Empire of Dust (21 page)

"So you think I killed him and buried him out in the desert?" said Damon. "That what you think?"

"I think it's real possible," said Ted.

"Why the hell do you think I came out here, Teddy? To lead half a dozen raggedy-ass assholes like you and Aileen around the desert? Well, think again! I came out here to find the Divine, and you think I'd be goddamn stupid enough to kill the only person who can find Him for us?"

"You knew Jezebel could," said Aileen accusingly.

"Yeah, and I also knew that she wasn't nearly as good at it as Ezekiel was—and you sure proved
that
, lady," he added in a loud aside to Jezebel, who had gotten to her feet and was looking at him like a little girl whose favorite doll he had broken. "What, you believe this bullshit?"

"Ezekiel was alive," she said, "and when you came, he died."

"You don't know that he's—"

"He's
dead
!" she screamed. "I
felt
it . . . I
feel
it . . . I know."

"And then you became leader," Ted said bitterly. "Just took over."

"It was right," said Rodney in his gravelly voice. "He should have."

"Why?" asked Ted, nearly in a rage.

"Because that's the way it should be," Rodney said. Damon knew what he meant. Damon had killed the king, and it was only right that he should become the king himself. But did that mean he was going to tell the truth about what he'd seen? Damon stiffened, ready to fight.

"Damon's the smartest one of us, and he didn't do a thing to Ezekiel," Rodney went on. "I hardly slept at all that night, and I had my eye on Damon's tent almost all the time. He hardly moved. If he'da gone after Ezekiel, I woulda seen him."

A wave of relief swept through Damon, and he grinned at the others. "All right, happy? Now, let's finish making camp, if the psychic princess wouldn't mind."

"Come on, Jezebel," Charlotte said, picking up the hammer at Jezebel's feet, "I'll help you."

Ted and Aileen turned away from the others and got their tent, and Rodney helped Damon set his up. "What was that for?" Damon asked him.

"Saving your ass? Hey, all I want now is for those of us who are here to stick together. We already lost too many, but we'da lost everybody, me included, if old Ted was leader of the pack. Nobody can stand that prick's guts. He's even worse than you."

"Thanks. You think we got enough muscle left to liberate the Divine . . . assuming we ever find Him?"

"Dunno. Shit, they could have a small army holding him, for all we know. But if we believe, we got no choice in the matter. Can I make a little suggestion, though? About
her
?" He jerked his head toward Jezebel, who was awkwardly helping Charlotte raise the tent. "Get her under your thumb more. I mean, she didn't take a leak that Ezekiel didn't have something to say about it."

"Why? She doesn't mouth off, or anything. That just now, that was way out of character for her—Teddy Boy was pushing her."

"Yeah, but when Ezekiel controlled her, it somehow, like, focused her more. She needs that, she needs somebody to replace what Ezekiel was to her."

"And what was that?"

"Shit, just about everything—brother, father, lover . . . yeah, they did it, all right, musta been a real trick with his blubber gut. About time somebody filled that gap in her life, know what I mean?"

Damon watched Jezebel for a moment as she bent over to try and hammer in a tent peg. "The prospect isn't unpleasant," he admitted.

"Hell, no. She's a good-looking woman. You took Ezekiel's place, so take it the whole way. See, it's like she never grew up. Ezekiel did her thinking for her and gave her everything she needed, including sex, the sick bastard."

"What about the others? Jezebel starts yelling, you think Ted's not going to try to stop me?"

"First of all, she's not gonna yell. And if she does, you think I'm gonna
let
Ted try and stop you? Besides, Aileen already thinks he's got the hots for Jezebel himself, so if he gets too involved in her sex life, Aileen won't be happy about it. As for Charlotte. . . ." Rodney shrugged. "Charlotte wouldn't squash a scorpion if it stung her on the ass."

Damon watched as Jezebel zipped open the flap of her tent and stepped inside, zipping it shut behind her. "I don't know, Rodney."

"Hey, man, don't make me sorry I backed your ass now, okay? I'm concerned with just one thing here, and that's getting that woman in the right frame of mind to get us all to the Divine. That's what it's all about, and nothin' else matters."

Damon straightened up and looked at Jezebel's tent that was to be his tent, too, from then on. He squared his shoulders and walked past Ted and Aileen, who were eating from cartons of yogurt they had bought earlier that day, and past Charlotte, who was pounding the final stake to secure the tent. "Good enough," he told her, then gestured toward the van. "Go bunk down yourself."

Then he zipped open the door of the tent and stepped through. Jezebel was lying on her back on top of her sleeping bag. She was wearing only a T-shirt and panties, and looked up at him as if she had been expecting him, but didn't feel either happy or sad about his presence, or know what he was going to do.

Damon put on his Mr. Cool face, zipped the door shut, and got on his knees next to her. Her lips were cold when he kissed them, and she didn't respond at all, but he liked a challenge. He ran a finger down her cheek and whispered, "Daddy's home. . . ."

All in all, he enjoyed it and thought she had, too, though it would have been better if Ted and Rodney hadn't been yelling at each other outside.

W
hen Gary Chee heard the shouts, he switched off his flashlight and rode his horse in darkness. There weren't any houses right around there, so he wondered who the hell it was making all that noise.

Shouts were something that you didn't hear much of down in Canyon de Chelly. Most of the Navajo who still lived there were summertime farmers, like Gary Chee's parents. Their houses weren't palaces, but the families who lived in them during the farming months were sober and hardworking, unlike some of the Indians who lived in the small towns on the rez on the government dole. Farming gave you some pride, and for a season let you live the way your fathers did. The only problem was, Gary hated farming. That was why he had become a guide.

