The Witch's Tongue (4 page)

Her nephew cocked his head. “Who?”

“Kicks Dogs.”

“Oh.
That
Kicks.”

Daisy rubbed her hands on her apron. “Before she married Jacob Gourd Rattle, her name was Frieda Something. I told Jacob he should’ve never taken up with a white woman.” She shot a wicked look at her nephew, was annoyed that he took no offense at the sideways reference to his own pale-skinned girlfriend. “But you know how stubborn and know-it-all a man can be. Jacob told me that he didn’t plan to raise no family with her, that he just needed a woman to take care of his house. And warm up his bed.”

“Is Jacob out there with her?”

Daisy moved to the other side of the window. “No. And I don’t see his rusty old van.” She performed a bit of elementary logic. “Kicks must’ve walked in.”

The tribal investigator considered this. “It’s a long way from the paved road. Maybe her car broke down on the lane.”

Daisy continued with her commentary: “I don’t know why that paleface gal stays with Jacob—he’s got a nasty temper. Last November, the Ignacio town police arrested him for whacking her on the head with a tire iron. But after she come to her senses—what little senses she’s got left—Kicks wouldn’t make any charges, so the police had to let Jacob go. Can you believe that?”

Charlie Moon could believe it without half trying. The former tribal policeman had seen it happen time and again. He buttered a biscuit, added a double dollop of chokecherry jelly. “How’d she get that name?”

“Her husband gave it to her.”

“Does she really kick dogs?” He firmly disapproved of this.

“I don’t know.” Still peeking though a crack in the window curtain, Daisy muttered, “You can ask her yourself—here she comes up the steps.”

There was a sudden pounding.

The Ute elder jerked the door open, glared at the wild-eyed white woman. Jacob Gourd Rattle’s wife was teetering back and forth like she might collapse. “What is it, Kicks?”

“Oh, thank God you’re home.” The woman was a sight to be pitied. A floppy felt hat was squashed over a moppy shock of yellow hair; a tattered poncho almost covered a faded cotton blouse; a soggy canvas knapsack hung over one shoulder. Her gray cotton skirt was dirty and torn. The woman’s bare arms were scratched and streaked with tiny lines of coagulated blood.

There was a crescent-shaped bruise on her right cheek.

Daisy raised her chin to point at the purple mark. “What happened to your face?”

At this remark, Charlie Moon got up from the table.

Kicks’ lower lip began to tremble. Tears flowed from her pale blue eyes. Slowly, at first, then twin gushers. Enough, it seemed, to wash the spray of freckles away.

Daisy cringed at the pathetic display. “Oh, don’t start bawling like a sick calf.”

Having appeared at the door behind and above his aunt, Moon grimaced at the battered face.
Looks like Jacob has been at it again
. “How’d you get hurt?”

“Hurt?” Her hand went to the bruise. “I don’t know. Must’ve bumped into something. A tree, most likely.” She stared at the tall man. “You must be Daisy’s nephew—Charlie Moon.”

The Ute confirmed this suspicion.

Kicks pushed past Daisy to enfold the startled fellow in a hug.

Moon, a longtime member of Alcoholics Anonymous, noted that the white woman’s breath smelled sweetly of whiskey.

Daisy slammed the door, muttered her complaints: “I might as well live in town. Way our here, you’d think I could keep my distance from the lunatics and riffraff. But does it help? No, it does not—the crazies walk for miles and miles, just so they can annoy me.”

Gently, but very deliberately, Moon disengaged himself from the tightly entwined woman. He eased her onto a chair at the kitchen table. Kicks put the knapsack in her lap; tears continued to drip from her chin. He searched his jacket pockets, found a spotless handkerchief to offer the unexpected guest. He could not help but notice that Jacob’s wife was a good-looking woman.

After wiping her face with the linen square, Kicks focused her watery blue eyes on the man. “I’m sorry to barge in like this and act such a silly fool. But it’s been just
so
awful….” The white woman’s words drifted off into a pitiful sigh before she inhaled deeply. “I am just all worn out.”

“What you need is a stiff dose of caffeine.” Moon found a cup in the cupboard over the sink, filled it with coffee, offered it to the distraught visitor.

