Moon Lily: (a novel) (Western Literature Series)

Moon Lily a

Susan Lang

n o ve l

moon lily western literature series

susan lang

Moon Lily university of nevada press

reno & las vegas

western literature series University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada 89557 usa Copyright © 2008 by Susan Lang All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lang, Susan, 1941– Moon lily / Susan Lang. p. cm. — (Western literature series) isbn 978-0-87417-768-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. California, Southern—Fiction.  2. Women landowners—Fiction.  3. Single mothers—Fiction.  4. Women pioneers—Fiction.  5. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction.  I. Title. ps3612.a555m66 2008 813'6—dc22    2008013995

The paper used in this book is a recycled stock made from 30 percent post-consumer waste materials, certified by fsc, and meets the requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r2002). Binding materials were selected for strength and durability.

First Printing 17  16  15  14  13  12  11  10  09  08 5  4  3  2  1

For the readers who have been waiting

moon lily

chapter one

W

hen her ear caught the low drone of an engine down can-

yon, Ruth struggled up from her chair and crutched into the cabin to put away her book. Without thinking about it, she skirted that certain afternoon shadow cast by the pinyon bough. She glanced in the mirror above the dresser, running fingers through her dark hair to untangle it. When that didn’t work, she snatched up her brush and gave a few quick strokes that managed to ignite sparks and leave hairs writhing in the air. Oh, why bother, anyway? They weren’t that kind of company. She put down the brush and made one last attempt to smooth her hair. By the time she hobbled out the door and made her way to the campfire, Maddie and J.B. were leaping over brush and rocks as they



ran down the wash to meet the Yuiatei pickup at the bend. She struck a match to the wood and watched her children jump onto the running board when the truck slowed for them. They hopped off again just before the truck came to a halt in her yard. Already Lem’s two kids had scrambled from the pickup bed, and all four youngsters dashed past her into the cabin. Ruth smiled at the excitement generated whenever Lem brought his children. She was disappointed, though, not to see his sister Martha with them. She’d been looking forward to catching up on all the stories they shared. Thomas nodded as he stepped out of the truck, but one look at his face brought her up. His expression had a strange tightness to it, she thought, watching him bend over the pickup bed to retrieve supplies. She could see that Lem’s heart wasn’t in the smile he gave her, either, as he limped toward her at the campfire. Clearly something was up, but Yuiatei custom required a period of sociability before talking about anything serious. Thomas carried over a box heaped with grapes and set it on the rock beside the fire, then pulled up a camp chair next to Lem, the two of them positioned for the coffee-drinking ritual that began any social visit at Glory Springs. How long would she have to wait to find out, she wondered? “Can we make some of that new Kool-Aid?” J.B. shouted from the cabin. “I guess so,” Ruth said. “But there’s lik’ii outside the door too.” Usually J.B. and Maddie drank only the beverage made from soaked mesquite pods that was once traditional fare at the settlement in Black Canyon. Oh well, she decided, let them celebrate their friends’ visit. “I wouldn’t mind a cup of that lik’ii,” Lem said, “while the coffee’s brewin.’ I miss havin’ lik’ii around these days.” His raspy voice always scraped up against Ruth’s sensibilities, as if his pain were still present—though she knew the accident that had caused it and claimed his wife’s life happened years before she met him.



“Sure,” she said, settling into the camp chair next to the flat boulder that was her secondary outdoor table. “Help yourself—cups are on the table rock. I do wish those kids knew what was good for them, though.” “But you did buy that Kool-Aid for them, didn’t you?” Thomas said. Ruth felt her face heat as he picked up a cup and followed Lem over to the mesquite crock, the two of them as opposite in appearance as two men could be—Indian or otherwise—Lem short-haired and pudgy, bent slightly from the ancient accident, and Thomas, tall and graceful in his stride, his long hair falling fluid across his shoulders. “J.B. wanted to try the new grape flavor,” she told him. “Said it smelled exactly like the purple lupines we saw up at Big Bear.” “I don’t suppose grape Kool-Aid will hurt any of them. Certainly not any more than that grape beverage you like to drink occasionally.” He looked back over his shoulder at her and tried to grin. Now her neck burned clear down into her shirt. Ruth studied him as he walked back to his chair. She knew he sometimes worried about her taste for wine—needlessly, since she could hardly afford it anymore—but it wasn’t like him to make such pointed remarks, even in jest. She refused to take it personally. After all, he’d seen so many of his people succumb to alcohol, especially after the Depression robbed them of the jobs that kept them alive. Modern culture had already made their old ways of life impossible. The sad part was, though, that now that the economy was finally getting better, Yuiatei were still filling in with alcohol. Even so, that had nothing to do with her own situation; Thomas had told her so himself—more than once, in fact. So what was bothering him then, she wondered? The tension she’d sensed increased as they sat waiting for the water that took forever to boil. Whatever was wrong had to be serious. Ruth strained to summon some patience. Relieved when water began



hissing over the edge of the pot, she lifted herself up from the chair. Using the table rock for balance, she took a step, then let go and took two more. After months of Thomas’s treatments, she could now put enough weight on her injured leg to stand and pour coffee grounds into the water without falling over. She could even walk short distances without leaning on her crutch. She had to be careful, though; sometimes, when she stepped too quickly on that side, the leg would turn to rubber under her. She felt more secure keeping her crutch beside her to absorb some of the weight if she needed it. Ruth stirred in the coffee, slid the pot to one side so the grounds would settle, then turned and took a chance that her leg would hold her weight for the steps back to her chair. She wanted Thomas to see her using it. The leg held, barely, just enough so she could reach the arm of her chair. She had bruised it when she tripped over an escaped hen and fell a few days ago at the spring. She had to keep building strength, but she had been afraid to risk another collapse like that, at least while she was alone. She would have to work her leg all the harder during the days Thomas was there. Once the coffee grounds settled, she stood, took a tentative step toward the coffeepot, then another. The children were disappearing across the wash as she poured. Ruth doubted they’d see them again before sundown and supper. Impatient with the wait, she blurted out what had been on her mind since they arrived. “Is your sister still out picking?” she asked Lem, handing him a filled cup. “I thought Martha was coming with you.” Maybe her question would get the social period started so she could find out what was wrong. She reached for another cup, but stopped when the men exchanged glances. She stood there staring, didn’t dare ask more. She’d seen looks like that before. When her leg began to buckle, Thomas rose and eased her into her chair.



When he said, “She’s in jail, Ruth,” such relief washed over her that a little laugh escaped before she could trap it back. It hung glaring in the air as Lem added, “For murder.” Suddenly nothing made sense. Martha? Murder? How could those words possibly go together? “Forgodsake, what happened?” “It was Jackson,” Lem explained. “He got drunk and went on the warpath again. You know how he is when he gets that way, always talkin’ about gettin’ rid of the Peeled Ones. Those Modajees always talk like that. Only this time he got hold of old One Eye’s rifle and was goin’ to do something about it. Martha tried to take it away from him. That’s when it happened.” “You mean she shot him?” “Nah, the gun just went off. Guess he got in its way.” “But—but—why murder, then?” Lem shrugged, looked at her pointedly. “You know the story, Dlah’da,” Thomas said. “Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if they were on the rez, where everyone knows them. But they were way out past Indio in that picking camp when it happened. A whole different county, where no one knows them. Down there they’re just a couple of drunken Indians. Besides, Jackson’s Modajee relatives were at the camp.” “But Martha doesn’t even drink . . .” “No one paid any attention to that. That sheriff just took her in. Who knows what those Modajees said about her? It’s a big picking camp, and the Modajees have lots of friends there. The camp is right next to their rez. But even Teske, Mexican, and Japanese pick there these days. Besides, the sheriff remembered Martha and Jackson from the commotion they’d caused the night before.” Thomas walked to the fire and poured coffee into a cup, handed it to her. “We heard Martha’d been screamin’ an’ tryin’ to stop him from gettin’ that gun the night before,” Lem said. “Someone called the law in.”



A shiver ran up Ruth’s back when she remembered the sheriff who’d questioned her after Jim’s death. Because Indian Jim had been her lover, the man had viewed her as lower than a prostitute. An Indian woman like Martha might rank even beneath that in his eyes. Surely it wouldn’t be the same sheriff, though. After all, ten years had gone by. Ruth gulped her coffee, entertaining its burn all the way down. She wished it were whiskey instead. “What can we do? Has anyone seen her? Can we?” Thomas shook his head. “She needs a lawyer. Without one they’ll probably put her away. We’re all getting some money together.” “Of course, I’ll put in,” Ruth said. “Whatever it takes.” Just the thought of giving up any of the money stashed in her dresser drawer sent a hot knife into her intestines. It had cost her the use of her leg to earn it, working in that ridiculous movie. Was that really almost two years ago now? She’d spent those funds frugally this past year, after leaving David Stone and coming back to live in the canyon again. Even the five pennies for Kool-Aid had been a splurge. Once that money was gone, how in the world would she support herself in Glory Springs—or anywhere else for that matter? Even the option of working at the nursing she despised seemed out of the question now. Whoever heard of a nurse on a crutch? She had a sudden image of herself crawling on one knee down a row of grapes, dragging her bum leg as she went picking with the Yuiatei. But how could she worry about her finances when Martha was in such danger? “But how will we find a lawyer who’ll defend an Indian woman? Maybe in San Bernardino? We’d better get on the road.” Ruth snatched up her crutch, pulled herself from the chair, and started toward the cabin to get the money. “Not today, Dlah’da,” Thomas said. “It’s too late now. And we think we can get that guy in Banning again.”



“You know, that Nicholas Ghosh guy who helped us when Jackson broke in and stole the whiskey last year,” Lem said. “Got ’im off with just a fine. Plus those days in jail. They wanted to put ’im in prison.” Ruth paused, then continued toward the cabin. “Too bad. If he’d been in prison, none of this would have happened to Martha,” she said. But she’d felt bad for Jackson when it happened. He always seemed like the nicest man—until he had a drink. Then all hell broke loose. The Yuiatei said it was because he was a Modajee—and Modajees prided themselves on being aggressive and warlike, rather than peace-loving like Yuiatei. But she suspected it was mainly the alcohol. She’d seen the same meanness in her mother, Cally, when she drank. Ruth pulled the shoebox of money out of the drawer, counted out a hundred dollars, swallowed hard when she saw how shallow that left the pile in the box. A hundred dollars equaled months of groceries, since the bulk of her food came from the land around her, what she shot, picked and grew. She might even have to forgo coffee soon. She’d already cut out wine on all but rare occasions, though she missed it dearly. Especially at the moment. Crutching out to the campfire again—all efforts to show Thomas that she’d been working her leg now deemed ludicrous—she held the bills out toward him. She wanted to get the money out of her hands so she wouldn’t fret over it. But Thomas shook his head. “Just wait, Dlah’da. Come with us tomorrow. With what we’ve already collected, maybe we won’t need it all.” “Lawyers are expensive. Take it. Do you think they’ll let us see her?” Thomas shrugged. “We can try. But we’d better hire the lawyer first. They’re not going to let us in unless they know someone’s watching.” Ruth sank into her chair. She pictured Martha kneeling at the na’dai in Black Canyon, singing a grinding song as acorns gave way



under her stone, remembered her laughing at Ruth’s first awkward attempts to leach the flour produced from those acorns. Ruth had learned so much from her friend. And they had become even closer after Grandmother Siki died and Ruth injured her leg, as if their grief had bonded them. After Grandmother’s death, Martha had abandoned the short curly hairstyle she’d adopted from white culture, and let her hair grow long enough to wear in thick braids that hung over her shoulders or looped and fastened to the back of her head. Ruth knew this look wouldn’t endear her to the sheriff and others in the legal system. For years Martha had worn only the clothing fashions of the mainstream culture she’d moved in while she worked at the agency. Then her job had been cut. And Grandmother Siki’s death had affected Martha differently than it had other Yuiatei. For most it had meant finally abandoning the last of the old ways, as if some center of things had been lost. For Martha it meant honoring the old customs. Ruth knew things had been dissolving before Grandmother Siki’s death too, as the Depression sucked livelihood from the tribe. Whites had long ago taken the land the people needed, the places they went to gather mesquite and acorns, the places they hunted. The tribe had become dependent on jobs, on food and shelter that they now had to buy. Jobs they lost when times got tough for everyone. But Martha told her that Yuiatei didn’t want to bother with the old customs these days, anyway. And Ruth had seen for herself how the traditional summer ceremonies in Black Canyon had been sparsely attended for the last two years. She felt a hand press her arm. When she looked up at Thomas, she realized her cheeks were wet. He said nothing, but the tenderness in his face was enough to bolster her. She took in a deep breath, let it out. Lem had left his chair and was already halfway across the wash, on his way to the children’s story place. Suddenly, she wanted



to be over there too, acting out the hopes her children had built into the structures there—the miniature Yuiatei settlement and replica of Frontiertown—in the dramas and rituals they played out to change the outcomes of things. But hope couldn’t be forced, and she couldn’t find any in her at the moment. Outside of her world at Glory Springs, everything seemed to be spiraling downward. “Don’t give in to it, Dlah’da,” Thomas said. “That way it wins— and it’s very strong.” Ruth nodded, drew in a breath at the sound of her Yuiatei name. She loved that name Grandmother Siki had given her, loved the idea of being a Willow Woman, though at the moment she knew her branches had gone barren with winter. She couldn’t define in words what the it Thomas spoke of was, but she felt its effect everywhere. She looked over to find him staring off, his eyes and thoughts far away. The hard granite cliffs on the mountain behind him contrasted with the soft flesh of his face, where two years ago the grizzly had gouged lines the length of one cheek, its claws etching their story in deep streaks of scar. Ruth rose and made her way to the cabin to finish preparing the pot of vegetables and jerked venison laid out for supper. She was particularly proud of that venison. The buck had come to her—there was no other way to see it—stepped out from behind a scrub oak three weeks ago when she was down around the bend hunting rabbit for dinner. She had raised the .22 and shot the animal between the eyes from about fifteen feet away. Her eyes burned with gratitude, remembering, and she thanked the buck silently once again as she began adding the jerked meat to the pot. Of course, once she’d shot it, she had to find some way to bring her prize home, and it took hours of struggle and the children’s help to get the carcass dressed out under a nearby pinyon branch and hacked into pieces. Then she brought the Model A down—Lem had rigged the gas pedal so she could drive it—and they hauled all the meat back



in the rumble seat. The blood never did come out of the seat completely, no matter how Ruth scrubbed, but that was the price she paid for her gift of food. A small price, considering what the deer paid. She sighed, remembering the way she used to brazen her way through life before the accident, certain she could do anything she wanted or needed to do—imposing her will everywhere. The injury had forced her to go differently in the world, to negotiate, see what that world itself was offering her of its own accord. She knew now that there were conditions. One of them was not giving in to the darkness that waited to suck people into itself. That was what Thomas meant. When she had the stew simmering on the campfire and finished milking the goats, Thomas motioned for her. She sat on the ground next to the moon lily plant, while he helped her do leg exercises, moving the leg just beyond its range. Her eyes were drawn to the shadow of the pinyon bough that lurked in the yard in front of her cabin. No matter how many times she told herself it was just her imagination, that dark shape stayed to remind her of what had happened there years ago. Imagination or not, she couldn’t see that tree shadow without seeing in it the spread of Jim’s hair as he lay there dying. The medicine man stepped in front of her view as he bent to wrap her leg in soft yerba mansa leaves, afterward chanting and sprinkling pollen around her. He stopped occasionally to have her drink from the potion he had prepared. Aware first only of her own turmoil, she kept picturing Martha in a cell somewhere, pictured also the diminished pile of bills in her shoebox. Gradually, though, the sound of his voice sent her far inside, where her thoughts lost the words they were formed by and floated up like clouds hovering above her. She could feel where the thought clouds had darkened with pain and fear that wanted to pour down on her as despair. Freed from these things, even temporarily, Ruth could focus her attention on her leg, imagine it absorbing the healing

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power of the leaves and potion, and the words Thomas brought forth into the canyon’s air. When she felt the tingling begin, she imagined herself walking without a limp, then running, with wind flinging out her hair. The sensation of wind in her hair came on so vividly that it brought back thoughts of her Juniper Blue as she rode him from Frontiertown while making that movie, then of the horse coming down on her, the crushing weight of him. The pregnant clouds rained down, flooding her with melancholy, as if the tree shadow had somehow pulled her into its darkness. All tingling in her leg stopped, along with images of herself running free. She became just a silly, crippled woman sitting on the ground with leaves wrapped around her leg, Thomas just a man chanting words at her that she didn’t understand. Then something like a voice inside said clearly, Stop, Ruth. Listen, feel the air. Stay with what’s real, Ruth, and she fought the black thoughts with her senses, breathed in the wind she had conjured, opened herself to the sound of the medicine man’s voice again, aware of the way it influenced the air around her. Ruth held fast to the present, and gradually her darkness began to lighten.

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chapter two

M

addie put the dai rock down and brushed the ground

chia seeds into her bowl with a clump of broom plant. She got quiet, listened to the wind singing. The sound of pines and scrub oak, grama grass and Joshuas, all the sharp cliffs on the mountain and piles of rounded rocks in the wash gave shape to the wind’s song. The story changed wherever she went. Here at the canyon’s bottom, its sound was raspy from all the low shrub. Higher on the mountain, the pines gave it a sweet hum. When she sat by the cliffs, the voice hollowed out against the hard rock. Some days, the wind was only a soft whisper everywhere; other days it shouted out as loud as a cougar’s scream, and she could hear oak leaves and pine needles cry out as they ripped

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away from trees. Sounds told stories even better than words in a book. You had to know how to read them. She used to think Ruth could hear the wind’s voice too, but now she thought Ruth heard something else. Haa’iit, a dead one. From the mountain Maddie had seen Ruth talk and smile to the air. It started after they came back from living in Los Angeles. Every morning Maddie woke up happy now to be back in the canyon. And not in Los Angeles. Sometimes she had dreams of that school she went to when Ruth got hurt. The children’s faces always blurred together, but not the sound of their voices. Maddie, Maddie. Mad as a hattie. The words stayed stuck in her head like a foot caught between rocks. Words were like that. Here comes that mad little Maddie they would say. She used to stop up her ears with her fingers. But the words slid underneath. She would close her eyes, but inside she could still see their mouths shaping the sounds. Words could do terrible things if you let them. That house in Los Angeles was always dark . . . Ruth kept the curtains closed all day. Maddie could see that more than her mother’s leg was injured. She felt the same hurt inside herself. Outside the house, the light was thin because of all the buildings. There was only that small patch of grass to sit on behind the house and a thorny hedge by the wall. Sometimes a bird would come by. But it was hard to be outside, too, where the noises of cars and machines grated on her ears. And the cranky dogs in yards around them. With sharp barks full of hate. They got mad if she tried to talk to them, promised to tear her apart. The dogs wouldn’t talk with her like wild creatures did. She used to close her eyes and remember the canyon. Then she could hear the wind singing through the canyon’s plants, the voices of coyotes and raccoons, and all the rest. It hurt her heart to be away from them. She got so old in Los Angeles.

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In that school David sent her to, she’d learned that she had no imagination. The teacher had told them all to draw a tree. Maddie raised her hand and asked what kind of tree the teacher wanted. “It doesn’t have to be any particular kind of tree, just a tree. Can’t you use your imagination?” The teacher’s voice was harsh, like the dogs.’ Maddie couldn’t think how to draw a tree that wasn’t any particular kind of tree, so she sat there trying to find her imagination so she could use it to do what the teacher wanted. Just what was an imagination, she wondered, and where in her could she find it? She searched and searched inside herself, but it was no use; she just didn’t have one. Maybe only children born in cities had imaginations. The teacher gave her a mean look when she turned the paper in with nothing on it. J.B. was different. Her brother liked learning things at that school, liked looking at all the buildings there in the big city center, where that theater was. David used to take him to look at them. But J.B. missed Glory Springs too. In Los Angeles he could only look at buildings. Here at Glory Springs he could build them. That’s how her brother told his stories. She knew her brother still liked David—just like she did before he took them away from here. David wanted to keep them away, to make them live in his story. Maddie put a pinch of chia seeds into her mouth and thought about stories and songs, about how the world was made of them. She liked the people stories she read in Ruth’s books, too, and the stories Kate used to tell her about Sweden. Even if they had words and words could slide around. English words do that. But the canyon’s stories, the stories in the desert and at Black Canyon were real. They didn’t slip away like ice did when she tried to hold it. Grandmother Siki said everything had its story—even without words. She said stories came before words. Like the chia seeds. All the plants and rocks and animals. You had to listen to their voices and think carefully to understand. A long time ago all Yuiatei could hear

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them, Grandmother Siki told her. They put the stories into songs. But too many got lost. Only a few were left. The ones Grandmother and Thomas knew. These weren’t people stories, even if they used word songs to tell them. These stories came from plants and animals. Maddie sang the ones she knew sometimes, like the chia song, while she gathered and ground the seeds. She liked shaping her mouth to make the words rattle like dry chia stalks in the wind. That’s what Yuiatei words do. Another way to know a plant’s story, Maddie knew, was to take it inside her. But many plant stories are too strong. Like words, they can hurt if you’re not careful. Creosote tea made her feel better when she was sick—but too much gave her a stomachache, made her throw it back up. Even deer knew which plants to eat, never ate the ones that would hurt them. Chia seeds never hurt anyone, though, no matter how many you ate. She put more in her mouth. They turned gooey on her tongue, except for a hard kernel in the middle she crunched down on. A spicy nut taste. Her stomach always stopped groaning when the chia gave her its story. She had to be careful when she used plants for medicine, like jai’ts’ei and ni’danai. The book David gave her had names for those plants like yerba mansa and yerba santa, but books don’t really know the plants’ stories. The Yuiatei song words understand them better. Each word tells the whole story, lets you know these aren’t plants to take inside you, except in tea for winter medicine. Some words tell you when is the right time to pick that plant, like with ni’danai, and to pick only the leaves and fall root, with jai’ts’ei. The song words say other things too. That’s what Maddie loved about Yuiatei words— each word held a whole story in its sounds. She could change a story completely with one little sound, could make the yerba mansa a dry land mountain plant instead of a low land water plant by changing the ts to da—but that would be a lie, and Yuiatei words weren’t made to lie. And whenever she put almost any Yuiatei word into English,

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it took many, many words to get its story—and even then English couldn’t say it right. The plants told their stories so quietly that at first she didn’t hear them. They got drowned out by the animals, who sang out in loud voices that were easy to hear. Easy for her to make. Even when Grandmother Siki taught her Yuiatei songstories while they gathered and ground up grass seeds, she didn’t understand. Then one day after Grandmother Siki was gone, Maddie was gathering yucca blossoms to eat and she heard them whispering. She stopped picking off the rubbery white petals and listened more closely. Not just the yucca— but all the plants around her. They were all telling her their stories. None of them came to her in words at first. But she felt their stories, their songs. How could her head hold them all? She had felt as if her head was getting so full it might just break open the way she’d seen sweet melons do when they got too ripe. She had to put her hands on top of her head to keep it in one piece. Even the tiny white flowers at her feet and the yellow rabbit bush flowers had stories to tell her. Listen to us, they were singing without a whisper, and we will tell you everything you need to know. This is who we are, she heard the pinyons singing. We have gifts to give you. Stay away from me, the moon lily bush hissed, if you’re afraid. Taste me, and I will show you the world. Then the voices had become words in her head. To stop the words, she began touching and smelling each plant, trying to understand what it was saying. Sometimes she tasted it if the plant told her to. Maddie put another pinch of chia seeds in her mouth, crunched down, then stopped. She thought she heard a low hum coming through the rock under her and stood to listen to the air. Yes, it was them. Maddie began running up the knoll to tell her brother that Thomas and Lem were coming in the pickup. He wouldn’t hear the motor yet down in the draw. She hoped they would be bringing Frank and Della in the back.

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chapter three

R

uth swiped at the trickle of sweat on her neck. She looked

away from the dry desertscape of Devil’s Garden out the windshield. In the rearview mirror she could see the great snake of dust rolling out from under the truck’s wheels to hover in the still air behind them. They had started out early to miss the full heat of the place, but there was no escaping it in late summer, even in early morning. It was hotter yet crowded between the two men, and the brown and parched land out the window unsettled her. Even the barrel cactus appeared shriveled. She hadn’t been farther away from Glory Springs than Juniper Valley since she drove to the Whirling Bird ceremony last spring. She remembered sitting with Martha under the arbor in Black Canyon, talking about how few Yuiatei had attended year’s festivities—

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and about how strong alcohol was on the breath of many who did. Especially Martha’s husband, but they hadn’t talked about that. In fact, Jackson had caused quite a commotion while the birdmen dancers whirled around the campfire in colorful feathers, imitating the calls of birds. Even Ruth could understand the words Jackson kept hollering out in Yuiatei before Martha and some others dragged him away from the ceremony. He had been calling the ceremonial spirits foolish women with little beaks and said they should join him and fight the Peeled Ones who ruined their people. Martha had been shamed by the incident. She would have left the ceremony, except that her sister and Ruth persuaded her that no one held it against her. Everyone knew that Jackson had been solid until he’d lost his job and couldn’t get work. And he still seemed perfectly fine most of the time—until he got hold of a bottle of whiskey. He wasn’t alone in finding solace in alcohol either. What set him apart was his Modajee anger and warlike antics. Now he was dead because of it—and Martha was paying the price. Just before they reached Highway 99, Lem slowed and pulled the pickup to the edge of the road and up onto a patch of hard ground. The children scampered out of the truck’s bed and headed for the creosote bushes. Until now the shoulder had been a dry swamp of sand ready to suck in the wheels of anyone careless enough to drive into it. That deep sand had flipped over countless vehicles when drivers hit it too fast. The dust trail of another vehicle was approaching from the highway as Thomas handed Ruth her crutch out of the back, and she began making her way toward a clump of boulders, farther from the road than the creosote but offering more cover. By the time she returned, the car had long passed, leaving its own dust snake in the air to guard the road. Lem added gas to the tank from the can they had filled in Juniper Valley, while Thomas unfastened the canvas water bag that hung in front of the radiator and poured more through the spout.

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“Let’s wet our whistles a little,” Lem said when he put the gas can back into the truck bed. He wiped at the crust around his lips. Ruth handed him the canteen she dug out from under the seat, and they all drank just enough warm water to whistle their way back onto the road again. At Banning, Highway 99 became the main street, and they drove slowly through the town until they located the sign, nicholas ghosh, attorney at law, in front of a small house. The children stayed in the pickup bed while Ruth went with Thomas and Lem to the door. A gray-haired woman appeared at their knock and told them in a foreign accent that Ghosh was in trial at the county courthouse in San Bernardino. She said he most likely wouldn’t be home for another day or two. Since the trial was to last several days, he would stay away overnight there. “Looks like we’re going to San Bernardino, after all,” Thomas said as they walked back to the pickup. “Yeah, but we have to give this motor a rest ’fore we go any farther.” Lem unlatched and raised the hood. Ruth could hear the radiator gurgling. “We’ll be here a while,” he called out to the children in his sandpaper voice. “Might as well stretch your legs.” “But how will we find him in San Bernardino? We don’t know where he’s staying there.” The trip appeared more and more like a wild-goose chase, though she didn’t know if it was herself or the lawyer who was the goose. The farther away from Glory Springs she got, the more unsure she was of anything at all. “We know where the courthouse is.” Thomas leaned against the pickup cab. “He has to come out of there sooner or later. We’ll find him.” Ruth looked over just in time to find Maddie and J.B. heading into the hedges around the house, Frank and Della close behind. “Stop, J.B., Maddie,” Ruth shouted. “Come back here. Frank, Della, you too.” She hoped the woman inside hadn’t noticed.

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Lem and Thomas were holding back grins. She rolled her eyes at them. Her children had been in the wild so long that any bush would do, and they saw no obstacle just because a bush had been trimmed and was landscaping someone’s house. She sent the children down the road to the gas station they’d passed, then settled on the running board to wait for the radiator to cool. While they waited, Thomas told her more about Nicholas Ghosh, the attorney they had traveled so far to see. Ghosh had a reputation for fighting for the underdog, which these days included Okies and immigrants, along with the Indians he had always helped. He couldn’t be in it for the money, either, Thomas said, considering the little they’d paid him for Jackson’s problem last year. “He told us he actually preferred cases like ours.” Thomas lifted the back of his heavy hair, twisted and tied it off his neck with a strand of burlap. “Preferred helping Indians?” Ruth had a hard time fathoming that. “He is Teske, isn’t he? Why would he prefer helping Indians?” Thomas and Lem laughed. “But what about you, Dlah’da?” Thomas said, with a wide smile. Ruth turned her face away, bit down on her reply. How could he call her Dlah’da, how could she be their Willow Woman—and still be thought of as white, as Teske? It pained her heart to know they thought of her that way, and she refused to acknowledge his words. It was true that her only blood claim came from a less than a quarter-breed grandmother, Lolinda—whom she’d never met. She had only seen Lolinda in the photo she kept in the shoebox. Her mother hadn’t seen fit to tell her about the woman until a few years ago—but what else could Ruth expect from a mother like Cally. She didn’t even know which tribe Lolinda belonged to, knew only that they had lived somewhere over the border in Mexico. And in truth, Ruth, by most of her blood and certainly by upbringing, belonged to white culture, was Teske.

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But in her heart she was not. She had never belonged, which was why she had come to her canyon and homesteaded Glory Springs. Was it really eleven years ago? It wasn’t that she actually thought of herself as Indian, even though she found more affinity with the Yuiatei than she had ever found with her own culture. In her deepest self, she knew she belonged to the land she lived on, reveled in its wildness and beauty. And her love for that place and her intimacy with it was much like the way the Yuiatei loved their home in Black Canyon, though their intimacy had once been much deeper. Yet that was why she felt like one of them, tended to forget she was not. Apparently that wasn’t true for her Yuiatei friends. Lem broke out the sandwiches she’d made, set the rest in the back for the children. She began choking hers down, ignoring Thomas, although she could sense him observing her. Already, the trip had come to feel interminable—and it appeared they were just getting started. It would take another two hours, maybe three, simply to get to the San Bernardino courthouse, then no telling how long they would have to wait to see Ghosh. And after that, what? Sitting cramped up between the men for so long had initiated strange little pinpricks of pain in her injured leg. These felt different than the phantom pains she occasionally felt—people without a limb felt such things, too, she knew. Could her numb leg actually be feeling something this time? She would have mentioned it to Thomas—if he hadn’t reminded her of the distance between them. The little pinpricks did not let up all the way to San Bernardino, and Ruth was eager to get out of the cramped truck to ease her leg some. They parked about two blocks from the courthouse, down the street from what looked to be a huge hospital. The courthouse itself turned out to be an imposing concrete building with a wide cement walkway that ended in steps up to heavy wooden doors at the entrance. Everyone but Lem and his daughter came with her to examine the large green lawn alongside the walkway and around the building.

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It was already late afternoon, so Thomas went inside to make sure that court was still in session, while Ruth occupied herself by crutching up the walkway, allowing enough weight on her leg to see if she could get the shooting stabs to stop. She looked over in time to see J.B. and Frank following Thomas inside. She couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the three Indian males striding so confidently into the white edifice that housed such authority. Thomas’s simple attire—cotton pants, white shirt with dark leather vest—contrasted with that of the suited men in ties coming in and out of the courthouse. She found it hard to hold on to her anger at him for what he’d said, especially since, in a manner of speaking, it was true. And maybe he understood the rest without saying so. Besides, how could she ever have survived the past year in the canyon without her Yuiatei friends’ help. Maddie had squatted by a walking flock of pigeons, conversing with them in sounds that Ruth couldn’t distinguish from the birds’ own calls. Although Maddie spoke both English and Yuiatei perfectly, she retained the penchant she’d had since she was a toddler for making the sounds of wild creatures, and seemed happiest when she was chatting away with them. Of course, who knew if she was actually communicating with these creatures—even if they did seem to answer her back. Ruth parked herself on a bench midway down the concrete walkway, in the shade of a tall palm tree. She rubbed her leg as she watched red ants forage for crumbs on the concrete. The tiny stabs had stopped, yet something about her leg felt different, heavier maybe. When Thomas and the boys came out of the courthouse, a uniformed officer followed them, then stood at the top on the steps watching as the tall Indian came over and stood in front of Ruth. At Thomas’s nod the boys walked on by her toward the truck. “Well, Ghosh is still in there. I think court’s about to adjourn. But they didn’t want to tell me anything.” He looked back at the of-

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ficer, who had started toward them. “I think it’s best if you wait here for him while I go back to the truck. Hostiles are everywhere.” He attempted a wry smile to go with his allusion, but anger turned his expression into a hard mask. Thomas squared his shoulders and started down the sidewalk. “But how will I . . . ?” Ruth got to her feet, the crutch clattering to the sidewalk. “Big man. Looks like that bear,” Thomas called back as he left. “You’ll know him.” “Are you all right, ma’am?” The officer ran the last few steps to retrieve Ruth’s crutch. “That Indian didn’t harm you, did he?” His blue eyes assessed her as he handed back the crutch, no doubt noting how worn her one set of dress slacks and blouse had become, how tanned her skin and dark her hair. He glanced at Maddie’s light skin and bright auburn hair as she plopped down on the bench by Ruth’s side. He suddenly seemed unsure of himself. Was she or wasn’t she? he must be thinking. “Not at all, Officer.” She took the crutch, struggled to hide the rage that came over her whenever she was confronted by such stupidity. It was a dangerous stupidity, she well knew, the same kind that had caused Jim’s murder because he was her lover. She couldn’t quite choke back her words, though she knew they wouldn’t help matters. “That Indian is our good friend,” she said, setting a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The officer’s eyes narrowed. “This is not an appropriate place to be loitering, ma’am,” he said with some chill. The tone sent its ice up her back, but it didn’t faze her. “We’re not loitering, Officer. We’re waiting for our lawyer, Nicholas Ghosh. This is a public bench, isn’t it?” “Oh, Ghosh, huh.” The man’s eyebrows raised. Then he cautioned her “not to wait too long,” and marched away and back up the steps, where he disappeared behind the huge doors.

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“What a fool,” Ruth whispered. She looked down to find Maddie making a face after him. “We just have to ignore people like that,” Ruth said. Maddie nodded, said something in Yuiatei about him being a rotten peeled fruit, which was a play on words Ruth heard often when her friends spoke of whites with attitudes. She wondered just what had happened to Thomas and the boys inside that building. Wondered, too, about the officer’s annoyed tone when he mentioned Ghosh. His attitude gave her hope that Ghosh might actually help Martha. Ruth hugged Maddie to her with one arm—for her own comfort as much as the girl’s. She knew Maddie thought of herself as no different from the Yuiatei, though with her light freckled skin and wild red hair, she stood out from them like blood on snow. Of course, the fact that Ruth had let her believe Indian Jim was her father, as well as J.B.’s, had contributed to the girl’s illusion. And Maddie had seen that picture of Lolinda too. Lolinda was, after all, Maddie’s own greatgrandmother. But it troubled Ruth that Maddie might someday learn that her father was not Jim, but the bastard who had murdered him. She was prepared to deny that fact with everything in her. When the courthouse doors swung open and a swarm of people streamed down the steps onto the walkway, Ruth yanked her crutch over and boosted herself to her feet. How in the world was she supposed to pick out some man who looked like a bear in that fast-moving crowd? She couldn’t even get a clear look at them with so many coming out at once. Then she saw someone walk through the courthouse doorway, flinging the huge doors aside as he went, and laughed out loud at the sight of such a man, big and burly, who looked as if he’d been stuffed into the suit he wore, yet kept pouring out of it everywhere. Hair grew in anarchic profusion from his head and face, and she could almost sense it trying to break free from beneath the bulging suit coat and shirt he wore as well. And all that hair was the exact color of the grizzly she’d seen in Black Canyon, the

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same wounded grizzly who’d been shot after attacking Thomas and Grandmother Siki. She headed over to intersect Ghosh at the bottom of the steps. Men followed on each side of him, scribbling words on paper pads. “Mr. Ghosh,” she called out, dodging the indifferent crowd as she approached. “Mr. Ghosh!” At first he seemed not hear her above the noise and his own voice as he answered questions put to him by what she now saw were reporters. Then he stopped suddenly, and she saw him look around. “Mr. Ghosh!” she shouted, louder, and made her way toward him. Ghosh looked her way, and she waved her free arm as she crutched forward. He continued to watch her, from the step above her, the expression on his face curious and somewhat amused. “Well, what have we here?” he said, smiling, when she came near. “What paper might you be with?” “You know I’m not with any newspaper, Mr. Ghosh. There’s no need to mock me. My name is Ruth Farley. I’m here on account of Martha Naubel. She was the wife of Jackson Naubel, the Yuiatei man you represented last year. He was accused of taking whiskey from a store in Banning. But a few days ago, Jackson accidentally shot himself down in Indio, and they’ve arrested Martha for his murder.” Ruth paused and pulled in a breath. “I’ve come here with Thomas Naranga and Martha’s brother, Lemuel Dann. They’re waiting for you over there in that truck.” She stopped, motioned with her head down the block. For a moment Ghosh didn’t speak, and Ruth sensed a stillness around him as he considered her words. “How extraordinary,” he said, finally, his eyes still weighing her. It was hard to guess his age through all that hair. Ghosh reached into his pocket, came up with a scrap of paper, slid a pencil from the hand of a reporter and wrote something on the paper he pressed against his briefcase. “Here, have them meet me at this address in two hours. You be there too.”

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As Ghosh started past her, the reporter reached to retrieve his pencil from the departing lawyer’s hand and, instead, fell against the man—who took a step to the side for balance. Ghosh’s quick sidestep landed briefly on the toes of Ruth’s injured leg, there and then gone. “Oh, have I hurt you?” he asked, as she stood there stunned beyond speech, looking down at her foot. “Are you all right, Miss Farley? Say something, please.” Ruth looked up then, tingling with wonder and emotion. “I felt it,” she choked. “I actually felt it.” She almost wanted to ask him to step on her foot again to make sure she had truly experienced that sensation of pressure, however light it was. “I’m sure you did. But have I hurt you?” Concern brought a gentleness to his face that seemed incongruous with his bearlike bulk. Ruth found herself laughing, though her eyes blurred with tears. “You have no idea what this means,” she managed to say. “No idea at all.” She worked to pull herself together. “Please go on about your business, Mr. Ghosh. I’m entirely fine. I’ll explain when we see you later.” The look that he gave told her he wasn’t completely convinced, but he did continue past her down the sidewalk, glancing back twice before he lumbered out of sight. Ruth looked around for Maddie, saw her halfway to the truck, this time chattering with a flock of noisy black grackles, and hurried past her down the sidewalk to tell Thomas what had happened. The two men were sitting on the hood when she arrived, the boys off kicking a rock along the sidewalk. Ruth held out the paper. “He said to meet him at this address in two hours,” she said. “But then something amazing happened, Thomas,” and she went on to tell about the stabbing pains and how she had actually felt his foot press down on hers. The first thing Thomas did was have her take off her boot. Although she had felt nothing more that a slight pressure, her toes

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had already darkened with bruise, and as soon as her boot was off, the foot felt as if someone had put a sock on it, one made out of thousands of tiny pins that pricked and tingled all over. Although Thomas had her sit in the bed of the truck with her foot up, wrapping it in a wet cloth, Ruth was beside herself with glee. She knew she had no business feeling that way with her dear friend in jail for murder, and she tried to concentrate on the mission they had come for, but little jolts of joy kept popping up into her concern. They remained parked where they were. That way they could watch the big courthouse clock take them from 4:30 to 6:30, when they were to meet Ghosh. None of them had any kind of timepiece. Even Ruth went entirely by the movement of the sun across the sky to tell her when and what was to be done. When to get up, when to feed chickens and milk goats, when to get on the road to somewhere, when to come back. Since her brief stint living in Los Angeles with David Stone, she’d had no practice translating her schedule into clock time, which suited her just fine. And right now sun time told her that after they met with Ghosh, they’d be trapped here in a big city hours away from home, just when it was time to sleep. But how could she even consider her own inconvenience when so much was at stake for Martha? Several times her reveries were cut short by the whine of ambulances passing nearby. She could see them turning into the drive of the big hospital building down the street. Ruth couldn’t contain her shudder at the memory of those weeks she’d spent in the hospital in Los Angeles after her accident. Living there day and night had been much worse than the months she’d spent in training to work in one in El Paso so many years ago. She’d hated that work, hated being surrounded with pain and suffering. Yet, were it not for that stay in the L.A. hospital, would she even be here now to abhor it, she wondered? Ruth shook her head. What nonsense too much thinking led to! The address Ghosh had given her belonged to a small stucco house a few streets from the courthouse. In fact, the house looked a lot like

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the one they’d stopped at in Banning, as J.B. was quick to point out, except that the porch where Ghosh was sitting was roomier. The pungent odor of cigar smoke greeted them the moment they left the truck. Ghosh rose as they approached, offered Thomas and Lemuel a cigar, which Lem was quick to take, then held one out toward Ruth. Clearly he liked to catch people off guard, she decided, shaking her head. She felt herself smiling at his antic, though, and wouldn’t have been surprised to see him offer cigars to the children if they hadn’t remained in the truck bed. Ruth watched him smoke with fascination, wondering how the man could keep from catching that abundant nest of hair on fire. Ghosh listened with that same quiet, while Thomas and Lem explained what had happened in Indio, as if he were absorbing each detail they related and inspecting it from different angles. When they finished their story, he asked about the incident the night before the accident, about possible witnesses, and about the behavior of the sheriff. Since neither Thomas nor Lem had been present, they gave him the names of the Yuiatei who had been in the picking camp. Ghosh told them he would see what he could do but said that he had to finish the murder trial he was in now first. He hoped it would be over by the week’s end. When they took out the money to pay him, he waved them off. “Let me assess the situation first,” he said. Ghosh looked over at her, then, his eyes traveling downward to her boot, which she had stuck back on against Thomas’s advice. She had crossed her legs as they sat there and had been trying to elevate the foot that way, since the pinpricks had turned to hard stabs with the boot on. She still didn’t know what to think about having sensation in that limb again, painful as it was. But it definitely felt real. “It appears I did do damage to that foot,” Ghosh said, observing her shifting positions. “I hope you’re not planning to sue me.” “I think you helped bring it back to life,” she said. “I haven’t had

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feeling in that leg since my accident. Thomas has been treating it for months now.” “Putting that boot back on over the bruise didn’t help things,” Thomas said. “Sensation might not want to stay with you if all it finds is pain.” The medicine man’s dark eyes confronted hers. “You talk as if sensation were a living organism, complete with its own free will,” the lawyer remarked, but Thomas would not say more and only watched the lawyer with assurance. “Well, some of my truths don’t meet the test of so-called logic either, I suppose.” Ghosh turned to Ruth. “At any rate, your medicine friend here is right about that boot. Why don’t you take it off? I certainly don’t mind. In fact, I’ve got ice in the house. That should at least help to remedy the swelling.” Ghosh snubbed out the cigar, then rose and walked to the door, held it open. “Let’s all go inside.” He looked over at the children left in the pickup bed. “Bring those kids in too. We can tend to that foot and talk strategy for getting Martha out. I have some tasks the three of you can complete before I get there.”

