Wild Indigo

Author's Note

Prologue

Chapter 1
Wild Animals

Chapter 2
Momma Anna

Chapter 3
Truth or Dare

Chapter 4
The Wolf

Chapter 5
Talking with the Stars

Chapter 6
The Elders

Chapter 7
The Bake

Chapter 8
Bone Man

Chapter 9
Tecolote

Chapter 10
The Scar

Chapter 11
The Nachi

Chapter 12
Diane

Chapter 13
Good Hunting

Chapter 14
The Apparition

Chapter 15
The Ruins

Chapter 16
Learning Pueblo Ways

Chapter 17
Saving Face

Chapter 18
The Hole in the Top of Everything

Chapter 19
See No Evil

Chapter 20
The Invitation

Chapter 21
The Carving

Chapter 22
The Professor

Chapter 23
No Good News

Chapter 24
The Alliance

Chapter 25
Yellow Hawk

Chapter 26
Super Natural

Chapter 27
Cry, Wolf

Chapter 28
Wicked Things

Chapter 29
High Tech

Chapter 30
Looking for Clues

Chapter 31
Family Feast

Chapter 32
Animal Wisdom

Chapter 33
Saddling Up

Chapter 34
The Lay of the Land

Chapter 35
The Fog

Chapter 36
The Fork in the Trail

Chapter 37
Unkind Ground

Chapter 38
Guiding Spirit

Chapter 39
Getting Out

Chapter 40
The Journey

About the Author

This is a work of fiction, and the characters herein are figments of the author's imagination, representing no one. Likewise, Tanoah Pueblo does not exist. Whatever similarities may exist between the imaginary Tanoah Pueblo and other pueblos are a blending of my research and experience, including travel and study concerning a variety of southwestern pueblos. I have intentionally alluded to myths, traditions, and rituals from several different Pueblo cultures, and I have mixed and changed patterns, times of year for these rituals, and cultural habits—as well as relied on imagination and invention—in a deliberate effort to keep this purely fable.

I would like to thank Sam Des Georges, Multi Resources Branch Chief, Taos Resource Area of the Bureau of Land Management, and Matt Wahlberg, United States Ranger, for their generous time and assistance with my research for this work.

I got there too late to save Jerome Santana.

The pueblo was closed, but I'd had a report that the buffalo herd was wandering out of its confines up on the foothills to the northwest of the reservation. And that land was in my jurisdiction—or the BLM's anyway. I work for the Bureau of Land Management as a resource protection agent. It was my job to check out the report.

Santana stood in the center of the herd, his arms outstretched and palms facing skyward. He was looking into the azure sky beyond the purple crest of Sacred Mountain. The bulls sniffed around him and pawed the ground, huffing angrily at this intruder. Santana's long black hair was tied into a rope of red cloth at the base of his neck, and his black traditional apron covered the lap of his jeans. His chest was bare, and his shoulders and back were laced with thin red welts.

The long gate on the north side of the ten-foot-high fence was open, and many of the cows and their calves had wandered into the fields of open scrub that led up to forest land and beyond. But the bulls saw the man as a threat, and they stayed—angry, circling.

I slowed my Jeep to a crawl, not wanting to provoke a stampede. I parked beside the tall hogwire fence and eased out the door, leaving it ajar so I didn't make much sound. I called to Santana, “Get out of there. Walk slowly toward me.” I reached into the backseat and drew out my rifle, being careful not to make any sudden or abrupt moves.

Neither the bulls nor Santana took any notice of me, and I raised my gun and found the brave in my sights. One of the bulls closed on him and rammed him with his head. Santana fell forward, then started to get up. I sighted my gun on the bull, knowing that if I fired, they'd stampede and the man would be trampled. “Move slowly!” I screamed, but Santana made no sign that he heard. He staggered to his feet and again stretched out his arms and faced the mountain.

The bull came at him again, and butted him hard, catching the tip of his horn in Santana's thigh. I saw red blood cloud the denim of his jeans, the color swelling and growing against the faded blue. I started for the open gate, moving as quickly as I dared. “Santana! Do you hear me?” I yelled.

For just an instant, his gaze fixed on me. His face was full of a strange wonder, almost joy. Beyond his dark eyes somewhere within was a heaven all his own, and he was no longer here at all, his body just an encumbrance that kept him from being fully spirit. He smiled, a sad sweet smile. And he closed his eyes.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, the way his body flew high into the air when the bull scooped him up like a giant shovel and tossed him away. Santana's lifeless form struck the back of the bull with a dull thud, then bounced against the side of another as the bison began to run, their hooves making huge clouds of dry dust rise around their legs as they almost floated above the landscape. They surged against the gate, against the fence, mowing it down, their huge bodies moving together like one mindless fury against the confinement of their kind, as if all the years of freedoms lost had risen within their blood and caused them to rebel in concert, all of them notes within one song—one screaming chorus of anger and longing. As the bulls drove forward in the direction of Sacred Mountain, the body of Jerome Santana bounced and fell among them, and was finally trampled beneath their hooves like the once-tall white grass and the dust of red earth.

