Tainted Mountain

by Shannon Baker

  Barrett didn’t move. Enjoy your last seconds, little prick.

  As if the shadow man worked magic, Big Elk seemed unaware he existed. “Don’t play games with me, McCreary. Either that money hits my account pronto or I expose Heather as an eco-terrorist. Sure, she’s a minor, but she’ll do time somewhere, I guarantee. Blowing up a ski lift is serious business.”

  Barrett’s self-control strained to the breaking point. He should have saved his money and killed Big Elk himself. On the other hand, it was almost comic how Big Elk didn’t even sense the black menace behind him.

  “That’s where you made your big mistake, Mr. Elk.” Barrett heard the sneer in his voice. “I could tolerate your low-class ways. I would even pad your accounts. But you should know to never, ever threaten my family.”

  Barrett dipped his chin slightly like Caesar giving a thumbs down. The dark spirit behind Big Elk raised his hand and drew it in a fluid movement across Big Elk’s throat.

  Big Elk made a sound like a gag, then slid to the yellow dust.

  It looked so easy and clean, aside from the gallons of blood gushing into the dust. No struggle. No last words. One second alive, the next … dead. Expensive, but you got what you paid for.

  Barrett pulled a thick envelope from his pocket and handed it to the phantom. “Tempting as it is to keep the Escalade, get rid of it as completely as you do the body. You’ll get the rest when I read the next obit.” What a waste of a great vehicle. He stepped briskly to the Mercedes and climbed in.

  Scott Abbott: check. Big Elk: check. Abigail: check. Alex: soon to be a check. Now to get the congressional committee in line, get snow making up and running, and find Heather and get her under control.

  Cole was still a wild card though. And Nora needed to go.

  Thirty-Five

  Back at Benny’s, they closed the door and all three took their first deep breath since the man in black had severed Big Elk’s jugular in front of them.

  Heather finally spoke. “Poppy and Big Elk were working to-

  gether?”

  With his yellow body paint streaked with sweat, Benny nodded. “Charlie and I suspected it. Big Elk was secretly buying up the council to vote for uranium mining.”

  “That was worth his life?” Nora asked.

  Benny shook his head. “Don’t think that’s what Barrett said.”

  What Barrett said was that Heather blew up the lift. Nora stared at Heather. “Did you really do it?”

  Heather froze. “Well, sort of. Yes. I helped.”

  “Why?”

  Heather looked lost. “I don’t know. I got all caught up in saving the mountain and doing the right thing, and Charlie kept talking about all the cool stuff he’d done. And your mom said you’d been such an activist when you were young. It was a mistake.”

  Mistake didn’t begin to cover it, but Nora couldn’t confront Heather today. Not with the smell of Big Elk’s blood swirling in her nostrils. “We’ll talk about this some other time. Right now, we have to figure out what to do about Barrett.”

  Heather sank to the couch, tears falling without care. “He’s a monster.”

  Nora nodded. “And Abigail just agreed to marry him.” The words tasted sour.

  Heather’s head shot up. “Poppy and Abigail are getting married?”

  “Over my dead body,” Nora said, knowing that phrase might be all too true.

  “I gotta clean up,” Benny said and disappeared into the other room, clicking the door closed.

  Heather curled up on the couch and in seconds she fell asleep for the second time that day. A psychologist would probably say sleep was her coping mechanism. At least Heather could find a moment’s relief. Nora wanted to pace but the small, windowless room wouldn’t allow much movement.

  Benny emerged in ten minutes looking like a normal person. The yellow mud and clownish makeup gone, his hair damp and combed, he wore jeans and plaid Western shirt. Though dressed in normal clothes and larger all around, he reminded Nora of the little kachina man. Maybe it was his dark eyes that didn’t seem to miss much.

  Nora’s insides twisted so tight she could barely breathe. “I need to know how my mother is.”

  Benny nodded. It seemed to take him forever to answer. Did he rehearse everything he said before it came out of his mouth? “It’s best if you stay here tonight.”

  She couldn’t twiddle her thumbs out here when Abigail was in the hospital. “At least call and find out how she is.”

  “Can’t call.” If he spoke any slower she’d need someone to translate. “No cell service and we don’t have land lines here.”

  Frantic now, Nora wanted to punch something. “How can you live like this?”

  He watched her with annoying calm. “I have everything I need.”

  “Sure. If you’re an Aborigine in the outback. You live in isolation with no phone, no television. You use kerosene for light and haul water. Maybe you’re surviving, but what kind of quality of life is this?”