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chapter four

M

addie watched her brother walk along the outside wall of

the big court building. She wondered just how long they would have to wait there to see the lawyer man who would help Martha. She didn’t really know what a lawyer was or why they needed one to help Martha. But the grown-ups thought it was important, even Thomas. Maddie thought it was funny how J.B. kept reaching across all those pretty patches of flowers just to touch that hard courthouse wall as he went. Sometimes he would stop and study something there. Finally Thomas called him over and they went inside with Frank. Maddie wondered just what J.B. would make when they got back to Glory Springs. He would never find anything so hard and white to build with in the canyon. Maybe he would use some of the

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white clay around the spring to cover over something else. She liked trying to guess ahead what J.B. would do. It wasn’t hard; he was always building something. The building didn’t interest Maddie. She liked the trees and green lawns better, the big oaks. But most of San Bernardino was like a little Los Angeles. At least it had mountains around it. She liked watching the pigeons, too, the way they flew back and forth from the ground to the high shelf near the roof. She could see their nests up there, the mounds of sticks and fluff jutting out from the ledge. Squatting down, Maddie waddled across the cement walk to talk with the pigeons who stayed on the ground. Up close, she got a good look at the shiny green and purple feathers on their necks. Pigeons were city birds. They weren’t afraid of people who came up to them. They looked like doves who ate too much, and their gurgling coo had a greedy plea to it. Even though they were easy to talk to, all they really wanted was food. Maddie could tell they didn’t remember how to get food on their own, so she gave them some of the chia seeds in her pockets. But they weren’t interested and went back to the bread crumbs people had scattered everywhere. She guessed pigeons weren’t wild anymore. The black grackles weren’t beggars like the pigeons. She liked all the noisy songs they sang as they flew from the lawn to the trees. It took her a while to learn their sounds. The birds ignored her until she got her voice right. But they got tired of talking right away and flew into the trees across the street. Maddie admired them for that. She hunkered down to watch the ants carry crumbs across the cement. When she put her ear just above them, she could hear the tiny scratches their feet made on the concrete. Ants were quiet creatures, and she let herself sink into their quiet to get away from the machine sounds scraping around her. When she looked up again, Thomas was walking fast out of the building with J.B. and Frank behind him. Thomas stopped to talk

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to Ruth, but the policeman came down the steps toward them, and Thomas walked away. Maddie got up, went over to sit on the bench by her mother. When the man asked if that Indian had bothered them, Maddie saw Ruth’s fingers dig into her thigh as she answered. Her voice got sharp and hard, like an old Yuiatei arrowhead. The policeman’s voice got hard too, but different. Heavy, like a big steel hammer. Maddie pretended she was growing a turtle shell against its sound. His voice told them they were ants crawling on the cement and he could mash them with his shoe. She could tell he was the kind of man who would do that to an ant. After he walked away, Maddie felt all sticky, like she’d been rolling around in garbage. Ruth’s arm clamped around her. She could feel her mother shaking. “He’s just a ha’iteske,” Maddie said, sliding out of Ruth’s grip. Rotting peeled fruit. That was the garbage she’d rolled in. Maddie went back to the ants. Some of them carried crumbs larger than they were. If she were an ant, she could carry the Yuiatei truck on her back. She could pick up that ha’iteske and throw him into the street. When people came rushing out the doors of the court building, she looked up and smiled because they reminded her of the ants coming out of the hole she’d discovered at the edge of the walk. Except Teske weren’t quiet like ants were. Ruth was rushing for the steps so fast her crutch hardly touched the cement. Maddie knew right away which man was the lawyer. He did look like a bear. Big and hairy and strong, like that grizzly. Maybe a man like that could help them. Frank and Della said Martha was in a cage down by Indio. It made Maddie choke to think about Martha trapped like that. She felt the cage wrap around her own body whenever she remembered. There was no air in there to breathe. Maddie pushed the feeling away from her, pictured Martha somewhere else, somewhere with nothing to cage her in, not even mountains like the ones at Glory Springs. She

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pictured her in a place that was completely open, the land stretched flat on all sides as far as she could see. They had to wait around the rest of the afternoon before they could talk to that big lawyer again. Ruth put her hurt foot up. Maddie heard her tell Thomas how the grizzly man had stepped on it and now she could actually feel it ache. Ruth was acting like she did when she drank wine, a little funny and excited. But Maddie knew she hadn’t had any wine for a long time. The lawyer’s name had a funny sound. Ghosh, like “gosh,” the way Kate Olsen would have said it. Maddie kept watching him when they went into his house later. She saw the way his eyes kept track of Ruth wherever she went, and his voice had a soft sound in it when he spoke to her. Most of the time Ruth just sat with her foot up, but when she went into the kitchen or out to the truck, his eyes followed her. Thomas noticed it, too. Maddie was glad when they finally left to go sleep out by Whitewater Canyon. She could see that Thomas was glad, too, by the way his voice lifted up. But she didn’t think Ruth noticed. Ruth never seemed to notice the way Thomas paid attention to her. At Whitewater, Maddie stayed awake picturing Ruth and Thomas together. Naked in bed the way her mother had slept with David Stone. Sometimes things she pictured happened. It was a way of changing the story. But she had pictured her mother and Thomas together so many times, and it hadn’t happened. Not yet. Ruth stayed up to wash her blouse. When her mother bathed her body in the little stream, the acorn-shaped moon lit up the skin on her face and breasts. The rest of her stayed a dark outline against the light sand beside the water. After a while, Maddie heard Thomas turn over, away from the stream. She wondered if Ruth knew he’d been watching her. Later, coyotes started to bark and howl farther up the canyon. Maddie had to strain to keep herself still. She wanted to sit up and join them. The others were asleep around her now, even Ruth. Maddie

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liked nothing better than singing with coyotes. Sometimes coyotes howled out so sad it made her cry. Other times they just fought over who was boss. Tonight they sounded happy. Maybe they had a fresh kill. Coyote songs always pulled at her insides, like the pack had a rope tied around her middle. They made her crave something she didn’t understand. She stood up, hunched over, and stepped through the sleeping bodies. Slid her feet deep into the wash sand to hush the crunch of each footstep. Outside their camp, she stopped to scatter a little sand ahead of her, in case rattlers were out in the warm night. The coyotes were howling from a different spot now. She headed that way. As she walked, Maddie kept remembering things. A time with her brother there beside her. Ruth wailing somewhere far away. Outside. Maddie remembered that she couldn’t move away from that sound. She had no word for it then. She only knew that was what Ruth brought to her when she dug in her fingers to pick her up and when she jerked her around to wash her face. Maddie had been afraid of Ruth’s pain as long as she could remember. In Los Angeles Maddie felt pain inside her too. Like that dream where her feet were trapped in a pool of ice at the willows. Her clothes were gone and wind kept whipping her naked skin. Even in the warm air, the memory made her shiver. She had no words for that pain’s story either. Whenever she found words for it, the story wriggled out, like a snake shedding its skin. Then it just waited somewhere she couldn’t see, ready to strike out at her. Maddie stopped and looked around. The moon made it easy to see, so she continued toward the shadows at the mouth of Whitewater Canyon. The air was calm and soft as the wash sand under her feet. She could hear the coyotes just around the bend. She heard pups there too, whining and getting snarled at. Maddie stopped and turned her face up toward the moon. She began to howl out, loud and long. After a while, the coyotes howled back. A few others on the knoll

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behind her joined in, and their voices echoed from the rocky hills around them. She yowled and yipped and howled and barked. The coyotes quit for a while—then started in again. She sang out all her stories. Sad ones and happy ones. Ones she couldn’t understand. All of them came pouring out of her, poured and poured, until her voice got ragged and thin. Finally, she sank down into the soft wash. The coyotes had quit long ago. She snuggled into the sand and let the mild desert night carry her off. In her dreams she ran with the coyote pack into the dark shadows. Howled with them up hidden ridges. Outside the dream, she heard them sniffing around her, wondering among themselves in muffled language. But she didn’t pull herself awake to explain her story to them and went back to run with their phantom shapes inside her.

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chapter five

R

uth sat sweltering on a porch bench outside the sheriff ’s

office. She got up occasionally to read the thermometer jutting out from the building. When it reached 118 degrees, she decided not to look again. This heat was vicious, the air thick with moisture from all the crops grown in this hothouse between the mountain ranges. She pictured the date groves and grape vineyards, the fields of alfalfa and various vegetables they had driven past to get here. Where the water came from to grow such crops was a mystery to her. The tan mountains enclosing the valley stood sharp and stark, scoured of plant life by the sand dunes on the valley floor. Thomas said a whole sea lay hidden somewhere nearby, its salty water warm

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enough to bathe in. Each time she pulled in a breath of humid air, she felt she was underneath the water of that rumored desert sea. She might as well have been underwater. Would that feel any stranger than being on the main street of this tiny town? Many of the few buildings were boarded up. The barbershop across the road was open, and the bar next to it. The only people she’d seen out were a few men who scurried slapdash from the barbershop to the bar. Minutes dragged by. The hands on the clock in the window appeared to be stuck at twelve forty-five, fifteen minutes before the sheriff ’s office was supposed to reopen. She fanned her face with a newspaper someone had left on the bench, then unfolded it. The headline and photo beneath made her drop the paper like a hot rock pulled out from her campfire. She snatched the paper back up and scanned the article with morbid fascination. europe at war. speculation that the u.s. might get involved. She looked out past the buildings into the harsh desert with amazement, fought to imagine far-distant cities where tanks rolled down streets, accompanied by soldiers with machine guns like the ones in the photo. And bombs that made ruins of whole cities. All that destruction made her skin prickle. Suddenly she wanted to drive back to Glory Springs and never leave it. Ruth refolded the paper, pushed it to the end of the bench. She closed her eyes and willed the unsettling thoughts to be swallowed up into the cicada chorus coming from a grove of mesquite down the road. But the insects’ metallic ringing only drilled the images deeper into her head. Ruth stood and stared down the sun-bleached street. Thomas and Lem had driven over to the big date-picking camp outside of town with the children. They hoped to find witnesses that Ghosh could interview later. He had given them initial questions to ask as well. But he had given Ruth the job of visiting Martha. She had a card and a letter that designated her as his representative to interview the client. He’d

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warned her, though, that the town was small and mean. She needed to comport herself with assurance, he said, whatever their attitude toward her might be. Easier said than done, she thought, especially when, at the moment, she felt more like some wandering vagrant than an attorney’s representative. They had driven out as far as the desert after they left San Bernardino and camped at the mouth of Whitewater Canyon, where the sand was soft enough to sleep on. They needed no blankets. Ruth had washed her blouse by moon- and starlight in the trickle left in the Whitewater River this time of year and hung the wet garment with her slacks on a bush. Even as the others slept, she had been making herself presentable for her task. Afterward, she lay awake, longing for her canyon, where life was so much simpler. That new throbbing in her leg pestered her out of sleep. It continued now as she sweated in front of the jail, preparing to affect an air of confidence. She felt about as sure of herself as a rabbit in a coyote’s den. When the hands finally reached one o’clock, she gathered herself together and pulled in a breath. If she couldn’t muster her old certainty, there was always bravado, she told herself, as she walked through the office door. “Good afternoon.” She flashed a smile and handed the card and letter to the officer at the duty desk, a young man with close-cropped brown hair. “I’m Ruth Farley. I’ve come from the office of Nicholas Ghosh, Attorney at Law, to interview Mrs. Martha Naubel. Mr. Ghosh is in trial at the moment.” The deputy looked at her blankly. “Mr. Ghosh is representing Mrs. Naubel, Officer,” Ruth explained. He scratched at his chin. “Oh, you mean the squaw. Wait a minute,” he said, handing her back the papers. “I’ll get Sheriff Daggett.” He disappeared down a small hall behind him. She heard a knock, then voices, the door closing again, then silence. When he reap-

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peared, the deputy had a familiar figure beside him, one Ruth had hoped never to see again. The sheriff ’s pale eyes narrowed when he saw her, and, for a moment, he studied her without speaking. His gaze dropped to the crutch by her side. “You say you’re from whose law office now, Miss Farley?” he asked finally. She held out the letter and card, could barely keep it from shaking its way toward him. “The law office of Nicholas Ghosh, Sheriff. Mr. Ghosh has sent me to do a preliminary interview with the client while he’s tied up in trial in San Bernardino.” “He should be tied up,” Daggett muttered, under his walrus mustache. “And you, still keeping bad company after all these years, I see. I don’t suppose that squaw back there has anything to do with the other funny business you were involved in?” Ruth met his smug gaze, channeled her hatred into politeness. “May I see the client now?” she asked calmly. Too much was at stake. “I won’t stop you.” He held back the small gate that let her into the back, all the while his mustache bobbing up and down as he chewed on the side of his bottom lip. It seemed his way of sneering when he had to give in to the law he represented. “You can have fifteen minutes,” he called out as the deputy led her down the hall. Ruth’s heart protested the civility she’d imposed upon it, pounded out so loud she worried that he must have heard its thudding. They went past a barred cell, where two small, dark-haired men huddled in the corner, looked out at her with resigned eyes. The deputy unlocked a heavy door at the end of the hall, swung it open to reveal Martha curled up on a cot at the back of a tiny room. It looked like an interrogation room—though the table had been upturned and a cot placed across from it. She saw no blanket or pillow. The only other item in the room was a covered slop jar. “There’s not even a window,” Ruth said, more to herself than to the deputy, as she looked over at this woman who was a heart sister to

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her, this woman who had been as at home in the wild as she had once been in the white culture usurping her own. She was certainly out of place now, in this cage of a room. “It was the best we could do,” the deputy said. “We don’t get many females in here, you know. Sheriff said not even a squaw one goes in with the men.” “She shouldn’t be in here at all. And Yuiatei women are called mnaawei.” “You’re allowed fifteen minutes,” he said. The door slammed behind him, followed by the click of the lock. At the sound of Ruth’s voice, Martha had sat up and looked at her with disbelief. Now they hugged each other fiercely. Ruth patted and stroked Martha’s heaving back, fighting her own tears. “I’m so sorry, Martha,” she whispered at last. “I sh-should never t-t-tried to take that gun away.” Martha’s words stuttered past tight shuddering breaths. “I sh-should’ve let Jackson just k-kill the damn Teske.” Ruth looked at her friend’s face. Tangled black hair hung loose over her shoulders, all sign of braids or curls erased, and tears had streaked paths through the dirt on her cheeks. Ruth wiped tears from Martha’s cheeks, smoothed back a strand of hair that had fallen over one eye. “We don’t have long,” she told Martha. “That bastard only gave us a few minutes. They only let me in because Nicholas Ghosh sent a letter with me.” She went on to explain how Ghosh had agreed to help and what he was having Thomas and Lem do at the camp. “Now tell me exactly what happened,” she said. “All the details you can remember.” They sat on the cot, while Martha told Ruth her story. The reason Jackson became angry, Martha said, was because the owner of the date grove hadn’t been paying them even half of the money he promised. Scaling the date palms had been horrid work. All of them

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ended each day with their skin sliced by the sharp bark the trees grew to protect the fruit. The commotion Jackson had caused the night before had been over the pay that he and the others hadn’t received. But the other workers were against confronting the owner. It had been done before, they said, and those who confronted him had been fired and replaced. Times were too tough to take a chance. Jackson seemed to agree, Martha told her, until someone started passing the bottle around. After a few drinks, he started shouting that he was going over to get One Eye’s rifle and make the owner pay up. He said he might just shoot the damn Teske anyway. She and the others had stopped him, but someone had called the sheriff over it. The sheriff treated the situation like it was just some family fight, she told Ruth. The next night Jackson got hold of a bottle and started ranting again. Except this time he’d already been to One Eye’s and got the gun. “He hadn’t let on about it,” Martha said. “But when I saw him head out with the rifle, I ran over to stop him.” “I can hardly remember what happened. It was over so fast,” she told Ruth, swallowing hard. She shook her head and looked up with welling eyes. “I remember grabbing the gun away from him. He was pretty drunk and staggering. Then he . . . he just jerked it away from me. I fell back . . . heard it go off just when I hit the ground. Then I looked over . . .” She stopped, covered her face with her hands. “Oh, poor Jackson,” she said. Ruth was about to ask the question Ghosh had given her concerning the gun, when the door opened and the deputy stuck his face in. “It’s time,” he said. “I’m not through yet,” Ruth said, now with genuine confidence. Martha deserved that much. “Mr. Ghosh gave me certain instructions. He’ll be displeased if you haven’t allowed me to carry them out.” The deputy turned on his heel and left. Ruth took Martha’s hands in hers. She noticed the set of bruises on Martha’s forearms—probably

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where they had grabbed her. “Do you know what happened to the gun? Can you remember? Did the sheriff take it?” Martha shook her head. “I don’t know where it went. Maybe One Eye still has it—or the sheriff. It was really old, that rifle,” she said as footsteps approached. “Ghosh said he’ll come in a few days—as soon as he finishes his trial. I’ll try to come with him,” Ruth said quickly. “He seems pretty smart. I’m sure he’ll straighten this out.” Martha didn’t look convinced. The door swung open again. This time Daggett himself stood glowering. “I told you fifteen minutes,” he said. Ruth stood, retrieved her crutch. “Mr. Ghosh told me to make sure she had water to drink—and enough to wash up with. I don’t see either here. No bedding either.” She crutched toward the door, looked up at the despicable man and smiled. “I know he’ll expect to see them here when he arrives—and his trial should be over any time now.” She felt Daggett draw himself up as she moved past him, glanced over her shoulder for one last look at her friend. Of course, Ghosh had said no such thing. Ruth was proud of herself for the addition. She only hoped the sheriff would take heed. He didn’t utter another word while he marched her to the front door and shut it firmly behind her. Ruth was relieved to see the pickup parked down the street. When she was almost to it, she realized no one was in it. Then she heard their voices and spotted them near the grove of mesquite trees, already making their way toward the truck. She wondered what they were carrying bundled in their shirts, was delighted when it turned out to be mesquite pods the children had gathered while they were waiting. These trees must have provided food for people long before this shabby town was built. She thought about all the flour for bread she could make from these pods, and she would still have plenty to cook down for puddings and dumplings and drinks. Ruth told Lem and Thomas about Martha’s makeshift cell and about how heartsick she had seemed at first. “She looked much bet-

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ter by the time I left, though,” she said, to reassure Martha’s brother. She filled them in on more details as they drove home and used her forefinger to imitate Daggett’s bouncing mustache, as she mocked his authoritarian manner. Neither man found any humor in it. Thomas said they’d found two Yuiatei and a Japanese man at the picking camp who said they might testify in Martha’s behalf. They also had the names of a few others who had already gone home. “But the Modajees there wouldn’t talk to us at all,” he said. “You shoulda’ seen the black stares they gave us,” Lem said. “Modajees stick by their own. They’re gonna be against Martha no matter what.” Ruth kept shifting the position of her leg as she listened. Her foot continued to throb the whole time she sat jammed between the two men on the long trip back to Glory Springs. They stopped at Matt Baxter’s store in Juniper Valley to call Ghosh from the public phone inside. It was now twilight, so they knew he’d be home expecting their call. Ghosh seemed satisfied with their reports. He promised he would call Sheriff Daggett the next day about Martha’s treatment. Although Matt Baxter went nonchalantly about his storekeeping duties, Ruth knew he was listening to every word she said. He was sure to spread her business throughout the valley, since his store was the gossip center of the town, and Matt a chief teller of tales. And Ruth had always been a prime item for gossip. She had to admit, this would be a rather juicy tale for him—if he could puzzle it out from one side of the conversation. She could imagine him starting out: she showed up here again with her Indians and—she knew her friends were referred to as her Indians—then he would go on, speculating as he interpreted talk of jail and witnesses. In earlier years, the idea of being a subject for gossip would have angered her. Now, as she went about gathering a few groceries while the men and children went back out to the truck, it gave her a certain satisfaction.

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She brought her supplies to the counter just as Matt’s daughter came in from the back room, dressed in pink organdy and patent leather shoes. He gathered her up and sat her on the counter. Mary was a beautiful child. With her blue eyes and golden curls, she was the image of her mother, who had died birthing a second child, a boy who died with her. The girl was only a year younger than J.B. and Maddie, although so delicate in build that she looked much younger. “It’s her birthday today,” Matt said, as he rang up Ruth’s purchases. He was always friendly to her—as long as no other customers were in the store. “Her grandmother has baked a big cake for her, chocolate, too.” “Happy birthday, Mary. You certainly are growing up.” Ruth stuffed provisions into her satchel. “I’m nine now,” she said. “But where are they? Your kids, I mean. Can they have some cake?” Ruth could feel Matt squirm. “No cake until after supper. And you have other friends coming, remember,” he told her. “I’m sure Ruth wants to get her children home for their own supper.” “Can’t they have supper with us?” The girl slid down from the counter, skipped to the front door and went outside. “Don’t worry, Matt. We really do have to get home.” Ruth shouldered her satchel, looked up and smiled. Matt’s face had reddened clear back into his hairline, which had receded in the last few years from above his forehead to almost the top of his head. No longer did he display the buttery curls that had once melted her body backward over the fender of her Model A. She turned back as she reached the exit. “I’ll send Mary in. You can never be too careful when wild Indians are about.” She crutched out the door, laughing to herself.

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chapter six

W

as there nothing she could do but wait while Martha stayed

caged in that tiny room? And at the mercy of that horrible sheriff? Too bad John Olsen had kept her from shooting the man that day. Ruth threw off her blankets and sat up on the edge of her cot. When Daggett came to investigate Jim’s murder eleven years ago, he’d called her “the kind of woman who cavorts naked with Indians.” What if he treated Martha worse now that he knew of her association with Ruth? Especially since she had not let him intimidate her this time. Or at least had not shown it. She wished her mind would let her body rest. She was still exhausted from the trip. Her foot tingled, too, though it no longer ached. Thomas had wrapped it in yerba mansa leaves under the sock

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that he made her keep on when she went to bed. She forced herself to lie back down, and after much tossing, managed to fall off into a restless sleep. She found herself on the ground again, beside Jim’s still body. She reached out, as she always did, to touch his cold shoulder, and with a hand brushed back his long bloodied hair. But it was not Jim’s face behind the dark curtain of hair this time; it was Martha’s. Ruth woke shaking. Relieved to see dawn light up the ridges down canyon, Ruth lay trying to calm herself as she waited for enough light to make coffee on the campfire, half drifting into fleeting, painful scenes. When sun finally pried open her eyes, someone had already lit the fire and put on the pot of water, though no one else was in sight. The children’s cots were empty now, and Thomas and Lem were nowhere around. She slipped away to pee behind a scrub oak; by the time she returned the pot was sputtering water into the flames. Once she had a cup of coffee in hand, the morning began to make more sense. The song of an oriole rang out from the pinyon, and she looked up to see sunlight glinting gold streaks through the green pine needles. She became aware of titmice chittering in the pinyon above her and of the call of quail making their way to the spring. The air still held the faint aroma of moon lily flowers. The luscious blossoms beside her hadn’t yet withered with the day. She knelt, put her coffee aside, and cupped one of the violet-white trumpets in her hands, breathed in its fragrance before settling into her chair. Children’s voices from across the wash told her that J.B. and Maddie were playing in the story place with their friends, and she spotted Thomas facing the sun on a rock partway up the mountain, his way of praying. She watched him while she sipped at her coffee, enjoying the grace of his movements, the silver streaks of sunlight reflecting in his long dark hair as he sprinkled pollen. When she heard the shot of a .22 rifle up canyon a few minutes lat-

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er, she knew where Lem was as well. He came back later carrying two cottontail rabbits for the dinner stew. Once the children returned, she mixed up some mesquite pancakes and served them with syrup made from prickly pear fruit, slightly sweetened with pit-roasted agave. The day took on a semblance of normalcy. After breakfast, Thomas treated her leg with fresh mansa and other leaves and gave her another mixture to drink. She told him she could now feel sensation on the skin of her leg, reaching almost to her knee, although it was so slight that sometimes she wasn’t altogether sure. He encouraged her to try more weight on the leg as she walked a few extra steps in the yard. At first neither of them paid attention to the sound of an unfamiliar engine in the distance, thinking it was probably one of the airplanes they now heard overhead several times a week. But as the sound got louder, it became unmistakably that of an approaching vehicle. The shock of seeing that old flatbed truck crawl around the far bend stopped Ruth’s breath. She watched as it continued its approach at a speed not much more than a walk, waited until it rounded the second bend before she let herself believe. Then her heart swelled and pounded with joy. It had been more than three years since she had seen John Olsen’s truck. Finally, Kate and John had returned from the Montana mines. She’d almost given up on ever seeing them again. Ruth hurried toward the road in lengthy strides, flinging her body forward, her crutch now a vault pole. The Olsens had been more than good neighbors and friends, had been more like the parents she never had. But when the truck neared, Ruth was surprised to see that Kate wasn’t beside John in the cab. He pulled up next to the yard where Ruth was standing and killed the engine. She reached the driver’s side just as he stepped out of the truck, and he caught her up in his arms, crutch and all, holding her so tight she had to struggle to breathe. They stood that way for a long time, neither speaking. Even in her gladness, Ruth felt the desperation

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in his hug, and her mind kept returning to Kate’s empty place beside him in the truck. Maybe she had stayed back at their homestead for some reason. Yet Ruth couldn’t quite convince herself, and cold began to creep over her. When John Olsen finally loosened his arms and stepped back so she could see his face, her fears were confirmed by the haggard sadness she saw there. His red-rimmed blue eyes seemed to droop with the crevices that had deepened in his cheeks since she’d last seen him, and the hair on his head and stubble on his face had gone completely white. He no longer looked the granite-solid man who had stomped out to meet her eleven years ago, a game warden and fire marshal badge pinned to each suspender—just as she was no longer the healthy young woman who had walked up to meet him. All the naive hopes she held when she first came to homestead this place rushed back over her. The Olsens had been there to bolster her when those hopes came crashing down. It was John who had found her there beside Jim’s body, who’d stayed with her through the nightmare days that followed. She remembered forcing him to say the words that changed the rest of her life: He dead, Rute, Jim dead. Those words, spoken in his thick accent, were etched into her forever. “It was the cancer, Rute,” he said now, in that beloved accent. He had no tears; his eyes were long wrung dry of them, were left with only a parched pain that wrenched her chest. She put arms back around him. “I’m so sorry, John,” she whispered. She recognized the grief in his flesh. But how could Kate be dead? The woman who had midwived Ruth’s children, who had nursed her back to life out of the blackness that followed their birth. As long as Kate might return, Ruth hadn’t had to face how terribly much she missed her. She heard Thomas come up beside them. “This is Thomas Naranga from Black Canyon, John,” she said, trying to steady herself. “You

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remember me telling you about him before you left for Montana. How he came over the mountain to say words over Jim’s grave. “And this is the John Olsen I’ve told you so much about, Thomas. The man Jim worked for at the onyx mine,” she said. She had told Thomas about the Olsens again and again, relating all the help they had given her when she came to homestead Glory Springs—though she’d never mentioned the fact that John had once believed that women on the reservation wore grass skirts and the men only loincloths. “And this is Lemuel Dann, also from Black Canyon.” “Not ’xactly from Black Canyon anymore. We hardly go there these days,” rasped Lem. He held a hand out to accept John’s. Handshakes were not a Yuiatei custom, but the Yuiatei were an adaptable people. Olsen nodded, shook hands, held his own out to Thomas as well. Then his eyes strayed across the wash to where J.B. and Maddie were coming on the run, their friends behind them. His face brightened as he began to walk toward them. J. B.’s and Maddie’s faces were radiant as they threw their small arms around the big Swede. “My gootness,” he said with a laugh. “What has happened to those little ones I used to hold on my knees? You almost grown up now.” Even as Maddie hugged him back, Ruth saw the girl eyeing the empty truck cab. As soon as he released her, she asked where Kate was. To save John the pain of answering, Ruth stepped beside her daughter and put a hand on her shoulder. “She’s gone, Maddie. The cancer took her.” Maddie swallowed, drew in a shuddering breath. Her face lost all expression, and two lone tears escaped when she shut her eyelids. Ruth hugged Maddie’s bony body to her. The girl stayed stiff— the same way she had responded to Grandmother Siki’s death. Kate and Grandmother Siki had been the children’s honorary grandmothers. The bond Maddie had with each of them went deep. Even J.B. understood and came to stand beside his sister, his face saddened. Ruth wished she had a decent mother she could offer up as grandmother.

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Certainly not her own mother, Cally. It gave her chills to think about that woman coming anywhere near her children. Which seemed more and more possible, since Cally kept sending letters that threatened to do just that. The air felt raw with pain. This was not the homecoming John deserved. “Come on, John,” she said, taking hold of his arm. “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee. Are you hungry? How about a corned beef sandwich?” She could probably stretch the can for everyone if she mixed in some tomatoes and cattail shoots. “I hope you like mesquite bread because that’s what I’ve got to serve it on. Maddie, you can help me fix lunch.” She started toward the house, keeping Maddie close beside her. “Your leg, Rute, what happen?” John Olsen asked, as he and Thomas followed behind her with Lem and the children. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you over coffee. And I want to hear more about Montana.” While Ruth and Maddie put together sandwiches, the other children gathered wood and Thomas fanned the coals back to flame and put water on for more coffee. Normally Maddie would have gone out to gather wood with the others, but Ruth wanted to keep her near. Any kind of comfort would have to remain unspoken. The girl wouldn’t trust it otherwise. Before they took out the food, Ruth pulled Maddie to her and kissed her forehead. She was pleased to feel her daughter return the hug for a moment, though she was quick to let go. After lunch, Ruth and John spent hours catching up, telling each other their tales. J.B. and Maddie sat at John’s feet listening, making their own additions. The other miners had stayed in Montana, he told her, where they were doing well with the gold. But he had no desire for more gold, once Kate died, so he’d come back to their homestead alone, bringing enough cash with him to get by, he thought, for some time. He told her of the wild beauty of Montana, the bears, and elk—and the cold.

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“Ya, crazy woman like you might like it there,” he teased. He looked off toward the mountain. “Kate miss you, Rute. She miss those kids, too.” Olsen reached down and smoothed Maddie’s hair. “I should bring her back before . . .” He covered his eyes with one hand. Maddie patted his leg, her eyes finally showing tears, and when J.B. stood and put a slender arm around John Olsen’s bulky shoulders, Ruth thought her heart would break. She got up from her chair, poured hot coffee from the pot into his cup, then knelt down and handed it to him. Her leg held up through it all. “We can’t change the past, John. You know that,” she said when he looked at her. “But we’re glad you’re here with us again.” She pushed herself up and returned to her chair. While she caught him up on the events of her life, the others began drifting away. Eventually, even Maddie and J.B. left to play with Frank and Della. After all, they knew her stories. But Thomas stayed, though he didn’t speak, while Ruth told John what happened with David Stone after he and Kate left, told him how Stone had been set on controlling her, had even moved them all to Los Angeles while she was helpless after her horse fell on her. Anger gripped her when she told John how Stone had burned down part of her cabin, trying to put in a butane stove against her wishes, then dissolved as she recounted how Thomas and her other friends had repaired the damage. She found it harder to explain her own actions—her brief encounter with the movie people. “You must have been surprised to see that phony western town where there was only blackbrush and sage when you left,” she said. “Some kind of movie set, ya?” “And you should have seen me making that movie, John,” she said, with a little laugh. “Riding Blue barefoot wearing a fringed faux buckskin dress. Hollywood’s idea of an Indian woman. “I paid for that foolishness, though, by losing the use of my leg.” Then she felt the old bitterness creep in. “But it was actually David’s

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damn van that spooked Blue. Remember how it always backfired? I kept telling him to get it fixed.” She could feel Thomas listening intently as she related the events of her story, though these were all things he knew. She sensed he was listening to how she was telling them. When the sun sat low above the western ridges, Thomas went down to gather vegetables from the garden. Ruth milked the goat, then cut up the rabbits for stew, while John Olsen walked with Lem across the wash to look over the structures the children had created. She’d told him how J.B.’s penchant for building things had become even more pronounced since he’d been gone and that Maddie had persisted in creating foods and utensils out of wild plants and objects. Lem and John stayed across the wash until after sundown, returning with the children in tow. “Those two are little Indians now, just like the other ones,” he said later, over supper. “More Yuiatei than my own, sometimes,” Lem laughed. “Frank and Della learn from them—makin’ acorn bread and ki’takiis.” He laughed again and the sound of it scraped against Ruth’s ears. “Mine are too busy learnin’ to be Teske at that school in the desert.” “J.B. built a Teske western town too, don’t forget,” Thomas reminded them. “He builds what he sees around him.” He looked over at her son, firelight glinting from silver streaks in the black hair that framed his face. “If J.B. lived in Paris, he’d be building cathedrals, or houses with many chimneys on the roof. What do you think, J.B.?” “If I liked them.” “Maybe you’ll go there someday and see if you do,” Thomas said. “You sound like David Stone,” Ruth blurted out, shocked at her friend’s words. “David’s always encouraging J.B. to leave here someday. I think it was London he suggested.” “But I would like to see those places I read about in your books,” J.B. said, looking over at Ruth. “I like the old Russian cities best, with

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all those gold domes. I’d like to see a real gold dome.” Young as they were, she had encouraged J.B. and his sister to read through the box of European novels that had sustained her through those harsh winters. Ruth had imagined the books would teach her children about the whole different worlds people lived in, the way they had taught her. She hadn’t considered that the books might make them want to go there. “I already see those places,” Maddie said, finally joining the conversation. “I can see them right here.” She pointed to her head. “Even right now, if I close my eyes. I don’t need to go there.” “You don’t know, Ta’ha. There’s much about any place that can’t be described in books,” Thomas explained. “You of all people should know that.” He went on to tell them about the summer he spent in France and Germany right after the war when he was in college—something Ruth had never heard him mention before. It seemed incongruous to imagine this lanky medicine man roaming the streets of cities she’d only read about, as out of place as she had been sitting on her horse in a Hollywood-fringed Indian dress for the movie. “That’s true about Sweden, too, I’ll bet,” Thomas said. Olsen nodded. “Ya, but don’t go to London or Paris now.” He went on to tell them how bad the bombing was in London, how Nazi soldiers had taken over parts of France. He had read accounts of it in newspapers as he passed through cities on his way here. “I heard there’s even talk they’re puttin’ people on some kind of rez—only worse,” Lem said. “Other Teske, too.” Ruth remembered the headlines in the paper she’d put aside in Indio. “It seems impossible to believe. So far away,” she said. “I simply can’t imagine it. And can’t say I want to.” She stood without her crutch and walked over to fill her cup. “Just because the war is far away doesn’t mean it won’t touch us here,” Thomas said. “Everything is connected.”

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“And just think— there used to be no Teske here at all,” Lem rasped. “They were still way ’cross the ocean. That’s hard for me to believe sometimes.” “Ya,” John Olsen agreed, “and I vas one of them. Now I here. This canyon not separate place, Rute.” Ruth sat back in her chair, hoping the discussion would end there, but Thomas and Lem began telling John Olsen about changes the Depression had brought to the people who had lived in Black Canyon for so long. Although the men certainly had made their point, Ruth was not convinced that war would affect the life she led here in this canyon. The thought was intolerable. She couldn’t deny that outside forces were affecting things here—Martha was in jail, the tribe was falling apart. Even the Olsens’ move to Montana and David Stone coming here to treat Glory Springs as an archaeological site were a part of it. To say nothing of Hollywood’s building that fake Frontiertown only a few miles away. And her injury, too, had come about because of those outside forces. But Europe was as fantastic to her as the magic castles she’d read about in fairy tales as a child. That trouble in those imagined cities might infect her quiet canyon was something she refused to accept. She looked over at the moon lily bush, its abundant blossoms lucent with moonlight. Seductive scent hung thick in the night air, and she pulled in large breaths of it, greedy for the heady well-being its fragrance always gave her. She leaned over and ran a finger along the edge of one of the soft, velvet blooms. Thomas had told her how the plant had killed many who tried to imbibe it without the old knowledge. Though he had never done so, he knew that medicine people in old times used it to induce visions. But all the secret medicine songs that told when and how to pick and prepare it were lost now. Ruth thought about the green-horned worms she watched chew up the plant’s poison leaves and spiky seedpods each fall—without consequence. The wild they were a part of had designed them to do

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just that. They were children of the hawk moth who came pollinate the blossoms, dipping its proboscis deep inside. For her, the plant’s luminous blooms remained a beacon to some realm just beyond her grasp. Ruth imagined dipping her own tongue into its pollen, licking up bits of the mystery she sensed there. She sucked in more huge breaths of perfumed air, her vision of living in this wild place becoming vivid and intact.

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chapter seven

“

H

ere’s more of that mud.” Frank set the blob of clay on a

rock near J.B.’s leg. “Della’s bringing some too. We put more of that hard stuff in the water to get soft.” “It’s clay, not mud. Whoever heard of white mud.” J. B. scooped

up a handful and slapped it into the crease between the pine branches, smoothing it flat between them. Frank took up a handful and copied him. “Niastwe means mud where water seeps up. Grandmother Siki said that’s what clay is.” Maddie looked up from the mat she was weaving for the floor. “Whatever.” J.B. didn’t know why Maddie always thought Yuiatei words were better. Yuiatei words weren’t in books or science.

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Sometimes he wondered if he should have stayed in L.A. with David and gone to school. He could have come out to Glory Springs in the summers while David was doing his archaeology digs. “Put in more of that red grass, Mad,” he said, looking over at her mat. She wasn’t even using the colors he told her to. “More dry yellow too. You got too much green.” The courthouse floor didn’t have green in it at all, just pink and gold and black. But there wasn’t any black grass that J.B. knew of, so she couldn’t help that part. And he knew it wasn’t her fault that the dry yellow grass she wove in didn’t look much like those gold swirls on the courthouse floor. Walking on them had made him feel like he was walking on sunset. He guessed the rest of his building didn’t look much like the one in San Bernardino, either, even with white clay on the sides. It was hard to keep the pine branches from showing through. The old yucca poles he used for the courthouse’s big pillars still looked like old yucca poles covered with white clay. Frank said it looked okay—and he’d been the only one who went inside the building with him and Thomas. But Frank was only seeing the shape and color, and there was more to a building than that. But J.B. didn’t know what else he could do using what was around here to build with. “Here’s more clay.” Della plopped her clay on top of Frank’s, and the whole blob slid off the rock onto sand. “Della!” he yelled, but it was already too late. She squatted down and pulled the mass into her skirt, brushing at the sand that had embedded itself. J.B. walked over and took the clay from her. He set it back on the rock and began scraping off sand with the scraper rock he’d used to take bark off the branches. “When can we make story?” Della asked. “I’m tired of helping build. We’ve been doing that all day.” “We gotta have the courthouse to take Martha to.” He carried a gob of the clay to the building and smoothed it over another groove. But he was getting tired of building too.

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“We don’t have to make the Martha story now,” Maddie said. “We can do it next time. Let’s just do one of the old ones.” “How about the movie story,” Frank said. “We could do the save King Kong one again. He’s still there in the goat shed.” “Awww, that one didn’t work right. It was silly to put the Empire State Building in Frontiertown. Nothing like the real one in New York.” They’d put poles around the tall rock for the building King Kong climbed, but all the while J.B. kept wondering what the Empire State Building was doing in a cowboy town. He did like using the little airplanes they made to knock Kong off, though. “Okay,” J.B. said, going back for more clay. “But first Frank and I have to finish this one side.” It sure was taking work just to make this little copy of the courthouse. More than any of the other buildings. But he wanted it to be big enough for them to sit in. Big enough so he could remember how he felt in the real one, with its thick white walls and marble pillars. Like nothing mattered except what happened inside it. Not Lem and Della out there in the truck. Not Ruth and Maddie waiting outside. Not even Martha locked up in jail somewhere. He didn’t know how a building could make him feel that way. That’s what he’d been trying to understand. He’d thought some of the books David brought him would explain it, but that wasn’t what they were about. None of them. Was it because the courthouse was so big and heavy that it felt important to be in there? Not like the little one here. Maybe the white color. But that couldn’t be all of it. The hospital down the street from the courthouse was big, too, and white. Yet it didn’t make him want to go inside like the courthouse did. And the theaters David took them to in L.A. were big and heavy. But they felt different than the courthouse or the hospital did. More like palaces for playing. The theater he liked best was where David took him and Maddie to see

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King Kong. They never told Ruth about it, but he didn’t think she cared much, then. She just wanted to stay alone in her room with the curtains shut all the time. He’d loved walking into the theater’s big restrooms made out of marble. A bathroom made for some king in those fairy tale books Ruth used to read them. It used to make him laugh when he thought about their outhouse back at Glory Springs while he was in there, with its crummy wooden hole to sit on and the door that wouldn’t stay latched. But it didn’t stink so bad that way. But it wasn’t just the big building, and those marble staircases and all the restaurants underneath the theater floor, that made him feel so carefree there. Things like the blue rugs hung on the walls were part of the feeling, too. Tapestries, he’d learned they were called. And the big fountain in the middle of the lobby. All of that gave him the feeling that they were rich and had everything they needed. That nothing was nicer than being there. At least the place made him feel that way while he was in it. He used to forget all about his mother at home with her hurt leg that didn’t work anymore. While he was in that place he hadn’t even missed Glory Springs or worried about the way Ruth hated David. That’s what he wanted to do someday. Make buildings to take away hurt. Like the way they changed the stories to take away the bad part, he would make buildings to take it away. When he used to make little play towns under the pinyon, he thought buildings were only places where people lived or went to buy groceries and things. He hadn’t understood about the rest of it then. That each place changed the way someone felt when they went inside. J.B. smoothed on the last handful of clay, then rubbed his hands over his arms to clean them. Frank was already running back from the goat shed with King Kong. One of Kong’s straw arms was missing. “I

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told you to make sure the goats couldn’t reach it,” he said. “I’ll go get some straw. We have to fix it before we start.” “Can’t we just pretend it’s there? Why do you always have to have everything perfect?” Della called after him. But he kept on going. He didn’t know why, exactly. He just did.

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chapter eight

M

artha stared straight ahead as the constable led her into

the small room next to the jail that was being used as a courtroom. Her eyes lit for a moment when she looked over and saw Ruth and Ghosh at the defense table. They had arrived this morning, only to find Martha scheduled for a surprise hearing. Ghosh had just minutes to prepare and file the motions he needed. Ruth had brought along a clean dress, but there hadn’t even been time to give it to her before court. Not that the sheriff would have allowed it. Ghosh told her that Daggett had deliberately moved the hearing up so it would happen before her attorney got here. It was only because Martha was an Indian, and this was a murder case, that Daggett had to wait this long for the federal judge to arrive from Riverside.