I had to run like hell to avoid being trampled myself, back along the hogwire toward my Jeep, the fence poles just behind me being snapped off at the ground one by one, making loud popping sounds like gunshots. I threw myself onto the hood of my vehicle and then scrambled for the top just in time. A section of wire flew across the hood and the fence post smashed into the windshield, causing it to shatter. One of the bulls caught the front quarter panel with his shoulder and the whole Jeep rocked and threatened to tip as I clung for life to the edge where the open door would have fit. That door was somewhere north of here now, lying on the ground in the wake of the bison, who were well on their way up the foothills, the cows running with them now, the calves crying as they struggled to keep up.

I peeled my fingers off the edge of the roof and raised myself to my hands and knees. A blue pickup was barreling along the road toward me at high speed, a fog of dust billowing behind it. I got down and began to walk toward Santana's inanimate form and the pickup squealed to a stop beside me, its worn brakes obviously metal to metal. Two men I recognized—War Chief Ruben Rael and buffalo wrangler Sonny Warm Hands—got out of the truck's cab, each of them carrying a rifle.

“What are you doing on pueblo land, Miss Wild?” Rael said. “You know Tanoah Pueblo is closed until the end of August.”

“Look, Jerome Santana is in there,” I said, pointing toward the bison pasture. “He's either hurt or dead. We've got to check it out.”

Rael looked at Warm Hands. They both looked at me. “Don't touch him,” Rael said. “We'll take care of him.” Warm Hands hurried toward the body of Santana. Rael stayed with me, his rifle barrel pointed skyward, but at the ready. I watched the wrangler turn the body over and put his ear against Santana's chest. He stood, spit, and said something in Tiwa to Rael.

“He's dead,” Rael said.

“What was he doing out here?” I asked. “Why did he open the gate to let the herd out?”

“What are
you
doing out here?” Rael said, his voice sinister.

“I had a report that the buffalo were wandering loose. I have jurisdiction from the fence line.” I felt my chest tightening with anger. “Why are you here?”

Rael looked in the direction of Santana. Sonny Warm Hands was standing beside the body, offering a pinch of tobacco to the mountain, muttering in Tiwa.

“I got the same report as you,” Rael said. For the first time, he lowered his rifle, the stock resting in the crook of his elbow, the barrel aimed at the ground.

“Who told you?”

“Tribal police got the call. They sent someone over to the governor's office. I was in there, so I went to get Sonny. We came as soon as we heard.”

As he was saying this, another vehicle approached, the sound of its tires crunching along the dirt road at high speed preceding it. It was a tribal police car. Rael and I watched in silence until it pulled alongside us and Officer Gloria Lobato got out. “Looks like we were too late to keep the herd in,” she said, smiling.

“That's not all,” Rael said. “There's a man trampled.” It was customary not to mention the dead by name. Officer Lobato's face went slack. She did not ask, but went instead to examine the body. Rael looked at me. “We'll take care of this,” he said. He moved between me and the others, blocking my view.

I gripped my back teeth together. “You can't just take care of this. I have to call the FBI, you know that.”

“Yeah, the Federal Bureau of Ignorance. We'll handle them, too.”

“And the buffalo?” I said, angrily.

“We'll get 'em,” Rael said. “Sonny will get some helpers. They'll round 'em up.”

I glared at him. He looked away. “By the time you could get everyone together, we'll have the herd back in the pen,” he said. “If we need any help, Miss Wild, we'll call you.” He turned away from me, a sign of dismissal. From behind him, I could see him reach into his pocket for a cigarette, take a pinch of tobacco from the end of it, and hold it toward the sky.

I walked back to my Jeep, the shell of it blown open where the door was torn off. I put my rifle in the back and slid into the driver's seat. I looked through the shattered windshield, the scene beyond it in fragments like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the green of the forest land rising to the blue and purple shoulders of the Rocky Mountains, the high peaks watching like guardians over the normally peaceful, ancient village of Tanoah Pueblo. Here, kiva and religious rituals were being conducted now as they had for a thousand years in preparation for the annual pilgrimage to the summit of Sacred Mountain to the Eye of the Great Spirit, the Indigo Falls—where the spirits of their ancestors went to live.

Someone's going to have to tell his mother,
I thought,
that Jerome Santana has gone ahead of them to the Wild Indigo.