Dance of the Bones

 

DEDICATION

For S-­wegi A'an, Red Feather

 

CONTENTS

 

PROLOGUE

S
OZA
C
ANYON,
A
RIZONA

M
ARCH
1970

AMOS WARREN WALKED WITH HIS
shoulders stooped and with his eyes and mind focused on the uneven ground beneath his feet. The winter rains had been more than generous and this part of the Sonoran Desert, Soza Canyon on the far eastern edge of the Rincon Mountains, was alive with flowers. Scrawny, suntanned, and weathered, Amos was more than middle-­aged but still remarkably fit. Even so, the sixty or seventy pounds he carried in the sturdy pack on his shoulders weighed him down and had him feeling his sixty-­plus years.

He had started the day by picking up several top-­notch arrowheads. He slipped them into the pockets of his jeans rather than risk damaging them as the load in the pack increased over the course of the day. The one he considered to be the best of the lot he hid away inside his wallet, congratulating himself on the fact that his day was off to such a great start. Over the course of the morning, he located several geodes. The best of those was a bowling-­ball-­sized treasure that would fetch a pretty penny once it joined the growing collection of goods that he and his foster son, John Lassiter, would offer for sale at the next available gem and mineral show.

Assuming, of course, that John ever spoke to him again, Amos thought ruefully. The knock-­down, drag-­out fight the two men had gotten into the night before had been a doozy, and recalling it had cast a pall over Amos's entire day. He had known John Lassiter for decades, and this was the first time he had ever raised a hand to the younger man. The fact that they had duked it out over a girl, of all things, only added to Amos's chagrin.

Ava Martin,
Amos thought,
what a conniving little whore!
She was good-­looking and knew it. She was a tiny blond bombshell type with just the right curves where they counted. Amos didn't trust the bitch any further than he could throw her.

His next thought was all about John. The poor guy was crazy about Ava—­absolutely crazy. As far as John was concerned, Ava was the greatest thing since sliced bread. In fact, he was even talking about buying an engagement ring, for God's sake!

As for Amos? He knew exactly who Ava was and what she was all about. She wasn't anything close to decent marriage material. He had noticed the wicked little two-­timer batting her eyes and flirting with John's best friend, Ken—­all behind John's back, of course. And two days ago, when John had been out of town, she'd gone so far as to come by his house—­forty-­five minutes from town—­where she had tried putting the moves on Amos.

That was the last straw. Amos was decades older than Ava. He had no illusions about his being physically attractive to her. No, she wasn't looking to get laid; Ava was after the main chance.

She knew John and Amos were partners who split everything fifty-­fifty. She probably understood that, for the most part, Amos was the brains of the outfit while John was the brawn. Amos was the one who knew where to go seeking to find the hidden treasures the unyielding desert would reveal to only the most ­persistent of searchers. He knew what was worth taking home and what wasn't. John was the packhorse who carried the stuff and loaded it into the back of the truck and who carried it into the storage unit.

When it came to selling their finds, Amos had years' worth of contacts at his disposal, all of them listed in his little black book. He had amassed a whole catalog of gem, mineral, and artifact dealers, some aboveboard and others not so much. He also knew which of those might be interested in which items. Amos did the behind-­the-­scenes wheeling and dealing while John handled direct sales at booths in the various venues. John was a good-­looking young hunk, which was always a good bet when it came to face-­to-­face interactions.

Amos suspected that John had gotten into his cups and talked too much about what they did and how much money they brought in, something Amos regarded as nobody's business but their own. He was convinced that was what Ava Martin was really after—­the shortest route to the money. Amos had sent the little witch packing, and he'd had no intention of telling John about it, but Ava had gotten the drop on him. She had told John all about their little set-to. The problem was, in Ava's version of the story, Amos had been the one putting the make on her. With predictable results.