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Martha’s face remained expressionless as the sheriff told the judge how, in a drunken rage, she had shot her husband to death over money. He claimed several witnesses would support his contention. The tone of his words shouted squaw, though he never used the word. Ruth trembled with anger at the distortions he made. His contempt for Indian people was clear. She could hardly force herself to remain quiet. But she had promised Ghosh. “He’ll say things that will make you want to get up and choke him with your bare hands,” Ghosh had told her when she asked to go into the makeshift courtroom with him. “But you can’t give in to it. You have to act as if his words mean nothing—and believe it. Just let them disappear into the air. That’s how to deny their reality.” “That’s an odd theory of law,” she’d said, surprised. “It sounds more like something Thomas might say about healing.” “Well, do you think you can do that? If not, don’t come in with me.” Ghosh shaded his eyes from the noon sun with one hand. “Your friend’s future will depend on it. That sheriff means to nail her.” Ruth was glad Ghosh had warned her. If he’d known that she’d once picked up a rifle to shoot Daggett for his arrogant treatment after Jim’s murder, he wouldn’t have trusted her. She looked forward to telling him once she’d proven herself. She wished Thomas and Lem were here. Ghosh had told them to stay clear of Martha for now. Their presence would increase the chance of racial bias in her case, he said, and he sent them to look for more witnesses at the picking camp, where he and Ruth were to meet them later. Ruth had come with him, intending to see to Martha while he was finding out when the hearing was scheduled. Neither had had any idea that this was the day. When it was Ghosh’s turn to present his argument to the judge, his voice held a note of incredulity that anyone could hold the absurd idea that Martha could be a murderer. “This is a woman who

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had been a trusted employee of the federal government before the Depression caused the loss of her job, a woman who not only never touches liquor but who speaks out strongly against it among her people, Your Honor,” he said. “A respected woman, who is a leader among the Yuiatei.” He went on to speak sympathetically about her having been reduced to picking grapes and dates whenever agricultural work was available. Ghosh told of Jackson’s problem with alcohol and his threat of misusing the rifle to remedy the situation—and of Martha’s attempt to stop him. “Your Honor, Martha Naubel was fighting to stop her husband from injuring his employer when the unfortunate accident occurred. She attempted to take the gun from him so he could not do harm with it,” he repeated. Each word he spoke filled Ruth with more confidence in the outcome. The man’s presence and the authority in his voice seemed to convey truth. She didn’t know how anyone could doubt him. “There was no argument over money, as Sheriff Daggett claims— except from Jackson Naubel, who had threatened to kill his employer in order to get what had been promised him. Martha Naubel is not a murderess, as the sheriff mistakenly claims. She is a heroine who wanted only to stop her drunken husband from carrying out his threat. Instead, her action resulted in his accidental death by his own hand—and in her incarceration, which she does in no way deserve. I’m sure Your Honor will see the injustice of this situation and set this brave woman free.” The judge sat considering the motion for a few moments, the room silent with anticipation. Various expressions flickered over his long bony face as he contemplated the matter. When the judge looked over at Martha, Ruth thought she saw a nearly imperceptible nod before he spoke. Her hopes deflated, however, when he banged down his gavel and ruled against dismissing the charges.

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“I order her moved tomorrow morning to the Riverside facility, where she will reside until her arraignment.” He looked over at Ghosh. “Will three weeks give you enough time to prepare?” “Yes, Your Honor.” “Very well, then. Until that time she will be allowed visitation, as well as additional clothing to bring with her. She may also request books and writing utensils.” After making some statements about jurisdiction issues that Ruth didn’t fully understand, he again brought his gavel down on the rickety wooden desk in front of him and got up to leave. “Don’t be let down over this,” Ghosh said, as the constable led Martha from the room. “She’ll get better treatment in Riverside—and her friends in the bia and a federal marshal will be involved.” He stood and began gathering his papers. “But she’s still in jail. He didn’t dismiss the charges.” “I never expected he would,” Ghosh said with a dry smile. “But judges don’t usually order apparel and visitation, you know—it’s assumed prisoners get those things before trial—after all, they aren’t officially guilty yet. That was a clear message. I think he has a pretty good idea what she’s been up against in this place.” He snapped shut his briefcase. “Shall we go?” When they’d met Ghosh at the highway earlier, he had accepted some but not all of the money Thomas offered him. Now, outside the courtroom, he took a few bills from his wallet and handed them to Ruth. “We can leave her with a few things,” he said. “You’ll know better what to purchase. But let’s get some lunch first.” They drove off the main street and down a dirt road to the edge of town, stopping in front of a white stucco house with a flat roof. Ruth noticed that even this little house had a thick wire leading down from an electricity pole. Beside the house stood a ramada with wooden tables and benches underneath. “Maria’s Casita,” he told Ruth, as they got out of his Buick. “The best fríjoles this side of the border.”

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Apparently he wasn’t new in this area, she realized, as a plump woman and two dark-haired children came running out the door to greet him with hugs. The children followed them all the way to the tables under the ramada, where the substantial man took up most of one bench all by himself. The children climbed on the bench beside him, but their mother shooed them off. “No molestes El Oso,” she said, waving them away with one hand. They settled on the top of another table to watch. “¿Quieres fríjoles, mi amigo, no?” she asked Ghosh. “¿Y tu mujer?” Ruth sat across from him while he answered in Spanish, then introduced her, which brought Ruth a warm hug from Maria before she went back in to prepare the food. Over a lunch of tortillas and beans, delicious enough to eat despite the heat, Ruth learned that several months ago Ghosh had kept Maria’s husband—a U.S. citizen born in this valley but without a certificate to prove it—from being deported to Mexico. Ruth couldn’t help but admire this man. When he’d given her the money to buy Martha clothing, a swell of gratitude had gathered, and it persisted as she listened to him plan out Martha’s defense. “But first we see what witnesses Thomas and Lem have rounded up,” he said, swiping up beans with his tortilla. He wiped a line of sweat from his forehead with the back of an arm before reaching for his beer. “We’ll contact the agency too. See if someone there will testify in her behalf.” “Why do you do this?” Ruth asked suddenly. “It can’t be for the money.” Ghosh put down the beer bottle and looked at her, his blue eyes peering out of the wreath of red-brown beard and hair that surrounded his face. “Does it matter?” he asked. He lifted the beer and guzzled, set it down and looked at her again. She thought she saw his skin color deepen, though it could have been from the heat. She hoped her own sudden flush appeared

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heat-driven as well. Regretting her question, she looked away, out past the few scattered houses, where the desert wavered in the distance. “My parents brought me here from Russia,” he said finally, calling her gaze back. “The Old Country, as they always referred to it. They were Trotskyites—you know that story—economic and political justice for all. Perpetual revolution to keep it that way.” He looked at her as if this were something she’d heard time and time again. In truth, she had no idea what a Trotskyite was, though she smiled in acknowledgment, took a swallow of beer to cover herself. “Anyway, they managed to escape intact after his ideas lost favor, arrived here with me and with one in the belly, which they lost soon after. My father was a doctor—or no telling what might have happened to them here. But a doctor he was, and a good one, though he specialized in those who couldn’t pay. Or paid in vegetables and baked goods. But we muddled by. I got to the university—as you can see.” Ghosh shrugged, then downed the rest of his beer. “I guess their ideals stuck with me. I can’t say I specialize in those who can’t pay for my legal services, but cases like this one are a major sideline. Something I feel compelled to do, I suppose. And they’re the cases I enjoy most. So I keep my coffers filled by taking on enough well-paying clients to support my habit,” he said. “This society murder trial I just finished filled them nicely.” His rough laugh reminded her of animal sounds she’d heard echo off the mountain at night. “Now, your turn to explain,” he said, pushing his empty plate to one side. His eyes were insistent. “Tell me why you’re here helping Martha Naubel. Is she some kind of relative? I can’t get a read on just how you’re connected with the tribe. You don’t exactly look Yuiatei, yet you could be. And then there’s your son . . .” “Martha’s a dear friend,” Ruth said quickly. “Like I’ve told you. But, as you said, does it matter?” “It might make a difference in how I prepare the case. Whether or

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not I call you as a character witness, and so forth. But mainly I’d just like to know who I’m dealing with.” “I’m not related to the tribe, except in here.” She held a hand to her chest. “And through my son, J.B. It’s a long story and I . . . we . . .” She stopped, struggling with how to put it all into words. “Yes,” he said. He stood, pulled a watch from his pocket. “We need to get Martha her things and get over to the picking camp. But you can tell me your story on the way, once we take care of Martha. It’s a long drive out to the date groves, you know.” Relieved at her reprieve, Ruth took part in the farewell hugs with Maria and the children, who accepted her simply because she was with him. When they walked out to the Buick, she found that for the third time today, she was able to place weight on her leg, and had to lean only lightly on the crutch. Her progress also held up back in town at the apparel and sundries store. It pained her to witness Martha’s desperate gratitude when they brought her the clothes, hairbrush, and writing materials. She kept one arm around her friend as they sat on her cot listening to Ghosh explain how the move to the Riverside jail would be a great benefit, then outlining his strategy for the upcoming trial. Although he made it clear just how serious Martha’s situation was, his tone spoke a different story, as if battling the legal system were no different than batting off a mosquito. Ruth sensed the way his confidence gradually soothed away some of the turmoil she felt in Martha’s body. Not that he gave her false promises; the message was entirely in his manner, and Ruth was reminded again how much like healing his methods were. “But why isn’t Lem here. And Thomas?” Martha asked her when Ghosh left to order her a fresh basin of wash water. He had noticed, as had Ruth, the empty basin left on the floor. Martha told them that the deputy had brought in a full basin just once, a few days ago after Ruth left.

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“Lem and Thomas are here,” Ruth told her. “We’re meeting them at the picking camp later.” She explained why Ghosh thought they should stay away from the courtroom. “And Lucy.” Martha’s eyes filled, though her gaze never wavered. “Does she know what happened to her father?” “I don’t know. I’ll find out if anyone wrote to her.” Ruth took her friend’s hand. “I’ll write her myself if no one else has.” She should have done so already. Somehow all thoughts of Martha’s daughter had escaped her. All she knew was that Lucy had married a Navajo a few months ago and was living on a reservation somewhere in Arizona. Martha’s face was solemn. “I think I’ve gone crazy in here. I keep thinking crazy things, anyway.” She glanced around the tiny room. “If there was just a window so I could look out at the sky sometimes.” She closed her eyes. “I keep seeing Jackson on the ground . . . his face. All the blood everywhere. So much blood.” She got up and began pacing beside the cot, then stopped and looked at Ruth. “Sometimes I even believe I did what the sheriff said. That I shot him in cold blood.” Ruth recognized the near hysteria in her friend’s voice. “I know it didn’t happen that way. But sometimes I’m not sure anymore.” “Stop it.” Ruth got up and took her friend by the shoulders. “You can’t let that happen, Martha. That’s just what Daggett wants. Stay with what’s real,” she said, giving Martha the words that sometimes came to sustain her, words she’d first heard in Jim’s voice. “But that’s just it.” Martha shook her head; her face looked confused. “Sometimes I don’t know what’s real anymore. I start imagining that—” “Ruth is right. Don’t let that happen.” Ghosh stood in the doorway, a basin of water in one hand, a pail in the other. He set them next to the bed, then turned to Martha. “Don’t worry, though. It’s normal for your mind to play tricks like that when you’re locked up

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alone in a tiny room like this. That’s another reason to get you to Riverside where you’ll be with others.” He righted the heavy interrogation table and set the basin there. Ruth gathered up the parcels and put them on the table too. “Now,” he said to Martha, as he pulled out a pad and pencil from the sack. “Before you go to sleep, I want you to write down exactly what happened the night before Jackson died, then what happened the night of the accident. You can give it to me in the morning. I’ll be here to see that you get transferred first thing. “But when you go to bed, I want you to keep your mind away from that night. If you can. If you can’t sleep, get up and write about those things until you can’t stay awake anymore.” He laid a hand on each of Martha’s shoulders and looked at her intently. “Think you can do that? Look, all you have to do is get through one more night here—then things will get better for you.” He gave her shoulders a squeeze, then released her. Martha looked stronger now, as if she’d been given an infusion of his strength. Ruth could feel the difference in Martha’s farewell hug. As they began their drive to the picking camp, Ghosh told her of other clients who’d temporarily lost touch after being caged like animals. Ruth listened, glad to be absolved from the story she had promised to tell. Yet they hadn’t gone very far when Ghosh stopped himself. “But this isn’t what we’re supposed to be talking about, is it?” he said. “You promised me a story.” Ruth looked out the window. She should have known. As they drove the makeshift road out past the dunes, Ruth sketched out her involvement with Martha and the Yuiatei People. The story she told was a bare skeleton that left most details to be fleshed in. Even so, it was a longer story than the one he had told her. She found it easier to tell because he did not look at her as she spoke but kept his gaze straight ahead as he drove—which she made sure of by frequent glances in his direction.

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She explained how she came to Juniper Valley eleven years ago as a nurse caretaker for Matt Baxter’s tubercular wife, but not how she was fleeing from her mother Cally’s dubious rest home—whose specialty was catering to men at night. She didn’t mention the affair that developed between herself and Matt Baxter, either. But she did tell Ghosh about her love affair with Glory Springs and how it was tempered by the challenges she’d faced those first few months by herself in the wild. The bear in her tent and the thunderstorm that flooded her out. Her struggle constructing the rock walls of her cabin. The greatest joy of her life, the love that grew between herself and Indian Jim, took only a sentence or two to relate, Jim’s murder at the hands of Charlie Stine simply another two—adding dryly that Sheriff Daggett had made it clear there was nothing much to do at the death of a mere Indian man. Of her having to carry Stine’s child as well as her lover’s, she said nothing, except that she forged her deep friendship with the people in Black Canyon after Jim’s death, partially for her children’s sake. Let Ghosh make of that what he would. It was easiest to tell him how she loved learning the ways of the Yuiatei People, how she had adopted many of their wild-food customs because that gave her a way to be more intimate with the land she lived on. She said nothing of Jim’s continued presence in her life, ephemeral as it was. Nothing of her prolonged relationship with the archaeologist, David Stone, nor that he remained a peripheral figure even now. “What about your leg?” he asked casually. “How did that happen?” He still did not look over at her. “I fell off my horse, Juniper Blue,” she said. “And he came down on top of me. If it hadn’t been for that damned—” She stopped. She had already exposed too much, had no intention of telling him about her foolish involvement with Hollywood. “And the horse? What happened to it?”

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“I don’t know. I think they must have shot him during those weeks I was unconscious. But I keep hoping that he just ran off somewhere.” She took in a breath. Would they never get to that camp? “It’s not something I talk about,” she said. He looked over at her then. Something in his smile told her that he understood she needed to leave the rest unsaid. “That’s quite a story,” he said. “It’s not easy pouring a whole life into a few words. Especially a rich one like yours.” Ghosh looked back at the road. “There,” he said. Dark green palm fronds rose above the next dune, and as they drove around it, rows and rows of date palms came into sight, all of them tall and slender, unlike any native date trees she’d seen. She spotted the picking camp to the left of the big grove that continued on until it met the foothills. Her eyes began searching for J.B. and Maddie. Then she remembered they were back at Glory Springs with John Olsen. For a moment she felt terribly out of place, as if she had been transported across an ocean to some strange and alien landscape. Then she saw the rusty Yuiatei pickup, Thomas squatting to examine a back tire, and the world righted itself again.

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chapter nine

J.B.

was across the wash making stories with Frank

and Della. He said Maddie and Della had to be caught by the Teske, but Maddie didn’t want to pretend anymore. She kept thinking of John Olsen’s sad face, so she’d come back across the wash to fix him a cup of ni’itabe. Grandmother Siki told her ni’itabe was for ha’atchi, the big sadness that came. Grandmother had showed her how to prepare the sweet piney drink for Ruth’s bad days. Ruth’s trouble was she couldn’t forget, Grandmother Siki said. Maddie fixed the tea for herself when Kate went away, and then again when Grandmother Siki died. She wished she’d had some when they were in Los Angeles. But there were no ni’ita bushes there. Just the thought of Los Angeles made her back shiver.

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John stopped chopping wood when she brought him the tea. His eyes were far away when he looked at her. Maddie took hold of his arm and led him to a camp chair, then sat on the ground by his leg and leaned her head against his knee. He smoothed back her hair with his big rough hand that kept catching and pulling on strands. She asked him what Montana was like, but it made him think about Kate again. Everything made him think about Kate. He told her how beautiful Kate was when they married in Sweden. He said they had a daughter with the same gold hair and blue eyes. “She gone, too,” he said, and his voice came apart. Maddie patted his knee. He looked down and tried to smile at her. But his eyes stayed sad. Maddie got up and poured more tea into his cup. She pulled his hands away from his face to hand it to him, then stood beside him, patting his back while he drank. When he finished, he put the cup down and hugged Maddie tight to him. “I go fix goat shed now,” he said when he let her go again. “Winter here soon.” Maddie watched the way he walked toward the barn. Slow with his shoulders drooped. An ache grew heavy in her chest. She could see that Kate’s story had been carved out of him. Each story had its own shape, and Kate’s was missing in him. He was filled up with its empty place. The old shape had no body now. Like the hulls locusts leave on the ground when they fly off. And the dead stink-bug shells she found in the wash. Jim’s shape was like that in Ruth. But Kate’s was bigger. John looked hollow now, like his voice. Like it wasn’t just Kate scooped out, but the rest of him too. Maddie knew she had carved-out places in her. Holes where someone used to be before their story ended. Kate and Grandmother Siki. Everyone had them. J.B. had one where David Stone was—even if David wasn’t dead. Just gone. She wondered about her real grandmother. Her mother got mad if Maddie asked about her. But she could feel the woman’s shape inside Ruth, one of the stories she was made of. Maybe it was in Maddie

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too. She had read the torn-in-half letter Ruth put in the drawer when summer started. The letter that said her grandmother Cally needed to come stay with them. All summer Maddie had been waiting to see if she would come. Maddie started back across the wash, sliding each big toe deep into the silky sand and pushing the rest of her foot behind it. The sand’s warmth rode over the cold her thoughts had brought. After a few steps, she stopped. She could feel the sand calling her into itself. The ground was darkest in the spot next to the big rock, softer, where water had pooled and dried again and again with each flood. Dropping first to her knees, then her belly, Maddie wriggled down into the satiny bed of silt, its fine texture comforting her skin. The canyon’s song a quiet hum high on the mountain, she closed her eyes and listened to the sand. Ruth said sand came from rock and so did everything else. Maddie pictured the sand slowly melting away from rock the way water oozed from the mossy bank above the spring. Years and years were buried under her. Rocks had long, long stories that never ended, and sand was made of tiny rocks. It was full of flowers and grass and trees and the rest. People too. People were just one of rocks’ stories. But what about sadness, she wondered? Did the sand have sadness hidden in it? It grew ni’itabe bushes to fix the sadness. Where else would sadness come from if not from sand and rock? Maybe people’s sadness was really the rock and sand’s sadness. Happiness, too. Like when she woke up this morning and looked around at Glory Springs. She could feel the oriole’s song filling her up, and she sang back, her chest puffing up with happiness just like the bird’s. But she didn’t stay happy. Not with Martha locked up in that jail. Even while they were making stories to change it in the i’kitswa place across the wash. She was bringing back some ni’itabe in her pocket to fix for Frank and Della too. And for herself. But her brother didn’t need it. He could put away his sadness, build walls around it, the way

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he did when he built things. Maddie didn’t know how the walls he built outside himself kept the unhappiness away from inside him. But they did. She heard J.B. call her name as she got up from the sand. Behind his voice she heard another sound, ugly, and as sharp as the scraper she used to clean the inside of a rabbit skin. She started running across the wash and up the knoll and came down the other side, her heart flip-flopping around in her chest. When she saw J.B. standing in the draw with Della and Frank, and the rattler only a few feet away, she stopped so fast she almost fell over. The sound of a rattler was like nothing else. A time came back when that loud buzz drowned out every other sound in the world, and she could still see the big face of the coiled snake. It stared right at her and flashed its tongue in and out. She didn’t scream, but her fear grew huge because she couldn’t let it out. Now each time she heard a rattler, all that fear came back into her. She thought her ears might bleed from the sound of it. Maddie saw J.B. crawl under a scrub oak toward a broken branch. “Hurry, it’s getting away,” Frank yelled. Then J.B. came out with the branch and ran after the snake as it slid away. Half of it had already disappeared into a cat’s-claw bush. She could see the rabbit hole on the other side of the bush. Maddie closed her eyes when her brother reached down and yanked at the rattler’s tail. When she opened them again, he had the snake trapped at the neck with that fork in the branch. She let out her breath, her body still shaking as fast as snake rattles. Della walked over and took her hand. While Frank held the wooden box her brother had made, J.B. scooted the rattler in and closed the lid. The rattling continued, weaker now, inside the box. Maddie wished Ruth was back from Indio to shoot the snake. Snakes make more snakes, her mother always said. J.B. would just take the snake somewhere and set it free again to make more snakes.

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“See, Ta’ha, they did it,” Della said. “The ka’tsswee is trapped up now.” She let go of Maddie’s hand and walked toward the boys. Maddie wished she could understand rattlers the way she understood other animals. She tried to change the story, made herself pick up gopher snakes and garter snakes, let them curl themselves around her arm. She almost liked them now. “Rattlers are just afraid, like you are,” J.B. kept telling her. “That’s why they rattle like that.” She knew it was true, but that didn’t change things. In its rattle she could still hear that it meant to kill her. She understood that well enough. “Come on, Mad,” J.B. said. “It’s locked up now.” With a stick, he lifted the lid a little and peeked in. “Want to see?” The rattling got louder again. Maddie shook her head. He let the lid fall back. “I don’t know why you’re such a scaredy-cat about rattlers,” he said. She didn’t say anything, just started piling brush in the fire ring to make the ni’itabe tea. Being afraid made her feel ashamed. But she knew being afraid could make her strong too. Like that time she was running through the garden and looked down to see her foot about to land on a rattler coiled in the shade of a squash plant. Somehow she made herself land several feet past the plant, safe from the snake. Only fear could have made her do that.

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chapter ten

B

y the time they arrived at the hot springs, the full moon was

broadcasting silver across the desert sand. They parked the pickup in a clearing near the bottom of a low foothill and walked toward a cluster of boulders. Thomas and Lem stayed beside Ruth to balance her as she scooted over boulder after boulder until she reached the other side. She drew in her breath when she caught sight of the spring, then the grove of palms tucked back in a cove that was hidden from the valley floor. She had not expected such beauty at this place. Ruth had heard Thomas and Martha talk about this spring where the Yuiatei brought their people to heal. She knew they believed it had special powers. She knew, too, that it was an honor for Thomas to bring her here, to share this special place as if she were

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one of them. It more than made up for his pointing out her Teske status a few days ago. They’d left Ghosh at the picking camp interviewing the witnesses. She’d felt guilty as they piled into the old pickup, as if she were deserting Martha. But Thomas said the healing waters of the hot spring would be good for her leg. She felt none of that guilt now, felt only grateful to be here. If she were a religious person, she might have called this place holy. Behind the smooth, waist-high rocks encircling the hot spring and its spiral of steamy mist grew a mat of wiry grass, the kind that accompanied springs everywhere. Beyond that a shimmering mound of dune created a pathway into a large grove of native palms, their trunks short and squat to the earth, so unlike the tall and slender trunks of the commercial grove, which suddenly seemed highfalutin. Ruth stood a moment, awed by palm fronds waving moonlit fingers into the night, immersed in their dance of silver light. A familiar scent drew her eyes to the bright white trumpets of moon lily scattered beneath the trees. She remained entranced until Lem broke the spell with a loud yawn. “I’ll go back and get the blankets and food,” he said. Thomas motioned her toward the palms. Ruth followed him over the small sand dune into the grove with the steady but limping walk she had developed over the last few days, using her crutch to steady her in the deep sand. Inside the grove, she was surprised to find grass and tiny flowers carpeting the sand. Flowers had disappeared months ago everywhere else in the desert. She breathed in the mixture of floral fragrances beneath the dominant moon lily, noticed interspersed clusters of blooming primrose. All but the moon lily and primrose had closed their blooms for the evening, leaving only their quiet aromas to persist with the rest. With each breath, she brought more of the loveliness inside her. She felt she might just fill herself with it until she floated away into the night sky like a child’s balloon.

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“These are the palms that gave us bi’hitsi in the fall. Those tasty little wild dates you like so much. We used to burn away the underbrush after we picked them,” Thomas said. “I guess no one takes time to do that anymore.” “You burned this beautiful place?” Ruth asked, alarmed at the thought of desecrating all this mystery, imagining it going up in a smoky pyre. “That’s just horrible.” “Maybe that’s what kept it beautiful, kept the dates coming too.” “That’s ridiculous,” she said, watching Lem scrambling back over the boulders with the blankets, a satchel hung over one shoulder. He dumped the blankets in a pile in front of the grove, dropped the satchel beside it and began emptying the contents. Ruth felt her stomach rumble as she started toward the satchel, already tasting the jerky and mesquite bread she’d put inside it, imagining the coffee she would make. “Do you think there’s some wood around here?” she asked. She began scooping out sand to make a depression in the dune. “Over here,” Lem said, his voice as scratchy as the sand that had gotten into Ruth’s shoes. “A fire ring.” He straggled off to gather brush beside the dune, his feet sucked into the sand with each step. “Fine,” Ruth told him. “Just so we don’t set fire to the grove.” Thomas filled the small pan from the freshwater spring behind the palms, gathering a few dried fronds along the way to add to Lem’s fuel. Ruth dumped in grounds when the water boiled, stirred and pulled the pan to one side. It didn’t take much of the flavorful venison jerky and mesquite bread to satisfy their hunger, and as she sat back savoring her coffee, she fancied herself back in the old times when Yuiatei came to camp here, to bathe in the hot spring and gather dates. In this ageless place, the fact that she had children somewhere, and a friend in jail, seemed unreal. “Oh, isn’t this what life is really about!” She hushed her voice to match the light swish of palm fronds. “I wish we could just stay here

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like this forever. Wish I’d been here in the old times—when people really lived like this.” “Boy, I sure don’t,” Lem said. “It’s much better now.” “Better now? With everyone out of jobs and Martha in jail? With people forgetting everything and turning into brown Teske?” she said. “Would you like this place so much f ’you had to walk all the way here from Black Canyon just to get some dates? You’d be carryin’ all yer food with you, remember, then carryin’ piles of dates all the way back. It’s easier to just drive over in the pickup and get ’em.” Lem laughed. “Now we even have long clippers to cut ’em down with.” “I can’t believe you really mean that.” “We only pick these dates now for ceremonies anyway—there’s not a lot of meat on those seeds, you know. Not like the dates they grow on the trees over by Indio. Those ones are better. Besides we hardly even have ceremonies anymore.” Lem got up and walked toward the rocks housing the hot springs. “Yep. Even with all that bad stuff, things are a whole lot easier now.” He disappeared behind the rocks. “You don’t feel like that, Thomas, do you?” Ruth asked. “You haven’t said anything. You still believe in the old ways, don’t you? After all, you brought me here because you believe that water will help my leg.” “It will help your leg. But what’s that got to do with whether you walk here or drive in a pickup?” Thomas asked gently. “The medicine is in the water, not in how you get here.” “Maybe it is in how people get here,” Lem said from behind the rocks. “Maybe they thought that water had powers ’cause only the ones who could make it all the way across the desert to use it were strong enough to live anyway. Just tryin’ to get here probably killed the rest.” Ruth wanted to stop up her ears. Each word Lem uttered seemed to scrape more of the shimmer off this place.

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“When Grandmother Siki died you talked about holding the web together,” she reminded Thomas. She remembered what he’d said that day about the wounded grizzly. Words that helped her find her place in her own life. “You said that there were Teske who hated what was wild in the world and wanted to destroy it—something like that, anyway. Now you’re saying that . . . that . . . I guess I don’t even know what you are saying.” “I don’t think I’m saying anything, Dlah’da.” Thomas’s voice was studied and quiet in the night. “I was listening to what you were saying. And yes, the old ways helped people to live in balance with the wild. But they knew they had to live that way in order to survive. No one believes that anymore.” “But that’s still true, isn’t it?” “Of course. All of us, Teske and Yuiatei, need to live in balance or we won’t survive. But I think you see the old life too simply when you think it’s the answer to what’s wrong now.” “But what other way is there to hold that web together?” “If we have to go back to the old ways to hold it together, it will only fall apart. Going back is impossible. No one wants to live that way anymore—not even most Yuiatei. Lem is right. Those were hard times. People didn’t live that way by choice. “Besides, too much of the knowledge is gone. Too many of the stories and songs that told us where to find water and food and when to go there. And even if those songs were still around, they would probably just lead us into the middle of places like Banning or Palm Springs. Houses grow there now, not plants and animals. No, we have to find ways to keep the balance.” “We don’t have to live like savages to hold the web together.” Lem appeared on top of the rocks, buttoning up his khaki shirt. “It’s too damn hot in that water,” he said, wiping his forehead. “I don’t think the Yuiatei People were ever savages,” Ruth insisted. “I think you just knew how to live with . . . with . . . well, with all this

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wildness around us. Nowadays, no one gives a fig about living with it. Or a date. What was it you said? That they’re afraid of it and hate it? All they want to do is use it up—tame and destroy it. I think keeping the web together means we have to stay apart from people like that and live as close to those old ways as we can.” “The web is bigger than that, Dlah’da. No one can keep themselves apart from the rest for long. Sooner or later, the rest touches us.” Two perfect moons floated on the surface of Thomas’s dark eyes as he looked at her. “Teske who think they can eradicate what’s wild are wrong, too. They’d be eradicating themselves—but they don’t know that yet,” he said. “I’m goin’ to sleep.” Lem walked over and separated out his blanket from the rest. “Too much talkin’ hurts my head.” Thomas laughed. He walked over to Ruth, stood looking down at her, the moonlight glinting from his black hair. “You ready to get into that hot spring, Dlah’da?” Ruth nodded, accepted the hand he held out toward her. “Think you’ll need help getting over those rocks?” She wasn’t sure if that was the question he was asking. She shook her head, anyway, felt some vague possibility dissipate. While he carried his blanket to the edge of the dune where Lem was already settling in, Ruth turned her face away, looked over toward the grove of trees she’d found so magical earlier. She sat for a moment, listening to the songs of crickets and frogs, then made her way through the sand to the low rocks surrounding the hot spring. Boosting herself over, she pulled the crutch with her. With her good blouse and pants safely folded on the rock, she sank down into the spring, welcoming the intense heat of the steamy water closing over her body. Its presence was especially strong on her weak leg, she realized, as she breathed in the slightly sulphur air around her. She eased back into the algae-coated sand and rock beneath her. The gooey feel of the spot, the acrid smell, seemed in harmony with

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the frog and cricket chorus. Still filled with the turmoil of discussion, she closed her eyes and surrendered to her senses. Stay with what’s real, she remembered Jim’s voice saying. She knew he must have come here. She tried to conjure his spirit around her, then let go of even that. After a while, Lem’s cynicism about the old ways floated off with the pond scum. He had meant it humorously, she told herself. The wonder she had felt in the grove seeped back to permeate her, and she soaked in the quiet joy of it. In memory she re-experienced the fragrant carpet of flower beneath her feet, the sheltering sway of palm with Thomas beside her. His words were harder to dismiss than Lem’s. There was practical truth to them, she knew, thinking of the conveniences she had added at Glory Springs. Would she really want to live there again with nothing but a tent, hauling water from her spring? What if she no longer had the Model A to drive into Juniper Valley for groceries? No Juniper Valley, for that matter, with its prepared supplies to supplement what she hunted and gathered? Even if that did make up more than half of what she ate and fed her children. Yet she used her car to drive to mesquite and acorn gathering places that didn’t exist in her canyon, used a rifle and bullets to shoot her game. Those were not the old ways. Ruth looked up at the milky sky and let Thomas’s words dissolve. Words only diminished the mystery. Diminished what she sensed was real. She drew in and let out a breath. When her body had enough of the spring, she boosted herself up. The desert air felt cool on her skin. She carried her blanket with her into the grove. Not wanting to crush the tiny flowers, she spread it on a sandy patch near the base of a palm, then lay down and looked up at the stars bright enough to brave the moonlight, the few visible through the thick palm fronds whispering above her in the light wind. An owl hooted from the back of the grove, adding its refrain to the choir of creature voices. Despite what Thomas had said about the old ways, Ruth remembered finding him wrapped in the skin of the grizzly that had attacked

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him and killed Grandmother Siki—the same grizzly skin that he had used to temporarily repair the roof of her cabin last year. He had taken it down when they came back and made a more permanent repair. After his injury, he had done sweats with the huge skin, he explained to her that day, told her he had slept with the skin for several weeks. He said he was na’nitsitwa, which she thought meant “becoming bear story.” He was absorbing its qualities into himself, the immense power she had glimpsed in the wildness of the bear. What was that if not the old ways? How did he fit his belief in that reality with the practical reality he had just spoken of? For her, those realities conflicted. How could both be real? Ruth couldn’t fathom it. She was convinced that Teske ways, the attitudes and practices of her own culture, would eventually eradicate the wild she loved. But there she was, trapping herself in words again. Ruth looked over at the moon lilies blooming beside the tree, breathed in their delicate potency. Their fragrance, the creatures’ voices in the night, like the ground she lay on and the stars and moon over her head, were what she found real. They told her all she knew of reality, of what was sacred. Wildness was the church she worshiped in.

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chapter eleven

T

he squawking and wing flutter of excited hens greeted Ruth’s

ears as she came up from the wash. She arrived at the coop in time to find an egg-filled gopher snake getting pecked and kicked by the outraged fowl. With lumps in its belly, the snake couldn’t move fast enough to get away. Ruth looked down at the reptile and shook her head. She supposed it was partly her fault for not collecting the eggs this morning. Usually that was Maddie’s job, but the children had walked to John Olsen’s place at dawn with Lem and Thomas. They wanted to help the men repair the leaks John’s roof had developed while he was away. He would drive them back and have dinner when the work was finished.

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She rescued the sluggish creature, scooting him into an apple crate with her crutch. Best let this one out somewhere down canyon, where breakfast wouldn’t be so handy, she told herself. Normally she welcomed these benign eaters of small rodents. But this one had forgotten its purpose—at least the purpose she had assigned it. Ruth set the crated snake by the trunk of a pinyon and covered the top of the box with a piece of plywood. “Digest in peace,” she told it, bending down to examine the moon lily bush beside the crate. She counted twelve of the candlestick-shaped buds whose ends had loosened into the pinwheel that told her they would unfold in the evening. She loved watching the pinwheels slowly turn—then suddenly burst into blossom, releasing an explosion of fragrance. Smiling at the prospect of a twilight show, she made her way over to the campfire. She’d gone all the way to the spring and back without having to depend on her crutch. What joy she got from this small act that she had once taken for granted! Her leg got stronger daily, could now complete on its own some of the motion exercises that Thomas had been helping her through the last few months, the kicks and pushes he had done to the leg by hand. It had been two weeks, and she still hadn’t heard from Ghosh about the date and time of the next hearing. They had driven down to Matt’s store in Juniper Valley three times to check the mail, had tried to call Ghosh from there, but got no answer. When they visited Martha at the Riverside jail, she didn’t know the date either. Lem had even gone by the attorney’s house in Banning, but no one was there. Once Lem and Thomas left tomorrow to pick apples in Yucaipa, she would have to drive in to Juniper Valley by herself to contact the lawyer. If only her leg were a little stronger, she would go pick apples with them. She could use the money—and might even miss David Stone’s next visit if she went. She was sure he would show up anytime now. It had been weeks since they’d seen him. J.B. still missed David some-

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times, she knew, but having Thomas and John around was starting to change that. Her life was beginning to feel right again. With a little effort, she was able to keep her thoughts positive about Martha during the day. She forced herself to picture Martha free again, sitting with her around the fire. Each time the image of Martha in that big jail came to her, Ruth chased it out with a memory of Martha kneeling at the na’dai singing, or laughing with her brother Lem. Ruth had also gotten Thomas to tell her more about the medicines he’d been using to improve her leg—though he insisted the best medicine had been time. And each night she fell asleep eager to see how much better her leg might be the next day. Sometimes, though, darkness sneaked into her dreams. In one dream, Martha lay tied up with rope, like a calf about to be branded, in the corner of that tiny jail room; another time men were dragging Martha somewhere with that same rope. But what disturbed her most was that—in all of the dreams—Martha would be flung into the same position Jim had been in outside the cabin door. Ruth would have to move aside that thick black hair—not knowing which face lay beneath it. The images ate fiercely into her day. But this day felt particularly free of darkness. She was pleased to have Glory Springs to herself for a while, and sat awaiting the coffee water’s boil. Morning sun warm on her face, she leaned back and closed her eyes, savoring the calls of quail coming to water at the spring. She listened deeper, hoping Jim’s voice might return to her this morning. She knew the voice was only in her head, but it still served to sustain her spirit. Yet it was another sound that caught her attention, a deep booming resonance so faint it was almost inaudible. She felt its presence as well, where her hands lay against the wooden arms of the camp chair, a light vibration with each beat from the distance. She’d never heard anything like it. Her senses now on alert, she strained to hear beyond the calls of quail and the wrens in the pinyon above her, beyond the muted hush

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of wind sighing through pines high on the mountain. The sporadic pounding became more rapid, then slowed, then accelerated again, until there was little space between thrums, sounding a bit like rolling thunder—but not quite like that either. Thunder coming from the earth instead of the sky—erratic, too, as if the earth’s heartbeat had gone awry. The sound of it set her on edge. What in the world could it be? Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the drumming stopped. She waited, her ears tuned to the far air, but the pounding didn’t resume again. She heard only the hiss and splash of water boiling over into the campfire. Surely she must have imagined it, she told herself, as she rose to make the coffee. Yet the strange sound and its vibration had certainly felt real. The event left her uneasy, tainted her optimism, and it took some time before she could lose herself in the day. By the time John Olsen’s truck appeared down canyon at sunset, she had venison chili simmering at the back of the campfire and a small pan of cattail muffins baked to go with it. She also had a new clay pot drying at the back of the stone table. It had done her spirit good to shape the vessel out of earth around the spring, coiling and smoothing its slick sides as it grew between her fingers. Before her injury, she had made her own clay utensils for cooking and eating but hadn’t thought of making any since she returned from the hospital last year. She had come close to forgetting the magic this malleable substance made beneath her hands, had forgotten the way it soothed away her troubles. While John Olsen’s truck made its slow crawl from the bend, Ruth pulled the coffeepot to the front of the fire and stuck in a couple chunks of wood to hurry its boil. She looked over as the flatbed pulled into the yard and was shocked to see Ghosh’s black Buick pull in behind the truck. Beside him in the front sat Martha. Forgetting herself completely, Ruth took off toward the Buick. She was halfway across the yard before her leg began to weaken from her

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sudden run. She realized she’d left her crutch behind at the campfire. But then Martha was holding her, and the two of them stood laughing and crying while the others gathered around them. “Tell me, Mr. Ghosh,” Ruth said, after things had calmed some, “how did you do it?” “Bail,” Martha answered for him. “He bailed me out. We have to go back in a week for the hearing.” Ghosh nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “But I’m happy to be out of that place, even for a few days.” Martha looked around at the canyon, where the air had tinted everything the gold of setting sun. “I wanted him to bring me here. It reminds me of when we used to be in Black Canyon.” Her tear-streaked face was drawn and her skin dulled from incarceration—but her eyes were shining. By now water was boiling furiously into the flames on the campfire. Thomas walked over to add the grounds and pull the pot from the fire. Ruth was grateful when he returned with her crutch. Her near-run had pushed beyond the limits of her leg’s new strength— although she couldn’t have done it at all even a few days ago. The venison chili fed the entire crowd, though there weren’t enough muffins to go around. Yet no one minded sharing. The dinner was a celebration, the air festive with laughter and story. Ruth watched the way Maddie and J.B. listened wide-eyed as Martha told of the so-called better conditions at the Riverside jail and of her cell mate, a prostitute who had shot someone’s husband. Frank’s and Della’s faces were hidden in shadow, but Ruth imagined they too were trying to comprehend a world that had such things in store. She thought it important that children learn what was out there, for their own survival. After John Olsen left for his place, Ghosh explained how he managed—with the help of depositions from Martha’s coworkers at the Indian Agency—to get the judge in Riverside to agree to bail. The

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trial date would be set at the hearing, he told them. There was a possibility that Martha would remain free even after that, until her trial. She could stay at Glory Springs until the hearing, he said, though he would have to return to Banning tomorrow to work on another case. Gradually, the children tired and wandered off to their cots. Lem soon followed, saying he planned to leave sometime in the morning. Although Thomas would be going with him, he remained at the campfire, as did Martha, and the two of them told Ghosh about some of the Yuiatei ceremonies once practiced at summer gatherings in Black Canyon. Ruth knew from her own experience that they were leaving out a great deal, which was the Yuiatei way, but she was moved by the fact that they shared as much as they did—as if it were in some way a payment for the help Ghosh was giving them. As they told the stories of their traditional customs and rituals, Ruth’s thoughts wandered. She worried about the more concrete payment Ghosh would be needing. She knew bail meant he’d spent more money, and they hadn’t given him much in the first place. He was such a strange and powerful man. Even Thomas seemed to trust him implicitly. Yet that didn’t mean the man would work forever with little recompense. At least they still had the rest of the money he had refused that first day. Surely he’d take it now. Conversation began to wane, finally trickling off into the cricket song and campfire crackle. The cry of a distant coyote came from somewhere down canyon. “I can see why you like it here,” Ghosh said. “There’s something special about this place. I guess that’s why you named it Glory Springs. It fits.” “Yuiatei had a name for it too,” Thomas said. “From old times when it was a hunting camp. Ni’hitaa’teh.” “Jim said that meant something like ‘small rocks rising,’” Ruth explained. “Something like that. But really more like ‘little living rocks go up

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again.’ Looked at another way it could mean ‘little rocks come alive again,’ ” Thomas corrected. “That does explain it,” Ruth said and went on to tell Ghosh about the tiny pebble-shaped insects she’d seen hopping in the sand that day. “You’ve seen them too, haven’t you, Martha?” She turned to her for confirmation, but Martha’s eyes were closed. Her head hung to one side. “She must be exhausted,” Ruth said. “We shouldn’t have kept her up talking so long.” She got up and put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. Martha’s eyes opened in alarm. “It’s okay. You’re here now,” Ruth told her. “Come on. There’s a cot under the pinyon for you.” Ruth looked over at Thomas, and he got up from his chair and walked toward Martha. “I guess we should all turn in,” Ruth said, letting Thomas lead Martha to the cot Ruth had given up for the night. The poor woman deserved some small comfort after her ordeal. “But it feels so good just to sit out here by the fire. I always hate to give it up.” She picked up a small hunk of pinyon and tossed it onto the coals. “Just one more hunk,” she said with a laugh. “That’s all.” Thomas came back to the fire. He didn’t sit but draped the big bearskin over his chair. “You can have this,” he told Ghosh. “To sleep on.” Are you sure? Ruth wanted to ask, as she nodded her assent, but held her tongue out of regard. For Thomas to sacrifice his bearskin bed to a guest was a significant gesture—a true honor. It made giving up her cot to Martha but a mild inconvenience. “The accommodations here are pretty rustic,” Ruth explained, after Thomas had wandered off to sleep under the pinyon. “Hard too, being that your mattress will be solid ground. But the bearskin will cushion it some for you.” Ghosh got up and examined his new bedding, spreading his arms to hold the huge skin up from the chair. “This looks like grizzly,” he said.

