The Witch's Tongue (24 page)

Pete Bushman sauntered up to the Columbine headquarters porch, scratched enthusiastically at his unkempt beard. “Fine day we’re havin’.”

Charlie Moon nodded. Waited for the next scratch.

The foreman scratched his ear. “I was talkin’ to old man Henry yestiddy mornin’.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Oh, his arthritis is kickin’ up again.” Bushman shot the boss a look. “He’d sure like to sell the Big Hat to you.”

“I’d like to buy it, Pete. And if cow pies was greenbacks, I’d have the Big Hat deed in my hip pocket right now.”

“He’s come down on the price.”

“How much down?”

Bushman told him.

Moon leaned against the porch railing, thought about it from six different directions. “That’s still a lot more’n I could come up with.”

Bushman chewed on a wad of Red Man Tobacco. “There’s more’n one way of raisin’ cash.”

“I know,” Moon said. “But robbing banks is risky business.”

Ignoring the crack, the foreman reminded the boss that the Columbine acreage on the far side of the paved highway was of no use to them at all. “And I just happened to run into that hot-shot land developer yesterday afternoon.”

“Where did you just happen to run into him?”

“In his office in Granite Creek. On the third floor of the Goldman Building.”

“Pete, you are a meddling busybody.”

“Thank you—I work hard at it.” Bushman chewed a few chews, spat tobacco juice into a scattering of pebbles under the gutter spout. “He’ll give you twelve hundred dollars an acre for the land that’s within a mile of the paved road. Eight hundred for that what’s farther back. O’course, they’d have to have some water rights.” He did not mention the developer’s interest in building six three-story condominiums and a nine-hole golf course.

Despite his love for the land on both sides of the highway, the Ute was sorely tempted.

The foreman kicked a chunk of gravel toward a sandstone pillar that supported the corner of the redwood porch. Missed it by a yard. “Whatta you think?”

“I’ll think I’ll think on it.”

“Don’t think too long. At the price old man Henry’s dropped down to, some know-nothin’ city slicker’ll snap up the Big Hat before you can say—”

“We’ll talk about it later, Pete.” Moon had seen a spot of dust in the distance. “I have company coming.”

The foreman turned to squint. “Who?”

“Unless I’m wrong—and I don’t think I am—it will be a representative of the federal government.”

At this news, Bushman swore and stalked away.

AN OLD, SWEET SONG

CHARLIE MOON
and Special Agent McTeague mounted a matched pair of copper-colored quarter horses. They rode under cottonwood branches on the bank of the river, then uphill past a creaking windmill that pumped cold water from a deep well and generated surplus electrical energy for the Columbine. The tall woman was decked out in trim khaki slacks, a long-sleeved white blouse, shiny new Roper boots. The Ute wore his workaday ranch clothes—scuffed cowboy boots, faded denim jeans, a blue cotton shirt. This ensemble was topped off by his black John B. Stetson hat.

McTeague cleared her throat. “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked if I could stop by this morning.”

“No. I naturally thought you desired the pleasure of my company.”

The hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “You were right.”

“Not that I’m surprised.” He patted the horse on the neck. “But right about what?”

“The burial where we found Officer Wolfe’s remains—there were two blood types on the stones. Wolfe’s A-positive and a John or Jane Doe with type O.” She patted her mount on the neck. “My partner still doesn’t buy your two-bodies-in-the-grave theory. Stan believes the person who killed Wolfe must’ve been injured during the struggle, and bled on the rocks while he was concealing Wolfe’s body.”

Moon had a look on his face she had not seen before.

She frowned. “What is it?”

“I am puzzled about something.”

“Want to tell me what?”

“Not right now.”

They passed by a sturdy corral attached to a small stock barn. The ensemble was shaded by a pair of knotty ponderosas. As they moved up a rise, their mounts crossed a narrow snowmelt stream on its way to the river. They topped a rocky crest, entered a thick glade of aspen and spruce. Shrouded in the midday twilight, a jungle of ferns, blueberry bushes, and curled lousewort sprouted from a carpet of bright green pyrola. The damp undergrowth was furiously alive with sounds of invisible creatures scurrying about to accomplish their daily business.

The pair came so suddenly into the sunlight that the woman lifted a hand to shade her eyes. The air was now crisp and dry. The lightest of breezes caressed them with perfume offered by wild pink roses, twining honeysuckle, purple lupine.

