The Widow's Revenge (6 page)

“Good. So tell me—do you big-shot Ute tribal cops wear uniforms?”

“Sure we do.”

“What color?”

“Gray.”

She snorted. “Sounds to me like a damned Johnny Reb outfit.”

He managed a wan smile. “Why do you think they call us the
Southern
Utes?”

“Ha-ha!” Pause. “What was I talking about before you started yappin’ about uniforms?”

“You were telling me how you preferred a well-dressed state police officer to a shabby SUPD cop.”

“Oh, no I wasn’t—and don’t you be smart-mouthing me, Charlie Moon, or I’ll tell your aunt Daisy on you, and she’ll give you a whack on the bean with that big stick she leans on.” Pause. “Oh, now I remember. It was about them nasty witches. You strap that big pistol onto your hip, and pin your shiny policeman badge onto your shirt, and get down here soon as you can and
kill every last one of them sons of bitches!
”

“You really think that’s necessary?”

“Well of course I do! You know what they say: ‘The only good witch is a dead one.’ I want every last one of ’em planted under six feet of dirt!”

Moon tilted his head to gaze at the beamed ceiling. “I’m not allowed to shoot anybody before you fill out the appropriate form.”

“Form? What
are
you babbling about?”

“Official Complaint Form number 595, which is for requesting a legal killing. Line One is where you print your full name and Social Security number. On Line Two, the complainee—that’s you—specifies exactly what ordinances and/or tribal laws the alleged malefactors have broken that calls for summary capital punishment.”

“Well that’s the silliest damn thing I ever heard of.”

“Maybe so, but rules are rules, Loyola. I can’t go shooting a U.S. citizen
dead right on the spot unless they’ve committed a serious offense. Like spitting on the sidewalk without a signed permit or jaywalking in front of a yellow school bus or—”

“These witches kill innocent animals.”

“What kind of animals?”

She shouted in his ear, “They murdered my sweet little nanny goat!”

Moon sighed. Whenever one of Loyola’s animals died, she refused to accept the misfortune as a natural event. The Apache elder evidently felt compelled to place blame on a tangible something or someone. The culprit might be a suspiciously sinuous coil of smoke curling up from a neighbor’s chimney, an unspecified toxin that she supposed was seeping from the earth to pollute Ignacio Creek, lethal radiation from electric power lines, or, that most convenient scapegoat of all—a
witch
. “You absolutely sure that somebody killed your goat?”

“Oh, no—I guess it’s just as likely that poor Nancy tied her hind legs to the back-porch rafter, then slit her own gullet with that straight razor she carries in her hip pocket!”

Somebody strung up her goat and cut its throat?
Moon didn’t know what to make of this, and any response that might have been forming in his mind was interrupted by Loyola, who had just inhaled a fresh breath of air.

The words fairly spilled from her mouth: “And now they’ve killed and roasted a big pig. Wasn’t
my
pig, though—poor old Dora died years ago.”

“Dora?”

“Sure. You remember my old sow. The witches must’ve stolen their roasting pig from my neighbors. But slaughtering other folks’ livestock is just the start—these witches kill
people
too.”

“That’s a pretty serious charge.”

“Well it’s the truth. Just last night, I heard ’em talk about it with my own ears.” She paused to snicker a gleeful “hee-hee” before continuing. “I snuck out of the house and creeped up to their camp.” Loyola was sorely tempted tell Moon how she’d fired several .45 slugs at the trespassers, but thought it best to skip over a violent detail that might detract from her credibility. It seemed more prudent to emphasize the intelligence-gathering aspect of her adventure. “I listened to what they was jibber-jabbering
about. And guess what—that bunch of snakes was planning their next sacrifice!”

Moon arched an eyebrow. “Sacrifice?”

“Sure. That’s what witches do.”
For a grown man, Charlie Moon sure don’t know much.
“From what I was able to pick up, this particular bunch kills somebody about every twenty-nine days, and always right at the time when . . . when . . . what’s-her-name . . . oh, you know who I mean.”

“Afraid I don’t.”

“Oh, I remember now. White Bead Girl—that’s who I was trying to think of.” She added, in a snappish tone, “Just to be contrary, you Utes call her White Shell Woman.”

Moon smiled at the Apache elder’s reference to the moon.