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“It was the last of them. White ranchers and homesteaders killed all the rest.” She told him about the ceremony to make the bear invisible to save it from the white man who was hunting it, explained how later the grizzly, wounded, came back to the camp and killed Grandmother Siki. “Thomas got those scars across his cheek trying to protect her. There are even deeper gouges on his chest,” she said. “The bear would have killed them both if old One Eye hadn’t shot it in the eye with his rifle.” She realized, now, that it must have been the same rifle that had later killed Jackson Naubel. “One of life’s ironies,” Ghosh said when she finished. “The people who wanted to save the bear end up being the ones to kill it.” “They had to finish what the Teske started or the bear would kill them.” “Teske?” “It means ‘peeled ones,’ but also something like ‘not-living things.’ It’s what Yuiatei call us whites.” Ruth stood. “You and I, we’re ‘peeled ones,’ or ‘peeled not-living things.’ ” She poured the rest of the coffee on the fire, sprinkled it with the bucket of sand she kept there, then poured water from a jug over that. Acrid smoke billowed up, then dissipated. “That should do it,” she said, shaking her leg to limber it. She started toward the outhouse. “There’s a blanket to put over you there by cabin door. Feel free to put that skin down anywhere you want.” She settled herself under the pinyon next to the snake’s crate and the moon lily bush, first pausing to sate herself with its fragrance. Dipping her nose into each of the twelve blossoms, she must have pollinated them as well as any hawk moth, she thought, rubbing the silky pollen from her nose into the skin of her face. In the excitement of Martha’s arrival, she’d neglected to watch the plant’s twilight blooming and wanted to breathe in all she’d missed. The flower’s potent scent left her slightly woozy as she wrapped herself in her blanket and looked up at the stars, brilliant and abundant in the darkness of new

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moon. She listened to Ghosh settling down nearby, heard Thomas sigh, before she felt sleep claim her. A bear stood just outside her cabin door. A big grizzly on its hind legs, waving forepaws in the air as it roared and flashed huge white teeth. She saw the creature right through her front wall, which, even in the dream, she knew was impossible. Fear knotted her insides. All her walls suddenly seemed as flimsy as the apple crate with the snake, especially where the rockwork ended and the wood began. She ran to the window that looked out on the pinyons and found the bear there too, then ran to the window that looked out on Rocky Mountain and found the bear there as well. The bear was everywhere. Terror overwhelmed her. She was acutely aware that the walls of her cabin could not stop such a powerful force from coming in. Yet somehow she had to keep the animal from destroying the place she had built. She flung open the front door of her cabin and roared back at the bear, but it seemed not to see her. Realizing now that it did not want to attack her but was simply in some pain of its own, she stepped closer and reached out to stroke its coarse coat. The stiff bristles beneath her palm filled her with a strange warmth, and she touched them with her other hand as well, running her fingers through the bristles that became slick and wet under her palm. She began pressing and rubbing her body up against the animal’s powerful flesh, felt its forearms wrap around her, then she was under it on the ground and the grizzly was entering her with its huge bear member, pleasuring her as never before. Then she saw that there were two bears, and reached out to touch the other’s pubic-like coat, and now she was with both bears, writhing in such intense delectation that it finally woke her. Her thudding heart and sweaty body told her that she actually had been writhing on the ground, her blanket kicked to one side. Had she cried out? Ruth felt herself blush. Might Thomas or Ghosh have heard?

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But worse, her whole body was still filled with desire, and she wanted nothing more than to go back and be with the bears again. She hadn’t felt such overwhelming hunger since her injury—and never before with so much uncontrolled force. She ached to put her hand to herself but dared not, for fear of someone overhearing. Using her crutch to pull herself up, Ruth made her way through the brush toward the outhouse. Maybe if she peed, the feeling would ease. But when she hooked the door shut, the memory of those bears came back over her, the feel of all that wildness inside her, intensifying her arousal. But do what she might to satisfy it, her own fingers were a poor substitute for the bear members of her dreams. Just before her desire reached its diminished conclusion, the bears transformed themselves into men, Thomas and Nicholas Ghosh. When morning light drew her from sleep, Ruth lay for a while, savoring her secret. She felt as if her body had woken up from a long sleep, rather like some bawdy fairy-tale princess. An oriole flew into the pinyon above her, looping its morning melody through the quiet, bursts of notes mirroring the explosion of gold glints that rising sunlight scattered on the pinyon needles. The others were stirring around her now. Thomas had gone over to start the campfire. Ruth watched his long body bend as he reached for the firewood on the ground, straightened slightly to throw it in, then crouched down to arrange the pieces in a pyramid. Low sunlight carved deep shadows in the scars that striped his cheek. She longed to run her fingers over the old wounds, could almost feel the rough scar tissue under her fingertips. How had she escaped her own knowing? Ghosh lay wrapped in the bearskin he’d placed on top of the blanket. She couldn’t quite tell where the skin ended and the hair around his face and head began, the color and texture appeared so similar. Whatever it was she’d felt for him last night, she was less sure of now. In broad daylight, the thought of his huge body melding with hers felt a little unnerving, dangerous rather than erotic.

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Martha and Lem remained quiet, although Ruth doubted they could sleep now that all four children were awake and talking next to them. Thinking she might make mesquite pancakes—and add a few of the gooseberries she’d gathered for jam—to celebrate Martha’s return, Ruth pulled herself to her feet and went to join Thomas at the fire. From overuse the day before, her leg cramped with soreness when she put weight on it, so she leaned more heavily on her crutch than she wanted to. Only for the time being, she told herself. Soon she might not need the crutch at all. No morning could have been more enjoyable, Ruth thought later, as she flipped pancakes on the campfire griddle. She and Martha had made the batter together, Martha wanting to “do ordinary things again,” she told Ruth, as she added more of the wheat flour to the mesquite. “I need to get my hands into something real like this.” Martha had looked over at Ruth, her face still amazed that she was out in the world again. “Maybe later I’ll make some bread.” “You might want to play around with clay from the spring too. Fashion yourself a little pot. That always feels good.” With the crackle of fire, the voices and laughter of her friends around her, Ruth looked forward to spending the day celebrating her friend’s return to freedom. She was oblivious to the sound of a motor down canyon, became aware of it only when Thomas stood and peered toward the bend. By then, David Stone’s tan van was already in sight. Why did that man have to show up to spoil such a wonderful morning? She looked over at her son, who slammed a last bite of pancake into his mouth, then jumped up and ran toward the road. David still had a hold on J.B., despite the boy’s choice to stay here with her rather than attend school in L.A. as David had wanted. She noticed Thomas observing her and gave him a shrug. “I think I’m goin’ now,” Lem rasped.

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“At least wait until he gets here, ip’itske, traitor man,” Martha said. “Maybe he won’t stay.” Ruth deflated, leaned against the rock table, the spatula still in her hand. She saw Ghosh’s puzzled look. “It’s another long story,” she said. His half smile made her face flush. The polite expression on Stone’s face as he walked from his van toward them, one arm around J.B., barely disguised the storm-cloud scowl that lurked behind it. Ruth knew the look well, that masked disapproval he often showed now that her life was out of his grasp. It was there each time he arrived to find Thomas staying with her. David certainly couldn’t be happy now, finding a whole crowd with her. Her impulse was to confront him directly with the issue. Such was her nature. But with Martha newly returned, with Ghosh there, and J.B. so obviously glad of David’s visit, Ruth decided to keep things on an even keel as best she could. “David,” she said calmly, when he got to the campfire, “you remember Thomas. And this is my friend Martha, her brother, Lemuel, and his children, Frank and Della.” She pointed the spatula as she spoke. “Nicholas Ghosh, David Stone,” she finished, returning to her chair. Her leg was aching unbearably from standing on it so long, but she was damned if she’d lean on that crutch with David there. She wanted him to see the progress she’d made, despite all his pessimistic predictions. “Pour yourself a cup of coffee, David. We have some spare pancakes too, but I’m afraid they’re full of that mesquite flour you dislike so much.” Though he had merely given a nod to her Indian friends, then pointedly ignored them, Stone flashed a sudden smile and reached out a hand to Ghosh. “Odd to see you again,” he said, “way up here.” Ruth was struck by how little David’s heartthrob smile affected her now. “Yes,” Ghosh told him. “Tell your friend Clare thanks again for me. I’ll let her know about the trial date.” “I thought Clare worked out of Two Bunch Palms,” Ruth said,

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with dawning understanding. “You mean it was Clare Gooden that you worked under at the agency, Martha?” “Only the last year,” Martha said. “That’s when she came. I didn’t know you knew her.” “The bureau expanded her territory,” David Stone said, not meeting Ruth’s eyes. A belly laugh she couldn’t hold back bubbled up inside her. So even while David came around trying to control her life, he was seeing his former sweetheart. That explained why he hadn’t mentioned marriage for a while. “I don’t see how that’s funny,” he said, reddening a little. “Anyway, I just came up to see the children—and if you needed anything. But it looks like you’re taken care of.” “Do have some coffee, David,” Ruth said. He shook his head. “I’ll visit with J.B. here for a while.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “Then head back to L.A. This was the week I planned to work that new dig just outside of Juniper Valley, but the army took care of that plan. Damned if I can work with those big guns going off out there—I can see the explosions from the top of the rockpile. Hellish big craters they leave, too. And soldiers chasing each other all over the desert.” “Soldiers?” J.B.’s eyes lit up. “Can I see them?” “Well, who knows. They might be shooting things up around here next.” Stone looked up at Rocky Mountain. “Running over these mountains instead.” “Forgodsake.” Ruth got up from her chair. She paced to the rock table and back, trying to quell her alarm at the idea of the lovely desert being ripped apart by huge guns, her head full of slaughtered animals and torn-up plants. “Those guns must have been what I heard yesterday. But what is the army doing out in the desert?” “No chance you could hear the guns from here, Ruth. But look— you’re walking without your crutch,” David Stone said. “How long have you . . .”

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“That war in Europe we talked about,” Thomas reminded her. “You know we won’t stay out of it forever.” “But that war is far away. Far far away. I refuse to believe it has anything to do with us,” she said defiantly. “Even if I can hear those guns. And I can, David. I felt their thuds coming up from the ground.” She collapsed into her chair again, closing her eyes. “Whatever does a war across an ocean have to do with soldiers wrecking our desert right under our noses?” No one said a word, but she felt them staring at her. Yet when she opened her eyes, everyone but Ghosh was looking away from her. “Don’t mistake what you want to be real for what really is,” he said. “That can be dangerous.” “What is is dangerous, all by itself,” she said to close off the discussion. “There is talk of us entering the war to help out, you know, Ruth,” David Stone said. “It’s in all the papers.” She knew that man would find a way to ruin everything for her— like the way he had burned down her cabin. Ruining things for her was never something he tried to do; he just seemed to have a knack for it. Besides, his just being around was enough to spoil things for her. Like this morning—she had felt so wonderful sitting around the fire with her good friends, would never have believed that only a short time later her spirits would feel the way she imagined the desertscape looked after the soldiers’ guns were through with it. Ruth sank into her chair, clamped down on the words that wanted to spew out of her. To keep herself quiet, she bit the inside of her lip until she tasted the rust of blood. David’s storm cloud had drenched her, become her own. Just go away, David, she said silently. As if he’d read her thoughts, David asked J.B. to show him the new additions the boy had made to his “little western play town,” as David called it, and the two of them walked toward the wash. Frank

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and Della got up to follow, but their father stopped them. “We gotta go now,” Lem said, nodding at Thomas. Ruth didn’t look up as Martha followed Thomas and Lem to the truck to say good-bye. “I’d leave too,” Ghosh said, “but I need to stay and talk more with Martha about her case.” “You must think ill of me now,” Ruth said, suddenly embarrassed. “Not ill at all, though you’re a very stubborn woman.” His expression was studied, not at all judgmental. “And I’m wondering why you just chased everyone away.” “The only one I want to chase away is David Stone.” “Maybe someday you’ll tell me that long story,” he said. “Maybe someday—if you’re still around.” “I’d like to be,” he said, “though not at the expense of Martha’s case. That I hope to dispatch soon—if all goes well. But I very much look forward to another of your stories when you’re ready to tell it.” “Stay around this afternoon, then, at least until he’s gone. He’ll be more likely to actually leave,” she said, “if you’re here.” She got to her feet, picked up her crutch. “Let’s say good-bye to Lem and Thomas. I have to give them the snake to let out at the mouth of the canyon.” She started toward the truck, picturing the snake’s slow crawl away from its wooden cage. Far easier to free the snake than her mind from its own tangled traps.

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chapter twelve

“

B

ut can’t I come out and see the soldiers make those explo-

sions? Just for a little while.” J.B. pictured big round balls shot out of huge gun barrels. The holes in the ground they must make. “Are they like the cannons in history books?” “A little. But they do far more damage than cannons ever did.” David reached over and touched his shoulder as they walked down the wash bank. “You don’t want to see stuff like that, J.B. You just think you do.” J.B. ducked away. “I’m not a baby, you know.” “I know you’re not. That’s why I’m telling you all this. It’s really ugly out there.” David stopped at the far bank of the wash. “Actually,

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I do want you to come out to the dig. But not to see all the gun and bomb craters.” “There’s bombs too? From airplanes? And do soldiers shoot right out of the planes like in King Kong?” David shook his head. “What am I going to do with you, J.B.?” he said. But he was smiling now. “Maybe after you see all the damage, you’ll understand.” “But when? Can I come with you now?” “I’m not going back there for a while. And the reason I want you out to the dig is to meet someone. An architect you’ve read about.” David started up the bank. J.B. ran after him. Yanked on his arm. “But when can I come, then?” David stopped, looked down at him. “Do you remember reading about the architect who makes buildings with natural setting in the design? Frank Lloyd Wright? He’s very famous.” A picture of a house surrounded by trees came to J.B. from a newspaper clipping David had sent. A waterfall ran underneath, as if it were coming out of the house itself. When J.B. saw it, he’d wondered if the water ever froze—or flooded—and what the people did then. “I thought that house with the waterfall was a dumb idea. People make buildings to get away from stuff like that.” “Oh, no, J.B. There’s more to it—a lot more. It’s about being consistent with environment. I’ll get you some books on his architectural philosophy. The compilation you have spends only a page or so on Wright, as I remember.” David began walking toward the story-making place. J.B. moved faster to keep up. “Anyway, there’s a big new building going up out there by the new dig. Several buildings, actually. The sign calls the place Spirit Center. I talked to the owner, who just came back from India,” David told him. “His work crew had turned up a few artifacts, which is why he contacted me. That’s how I found out who he hired

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to design his building. Take a wild guess.” David was really smiling now. “Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s the chance of a lifetime for you, son.” J.B. wasn’t sure why he should meet this Frank Lloyd Wright. But it would get him out to the new dig. David walked in front of the story courthouse. “What kind of a building is this? It’s not like any of the others.” J.B. stopped to examine a spot where more of the clay had peeled off. “A courthouse. Like the one in San Bernardino. It isn’t very good, though. I couldn’t—” “When did you see a courthouse in San Bernardino?” David’s eyes narrowed. J.B. had to look away. “We only went there to meet that Ghosh lawyer. So he could help Martha.” “So that’s why Ghosh is up here. I wondered about that. What’s Martha done? I wish your mother would stay away from those damn Indians. They’re nothing but trouble.” J.B. never should’ve told him. He hated it when David talked that way about the Yuiatei. “She didn’t do anything, David. None of them did. And they’re not—” “Then why does she need an attorney?” J.B. looked over at the courthouse. He didn’t want to explain about Martha’s drunk husband and the gun going off. It would just make David more mad at their friends. “Tell me, J.B.” David gripped his shoulders. His face had gone dark. “Tell me.” “Her husband got killed. Martha’s. The sheriff thinks she did it, but the gun just went off and . . .” He stopped. David kept shaking his head and looking back across the wash. “Look, J.B., I don’t mean to say anything against your friends. I just want to make sure you’re safe. Sometimes your mother, well, she doesn’t seem to think enough about that. And it’s clear she doesn’t want me around to do it anymore.”

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“Can we go back now? You already saw the new building.” David looked at him, let out his breath. “I’m sorry, J.B.,” he said. “Just forget I said anything.” He started toward the courthouse. “Now, let’s take a better look at this building you made, shall we? It sure is a different style for you.” Later, after David drove off, J.B. took another look at the newspaper picture David had sent. He did like the way the layers of the house came down. It felt a little like the waterfall itself—except all the lines looked too straight to him. And the waterfall did look neat coming out of the house. But it still seemed silly to have a waterfall right under a house. Dangerous, too. He wouldn’t want to live over one. But maybe it was a fake waterfall and not natural at all. Like that fountain waterfall in the theater lobby. And all the plants. Maybe he could ask that Wright man about it if David took him to the dig to meet him. He wondered exactly what David meant by “with natural setting in the design.” That meant nature, didn’t it? How could anyone not include it? Wasn’t everything nature? J.B. thought about the way he felt inside the courthouse again. He knew its marble came from nature, but the inside of the courthouse said nature didn’t matter. Made you forget about it, even. That was interesting to him. All the other buildings he knew were so full of nature he’d never thought about it. The stones in their cabin walls. And John Olsen’s walls. The wood roofs, too. When people said natural setting, did they mean outside? Bringing the outside into the house’s inside. Their cabin had so many cracks around the windows that outside was always blowing in, especially in the winter. Maybe he would seal the cracks up with clay before the cold came. Brown clay, not the white. Yuiatei ki’takiis were like a bunch of outside too. Willow branches and cattails. Sometimes animal-skin ceilings. But Yuiatei made them to keep away the real outside. That was interesting too, now that he

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thought about it—the outside protecting against itself. He supposed he’d built things that way, too—but without thinking much about it. Ever since he could remember, he liked to play around with the different shapes he saw people living in. Sometimes it was hard to find stuff to make it look right. But he was starting to see there was more to a building than the way a place looked on the outside. Or the way it protected people. Like David said. There was more to the desert too. He could hardly believe real soldiers were out there shooting and bombing things. He’d heard Thomas say there might be a war, but it seemed too strange to be true. J.B. tried to imagine what the desert would look like full of soldiers running with guns. He hoped David would take him to see for himself. He wondered what soldiers lived in while they were fighting a war? Maybe he could talk to some soldiers when David took him out to the dig. Not when they were shooting, of course. But talk to a real soldier. Now that would be something. And he would meet this Frank Lloyd Wright, but only because David wanted him to.

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chapter thirteen

“

I

t’s no use.” Martha pushed aside the clay she’d been coiling into

a small bowl. “I can’t get my mind off that court hearing. I wish I had a cave I could go hide in. Somewhere they couldn’t find me.” Ruth reached over and took Martha’s clay bowl, held it up to examine it. “They’d find you, all right. Drag you back to Riverside.” She set the bowl back down. “You’re doing a good job with this.” “But it’s not fun for me the way it is for you. You’re the niwa’eri, not me.” Martha looked up and surveyed the face of Rocky Mountain. “There must be a cave up there for me somewhere,” she said. Her clay-covered fingers cemented a stray hair into place that had slipped out of her braid.

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“I’m no such thing. I know you’re worried. But Ghosh said nothing would happen at this hearing. It’s only to set the date for your trial.” Ruth wet her hand in the spring’s runoff and went back to smoothing the sides of the small olla in front of her. “The whole thing will take about an hour.” “But they might lock me up again, you know.” Martha shuddered. “I keep hearing those iron doors clank shut behind me.” “The courtroom is nowhere near that jail.” Martha gave her a look, then sat staring off. “Grandmother said you were, you know,” she said after a while. “Or you would be.” “What?” Martha stood, shook sand from the back of her pants. “Niwa’eri. That’s what she told me when she saw those ollas you made.” “Really? She thought I was niwa’eri?” The word meant something like “flows with earth.” Only the best of Yuiatei pottery makers were called niwa’eri. As far as she knew, there were no more living. Ruth held out her hands, examined them in wonder. An oriole song rang out a few feet from them. When they turned to look, they found Maddie gazing up into a pinyon. She made the call again, and the bird flew off. The girl shuffled toward them, her face dejected by the bird’s rejection. “I wonder why Lucy hasn’t written,” Martha said. “I wish she wasn’t way out there in Arizona. If only she hadn’t married that Navajo.” “It’s only been a couple weeks since I wrote her. I had to send the letter to some trading post,” Ruth said as Maddie came up beside them. “I’ll bet it will take some time to get to her.” “What’s a trading post?” Maddie asked. “They’re all gone around this area,” Martha said. “They were places the people took all the beautiful things they worked hard on, and the owner gave them a few groceries for it. Sometimes a little money, but not much. Most of them were in Arizona and New Mexico.

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There are pictures of them at the agency. Here we had mostly the missions, instead.” The oriole flew into a Joshua tree beside them. Maddie sang out, and this time the bird sang back. They repeated the calls a few times, then the bird flew off again. Maddie’s face remained bright with whatever strange joy that act brought her. She turned to Ruth and squatted beside her. “We want to know if we get to go to the city with you tomorrow.” “When I take Martha to Riverside, you mean? I thought you and J.B. would stay here with John again.” “We want to go too. J.B. wants to see the big buildings. I can get some creosote on the way and some it’gihi in Devil’s Garden.” Why didn’t J.B. come ask for himself? Ruth wondered. He’d been distant since David’s visit. “I suppose,” Ruth told her. “But you can’t come into the courthouse. And you’ll have to ride in the rumble seat the whole way.” Maddie nodded, then turned and ran up the knoll and over it like some wild thing, her bare feet seeming to fly over rocks and brush, her mane of red hair whipping back over her shoulders. “I wish Grandmother were here to see Ta’ha now,” Martha said, her eyes full. She used the name that Grandmother Siki had given Maddie for her red hair, Ta’ha, which meant “paintbrush flower.” “Let’s go have some lunch.” Ruth set her finished olla to dry on the rock beside her and got to her feet. “Maybe we can drive down and invite John up for dinner afterward. He’s so thin these days. I know he’d like to have the kids stay with him. I hate to disappoint him. At least he’ll get to visit with them over dinner.” They were all up before dawn the next morning so they could make it to Riverside on time. Like the courthouse in San Bernardino, the building in Riverside was large and imposing. “It’s so huge,” J.B. said, gazing up in admiration. Thomas and Lem had gone in before them, while Ghosh was giving Martha last-minute instruction. Ruth saw that he had trimmed his hair and beard for the court appearance

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and looked a little less like he had just come out of the wilderness— but not much. “You’ll have plenty of time to look it over,” Ruth told her son. “While we’re inside.” “Can’t I go in too? Please. I just want to see what—” “I said you and Maddie had to wait outside, remember.” “I don’t want to go in that place,” Maddie said. “He can come with us as far as the courtroom door and peek in—if it’s okay with you,” Ghosh said. “Then go back and wait outside. It won’t hurt anything. Are you ready, Martha?” He checked his watch. One look at Martha’s face told Ruth her friend didn’t need any more conflict, so she nodded her assent. Pushing her point on principle would only stir up Martha’s anxiety. “I just want to see how they made it,” J.B. tried to explain. “This one is different from—” “I said okay. Now let’s go in.” Ruth tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. How could her son be so concerned with looking at a building when Martha was barely able to hold herself together? He should have more sense than that. After all, he was ten now. When they walked into the courtroom to find three rows of seats occupied by Indians, Ruth fought not to show her shock. Most were men, but two women sat with them as well. At first Ruth thought they might be Yuiatei here to support Martha, but a glance at her friend told her differently. “Modajees,” Martha whispered, her face gone pale. At least Ruth didn’t see Sheriff Daggett anywhere. “Don’t worry. They’re not here to testify,” Ghosh said quietly, as they took their seats beside Thomas and Lem. “That’s not what this hearing is about.” “All rise,” a voice boomed out a few moments later. The judge entered the room, taking his seat on the high bench in the front.

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Three other cases came before theirs. Each one needed only a short negotiation between the judge and attorney before being dispatched, the accused clients docilely following these figures of power out of the courtroom. The air was so tight that Ruth found it hard to breathe. The hatred oozing from those rows of dark heads was palpable, and the glances they gave felt sharp enough to draw blood. Especially those of a woman with graying hair and a face whose creases had no humor in them, and a youngish man beside her with many jagged lines tattooed across his cheeks, forehead and chin. Ruth found it hard to believe that Jackson had come from these people, despite his occasional drunken outbursts. Finally, Martha Naubel’s name was called, and Ghosh walked with her to the table in the front of the room. A barely audible spitting hiss, and some deep damning tone, came from the Modajees as Martha passed them. Ruth felt Thomas tense beside her. The judge rapped his gavel and threatened to throw the whole group out of the courtroom. When the Modajees quieted, he looked down at Martha, who appeared small and helpless below him. He asked the prosecutor to read out the charges. When the words “murder in the second degree” rang out, Martha held on to the table in front of her. “How do you plead?” the judge asked. The judge’s words hung in the air like visible things, waiting for the woman to accept or deny them. It seemed forever before Martha made the plea as Ghosh had instructed her, and even then she only whispered the words. “Would you kindly speak louder, Mrs. Naubel, so the court can hear you,” the judge boomed. Still her “not guilty” wavered quietly in the air, weak and unconvincing. Some Modajees hissed again. The gavel came down, this time hard.

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“I warned you,” the judge said. “Now get out of my courtroom.” He raised his gavel toward the door and waited for the bailiff to escort them out. “Now,” he said, once they were gone. “Would you please repeat your plea, Mrs. Naubel?” “Not guilty,” she said, more clearly this time, adding the phrase “Your Honor,” as Ghosh had advised her to do. “That’s more like it,” the judge said. “You may take your seat now.” Martha sank into the chair at the big table, while Ghosh negotiated with the judge and prosecutor until they agreed on a date for the trial, a few weeks later. And until then Martha would remain free. Ruth longed to go up and put her arms around her friend. She was grateful that at least those hateful Modajees were out of the courtroom. The Modajees hadn’t gone far, though, and stood waiting along the walls outside the courtroom when they came out. Where was that bigoted officer now, she wondered, as they passed them, the one who had intimidated Thomas out of the courthouse in San Bernardino? Yet she doubted he’d be able to intimidate these Modajees, who appeared to be attacking Martha with their eyes as she walked by. Thomas and Lem protected either side of her, Ghosh in front, his bearlike bulk clearing the way. Ruth followed, carrying the crutch she’d brought just in case, and trying not to limp. The gray-haired woman spat on the courthouse floor when they passed, and the tattooed man beside her glowered, shot daggers out of narrowed eyes. The rest hissed and moaned under their collective breath. These were like no Indians Ruth had ever known, although she had to admit she hadn’t known any besides the Yuiatei. She had an urge to lift up her crutch and slam it across that old woman’s face. Martha couldn’t keep her hands from shaking as Ruth led her to the Model A. Ruth choked up with an old anger at seeing this strong woman reduced to such a state. The prejudice and hatred Daggett had shown was no different than that of Charlie Stine, who had murdered Jim. She was ready for the prejudice from her own culture. But she

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was outraged that Indians would behave this way to other Indians, even if they were from a different tribe. Was there no end to human viciousness? How could they blame Martha for Jackson’s death? His reputation for drinking and fighting was well known. It could just as well have been Martha shot dead when that gun went off, Ruth thought, as she opened her driver’s door. Surely the Modajees must know that. They all drove out to Ghosh’s house in Banning, Thomas and Lem in the truck, Ruth and Martha in the Model A. J.B. and Maddie rode with Ghosh in his Buick. Ruth paid for gasoline for the truck as well as the Model A, since Thomas and Lem wouldn’t finish with the apple picking for at least another week and had to return to Yucaipa that evening so they could work early the next morning. Only when they finished would they get paid—though they wouldn’t make much. But anything helped. That day at Glory Springs, Ruth had given Ghosh the rest of the money they’d collected. He accepted it, although reluctantly, telling her not to worry about giving him more. The truth was, there wasn’t any more left to give him, other than what Ruth had stashed— and desperately needed to live on. And all the trips they’d had to make were expensive. She didn’t like that clunking sound her car had developed on the way, either. It sounded like an axle going again. Martha was quiet most of the way to Banning. Ruth worked hard to cheer her, reminding her that she had only a few weeks before the trial. With all the witnesses Ghosh had gathered, surely she would be free once it was over. Martha remained unconvinced. Ruth didn’t blame her. She wasn’t convinced either, not after all those Modajees sat sending their dark thoughts to influence things. What else might they be doing? she wondered. It occurred to her that maybe Martha’s idea of a cave wasn’t such a bad idea. Not a real cave, but some place hidden—maybe Jim’s place up on Rocky Mountain. Ruth chased off the thought as she drove up in front of Ghosh’s house, parking in the same spot where they’d waited weeks before.

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The idea of hiding Martha was ludicrous. In the first place, it would mean that Martha would have to stay a fugitive for the rest of her life. In the second place, Ruth reminded herself, Daggett knew where Glory Springs was, and he would be sure to scour all the mountains in the area. Still, Jim’s place wasn’t easy to find. And the thought of seeing it again filled her with a strange joy. Maybe soon her leg would allow her to climb that mountain again. It was something she’d put off far too long. Ghosh met them at the door. How much faster his Buick had traveled, compared to her own slow and clunky ride over. Now out of suit and tie, he’d left all pretense of tidiness behind as well, his hair and beard relaxing into their normal untamed state. Ghosh introduced the woman who had greeted them before as his mother, Muriel. “Come in,” she said, each word thick with Russian accent. Muriel had been expecting them and had set out some kind of delicious biscuit that looked and tasted a bit like shortbread. By the time Thomas and Lem arrived, Ruth had helped her bring out China cups for tea. Thomas drank from the China cup as if it were something he did daily, as did she, though she couldn’t help but picture the tin cup he’d held the night she met him at the campfire in Black Canyon. She thought about the way he had led her out to Jim’s old ki’takii and left her alone with her thoughts. For today’s court appearance, Thomas had pulled his long hair back from his face and trapped it in a bun. He looked as natural that way as he did with it worn long and loose. How adaptable her friend was—he looked as if he always wore that snow white shirt and tie under his dark leather vest. The image of Thomas draped in eagle feathers, as he chanted and shook pollen, seemed just as natural. She loved the comfortable intimacy between them, didn’t know what she would do without it. Her love affair with Jim had been too brief for such a thing to develop. Yet it had evolved with Thomas before she had any thought of a love affair—or any of the dreams. Her fingers

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tingled as she remembered running them over his bare chest in last night’s dream. Ruth looked away, turned her attention back to Martha. She was pleased to see how attentive Muriel was to Martha, serving her the sweet and flavorful tea first, insisting that Martha help herself to the biscuits on the plate. Ruth noticed that Maddie watched Muriel constantly. Was her daughter seeing the prospect of another honorary grandmother? Maddie seemed a little old to still require such a thing. The woman certainly looked grandmotherly enough, with gray hair in a bun and an ample body, yet her features conveyed a keen and worldly intelligence. Muriel served tea from an odd large teapot, with its own fire beneath and a spigot near the bottom. She offered cups this time to Maddie and J.B. Ruth thought she recognized the pot from the Russian novels she’d read. How odd to find one in this little desert town. “It is tea I make in Old Country,” Muriel told them, “in Russia.” Her strong accent was as rich as the tea she served, Ruth thought, and as pleasant as the spicy aromas saturating the air. “It’s delicious.” Ruth nodded toward the plate of biscuits. “And so are these.” “Wait till you taste what she has in the oven.” Ghosh stood in the kitchen doorway, a cloth in his hand. “I’ve tried to make it myself many times, but it takes her magic touch.” “It was your father’s favorite,” Muriel said, her face almost wistful. Martha looked up at her words, her expression softening. It was easy to forget that along with all the fear for her freedom, Martha must be deep in grief over her husband’s death. They ate on an old oak table covered with a cloth edged in silk brocade, and the food brimmed with exotic flavors that Ruth couldn’t identify. She savored each one, along with the conversation that seemed to grow out of the pungent aromas, calling forth stories from their pasts. Muriel told about what happened long ago in Russia, and

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Ruth finally understood who Trotsky had been; Lem and Thomas offered up Yuiatei stories that brought a fresh perspective to local history, Martha adding small details she had heard from the women. Ruth was even moved to speak of her own history and tell about the mystery of her grandmother, Lolinda, and the stories her mother, Cally, had told her only a few years ago. All the while Maddie and J.B. sat silently absorbing the stories. No one spoke about the present or the crisis Martha was facing. In fact, for some time they all seemed to forget about it, even Martha as she related bits of information Grandmother Siki had told her about plants that grew in places they used to go to in the past. She told stories she’d heard of the abundant amaranth, cattails, and wild grasses, the animals Yuiatei had hunted that had populated the bi’kehii’ha, the far-off river. Then Martha’s face fell again when she told how it was the Modajees who had chased the Yuiatei out of their land of plenty. “They have always been against us,” Thomas said plainly. “Against many others as well. Modajees like to fight. And they sure don’t like to share.” “And that terrible woman, Jackson’s aunt—you saw her. She really does hate me. She made sure none of the family spoke to me when Jackson took me there after we got married. He had a big fight with his cousin, you know, the one with all the tattoos, over the way they treated me.” “Yep. Those Modajees sure don’t believe in mixin’ blood with old enemies,” Lem said. “But Jackson wasn’t like that.” Martha’s hands lay in her lap as she stared at her empty plate, her body shrinking in on itself. “And a lot of Modajees aren’t even that way,” she said. Such sadness saturated her voice that no one would contradict her with the fact that seemed all too apparent—that Jackson became like that himself when he drank. But she must have heard herself. “He wasn’t like that when I met him at the agency, anyway. He wasn’t like that at all.”

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“Of course not,” Muriel said to her. When Martha looked up, Muriel added quietly, “The power of blood and culture is strong over any of us. What chance has any one person against that?” “I don’t think that’s always true,” Ruth said, suddenly oblivious to Muriel’s attempt to soothe. “Sometimes one person can be stronger than the blood or culture she comes from.” They all looked at her with some puzzlement. All but Thomas, who said in his firmest medicine man voice, “You mean yourself, of course. But did you ever think that even your rejection of the culture you come from is a part of the power it has over you?” “That’s not true. I’m just not like other Teske. I think if I were Yuiatei, I could be comfortable with the culture I lived in.” “How do you know that, Dlah’da? Maybe you’d leave the Yuiatei ways behind and live as a Teske?” “Even so,” Ghosh cut in, “you’re making her point. You’re saying that it is her nature that makes her uncomfortable with whatever culture she lives in—which is exactly what she claimed.” “No it’s not. That’s not what I meant at all,” Ruth said. “What did you mean then?” Ghosh asked. “I don’t know exactly. But certainly not that it’s my nature to be dissatisfied with whatever culture I live in.” She sought words to sort through her confusion. “Maybe I mean that my nature, as you call it, is more comfortable living close to what’s wild—and needs to be a part of a culture that lives that way.” “What has all this got to do with Jackson?” Martha’s voice sounded pained. “Are you saying that Jackson just wasn’t strong enough?” “I’m sorry, Martha,” Ruth said, recognizing her lack of sensitivity. But Muriel’s words had fallen upon something tender inside her. “I wasn’t thinking of Jackson at all. I was thinking only of myself. I shouldn’t have been.” Yet, if she had been thinking of Jackson, that was what she would have said about him. That he was weak.

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“It’s all right.” Martha reached over and squeezed Ruth’s arm, tried to mean it. Muriel was watching Ruth intently. “Will you help me clear away the table?” Muriel looked at J.B. and Maddie, who both got up at once to help. Ruth wondered what the look Muriel had given her might mean. It didn’t seem judgmental, though Ruth knew she deserved judgment. “I want to go with you,” Martha told her brother. “To go pick apples for a few days.” She looked at Ruth. “I need to work hard,” she explained. “I’ve got to stop thinking for a while. You understand, don’t you?” “It’s too hot to think down in those groves, all right,” Lem rasped. “If you’re sure it’s whatcha’ want, sister.” Martha nodded. She got up from her chair, began gathering up what dishes were still left on the table and took them into the kitchen. “I hope it works for her,” Ruth said when Martha had gone. “She’s been beside herself at Glory Springs.” “I’ll bring her back there when we finish,” Thomas said. “We can give her lleha’da.” “What about the hot springs—taking her there first when the picking’s done?” Ruth asked, remembering the healing feel of that place. That along with the lleha’da, the healing words, would be good for her friend. Thomas nodded, then turned to Ghosh. “I don’t know about those Modajees,” he said. “They’d say anything, you know.” “I’m worried about them too,” Ghosh admitted. He glanced toward the kitchen door. “Some of them could have been at the camp when it happened. They could be witnesses for the prosecution. I’ll find out soon enough.” “Even if they weren’t there, they’d claim they were,” Lem added. “No tellin’ what else. Modajees lie like sonofabitches. Pride themselves on it, even. Don’t forget, for them it’s high honor to do sna’atnswei.

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To bend the world with words.” He started to say more, but Martha came out of the kitchen, Muriel behind her. “We better get on the road while the sun’s still up. If you’re comin,’ ” he told his sister instead. “We have to start pickin’ at dawn.” “I have a long way to go, too.” Ruth rose from her chair and looked at Martha. “Are you sure?” “I’ll see you in a few days,” Martha said. “I promise.” After Martha said good-bye to Muriel and drove off in the truck, Ghosh walked Ruth to her Model A, where her children waited impatiently in the rumble seat. She knew Maddie wanted to gather those herbs while there was still light. “I have a case next week,” Ghosh said as she closed her car door. He leaned his bulk against the frame, bent down so his face and fringe of brown-red hair filled her window. “But after that I want to come up and talk more with Martha—once she’s back,” he said. There was a question in his voice and his eyes probed hers for an answer. “Of course,” Ruth said, hardly aware of his words. The scent of him made her slightly woozy, dwarfing everything else. “She should be back in a few days.” Over his shoulder she noticed Muriel watching them from the front porch. “It’s not only Martha I’ll be coming to see,” he said. Ruth met his eyes, let her smile slip out. “I know,” she said, then turned her face slightly away from this presence that threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to say more, to convey the reservations she couldn’t put words to. She wanted him, but. But what, she didn’t know. Ruth gave the choke a punch and turned the ignition switch. The big man stepped back when the engine started, and she quickly rolled the window up a couple inches. A puzzled hurt flickered over his face, which made her reach up and touch his forearm to assure him. She gave a brief squeeze and let go. “See you soon, then,” she said, with a little wave—and stepped on the gas fast.

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chapter fourteen

I

t had taken days before Ruth could settle back into life at Glory

Springs—and when she did, it was with the feeling that the situation was temporary. Even now, as she sat with coffee under the pinyon, she kept expecting to hear the sound of yet another engine on its way up canyon to bring some other news she hadn’t counted on. Yesterday she had been grateful to find it was merely John Olsen’s truck rounding the bend. She had completely forgotten about his visit. When he left this morning, taking J.B. and Maddie with him to the store in Juniper Valley, Ruth realized that—however welcome his return was in her life—it was yet another of the many changes she struggled with. Nothing seemed constant anymore, not even the ground she walked on, nor the way she walked on it, half hobbling along on a

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leg that had forgotten how to carry her. She remained acutely alert to those army guns from the practice range that would without warning vibrate the wooden arms of her canvas camp chair; their faint thuds pounded loud against her serenity. She sensed that Martha wasn’t the only one in danger. Some form of Daggetts and Modajees lurked just about everywhere—and with harmful intent. Maybe she and Martha should both should go hide out on Rocky Mountain—if her legs could carry her up there. And maybe they could. After all, her good leg was strong from double duty, her shoulder well muscled from all the crutching. And another letter had come from Cally last week. It read about the same as the last one, except more desperate. Send money or else she’d be on the doorstep. The thought of it gave Ruth a chill. Her mother must have done something serious this time, something beyond the usual scandal. Why else would she even consider coming here? Yet Ruth could hardly picture Cally finding her way to Glory Springs—or even wanting to. Besides, she no longer had a choice, had no money left to send her mother to support her dubious “business.” A vague image of dim hallways and seedy rooms visited her from the past. Would she never be rid of that woman? Ruth closed her eyes, strained to hear something in the wind. The absence of Jim’s voice hung at the center of all this change. Had it quit coming to her forever? Without it she sometimes felt like an uprooted plant that could be carried away by the torrent of some thunderstorm or by one of those dust devils spiraling around the lower desert regions. She had never told a soul about that voice. She knew what they would think. But she was willing to risk craziness if it would just come back to her. Lustful dreams were another sign. As if the tumult in the outside world had found its voice inside her as well. The dreams hadn’t stopped with her return to Glory Springs, and she lay awake for hours before sleep trying to talk herself out of these evening escapades. For

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a few days, she denied herself the scent of moon lily flowers, thinking maybe that intoxicating fragrance might be responsible for awakening such lasciviousness in her. But her abstinence had no effect on those near nightly ruts. The next thing you knew she’d be dragging poor old John Olsen into her dream bed with the others. At the thought, a wave of lewd images crashed against her resistance, leaving her atingle and sending her to her feet. She stuck her cup under the coffeepot, gulped some down, as if its burn could scald off the troubling sensations. She had a sudden urge to pick up her .22 and splatter the brains of some innocent rabbit or quail—for supper, of course, though that would not be the point. But shame on her. Her problems weren’t even real. Certainly not the kind of real that can rip apart a life the way a flash flood tears away the bank of a wash—like Martha’s was. Like her own accident had been. This was only inside her and not real at all. Surely she could get it under control. All she had to do was quit pining over some phantom voice that she knew existed only in her own head. And to stop longing to bed every male that walked, human or animal. Snatching up her crutch, she slid down the wash bank, then wove her way across the obstacle course, steadying herself as she traversed the layers of flood rock and debris, the interspersed patches of deep sand. She let the crutch fall at the top of the far bank, and walkhobbled the remaining few feet to Jim’s grave. She stood for a moment, amazed at how thoroughly the land had reclaimed the grave space. Only a practiced eye would know her lover’s bones lay under that brittle carpet of drying grama grass and wildflowers, plants that came up green and multicolored to cover him each spring, then returned to earth, leaving only shells of themselves behind. “Oh, Jim,” she whispered, sinking onto the scratchy surface. Would she ever stop missing him? She couldn’t even remember his face anymore. Not counting the months of friendship before they became lovers, they’d had less than two weeks together before he was mur-

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dered. Such a short time to mark her for life, to make her somehow his and his alone, no matter who came after. Scenes came to her from last night’s dreams, and she felt her face heat to have remembered them over this sacred space. She lay her cheek against the prickly stubble and rough pebbles, her tears trying to water her old love back to life. But you are alive, Ruth. Be glad of it, a voice inside told her. But was it Jim’s? She could no longer be sure she knew the sound of his voice. A sweet sadness crept through her. Maybe she had not been deserted. Ruth closed her eyes and wept until her heart felt calm again. Afterward, she stayed still for a long time, allowing the canyon’s granite sand to strengthen her. The hated gun sounds had stopped—or couldn’t be heard this close to the mountain. For the moment she felt the joy that was at the heart of her life in this place. She pulled herself up and looked around, smiled when she realized that now she could feel sand and pebbles beneath her feet—both of them. She wriggled each deeper into the earth, letting sand ooze up between her toes. Suddenly her world felt right again—even with all the new events milling around like stallions, powerful and unpredictable. She was strong enough to handle them. The next afternoon, it was Nicholas Ghosh’s Buick that rounded the bend down canyon. Ruth and Maddie were grinding batches of acorns, Ruth at her table rock and Maddie at the na’dai above the spring. J.B. had settled on his cot under the pinyon to read the latest book David Stone had sent him about that architect. The man kept feeding the boy books on that subject, like the one John Olsen picked up with the mail yesterday. Too bad David wouldn’t let the boy’s building remain simply play. But she was afraid that interfering between them would only foster their connection. She put down her grinding rock when Ghosh drove into the yard, brushed some of the acorn meal from her hands, and went to greet him. She had hoped that Martha and Thomas would be back before

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he arrived, so she wouldn’t have to find herself alone with him. At least her children were there. “Good to see you. How was your trip, Mr. Ghosh?” she said, extending her hand—then snapping it back again when she noticed a streak of acorn meal still attached to the back of it. “They haven’t brought Martha back yet.” “Won’t you call me Nicholas now? Surely we know each other well enough for that.” He reached into the backseat and pulled out a cardboard box. “I brought up a few things,” he said, “so I won’t eat you out of house and home.” “Feeding you is the least I can do, given the little we’ve paid you,” she told him. “But maybe you’d prefer something besides my rabbit stew and acorn bread.” “It isn’t that, believe me.” He set the box on the rock table and turned to look at her. “Those are real treats. I just want to contribute, that’s all.” “Indeed,” she said, eyeing the two bottles of red wine among the groceries. “This is for you,” he said to J.B., who had come over from the bed. He handed him a large book. J.B. stood speechless, staring down at the book in his hands. “You told my mother that you liked reading about all those golden domes in the Russian novels,” Ghosh said. “So I thought you might like to see them in photographs. It’s one of my father’s old books. One of many. I have something for your sister, too.” He set a small box on the table. “Mother thought she might like this.” “Would you like some coffee?” Ruth asked. “Something to eat. I can heat up the stew early if you’re hungry.” “I can wait,” he said. “And I brought beefsteaks to cook up. They’re on ice in the car.” “Ice? You brought ice all the way up here?” “From the new icehouse in—”

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“Can I see the ice?” Maddie asked. The sight of her brother receiving a gift had brought her on a run from across the wash. “You might want to open this first,” he said. “My mother sent it.” At first Maddie looked puzzled at the strange wooden egg-shaped doll inside the box. She picked it up and examined it. Ghosh took it from her, gave it a twist to reveal a second doll nested inside. The girl needed no more prodding and soon had a row of egg-shaped dolls lined up at the edge of the rock. He brought another cardboard box from the car, this one with a large block of melting ice, packages of meat, butter and cheese stuck along each side. Both Maddie and J.B. put aside their treasures to fondle the block of ice. Ruth couldn’t help but squat down herself to touch this winter phenomenon, so out of place in these late days of summer. She’d heard about the new icehouse in Juniper Valley. If she’d had more money, she might have been tempted to purchase one of those iceboxes down at Matt’s store. But she had learned to get along fine without such conveniences. That was how it all started, anyway, she thought, as she slid her fingers over the smooth cold block. The next thing she knew, she’d be coveting electrical appliances—or worse yet, wanting one of those racket-making Delco generators, like the one the Hudsons cranked up to run their Maytag ringer washer. “I wonder where that took you,” she heard Ghosh say. Ruth got to her feet. “Not so far. Still in the vicinity, anyway. It was only a few years ago, you know, that Juniper Valley didn’t even have electricity—let alone an icehouse.” “Yes, it’s called progress. But from what I understand, only those living in the valley itself have electricity. The man at the icehouse told me more people live in the outlying areas than in the valley. Otherwise, he wouldn’t make a living.” “Wait until winter. Then he won’t.” Ruth pulled out the meat and looked beneath the paper that wrapped it. “This is a whole lot of steak. Why don’t we invite John up to join us?”