The white woman accepted the hot beverage. “Thank you.”
He is so sweet
. She took a drink of the black liquid. Made a horrible face, looked cross-eyed at the cup.

He grinned. “Ute Mountain Java. My aunt picks and roasts the beans herself, and adds a dash of paint thinner to give it character.”

“No I don’t,” Daisy muttered. This white woman might be just dumb enough to believe such foolishness.

“But don’t take big gulps,” Moon warned. “It’s a delicate brew, meant to be sipped.”

Daisy plopped down in a chair, groaned.

The new arrival almost managed a smile. “Charlie—it is all right if I call you Charlie? I mean, I don’t want to be too familiar or presumptuous or anything—”

“You can call me Charlie. And I’ll call you Mrs. Gourd Rattle.” Now that she was moderately refreshed, Moon inquired about what the matter was.

She stared blankly at the coffee cup. “I want to make sure I tell it just like it happened, but I don’t know quite where to start.”

“Start with something simple,” he said. “Like what you’re doing here.”

She took another deep breath, brushed a wisp of wet hair off her bruised cheek. “It all started about this time last month. Jake—poor fella—he got so he was tired all of the time. I’m sure it was on account of those strange dreams he’d been having. That was what made it hard for him to get enough sleep.”

At the mention of dreams, the Ute elder narrowed her dark eyes.

The white woman kept her gaze fixed on Charlie Moon’s friendly face. “Jake told me he’d been having this same peculiar dream over and over. He was always at a particular place in that big canyon”—she pointed at the window—“so last week, he made up his mind he’d go there and stay a few nights. That way, he figured he might be able to find out what his dream was trying to tell him. On Monday, we drove out to the mesa. I left him in the canyon with his camping gear and drove the van back home. Then last night, I came back to get him.” She looked at her hands, flexed her cold fingers. “But Jake had decided he wanted to stay for an extra night, and he asked me to stay there with him so I did.”

“Spirit Canyon is no place to be staying all night,” Daisy muttered. “Especially not in this kind of weather.”

Kicks pointedly addressed Charlie Moon: “Would you like to hear about Jake’s dream?”

“I’m sure it’d be real interesting.” He said this with a slightly pained expression. “But first I’d like to find out why you’re here, and where Jacob is now—”

“I’m here because I didn’t have no other place to go.” She dropped her gaze to the silver bear paw on the Indian’s bolo tie. “And I don’t know where Jake is.”

Moon did not like the sound of this. “When was the last time you saw him?”

The white woman paused to wipe at her red nose with the loaned handkerchief. “This morning—around daybreak. Jake was walking off with his buffalo robe. It was foggy and snowing, so I thought he was going to look for a dry spot.” She picked at a loose thread on her blouse. “I thought he might come make his bed with me, but he just walked off up the canyon.”

Daisy drilled the woman with a gimlet eye. “You two wasn’t sleeping together?”

Kicks shook her head. “Jake was camped out in the middle of the canyon—I’d bunked under one of those overhangs.” The white woman frowned as she yanked the stubborn thread. “After he left, I laid there for a while, wondering where he’d gone. Finally, I got out of my blanket, hollered his name a few times. When he didn’t answer back, I kinda got panicky. I worried that maybe he’d had a heart attack or something, so I went looking for him.” Kicks rubbed her hands together briskly, as if hoping to produce some warmth. “I kept on yelling for him, but all I heard was my own words coming back at me. I got really scared. It was something about that awful, spooky place—it was quiet as a graveyard. And those clouds was a-billowin’ up like smoke from Lucifer’s chimney.” Getting a blank look from the man, she turned to Daisy. “Do you know what I mean?”

Surprising herself, the Ute elder nodded.

The tribal investigator attempted to ease the distraught woman onto a track that went somewhere. “But you didn’t find Jacob?”

“No.” Kicks Dogs gave him a wild-eyed stare. “And that was when I got
really
scared. I started running. I don’t know how long I run, but I finally got outta that terrible canyon. And I found Daisy’s trailer house.” She turned her head to smile at the old woman.

