“You don’t.”
“You either.”
“Nothing to laugh about, is there?”
“Nope.” His lips twitched. “If I could go back, there are so many things I’d change. I wouldn’t have let Thomas talk me into going to Cheyenne, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe you had to.”
“Why?”
“So that you’d go rescue those people. So that you’d get blown up. So that you’d be there to shoot Edgewater.” She shrugged and chuckled. “Hell, maybe so that you’d be here, wondering what kind of idiocy we’re enduring so that we could wish we’d made other choices way back when.”
“What would you have done differently?”
She pursed her lips and finally admitted, “I wouldn’t have won first place at the High School State Rodeo finals. I wouldn’t have drank that pint of whiskey, and I wouldn’t have ended up pregnant with Travis Labeaux’s child.”
Sam stared thoughtfully at the fire. “That’s what went wrong between you and your folks?”
“History repeats itself. I mean, that’s how Mom got pregnant. Which led to me and Brandon. But, hey, Travis Labeaux wasn’t any Frank Tappan, you know what I mean? Even for a bulldogger he was dumber than a box of rocks.”
She exhaled wearily. “So I had Trish Thompson take me to Billings. Had an abortion. And somehow the folks found out.” A beat. “Hey, I had plans.”
“Yeah, me, too.” He slapped at a mosquito. “Mom and Dad scraped and saved all of their lives so I could go to college. Figured I was going to be a business major, maybe law or medicine. That I’d be there. In the neighborhood. Help them.”
She glanced sidelong at him. “If you had an MBA you’d be just as dead as they are right now. The last of their line. Extinct. I’d be dead, too. Along with Joelle, Michaela, Kylie, and the rest of the girls. And those people from behind the fence. Shirley Mackeson, the ones who went with us. Some of the others—like Tank and Lehman—we freed from that compound, evaded, and weren’t caught.”
“Those men in that posse we shot up at slickside would be alive.”
“And maybe Brandon, Shanteel, Meggan, and me would be dead or taken prisoner. I fit into that profile of Edgewater’s, you know. Young, attractive, slim, with a good figure. Want to bet that Tubb would have let me walk away when he already had a beef with the Tappans?”
“Jesus,” Sam whispered. “A person could go crazy thinking about this.”
“Yeah. And we still have to survive whatever Thomas is cooking up for tomorrow.” She reached out, punching him playfully on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Sam Delgado.”
“No, I’m not,” he told her, eyes on the distance.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Sitting at the mouth of the sacred cave—at this place of puha kahni—Thomas rhythmically beat his pot drum and sang the old songs. He called upon Tam Apo, and Tam Segopia, our father the sky and our mother the earth. He sang to Wolf who brought wisdom and order to Creation in the Beginning Times. He sang to Coyote, who had caused all manner of mayhem and chaos in those same early days.
Most of all, he sang to the Spirits of the Water World below and pleaded that they would come and help to heal his wounded friends. That they would convince the navushieip—the wandering dream souls of the dead—to leave Sam and Breeze in peace.
Yesterday evening, as dusk was descending, he had led them down here to Puha Canyon, carrying only blankets and a canteen full of toyatawura drink distilled from the ancient power plants.
He had made them drink, asked them to disrobe, and handed each a colorful Pendleton blanket. Then he led them into the cave as the last light dimmed. Illuminated only by a pitch torch, he’d guided them from carving to carving, watching their expressions as the holy drink had taken possession of their souls.
Sam was easy. Thomas had made him lay down before the image of Nynymbi. It helped that the young man already had a guide.
To his surprise, Breeze had chosen to sleep before the image of Water Ghost Woman. A decision which filled him with uncertainty and no little trepidation for what it might portend. He had no knowledge of what kind of women’s puha Water Ghost Woman might share with a female of Breeze’s strength and character.
Then he had taken his place outside the cave entrance, standing watch, singing, and praying the night through. Stars barely penetrated the thick haze overhead. Occasional bits of ash floated down like soft flakes. The air had that “burned city” smell.
Sunrise finally began to turn the cloudy sky from black to darkest indigo. And still Thomas sang, his words echoing in the narrow canyon.
To his surprise, Sam and Breeze emerged together, holding hands, as if to steady each other. He searched their faces, looking for some sign of the visions they must have shared with the spirits, and saw only weary acceptance.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Totally empty,” Breeze told him woodenly as she picked her way over to her clothes, shed the blanket from around her shoulders, and began dressing.
Sam’s expression looked pinched, his eyes fixed on a distance, his still-bruised body shivering in the cold as he dressed. He paused only long enough to bend double and suffer through the dry heaves. A not uncommon result after dreaming with toyatawura.
Breeze steadied him, her own expression pained. “You with me, Delgado?”
“Yeah. Somebody’s got to have your back and blow up the machine guns.”