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Excited by the idea, J.B. and Maddie took off down the road at a run. Four miles downhill was nothing for them. She’d watched the two of them run up the sides of these mountains for years, leaping small boulders and brush with ease. Maddie was the more agile of the two, she thought, though J.B. was taller and could keep up with her. “You think I should give them a ride?” Ghosh suddenly looked unsure of himself, his expression somewhere between confusion and surprise. Not an expression he wore often, she wagered. She laughed. “You really think you could catch them? Besides, John will bring them back. That way he’ll be sure to come.” “You certainly are raising a couple of wild creatures.” He glanced over at the cot, where the children had abandoned their gifts next to the book J.B. had left open. “But these creatures read, too.” “Don’t sell wild creatures short,” Ruth said, a rush of blood flooding her head. “All wild creatures read. Any old deer or bear can read the world better than humans can. It knows by smell which leaves to eat and which to let be. It can read the air and know what other animals are around. Read the ground and know which animals have passed through. Isn’t that even more remarkable?” “I suppose, but I still find it extraordinary that children living in this wild canyon have some understanding of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I hadn’t even heard about them until high school.” “That’s because they read what I have in the book box—left to me by a father I never knew. But I’m happy they’re equally versed in the wild,” she said, calming. “Maddie is, more so than J.B. She knows more than I do about which plants to use for medicine, and when and how to pick and prepare them. She learned a lot from Grandmother Siki before she died. J.B.’s not interested in that kind of thing.” Ruth brushed the acorn flour into a jar, screwed on the lid. “He’d rather build things. That’s what the Yuiatei named him, you know, Nii’giia, ‘makes places.’ Have him show you what he’s built across the wash. You’ll be amazed.”

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“Too late for that,” Nicholas Ghosh told her. He smiled. “Everything about you has amazed me from the beginning.” “I thought we were talking about my children.” “Would you like me to open one of these?” He picked up one of the bottles of wine. “It’s from France.” “Now I’m amazed. Where in the world did you get such a thing?” She took the bottle from him and studied the words printed on the label, which certainly seemed French to her, given her short acquaintance with the language during the two years she spent at Sarah Higgins Academy. She could no longer understand a word of it. “For all your complaints about cities, I doubt you’ve spent enough time in one to know what’s available there. Cities aren’t all bad. Actually, these were given to me by a client who travels—I have several more at home. My mother doesn’t like wine, and I only like it occasionally. I didn’t want it to go to waste.” “Well, let’s open one then. I’ve never tasted French wine, though I have read French novels—translated, of course. Some more than once,” she said. “I practically know Madame Bovary by heart. I don’t know how I would have made it through all those snowbound months without that box of books.” She dropped into her camp chair and patted the one beside it. The wine’s rich taste brought to mind fertile earth covered with berry bramble, high green grass filled with multicolored flowers. Ruth closed her eyes and tried to picture the place these flavors were born. “Mmmm. This is just wonderful. Almost beyond description.” She took another, larger, swallow. “Isn’t it, though! I’m afraid it would be impossible to get these days because of the war.” Ruth looked at the nearly empty glass in her hand. So this wine was yet another example of foreign intrusion into her wild place— albeit a delicious one. She sighed, held out her glass for more.

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The alcoholic ambrosia cast a spell over everything around her, intensified the light of setting sun. The green-gold shine of pine needles flickered above her in a breeze that felt satin to her skin, and the rock walls of her house gave off a rich glow that matched the ground’s amber tinge. Even the calls of quail on their way to the spring became a symphony of sorts. It was all so lovely, as if the rough edges of the real world she knew and worried over had been sanded off and polished smooth. She smiled up at the man next to her who had furnished this precious moment. “Thank you,” she said. He reached over and took her hand. His was so large, she watched her own disappear inside it. “Thank you for letting me be here with you, Ruth,” he said. She didn’t reply for some time. Words would only take some of the glow from the moment, the way his had done. Some moments weren’t meant for words. But she felt his need for her reply. “I like being with you, too,” she admitted, finally, but took back her hand. “I’m afraid it’s much more than that with me,” he said. The intensity of his eyes sent strong sensations into her belly. She jerked up from her chair. “I wonder where they are? They should be back by now.” He stood and she felt him towering beside her, like the black bear had in this same spot many years ago, but she didn’t look up. “Do you want me to drive down there and see if I can find them?” he asked quietly. She looked at him, then, to tell him yes, but her legs weakened at the sight and smell of him, and she had to stabilize herself on the rock table behind her. He reached out to catch her, one arm circling her back to brace her. Brought up close against him, she gasped at the surprise. She heard his gruff groan, saw his face loosen. Such danger she sensed as he crushed her to him, and she fought to get him even closer as he lifted her hips to the rock table, bent

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her back while her legs circled his bulk. Whatever would Thomas say about this leg exercise, she mused laconically, as she felt her clothes melting away from her? She found herself helping him open her blouse. Then she knew the authority of his hands on her breasts and belly. The notion that such a force could kill her as sure as a lightning strike flashed across what was left of her mind. But where were her children, she wondered, vaguely, and then no longer cared, about to give herself over to the firestorm. They almost didn’t hear the sound of John Olsen’s truck. By the time they looked up, it was already rounding the far bend. Snatching up her clothing, Ruth ran for the door of her cabin, grateful for the deep twilight that hid the sight of them from her children’s eyes, and for the strengthening leg that had let her escape. Her heart slammed madly in her chest as she slapped her clothes back on, drawing in long breaths to stop her panting and cool her inflamed body. To have been so close to the animal she sensed in him, some wild potency buried there, left her ravenous to complete what they had started. Grabbing a stack of plates from the shelf, Ruth carried them out toward the rock table just as Olsen’s truck pulled into the yard. Ghosh had picked up the coffee can and utensils they’d knocked off the table and was brushing pebbles from the meat where it had hit the ground. “Use some of that water,” she said quietly, pointing to the jug beside the campfire. Neither of them looked at each other. Her leg nearly failed her as she bent to toss kindling onto the embers they had neglected when their own raged. Relieved to see the coals blaze up again, she threw on some chunks of pine as John and her children hurried toward them. “We were just wondering what was taking you so long, John,” Ruth lied, keeping her voice casual. She reached over and retrieved her fallen crutch, leaned hard on it. “You should try some of this wine we were sampling.”

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“Ya, Rute. We went look for the dove killer, we did. Track him up the mountain, but it get too dark to see good, so we have to stop.” Olsen collapsed into one of the camp chairs, pulled a flask from his pocket. “I drink this,” he said. “Someone killed them all. A whole gunnysack full, right there in the willows,” Maddie said, her voice filled with bewilderment. “Don’t worry. We’ll find which way he went tomorrow, Mad,” J.B. told her. Puzzled, though relieved that they were too preoccupied to notice anything amiss, Ruth continued with dinner preparations, opening two cans of beans and dumping them in the pot, while Ghosh seasoned the meat for the fire. Gradually, she pieced the story together, learned that John Olsen had heard many shots being fired down canyon around noon, but hadn’t gone to investigate, since he was up tarring the last patch needed to repair his roof. He said the shots sounded far too close to be the big army guns from the practice range, sounded more like shotgun and rifle By the time Maddie and J.B. had arrived, the shooting had been over for some time. He finished the roof and decided they would ride down and see what they could. What they found was that gunnysack full of dead doves, already beginning to smell from afternoon sun. Other birds lay blown to bits around the ground. Shells from shotguns and m-1’s were scattered throughout the willows. Boot prints— John was convinced they were made by army boots—dotted the area. One set headed up the side of the mountain. J.B. and Maddie had tracked the boot prints about halfway up, but it was getting close to sundown. The killing of animals for food was one thing; killing them senselessly was quite another. “But who would do such a thing?” Ruth asked no one in particular, remembering the sweet cooing of doves as they pecked after seeds in the shade of that damp willow glade. “Whatever kind of person must it be?” Her question hung unan-

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swered in a silence punctuated only by popping fire and bursts of sparks. She sank into a camp chair and stared out into the growing darkness. “You shouldn’t be following after someone like that. He has a gun, remember,” Ghosh told her children. “He might mistake you for doves.” Ruth nodded in agreement. “That dove killer long gone now. The children good trackers. I go with them in morning, ya,” John Olsen said. “Bring shotgun too.” “I’ll go with you as well, then,” Ghosh said. The fact that she could not follow them turned Ruth’s mood black, and a somber cloud seemed to settle over the evening. She knew well that this act had to be addressed somehow, remembered the consequences of letting lurking danger lie. But she wanted to be the one addressing it—not sending friends and children to take care of it. Even the concern she had for her children’s safety was overshadowed by jealousy that they were able to climb behind those mountains. She was tired of letting an injured leg dictate what she could do. Sure, her leg had gotten stronger, somewhat—but now she had to get those weakened muscles to do the work they were made for. By the time she got up to cook the beefsteak, not one of them had an appetite left. They all chewed the meat and beans, swallowing dutifully so as not to waste it. Ruth and Ghosh stayed at the fire after the children and John Olsen settled down to sleep. She had no idea what to say, but it felt right sitting out with him. They had left the rest of the good wine untouched, and she had no desire to waste it on her mood now, so she put on another pot of coffee instead. “I hate to make things worse,” he said, when she sat back down, “but I might as well tell you now what I learned.” “As long as it’s in keeping with the mood of things,” she said. “Why spoil the mood with anything cheerful?”

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“It’s about those Modajees,” he said. “Seems the prosecution has three of them listed as witnesses. One of them is that woman, Jackson’s aunt. And that’s not all. I got a call from Thomas and Lem, when they were down at the camp trying to find witnesses. Thomas said that Jackson’s aunt and cousin hadn’t even been at the camp when it happened. Word was out that Daggett was using Modajees any way he could to get Martha convicted. Rumors also had it that some Modajees had been threatening Yuiatei and other witnesses who’d said they might testify in her favor.” “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” Ruth got up to pour in the grounds, gave them a quick stir, then moved the enamel pot to the back of the campfire to settle. She turned to look at him, wondering how he could have come up here so cheerful, bearing gifts. “I guess I wanted to cheer you some first. Spend some good time before I gave you bad news.” He looked down at his feet, then brought his eyes up to meet hers. “That other business . . . I never meant that to happen, Ruth, though I’m not sorry it did.” “And even then, you knew all this,” she said, her neck heating despite herself. “It seems . . . seems—” “Callous. I know. It does to me too, now. I don’t know what came over me.” He stopped and shook his head. “It’s not like me to lose control.” Ruth turned her back to him and stirred the pot, set out the cups for pouring, all the while repressing a smile at his admission. “What are you going to do about the Modajees?” she asked. “Don’t know yet,” he said, standing up beside her. “Other than find witnesses to discredit them. And that might be difficult, given the way they’ve intimidated everyone.” She filled the two cups, turned to face the man beside her. “We aren’t going to do that anymore,” she said. “Not until Martha is safe, anyway.”

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She watched him swallow, suck in a breath. Then he nodded, let his breath out. “Both will be a challenge,” he said. “Freeing her should have been easy without those Modajees. It won’t be now, I can see that. Nor will it be easy staying away from you.” “Here’s your coffee.” Ruth picked up her cup and sat back in her chair. “Nothing is ever easy,” she said. “Nothing I know of, anyway.”

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chapter fifteen

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he big boot tracks were easy to see in the bright sun, and

Maddie followed them up the mountain at a run, her brother right behind. Only when the tracks crossed some slabs of granite at the top did they have to slow to spot where the man had jumped back into the sand. The tracks went way back over the ridges. Where was this dove killer going anyway? Maddie kept wondering. They had to wait for John Olsen and the Ghosh man, too, especially on the steep slopes. The men’s faces got as dark red as manzanita bark while they struggled up places that she and J.B. had run. Maddie felt like she was in a bad dream she couldn’t get out of. It all started when they found that sack of shot-dead birds in the willows

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yesterday. J.B. had spotted them first. But she had already smelled the rotting blood. Nothing since then had felt right. Her heart hurt to think about it. The picture was too awful to let inside. Even as she ran, she kept seeing their little heads hung on limp necks. All bloody. Their little eyes open and glazed over like someone poured a gob of egg white on them. Some didn’t even have heads anymore. Soft little feathers scattered everywhere. More birds lay under the willows. The worst was the bits of bird bodies splattered around the place. John said some kind of gun with big bullets did that. Military, he told them, but she saw shotgun shells there too. Lots of them. “He went up there.” J.B. had pointed at the tracks going up the mountain. “Let’s go find where he went.” Maddie couldn’t even see the tracks with her eyes all blurry with tears. She wanted to stay there and wail like the wind through the willows. But it would be dark soon, John Olsen said, so they had to wait until today. J.B. stopped beside her. She’d smelled it too. Then they saw the body just ahead of them. A coyote. What was left of it. It was full of big dark holes. She could hardly look at the bloody spot where its coat was blasted off. No words came to her when the two men caught up with them, but her brother understood that she wanted to bury it. “We have to find where he went first, Mad.” The tight look on J.B.’s face told her he was right. They kept finding more dead things along the way, squirrels, lizards. Bright blue feathers exploded around a dead jay. The first lizard’s body felt cold, like the ice block she had touched yesterday. After a while, they didn’t stop to examine the creatures and just hurried by them to find their killer. The trail headed downward off the ridge behind Rattlesnake Canyon. Going downhill, John and the Ghosh man could almost keep up. The trail came out behind the mountain at the mouth of the canyon, then went toward the main road to Juniper Valley. It ended by some big tire tracks beside the road.

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J.B. looked over at her. “I guess he got away,” he said. “Sure looks like it,” the Ghosh man said. He was still puffing. Sweat ran down the sides of his face. John Olsen’s too. “We have to go bury them now,” Maddie said. John Olsen and Ghosh looked at each other with tired faces. She knew they wanted to walk back the easy way. Up the canyon road. So she hurried through the brush toward the back of the mountain, the way they had come. J.B. followed after her. The men came behind them, slowly, but that was all right. It gave her and J.B. time to stop and dig small holes for each animal. They used sticks until John gave them his hunting knife. The knife dug a little better into the dry ground, but it was still hard. The coyote needed a very big hole. Too big to dig with the knife. They had to bury him in an opening beneath two rocks. On top of each grave Maddie placed the prettiest rocks she could find, chunks of quartz, or rosy-looking ones, a slice of shiny mica she picked off a larger rock. When they finished, Maddie didn’t feel so raw inside. Burying the animals was a little like putting a yerba mansa leaf over her heart. But it didn’t change what had happened. They could only change the very end of the story. As they walked back, Maddie thought about the quail and rabbits and deer her mother killed for them to eat. She pictured the dead cow that last night’s steak meat came from. Why didn’t she feel bad about those? J.B. shot rabbits and quail. And she pulled the fur from rabbits hung from the clothesline, cut open their bellies and scooped out the sticky guts with her hand. She liked to fry up rabbits to eat. Why didn’t that hurt her heart? she wondered. When they got back to Glory Springs, she let J.B. and John tell what had happened while they sat at the campfire. She didn’t want to make words for that story; they might just stay in her head. Maddie helped Ruth make sandwiches out of the leftover steak. As she put the pieces Ruth cut up onto the bread slices, she kept thinking

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of that cow. Pictured it walking along eating bushes. Taking a drink of water at the willows. Her mother looked surprised at the cow sound Maddie made, the kind she made when she talked to cattle that came through the canyon. She tried to tell the cow she understood. Even if it wasn’t there to hear her. She stared down at her sandwich for a long time, watching the others eat theirs. Her brother was eating his. She could see he wasn’t thinking of the cow he chewed on. Not even Thomas seemed to be paying attention, though she couldn’t be sure. Thomas paid attention to things without showing it. Maddie took a little nibble at the edge, where only green leaves and tomatoes were, then wondered about them too. The plants didn’t always die when they picked from them, though. Did that make it better to eat plants? Just looking at that sandwich made her stomach groan with hunger. Her stomach didn’t pay attention to what she was thinking about. About how plants grow up from the dirt, how cows and deer and rabbits eat them, then people or coyotes ate the rabbits and deer. The cow was already killed now, she reasoned. Maybe she could give it back some of its life if she put it inside of her. Its story would go on in her. She took a small bite with meat in it and chewed slowly. I’m taking you into me, cow, she thought, picturing it grazing on grass around a spring. She swallowed the bite, imagining the cow sliding down inside her. I’ll take good care of you, she told the image. Maddie could feel the cow inside her now. She had always been a little part cow but didn’t understand it, at least not out loud. A bigger part deer and rabbit and quail. She was part tomato and amaranth greens, part acorn from the bread. Was she also part of the animals she looked at or heard too? Weren’t they in her head? The question seemed too big to hold. All those stories felt heavy inside her. That night after dinner, Maddie got up from the campfire and walked over to her cot under the pinyon. She wanted to thank all the

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creatures that were part of her. Everyone looked over and laughed when she sang out in the cow’s voice. But when she kept on singing all the other creatures voices she could think of, the faces staring at her from the flickering firelight looked confused. Even J.B.’s. Only Thomas’s eyes understood as she went on and on, trying to remember each and every voice she had ever taken inside with her mouth and eyes and ears. When she came to the plants’ songs, only a few were out loud, like the rattle of chia seeds and the soft puffs of juniper pollen. Most were quiet, and there were so many. She sat up long after everyone went to sleep, remembering the tastes and smells of silent things that were the stories in their voices. Finally there were no voices left to remember. No more stories. Maddie lay back on her cot and looked up at all the bright splashes of light in the black night sky. Did each light have a song that told its story? She closed her eyes and tried to hear them, but it was the song of crickets that drifted into her. She took a deep breath and brought the smell of moon lily blossoms into her too. She was tired of songs. Tired of stories. She felt herself float away toward somewhere soft and peaceful. But the rotting carcass of the coyote was piled in her way. Its stench drowned out the moon lily. She saw shot lizards and squirrels and doves scattered around her too, all bloody and still. She was trapped in their terrible story, couldn’t get out of the dream. Then she knew what she had to do and got on her knees. Maddie ran her hand over the fur where it was not blasted off. She shooed all the flies away from the dark wound, leaned down and began to nibble at the dead coyote’s flesh.

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chapter sixteen

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ll Ruth meant to do was have a little taste, to tamp down the

thuds of distant guns beneath her feet—and to ease the anxieties she put aside about her children, who were off tracking yesterday’s dove killer. She hadn’t intended to finish off the last half of the bottle. But the wine was so delicious that one taste led to “just a little bit more” and now the bottle was empty. Ruth tipped it up and savored the last drops trickling down onto her tongue. And before long she hardly cared about the sound of guns, nor worried for her children. After all, they had two grown men with them, one armed with a .30–30, and

the dove killer would be long gone anyway. Somehow she couldn’t make herself care, either, that it wasn’t yet noon, and they would soon

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be back to find her tipsy. After all, Ghosh had brought the wine for her. She didn’t need to share it with anyone, even with him. And there was a whole other bottle left. Besides, sharing wine with him had unleashed its own danger. Despite last night’s resolution, her dreams had been filled with episodes in which she had broken her promise again and again—and not only with Nicholas Ghosh. She shook her head, trying to erase the memory of herself and Thomas coupling on the grizzly skin. Ruth got up and whirled her way to the cabin door, her crutch abandoned beside the chair. Maybe forever, she hoped. The wine had limbered every muscle in her. At the sink, she peeked under the overturned cardboard box, saw there was enough cooked steak left over for sandwiches when the men and children returned. The sight of the small lump of ice underneath gave her an urge to plop it into a pitcher of water and drink her fill. Ice water, like they served in fancy city restaurants—how easy it would be to spoil herself. But winter would be here soon enough and then she would be fighting ice like this, she told herself. Covering the remnant with the cardboard box, she reached up and took down the cheesecloth packed with fresh goat cheese that hung above the sink drain. Tearing off a section of one of the cattail pollen and acorn bread loaves set out to cool, she spread the spongy hunk thick with cheesy goo and popped it in her mouth. This would more than do to spoil her. At the sound of a truck engine coming from down canyon, she began slicing up the other loaf of bread for the meal, finishing by the time the truck pulled into the yard. But when she got to the cabin door, Ruth was surprised to see not John Olsen’s flatbed but the pickup Thomas and Lem drove—and only Thomas in it. “Did Lem and Martha stay at the picking camp?” Ruth asked, as he got out the driver’s door and walked toward her. “I thought the picking would have been finished last week.”

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Thomas shook his head, studied her. “I saw Olsen’s truck parked by the road in the willows. But he was nowhere around.” His eyes went to Ghosh’s Buick, parked under the pinyon. “They’re out tracking down some fool who left a gunnysack full of dead doves in the willows yesterday—John with Nicholas Ghosh and J.B. and Maddie. John thinks the guy might be a soldier from the artillery range.” She started to say more but broke off. “But you didn’t say where Martha and Lem were. Ghosh came up to talk with her about the trial. Did they go to Black Canyon? I know Martha needed to get away, but I was hoping she’d come back here.” He shook his head again. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “Ghosh certainly isn’t going to like it. And you can’t even tell him yet.” He picked up the cup on top of the mesquite drink jug and dipped it in the lik’ii, then turned back to her. “We found out while we were at the camp that what we suspected was true, that the Modajees are planning to lie straight out. The word’s that they’ll testify they heard Martha threaten to kill Jackson several times. Sna’atnswei. And that hi’achi, Jackson’s aunt, is even planning to say she saw Martha deliberately shoot him, then throw the gun on the ground beside him.” “I got the idea that Ghosh was afraid of something like that. But can they get away with deliberate lies? Surely someone will—” “Who’s to stop them? Daggett is only encouraging them. Why take a chance? Martha’s life is at stake, Dlah’da. But that letter finally came from Lucy. She offered a solution we hadn’t thought of.” Thomas gulped down the last of his lik’ii and set the cup back on the jug. “So where—?” “Winslow, in Arizona. Lem went with her to meet Lucy and her husband at the train station there. They’ll take her somewhere out on the Navajo reservation. Hundreds of miles of open land—even the families are all spread out miles apart. The law will never find her out there.”

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“But . . . but . . . what about . . . ?” “Frank and Della are with Lem’s mother, Nau’chi, until he gets back.” “But the bail Nichol . . . Ghosh put up? What will happen to—?” “We put the money up, Dlah’da, remember. Most of it was yours. And you’ll lose it, of course—the court will keep it. But Ghosh won’t be held accountable for it—not unless he was part of helping her get away. That’s why we can’t tell him where she is.” Ruth sagged against the doorframe. “Let’s go inside,” she said, reaching down to rub blood back into her thigh. “I need to start making the sandwiches. They should be back soon.” Still distanced from herself by the wine, she caught the hollow ring in her voice. Whatever tipsiness she’d felt earlier had been replaced by shock. Martha gone— now an escaped fugitive—and Thomas and Lem a party to it. The idea sat there on top of her mind, like water spilled onto sunbaked clay earth, and simply would not sink in. Thomas retrieved her crutch from the campfire, walked back to rest it against the wall beside her. “She’ll be safe out there. That’s what matters. We can handle the rest,” he said. When he came closer, she saw that he was looking at her askance, watched her stumble as she stepped away from the doorway. The knowing in his eyes unnerved her, so she turned and made her way over to the sink without the crutch, pulled out the leftover steak and set it next to the bread left sliced on the table. All the while, Thomas continued to watch her without saying a word. “I only drank what little was left in the bottle from last night’s dinner. Ghosh brought it up with him,” she said, breaking two eggs and extracting the yolks to whip up with oil and spread on the bread. “Good wine, too—the best I ever had.” Setting aside the whites to use somewhere later, she sprinkled in some ground mustard plant and a pinch of sage. Thomas walked over and stood beside her. Ruth looked up. “These

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are serious times, Dlah’da,” he said. “It’s easy to get lost in them.” He reached over and brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across her cheek, leaving a trail of skin tingling beneath his fingers. She drew in a quick breath, felt herself tremble. Thomas turned away at the sound of engine whine down canyon and went outside to wait for Olsen’s truck to appear at the bend. Ruth busied herself with the sandwiches, standing fast in the whirlwind his look had unleashed, suddenly vulnerable and naked. Fragments of fear, Martha’s tearful face, Sheriff Daggett’s grimace, Modajee hisses and the sounds of big guns got caught up in the spiral like bits of debris she’d seen whipped up from the desert floor and whirled away. In the commotion of the group’s return, no one seemed to notice anything strange about Thomas having arrived by himself. Her children started in at once on the story of their futile search. It wasn’t because the killer had been hard to track that had led to the dead end, they said. Ruth shuddered when she heard about the trail of dead animals that accompanied the boot prints—squirrels, and jays, and lizards, they said. Even a coyote. “Looked like he shot everything in sight simply for the fun of it,” Ghosh said. Maddie’s eyes, already puffy and red-rimmed, teared up as John Olsen told how the trail ended at the mouth of the canyon, the tracks coming out where Rattlesnake Canyon road met the crossroad between Frontiertown and Juniper Valley. Ghosh said it appeared that a truck had been waiting there, one that left huge tire imprints. “Military truck it vas, ya,” John Olsen said. “Den Maddie had to bury all the dead animals coming back.” He took in a breath and shook his head. For a while, no one spoke, and it was some time before anyone could think of eating. Then Ruth sent J.B. to the garden for tomatoes and goosefoot greens to complete the sandwiches. After lunch, Maddie and J.B. left for their little settlement in the draw across the wash. Ruth wondered if they would reenact the story

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there, as she’d seen them do with other situations, changing the outcome to suit their ideas of justice. She admired their faith, only wished she knew how to reenact Martha’s story in the real world, change the ending so that her friend was truly free and at her side again—and not a fugitive in danger. “I’m sorry Martha’s not back yet,” Ghosh said after the children had gone. “I’d hoped to prepare her for the trial.” Ruth’s stomach dropped toward her knees. The thought of maintaining the lie about Martha’s whereabouts between herself and this man left her weak and queasy. Yet she could not betray Thomas’s confidence. She wondered just what Thomas would say to deceive this man who was doing so much to help their friend—even if the deception was for Ghosh’s own good. Thomas was anything but a liar. But, oddly, Nicholas Ghosh didn’t ask about Martha’s whereabouts. He talked instead of concerns he had about possible Modajee testimony, asking Thomas about tribal politics and for ideas about discrediting the Modajees. None of this required Thomas to lie. It crossed Ruth’s mind that Thomas might have spent his time out at the campfire before Ghosh came, chanting words that made things happen this way, but the idea was too far-fetched to entertain. The last thing the lawyer said before the subject changed was that they should bring Martha to his place on Wednesday, the evening before, so he could explain the next day’s courtroom procedures to her. Thomas only nodded. Ruth was grateful that Ghosh decided to open the other bottle of wine shortly after that. She felt the need to wash herself clean of the deception—or to at least loosen its hold on her conscience until the lawyer left. As the days passed, Ruth felt perpetually tense and unsettled. She listened hard for Jim’s voice in every whine of wind. If she could just hear the sound of it again, maybe things would fall into place. She was afraid it was lost to her for good. She tried to make herself remember Jim’s face but kept picturing

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Thomas instead, sometimes even Nicholas Ghosh. Before Ghosh drove off that next morning, he’d said that he would see her the following Wednesday. She cringed inwardly at the expectation in his eyes. Thomas had left later the same day. “We can decide what to do about the rest when I come back Tuesday,” he told her. Suddenly, days became all-important, and rather than keeping loose track of them in her head, she made a small calendar and marked each one off at sunset. It was early morning, about midweek, which in this case meant Sunday, when she heard the sound of several shots fired from somewhere high on Rocky Mountain. What in the world was going on in this canyon? Intrusions seem to come from everywhere. How could she possibly feel safe with god-knew-who up there shooting on her mountain? Well, not her mountain, exactly; she owned only a small strip down at its bottom. She had no idea who owned the rest, but she considered it, if not hers, then at least inviolate, a buffer that held out the so-called civilized world. And on that mountain’s craggy top was the place she cradled in the very center of herself. Soon after the shots stopped, J.B. and Maddie appeared at the cabin door. Ruth wiped the moisture from her cheek and motioned them over. The three of them stood looking up at the mountain and listening for some time. Although no more shots came, she couldn’t simply dismiss the matter. This would not be the end of it, she was afraid. “Let’s go get John,” she told the children as she walked toward the Model A. They seemed relieved, and didn’t even question her reasons. Ruth knew she would need him to help her. This was one confrontation she would not be left out of—she didn’t care how long it took to get herself up that mountain on the crutch. Her good leg was plenty strong enough from doing double duty for the last year, she told herself. She had to argue to get John Olsen to come with her, and as they drove back to Glory Springs, he kept trying to talk her out of the idea.

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“It too hard on that leg. On both legs, ya. You just starting to walk again,” he said. “Why not I take children up there? We track him fine again without you.” “You wouldn’t just be tracking him this time, John. He might be still there this time, and I’m not about to send my children up that mountain after someone like that, even with you, John, unless I go too.” “But Rute,” John Olsen said, “with that leg you—” “Besides, I have to confront this man myself, John. He’s getting closer and closer. Invading my land, putting my children in danger. Don’t you see?” “Maybe he not the dove killer, Rute. Maybe it someone else this time. The dove killer go the other way, ya—out of canyon.” “That was days ago. Whoever it is, I need to confront him,” Ruth said, as she drove around the bend toward her cabin. “If you won’t help me, then I’ll go on my own. You can stay here with J.B. and Maddie. That might be best anyway.” She would make it up that mountain if she had to crawl. The image of Jim’s camp had taken hold of her, pulled at her now like iron to a magnet. John Olsen shook his head, didn’t answer, yet Ruth heard the resignation in his deep sigh, saw it also in the slight drop of his shoulders. After packing back satchels with pemmican cakes, chia seeds and pinyon nuts, and filling their canteens, they started up the mountain, John Olsen carrying a .30 and Ruth with a .22 strapped to her back. Although it had been years since she had climbed Rocky Mountain, she was confident she would remember the old route to the top, a route that would keep them out of impossible tangles of chaparral and away from rocky precipices where they would have to backtrack. The mountain didn’t change much with time, she knew, except for vegetation growth and deepening erosion paths. How easily she had once traversed these ridges, she thought wistfully, as she struggled up them now, digging her crutch into decom-

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posing granite that sometimes caused the crutch bottom to slip and propel her forward. She now used her injured leg only to regain balance. That leg had tired quickly; they hadn’t gone but a third of the way up the mountain before it became all but useless, and she had to depend almost completely on her crutch and good leg, using the weak leg to steady her when she boosted herself over rocks. But she remained certain that her good leg and shoulders would hold up, since they had gotten so strong over the past year and a half. John Olsen waited patiently for her as they went slowly up the slopes, ready to catch or boost her if she needed him. Age had slowed his pace, too. J.B. and Maddie were more impatient, having a harder time restraining their energy—like two racehorses forced to walk a track that their bodies had been built to run. They were eager, too, to see the top of the mountain. That was the one place Ruth had not let them go. She had wanted that place to remain untouched until the time came when she could bring herself to revisit it. But this morning had changed all that in a hurry. And it angered her to be forced to make the journey on other than her own time. But what if some stranger sat at that very spot by the lake that she loved? Shots coming from anywhere in her canyon would have been an encroachment, but coming from this mountain made them akin to her rape. Nothing else could have urged her past her body’s boundaries. Her good leg had gone from aching to constant sharp pains from straining to carry her upward, and the shoulder with the crutch under it had gone numb long ago. Muscle in her thigh quivered each time she insisted it lift her up a steep ascent, and she began to worry that even that leg might collapse from under her, pictured herself crawling and clawing her way to the mountain’s peak. She took hold of John Olsen’s hand gratefully whenever he reached back to boost her. There had been a time when such help would have insulted her. About two thirds of the way up, they stopped for a long rest under a pinyon, unpacking some of the pemmican and seeds to eat.

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Afterward, Ruth took time to rub her thigh and shoulder, trying to massage blood back into them. She brushed away the bed of sharp pine needles behind her and lay back. Gradually, the pounding of her heart slowed, and a light breeze tickled the hairs of her arms, cooled her sweaty skin. “Rute, I think we go now, ya,” John Olsen said, pulling Ruth out of a dream where she ran, rifle in hand, after a man dressed in khaki shirt and pants. How could she have fallen asleep so fast? she wondered, trying to clear her head. “Was I gone long?” She asked. “Few minute, ya,” John Olsen said. “You sure you want to go on, Ruty? I take children the rest of the way. You wait here?” “Not on your life,” she said, forcing herself upward. Every muscle screamed in protest. “I’ve come this far. I’m not about to turn back now.” She fixed her gaze at the place where the mountain’s high ridge met the sky. It seemed an impossible distance. Reaching down, she gave her good leg a brisk rubbing, then started up the ridge, one shaky step after another. “Let’s go,” she shouted to J.B. and Maddie, who were sliding down the sand of a small gully. Now her trek upward became a blur of alternating numbness and pain. Her shaky leg screamed out with each step as she labored toward the top. It was all she could do to lift it and place her foot again and again on the hard ground. The injured leg she no longer felt at all, even when she tried to use it for balance. She had no idea what it was doing. As for her shoulder, it seemed to be working, but mechanically, disassociated from her body. Now she began to wonder in earnest if she would get to the top, even if she did crawl. She could imagine herself falling into a heap, begging to be dragged and half carried the rest of the way. Yet she continued to trudge upward at her lame-tortoise pace. Midday heat beat down on them now, and Ruth had to stop often for sips of water. Now into her second canteen, she wished she

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could simply pour the remaining water over her clothing to cool her overheated body—but dared not waste what she would need for drinking. She allowed herself only an occasional small splash on her face, was grateful for each breeze that wafted by to cool her wet cheeks. John Olsen kept insisting that she take frequent brief rests, but each time she found it harder to get started after even a fiveminute sit on a rock. Even Maddie and J.B. seemed to be watching her now. If it hadn’t been for the possible danger waiting at the top, she would have told the three of them to go ahead and let her come at her own pace—though she doubted that they would leave her at this point. Rocky Mountain might yet get the best of her, she realized, remembering a time years ago when she’d wandered around it lost in a snowstorm. The mountain had played its part in bringing her Jim, too, and it was on its surface that her world had shifted. She remembered the two of them sliding down the loose sand of a far slope, locked in their first kiss, remembered the trees jeweled with ladybugs he had taken her to see. Their moments together came back vividly, enveloping her so completely that it was the struggle up the mountain that became unreal. She was barely aware of John Olsen as he boosted her over difficult spots, and it wasn’t until she saw a familiar pile of boulders that she came fully back to the present. Then she hobbled over and leaned against the one nearest her, placed her cheek against the warm and scratchy surface, spread her arms around its curve. “Rute,” John Olsen said. She felt his hand on her other shoulder. “You all right, Ruty?” Her children had come up beside her too. “We’re here,” she said through her tears. “We made it.” On the other side of these rocks lay her heart. “Look, Maddie,” J.B. said, as he walked around the boulder pile. “It’s a secret passageway.”

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“Stay where you are, J.B. I’m going first.” Ruth drew in a breath and lunged forward, took back the lead through the split in the boulders. She went forward slowly, with reverence, her heart pounding. As she neared the opening that led out of the boulders, Ruth braced herself against whatever the sight might stir up in her. “Be careful, Rute,” John Olsen said. His words startled her, reminded her why she had come. She stopped and asked J.B. to hand her the .22. Rifle in hand, she took another step and peered out at the little bowl of land that held the lake and Jim’s old camp. The beauty of the small valley was still intact, the blue water of the lake remained pristine, surrounded on three sides by thick stands of willows and a few cottonwoods, their leaves trembling in the breeze. The side of the lake that faced Jim’s lean-to hut and the petroglyphs once had little vegetation. Now, after years of non-use, cattails grew along the edge in abundance and behind them floated a bed of lily pads and flowers. But Ruth could not respond to the loveliness of the place, did not stop to listen for Jim’s voice in the whispering cottonwoods. She was seized by anger at the intrusion of a small tent, perched back from the water, near the spot where Jim had built his hut against the rocks. Her physical discomfort forgotten, she cocked her .22, secured the crutch under her arm, and marched toward the ugly canvas fixture so out of place in this hallowed spot.

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chapter seventeen

“

R

ute,” she heard John Olsen say, then his footsteps behind

her as she got to the front of the tent. “Is anyone in there?” she demanded. It didn’t look like it—the tent door was latched from the outside, but she had to be sure. “Hello. This is Ruth Farley and John Olsen. I said is anyone there?” John Olsen stepped closer, reached over, and unlatched the tent door. Pushing aside the flap, he poked his head in. “He gone, Rute.” Ruth motioned J.B. and Maddie over from the entrance by the boulders, then followed Olsen into the tent. Her legs barely held her, even with the bulk of her weight on the crutch. She was struck by the stark orderliness of the tent’s sparse contents: the canvas army cot on one side with its tight bedroll; the piles

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of neatly stacked cans and ration boxes across from it; the latched metal case at the back of the tent. Something about the place made her intestines squirm, and she stayed rooted as John Olsen squatted to examine the cans. J.B. went straight to the metal case. Maddie stood outside the door, listening. “Army rations, Rute. I knew he vas military.” Olsen held out a can for Ruth to inspect. “Boy. Look at these,” J.B. said. “Four of them, too.” Ruth took a step over and peered under the woolen blanket and heavy jacket that J.B. had pulled aside. She reached down and hefted one of the rifles. Its weight surprised her. John Olsen took the rifle from her, slid open its chamber. “Look at the huge bullets. Just like those shells at the willows,” J.B. said. He held up a three- or four-inch cartridge from the cartons he’d opened. “Ya, for army rifle. That one for m-1, I think.” “But why bring them way up here?” She stared down at the brass casing that ended in a sharply pointed slug. It looked a little like a small metal candle, lit with a flame of lead. Olsen shook his head. “I don’t like this, Rute. Something wrong here.” Ruth felt it too, a slight shiver up her spine that pricked at the hair of her neck. “Close up that case, J.B.,” she said. “Don’t touch these things.” “But . . . but . . .” “Hurry up. What if he comes back?” “Don’t worry.” Maddie pulled aside the canvas tent door. “He’s not around anymore. Fresh boot tracks go down into the North Fork.” She pointed toward a trail that went past the lake toward North Fork Canyon. “He’ll be back sometime, though. Make no mistake about that,” Ruth told them. “The question is when—and why. What is he doing

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here in the first place?” She pulled back the canvas flap and stepped outside. “Come on,” she told J.B. Ruth circled the tent to inspect it, then studied the landscape around her. She noted with relief that the boot tracks did not go near the boulder entrance they had come through, but had carved out the overgrown trail that headed down toward the old onyx mine. She was glad he hadn’t been coming and going through Rattlesnake Canyon. Still, the place seemed saturated with eeriness. This was at once the same place she revered and remembered, yet not the same at all. Ruth felt somehow set askew in time. Images from when she was here with Jim, when his skin-and-willow-bough hut was still intact and not a pile of rot beside the rock cliff, drifted like a thin veil over the landscape in front of her. She had to blink her eyes several times to bring herself back and see the place clearly as it was now. Willing her wobbling legs to hold her, she struggled toward the rose quartz cliff, with its etched petroglyphs and embossed streams of embedded mica gleamimg like liquid beacons in the sun, and let herself down onto a flat rock. Maddie was examining the carved rocks, running her fingers over the shapes of deer and cougar and bear and humans, her face lit with wonder. Strands of her long red hair lifted up and twirled like sprites in the wind. Ruth remembered her own sense of wonder when she first saw these ancient symbols, and for a moment her spirit lightened. She thought about the hours she once spent trying to decipher the mystery of those stories carved into rock. Then she saw where the rock had been splotted again and again by fresh gunshot, raw gaping wounds where whole sections of petroglyph figures had been blasted away by bullets, leaving the rocks splotched instead with lead. Spent shells lay scattered at her feet. A deep sadness crept over her. Why would someone want to desecrate all this lovely mystery? She couldn’t fathom it. “This looks like some kind of old hut,” J.B. called. He and John Olsen were rummaging through the debris from the old shelter.