Moon chose his words with care: “Mrs. Gourd Rattle, where did you park your car last night?”

She pointed. “It’s up there on the mesa.”

“This morning, did you go back to your vehicle?”

Kicks gave him an odd look. “Why would I do that?”

“Well—to see if your husband had gone to the car.”

She seemed perplexed at this suggestion. “Why would Jake do that?”

Charlie Moon felt his face getting warm. “Maybe to find a dry place to get out of the rain and snow.”
Maybe to drive away
.

She shook her head briskly, whipping stringy strands of yellow hair through the air. “That’s silly—he’d never go back to the van without taking me. No, Jake’s wandered off somewhere in that canyon. He’s hurt. Or dying. Maybe he’s already…” She clasped her hands, gave Moon a big-eyed look. “Somebody has to go look for him.”

The tribal investigator used his cellular telephone to dial the SUPD number he knew by heart. Charlie Moon had a brief conversation with a recently hired morning-shift dispatcher he had never met, requested that a search be initiated for a tribal member who had apparently wandered off alone in Spirit Canyon. The dispatcher informed him that Chief of Police Whitehorse would have to authorize a search, and the chief was currently tied up in a meeting with tribal chairman Oscar Sweetwater. On top of that, there were no officers immediately available to take part in a search.

He reminded her that a tribal member might be lost in the snow. Moon doubted this, but it was a possibility. The dispatcher asked him to hold for a moment. She returned after a long absence to inform Moon that SUPD officer Jim Wolfe had reported in from the graveyard shift and was about to go home, but had agreed to drive his unit out to Three Sisters Mesa. He would meet Mr. Moon in Spirit Canyon.

As the tribal investigator entered the mouth of
Cañon del
Espiritu
, snow floated about him like goose down. A shallow river of blue-gray mists washed along the bottom of the broad canyon. A wispy, whispery fog imposed an eerie silence, transfigured familiar objects into nightmarish props. Jutting boulders stood like alien creatures frozen in instant death. A symmetrical, snow-covered juniper took on the appearance of a giant, frosted toadstool. A prickly yucca pretended to be an icy sheaf of two-edged swords—whose malignant purpose was to impale the unwary pilgrim.

Though endowed with considerable imagination, Charlie Moon was largely immune to these sinister portents. His practical mind was occupied with how best to complete this thankless task. And so as his boots crunched along a snow-packed streambed, the tribal investigator focused on the job at hand. He had already passed the easy way to the top of Three Sisters Mesa, which was near the mouth of the canyon. That path was used by his aunt on her occasional herb-gathering trips to the crest of the mesa. The more challenging trail was a mile and a half into Spirit Canyon. Based on Kicks Dogs’ report, her husband had made his camp near the foot of this steep ascent.

A slender, gray-eyed, sandy-haired six-footer, SUPD officer Jim Wolfe was a sturdy product of the Oklahoma hills. Weather of all kinds pleased the enthusiastic man—especially when it was wet. Outfitted in waterproof boots, a heavy black raincoat, and a broad-brimmed black canvas hat, he was sorry that the snow had not amounted to an all-out blizzard. As he watched the tall figure coming up the canyon in long strides, Wolfe removed the hat, waved it at the tribal investigator. “Hey—Charlie.”

The Ute, who had seen the
matukach
first, waved back.

Moon approached, pumped Wolfe’s outstretched hand. The white man’s eyes were bloodshot; he looked to be badly in need of some serious sack time. “Dispatch didn’t have any day-shift officers available. I’m glad you felt up to putting in a few more hours.”

“No problem. I can use the time-and-a-half pay.” Wolfe jerked his thumb upward. “My unit’s parked up on Three Sisters Mesa.”

“Was Gourd Rattle’s van up there?”

Wolfe shook his head. “If it was, I didn’t see it.”

The fog was lifting, exposing the sandstone walls of
Cañon del Espiritu
. If even the bare essentials of Kicks Dogs’ tale were to be accepted, they must be within a few hundred yards of the spot where her husband had set up camp. Moon squinted, examining the mesa rim. “You seen any sign at all of Jacob?”

“Nope.” The paleface tried to smile. “So what’s the scoop?”