The previous evening, Amos had gone to El Barrio, a run-­down bar on Speedway on the east side of I-­10. Years earlier, El Barrio had been within walking distance of the house where he had lived. When developers came through and bought up that whole block of houses, Amos had taken his wad of money and paid cash for a five-­acre place up in Golder Canyon, on the far back side of Catalina. The house was a tin-­roofed adobe affair that had started out long ago as a stage stop. In town, John and Amos had been roommates. The “cabin,” as Amos liked to call it, was strictly a one-­man show, so John had chosen to stay on in town—­closer to the action—­and had rented a place in the old neighborhood.

When Amos had gone to El Barrio that night, he had done so deliberately, knowing it was most likely still John's favorite hangout. Amos's mind was made up. He went there for no other reason than to have it out with John. Either Ava went or John did. Amos had been sitting at the bar, tucked in among the other twenty or so happy-hour regulars and sipping his way through that evening's boilermaker, when John had stormed in through the front door.

“You bastard!” the younger man muttered under his breath as he slid uninvited onto an empty stool next to Amos.

John was hot tempered, and Amos knew he was spoiling for a fight—­something Amos preferred to avoid. He had come here hoping to talk things out rather than duking them out.

He took a careful sip of his drink. “Good afternoon to you, too,” he responded calmly. “Care for a beer?”

“I don't want a beer from you, or anything else, either. You keep telling me that Ava's bad news and claiming she's not good enough for me, but the first time my back is turned, you try getting her into the sack!”

“That what Ava told you?” Amos asked.

“It's not just what she told me,” John declared, his voice rising. “It's what happened.”

“What if I told you Ava was a liar?”

“In that case, how about we step outside so I can beat the crap out of you?” John demanded, rising to his feet.

Looking in the mirror behind the bar, Amos saw the reflection of John as he was now—­a beefy man seven inches taller than Amos, thirty pounds heavier, and three decades younger, with a well-­deserved reputation as a brawler and an equally well-­deserved moniker, Big Bad John. Amos's problem was that, at the same time he saw that image, he was remembering another one as well—­one of a much younger kid, freckle faced and missing his two front teeth. That was how John—­Johnny back then—­had looked when Amos had first laid eyes on him.

Amos knew that in a fair fight between them, outside the bar, he wouldn't stand a chance; he'd be dog meat. John may not have been tougher, but he was younger, taller, and heavier. By the time a fight was over, most likely the cops would be called. One or the other of them or maybe both would be hauled off to jail and charged with assault. Amos had already done time, and he didn't want anything like that to happen to John. That in a nutshell took the fair-fight option off the table. What Amos needed was a one-­ or two-­punch effort that put a stop to the whole affair before it had a chance to get started.

As the quarrel escalated, tension crept like a thick fog throughout the room, and the rest of the bar went dead quiet.

“I don't want to fight you, kid,” Amos said in a conciliatory tone while calmly pushing his stool away from the bar. No one noticed how he carefully slipped his right hand into the hip pocket of his worn jeans, and no one saw the same hand ease back out into the open again with something clenched in his fist. “Come on, son,” he added. “Take a load off, sit down, and have a beer.”

“I am not your son!” John growled. “I never was, and I'm not having a beer with you, either, you son of a bitch. We're done, Amos. It's over. Get some other poor stooge to be your pack mule.”

Big Bad John Lassiter never saw the punch coming. Amos's powerful right hook caught him unawares and unprepared. The blow broke John's cheekbone and sent him reeling backward, dropping like a rock on the sawdust-­covered floor. Big John landed, bloodied face up and knocked cold. In the shocked silence that followed, with all eyes focused on John, no one in the room noticed Amos Warren slip the brass knuckles back into his pocket. No, it hadn't been a fair fight, but at least it was over without any danger of it turning into a full-­scale brawl.

As John started coming to and tried to sit up, several ­people hurried to help him. Amos turned back to the bartender. “No need to call the cops,” Amos said. “Next round's on me.”

As far as the bartender was concerned, that was good news. He didn't want any trouble, either. “Right,” he said, nodding in agreement. “Coming up.”

It took several ­people to get John back on his feet and work-­wise. Someone handed him a bar napkin to help stem the flow of blood that was still pouring from the cut on his cheek, but the wad of paper didn't do much good. The damage was done. His shirt was already a bloody mess.