Farther out in the grasslands was the most exquisite lake she had ever seen.

Off to their left, nestled in a dark stand of spruce, was the sort of log cabin that a realtor would list as “rustic.” The square-cut logs were chinked with concrete, the chimney was constructed of a dozen types of local stones, the pitched roof was painted a dark, rusty red. McTeague heard something, reined her mount to a halt.

It was an older man’s voice, but sweet and pure—like the sundrenched stream that splashed down the grade to feed the lake.

She looked to her companion for an explanation.

With the barest nod, Moon let her know that they must ride on.

When they were near the edge of the lake, Lila Mae McTeague got off her horse.

The Ute also dismounted, took the reins of both animals.

She turned her pale face, looked up at the silent man. “Charlie?”

He looked down at the big eyes.
This woman gets prettier every time I see her
.

“Shall we walk around the lake?”

Spaces out here could easily deceive the inexperienced eye. He looked at her stiff new boots, then at the distant shore and beyond. “It’s a lot farther than it looks.”

“I’m not in any hurry.”

“All right then.”

“One more thing. While we walk, will you hold my hand?”

He said that he would. And did.

Minutes passed without effort, as did a mile. And then two.

“I want to ask you something.” She had slowed her pace to a meander. “Something important.”

A virginal bride lightly veiled in a diaphanous mist, the pristine lake filled his eyes. He waited for the question.

“Are you happy?”

Surprised, he played for time. “You mean right this minute?”

“Yes.”

He pondered this weighty question for so long that she thought he was not going to respond. After a hundred heartbeats and then a dozen more, he said, “I’m not sure.”

A shadow passed over her face.

“But if I’m not entirely happy, this’ll do just fine.”

It was an acceptable answer. Lila Mae McTeague squeezed his hand. “Let’s not talk.”
Let’s just walk
.

And with the man leading the horses, the woman at his side, so they continued. It seemed a shorter way than it was. They strolled past a field of granite boulders that resembled patient old soldiers waiting for that final battle to begin. Through an exclusive neighborhood of straight-spined aspens, all with their heads in the air. Along the edge of a dry arroyo, where the fossilized ribs of an ice-age bison were exposed.

Far off in the distance, toward the highway miles away, there was a lonely wail. A mournful whistling. It might have been the wind.

Or one of Daisy’s friends.

It reminded the lovely woman of something quite pleasant. A happy experience from her childhood. “Have you ever ridden on a train?” She smiled at a hummingbird darting about a cluster of purple asters. “I mean—one of the really old ones. With a steam engine.”

“Yes I did,” he said.
Sixteen coaches long…

“When?”

“About three years ago.”
While I was dead
.

She saw the faraway expression, knew she should not ask.

The breeze was against their faces, the edge of the lake at their feet. Charlie Moon looped the horses’ reins over the delicate arm of a white-barked aspen. As they stood watching sunlight dance and glance over the waters, their shadows stretched along the narrow beach. It may be that some wordless communication passed between their palms. Or perhaps it was a whisper between two like souls. However it was managed, they knew precisely when it was time to turn back. And without exchanging a word or a glance, they mounted the muscular horses, departed from the lake.

As they approached the log cabin, the man was still singing. But now he sang a different song.

The Ute’s sharp ear picked up the words before the city-bred woman heard the sounds. He listened with unusual intensity.

As they came closer, McTeague heard the man’s voice.

His hour of prayer seems to be over
. The slender woman turned in the saddle, fixed the violet eyes on her companion. “May we stop and say hello?”

Moon looked toward the cabin. “Most of the folks on the Columbine are here because they don’t like living in town. This one likes to spend his time alone.” Seeing the disappointment on her face, he quickly added, “But I’ll ask him if you can drop by next time you’re here.”

“Very well.”
That sounds very much like an invitation
. She turned away to smile.

As they rode past the cabin, the haunting challenge of the Negro spiritual followed them.

Loath to depart from the hymn singer, McTeague slowed her mount to a walk.

Charlie Moon seemed lost in a trance.

His pretty companion began to wonder what sort of man she was riding with. “Shall we go by the stream again?”

He nodded. Somewhat vacantly, she thought.

They turned their mounts toward the fragile willows and gnarled cottonwoods clustered along the rocky riverbank.

They rode slowly beside the rushing, rolling waters.

Charlie Moon dismounted, let his animal drink from the cold river.

The woman did the same.

From somewhere deep inside the man, a great laugh boomed out.

