The Drowning Man

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

NOW SOMETHING WASN'T
right.

Brian Little Wolf squinted past the pockmarked windshield at the mountain rising over the road and tried to put his finger on what was different. Something out of kilter, he could feel it in his gut. Red Cliff Canyon looked the same—the road snaking ahead around a hump of mountain, the sun beating down through a sky as blue and clear as glass. He adjusted his spine against the hard seat of the pickup and squinted into the sun that glistened in the streams of runoff tracing the road. He had the odd sense that he'd never driven up this road before, never been in
this
canyon.

Well, that was ridiculous. True, Red Cliff Canyon was a sacred place, which always filled him with awe, as if, in the midst of the vast isolation and silence, he was not alone. Spirits dwelled in the canyon, and that was a fact. They had carved their own images on the boulders that jutted out of the mountain as proof of their presence, so the people would know they were always with them. They had watched over the canyon, the elders said, from the beginning of time when the Creator made the Arapahos—before He made the other human beings. Every time Brian Little Wolf drove through the canyon, he looked for the images, comforted by the flash of light-colored figures carved into the rocks. He'd always felt safe in the canyon, comforted. Not like today, when he felt bereft, alone in a strange and lonely place.

He'd been driving through Red Cliff Canyon since the summer he was thirteen years old, hired on as a junior wrangler up at the Hidden Lake Dude Ranch where the road narrowed into two tracks that loped into the Shoshone National Forest. The foreman had tossed him the keys and said, “Kid, go down to the Taylor Ranch and get a couple extra bales of hay for the horses,” and he'd said, “Yessir,” and jumped into the old black pickup, this very pickup he was driving now, half sitting and half standing, hauling himself upright over the steering wheel so that he could see the road. He'd turned the key in the ignition and stomped on the gas pedal, the way he'd seen the cowboys do, and bumped across the field, hoping he'd make it to the road before the foreman realized he'd never driven before and called him back. He'd driven down the canyon, picked up the hay, and headed back to the dude ranch, fighting the steering wheel all the way to keep from plunging down the mountain into the creek.

That was ten years ago, and ever since, he'd been in Red Cliff Canyon so many times that he could find his way blindfolded. In the summers, as soon as the tourists arrived, he stayed up at the dude ranch, looked after the horses, took the guests out on trail rides. Sometimes a whole week went by before he drove down the canyon. But during the winter, he'd drive up to the ranch two or three times to knock the snow off the roofs so they wouldn't collapse and fix the fences around the corral. A thousand tasks, just to keep the place from being swallowed in the Wyoming blizzards.

He knew this canyon, he told himself. He'd seen it in all kinds of weather, from a hundred different vantage points. Why did he feel as if he were seeing it for the first time?

He pulled himself over the steering wheel and scanned the boulder-strewn slope. Ah, there was a petroglyph, and another right beside it. And up ahead, as the road started to curve, yes, there it was, the long wall of carved pictures that looked like humans with squared heads and rounded eyes and short, sticklike legs, and arms and fingers like twigs floating in the water.

Water. That was it!

He hadn't seen the image of the Drowning Man. It was always the first petroglyph that came into view, looming over the road not more than thirty feet up the slope. The guardian of the canyon, welcoming visitors into the sacred place of the spirits. The image gave permission to proceed, and one shouldn't proceed without permission. Yet somehow he'd driven right past. He hadn't paid the proper respect. That explained why he felt so uneasy.

He pressed hard on the accelerator. The tires skidded in the dirt as he drove around the curve, keeping his eyes glued on the road for the turnout ahead. He had to go back and pay his respects, ask the spirit to grant him a safe passage through the canyon.

He pulled into the turnout, an apron of land that jutted over the steep drop-off into the creek below. Moving the gear—reverse, forward—he carved out a half turn until he was back onto the road heading downhill. Calmness began to settle over him. The other spirits had shown themselves—that was true, wasn't it? He hadn't just imagined them, or seen the figures that his eyes had seen so many times he'd assumed his eyes were seeing them again. Yet he had failed to see the Drowning Man.

He came around another curve near the mouth of the canyon, crossed the lane, and bumped to a stop. This was the place. The pickup tilted sideways toward the barrow ditch. He got out and started up the slope. No sign of the image.

He bent forward and kept going. There was a steep pitch to the slope, and he had to dig the heels of his boots into the soft earth, still moist from the snow that had covered the ground all winter. He could see the road unwinding below. The petroglyph had to be here somewhere. He kept climbing, struggling to fight off the panic that grabbed at him, like the branches plucking at his arms and pant legs. Why would the spirit refuse to show its image?

It was then that he saw the rock where the image should have been. His breath knotted in his throat. The face was a raw wound with pink and white stripes running like blood and water through the stone. The edges were jagged, broken by the deep thrusts of some kind of weapon. Beyond the rock was nothing but piles of other rocks wedged among the scraggly brush and pines. There was a hollow sound in the breeze sweeping through the canyon.

The Drowning Man was gone.