“These witches sacrifice a human being when White Shell Woman has smeared her whole face with black mud.”

“The Dark of the Moon?”
That must be coming up pretty soon.

“That’s right. And those devils plan to murder somebody up north, close to where you live.” She hummed a few bars of “Dig a Hole in the Meadow.” “What
is
the name of that little jerkwater one-horse town?”

“The only town within forty miles of the Columbine is Granite Creek.”

“Yeah. That’s the burg all right.”

He laughed. “I expect it’s grown some since you were here.”

“Well I won’t dispute that.” The ninety-six-year-old snorted. “They invented TV and went to the moon since I’ve been twenty miles from my farm. But Granite Creek is where the witches’ next sacrifice will happen.”

Humoring the cantankerous old soul seemed the wisest course of action. “You’d better tell me all about it.”

Longer pause.

“Loyola?” Moon pressed the phone hard against his ear. “You okay?”

“Shhh—don’t disturb me. I’m trying to remember.” Her exasperated sigh seemed to breathe in his ear. “What’s that president’s name? The one I always admired so much.”

“Well I don’t know, Loyola.” Moon enjoyed a grin. “Us Southern Utes tend to favor Jefferson Davis.”

“Oh—that’s his name all right, but the other way around.” Charlie
heard Loyola stamp her foot. “Oh, you know the one I mean—the president with his face on the nickel.”

“Mr. Tom Jefferson?”

“That’s the one. What them witches plan will happen at Jefferson’s General Store—no, wait a minute. That’s not right.” Loyola groaned. “Oh, my mind gets all tangled up and I can’t remember what to
call
things.” Talking to herself, the aged woman muttered, “Alphabet soup . . . hammers and nails . . . buckets and pails . . . puppy dogs’ tails . . . sugar and spice and everything nice . . .”

Poor old woman. Maybe I should send a social worker out to see her.
Moon heard a tick-tick-tick. Wondered what it was.
Sounds like she’s clicking her false teeth.

Loyola Montoya rarely wore her dentures. She was tapping a yellow, No. 2 lead pencil on her kitchen table. “I got mixed up, Charlie. What was we talking about?”

The sad man sighed. Closed his eyes. “What the witches are planning to do in Granite Creek.”

“Oh, right. And it’s a regular coven—I counted about a dozen. And some of them—maybe the whole bunch—are right out of the funny papers, at least they
pretend
to be.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Sure as crab apples are sour. What I mean is, their
names
are from the funny papers. But you can put a stop to this nasty business before it commences, Charlie Moon. Oh, look at the time! I can’t talk all day—how soon can you get here?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“I could be stone cold dead by then—strung up like poor Nancy, with my throat slit ear to ear!”

“Tomorrow morning, then.” The tribal investigator smiled at memories of his visits as a uniformed SUPD officer. “But I don’t work for nothing. I’ll be expecting a sugary snack and something cold and nutritious to wash it down with.”

“You don’t need to remind me.” Loyola Montoya cackled a crackly old-woman laugh. “I never saw a grown man eat as many cookies and drink as much milk as you do, Charlie Moon—and without ever putting on a
pound of fat. Just bring your six-shooter and thirteen bullets and—” A sharp intake of breath. “I just heard something rustling around on my back porch.”

“Probably a raccoon.”

“Either that, or it’s my stupid grandson who’s finally come home from his drinking and whoring, or it’s one of them damned witches come to spy on me through the window. Sometimes I think they prowl around my house when I’m away. I wish I had better locks and latches on my doors. A blind man with only two fingers on his hand could open the back door with a bent tenpenny nail. These long-distance calls cost an arm and a leg—I can’t talk to you anymore.” This terse announcement was followed by a sharp click. Loyola had hung up. Moon returned the telephone to its cradle.

From her twilight sanctum in the short hallway between the dining room and the kitchen, Daisy Perika had heard enough to conclude that Charlie Moon was talking to Loyola Montoya. Evidently, the
pitukupf
’s report was not a fabrication—the strange old Apache woman was in some sort of trouble. Daisy was pleased to know that her nephew was going to look into the matter. She chose this moment for her entrance. “I was wondering if you might like to have a fresh cup of—Oh!” She raised both palms in an expression of embarrassed surprise. “I didn’t know you was talking on the telephone.” Daisy headed to the cookstove. “You want me to get you some coffee?”