“You’ll do, Sam.” She patted him on the shoulder and straightened. Her expression had taken on a somber cast.
“You all right?” Thomas asked them both after the young man had wiped his mouth and straightened.
“Not sure,” Sam told Thomas. Then he glanced at Breeze. “You saw, didn’t you? You were there. In the vision.”
She nodded, pupils like black dots in her brown-ringed hazel eyes. “Nothing to bounce around in glee about, is there?”
Sam gave her a weak smile, then led the way up the steep canyon trail to where the horses were tied in the aspens. Thomas was only halfway up, puffing for breath, when Breeze reached back, took his hand, and pulled him to the top.
A thousand questions ran through Thomas’s head. As they rode back to the field camp, he glanced surreptitiously at the two of them. He had expected to see relief, perhaps a lightening of the burdens each seemed to carry. Instead, both appeared slightly depressed, introverted.
As much as he might wish to pry, a spirit journey was not the sort of thing to be meddled with. He would have to take a measured approach, ask only appropriate questions.
Thomas felt his years as he stepped down from his horse and tied him off at the picket line behind camp. He walked to the fire Willy had kept going and accepted a plate of pancakes with hot tallow for butter and chokecherry jam for sweetener.
He watched Breeze and Sam—each locked in their thoughts—take their plates and seat themselves warily by the fire.
“What you have just finished,” Thomas said softly, “should not be approached lightly. What the Spirits have shown you, told you, is not granted frivolously.”
“Call that an understatement,” Breeze said as she nibbled hesitantly at her pancakes. “Was that real, or was that drink you gave us drugged?”
“It was an hallucinogen,” Sam told her. “That’s common for vision quests; medicine men and women use it to open their minds to the spirit journey.” He snorted as if in self-derision. “Damn, does it work, or what?”
“The things I saw...seemed so...real.” Breeze shook her head. “Impossible. Water Ghost Woman, the turtle, the dogs.” She took a breath. “The dead, I talked to them.”
“What did they tell you?” Thomas asked as casually as he could.
“That I’ve been tested. That I’m chosen.”
Almost angrily, she jabbed her fork into her pancakes. “All I wanted was, like, to do my own thing. Now everyone thinks I’m so special.” A beat. “‘The hero of the Line.’ ‘The woman who got the girls out.’ I didn’t ask for th
is.”
“Maybe you were chosen because you didn’t want it,” Thomas told her.
Sam was listening quietly, his own expression reflecting confusion and disquiet.
“So, do you think it’s possible to see the future?” Breeze asked, shooting him a sharp look.
“Do you want me to answer as a puhagan or a physicist?”
“Either.”
“If time doesn’t exist as a thing, who is to know? Forces, inertia, observations that create reality, a cascading of events for which only one possible outcome must, of necessity, lead to another predetermined outcome. Yes, it is possible.”
At that she turned her pensive eyes on Sam, jaws knotting. “How does it feel to be chosen?”
“Was it real? I mean, I’ve read the literature. I know what goes on in the brain, the physiological explanations.” Sam forked pancake into his mouth and chewed listlessly. “But, wow, I mean I see Nynymbi. I’m supposed to be a scientist, an impartial observer.”
“Sometimes you just have to believe,” Thomas told him. Breeze was studying him with a curiously level look.
She smiled grimly. “Water Ghost Woman took me to visit with the dead. So, did I really get to tell them I was sorry, or was that just my mind allowing me to forgive myself?”
“What do you want it to be?” Thomas asked. “That’s the power of spirit visions. They open a door.”
She nodded, chuckled softly, as if amused at herself. “It’s hard, that’s all. We really had it good. People just took it for granted. Food, safety, a warm house. Now they ask me to let it all go the same way they have.”
“Who?” Thomas asked.
Breeze picked at her food. “How do you say no to the people you’ve killed? Okay, so they forgave me, but these things they want me to attempt...?”
“And what did Water Ghost Woman say?”
“She grants me the power to take life, to measure myself against the future.”
From beneath the brim of her hat, Breeze studied Thomas with those piercing eyes. “So, what’s the real story on Water Ghost Woman?”
“She’s dangerous. Very powerful. Seduces men, and when they’re making love to her, she either drowns them or devours them. She can grant a man sexual prowess if he survives, and she has powers of fertility. She offers women different powers, but, being a male, I don’t know the medicine. Nor do I know a waip puhagan, a woman shaman, who still knows the old ways who could guide you.”
She took a deep breath, glanced around, and lowered her voice. “Wow. So, I’ve got a heavy-hitter when it comes to a spirit helper, huh?”
Thomas felt a chill run through him. “She is the most powerful of the female spirits. Bloody in her wrath, but capable of granting remarkable abilities to those she chooses.”
Have I created a monster, or a hero?
Standing, she tossed her plate into the fire shook her head, adding, “Being what they want me to be? How can anyone live up to that?”