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“Maybe a kind of a lean-to. And these look like old skins of some kind—” “Wait, J.B.,” Ruth said. Clutching the crutch, she strained herself upright and started toward him. But her son had already raised up a section of willow poles, ragged shreds of animal skin still attached. When she had last been here, intact skins of cougar and coyote and deer were sewn tightly together and covered over with a thick layer of woven willow bough, sage and other branches that had protected the hut’s occupants—protected Jim, and later the two of them. A sob welled up from so deep inside her she couldn’t speak, nor release it, couldn’t ask her son—Jim’s son—to let be what was left of his father’s dwelling, and the sight of J.B. examining the old hut, unknowing, swelled up inside her like a bubble about to burst. She could only stand and watch as he explored the construction and imagined aloud what the hut had looked like. Maddie came up beside her, took Ruth’s hand. “It was his, wasn’t it?” she said. Ruth nodded, still unable to speak. “It belonged to our father,” Maddie told J.B. for her. “He made it.” J.B. let the pole fall back and stared down at the debris in front of him. John Olsen looked at Ruth with some puzzlement. With her eyes, she told him their father was the story she wanted. His expression turned tender in response. Ruth remembered with shame how John had witnessed the hate she had once borne this daughter, this child of her rape. He had watched her put the child aside and as far away from her as she could at every opportunity. Watched her clenched-jaw toleration of the little girl’s antics. She could see that he approved of her deception. When Ruth spoke again, it was to describe to the three of them the way the dwelling had been fashioned then, its wild beauty. She pointed out the fire ring beneath the debris, told them how its smoke curled up and out an opening by the rock cliff, showed them the rusty metal box where Jim kept the matches. “This one,” she said, holding

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up a small rounded canister, “always held chia seeds. I ate the last of them when I was caught here alone in a snowstorm. You were both here with me too, but not born yet.” Trying to find words to convey the magic that was once a part of this place, she explained how Jim had sewn together the animal skins overhead in their natural shapes—and how, when they lay back on the willow and sage bed, the animals appeared to be alive and moving in the flickering firelight. Her children’s faces were tinged with amazement as they listened to her story. The greatest amazement, the merging of two beings here, she left them to imagine without words. She fell into silence, closed her eyes and let herself relive those precious moments. “We better go back now, Ruty,” John Olsen said gently, after some time had passed. “Do you see now, John, why I couldn’t just let someone ruin this place?” She turned her face away, wiped at her wet cheeks. “To say nothing of the danger such a man poses.” “Ya, something not right here. But what we do about it?” “We could take the guns away,” J.B. said. “Hide them someplace on the mountain.” “We could take down that tent too,” Maddie said. “Then he won’t have a place to come to.” “Or throw those guns in the lake.” J.B. walked toward the edge of the water. “We could put them in right here.” He pointed to the thick stand of cattails. Suddenly, he began running along the side of the lake, heading for the willow thicket. “Oh, no, there’s more of them,” he shouted as he went. “Mad, come see what he did.” Maddie ran toward him. Ruth let John Olsen take one arm as she started forward. She expected that J.B. had found more rifles and stopped in shock when she caught sight of the pile of animal carcasses. Pulling away from John Olsen, she lurched forward, the stench of putrefaction enveloping her despite the wind blowing in the other direction.

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A fawn lay piled on top of what was definitely a coyote carcass. Several smaller canines were too warped to identify for sure as coyote pups. They could have been foxes. Near the bottom lay something large, with what was left of a long tail that stuck out the far side. The only thing that large with such a tail, Ruth knew, would have been a mountain lion. “Just like the doves,” Maddie said, “and all those other animals.” Her voice sounded so sad that Ruth reached out and smoothed down her daughter’s hair. “We ought to shoot him,” J.B. said. “He should be the one left here stinking.” John put a hand on her son’s shoulder. She stared down at the decomposing animals behind the willows. Scattered around the heap of what had been living animals were empty ration cans, cartons and other refuse. This was, in fact, a dump site for everything that someone considered worthless waste. “What kind of monster would do this?” Ruth asked. She looked out at the lake, then back at the rose-colored rocks where the stream came in to feed the lake—as if somehow the story of the killer, who he was and the reason for his despicable behavior, were etched here with the petroglyphs. She looked over at John Olsen. “Let’s go, Rute,” he said quietly. She shook her head, stood racking her brain and soul for answers. How could she just leave this desecration in place? But what else should she do? Then she heard a familiar voice inside her. You know what to do, Ruth. “J.B., Maddie,” she said. “Throw all those guns in the lake. That was a good idea.” “That not stop him, Rute. This man not right,” John Olsen reminded her as the children ran in to get the rifles. “Might make him mad.” “The bullets, too, J.B.” She felt her legs quivering, leaned back against the rock face and willed them to stop. “Maybe not, John, but

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it will slow his destruction. And I hope this makes him even half as angry as I am.” He shook his head as J.B. and Maddie ran back to the tent for the other rifles. But instead of taking the last rifle to the lake, J.B. brought it over to John and Ruth. “Can I keep just one?” he asked. “Please.” “That gun might be good thing to have with him still around, ya,” John Olsen said. Ruth shook her head. “Throw it in the lake with the others, J.B.” “All the cans and stuff too?” Maddie asked once the rifles were safely sunk in the lake. “No, not the food. Just latch up the tent and fill the canteen. Then the three of you can get started down. I’ll catch up.” Ruth rubbed blood back into first one leg, then the other. “You okay, Ruty? Maybe want rest here more?” “I just want to sit here a while by myself, John. Who knows when I’ll ever get up here again. I won’t stay long. I promise.” “But Rute . . .” “Don’t worry, John. I’ll be right behind you.” Ruth waited until the three of them made their way to the boulders, waved John off when he stopped to look back at her. When they disappeared into the passageway, she turned and looked at the pile of debris that had once been Jim’s hut. She closed her eyes and imagined it back to life, went inside and lay again on the bed of willow boughs and sage, while Jim peeled off her wet clothing and his own, pressed his warm body against hers. She felt again the world shift as he entered her. The joy of that time was still fresh inside her, hadn’t decayed with the lean-to, and she let the memory renew her. She heard the voice, then, and opened her eyes. Good-bye, my love, it said softly. This time she recognized the voice as her own. Gritting her teeth, she jerked herself upright, forced her sore muscles to bear her weight once more and took a step forward. She was thankful the way home was all downhill.

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chapter eighteen

H

e thought soldiers were supposed to protect his country.

Not kill what lived there. He didn’t care now if David ever took him to see soldiers shooting up the desert. The day he saw those doves, he’d thought it was the worst thing he’d seen anyone do. But these carcasses in front of him had to be it. How could someone come all the way up here just to shoot animals and leave them in a pile? They hadn’t hurt anyone. And if that man was really a soldier like John said, well . . . ? J.B. closed his eyes against the sting. He wanted to grab one of those army rifles in the tent and blow a big hole in that soldier. “We should just shoot him and put him on the pile with the rest,” J.B. told them. “He should be the one left stinking here.” No one argued with him, but it didn’t matter. The man wasn’t

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anywhere around to shoot. But J.B. was glad Ruth listened to him about throwing the guns in the lake. At least that was something they could do. He swung the first gun way back and pitched it as far forward as he could into the water. The rifle Maddie threw went in only a few feet, so he took off his shoes and waded into the lake, picked the gun out of the water. “Like this, Maddie,” he said, and showed her how to use the weight of the rifle to carry it forward. He waded back to the shore, and they ran back for the other rifles. “The bullets too,” Ruth told them. “I’ll throw the bullets. You do the guns. You can throw them farther.” Maddie pointed to the last two rifles. m1’s, J.B. remembered. He followed her out with the rifle, tossed it as far in as he could while she threw handfuls of bullets. They made little splash craters over the surface, like giant raindrops falling out of the blue sky. When he went back for the last rifle, J.B. stopped to slide the lever open and look inside at the empty chamber. It was about ten times bigger than the chamber in Ruth’s .22. He ran his finger along the smooth metal groove for a moment and pushed the lever shut, then walked to the tent door. He aimed the m-1 toward the trail that went toward the North Fork. Ruth made him throw it into the lake with the rest. But all you have is a .22, he wanted to argue. Still, he felt safer when all the soldier’s rifles had disappeared under the water. Just so the man didn’t bring more up here with him. After he latched up the tent, J.B. looked over at the old animal skins and rotted poles by the rock where his father had stayed. He wanted to go over and try to piece it back together so it would look the way his mother told them it did years ago, with the animal shapes moving in the firelight. It made him happy to think his father had built something so special. He guessed his father had killed animals too. But he didn’t just leave them to rot in a big pile. J.B. wished he

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knew more about Jim. No one even had a photograph of him, like the ones David took of him and Maddie and Ruth. There was even a photograph of Ruth’s grandmother, but none of his father. Maybe Yuiatei didn’t take photographs. J.B. couldn’t help thinking of David that way—like a father. But not a father at the same time. Sometimes he wished David still lived with them. But here in Glory Springs, not in L.A. J.B. could have liked living in L.A., he thought, at least for a while—if Maddie and Ruth were happy there. He’d get to see those big downtown buildings whenever he wanted. And he liked going to that school, reading new books. But he had missed Glory Springs. At least he could read books here too—whenever he could get them. His mother was over by the rocks now. She looked back to see if he was coming, so J.B. started toward her. He didn’t know how she was going to get back down the mountain. She was already leaning all her weight onto the crutch, hardly any on her good leg. But he hadn’t thought she could make it up here either, and she did, even if John had to lift her over some of the hard places. He could help John do that on the way down. The two of them would get her home, he decided, and ran toward her.

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chapter nineteen

M

addie turned away from the pile of twisted bodies,

rubbed her eyes hard to get rid of the picture that kept coming into her head—where she saw herself shoo away the flies and eat at the dead animals. There had been no maggots on the coyote in her dream, none of these clusters of black bugs with orange crosses nibbling at its carcass. And it had been just one shot coyote, not a clump of dead animals all tangled together. The animals must have come here to drink at the lake. She thought about the mother coyote standing at the lake’s edge with her pups, then saw her fall with the shot. She saw the cougar crouching down to lap, its tail twitching as it enjoyed the cool water. Then the boom of a gun blowing it over on one side. This ugliness was too big to eat,

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even in dreams. It seemed big enough to eat her, eat all of them, if they didn’t get away from it. She wasn’t at all sure Glory Springs was far enough away to be safe. For a long time none of them talked while they followed the line of ridges back down the mountain. Her mother could hardly walk now, so they had to travel slow. John had to lift her over small boulders, and she had to stop and rest a lot. Maddie didn’t run ahead with J.B. like they usually did. Both of them stayed close in front to help while they followed the tracks they’d made coming up. And J.B. carried Ruth’s .22. When the sun fell behind the far ridge, they still had a lot of mountain left to go down. Maddie knew they wouldn’t make it by dark. “Maddie and me could go down and get the lantern,” J.B. told John the next time they stopped near a deep ravine for Ruth to rest. “We could bring it back up here.” “I got someting better, ya,” he said. “Flashlight. Big one from the mines.” He pulled the large lamp from his pack. “I knew we need it when Rute get crazy. Only crazy woman with one leg climb this mountain.” “You know I’ve been using both legs lately, John. And my arms are strong from all the crutching. I could have come up here using only my good leg. It was pushing things, I admit. But I think the situation called for it,” Ruth said. “We really don’t have far left to go. I’m ready now.” Yet when her mother pulled herself from the rock to her feet with the crutch, Maddie saw her good leg bend at the knee. She sagged back against John, who was barely able to catch her. Her brother ran to Ruth’s other side and slipped between her and the crutch. They eased her back down onto the rock. “It already twilight, Rute. Ya, I tink it better we stay here a while so you rest more. Eat something,” John said.

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Ruth sat rubbing and patting at her leg without answering, her eyes staring at nothing. Maddie wished she had brought some yerba mansa leaves for her mother’s leg. She wished even more that by dark they would be down at Glory Springs by the campfire. “We can make a fire,” J.B. said, as if he read her mind. “Hmmm. Well, maybe a little one. We won’t be here that long,” Ruth told him, as if her leg hadn’t turned into a cooked noodle when she tried to walk on it. “But a small fire will keep us warm,” she said, with a cheeriness that Maddie could tell was forced. “It does get chilly these days after the sun drops. I suppose I should have moved the beds back inside already.” Maddie felt the cold too, but it wasn’t from the air. She knew her mother needed the light. They all did. John stomped off a couple large pieces from a fallen branch, while J.B. collected rocks and made a small circle in the clearing. Maddie crawled under a pinyon and gathered up broken twigs and a few cones for kindling. She was careful to stay away from the side of the tree where the ground gave way to the steep drop of the ravine. She saw how the pinyon’s gnarled roots clawed out into the ravine, grasping at air to find food. It was full dark by the time John Olsen struck a match to the pile of wood. Maddie watched it blaze light into their faces, leaving their eyes hidden in shadow holes. Ruth handed out the rest of the jerky and pemmican, set the little bag of chia seeds out for them to help themselves. Maddie pinched out a small handful and poured it into her shirt pocket. Before she put any in her mouth, she made herself remember the way the plants looked growing on the slopes where she gathered the seeds. Pictured the plants when they were green, with little blue flowers on the purple spiked balls that held the baby seeds. While they ate, their mother told the story about the first time she came to Rattlesnake Canyon, met John and Kate Olsen, and “first laid

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eyes on Glory Springs.” It was a story Maddie and her brother loved. She knew Ruth was trying to make them all feel better. But Maddie had heard the story many times. She kept watching the huge shadows that the fire cast behind their bodies and listening to a whoosh of wings nearby. After a while, the owls began calling to each other. They sounded close enough to see if it had been daylight, and Maddie’s eyes kept searching in the darkness for large yellow eyes. She caught a movement in the black silhouette of a Joshua tree on the ridge across the ravine, where the Joshua’s twisted limbs blotted out the stars. The arms twined upward, ending in a handful of thin, spiky fingers. Another movement brought her eyes to the tree’s highest branch, where its long thorns poked up into the starry sky. There in the center sat the owl. Watch out, watch out, watch out, out, out, the owl told her. From somewhere in the dark, its mate echoed the warning. Fear settled in the pit of her stomach. Now the Joshua tree’s shape made sense to her—it was a rearing horse, like Juniper Blue. Its front legs pawed the sky, while its rider held up a torch. In the place of a flame sat the owl. In the daylight she would probably think the Joshua tree was only an ordinary Joshua, the kind that she gathered early pods from to make sweet paste for toast. She would think the owl was only telling her to stay away from its nest, which it probably was. As firelight danced orange light onto the brush around her, she tried to make herself believe that was all that it meant. But in her bones she knew better.

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chapter twenty

P

ain tormented her out of sleep throughout the night. When

morning finally came, Ruth found she could not move in or out of her cot without intense suffering. Every muscle in her throbbed in anguish. The slightest movement of either leg set off agonizing spasms. It took everything in her to crawl a few feet to the boulders and pee without crying out while John and the children were feeding chickens and milking the nannies. Even so, she was near tears. What in godsname had she done to herself? She had become such a weakling. When they finally got off the mountain last night, Maddie had gathered fresh yerba mansa from around the spring and helped Ruth wrap and bind the large, soft leaves around each of her legs. No doubt that had helped, but she had pushed herself past real help. She

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only hoped she hadn’t damaged her legs beyond what her body could naturally repair. Whatever had gotten into her to go to the top of that mountain? She had certainly expected more from her injured leg. But, she reminded herself, she actually had made it to the top, whatever the consequence. She couldn’t say she was sorry she had gone, either, even with what they’d found there. She supposed she would do it all over again, even knowing the outcome. Last night, she’d let Maddie fix her a cup of ni’itabe, the numbing tea. At least that was how she’d always thought of it. But it was only for physical pain this time. Maybe she needed another cup. The rest of the day went by in a blur of pain—and worry over what might come of all they’d discovered. She winced each time she remembered the pile of carcasses. The shriveled shapes of what had once been coyote pups. That long, ratty tail, a remnant of a once sleek and living cougar. Such wanton murder—and so close to her Glory Springs. John Olsen had to leave to care for his own animals and didn’t return to check on her until late afternoon. By then, she’d had Maddie and J.B. pull together a pot of acorn stew, although she hated to sacrifice hunks of jerky to flavor it. With winter coming on, she would need that jerked meat as a staple for stews and beans in days to come when hunting meat wasn’t an option. Of course, in a pinch, there were always the nannies’ new kids. After another cup of ni’itabe, Ruth managed to hoist herself into a chair so that John and the children could move the beds inside. It wasn’t so much the weather as the calendar telling her it was time; despite the balmy days and cold but not yet freezing nights, it was the first week in November. The prolonged mild weather was a fluke, and the real chill could hit anytime, she knew. But more important than that, she felt compelled to secure her children inside, where they weren’t left open to who-knew-what lurking outside as they slept. The feeling wasn’t entirely rational, she supposed—that crazy dove killer

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wouldn’t be sneaking around in the dark—but the notion had settled in on the mountain, and she couldn’t rest easy until it was done. By the time Thomas showed up the next day as promised, Ruth was able to hobble a few tortured steps if she leaned heavily on her crutch. His face was somber as they sat out under the pinyon, and he told her about the phone call Lem had made to Nicholas Ghosh once he returned from taking Martha to the Navajo reservation. Lem had told Ghosh that his sister had somehow disappeared—but that he would try to find her and get her to court on Wednesday—which by now was tomorrow. “At least it wasn’t you who made the call and had to lie to him,” Ruth said. “My part in it is as much a lie as Lem’s. That’s not what bothers me. As a Yuiatei, I have no qualms about lying to Teske who live on most of our lands and punish us for still being alive.” He got up from the rock across from her and looked down canyon. “Except for the Cajella.” His smile was sardonic. “Who have land in what’s now the middle of Palm Springs. I hear they’re doing well.” “But Ghosh isn’t just Teske. He’s been a friend. You said he wouldn’t get in trouble.” “A friend, yes, but don’t forget he’s also part of the same legal system that confiscated our lands. And don’t worry. He won’t get in any trouble, even though it won’t look good for him with the court. Won’t make him eager to help Yuiatei again, either. But that’s not my main concern.” “So what is? I thought that getting Martha away from the Modajees put her out of danger. Are you worried they’ll find her way out there?” Thomas smiled, settled on the rock again. “No, Dlah’da, my concern isn’t for her safety. That’s taken care of.” His face became serious. “I don’t like the idea of her living out there away from the rest of us, but we had to do what we did.” He glanced over at J.B. and

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Maddie, who’d been listening intently the whole time. “It’s the reprisals against Lem and other Yuiatei I’m thinking about. By Daggett and his crew. There are a hundred ways he might harass us to try and find out where she is.” “Reprisals against you too, then.” “They might try to charge Lem and me. We chose to take that risk. But most Yuiatei had nothing to do with this. They know nothing. But they’ll be made to pay too, in other ways. Things like this have long-term consequences.” Ruth sighed at the truth in his words. “And I may never see Martha again.” Her ni’itabe calm dissolved. She shook her head. “With Martha a fugitive and with those damn army guns shaking the ground all day—and now some idiot running around shooting every animal he comes across—it’s beginning to feel like the whole world is coming apart. What the hell is next?” “That can be a dangerous question.” Ruth struggled from her chair, snatched up her crutch and took a couple of painful steps toward the campfire. “I need some coffee,” she said. “I’ve had nothing but that damn tea for two days now.” “I’ll make some.” Maddie sprinted toward the campfire. Grateful, Ruth stopped, turned back. “Put in plenty of grounds, Maddie. Make it really strong.” “I’ll build up the fire.” J.B. ran toward his sister. Ruth grimaced as she settled back into her chair. “Did you fall again?” Thomas asked. His demeanor darkened as she told him about the trip to the top of Rocky Mountain and the grisly scene they’d found there. “I thought John might have told you,” she said when she finished. “You always stop on the way up.” She gulped down the coffee Maddie brought her and held out her cup for more. “John wasn’t there. Maybe he’d gone for supplies.” They sat for a while without speaking. Maddie and J.B. disap-

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peared across the wash. Ruth leaned back and listened to the quiet hum of light wind in the canyon’s pines. It all seemed peaceful enough at the moment. Then the ground under her thundered again, the vibration traveling up from the sand into the bare soles of her feet. She clenched at the idea of David Stone telling her this wasn’t possible to feel, and when the next gun thudded, she tried to stamp it out with her good leg. A mistake that caused her to yelp out in pain. “We need to treat that leg.” Thomas smiled wryly. “Both legs now, I guess.” “I miss all the ceremonies in Black Canyon,” Ruth said. “There’s only been a few since Grandmother Siki died. Oh, I wish . . .” He nodded. “Without the ceremonies, things can come apart even faster.” Thomas suddenly looked older, and tired, and very sad. “This is bigger than our own struggle, yet we’re a part of it. I think we’re caught in something larger that’s coming apart.” Ruth reached over and put her hand on his arm. “Do you think we could have a ceremony here for Martha? Have people come up for it—Glory Springs was a Yuiatei camp once, wasn’t it? Isn’t the natsata really a leaving feast anyway?” Thomas put his other hand around hers, and she relaxed into its comfort. “I’ll think on it, Dlah’da. But right now, let’s get your leg in better shape.” He stood, pulled her to her feet. With Thomas’s help, Ruth walked a few shaky steps to the spot near the moon lily bush and lay flat on the patch of ground where Thomas always performed his treatment ritual. She waited while he prepared the potion for her to drink and brought fresh yerba mansa leaves to wrap around her leg. Spent moon lily blossoms drooped beside her, like deflated angel wings. She could see the green-horned caterpillars of the hawk moth already busily at work, chewing apart the thorny apples that held the seeds and gnawing the plant’s leaves and branches to the nub. Consuming the last of summer’s beauty.

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The potion Thomas brought her was bitter, but comforting in its familiarity. Ruth surrendered to the feel of falling pollen and the soft brush of an eagle feather on her skin. She distanced herself from the erratic pounding of the earth beneath her back and let the soothing sound of Thomas’s chant enter her, bring back to life a small seed of joy buried somewhere deep inside.

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chapter twenty-one

R

uth wasn’t terribly surprised to see Nicholas Ghosh’s Buick

rounding the bend—and traveling at a far greater speed than any vehicle should on that rough rut road. The trial date had been yesterday; she’d half expected to see him last night. She glanced over at Thomas, who was climbing the wash bank with the end of the garden’s root vegetables in his arms; last night’s freeze had taken the rest. Although the day was warming nicely, there wouldn’t be many more mornings left to sit outside by the campfire, even with a jacket. “Let me do the talking,” Thomas told her as he went past her into the cabin with the vegetables. Deception squirmed in the pit of her stomach, sickened her, even if it was necessary to protect Martha. She

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didn’t like involving J.B. and Maddie in it either. She had told them to stay away for a while when Ghosh showed up. The Buick skidded to a stop beside the pinyon. The door swung open and Nicholas Ghosh came marching toward them, his face set, his steps determined. “It looks like Lemuel didn’t find her,” Thomas said when the lawyer reached the campfire. Ghosh looked at them for a moment without saying anything. “Judge Koksure wasn’t happy about it, either. Nor was I.” He looked first at Thomas, then at Ruth. She had trouble meeting his eyes. “Her brother said he thinks she might be somewhere in Mexico.” “What now?” Ruth asked, despite Thomas’s precaution. “Well, there’s a warrant out on her, of course. If she comes back, they’ll arrest her. Lemuel got six months for obstruction—though he claimed not to know where she’d gone to. I think he got off easy. Daggett looked like he wanted to hang him on the spot.” The lawyer paced in front of the campfire, turned to face them both. “Look, you two, don’t try and pretend you know nothing about this. But I don’t want to know what you do know—so we won’t talk about it. I’m not entirely sure what I would have done in your shoes— the situation was looking bleak. That being said, you have to know that this isn’t over. Aside from the damage done to my reputation, there’s still Daggett to contend with. And this has put the proverbial bee in his bonnet. More like multiple bumblebees. He promised the court he’d organize a posse and chase Martha Naubel to the ends of the earth. He actually said that—‘the ends of the earth.’” Ghosh shook his head, laughed dryly. “I thought I’d better warn you.” Ruth nodded, swallowed hard. She knew well where one of the “ends of the earth” might be. A chill crept up her neck at the thought of that man here on her land again, violating what was left of her peace. “If he’d organized a posse when Jim was murdered, he might have caught his killer,” she said.

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“I suspect this one will be a posse of Modajees, at least in part,” Ghosh said. “And if I know Daggett, the U.S. border won’t stop their search, either.” Ruth exchanged a quick glance with Thomas, as if a search in Mexico was what they feared. The deceptive gesture came so easily it shocked her. The reality, Lem and Martha’s disguised departure from the busy train station in Los Angeles a week ago, would not be easily traced, especially when they were being looked for in the other direction. Who would expect her to head for the Navajo reservation in New Mexico? And even if they did, Thomas assured Ruth that Martha was so secluded and the people there so uncooperative that she would never be found. “There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Thomas said. “Except be glad she’s out of jail.” Ghosh looked at him and shook his head, pulled in a breath. “Fucking Indians,” he said. His smile was sardonic. “What happened to offering your visitors coffee?” he said to Ruth. “I thought that came with hello.” He sank into the camp chair beside her. Ruth stood and forced herself to walk the three painful steps to the fire, pulled the pot over the coals to reheat it, then threw in two new chunks of pinyon. As she struggled back to her seat, she caught Ghosh’s puzzled expression as he watched her pained hobble. Once she’d eased herself into her chair, she explained that she was recovering from her trek up the mountain, went on to tell him the story of what they found there. When the coffeepot sizzled, Thomas got up to pour the two of them a cup. He nodded toward the wash, then left to join J.B. and Maddie. The medicine man glanced over his shoulder before descending the wash bank, looking from her to Ghosh. There was something odd in that look, though she couldn’t name it. Ruth suddenly felt awkward, now stumbling over words that had been pouring from her. She felt herself in some strange state of acute awareness that she had

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never before experienced—as if Thomas had imparted to her a taste of what she sometimes sensed in those far-reaching eyes. A part of her separated to assess the rest. She became aware of her own chattering to stave off any probing by the man beside her. Along with that came a faint recognition of the multitude of events that had brought her to this moment. She was aware, too, of Nicholas Ghosh, who had nearly been her lover on the rock table next to them, and of his impatience for her to stop holding him away with words. The sudden observer in her was awake to countless possibilities that might derive from anything she chose to say or do. And then she found herself aware of being aware of herself. The words she had escaped stumbling over suddenly piled up in front of her like a barricade, and she crashed against it into silence. The alien awareness became a morass of conflicting emotions. “Was it hard keeping it from me? Or do you just come by deception naturally?” Ghosh asked, in a disturbingly neutral tone. Ruth raised her face at the hurt buried in those words. She met his eyes. “I haven’t seen you,” she said. “Even so, it wasn’t easy.” “I didn’t expect it of you. Of them, maybe, but not you. Not after what happened between us.” “What almost happened, you mean.” “No. I mean after what did happen. After what drew us together in the first place.” Ruth bit down on the defenses she wanted to raise—Martha’s life was at stake, it wasn’t her idea in the first place, she didn’t find out until afterward, the half-lie that she would have had to drive to Riverside to tell him. It was no use. He would never trust her again. But, oddly, she was relieved, as if she had escaped some sort of danger. And when she looked at the hairy giant of a man in the chair next to her, she saw not the wild creature she lusted after from her dreams, but a man she liked and respected. The intensity of that former crav-

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ing embarrassed her now. It must have been the wine, she decided, shuffling off the memory of the bear dreams that had inspired her desire. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That we had to deceive you. But not that we did.” He nodded. His eyes searched hers for answers. “I’m not quite sure why I had to race up here like a maniac to say these things. It’s been a long while since anyone has been that important in my life. Although now I’m not convinced we can be anything at all to each other.” Ruth nodded. “I know,” she said, lowering her glance. “And I’m sorry about that too.” Yet she wasn’t entirely. She no longer wanted him in her bed. At least not at the moment. She still didn’t look up when his footsteps crunched away, nor when the Buick door creaked open. But when it slammed shut and the footfall came toward her again, Ruth confronted the raw pain in his eyes. “I guess I don’t want it to be over,” he said. “But I’ll have to rethink what’s between us.” She nodded but didn’t speak, swallowed hard, knowing he wanted her to reassure him. The quiet around them thickened unbearably. “If you feel like staying around, I’ll try to expl—” She stopped at the sound of an engine straining up canyon and glanced at the bend. Her heart dropped at the sight of the tan van. “Oh, no,” she said. “What does that man want now?” Already J.B. was running down the wash toward the truck. “You don’t suffer former lovers kindly, do you?” Ghosh said dryly. “Who said he’d been a lover?” she blurted, then immediately regretted it. “I didn’t say he wasn’t, either.” “No. You hadn’t gotten around to that story yet, as I recall.” Ruth kept her eyes on the van as it got closer, watched it slow so J.B. could climb onto the running board. “Well, there goes any chance to tell it to you at the moment,” she said, surprised to see Olsen’s truck following behind the van.

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Thomas came over the bank of the wash, Maddie trailing behind. “Looks like he’s got someone with him,” he said. “A woman.” “Maybe he’s bringing Clare,” Ruth quipped, now able to make out a figure beside him. The van pulled up behind the pinyon. When the engine quit, there was no loud backfire like the one that had spooked her horse and left her lame, and Ruth drew in a breath in anger. Every time the van quit without a backfire, it reminded her of how he had refused to get the thing fixed until the harm to her leg was already done. She yanked up her crutch and started toward the van, curious to see if he had really brought his little friend, Clare. It would just like David to do something so inappropriate. Then she stopped cold, seized with dread. The woman getting out of the car was not Clare at all, but someone far more familiar, even with her long dark hair now dyed henna red and bundled respectably back. Stunned out of words, Ruth watched Cally approach. “Close your mouth, daughter, or you’ll let the flies in,” Cally said when she stood in front of her and put on what Ruth vaguely recognized as her public smile. “Unless you have some words of greeting for your mother.” Cally pointed bright-painted fingernails in David’s direction as he came up beside her. “Your friend here was good enough to bring me up from that little town. My ride had got me as far as the general store there.” Ruth looked from Cally to David and back. The man had really outdone himself this time in ruining her life. Burning her cabin and making her lame were almost forgivable compared to this outrage. How dare he bring this woman to the sanctuary she had made for herself—especially when he knew full well how she felt about Cally. “It was my pleasure,” the man actually said to her mother, “believe me. Ruth had never told me how charming you are.” He glanced at Ruth just long enough to note her wrath. “Matt was about to bring her up himself,” he explained. “I thought I’d save him the trip, since

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I was on my way out to the Rimrock dig to gather the rest of my equipment. Well, I’ll get your bags.” He swung around and headed for the van. “Are you our grandmother?” Maddie asked. Ruth hadn’t even noticed her daughter standing beside John Olsen. Cally studied the girl for a moment, her eyes registering every detail. “Well, yes, child. I suppose I am. That is, if you belong to Ruth here.” She looked over at Ruth expectantly. “Put her bags down right there, David,” Ruth said as he headed for the cabin. “Outside the door.” She looked at Cally and tried to gather herself. Restrained her impulse to sniff the air for the smell of whiskey. “You’ve surprised me, Mother,” she said, coldly. “I don’t know why. I’ve written you several times that I would be coming,” Cally said, with that same fake smile. “Of course, mail must be terribly unreliable in a place like this. It’s no wonder I never hear from you.” She looked around at the canyon, then at David, and gave a little laugh. “Probably pony express.” “Hardly,” Ruth said. The mail had worked just fine for Cally to blackmail her through the years. “But you can see it’s certainly not your kind of place.” “But the only place I can see you and your children, daughter.” Cally’s voice and smile strained to stay civil. They both knew the conversation would be quite different if the others were not around. Ruth glanced at the bags by the cabin door. “There’s not much room in that cabin, Mother. No extra cot, either. You can see for yourself.” “It seems I have no choice at the moment. I explained that to you in the letters.” Cally’s public persona took on strength. The age-etched lines on her face rendered its beauty almost benign. “I’m sure you wouldn’t turn your own mother out in the cold. Especially not with winter coming on.” She flashed a demure glance toward the others. Couldn’t they see how much Cally enjoyed putting her on the spot? Ruth wondered. Ghosh looked baffled by her behavior, Thomas

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amused. Neither had an inkling of the money she had sent Cally over the years to keep her away—money that had no doubt gone to support her mother’s brothel, something she referred to as her “business.” Ruth wondered what really happened to make Cally give up that “business” and come here to this isolated canyon. “She can sleep in my bed,” Maddie said. “I’ll sleep on the floor.” “I guess I’d better head out.” David Stone looked around nervously, then began walking toward his van. Ruth started to call him back, to make him take Cally and her bags with him back to Juniper Valley. “I have extra room, ya,” John Olsen said. “Maybe she sleep comfortable there for now.” “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends, Ruth?” Cally’s eyes hardened. Ruth clamped her mouth tight shut. “I’m Thomas Naranga,” her friend said, rescuing the civility of the situation, an aspect Ruth had been more than ready to forgo. “This is Nicholas Ghosh, and this is John Olsen.” “Yes, I met Mr. Olsen when we stopped on the way up. My name is Cally Farley, by the way.” She gave Ruth a reprimanding look. At a movement in the pinyon above her, Cally glanced up. “And who are you?” she asked. “I’m J.B.,” he said from the pine branch, closing his book. “I think you’re my real grandmother. She said we would get to meet you someday.” He looked over at Ruth. “She did, did she? Well, it looks like that day has come. Why don’t you come down from that tree and give me a hug? You too,” she said, looking over at Maddie. “At least someone here is glad to see me.” Arms hanging helpless at her sides, Ruth watched Cally ingratiate herself. Her children seemed to welcome the physical connection, weren’t repulsed by it the way she had been during those rare hugs she received while growing up. But she knew her mother no more wanted her children’s hugs than she wanted to be here in the first place. Clearly, the woman was desperate.

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“David told me about your accident.” Cally released the children. “I was sorry to hear of it. Lameness must make living way out here a trial. Maybe I’ll be of use to you.” “I’m managing just fine.” Ruth had had enough. The woman had never been of use in her life—was a user through and through. “Come over by fire.” John Olsen took Cally’s arm, gave Ruth a look. “Have coffee, ya?” “I’ll make some,” Maddie said. “There’s enough left in the pot,” Ruth called after them. “Don’t bother making fresh.” J.B. jumped from the branch to join the others. She felt a firm hand on her shoulder and looked up. Thomas’s eyes steadied her, made the situation seem almost funny. Almost. Those years with Cally had too deep a hold on her. “I guess I could use a cup,” Ghosh said, starting after the others. “I could too,” Ruth said, blackly. “But not of coffee.” She began hobbling toward the campfire, Thomas by her side.

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chapter twenty-two

S

he’s got red hair like me. That’s how I knew who she was when

she got out of David’s truck. But I asked to be sure. Cally is her name, Grandmother Cally. I like how Cally and Maddie sound a little alike at the end. She smelled good when she hugged me, like those roses down at the courthouse. Her fingernails are the same color as the big red ones. The color of blood when it beads out of a cactus prick. I never saw fingernails so long before. Her lips match too. And her cheeks. I like the streak of blue paint above her eyes. Brown eyes with gold specks, like Ruth’s. She wears makeup on her skin like those men did in Frontiertown when Ruth was doing the movie. But those actors

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looked like they had masks on. They looked silly, like Ruth said. But Cally’s mask looks different. More like a pretty mask she dresses up in to make stories. Ruth wouldn’t let her stay with us. Over my dead body, she said. I know she hates her. That’s why she never wanted us meet her. But I don’t know why. Cally is mad at Ruth too. Sometimes her pretty mask got hard when she looked at Ruth. Her eyes did too, like those marbles Frank likes to carry in his pocket. Agate eyes, he calls them. Before she left with John Olsen to stay in his extra room, I took her out to my na’dai and pulled off some scrub oak acorns to show her how to grind. I even sang the acorn grinding song for her, though it’s not the song for scrub oak acorns. They taste too bitter to eat unless the People are starving, Grandmother Siki said. I called over the chipmunks that live near the na’dai and gave them the meal. Grandmother Cally laughed and said I sounded just like a little chipmunk. I don’t think she understood. She probably thinks we really have to eat those things. But I’ll show her later what the good acorn meal tastes like. Maybe when she comes tomorrow. We took her out to i’ kitswa, the story-making place, too. She was surprised, like people always are. J.B. builds really good. But Frank and Della and I help too. I taught Della how to make baskets, and we have a lot of them over there now to hold all the suncake. I can’t weave them tight enough to hold water, like the ones Grandmother Siki made. But I’m still practicing. Grandmother Cally did eat some of the suncake I gave her. She kept shaking her head and looking around the i’kitswa. At the ki’takiis and the kit’catact. And the Teske town buildings J.B. made from willow and pine branches. Not from lumber like the real ones. But they’re not big like the real ones either. Only two of us fit inside when we make stories—except for in the big courthouse. J.B. and Frank put white clay over it, too, but rain washed most of it off.

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“Why, I’ve never seen such a thing,” she said. “Someone should write a magazine article about all this.” She doesn’t want us to call her Grandmother or Cally, though. “‘Chi Chi’ will do just fine,” she said. That means “breasts” in French, Ruth told us after she left, and we’re not to use it. “But what will we call her, then?” J.B. asked. “Don’t worry about it,” Ruth said. “She’s not going to be around long.” Maddie hoped Ruth was wrong. “She’s not like Kate or Grandmother Siki at all, Maddie,” Ruth told her. But Grandmother Cally, Chi Chi, was the only grandmother Maddie had left. J.B. said he didn’t care where she stayed. He only cared about that new book David brought with him. Even now Maddie could see light on the cabin roof from the flashlight J.B. had under his covers on the top bunk. She knew he wouldn’t stop reading until he finished the book. He said David was going to take him to meet the architect the book was about. But Maddie wondered if it was really the bombs and big guns at the new dig that he wanted to see. J.B. kept talking about them. She didn’t know why after all the dead animals he saw. It made her sick to think about them. Maddie closed her eyes and settled down into her pillow. It was hard to sleep knowing her grandmother would be back in the morning. She wanted the night to be over already. Her new grandmother’s face waited behind her eyes. Maddie wanted to dream about her—but with her hair unwound and down. With no makeup on her face. Maddie made a story of them patting a suncake together outside by the campfire, the way she used to do with Grandmother Siki. She pictured the sun shining down on their two red heads as they worked. She would sing Chi Chi the song of suncake making, the one that told the story about how all the ingredients—the mesquite pods, and water and dry chokecherries and chia—gave themselves to the

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Yuiatei People. The song told where these plants lived and when to go there. All the People had to do in return was not forget and to be careful not to hurt any of the plants that gave themselves. Lots of food-making songs told that story. It was a good story, Maddie thought. She wanted to teach it to Chi Chi, wanted to teach her all the song stories.

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chapter twenty-three

R

uth lay waiting for light to appear behind the ridge out the

window. She pulled the comforter tight to her neck. It felt cold this morning, with wind whistling through cracks around the windowpane. She thought about getting up, getting a fire going in the stove. But she didn’t really want to move yet. Letting her eyes close again, she pictured Thomas outside, wrapped in the grizzly skin. He said he slept warm with it, even in snow. As she had many times lately, she imagined going out to him, pulling the fur aside, and snuggling in beside his lanky frame. A comfortable erotic warmth began to spread through her body. Then she remembered that everything had changed, and the warmth was replaced by bone chill. She burrowed deeper under the comforter.

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This morning John Olsen would bring Cally back to spend the day at Glory Springs. How long before Cally had John under her spell? She’d certainly had David there quick enough. Her jaw clenched at the thought of his depositing that woman here. The nerve. But poor John . . . a lonely old man who missed his life’s companion. Guilt nagged at her for letting him take Cally for the night—but it was outweighed by gratitude for the reprieve. All the inheritance money she’d sent Cally to stay away over the years had been for nothing. So had the stint with the movies to earn more money to send the woman—and that one had cost her the use of her leg. Despite everything she’d done to keep Cally away, she’d ended up almost flat broke—and with Cally around to boot. Just what she’d dreaded all along. But Cally’s disregard for her promise to stay away was no surprise. The woman had no regard for anything or anyone save her own self. At least sending the money had bought time, several years in fact. But it appeared that time had run out now. Ruth opened her eyes to find dawn’s light at the window. She slid out from the covers and dragged her feet across the cold cement floor to the stove, stuffed in pine needles and cones, some kindling and a few wood chunks. She struck a match to it, then shuffled back to bed before the warmth left her nest of blankets. There would be no outside campfire this morning. The sun had been up long enough to get the nanny milked and chickens fed, to pour warmed water into the ice-crusted trough, before John Olsen’s truck pulled up. Ruth did what she could to fortify herself as footsteps crunched toward the cabin door, John Olsen’s heavy and steady, Cally’s sharp heels puncturing the sand alongside. Thomas rose from his chair next to Ruth at the stove, and Maddie jumped up from her bunk, ran to the door to greet them. Ruth drew in a breath, continued mending the shirt in her lap, as the door swung open.

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“Grandmother Cally,” Maddie said, throwing her arms around her. She looked back at Ruth defiantly. “I mean, Chi Chi.” Cally patted the girl’s hair and smoothed it back from her face, then leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead. “And what about you?” she asked J.B. “Don’t you have a hug for Chi Chi?” Chi Chi indeed. “I’d rather they not use that term,” Ruth told her as J.B. put down his book and went to grant the request—and with a bit more enthusiasm than Ruth wanted to see. “But that’s what I’m called everywhere, dear,” her mother said, an accurate facsimile of a smile pasted on. She looked up at John Olsen beside her. “Even my new friend John here calls me Chi Chi now. Don’t you, John?” “I’ll bet he doesn’t know what it refers to. Why don’t you just choose a body part farther below for a nickname? That would be even more accurate.” “Don’t be so vulgar. Not in front of the children.” Cally opened her purse and pulled out a small velvet sack. “Here,” she said. “I have something for each of you.” “Come sit first, ya,” John Olsen said, giving Ruth a pointed look. His face had reddened at her remark. He led Cally to the chair Thomas had vacated. The children followed, their eyes fixed on the sack. While Thomas poured coffee into cups, Cally handed out her gifts. A small black barrette with pearl inlay that she placed in Maddie’s hair to hold it back from her face, and a fancy ink pen for J.B. that could have come out of the pocket of some high official. Which it probably did, Ruth thought darkly. “And I haven’t forgotten you.” Cally turned up the sack and shook it. A pair of pearl earrings dropped into her palm. She held them out toward Ruth. When Ruth made no move to accept, Cally tossed the earrings into her lap.