The tribal investigator gave Wolfe the boiled-down version. “Mrs. Gourd Rattle dropped her husband out here on Monday, headed back home, then drove the family van back yesterday to pick him up. But Jacob wanted to stay another night, so she stayed with him. He slept somewhere near the middle of the canyon floor; she found a place under an overhang. The woman woke up early this morning, saw her husband walking away with his buffalo robe. She thought Jacob was looking for shelter from the snow.”

The white man’s eyes narrowed. “What was Jake Gourd Rattle doing in the canyon?”

The tribal investigator shrugged.
Following his dream…

Jim Wolfe stared up at the place where the Three Sisters were still shrouded in clouds. “His vehicle might still be up there. But if his wheels are gone, then he’s gone, too.”

High on the cliffs, there was a harsh call from an unseen raven. It was answered by a raspy echo from the opposite wall. As if summoned, a low, moaning wind swept down the broad canyon. To Jim Wolfe’s superstitious ear, it was the soul-wrenching sound of a ghostly woman wailing for her dead children. This was followed by a deep belly-rumble of thunder, a diffuse flash of lightning.

Moon wondered how much evidence had been covered up by the drifting snow. That was an odd thought.
Evidence of what?
“We’ll look for his van later. But as long as we’re down here, let’s check things out.”

Wolfe nodded. “You want to head up canyon?”

“Might as well.”

The lawmen got to work, trudging doggedly along in the wet snow.

Every few paces, Moon would put his hands to his mouth, bellow the missing man’s name.

As the spirit moved him, Wolfe would do the same.

The calls were invariably answered—by mocking echoes off the canyon walls.

Another boom of thunder was followed by a stinging sleet that peppered the snowy floor of the canyon. The sleet changed to a fine-grained snow. This was converted to heavy, wet flakes. It snowed hard for an hour, covering the canyon floor with several more inches of soft, feathery carpet.

During this time, the men did not exchange a word.

The snowfall finally ceased, and with it, the obligatory search.

Having backtracked, the searchers headed for the only trail that led out of this section of Spirit Canyon. The slippery snow made the winding path more hazardous than usual. The climb was steep until they reached the trail’s upper portion, where the rocky path zigzagged to the crest of Three Sisters Mesa.

As if to celebrate their arrival, the clouds parted in a narrow slit. Sunlight spilled down from the cleft heavens like a waterfall of molten gold.

The tribal investigator followed the SUPD officer to his coal-black Blazer, where Wolfe shared a Thermos of steaming coffee with him. Thus refreshed, the lawmen walked along the rutted lane. Even the heavy-treaded tracks the Blazer had left a short time ago were concealed under the new snow. While the white policeman watched, the tribal investigator climbed a six-story tower of sandstone—the lesser of the legendary Three Sisters.

Having reached the craggy shoulder of the Pueblo woman, Charlie Moon pulled the brim of his black Stetson down to shade his eyes. He had an unhindered view of the mesa and beyond. Unless Jacob had taken considerable trouble to hide it, there was no van. Convinced that he had done his duty and more, Moon descended the skirts of the petrified woman.

They returned to the SUPD officer’s four-wheel-drive unit.

Moon listened while Jim Wolfe contacted dispatch, reported negative results on a preliminary search for Mr. Jacob Gourd Rattle and his vehicle, and requested that a second unit be sent to pick up Mrs. Gourd Rattle at the Perika residence.

Dispatch informed him that Officer Danny Bignight would transport the woman to tribal police headquarters for a formal statement, then take her home.

The call completed, Jim Wolfe rolled himself a sad-looking excuse for a cigarette, touched the tip of the drooping cylinder with a flame sprouting from a plastic lighter. He sucked carcinogenic fumes into his lungs, puffed a pair of smoke rings. “What do you think about all this, Charlie?”

Wolfe’s cigarette was reduced to a butt before the Ute responded. “I think I’m ready to call it a day.”

“It’s a long walk to your aunt’s place.”

The Ute did not deny this.

“Hitch a ride with me,” Wolfe offered.

Moon tipped his hat to salute the notion. “Let’s hit the road.”