“Thank you.” Moon patted her bent back. “I don’t mind if you do.”

Still smarting from her failed attempt to get Charlie Moon alone, Sarah Frank returned to the kitchen. The young lady also had a cup of coffee. Black and sweetened with Tule Creek honey, which was how Charlie had his.

AFTER HER EARLY-MORNING CONVERSATION WITH CHARLIE MOON, LOY
ola Montoya had enjoyed several quiet, peaceful hours. Shortly after the sun had slipped away to ready itself for another day, a sprinkling of stars sparkled above her ten acres of brush, weeds, and sickly apple trees. Loyola turned off the kitchen lights and listened by the screen door.
I don’t hear anything
. In the distance, a dog barked.
Which don’t mean they’re not out there.

After perhaps twenty seconds, which passed like as many minutes, the widow began to entertain the hope that the witches had departed to set up camp elsewhere.

She pulled on a tattered black sweater, picked up the .45 caliber pistol off the table, made sure the safety was
off
, and slipped out the back door. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark kitchen and could see reasonably well in the patchy splashes of moonlight.

It was a balmy, pleasant night. Here and there in the orchard, cheerful crickets chirped. From behind the willows, the burbling murmur of the stream soothed her weary ear. The old woman took a deep breath of night’s calming fragrance, exhaled it with a satisfied sigh.
Those nasty witches must be gone.

Accepting this hopeful assertion as fact, Loyola concluded that she had put a big scare into them last night when she’d fired the pistol.
They don’t know what I might do next, and they’ve decided not to hang around and find out.
She could not resist a spiteful “heh-heh.” The old-fashioned soul was bolstered by the thought that her gun-toting adventure proved how well things could work out when a woman didn’t wait for other folks to solve her problems. It was like her grandmother’s favorite old saying:
If you want your garden to grow, do the planting and hoeing yourself.

It occurred to Loyola that with the
brujos
’ retreat, the Ute tribal investigator would be making a long trip for nothing.
And I’ll look like a fool when Charlie Moon shows up and witches are as scarce around here as pink giraffes.
She playfully aimed her pistol at an inoffensive fence post.
I suppose I ought to call the ranch and tell him they’ve packed up and left for a safer hiding place—there’s no need for him to drive all the way down here.
On the other hand . . .
Witches or not, it’d be nice to see my young friend again.
She took a last look at the starry night sky.
I might as well go back inside and bake some cookies; Charlie Moon really likes my oatmeal-walnut-cherry recipe.
Which presented a problem. While Loyola had an ample supply of Quaker Oatmeal, she was all out of walnuts, shelled or otherwise, and there was not a cherry in the house—fresh, canned, or dried. But challenges were the spice of life, and she was always able to improvise. The lack of walnuts was dispensed with forthwith:
I’ve got that little sack of piñon nuts I gathered last year.
But what could a person substitute for cherries? As she mulled over what she had in the pantry, Loyola could not come up with a respectable solution, so she settled on deceit.
If I just stir something red into the batter, I bet Charlie won’t even notice the difference.
Like famished dogs, hungry men tended to gulp and swallow their food without appreciating the more subtle nuances of flavor.
I could blend in some red pepper chips.
She smiled.
Or some chopped pimentos.
But what would it be, peppers or pimentos? Having no time to dillydally over small decisions, the firm-jawed cookie maker decided to use both.
And if the recipe turns out to be tip-top, I’ll enter a batch of oatmeal, piñon-nut, red chili pepper, and pimento cookies in the La Plata County Fair next year.

Surfacing from her culinary musings, Loyola noticed that the night-sounds were no longer soothing to her soul. The crickets had ceased their chirping; the stream’s happy gurgling had shifted to a malicious, gossipy whisper. A chill, dry breeze rustling crispy elm leaves produced a raspy, gasping sound—a drowning soul’s final breath.

Despite an involuntary shudder, Loyola reassured herself that the witches were long gone. Nevertheless, the prudent woman retreated into her house and closed the porch door behind her. Even in the familiar comfort of her kitchen, she did not feel entirely safe. What if one or two
of those brutal goat slayers had remained behind with the intention of evening the score?
I’ve got my pistol, but I can’t stay awake till Charlie Moon gets here. And while I’m sleeping, one of them rascals could slip into my bedroom and slit my throat!