She considered this quite extraordinary.

He gave her a boyish grin. “Special Agent McTeague, I have a serious question to ask you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Are you on duty today?”

She did not quite like the look in his eyes. “Well—it is hard to say.”

“Give it your best shot.”

“This is my day off. But I’m always on call.” She pushed a long strand of black hair off her face. “Why do you ask?”

He came close to her. “If you are on duty, what I’m wanting to do could get me in some serious trouble with the federal government.”

She smiled at the unpredictable man. “Then perhaps you had better reconsider.”

“Perhaps” is good
. “It’s way too late for that.” He reached for her; ever so gently, ever so slowly, pulled her to him.

Lila Mae made no attempt to escape the embrace. Before she knew she had, she was hugging him back.

The river flowed on toward the salty sea.

After an eternal instant, he whispered in her ear. “I’m sure now.”

She closed her eyes, sighed. “Sure about what?”

“What you asked me about.”

The woman listened to his heart beat. “Please explain.”

Charlie Moon laughed, lifted her off the earth. “I am a happy man.”

Before the first warm hint of dawn, Charlie Moon parked the Ford F-350 on the crest of Three Sisters Mesa. By the time the tribal investigator made his way down the rocky trail into Spirit Canyon, the sun had shown its crimson brow over the fuzzy bulge of Burro Mountain. Now the blazing disk was halfway across the sky.

The Ute hiked up the big canyon until it was reduced to a dark, narrow cleft in the base of the mountains. He conducted as thorough a search as a man could make in half a day, but had found not the least evidence that Jacob Gourd Rattle—or anyone else—had camped in
Cañon del Espiritu
in recent times.

Moon found a seat on a variegated-sandstone outcropping, removed a thick ham and cheese sandwich from one jacket pocket, a pint Thermos of honey-sweetened coffee from the other, proceeded to eat his lunch.

The food was good, but he found no pleasure in his thoughts.

Kicks Dogs either had imagined the whole episode or was lying through her teeth. Or some of both. Maybe the woman had spruced up her visions and dreams with a few well-fashioned falsehoods. But that did not throw any light on the central question—exactly what was she doing in Spirit Canyon that morning? He took a man-sized bite of the sandwich. Smiled at the memory of the woman’s strange ravings. Kicks Dogs had blamed her bad dreams on a
spotted lizard
. Moon was about to take another bite. He lowered the sandwich. Jacob Gourd Rattle’s wife had said she’d slept under an overhang at the cliff’s edge. Any decent rock shelter would have been used by the Anasazi. Maybe Kicks had turned on her flashlight, looked up at a smoked stone ceiling, saw a lizard petroglyph. But Charlie Moon had roamed Spirit Canyon as a boy and seen most of it ten times over—if there was a spotted lizard in Spirit Canyon, it would be news to him. So she had probably dreamed about a spotted lizard. Even so, something nagged at the murky depths of his consciousness, tried ever so hard to bubble to the surface.

A shaft of noonday sunlight moved across the canyon floor, illuminated him.

Of course.

When Kicks Dogs showed up at Aunt Daisy’s home that morning, she had not said she had been in Spirit Canyon—Kicks had simply said she had been in “the canyon.” Moon’s aunt had assumed that the distraught white woman had emerged from the larger of the canyons, because the mouth of
Cañon del Espiritu
was closest to Daisy’s home. And when the tribal elder had voiced this perfectly reasonable assumption, Kicks Dogs had not disputed it; she didn’t know any of the canyons by name. It had never occurred to Daisy that a traditional Ute like Jacob Gourd Rattle would have little enough sense to set up camp in that
other
canyon—on the other side of the Three Sisters. That was a very bad place.

Moon hurriedly finished the remnants of his sandwich, gulped down the sweet coffee, headed for the trail that would take him to the crest of Three Sisters Mesa—that miles-long slab of sandstone that separated
Cañon del Espiritu
from
Cañon del Serpiente
.

In half an hour, the tribal investigator was on the floor of Snake Canyon.

Above him was a basalt formation that protruded rudely from the Three Sisters side of the narrow canyon. On the opposite wall was its smaller sister. Moon plumbed the murky memory of his childhood. What had the traditional Utes called it? The answer came to him. The larger was the Witch’s Tongue, the smaller the Witch’s Thumb.

Where had the white woman slept?