“See you tomorrow then?” Amos called after John, watching him in the mirror as he staggered unsteadily toward the door.

“Go piss up a rope, Amos Warren,” John muttered in reply. “I'll see you in hell first.”

That was the last thing John had said to him—­
I
'
ll see you in hell
. They'd quarreled before over the years, most recently several times about Ava, but this was the first time they'd ever come to blows. In past instances, a few days after the dustup, one or the other of them would get around to apologizing, and that would be the end of it. Amos hoped the same thing would happen this time around, although with Ava standing on the sidelines fanning the flames, it might not be that easy to patch things up.

Lost in thought, Amos had been walking generally westward, following the course of a dry creek bed at the bottom of the canyon, some of it sandy and some littered with boulders. During monsoon season, flash floods carrying boulders, tree trunks, and all kinds of other debris would roar downstream. As the water level subsided and the sand settled, there was no telling what would be left behind. In the course of the day, Amos had seen plenty of evidence—­spoor, hoof prints, and paw prints—­that indicated the presence of wildlife—­deer, javelina, and even what Amos assumed to be a black bear. But there was no indication of any recent human incursions.

At a point where the canyon walls narrowed precipitously, Amos was forced off the bank and into the creek bed itself. And that was when he saw it—­a small hunk of reddish-­brown pottery sticking up out of the sand. Dropping his heavy pack with a thud, Amos knelt on the sand.

It took several minutes of careful digging with his bare fingers for him to unearth the treasure. Much to his amazement, the tiny pot was still in one piece. How it could have been washed down the stream bed and deposited on a sandy strand of high ground without being smashed to bits was one of the wonders of the universe. Amos suspected that the sand-­infused water of a flash flood had buoyed it up before the water had drained out of the sand, leaving the pot on solid ground.

Once it was free of the sand, Amos pulled out his reading glasses, then held the piece close enough to examine it. He realized at once that it was far too small to be a cooking pot. Then he noticed that a faded design of some kind had been etched into the red clay before the pot was fired. A more detailed examination revealed the image of what appeared to be an owl perched on top of a tortoise. The presence of the decorative etching on the pot along with its relative size meant that the piece was most likely ceremonial in nature.

Still holding the tiny but perfect pot in his hands, Amos leaned back on his heels and considered the piece's possible origins. He wasn't someone who had a degree in anthropology, but he had spent a lifetime finding and selling Native American artifacts from all over vast stretches of Arizona's desert landscapes.

Years of experience told him the pot was most likely Papago in origin. Sometimes known as the Tohono O'odham, the Papagos had lived for thousands of years in the vast deserts surrounding what was now Tucson. This particular spot, on the far southeastern flanks of the Rincon Mountains, overlooked the San Pedro Valley. It was on the easternmost edge of the Papagos' traditional territory and deep into the part of the world once controlled and dominated by the Apache. Had a stray band of Tohono O'odham come here to camp or hunt and left this treasure behind? Amos wondered. More likely, the tiny artifact had been a trophy of some kind, spoils of war carried off by a marauding band of Apache.

Since the pot had clearly been washed downstream, there was a possibility that a relatively undisturbed archaeological site was sitting undiscovered farther up the canyon. There were several professors at the U of A who would pay Amos good money as a finder's fee so they could go in and do a properly documented excavation. As to the pot itself? Regardless of where it was from, Amos knew he had found a remarkable piece, one that was inherently valuable. The curators at the Heard Museum would jump at the chance to have a whole undamaged pot for their southwestern collection. Amos knew that most of the pots on display in the museum had been pieced back together, and there was a reason for that.

The Tohono O'odham believed that the pot maker's spirit remained trapped inside her pots. As a consequence, when the pot maker died, tradition demanded that all her pots be smashed to pieces. So why was this one still whole? That made the theory of it being stolen goods all the more likely. Apaches would have no reason to adhere to Tohono O'odham customs. Why free a dead enemy's spirit? What good would that do for you?