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“So ungracious.” She sighed, looked up at John Olsen with resignation. John’s face registered such disappointment when he looked down at Ruth that it was all she could do not to get up and smack her mother across the cheek. God knew she had felt the smack of Cally’s hand often enough. How could they all be so blind? But then how could she expect them to see through Cally’s manipulation? They weren’t the ones who’d seen Cally’s charming smile change to a spiteful smirk as soon as she’d hustled Ruth down the hall and out of the sight of her guests. Or the ones who’d been smacked and shaken and threatened with much worse if they dared cry out. As Thomas handed out the coffees, Ruth thought she saw a hint of amusement on his face. Maybe he wasn’t as blind as she imagined. She hoped not. Sometimes he seemed blinded by his reverence for ancestors of any ilk. Now what? she wondered, as John Olsen ducked down to sit on Maddie’s bunk with his coffee. Were they all going to just sit there and make chitchat, for heavensake? But the others didn’t seem to be afflicted by the oppression she felt, and they did exactly that, make chitchat—even seemed to enjoy it. Ruth sat tongue-tied as John Olsen told Cally the story of how he and Kate came to homestead in the canyon. Maddie and J.B. chimed in with questions. Cally asked the children about their schooling and reading habits—as if she were some normal grandmother come to visit, one really interested in those things. But Ruth noticed that Cally didn’t provide any information—fictional or otherwise—about her own disreputable history. It was when John Olsen mentioned that the children’s father, Indian Jim, used to work with him at the onyx mine that a glimpse of the real Cally appeared—and then it was only in a knowing, halfmocking glance she flashed Ruth’s way. A glance so subtle and fast that no one else could have noticed. But it was enough to bring back

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the bone chill that had come over her when she first saw Cally get out of the van. Ruth had an urge to yank Maddie from Cally’s side and secret her away to somewhere safe. She knew Cally would have no scruples about informing the girl of her true paternity—should it suit her purposes. Ruth sat silent while the others went on, oblivious to the danger of this woman. Only Thomas appeared to be scrutinizing her. When John finished his coffee, he took his cup to the sink and looked at Thomas. “Time to get the wood, ya? Then we be back by supper.” “It’ll be rabbit stew.” Ruth nodded toward the two skinned cottontails on the table. “J.B. and Thomas shot these by the spring while I was milking.” J.B. slid off his bunk and yanked his jacket from the hook on the wall. “You stay. Visit your grandmother, ya,” John Olsen told him. J.B. looked over at Cally. “Aww, I’ll see her later. Maddie will be here. Besides, you’ll get done faster if I come.” “He’s right,” Thomas said. “We’ve got a lot of wood to cut. He can gather and load the truck. It’ll be a big help.” Cally looked surprised at the gentle authority in his voice. After the men left, Ruth went out to lime the privy—anything. She couldn’t bear to hear the affection in Maddie’s voice as she spoke with her grandmother. The day, with only a slight girl between her and Cally, stretched ahead of her like the endless brown desert she’d seen wavering beyond Indio. And she felt as trapped as Martha had been, her cabin shrunk up to the size of the small room Daggett had held her friend in. It would be hours before the men returned, the flatbed piled high with wood that finished off the winter supply for both households. She busied herself outside as long as she could, raking goat pellets and pools of chicken shit from the floor of the milking shed and chicken coop. But her whole body was still racked from her trek up

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the mountain. She could hardly force herself to bear weight on her leg, which ached even when she wasn’t trying to use it. Now she had to depend upon her crutch again, almost entirely. If it weren’t for Cally being there, she would have curled up with one of the new books that had arrived at the general store last week. Damn it. It was her own cabin. She was a grown woman, not a silly child that Cally could intimidate. Ruth dropped the rake and marched back inside. Maddie and Cally were at the stove in the corner, Maddie stirring something in a small pot. Ruth caught the smell of acorn mush— something else, too, as she hobbled to the sink to wash her hands. Something unpleasant. When Cally turned her head slightly and leaned down to look into the pot Maddie stirred, Ruth saw the cigarette dangling from her lips, the ash so long it dropped into the pot of acorn mush she bent over. Laughing, Maddie reached in and flicked it out with one finger. Cally watched Ruth crutch her way to her cot and ease herself down. “It really does appear you could use my help, Ruth. You can hardly get around,” she said. “I do just fine,” Ruth snapped. Despite its ache, she stopped rubbing at her leg. “She just hurts right now because we went up the mountain after that dove killer.” Maddie told Cally about the dead animals and the small arsenal in the tent. “Ruth said that pretty place by the lake was where our father used to stay,” she finished. Again, that flash of knowing smile from Cally, there and then gone almost before it registered. “Quite a dangerous situation, if you ask me,” Cally said, “to have some maniac on the loose. Probably not even a sheriff anywhere around to report this to. But I guess this isn’t exactly a civilized area.” “No it isn’t, thank god. At least not civilized in the way you mean it. That’s why I live here. I still don’t know why you’re here, though.”

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Cally left the stove, walked over and stood by Ruth’s cot. “Can we have a truce, Ruth? I’m asking you.” She sat down next to her. “There’s no sense in making this any more miserable than it has to be.” “The mush is ready now,” Maddie called from the stove. “I put some dried chokecherries in it. It’ll be extra tasty.” At the sight of her daughter’s bright face, the small smear of mush beside her smile, Ruth swallowed her anger and got to her feet. “Well, let’s have it then,” she said.

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chapter twenty-four

I

t was mid-December when Ruth heard the shot, then the crack

of the pine branch on the other side of her. She flew the few steps to her cabin door, splashing much of the hard-won goat’s milk over the ground as she went. The pail slid sloshing across the floor when she let go of it to grab her .22 and the cache of bullets from the shelf. Dropping the rifle onto her cot, she reached underneath and pulled out the shotgun John had loaned her and the box of shells beside it. Her hands shook wildly as she broke the shotgun open and shoved two shells inside. Then she ran back to latch the door. She took down the binoculars Nicholas Ghosh had brought up the week before, after she told him what they’d found on Rocky Mountain. Positioning herself at the window with both guns beside

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her, Ruth searched the upper reaches of the mountain, moving her gaze slowly across open patches. Not seeing anything there, she shifted her search downward. Still nothing revealed itself. No sign of anyone at all. After some time had passed and no more shots came, she began to wonder if she might have been mistaken. After all, the wind had kicked up last night and was blowing things around. Maybe the sound she heard was the crack of rock falling on rock over on Rocky Mountain. Maybe what hit the branch beside her wasn’t even a bullet but some wind-driven cone. She should go out and examine the tree—but not until she was more convinced she’d been wrong. She left the window long enough to dash over and throw wood into the stove, pull the coffeepot onto the burner to reheat. Then she went back to her vigil. Today was supposed to be a day home alone, and she’d looked forward to some time to think things out. She needed to figure out just what to do about Cally. The two men were also on her mind. Thomas had been gone a week now, had left with Ghosh the day after Daggett finally paid that visit she had been dreading. Naturally, Mexico had proved a dead end for his hunt, and so his suspicions had turned onto her. Thank god the lawyer happened to be there when the sheriff showed up. Sure enough, Daggett had brought a pack of Modajee deputies with him as trackers. Ruth had barely controlled herself while they canvassed Glory Springs and the side of Rocky Mountain for Martha’s footprints. They left still suspicious, since rain the week before had washed away all but the latest prints. But Daggett had made it clear that he wasn’t through with Glory Springs. J.B. had gone to that new dig this morning with David, who said he planned to introduce J.B. to the architect at the new Spirit Center. Ruth almost didn’t let him go. She hated to abet David’s pressuring him in that direction—the way he’d been doing with all those new books. But since John Olsen had already taken Cally and Maddie to

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San Bernardino with him at dawn, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a day to herself. And maybe the day would turn out all right, anyway, despite its alarming start. Ruth poured herself a cup of thick coffee—it had been boiling for some time—and sat back at the window. Her heart had calmed now and fear no longer drove her to inspect the mountainside as acutely. Her earlier concern came back to her; it was never very far away. Whatever was she going to do about Cally’s intrusion into her life? The ease with which everyone came to accept the woman troubled and puzzled her. But she just couldn’t bring herself to trust any situation her mother was involved in. Was she being as unfair as John and her children seemed to think she was? The new routine had developed almost naturally—Cally’s staying at John Olsen’s, who brought her up to Glory Springs almost every other day. John was happy enough with it, which was another part of the problem. Cally had no scruples about insinuating herself into a lonely man’s heart to get her way. A child’s either. Maddie walked down to spend time with her grandmother on days when she didn’t appear at Glory Springs. But this new Cally didn’t seem at all believable to Ruth. She’d seen Cally change from sweet to sour in an instant, and her mind teemed with images of Cally’s mean face, gleaned from countless childhood encounters. She’d seen Cally switch from loving mother who combed and complimented Ruth’s hair to a hissing whiskey-breathed witch in an instant. Could someone like that ever have a complete change of heart? A flash of movement halfway up the mountain caught her attention. She snatched the binoculars and trained them on the area, saw nothing. Did she imagine that movement? It could have been anything—a deer or coyote. Even a cougar or bear. Still, she couldn’t count on that. Ruth set the binoculars down, picked up the shotgun and walked to her cabin door. Hitting the latch with the barrel, she kicked open

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the door, stepped outside and blasted both barrels into the air. Then she went back in, relatched the door, shoved two more shells into the shotgun, took it to the window with her and lifted the binoculars. Still no hint of movement, let alone some soldier running from bush to bush toward the top. She had to have imagined the whole thing, she told herself. But how could she be sure? By midafternoon, thick clouds began drifting over the ridges and the temperature dropped enough to send her to the drawer for another sweater. She found herself pacing the small patch of cabin floor, caught herself after the ache in her leg became a throb. She’d finally been able to bear weight on it comfortably again the last few days and knew not to push it too far, so she forced herself into a chair, then sat feeling like one of the coiled springs beneath her mattress. Determined as she was to relax, her gaze kept wandering out the window to the mountainside. A few flakes blew against the pane. Ruth sprang from the chair and rushed to the door. She flung it open and stared hard at the bend, as if she could conjure up the vehicles that would bring her children back before the storm hit. But she knew it would be well after dark before John Olsen got back from San Bernardino with Maddie. J.B. was only a few miles away, though. Surely David could get him back in time. By dusk the flurries changed to a light but steady snow—and still no sign of J.B. What could be keeping them? she wondered as she pushed the chili to the back burner to simmer on the coals. She went to the door, unlatched it again and stood looking at the bend through the gauzy veil of falling flakes. She pictured the tan van stalled somewhere on the way up. If it had stalled, it would be difficult for them walk up after dark, especially if the snow increased. David was famous for forgetting to carry a flashlight with him. What if he slid off a bank down by the willows? If they didn’t show up soon, maybe she’d drive down to see.

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She waited until darkness had fully settled in before tugging on her boots and pulling on her jacket. Grabbing the shotgun, she stepped out the door and latched it behind her, stood listening to the hush of falling flakes over the whitening landscape. The snow on the ground was still patchy for the most part, she noted with relief, as she walked to the car; the ground had absorbed enough sun that day to melt much of it. Ruth stuck her crutch in the Model A first, then the gun. She wasn’t using the crutch much now, but brought it along just in case she needed it in the snow. The road was beginning to cover but remained bare in spots. She drove slowly, coasting mostly, watching for any sign of the van in the scope of her headlights. At John Olsen’s, she angled the beams into the yard but found the coating of snow there smooth and undisturbed. The rest of the way through the willows, she inspected the ruts for tracks that headed out of bounds toward the wash bank. She found no sign of any. By the time she reached the mouth of the canyon, the snow had changed to rain and it stayed that way into Juniper Valley. She found no broken-down van beside the road anywhere. Ruth pulled up in front of the general store, though it was closed up tight like the rest of the town buildings. She cut her engine, sat wondering what to do next. Gusts tossed raindrops against the windshield. Worry teetered with ire. Where in hell were they this late—and in this storm? Still at the Spirit Center? David said it was being built not far from the paved highway a few miles out of town, on the way to Two Bunch Palms. She punched the choke, switched on the ignition and headed out that way. There weren’t any other vehicles on the road, so she crept along searching for the big Spirit Center sign David had told her about. Yet she hadn’t gone far when she drove over a small hill and her headlights caught the shape of the tan van itself on the shoulder of the road. Heart pounding, she jammed down the gas pedal and crossed

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the highway, slid to a halt in front of the darkened vehicle. Her headlights revealed a gleam of metal from a downed axle on the ground next to the right front wheel. Rushing to the passenger door, Ruth yanked it open and, seeing no one inside, climbed up on the running board and pulled herself up into the van. “J.B.? David?” Her voice echoed through the empty van. At least there was a reason David hadn’t brought him home. But wherever had they gone? Ruth slammed the van door and stood in the rain, looking around for any lit-up buildings nearby. After all, she’d heard that almost a hundred people now lived in the vicinity. Using the front bumper, she boosted herself onto the hood, crawled across its slick surface and over the windshield to the roof, where she tried to peer through the heavy darkness. As she stood shivering on the van’s roof, the curtain of moisture obscured the world from her view and wrapped her in a softly eerie silence. For a split second she had the strange sensation of having stepped into some mysterious time and place. Then a faint fuzzy light came into view down the highway and brought her back to her quest. Maybe that was the Spirit Center. Could they have walked back there? Ruth slid from the windshield to the hood and down from the fender to the ground, shaking off the wet chill seeping through her jacket and into the layers of clothing underneath, and the deeper chill that had crept into her head. She climbed into the Model A, punched the choke and switched on the ignition. But before she could pull back onto the highway the misty world around her suddenly lit up and her foot slipped from the clutch. The Model A lurched forward and stalled. A pair of fiery eyes appeared out of the mist, sending huge beams to floodlight the hazy rain. Dark growling shapes floated into view, passed by her on the highway. When she came out of her shock, Ruth

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realized these monsters were army trucks. Some of the canvas-covered truck beds held men she glimpsed through open back flaps as they went by. The canvas of other trucks covered what could only be tanks, their long barrels protruding even under the stiff folds of cloth. Even after their taillights faded into the mist, she sat stunned. The scene seemed to come from some other world, though she feared that it did not. It took a moment for her to recover and remember her children. Relieved to regain her purpose, she punched the choke again. It turned out that the bright light she’d seen lay close to the highway, and was indeed just behind the big Spirit Center sign. She turned and gunned the car toward the big building. “Please be there, J.B.,” she whispered. Ruth had no trouble seeing the interior of the place through the building’s huge windows. The walls were made of wood and stone. Enormous beams crisscrossed under the high domed ceiling that roofed the round room. The place was empty of furnishings, except for a chair and sofa near a fireplace on the side farthest from her. Two men sat there. Neither David nor J.B. was in sight. Shivering violently now, she worked her way toward what looked like a portal to her left. She rapped her knuckles on one of the two heavy doors that towered several feet above her but couldn’t hear her own knock sound in the howl of wind. Grabbing hold of the door’s foot-long wrought-iron handle, she yanked it toward her. To her amazement, the door flew open easily, as if it were made of cardboard—which it most certainly was not—and she found herself staring directly at the two men, one of whom rose in surprise. “May I help you, madam?” he asked, a measure of incredulity in his voice that resounded through the empty room. His face appeared kindly, if quizzical, surrounded by a wreath of gray hair. “I’m looking for my son, J.B. David Stone, the archaeologist, said he was bringing him out here. But that was this morning. They haven’t come back yet.”

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“They were by—came to see Mr. Wright, here,” the man said. “But that was hours ago—before the rain started.” He took a step toward her. “But come in, will you? Stand by the fire. You’re shivering with cold.” “I have to find out what happened to them. David’s van is parked on the road not far from here. Looks like a broken axle.” She pulled her jacket tighter, trickling drops of water down the middle of her back. “I’m sure they’re fine,” the man said. “So you’re the mother of that amazing young man,” a voice behind the man said. Now the other man rose and studied her. “I’ve invited him back.” His tone indicated that he had bestowed a great honor. “Well, he won’t be coming back unless I can find him now,” she said, turning. She took a step backward, outside, but held the door open. “You haven’t come here by accident, you know,” the first man said. “Meetings like this are preordained. It’s probable that some other answer lies here, one that you’ve been searching for.” “Oh, for heavensake,” Ruth said, and let go of the door. Her leg ached as she hurried back to her car. The idea of getting a lecture about fate when she was frantic to find her child flabbergasted her. Yet the man was probably right about J.B. being fine. But where in the world could David have taken him—and how had she missed seeing them? Maybe they’d taken a shortcut across the desert toward town, instead of following the highway. She drove back to Juniper Valley and pulled over at the place where the highway met the wide dirt road to Rimrock that would connect to Rattlesnake Canyon’s rut road. She hated to go back without J.B. Yet there seemed little choice but to go home and wait for John Olsen. He might even be back by now with Maddie. Then he could help her with the search. When she turned onto the canyon road, she was grateful to find the imprint of big flatbed tires in the snow now covering the road—

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about three inches’ worth. Her body numb with wet and cold, she fought to keep her speed slow and steady. The Model A slid sideways if she braked fast, but the snow was not deep enough nor frozen enough yet to send the tires out of the ruts. She saw where the big tracks had pulled into Olsen’s place and out again. The tracks continued on toward her cabin. When Ruth pulled into her yard, she was shocked not to find the flatbed, yet relieved to see light through the windows and to smell smoke in the air. And when both Maddie’s and J.B.’s faces appeared at the window, her eyes brimmed over. She flung open the car door and slip-slid her way through the snow to her cabin, using her crutch to brace her. “Where did you go?” Maddie asked as soon as Ruth opened the door. The girl stood at the stove beside Cally, who looked over but continued stirring the pot in front of her. “I went to look for J.B.” Ruth unfastened her jacket and headed for the warm stove, peeling off her sweater as she went. “John Olsen picked us up in town,” J.B. said. “David’s truck broke down.” “Yeah, I saw it on the highway. I must have just missed you. But where’d John go, anyway?” Ruth sidled up as close to her woodstove as she could get without shoving Maddie away. She was seized with sudden sneezes. “You’d better get out of that wet shirt first,” Cally said, once Ruth gained control. “You’ll get burned. Look, you’re already beginning to steam.” She fixed her eyes on the spot where Ruth’s shirt nearly met the stove. “Chi Chi’s making fudge. See all the nuts we got in San Bernardino? Walnuts. I got to chop them up.” Maddie reached down and popped a piece of nut meat in her mouth. Still bone-chilled with her back nearly on fire, Ruth turned her front to the stove. “But where did John go?”

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“He went to take David back. You want some cocoa?” J.B. asked. “Chi Chi made a whole pan of it.” “What are you doing with all that chocolate? There’s more chocolate on that stove than they’ve had in their entire lifetime.” She bent to smell the sweet fragrance in the pan at the back of the burners, beside what was left of the chili. At least Cally’d had the sense to feed them first. “That’s the problem. I thought the children might enjoy a treat. They don’t always have to eat like wild Indians, do they?” Cally pulled the fudge pot from the fire, tipped it to one side and began whipping the thickening substance inside with a large spoon. “I think that’s for me to decide,” Ruth said, but without much conviction. The sight of her mother beating fudge brought back one of her few good childhood memories of times they spent together. She remembered pouring in the nuts when the fudge thickened, something Maddie was preparing to do now. For a moment she almost believed in this fudge-making Cally, as she had so long ago. Always to her regret. Cally gave her a look that said not to spoil things. Ruth sighed and went over to find a dry top to wear. “Forgodsake, what in the world is this? A radio?” “Chi Chi bought it. But it’s all static now. John and David said we’ll have to run that wire up the mountain to a pine tree before we can get any signal,” J.B. told her. “I can do it in the morning. There’s an extra battery too.” “Indeed. I don’t know why we need it. John Olsen already has a radio.” Ruth pawed through the boxes of canned goods left by the door. “How did you get all this?” “I spent what little I had left on it. I thought we could use a little civilization up here.” “That must be why you got these cartons of cigarettes, then.”

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“She got a cot too,” Maddie said. “There in the corner. It folds up. So she can stay with us sometimes.” “Like tonight,” J.B. said. “John said he’d come get her tomorrow.” “How much better could life be?” Ruth muttered. But she supposed she could stand one night trapped here with the witch if it made her children happy. And maybe, just maybe, Cally really was trying to change. The next morning, Ruth woke to the click of the cabin door latch. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked around, surprised to find Cally at the stove, her children nowhere in sight. “They just went up the mountain behind the house with that radio wire.” Cally answered her unasked question as she came toward her with a cup of coffee, the trademark cigarette dangling from her lip. “When did you become so domestic?” Ruth asked, but she accepted the coffee. A little weaker than she liked, but decent coffee nonetheless. And she needed it, felt a bit listless and chilled. She took a sip and hobbled to the window, stiff from the day before. Snow was still coming down, and there looked to be at least eight inches already on the ground. John had better come get Cally soon. Even his big truck couldn’t make it up the road if much more fell. Ruth slugged down her coffee, got up to get her pants and boots. She was surprised not to hear the nanny complaining to be milked. But then the wind was creating such a racket. She sneezed three times and went over to get the bucket. Found it half full. “They gathered in the eggs too,” Cally said. “Fed your animals, apparently. I have to admit you’ve got good children, Ruth.” Her voice said she hadn’t expected that. “You might as well have another cup of coffee. You don’t look so good.” “I’m fine,” Ruth told her, but poured herself another cup and stood trying to warm away her chills at the stove. When J.B. and Maddie showed up a few minutes later, J.B. rushed

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to the radio he’d hooked up by the far window and switched it on. Loud static filled the quiet cabin. He turned a dial until the static stopped, continued turning. A voice came in clearly, speaking excitedly. But the language was unintelligible, no matter how loud he turned it. “Sounds like Chinese to me,” Cally said, looking up from her chair by the stove. “I heard it spoke often enough in Boulder City. Could be Japanese, though.” J.B. turned the dial farther and found voices speaking English, but they were drowned out by static. Ruth could make out only a word here and there. He kept turning until a deep male voice came in clearly, this time speaking English. J.B. turned up the volume. The sound of that intruding voice seemed so out of place, such a violation of her cabin space that Ruth was just about to tell her son to turn the radio off, when she realized what the voice was saying. Then dizziness overcame over her, and she nearly sank against the hot stove in shock. She reached out and held on to her rock wall for support. The voice was talking about war. The war Thomas had warned her about. It was saying that war had been declared.

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chapter twenty-five

H

e sat on the edge of his mother’s bed, trying to get the

snow-cooled cloth to stay on her forehead. But she kept moaning and turning her head from side to side. Her cheeks were dark red splotches. She looked even hotter than when they had climbed the mountain. He leaned in to hear if her chest still had that gurgle when she took in a breath. As he got close, he felt the heat of her skin on his own face. Their grandmother said pneumonia caused the fever. She kept shooing him across the cabin so she could wipe down Ruth’s skin with melting snow water. Chi Chi let Maddie put yerba mansa leaves on Ruth’s chest too, and make her drink a few sips of willow bark tea from a spoon. “Heathen remedies,” she called them. “But

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that’s what we’re stuck with here.” J.B. wished Thomas were there. He would know what to do. John Olsen hadn’t come back either, like he said he would. It had been days since he left to take David back to town. Was it four or five? J.B. tried to remember. But the days all blurred together, like the trees outside behind the falling snow. Each day more snow fell. Sometimes he read the books again about Frank Lloyd Wright, but he couldn’t forget for a minute how sick his mother was just across the room. She’d been that way since the morning after they heard about the war on the new radio. In the evenings he turned the radio on again for a while and listened to talk about the war against the Germans and Japanese. “Don’t wear out the battery,” his grandmother would tell him after a few minutes. “We might need it later.” He knew there was an extra battery, but he didn’t argue with her. Especially at night when she was drinking that whiskey she’d brought back from San Bernardino. It put a look on her face that warned him to let things be. Maddie saw it too and stayed away from her then. During the morning, she was okay. J.B. moved out of the way fast when Ruth suddenly sat up, her eyes wide open, but glassy and bloodshot. “Bring me my shotgun! Quick!” she shouted, then fell back onto her pillow, asleep. “I better wipe her down again,” his grandmother said. She rose from her chair, dipped a basin into the tub of meltwater. “She’s still delirious. J.B., Maddie, go get some fresh snow. I think I’ll pack some around her afterwards.” Not much was coming down when they went out to heap fresh powder into the dishpan and the big stew pot. J.B. didn’t have a measuring stick, but he guessed over two feet had fallen. Not nearly as much as that winter Ruth hurt her leg. He wondered again why John Olsen hadn’t come back. Why he hadn’t walked up if his truck wouldn’t make it. J.B. thought about fighting his way through all the

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snow to John’s house to see what was the matter—but what if Ruth got worse? Or needed something? “I don’t know why she isn’t getting better,” Maddie said, as she pushed snow into the pan. His sister’s face was tight with the same worry he felt. When they brought the snow in, their grandmother told them to go carry in more wood and when that was done, she ordered them out to play in the snow. She already had Ruth covered up, so that wasn’t it. “But we don’t want to play. We want to be in here with her,” Maddie said. “We’re too big to play in the snow,” J.B. explained. “Go on, now. Do as I say,” Cally told them. “I don’t want to go over to story place,” Maddie said after Chi Chi shut the door. J.B. nodded. It seemed too far from Ruth and the cabin, but he would like to see what it looked like over there under all that snow. If any of the roofs had caved in. Maybe tomorrow he’d go. It was too early to milk or to feed the chickens again yet, so they got into the Model A and sat there. “Do you think she’ll be all right?” Maddie asked him. J.B. could see tears ready to roll down her cheeks. “Let’s make one of those igloo things we saw in that old magazine,” he said. It just came to him. “I don’t want to make some stupid igloo.” Maddie folded her arms and looked at the windshield, even though it was covered over with snow. A tear rolled down to her chin and fell onto her jacket. “Well, I do,” he lied, “and I can’t do it without your help. She won’t let us back in there for a while. At least it will keep us warm.” He opened the door and slid out into the snow. Maddie bit her lip. “Come on,” he said. “Please.” He was relieved when she scooted across the seat, didn’t even mind the dirty look she gave him.

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They built the igloo out beside the barn, sculpted the low wall, then shaped blocks of snow to get the walls higher. It got tricky when they had to fit them over to make a roof. He didn’t do it right the first time, and the whole thing collapsed on top of him, spilling snow down the back of his jacket. It was the first time he’d heard Maddie laugh in days. On the next try he made sure the snow blocks overlapped enough. Inside, the igloo felt cold and bare and tight. He thought it was odd, since it was actually warmer in there. But that wasn’t how it felt. The igloo in the magazine had been much larger. Inside were skins and a fire that made the place look alive. He remembered the feel of the big room Frank Lloyd Wright had built at the Spirit Center. All that glass and wood and rock—as if it were part of the outside he built it out of—not just made of the outside, the way J.B. knew buildings always were, but built to feel like that outside around it. The outside turned inside. Just being in it made him understand better what those books were saying, though he didn’t know how to put it into words exactly. Maybe words could never say anything exactly. He hadn’t realized how much time had gone by, until he heard Chi Chi call their names. When they crawled out of the igloo, they found her standing at the cabin door, a milking bucket hanging at her side. “It’s getting late,” she said. “What have you been doing out there so long? You haven’t even done the milking yet. We need some for dinner pancakes.” Maddie looked as surprised as he was. “We’re coming, Chi Chi,” she said. “I’ll do it.” J.B. gathered eggs, settling them carefully into his mackinaw pockets. He sprinkled mash, holding his breath as long as he could to escape the stink of cooped-up chicken shit, his wind bursting from him as he ran out of the coop. After he pulled apart enough frozen hay for the nanny, he stood and watched Maddie milk her. His sister kept having to stop and rub her fingers so they could squeeze the

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teats. Even the sounds Maddie made to answer the goat sounded tight with cold. “I can finish,” he said, pulling off his mittens. He picked up hers and held them out to her. “Go on in,” he told her. Maddie shook her head but got up from the stool. “I’ll wait for you.” She stood beside him, trying to get the mittens back over her frozen fingers, while he shot streams of hot milk into the tin bucket. When he pulled open the cabin door, warm air blasted his face, as if he’d leaned too far into one of the open stove burners. J.B. couldn’t get out of his jacket fast enough. Once he’d put the eggs away, he followed Maddie over to Ruth’s bed. Tiny drops of sweat covered his mother’s cheeks and forehead, the way beads of water gather outside a glass of cold water in summer. Her chest rose and fell more softly now, and without that sound. “Her fever finally broke, thank god.” His grandmother came up beside them. J.B. caught the strong smell of whiskey. When she pulled in on her cigarette, then took it from her lips, he noticed how her red fingernails had gotten chipped and jagged. “Your mother should be okay now,” she told them, small puffs of smoke escaping her lips with each word. “You can stop all that worrying.”

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chapter twenty-six

M

addie strained away bits of willow bark and creosote

leaves as she poured the tea into a cup. She stirred in a spoonful of honey and carried it to her mother, who sat propped up with pillows against the wall behind her bed. Maddie set it on the chair bottom, beside the bowl of stew that had got cold now. Ruth had only nibbled at a few bites. At least today she was sitting up. “You don’t have to fuss over me, Maddie,” her mother said in a thin, ragged voice. “I just had a bit of fever. I’m fine now.” But talking caused that deep, scary cough to start again. A little like a coyote bark, but full of crunkly stuff too. Maddie ran to the dresser and ripped off another section of rag, handed it to her to spit up in.

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J.B. put down his book and watched her from the top bunk until her coughing eased up. Chi Chi left her chair and came toward the bed. “Nasty, isn’t it? But she has to do that,” she said. “You don’t get over pneumonia without that vile hacking.” “I made her some coughing tea.” Maddie took a quick sniff but didn’t smell whiskey on Chi Chi’s breath yet. “Well, see if you can get her to drink it, then.” Her grandmother picked up the cup and held it out. “You have to try some, Ruth,” she said. Ruth waved the cup away. “Hurts to swallow,” she whispered, coughed, then pulled in a breath. “Coughing tea will help your throat,” Maddie told her. But Ruth only rolled her eyes. “Quit acting like a stubborn child and take your medicine,” Chi Chi said. She set the tea back on the chair bottom. Ruth shook her head, waved them both away. The barking cough started up again. Maddie sat on her bunk and stared out the window toward the bend. It hadn’t snowed again since her mother’s fever broke two days ago. Clouds were gone from the sky, but it was colder now. She kept wondering why John Olsen hadn’t come yet. “You two get outside for a while,” her grandmother said, suddenly. Neither of them made a move to go. “Go on, now, I told you.” “It’s too cold,” Maddie told her. But it wasn’t that. She knew the whiskey started when Chi Chi sent them outside. When they came back in, she would be like someone else. “I said out, young lady! A person can’t think with you two underfoot all the time.” How were they underfoot when they were both just sitting on their bunks—not even talking? Maddie looked over at her mother for help, but Ruth was coughing and spitting into the rag. Maddie was glad to see that when she put the rag down, Ruth reached for the cup of tea.

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“How do I get you to mind? Do I have to use a belt on you?” Chi Chi started rifling through her suitcase in the corner. J.B.’s legs swung over the edge of the bunk above her. He dropped to the floor and stood looking at her. “Come on, Mad,” he said. They put on another shirt and pair of socks, then the boots, jackets and mittens, and went out into the frozen day. A few chickadees flitted in the pinyon branches, and Maddie chittered with them as they walked underneath. Powdery snow filtered down whenever the birds bounced from limb to limb. She followed her brother down the trail they’d made yesterday over to the story place, a rough path hacked out by dragging their bodies over the deep holes made by their boots. J.B. wanted to finish fixing the roof on that courthouse building. Maddie didn’t help. She pushed the snow cap off the big rock and sat out in the sun, trying to call the chickadees to come over. But they wouldn’t come. Yesterday, when they went back inside, Chi Chi told them to get back out again. They had to promise to take a nap before she let them stay in. While they pretended to sleep, Chi Chi had pulled her chair up to Ruth’s bed and sat there talking to her in a low voice—her someone else’s voice—and the sharp edge of Chi Chi’s whisper cut through the air. It was easy for Maddie to hear her words. Chi Chi kept turning her head to make sure they were asleep, but Maddie would close her eyes in time. “I don’t see how you can live like this, Ruth. I sure wouldn’t if I didn’t have to. God knows I’ve tried to. But cooped up in this cabin with those two. They are sweet little bastards, I’ll give you that,” Maddie heard her whisper. The cigarette in her grandmother’s mouth bounced up and down as she spoke. “And you should be ashamed— trying to pawn me off on that old man. Smells like a goat.” Chi Chi looked around, and Maddie closed her eyes, kept them closed for a while. When she heard Chi Chi take a drag on her cigarette, she looked back. Her grandmother blew out the smoke over

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Ruth’s bed and went on. “Oh, I know you think you have such a fine setup here—what with your tall buck and that beast of a lawyer. God only knows what you think you’re doing. You’re Lolinda’s granddaughter, all right. Even after all I did for you.” She stopped talking, leaned in closer to Ruth’s sleeping face. “Don’t think for a minute you fool me with that sleeping act. I know damn good and well you hear every word I say.” But Maddie could see that her mother was really asleep. She was glad of it too. It made her heart hurt to hear Chi Chi say John smelled like a goat. Maddie liked the way he smelled. She didn’t think Chi Chi calling her and J.B. bastards was nice, either. Maddie wasn’t exactly sure what a bastard was, but she didn’t think it was something sweet. Maddie did go to sleep after a while, her grandmother still going on and on in the whiskey whisper. Just remembering Chi Chi’s whiskey voice made tears come to her eyes. It was like she had two different grandmothers in the same body. One of them scared her. “Look, Mad! He’s coming up the wash,” J.B. said suddenly. “Come on.” He jumped down from the story courthouse roof. “There, down by the bend.” Finally, John Olsen had come. Now things would be right again. Maddie ran out of the i’kitswa after her brother. Yet it wasn’t John Olsen she saw struggling toward them through the deep snow, but Thomas. Maddie would have skipped toward him if all the snow wasn’t there. She waved her arms and could hardly wait as he battled his way toward their footprint path that led to the cabin. But when he got closer, she saw that the look on his face was serious. And he was carrying John’s big .30-30. She quit waving and stood quietly beside her brother until Thomas reached them. He stopped and looked down at them, his eyes traveling from Maddie to J.B. and back again. Maddie was shocked when he reached out and hugged them both tight to his side. He let them go again and looked across the wash toward the cabin. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

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“It’s John Olsen. I found him shot. Must have happened a few days ago.” He answered their unasked question with a quick shake of his head, then started down the trail. The canyon was a blur of white as Maddie watched Thomas and her brother walk toward the cabin. “But I want to see him anyway. Let’s walk back down there,” she cried out to their backs. Thomas stopped, waited for her to catch up. “I’m sorry, Ta’ha,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “This is a terrible thing. It must have been that dove killer.” He looked up at the mountain. “I followed his boot tracks as far as the North Fork. He must be up there now.” “But what happened?” J.B.’s face was white as a Teske’s. Maddie reached for his hand, but it was in his pocket. “Wait until we get inside. I’ll tell the story only once. Saying the words can make the na’dadat stronger, the bad medicine.” He turned and started down the trail again, J.B. right behind him. Maddie hurried to keep up, leaping from footprint hole to footprint hole. Nothing around her felt real—except for the na’dadat. It was something she couldn’t see or touch, like the voices on the radio talking about war. Something she didn’t want to get near. She knew it was what she’d felt coming all along. A bad song story pulling everything into itself.

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chapter twenty-seven

“

R

uth, that damn Indian of yours is at the door.” Cally’s deri-

sive tone crept into the depths of confused dreams. But her mother’s presence made no sense, was not acceptable, and Ruth stayed adrift. Then she heard Thomas’s voice and began making her way upward toward sunlight. “No. Don’t wake her,” Thomas was saying. “How long has she been like this?” She felt the back of his hand cold against her forehead. “Since the snow started. She’s been delirious with fever. Her chest squeaking and rumbling like I don’t know what,” Cally was telling him when Ruth finally brought their faces into a blurred focus. “But she’s better now. She even drank her coughing tea,” Maddie said. “Look. She’s awake.”

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“Still feverish,” Thomas said. Ruth felt a cool hand on her forehead, opened her eyes to see dark eyes tenderly probe her own. She struggled to sit up and bring the world into order, not yet sure if this man squatted down beside her bed came from wake or sleep. “Looks like you’ve been through hell,” he said, with a wry smile. “But I’ve got just what you need.” He stood and pulled off his back satchel, felt around inside. Ruth started to tell him she was fine now, but her words were drowned out by the deep baying cough that kept plaguing her, and she remained in its throes while she spit and spit into a rag someone handed her. When she finally got her cough under control, Thomas was at the stove with J.B. and Maddie, stirring something into a small pot. No doubt concocting something to help her. She basked inwardly at the comfort of his being there. Then she caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and became aware of Cally in the chair by her bed. She remembered the voice on the radio announcing war, and her world tipped sideways. Her eyes sought Thomas and her children to set it right again. Cally leaned over the bed until her face was only a few inches from Ruth’s. A cigarette hung from her fingers. “Well, it appears your buck hasn’t deserted his squaw after all,” she hissed under her breath. Her words spewed out on a mix of whiskey and tobacco. Cally sat back and drew in on her cigarette, smoke escaping from one side of the smirk Ruth found so familiar. She’d known that smirk was hidden there all along, behind the hollow grandmotherly smile. She hadn’t been wrong about Cally after all. Ruth opened her mouth to tell her to shut up, but another spell overtook her. When it passed, Ruth closed her eyes, too weak to confront Cally’s challenge, even with the old hatred coursing through her. Now that her mother had wormed her way into the household, the woman Ruth remembered was finding her way out. And whiskey had always smoothed her arrival.

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When Thomas brought over the new tea, he sat beside Ruth in the chair that Cally vacated, chanting and sprinkling pollen while she drank what had to be the worst-tasting cup of tea she’d ever had. If anyone else had given it to her, she would have spit it out at the first sip. Yet she drank the vile liquid down to the last drop, savoring its bitterness. Bitterness was something she trusted. It wasn’t until later, after she’d slept, then woken up and eaten a bowl of chicken soup, that she began to sense something somber in the air. The cabin felt too quiet. Thomas sat at the window staring out at Rocky Mountain. And why were J.B. and Maddie so preoccupied with their books while Thomas was there for them to talk to? Had the war dampened everyone’s spirits so severely? she wondered. She wondered, too, if John Olsen knew about the war. His radio battery had been out for a while, but maybe he’d bought a new battery when Cally bought her radio. Thomas had to have seen him on the way up. She would have to ask him why John never came. Could he be ill too? Or maybe Cally had finally scared the poor man off with something she did on the trip to San Bernardino. Ruth waited until Thomas got up and brought over another cup of the bitter tea to ask him about it. “Drink up, Dlah’da,” he said. “First things first.” Impatient as she was, she drank the tea while he sat and chanted quietly beside her. “Okay. First things are over,” she said when he finished his chant. She handed him the cup. Thomas put the cup under the bed’s edge and took her hand in his, sat looking at it without saying anything. When Maddie and J.B. came over and stood beside him, Ruth felt herself go cold, especially when she saw the tears Maddie was holding back. “John’s been shot, Ruth,” Thomas said then. “He’s gone.” Ruth gripped the mattress until the wave of dizziness passed. “Someone took his supplies and left him on the floor. Didn’t even bother to close the door. Looks like he bled there a long time.” Maddie buried

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her face in Thomas’s back. Ruth could see her shoulders heaving. J.B. reached out and took his sister’s hand. The scene came to her as if she were standing in the doorway of John’s rock house, snow mounded inside the open door. She saw him cold on the floor beside the table, blood puddled under him. Dark ice crystals around the edges where it had seeped out and pooled. “I guess you had to leave him there?” she said when she found her voice again. Thomas nodded. “I wrapped him in a blanket first. The body’s in the pantry dugout.” She pictured that dim cave carved into the mountain behind the house to keep food cool, the body stored there, wrapped in a red blanket. But the red blanket was not John’s. “That’s where they put him too, you know,” she whispered. “My Jim.” Thomas tightened his grip on her hand, reached over and brushed back the hair from her forehead. “No tracks led in to John’s place,” he said. “The killer must have come before or during the storm. Looks like he waited it out there, then left sometime after the snow stopped. I followed his trail up the road till it cut off at the North Fork.” “The dove killer, then.” Ruth willed herself to stop shaking from the shock of it. “But we didn’t touch his supplies. Except for those guns. Why would he . . . ?” “I hurried here as fast as I could. I was afraid this place might be his next stop.” Thomas shook his head, his dark eyes soft with emotion. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this when you’re still so sick. But you might be in danger. I hope he’ll stay put on the mountain for a while in this snow—but if supplies run low—or he gets tired of the isolation . . .” Ruth told him about the shot she thought she heard from the mountain a few days ago, how she’d fired off the shotgun that day when John Olsen took Maddie and Cally to San Bernardino. She hadn’t seen John again after that morning, she realized. Would never see him again.

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Choking up brought on another spell of hacking, and it took a while before she could calm herself. “We’d better get the guns ready,” she said then. Thomas nodded, looked down at Maddie and J.B. “And stay out of open spaces when you go out in the yard. He still has at least one big army m-1. The one he used on—” “I’m glad we threw the rest in the lake,” J.B. said. “What if that’s what made him do it?” Ruth closed her eyes, remembering. “John didn’t want us to touch them.” “We’ll never know,” Thomas said. “But I’d guess he’s been preparing to desert for some time now—when war came. Throwing those rifles out might not have anything to do with it.” He got up and walked over to the window, stood looking out at the mountain in the dimming light. Ruth saw now that he had John’s .30-30 leaned against the wall. “John never got a chance to use it,” Thomas said. “I found it there behind the cupboard where he always kept it.” “All this talk about some crazy fool up on the mountain with a rifle,” Cally said suddenly, rising from her chair near the stove. Ruth had forgotten she was in the room. “We have to get out of this godforsaken place before something else happens. Any idiot can see that.” She stumbled once in her march toward the bed. “Leaving’s not an option.” Thomas looked over at Ruth. “At least not yet.” “I’m not about to be the cause of putting all of you in danger,” she told him. She sat up and managed to swing her legs over the edge of the bed before an explosion of coughing took hold of her. “It’s not because of you,” Thomas said, when her spasms ended. “It would be too much risk; we’d be out in the open much of the way down canyon. That would give him clear shots from the top.” He came over and stood between Cally and Ruth’s bed. “Now you stay still and get better,” he told Ruth. “You’re going to need that strength.”

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“That’s ridiculous,” Cally said. “We could leave at night.” “Not in this much snow,” he said. “Don’t tell me what I can do. Who do you think you are?” Cally spat, abandoning all pretense. “You . . . you’re just some damn buck my daughter picked up for sport. Don’t you dare presume to think you’re part of this family. You don’t even live here—and thank god for that.” “Go, then, if you want to,” Thomas said coldly, his eyes as hard as obsidian. “It’s almost dark now. But you’ll go alone.” “I’ll take these kids with me if I choose. You can’t stop me. They’re my grandchildren and no relation to you.” Swaying slightly, Cally started toward the bunk bed where J.B. and Maddie watched her transformation with wide eyes. Thomas took her by the arm, jerked her to a halt. “You’ll do no such thing,” he said, letting go of her arm. “Now sit over in that chair until you sober up and get your senses back.” “Why, you—” She reached up to claw his face, but he caught her by the wrists and backed her to the chair, flung her into it. Ruth flooded with a stunned gratitude. Shocked into submission, Cally sat glaring at Thomas from the chair. The cabin remained silent through most of the evening. With not much left to say, they were quiet with their own thoughts. She felt Thomas’s protection as he draped a cloth over the windows so they would not be seen by candlelight. Maddie heated the chicken soup and biscuits for supper. Afterward, J.B. set up Cally’s cot, while Thomas got down his bearskin and stuffed the stove with wood for the night. Once the candles were blown out, Ruth lay in the dark, annoyed by her mother’s loud whiskey snores. She’d been snoring like that every night, but Ruth had been too ill to understand the cause—or to care to. Tonight her own breath was coming easier, she realized, and for that she was grateful. She relaxed into the rhythm of it, and, after a while, dropped off into sleep.

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The next morning, Cally seemed unaware that anything had changed—as if she had never uttered a venomous word nor been put in her place by Thomas. Ruth kept waiting for the old Cally to reemerge and chase away the grandmother at the stove, whipping up pancakes for children who watched her with wary eyes. She seemed not to notice their caution, either. Could it really be that Cally didn’t remember any of it? Ruth wondered just where her mother was keeping that damned whiskey. Now that she felt better and more awake, she would keep her eyes open until she found out. Later the cabin emptied when Cally went out to the outhouse, and Maddie and J.B. were helping Thomas bring in wood. Ruth rifled through her mother’s suitcase in the corner. But Cally was too smart for that. Ruth scrambled back to her bed so she wouldn’t get caught. When Cally still hadn’t come in a few minutes later, Ruth slipped out of bed again and felt around the back of shelves and behind the canisters, then searched all the dresser drawers until she heard Cally fumbling at the door latch. She stopped and began stuffing wood into the stove as Cally came into the cabin. “You shouldn’t be up, daughter,” she said. “I didn’t nurse you back to health just to have you make yourself sick again.” “I’m better now,” Ruth told her, although she was dizzy and could already feel her legs weakening. And she did have a hazy memory of her mother there at her bedside, nursing her. But Ruth knew it was Thomas who’d made the difference. She remembered also, though vaguely, as though she’d dreamed it, Cally’s voice telling her that she couldn’t dare die and leave her snowed in in this wasteland. When Cally came to the stove to ease Ruth away, Ruth smelled whiskey. “Starting early, aren’t you?” Ruth stood staring at the big coat that Cally hadn’t taken off. “So what if I am? What business is it of yours?” Cally plunked into the chair and pulled the coat tight around her. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Ruth. You have a fondness for the stuff yourself.”