He approached an impressive overhang beneath the
Brujo’s Lengua
, noted the sooty campfire coating that was evidence of occasional human habitation over several centuries, perhaps millennia. The Ute stood under the arching ceiling, gazed up at an assortment of stick figures. Human beings with arms outstretched. Four-legged animals that might have been deer and elk, a few horses added by more recent artists.

And in the center of the blackened canvas, a fat, open-mouthed lizard—with spots that gave it a comical polka-dotted look.

So Kicks had been telling the truth—at least about sleeping under the spotted lizard. She had, if her story could be believed, come to this place to take her brutal husband home. But what had Jacob Gourd Rattle been doing in Snake Canyon? Having no ready answer, Moon left the menagerie of fabled animals behind.

At the center of the rock-strewn canyon floor, he came upon something quite unexpected—a rectangular spot where not a sprig of grass grew. The tribal investigator estimated it to be about seven feet long, more than thirty inches wide. As he stared at the patch of sterile earth, the Ute had the beginning of a notion.

Within a yard of the patch that had the appearance of a grave was a dry streambed. On the off chance that something of interest had been washed away by the snowmelt, Moon walked along the rocky surface.
This is a real long shot
. But after a half-dozen paces, he knelt to get a closer look at the long, tangled strand of rawhide. Attached to one end of the leather cord was a thin blade of polished bone. It was not quite two fingers wide, and as long as his hand. Engraved on one face of the object were four wavy lines. On the opposite side were three deeply incised zigzags.

He touched his thumb to one of the beveled edges. It was as sharp as a butcher knife.

Charlie Moon stared at the singular instrument.
I should leave it here, let the FBI deal with it when they excavate the grave. But if I do, it might wash away with the next hard rain
. Having rationalized his way to where he wanted to be, the Ute wrapped the rawhide cord and sliver of bone in his handkerchief.

He continued to search for another hour, found nothing more.

When the shadow of the west cliff was slipping over the canyon floor, Moon’s gaze swept up the wall of Three Sisters Mesa, past the Witch’s Tongue. He recalled Kicks Dogs’ dream about Jacob Gourd Rattle climbing a moonbeam into the clouds. But after she had awakened at dawn, Kicks had seen her husband walking away with his buffalo robe. Or so she said.
Maybe her dreams are closer to the truth than what she sees when she’s wide awake
.

After a return hike up the trail to the summit of Three Sisters Mesa, he approached the cliff over Snake Canyon. It had been a highly productive day, and sunset was only a couple of hours away. He stood as still as one of the stone Sisters, staring down at the extended black basalt tongue, the sandy canyon floor. Charlie Moon considered many things—some quite odd, others mundane. It was like peering through a telescope at a past that was slipping in and out of focus while it receded. Though there was still a fuzzy patch here and there, portions of the image would occasionally become more distinct. The tribal investigator thought he knew why Jacob Gourd Rattle had come to Snake Canyon. Why the man had sent his wife home. Why there was something in the canyon resembling a grave.

One absurd image still nagged at him—Jacob the moonbeam climber. Sensible folk believed that what went up would generally come down again, though the reverse was not necessarily true.
How
to do it was the issue. By force of habit, the tribal investigator’s gaze examined everything great and small. Over and over again—the earth under his boots, the Witch’s Tongue, the dry streambed meandering through Snake Canyon.

Without knowing why, the solitary man began to hum an old, familiar tune.

Then he began to sing it:
We are climbing…
He listened to the words fill his mouth.

In an instant, the truth dawned. For an electric moment, he was stunned. It was so simple.

As he recovered from the shock of discovery, the Ute began to consider what must be done. When the time was right, he would bring Special Agent McTeague to this place, show her the excavation one person had dug, another filled. But right now there was more urgent work to do.
Jacob used what he found that night. I’ll use what I’ve already got
. It took a few minutes to formulate his plans in detail.
I’d better head back to the truck
. And a fine pickup it was—with all the bells and whistles. Every hardworking man ought to own one. Charlie Moon boomed out a hearty laugh.

The happy sound echoed off towering sandstone walls.

LONG BEFORE
the weary man reached the Columbine, darkness had slipped across the high plains. A cold rain was peppering the F-350 windshield. He lowered the window at his elbow. The smell of wet sage and fragrant juniper refreshed him.

Sidewinder met the big truck near the Too Late bridge, plodded along behind to the ranch headquarters. Before Charlie Moon knew he was there, the peculiar old hound vanished into the night.