With a heavy sigh, she shook her head and walked away.
“Think she’s going to be okay?” Willy asked from the cook tent.
Sam tossed his empty paper plate into the fire and rubbed his face with both hands. “What do you choose? Yourself? Your happiness? Or do you give that all up for a long-shot chance to save the world?”
“That was the question the spirits posed?”
Sam sucked his lips, nodded. Glanced at the forest where Breeze had disappeared.
“You and Breeze?”
“Tough times ahead, Thomas. I wanted to be a scholar, and now I’m a warrior for an impossible cause.”
“What did Nynymbi show you?”
“We have a chance here, Thomas. A slim, fighting chance to hold the darkness and the barbarians back. It’s already cost me Shyla...and part of my soul.”
Thomas whispered. “I can’t imagine the choices you and Breeze will have to make.”
Sam cocked an eyebrow. “Breeze and me? Think again, elder. You are our lodestone, our moral compass from here on out.”
Thomas smiled to himself, a sinking sensation in his heart. Yes, for a supposedly wise elder, he should have seen puha working through him.
“I could give up, Thomas. Find a way to join Shyla. But if I do? Well, I guess we lose it all.”
“You saw this in your vision?”
A fleeting smile crossed Sam’s lips.
“Sam...?”
“Shyla asked me to thank you. She’s found her way.”
“I wondered if I should have sung over her. Sometimes it’s hard to know what is right and what only causes complications.”
Thomas watched Sam rise, cast another glance in the direction Breeze had taken down into the trees. Sam picked his way up the slope, finally seating himself on the rocky outcrop he had once shared with Shyla.
We Lost It All
Who were we? What had we become? How did our world die? Who unleashed the maelstrom? Why did we turn on each other? What was it to be American? Why did we hate? Who was responsible? How could this happen to us? Didn’t we care who we were? What kind of insane were we? Could we have been that selfish? Who fostered the hate? Why did we embrace it? Who did this to us?
If you could go back, what would you tell the Republicans? The Democrats? The religious right? The social progressives? The president? The social media tweeters? The TV pundits? Antifa? QAnon? The police? The socialists? The white nationalists? Black Lives Matter? The pro-life movement? The gun-control lobby? The secession movements? The social conservatives?
Who is to blame?
Who isn’t?
And the questions never cease.
I was just a student, but I know we could have survived the cyberattack. Freeze the banking system and credit. Find and expunge the malware, backdate the system a week, and restart.
It would have been difficult. Painful. The process imperfect and not without issue. Still, we could have endured, worked together. Like we did when we saw ourselves as neighbors, friends, as an imperfect but willing people. Back when we had a single identity. Before we separated ourselves, blamed each other.
Whoever perpetrated the cyberattack sought to weaken us, perhaps distract us. Instead the effect was like tapping an already fractured glass. Once the first shards fell, the cascade couldn’t be stopped.
We didn’t need an outside enemy.
We had ourselves.
A LOOK AT Flight Of The Hawk: The River: A Novel of the American West
INTERNATIONAL BEST-SELLING AUTHOR W. MICHAEL GEAR TURNS HIS MASTER’S HAND TO THE FRONTIER WEST.
1812 Missouri Fur Trade – An intimate of the Burr conspiracy, the condemned and hounded John Tylor signs on as boatman with Manuel Lisa’s expedition. But the river is now contested as the British, Spanish, and other fur companies prepare to break Lisa’s hold. As the expedition battles its way up the violent river, Fenway McKeever lurks in Tylor’s shadow. Not only is the half-mad McKeever paid to kill Tylor, but he’s convinced himself that by destroying Lisa’s expedition, he can sell his services to the highest bidder.
“No one reads a Gear novel without being transformed in beautiful ways.” –Richard S. Wheeler
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W. Michael Gear
About the Author
W. Michael Gear is the New York Times and international bestselling author of over fifty-eight novels, many of them co-authored with Kathleen O'Neal Gear.
With seventeen million copies of his work in print he is best known for the “People” series of novels written about North American Archaeology. His work has been tr
anslated into at least 29 languages. Michael has a master’s degree in Anthropology, specialized in physical anthropology and forensics, and has worked as an archaeologist for over forty years.
His published work ranges in genre from prehistory, science fiction, mystery, historical, genetic thriller, and western. For twenty-eight years he and Kathleen have raised North American bison at Red Canyon Ranch and won the coveted National Producer of the Year award from the National Bison Association in 2004 and 2009. They have published over 200 articles on bison genetics, management, and history, as well as articles on writing, anthropology, historic preservation, resource utilization, and a host of other topics.
The Gears live in Cody, Wyoming, where W. Michael Gear enjoys large-caliber rifles, long-distance motorcycle touring, and the richest, darkest stout he can find.
Dissolution: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book One Page 39