It wasn't a bad life. He hung around the visitors' center with the other guides, sitting in the shade, drinking Pepsis, and shooting the shit, until his name worked its way up to the top of the list. Then he met the people he was going to guide, found out how long they wanted to stay in the canyon, hopped in their car while they drove to an access trail, and away they went.

He would guide them down into the canyon, along the floor, and past some farms and herds of sheep, and usually end up at one of the ruins. Then they would head back. A hike lasted a minimum of three hours, and Gary charged twelve bucks an hour, and usually got a ten-dollar dip. Most days he made two and sometimes three trips, so he could salt away a good bit during the tourist season, more if he stayed with his folks on the canyon floor.

Most of the Anglos he guided were nice enough, though they were pretty stupid when it came to knowing much about the Navajo. But he had his gracious answers ready for even the dumbest questions and remarks. That was how he got his tips.

The last family he had taken down that day had been more than pleasant, but totally clueless. The father had thought the Navajo and the Anasazi were the same, so Gary had gently corrected him by telling him that the Navajo considered the Anasazi "the ancient enemies," and keep their farms as far as possible from the ruins. The teenaged son thought that the "desert varnish," the marks made by oxide-rich water flowing down the canyon walls, was put on by the park service to preserve the stone. Fortunately, the mother filled him in, and Gary pretended not to hear. If you made your people feel
too
stupid, it could hurt your tip.

The mother had been far and away the sharpest of the trio, and a pretty good-looking lady, to boot, but a little careless, as it turned out. At the end of the day, Gary was walking out the door of the visitors' center, getting ready to hike the two miles back down into the canyon to his folks' farm, when a ranger hurried out after him and told him that he had a phone call.

It was the husband of the family he had taken down on the last trip of the day. They had gotten back to their motel and discovered the wife's wallet was missing, and figured that it must have slipped out of her pocket on the hike through the canyon. She thought it had probably happened where they had sat to rest on a log about halfway in. If Gary was willing to go back and try to find it, the man would pay him fifty dollars, and if he was successful, another fifty. Gary agreed and told the man to meet him at the visitors' center when it opened at eight the next morning.

By the time he had hiked down to the floor, it was already dark. So he had dinner, and then, at 10 o'clock, saddled his father's horse and rode to the trail they had hiked that day, riding slowly along and shining the bright flashlight back and forth. He wondered about what he might do if he found the wallet and discovered that it was stuffed with money. Then he decided he would give it back. He'd been honest all his life. No need to change now.

When he heard the shouting, he turned off his light, tied the horse to a tree, and walked softly toward the sound. It was some kind of camping party, and by the flashlights they were whipping around, he could see they were white people, and they looked pretty ratty.

The hell with them, he thought. He wasn't about to tell them that they were trespassing on Navajo land and to get out. He doubted they'd take the advice kindly. He trotted back to the horse and rode away, not turning on his light to look for the wallet until he knew he was out of sight of the camp.

He rode deeper into the canyon, and the walls began to rise steeply around him. The place he was heading for was about three miles in, at the bottom of an overlook which offered no access trail to the floor.

Only a hundred yards before he reached it, Gary thought he heard something up ahead, and he drew his horse up and listened. The dead silence had been broken by the sounds of rocks rolling from the top of the cliff. Slides occurred occasionally and were generally of no concern, since most of the houses were built far from the canyon walls. Maybe the Anasazi had built their cliff dwellings where rock slides could sweep them off their ledges, but the Navajo had been a lot smarter than that.

But there was something about the sound that had puzzled him, a softness among the peppery rattle of the stones. It was the sound a deer or other large animal might make falling from the top of the cliff. There were few deer in or around the canyon. Although the park service had made attempts to reintroduce them, they generally wandered away to the Lukachukai Mountains, or the higher parts of the Defiance Plateau.

Gary thought about a stray sheep but doubted one could climb as high as the place he thought he had heard the slide start. They were just domestic sheep, not mountain goats, and whatever it was hadn't made a sound in its descent. Most sheep would bleat their asses off if you looked at them sideways.

Finally he thought, God, what if it's a person? It would be just like some dumb tourist to want a shot of Canyon de Chelly by moonlight and lean too far out over the edge of the overlook. But hell, people were even noisier than sheep, and he hadn't heard anyone yell.

Everything was quiet again, and he guided his horse toward where the sounds had come from. But then he saw the log on which the family had rested that day and remembered his main reason for coming out tonight. He whipped the light ahead, looking at the cliff face, and saw some loose stones at the bottom, about thirty yards away, but saw not a trace of man or deer or sheep. It had just been a little rock slide, then, nothing more.

Then he played the light about the log and saw something gleaming warmly at him from the ground behind it. Polished brown leather? He climbed off the horse and walked toward it, flashlight in one hand, reins in the other.

Then he grinned. Hello, a hundred bucks, he thought, crouching and picking up the brown leather wallet. He stood up and looked at the cards first, and saw on the Indiana driver's license the photo of the woman he had met today. Out of curiosity he looked in the currency sleeve and found seventy-two dollars and some travelers' checks. Good. He wasn't going to be tempted.

He put the wallet into the pocket of his denim jacket and snapped the snap so that it wouldn't fall out. Then he put his left foot into the stirrup and vaulted back onto the horse. Tomorrow morning he'd see the grateful Anderson family again and collect his hundred dollars. He wouldn't be surprised if there was a little bonus besides.