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“I don’t turn into a raging witch when I imbibe.” “More like a raging whore, if I remember, opening your legs to any man around. You never were too choosy—though I guess it takes some kind of wild savage to satisfy you.” “Give me that goddam bottle, you foulmouthed bitch.” Ruth reached down and yanked at her mother’s coat, stabbed her hand into one of the deep outside pockets before succumbing to the cough that seemed to spew forth from her very core, phlegm flying onto Cally’s coat collar. “Oh, disgusting. Let go of my coat!” Cally shouted, rising from the chair and trying to shake Ruth loose. “Talk about foulmouthed.” Cally jerked her coat out of Ruth’s reach, but Ruth dove one hand into the other front pocket, found it empty too. Her cough now completely out of control, Ruth sank to her knees in front of the stove, doubled up with deep, hacking spasms. She gave herself over to the convulsions that racked her again and again, felt as if she would expel her very lungs out onto the cold cement floor of her kitchen. Ruth heard the cabin door open, then felt Thomas lift and carry her to the bed. Maddie handed her a rag she took with shaking hands. She felt herself wrapped in something warm, something soothing and very heavy. It wasn’t until her baying subsided that she realized it was Thomas’s grizzly skin, and that he’d propped himself against the wall behind her on the bed, held it around her with his arms. His presence surrounded her, like a great furnace that radiated not only heat but strength. She stayed quiet, let it envelop and seep into her. It wasn’t until Maddie brought her tea that she could manage a hoarse whisper. “I thought I was better,” she said, taking the cup her daughter had brought. Her hands were barely shaking now. “I’m sick of just languishing here.” “What were you doing up?” Thomas loosened one of the arms he had around her so she could take a sip. “Trying to find that damn whiskey,” she said, keeping her voice

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low. “I looked everywhere, even in her coat pockets. Maybe it’s in the outhouse somewhere.” Thomas rested his palm on her forehead. “At least the fever isn’t back.” “I thought—” “Shhhh.” He brought his finger to her lips. “Stay quiet. You are better—but you have to keep still for another day or so or you won’t be.” Once she’d finished her tea, Thomas teased his body out from under hers without disturbing the grizzly skin, which he pulled tight around her as he stood by the side of her bed. Already she felt his absence acutely; with her eyes, she tried to pull him back to her. Yet his smile told her he wouldn’t go far. When he and the children went out to bring in more wood, Ruth felt strong enough to get up and use the slop jar. She was dismayed at how soon dizziness returned. As she crawled back to her bed, she was relieved to see that her mother had leaned against the wall and fallen asleep in the chair. Ruth curbed an urge to walk over and push the monster against the stove instead. She slept on and off most of the day. Woke for cups of tea and trips to the slop jar. Sometime in the night she became aware of Thomas beside her under the grizzly skin—fully dressed, of course, she noted, smiling inwardly as she snuggled up against the comfort of him. It was two more days before she felt ready to get up and make her own coffee, though this time she knew better and resisted her impulse for independence. She even made herself ignore Cally when the woman came to Ruth’s bedside to deride her as an ingrate, her breath so pungent from drink that Ruth couldn’t help but wave away the fumes with one hand. At that rate, at least the bottle should be empty soon, Ruth mused. “Don’t give me that look, you little snitch. You’d like some yourself, wouldn’t you?” Cally swayed and dropped heavily into the

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chair by the bed. “What’s the matter? Afraid he wouldn’t like it if you did?” Ruth turned her head and looked out the window, watched Thomas and J.B. walking back toward the cabin, noticed how they kept out view of Rocky Mountain, then bent over and lowered themselves to the level of the snowbank beside the path when they got near the front of the cabin. She saw also that the height of the path’s bank had dropped considerably in the last few days of sun. “I deserve some reward for nursing you,” Cally continued. “Ingrate, that’s what you are. Besides, how else in hell could I survive being cooped up in this wilderness with you and your . . . your . . . And don’t think you can keep your little secret forever, daughter.” Ruth threw off her blanket and swung her legs over the edge of the bed just as the cabin door opened and Thomas and her children came in. Cally jerked up from the chair and began backing away while J.B. latched the door. Maddie walked in front of her carrying a dishpan of snow over to the melt tub. Ruth was on her feet and heading for her mother’s throat by the time Thomas had dumped his wood into the bin and returned to Ruth’s bed. He stepped between her and Cally, stood glaring down at the woman. Her mother made a face at him and huffed across the cabin. He turned to Ruth, and the understanding on his face helped calm her beating heart. Not now, his expression said. Ruth sank back onto the bed, put aside her determination to throw her mother out into the snow and latch the door behind her—but only for the time being. It was later, when they were eating leftover jerky stew for lunch, that they heard the whinnying of horses. In the distance, but definitely whinnying. Thomas bolted to the window for John’s .30-30, then to the cabin door. He stepped out and closed it behind him. Ruth reached under the bed for the shotgun. “Maddie, throw me my pants,” she ordered. “There in the top drawer. J.B. take the .22. Get behind the dresser by that window till I get there.” Catching hold

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of the pants, she tugged them on over her pajamas, grabbed a sweater from the hook near the door to put over her pajama top, then took J.B.’s place at the window. “I told you we had to get out of this place,” Cally said. “Now we’re trapped inside with a madman out there.” “I doubt it’s him. I don’t think he’d have horses,” Ruth said, remembering the time David Stone rode up to rescue her in a snowstorm. “But we can’t take any chances.” David wouldn’t think of rescuing her these days, she knew, but she didn’t know who else might ride up this canyon on a horse—horses from the sound of it. “There’s five of them,” Thomas said from outside the door. “Looks like Daggett and his crew of Modajee deputies.” Relief flooded through her. Who would have thought she would ever be glad to see that awful man? But now they could tell him about John’s murder and about the man hiding on the mountain. Give Daggett something to do besides chase poor Martha. The cabin door opened and Thomas stepped back inside, closed the door. “They’re coming at quite a clip,” he said. “I don’t like it.” “Don’t like what? Now we can—” “What do you suppose is important enough to bring them up here in this snow? And on horseback. In another week, the sheriff ’s van could have made it.” He leaned the rifle next to the door, stood there contemplating. “I’ll put on water for coffee.” Ruth walked toward the stove. “They’ll be frozen from the ride.” She felt a bit light-headed but not so much as the day before. Her cough had eased up too—no wonder after all the coughing tea they’d been filling her with day and night. When she heard the horses in the yard, Ruth started toward the door to greet them, but was almost knocked aside by the door as it flew open when she got near it. Daggett and two of the Modajees strode in, pistols out—and cocked, she quickly observed. One of them was the tattooed man Martha had said was Jackson’s cousin.

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“Just what do you think you’re—” Ruth managed, but stopped when she saw that Daggett’s and the two Modajee deputies’ guns were pointed at Thomas’s chest. One of the Modajees snatched John’s rifle from beside the door, picked up the shotgun from her bed. The tattooed Modajee kept his rifle against Thomas’s chest. “She’s here too somewhere. I’m sure of it.” Daggett nodded at the deputy with the rifles, who began to search under beds and behind the few pieces of furniture in the room. “Well, well, just who do you suppose this is?” Daggett asked, walking toward Cally in the chair. She had wrapped herself tightly in her coat and put a dark scarf over her head, kept her face turned toward the wall. “Don’t tell me you keep Naubel disguised, even way up here.” He snatched the scarf from her head. His face registered disappointment, then what looked like recognition. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “This is a surprise.” The other two Modajees burst in then. “No sign of anyone else outside,” one said, shaking his head. “Maybe not, but look what I’ve found. The fire queen.” Daggett laughed. “So maybe they aren’t hiding Naubel after all—but this is that madam from Nevada they’ve been looking for. The one who started the fire and burned down half the district.” He pulled Cally up from the chair. Daggett turned to Ruth. “Unsavory company for children. A madam and a murderer.” He nodded at Thomas. “Two murderers, counting the one that’s missing.” “What are you saying? Thomas isn’t a murderer.” Beside herself, Ruth watched as one of the Modajees searched under and around her children’s blankets while they sat shivering on their bunks. He pulled out the .22 from behind J.B.’s bunk. “Did you think we wouldn’t find that old man’s body?” Daggett said. “The one you hid in that cooling cave. Your tracks led us straight up here.” “Then you must have seen two sets of tracks. One went up the

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North Fork, not here,” Thomas said quietly. “That’s where the murderer went.” The Modajees exchanged glances. Daggett shoved Cally back in the chair and strode over to Thomas. “Shut it, scarface,” the sheriff said. Ruth’s breath caught as he lifted his pistol, poked it into the medicine man’s belly. “I got you dead to rights. You’re not gettin’ out of this with any cockamamie story.” He holstered the gun, nodded toward Cally. “Take her out,” he told one of the deputies. “But it’s true. The killer went up the North Fork,” Ruth started to explain. “He’s hiding somewhere on Rocky Mountain. He’s some soldier who—” Daggett snorted. “Why, sure he is. Turn around,” he told Thomas. The tattooed Modajee stuck his rifle in Thomas’s back. “Take her too,” Daggett told another of the Modajees. “Be sure to bind the whore tight. She may have got away from my brother Butch in Nevada, but she ain’t getting away from this Daggett.” He walked over and pushed his face close to Ruth’s. “And don’t think I’m letting you off, either. Harboring criminals. And I suspect it’s you behind the whole thing.” He swung her around and gave her a nudge toward the door. J.B. slid down from the top bunk, stood beside Maddie, who got up the minute Daggett went after her mother. “Too bad we can’t take these two in as well,” the sheriff called out over his shoulder as he marched Ruth toward the door. “They’ll be committing crimes of their own soon enough.” He pushed her toward one of the deputies and headed for the outhouse. A coughing spasm came on as the Modajee lifted Ruth and threw her behind the saddle on Daggett’s horse, began binding her hands. She could only hang there choking and hacking, her stockinged feet on one side, head on the other, the way her mother drooped helplessly on another horse, already bound behind one of the Modajees. His tattooed companion had just begun looping a rope around Thomas’s hands and waist so he could pull him along behind his

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horse when Ruth heard the shot, saw the Modajee spin around and fall facefirst through the tough crust of snow. Thomas dropped beside him. Then another shot, and the Modajee in front of her mother jerked upward and slid off his horse. The horse took off down canyon at a run, bounding through the snow crust, Cally sliding and bouncing behind the saddle as she screamed bloody murder. The Modajee who was tying Ruth’s hands abandoned the rope and ran into her cabin, the other deputy right behind him. Maddie and J.B. stepped back from the door to let them inside. Ruth tried wriggling and squirming to get off the back of the horse. Another shot and the horse reared, landing her in the snow in front of Thomas, who had been working his way toward her. They squirmed out of the way when the horse went over on its side, legs thrashing in air, then still. The other horses ran off down canyon. “Stay down,” Thomas told her. Hands still bound in front of her, Ruth scoop-crawled after him toward the cabin door. But the two Modajees inside had latched it and didn’t respond when they pounded their fists on the bottom. Another shot zang out. Ruth looked over her shoulder in time to see Daggett jump back into the privy and pull the door closed. Two more shots came from the mountain, slammed against the wooden side of the outhouse. They heard the sheriff yell out. Keeping below the level of the path’s bank, Ruth crawled behind Thomas around to the far side of the cabin, and the two of them crouched against its rock wall. Ruth shook from cold and shock as Thomas unbound her wrists, but at least her cough had eased some. She stood and looked in the window, knocked to get her children’s attention. The Modajee who had been holding her children back from opening the front door let go, and they rushed to the window. J.B. snapped the latch and lifted the pane. Thomas boosted her inside, climbed in after her. Neither Modajee did anything to stop them. Their faces appeared as frozen with fear as the static hate lines tat-

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tooed on Jackson’s cousin’s face, now buried in the snow outside. Neither deputy had a rifle with him. “The .30-30,” Thomas said. “Where is it?” “Out there, I guess,” one said. “In the snow with the others.” Ruth’s heart dropped toward her knees, both of which failed her when Thomas unlatched the front door, and she sank down on her cot. “Stop. Don’t go out there,” she cried, but he was already on his belly outside the front door, snaking his way toward a fallen deputy. Suddenly, Maddie was beside her on the cot. Ruth reached out and pulled her daughter to her. They held tight to each other as they watched Thomas’s long body glide along the icy path, his dark hair shimmering in the sunlight. Even the Modajee deputies stared at him with fascination from the open doorway. Ruth thought her heart might stop entirely when Thomas paused and raised his head slightly to look into the snow beside the dead deputy for the rifles. She was acutely aware that his hair now covered the same spot as Jim’s when he lay dead, the same spot the pinyon cast that summer shadow. Not again, she pleaded inwardly, oh please not again, positive that a shot would ring out from the mountain to drop him there where her lover’s body had lain. Then Thomas wriggled on and she could breathe again. He was almost to the place the horses had been when another shot did come, this one loud and close, then another and another. The windowpane facing the mountain exploded, glass scattering across the dresser and over the floor. Thomas raised up with the rifles, onto his feet but bent low, running toward the door. Another shot boomed as he crossed the threshold. Ruth heard the crack of wood in the pinyon next to the cabin. J.B. slammed the door shut and latched it behind him. “He’s only a little way up the mountain now—heading for the wash, it looks like,” Thomas said. “Stay down.” He threw Ruth the shotgun, handed one of the deputies a rifle, kept John’s .30-30 for

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himself. Ruth began to cough as she loaded the shotgun, the cabin air now cold from the lack of a pane. Maddie handed her a jacket. Yanking the dresser from the window, Thomas crept below the windowsill with the .30-30, rising occasionally to glance at the mountain with the binoculars. The Modajee deputies kept watch out the far-facing window—safely removed from the side where the killer was coming down Rocky Mountain, Ruth noted. She was surprised, though, to see one of the deputies keep motioning to J.B. and Maddie to stay down, as the children huddled together on the bottom bunk, where the lower stone walls of the cabin protected them. Ruth had never been gladder about spending all those months lifting rocks in the hot sun. “There,” Thomas said suddenly. “Just across the wash by that bluff.” He dropped the binoculars and raised the rifle, squeezed the trigger. The sound of his shot rocked the room inside: two shots echoed in return from outside, one slamming a metallic thud of lead against the low stone wall across from the window, the other splintering the wooden plank of the section above it. More shots splatted against the outside the cabin, some ricocheting off its rocks. Ruth heard the far window being unlatched, looked over in time to see one of the Modajees climb out. The one who had motioned to the children glanced over at J.B. and Maddie. “Keep down,” he told them, then climbed out and let the pane fall shut behind him. Ruth could see them creeping from bush to bush toward the mountain opposite the one the danger came from. “Good riddance,” Thomas said. “It’s easy for him to keep out of view now that he’s close,” he said. “Be ready. If I miss, he’ll try for the windows or door to get in. He’ll come in shooting, most likely. You two better get under that bunk now, scoot way under, out of sight from that far window, just in case.” Then Ruth was shocked to see him follow the Modajees out the win-

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dow. Relief followed as she watched him duck around the back of the pinyon, catch hold of a branch and swing himself up and out of view. Ruth positioned herself in the corner across from the door, ready to blast the shotgun the minute the killer dared set a foot in her doorway or poke a head in sight of either window. Her hands threatened to shake with fear and cold, but she willed them to stay steady, somehow calmed the wild pounding of her heart. Her children would be protected only by what happened next. She couldn’t afford to panic.

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chapter twenty-eight

J.B.

wriggled closer to the front edge of the under-

bunk, while Maddie stayed back against the wall. From near the edge, he could see Thomas’s head and one shoulder about halfway up the pinyon. Thomas had John’s rifle propped in the crook of a branch. His eyes squinted as he watched for the dove killer. But the man had killed more than doves now. The thought of John Olsen’s body somewhere wrapped in a blanket made J.B.’s eyes burn. And the man had killed those deputies out in the yard too. Even one of their horses. “Thomas said to stay back against the wall, J.B.,” Maddie whispered. When he looked back he saw that she had curled up into herself. “I can see Thomas from here,” he whispered. “I want to watch

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what he does.” He wasn’t going to stay hidden like a small child. “I wish he gave me the .22 instead of that Modajee.” “A .22’s no good when someone has an army gun.” “Better than no gun.” J.B. scooted back a bit from the bed’s edge. “Hush up, so I can listen for him,” Ruth hissed from across the room. J.B. tried to listen too, but his heart pounded so loud in the quiet that he could hardly hear anything else, let alone the crunch of feet in the snow outside. He kept wondering just how the cabin could be made safer from bullets. But it was hard to think or even see straight. Everything looked just out of focus, the way it did for a second after he rubbed his eyes real hard. Only he couldn’t get it to come in sharp again. And he hadn’t rubbed his eyes. There had to be something he could do to help. He spotted the hunting knife on the table and was about to crawl over and get it when several shots boomed through the room. Lead cracked into the wooden door and planks above it. The shots stopped and his heart pounded out so loud it filled the whole cabin. More shots roared in his ears. He couldn’t tell how many or from where they came. J.B. saw his mother stand, her mouth moving like she was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her. She unlatched the front door and kicked it open. He saw her body rocked back by the shots as she fired, watched her step inside, duck behind the rock wall beside the door. She broke open the shotgun and shoved in more shells. J.B. saw the soldier, then, tall and skinny in his uniform, as he ran from behind the big boulder to the back of the outhouse. He had one rifle in his hands, another hanging behind his shoulder. When he reached the privy, he leaned out from behind it, lifted the rifle and pointed it toward their open door. Maddie jerked his shirt so hard a button popped off. “Get back, J.B.,” she yelled, and he squirmed back next to her against the rock wall.

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“I’m here, Mad,” he said, patting her. Bullets crashed against pots and pans. The glass jar of flour on the table flew apart, knocking off the hunting knife. Then his mother stuck the shotgun out the door and fired both barrels without moving from behind the rock wall. She pulled her arms back in, broke open the shotgun to reload it. Suddenly J.B. saw him again, this time leaping through the snow as he ran from the outhouse toward the open front door. Saw his eyes opened so wide they were mostly white with a circle of dark in the middle. Then the soldier jerked around in midair, got knocked back twice before he tumbled sideways into the snow. J.B. hardly heard the shots through the ringing in his ears. Ruth ran out the front door with the shotgun. He thought more shots came as he wiggled out from under the bunk but he wasn’t sure. So many were echoing in his head. He felt Maddie behind, scrambling after him. She caught up by the time he got to the door. He grabbed hold and held on to her. He wasn’t sure which of them was shaking. He felt numb to the bone. Bodies darkened the snowy yard. Bright red blood splotched the snow everywhere. J.B. watched someone who looked like Thomas pick up the m-1, bring it over and lean it against the cabin wall next to the doorway, where he and Maddie stood. He drew away from the big gun, pulled Maddie away from it too. The man had the same face as Thomas, the same bear claw scars across the cheek. A woman who looked very much like his mother walked over to this man, and his arms closed around her. They were both crying. When they let go of each other and walked together toward the doorway, J.B. wanted to run toward them and away from them at the same time. He looked down at Maddie, who didn’t seem quite like Maddie either. The woman put her arms around them both. J.B. pulled away, ready to run somewhere that was real, but he didn’t know where that would be. Maybe the story-making place. Then the face like Thomas’s

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came close to his own; its dark eyes caught hold and held his gaze. J.B. felt himself getting right again, as if he’d been turned upside down, spun around for a long time, and was just now set steady on his feet. “It’s over, J.B. The killer’s dead now,” Thomas said, and this time J.B. knew the man was really Thomas. “I have to go make ni’itabe tea for us now,” his sister said in a strange thin voice. Her eyes were fat with tears. “In a minute you can, Maddie,” his mother said. She pulled J.B. and Maddie to her body and crushed them tight against her until he could feel their warmth gathering together. His heartbeat got slow and quiet again. Thomas stood watching with that look he had before he chanted. Then he turned and walked to the outhouse. “He’s still alive in here,” Thomas shouted a minute later, “but barely.” He appeared in the outhouse doorway, holding up that sheriff. “J.B., give me a hand getting him inside.” Ruth loosened her grip on him. J.B. looked around at the dead bodies in the yard, at the horse on its side, its legs frozen as if it still were galloping away. He stared down at the tall, skinny man in army clothes. His body was twisted onto its back. His eyes were fixed wide into the sky. But the soldier didn’t have a man’s face at all. It was a boy’s face, looked just a little older than his own. And he looked so small. Was this what a killer looked like, then? J.B. couldn’t take his eyes away from the blood spreading into the snow beneath the soldier’s body as he watched. “J.B. I could use some help here.” J.B. let go of Ruth and Maddie and ran toward Thomas. He dodged between the bodies, leapt high over spots of bloodstained snow in his way. He felt lighter now, almost happy, because everything was real again.

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chapter twenty-nine

S

he made ni’itabe tea for them every day now. Not just because

they were all sad about John. But because what happened that day was bigger than sadness. They seemed okay on the outside, but Maddie could feel something bleeding inside her. She knew it must be the same with the others. She understood now that it was all part of that same story. A very bad story. The doves blown apart in the willows and the pile of dead animals on the mountain. John Olsen killed and the bodies in front of the cabin. The owls on the mountain had warned her. The talking about war on that new radio was part of the story too. It put so many bad words in the air. Words made themselves into terrible stories. Not just English words, either. That night they’d

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heard the Japanese voices. The next day radio words told a story of big ships blown up somewhere. She’d never seen a ship, except in pictures. Thomas told her German voices were on the radio, too, but we couldn’t hear them. Maddie didn’t know what a German voice was until Thomas said some German words right at her. “Don’t worry, Ta’ha, those are only words about food,” he told her. “Good words. The kind I learned when I was over there.” Thomas understood what word stories could do better than anyone. She hoped he would stay with them now that he was sleeping in the bed with Ruth. “I wish Yuiatei stories were on the radio too,” she’d said. “Yuiatei have good words. They tell better stories.” He only smiled at her. Maddie had even made the tea for that sheriff when he was able to drink it. He was too sick with gunshot at first, and it took a long time for Thomas to heal him. She was glad when Thomas finally drove him away in the Model A after the snow melted. She wanted to make sadness tea for Chi Chi too, but for a long time she didn’t know where her grandmother had gone on that horse. Now she knew that Chi Chi was living down at that Spirit Center. Thomas said she didn’t want to come back. Ruth didn’t want her back anyway. Maddie knew her grandmother got mean with whiskey, but she still liked to have her around sometimes. Lots of people acted bad with whiskey, the way Jackson did. And she’d seen Ruth get mean on whiskey too, sometimes. But not as mean as Chi Chi. She was glad Ruth wasn’t drinking it anymore. Always before, when bad things happened, she went out to the story-making place with J.B. and made them right. They made the bad stories into good ones again. But this story was way too big, and she didn’t know what to do with it. J.B. said there was nothing he knew how to build that could change it. Maddie thought they had to try, but he wouldn’t listen to her. Why did he always think he had to build something to change a story?

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“We have to do it, J.B.,” she’d told him, when they came across the wash to the i’kitswa place this morning. “Remember how Thomas said everything could have gone worse?” She stopped, pushed that worse story out of her head—that picture of them all shot and bloody on the cabin floor while the dove killer took over their cabin. She didn’t want to put it out into the world. “It’s too big for us, Mad,” he said. “Just too big.” Then he went back to the cabin to help Thomas. After he left, Maddie moved the canvas flap away from the ki’takii doorway and went inside. Some of the cattails had fallen from the walls and she picked them up and tucked them back with the rest. Dry willow leaves had come loose from the ceiling and lay scattered on the mat floor. She brushed them into her hand and left them in a pile outside the door. How long had it been since she’d thought about fixing up the story place? Maybe it needed to be healed the way a body does when it gets hurt. Maddie sat quietly on the mat and closed her eyes. She tried to picture everything back like it used to be. But it hurt her to do it all alone. The sound of shots and those bodies kept creeping in. She felt her hot tears turn cold as they ran down her cheeks. She didn’t try to stop them from dripping onto her coat. They just kept pouring out and out and out of her. She pulled a rag from her pocket and blew her nose on it. The tears kept coming until they were used up and no more came. She felt quiet inside again. Maddie listened to the thuds of wood being chopped, to Thomas’s and J.B.’s sometimes talking. Ruth calling out that lunch was ready. Chickadees chittering in a pinyon near her. She was thinking about answering the birds, when she heard, faint and far away, a quiet voice in the wind. A low hum hardly louder than a cloud floating past. It seemed a long time since she’d paid attention to that voice. Maddie stilled herself more, so she could hear what it had to tell her.

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The hum wasn’t a song story exactly because it had no words. But maybe it was where all the song stories came from. It seemed to come from everywhere. She could hear in it the whine of pines on the mountains, and the gruff scruffy voices of cat’s-claw and sagebrush. The muffled whistle of Joshua-tree spines and the rough rustle of scrub oak leaves. The mountain’s rocks too, the way they swallowed up the sounds around them, added a hush to the softly moving air. Of course the sounds from all the trees and bushes came from those rocks, she remembered. So maybe what she heard was the rocks and wind talking to each other, telling their stories. Maddie crawled to the ki’takii door, stuck her head out to hear better. But the voices weren’t as clear there. They sounded all mixed up, so she crawled back in and sat where she had first heard them. The voices were as bright as before. So very quiet, but clear as the crystals in quartz that she sometimes held up to the sunlight. She wondered if the ki’takii was bringing them to her the way that radio picked out those voices hidden in the air. Maddie heard Ruth call her for lunch again but didn’t move from her place on the mat. She sat there for a long time. Imagined herself into soft sand and the voice into a fine spray of water soaking into her. She didn’t hear it saying anything new—nothing voices hadn’t told her before. But she understood better now. She was one of the rocks’ stories too, they all were. Just like everything around her—the plants, and animals. It made her happy to know she was one of the rocks’ stories. She just had to keep her story right. Maddie pictured herself carved into the stones up on the mountain by the lake like the figures of lions and deer. Then the pile of animals came into her head, and the Modajee bodies in front of the cabin. And the big splotch of blood on the snow around that horse. The soldier she had been so afraid of lying there in the snow, looking as small and helpless as she felt. She thought about John Olsen when they threw handfuls of dirt

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on him. Thomas and J.B. shoveled the rest. Did all that come out of the rocks’ story? But people could change a story too, make it go wrong. Just like when Ruth made a bowl or olla with clay. Sometimes it got all lopsided or caved in if she wasn’t careful. Maybe people could get their stories lopsided too. She closed her eyes again and listened to the wind. She wondered if she could hear John’s voice separate from everything else. She knew his story was mixed in with the rest of the canyon’s song. So was the horse’s and those Modajee deputies’ buried across the wash. Maybe if she learned to listen even better, she would be able to hear John Olsen there. Maybe Kate and Grandmother Siki. “Maddie, where are you?” She heard J.B.’s feet crunching through the sand around the story-making place, heard him walk by the ki’takii, then stop and come back. His head poked around the canvas door flap. “There you are. Ruth says you need to come out of the cold now. Besides, she said she needs you to make more ni’itabe tea. Her leg hurts.” He came over and sat in front her. J.B. didn’t say anything else, but took a cloth out of his pocket, opened it between them. Maddie looked down at the slice of mesquite bread spread thick with pinyon nut butter he’d brought. “She said you might like this,” he told her. Maddie couldn’t help but smile, thinking of Ruth taking the time to crack each little pinyon nut, then mash them all together with honey and chia. She knew how much Maddie liked it, though it took forever to make. She picked up the slice of bread and bit into it, let the sweetness melt against her tongue before she chewed. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” her brother told her. “About something we could build to change that bad story. Maybe, but I’m not sure what it is yet.” “Maybe we don’t need to build anything new,” Maddie told him. “Maybe that story is too bad to build for, like you said. Maybe we can

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start fixing up all the little stories we made. So they’ll be strong again. Little stories make up the big story.” She took another bite. “And the stuff you built to make them. We can fix it, too,” Maddie said. “Like this ki’takii all falling apart. And your court building. Some other ones too. Maybe we can’t just make stories and build things, then forget to take care of them.” J.B. sat watching her chew. With this bite she remembered to think about each story baked into the bread as she tasted it—and the spread she loved, how the pinyons grew their nuts and gave them up, how the honeybees put honey together after drinking the sweet flower juice, the way chia plants released their seeds into her hand when she bent and shook their dry bulbs. Each bite needed time to appreciate. “The buildings are kind of falling apart. Sure, we could fix them up again,” J.B. said. “But I don’t know how fixing them will change anything.” “Not just fix the buildings. The stories too, J.B.” “That’s silly. How do you fix stories? Besides, in a way, the buildings are the stories.” Maddie shook her head. “That’s what I mean, J.B. The buildings make us think that because we can see them there. We can’t see the stories. We have to make sure we remember the stories right, so they don’t fall apart inside us like this ki’takii.” J.B. rolled his eyes. “How can anyone ever understand what you mean? You always have to make everything so . . . so complicated. So hard to figure out.” But she could tell by the way he screwed up his face and stared at the ki’takii wall that he was thinking about what she said. That was good because she wasn’t exactly sure what she meant either. But she knew it was true. “Okay, then,” he said, a little later. He stood, reached up to the ceiling and tucked back a loose cattail. “Let’s go back to the cabin now, Maddie.”

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She got to her feet and followed him out of the ki’takii. As she stepped out the door, a tiny gust whipped up the pile of willow leaves and scattered them into the air, then let go and left them to float back to the earth around the story-making place. One drifted down in front of her. She reached out and let it fall into her palm. Maddie studied its shape as it lay like twisted paper against her skin. She thought about the way the leaf must have looked when they cut the willow bough and wove it into the ceiling, straight and green and heavy with sap. “Come on, Mad,” J.B. called back. He was already starting across the wash. She blew a gust of breath into her palm that sent the leaf back out into the air, where it made its way down slowly, finally settling onto the ground. A squirrel fussed at her from the top of a boulder pile, and she fussed right back at it. Sent it scurrying into a crevice. Maddie laughed, took off running. She caught up with her brother, passed him just before they reached the cabin door.

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chapter thirty

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ach time Ruth returned from the week she spent at the hos-

pital in San Bernardino every month, Glory Springs felt like that much more of a miracle. Breathing the canyon’s sweet air seemed to clean away some of the suffering she faced while nursing the sick and wounded in the city. Today her drive up the rut road felt especially poignant—it had been a hard week—and she was eager to settle in with Thomas and her children until her shift next month. She needed to forget about the bodies she saw mangled like the animals piled up on Rocky Mountain last fall. Only these bodies were still alive. She fought to keep as many of them that way as she could. Of course, her job as a practical nurse wasn’t entirely noble. It served a practical purpose for her as well, bringing in just enough

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money to take care of bare essentials. She only hoped the Model A would hold out for a few more trips without repairs until picking season started. Then Thomas would bring in money, too. Maybe she could get the motor overhauled again. On a nostalgic whim, Ruth drove into the old Olsen homestead and walked over to John Olsen’s grave. She plucked from her hair the lupine that she’d stopped to pick along the road and laid it near the big chunk of onyx they’d used for his headstone. Wilted as her tribute was, she knew he would understand. For her, he had been the war’s first casualty. When she pulled into the yard at her cabin, she was surprised to find that the flatbed truck was not there. She had finally gotten over the shock she got each time she came home to find John Olsen’s truck parked there. But her friend had had no family left, and she saw no reason not to confiscate it after he died, along with a few other things. She was sure he would have wanted it that way. Inside the cabin, she found Thomas’s note on the table, explaining that he and the children would be back sometime this afternoon. He said he would have a surprise for her when he returned. Puzzled, and a bit unsettled by the unexpected, Ruth filled the coffeepot with water and took it out to the campfire. But where in the world could they have gone? she wondered, as she laid in wood for the fire and struck a match to it. And just what kind of surprise did he mean? She shrugged and settled into a camp chair, guessed she would just have to wait to find out. Waiting had never been one of her virtues. Of course, she couldn’t claim to have many others, either, she laughed to herself. The moon lily plant by the pinyon caught her eye, and she smiled at how fast it was growing. When she left a week ago she could see only one thick shoot a few inches high; now the plant was well over a foot high, already branching out several directions. She looked forward to the time its beautiful blooms would appear to scent the evening air.

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The sound of water splashing into the campfire brought her back, and she got up to pour grounds into the pot. As she returned to her chair, her eye caught the shadow shape a few feet from the pinyon. She walked over to inspect it. How very odd, she thought with amazement. The shape of the shadow cast by the pine bough had changed this summer. It no longer looked anything at all like the spread of dark hair that had once covered the ground there. Of course no one but herself had seen it that way in the first place, and her friend Martha was the only one she’d told about it. Her throat caught at the thought of her missing friend, and she turned her attention back to the shape on the ground. What the shadow looked like now, she couldn’t quite say, though it seemed strangely familiar. Its outline was vague, seemed to thread outward in all directions, as if it were still developing. Numerous freckles of light dappled the dark blotch. She studied it hard, but nothing came to her. She thought about the figures etched into stone high on Rocky Mountain, the mystery of those stories set down in stone so long ago. But those were written by people who’d come to live on this land. Who, she wondered, was writing the story embodied in the shape of that shadow? The question unnerved her. She drew herself up and shook off the thought. Taking advantage of time alone and of the summer air, Ruth filled her largest stewpot and the rendering kettle with water and put them on the campfire to heat, then dragged the #10 tin tub into a sunny spot in the yard. The hot water did much to soothe the ache in her leg. She massaged her thigh muscles under the water, grateful that the leg had held up for yet another week. Grateful, too, that each time she returned to her hospital work, the leg was that much stronger. It had been Nicholas Ghosh who’d helped her make the connection with the hospital. He knew she needed the money—and the hospital was desperate for anyone with training. All hospitals were now, he said. Not that she remembered much about what she learned so

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many years ago in El Paso. But she dug out her old certificate, and that had been enough to get her the job. In fact, they had wanted her to work full-time, but with the situation so desperate, they accepted the week of double shifts once a month that she agreed to give them. Whatever it took to hold things together. She had to admit that spending a week a month with Nicholas was an added bonus for her—although she hadn’t seen much of him during the past week. He’d told her he had some important legal business to firm up. What a dear man he had turned out to be, despite all her indecision. Although she had taken the job because she had to earn some money, the idea of the nursing itself had still repulsed her. She’d gritted her teeth each time she went onto the floor. What a surprise when she began to find satisfaction in the work itself, enjoyed slipping in some of Maddie and Thomas’s remedies, ni’itabe tea and mansa leaves and such, to supplement her patients’ treatment. And bringing a bit of her canyon with her into the city helped sustain her as well as heal her patients. Yet while other nurses spoke of “contributing to the war effort,” she saw her work as undoing what the war had done, at least in a tiny way. Holding a few strands of the web together. And even though it might be a foolish idea, she liked to think that if she offered up a small portion of the life she had carved out here, it might keep her canyon life intact as well. After all, hiding from the so-called civilized world certainly hadn’t worked. The war wasn’t being called World War II for nothing. She knew now that that world had the power to reach in and grab her life by the throat if she wasn’t careful. It reached everywhere. Her will had no power over that. It was all a part of the same web that Thomas talked about. Not a part she was fond of. Sometimes she thought of the whole human world as a webwrecker, and she didn’t quite understand how something could be part of the web and its destroyer at the same time. Didn’t understand

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how people could turn against and kill each other. How they could rip up land without a thought for all they were killing on it. What kind of creature does such a thing? Bears and ants and other creatures just went about their business of being part of the web without a thought. Was thinking the problem, then? Yet it wasn’t thinking that had made her want to kill Charlie Stine after he’d raped her. And she’d wanted to do much more than just kill him—had wanted to skin him alive and watch ants eat his flesh. So she wasn’t that different from the rest of her kind. Ruth bent her knees and leaned back until the back of her head touched the surface of the water, leaned farther and submerged all but her face. Then she sat up and rubbed soap into her hair and scalp—vigorously, as if she could wash the troubling thoughts from her head. The sun was nearing the far ridges when she finally heard the sound of an engine straining up canyon. She pulled the pot of fresh water from the back of the campfire onto the flame and stood up to watch. When the flatbed rounded the bend, she saw that the old Yuiatei pickup Lem drove was right behind it. A moment later, Nicholas Ghosh’s Buick appeared behind that. Ruth took hold of the rock table to steady herself as dread crept over her. What had happened now? Now that her life had finally found some kind of balance again. Was it her children? Then she remembered what Thomas said about a surprise and calmed herself. Oh, couldn’t they drive any faster? The vehicles were barely crawling up the road. She had paced out to the road before Thomas turned into the yard—but her children weren’t beside him in the cab. Then she heard laughter and children’s voices, spotted them in the back of Lem’s pickup with Frank and Della and let out a huge breath of relief. When she looked into the Buick, her heart picked up pace again, and she was almost to the passenger side by the time the car stopped, Martha flinging open the door.

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Her chest near to bursting with joy, Ruth caught hold of her friend, pulled her tight to her, as if letting go might unravel whatever events had brought her back to Glory Springs. When Ruth finally stepped back and looked up, her head swarmed with questions. Thomas and Nicholas stood grinning at her. “How in god’s name . . . ?” she started, then looked at her friend, alarmed. “But are you still . . . I mean . . . is this legal? Will they come for you?” “I’m free,” Martha said. “I can hardly believe it.” “That’s right. She’s entirely free,” Nicholas said. “All the charges are dropped, even the escape charge.” “But . . . but . . . how?” “It’s a long story, Dlah’da,” Thomas said. “We’ll explain it over coffee.” He took her arm and led her toward the campfire, where Maddie was already stirring grounds into the pot. Ruth reached out and took Martha’s hand, pulled her along with them. It was hard to keep track of all the details of their story, with her eyes wandering back to feast on her friend’s face. Martha’s daughter, Lucy, had been in the Buick’s backseat all along, with her new baby. In the excitement, Ruth hadn’t even noticed her. Ruth also found it hard to believe that Sheriff Daggett had had the complete change of heart the men described. The idea of that bigot working with Thomas and Nicholas to get the charges dropped was simply beyond her imagining. Her view of the world just couldn’t incorporate such a thing, even though she knew Daggett had been grateful that Thomas had saved his life, healed him enough so the hospital could do the rest. Daggett’s view of the Yuiatei must certainly have changed after the Modajees deserted him. Could the medicine man’s care have healed more than the sheriff ’s body? The next thing she knew, they’d want her to invite the man to her campfire. Just the thought of it chilled her. “And what about Lucy?” Ruth asked her friend. Why had she come back? Had her marriage gone bad?

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“Her husband joined up,” Martha told her. “Lots of Navajo went into the war.” “He’s somewhere over there now,” Lucy said sadly. “His brother, too. I don’t want to stay way out on that rez without him. It’s too hard hauling all that wood and water so far. There’s not even electricity. Besides, the baby kept getting sick all the time.” Ruth decided not to remind Lucy that there wasn’t electricity at Glory Springs, either. “I’m glad you came home,” she said instead. “Clare pulled some strings and got Martha her old job back,” Nicholas said. “She’ll need an assistant now that she’s marrying Stone.” Clare will need more than that, Ruth thought, with some satisfaction, unless David had changed as much as Daggett seemed to have. When she saw David and Clare together at the general store, he appeared to be in charge of every item the woman put into her basket. But he was Clare’s problem now—though he still insisted on maintaining his connection with J.B., and continued to push him toward that architect at the Spirit Center. Yet J.B. did love being around the architect, so what else could she do? Sometimes it was hard to tell caring from control. And now Cally had been hired as the new manager of the place. . . . The idea of it tickled Ruth’s insides whenever she thought about it. If that there-are-no-accidents minister only knew who the woman was that fate had brought him tied to the back of a runaway pinto! She wondered just how Cally had reshaped her part in the story. Just wait until she got hold of a whiskey bottle! Yet it looked like Daggett wouldn’t be going after her, either. Unfortunately. But maybe even Cally deserved another chance—as long as it wasn’t at Glory Springs. They sat around the campfire sharing stories until the night chilled, then brought out blankets and sat some more. No one wanted to give up a moment of this gathering that seemed so much like old times. The children gave out first, curled up in their blankets and closed

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their eyes. It took longer for the adults to wind down, slowly, like the old clock Ruth had come to use when she worked at the hospital, a place where the sun was not in charge of the cycles people lived and died by. When she snuggled into a blanket herself, having given her cot to Martha and Lucy, Ruth still had no desire to sleep. There was too much around her to savor. Such perfect nights were precious and rare—fleeting, too, she’d learned. She wanted to treasure this one fully while it lasted—the way she’d seen Maddie appreciate her food and J.B. prize each building he saw. Above her, starlight flickered in and out between pine needles as branches swayed slightly in light wind. Like the branches, nothing stayed still for long. It wasn’t in the nature of things to last. Only change lasted, it seemed, but the idea didn’t sound logical. She wondered just what around her was changing even now, things she couldn’t feel or see. Something in her wanted to hold everything still, to keep it just the way it was tonight—or to change only the things she wanted changed. Too bad the world didn’t work that way. It turned out to be far more complex than she’d ever imagined. But, she reminded herself, these men beside her under the pinyon wouldn’t be with her if things had stayed the same. Nor would her children. She could scarcely bear the thought that they might not always be with her. But she knew it would be so. How lucky she was at the moment, though. Both men loved her, and to each she gave the part of herself that belonged to him, the essence that his nature called out. Yet there was something left over that was hers alone, that no child or lover would ever own. That was the part of her David Stone had wanted to control. Neither Thomas nor Nicholas intruded there. And she knew that someday even she would be gone, would not return each summer like the moon lily plant she loved. Knew too that somewhere far away people were killing each other, in a war infinitely bigger than the one that happened in her yard last summer—or the

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earlier one when Jim was killed. She still didn’t understand why those things happened, what they meant. They were part of something too large for her to know. She understood only that for now she had to reach out into the world and give back to it something of what she’d found here. All she could do was her own part. Ruth turned over onto her belly and propped her chin with her hands so she could see the dark outline of moon lily limbs. The slender stems were long enough now to begin weaving the pattern for the plant’s summer display. She reached out and ran her hand along a strand of the curving plant, tender and succulent beneath her fingers. It was never the exact same plant that came back; the returning mesh of limbs and leaves brought with them a shape different from the summer before. Like the shadow of pinyon bough, she thought, picturing its new mysterious shape. Then, as she imagined it, her mind began to find form in that nebulous web of shadow, to discover a design in the splashes of sunlight scattered within the dark schema of shade.

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acknowledgments

T

hanks to Carol Rawlings, Barbara Sassone, Mary Sojourner.

T. M. McNally, Joy Passanante, Jan McInroy, and Sheila Sanderson for the suggestions that made this a better book. I am grateful to Robin Kobaly for sharing her story, her knowledge, and her love of wild. Thanks also to Margaret Dalrymple, Joanne O’Hare, and the folks at the University of Nevada Press for midwiving the last of my trilogy into the world.

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