  Pause, pause, irritating pause. “Tomorrow I will greet the sun and the Creator with prayers and thanks. My family and neighbors will be happy to see me. I have enough corn to last until harvest. I have the work of farming to keep me busy. The simple life avoids waste and misuse. There is no over-production. I live in harmony and balance.”

  This philosophy wasn’t new to her. She’d grown up in Boulder, Colorado, after all. Communal, back-to-nature living and all that New Age spiritual stuff drifted off the foothills with the pine pollen. But she noticed that when even the more dedicated hippies reached middle age, most had real jobs, mortgages, and health insurance like everyone else.

  Benny’s words beat in cadence to a rhythm in his head. “We live like this to develop a strong spiritual life so we can care for the land and protect it. Our spirit people looked after the human people and taught us many things. They gave us language and our ceremonies and many sacred and secret things. But with this knowledge came great responsibility. When we live as instructed, we are happy and the world stays in balance.”

  Benny inhaled deliberately and let it out slowly. “Taking water from our sacred aquifer and spraying it on the sacred moun-ain is disrupting the balance. You shouldn’t do that.”

  Sacred everything, Nora thought. I’m so sick of hearing that. “There have been scientific studies that show making snow will not harm the mountain.” Even as she spoke, it sounded flat and unconvincing.

  Benny shook his head as if sad at her ignorance. “Western science compartmentalizes; we know everything is connected. To say taking water from the ground and spraying it on the surface won’t change anything is denying the relationship. It’s like saying your thumbs are not connected to your toes.”

  “You know the court ruled that Native American religious rights are not harmed by making snow as long as there are other places on the mountain where you can perform your ceremonies.”

  If she’d been trying to goad him to temper, she’d failed. He considered what she said. “Everything depends on the proper balance being maintained. The water underground acts like a magnet attracting rain from the clouds. The rain also acts as a magnet raising the water table under the roots of our crops. Drawing water from the aquifer throws everything off. Our elders tell us if this happens, everything but Hopi will disintegrate. They warn us that time is short.”

  Heather didn’t stir. Suddenly exhausted, Nora sank to the couch. What she wouldn’t give for a bath and to change from the sooty, dirty, sweat-soaked clothes. She realized she hadn’t showered since yesterday morning.

  “It would be great if the Indians could live the way you did two hundred years ago and have all your sacred places and follow the buffalo and smoke peyote and all that. But this is the real world, and you can’t halt progress. Indians need to stop living in the past and acclimate to the modern world.”

  “We need to live our way. I
t is what we are made to do.”

  Nora kneaded her forehead. “And destroy or kill anyone who gets in your way?”

  “That is not the Hopi way.” He didn’t move, simply watched her with his unreadable dark eyes.

  Nora couldn’t argue with his logic. If he wanted to live in poverty and believed it saved the world, she had no right to tell him any differently. Heather’s soft snoring filled the room. “Sleep will do her good,” Nora said.

  Benny pulled a folded blanket from the back of the couch and laid it over Heather. He walked to the door with his steady pace. “You can stay in my cousin’s house tonight. She works in Winslow as a night clerk at the Holiday Inn.”

  Nora didn’t follow him. “I want to see my mother.”

  He continued as though he hadn’t heard her. “Her house is just across the plaza.”

  “Can’t you take me back to Flagstaff?”

  He held the door open for her. “Do you really want to go back tonight?”

  “Of course I do.”

  His deadpan expression didn’t change. “Someone, maybe Barrett, killed your husband and tried to kill you. The cops think maybe you’re a murderer and suspect you’re trying to swindle the insurance companies, so going to them won’t help you.”

  Someone wanted her dead. Even if that someone was Big Elk and he couldn’t get her any more, his faithful followers might not want to call it quits. If Barrett killed Scott, maybe he’d kill Nora too. She couldn’t go home. Couldn’t check on her mother. Like Fay Wray in King Kong’s grip, she felt trapped. “How do you know so much about this?”

  Benny waited by the door, letting cool night air into the cluttered room. “Cole told me.”

  “What does he have to do with me?”

  One of Benny’s eyebrows lifted slightly, what for him was probably a hissy fit of some kind. “He cares about you.”

  Not sure what that meant and too tired to figure it out, Nora gave in. She’d go to Flagstaff at first light. She plodded across the plaza. The pitch-black night closed about her and she stayed on Benny’s heels. Even if she didn’t believe in spirits and ghosts—which she reminded herself she definitely did not—she could imagine the place teemed with malevolent forces that knew she intended to desecrate their home.

  Benny walked her out a small arched entry to a dark door. He pushed it open and pulled the little chain to the light hanging from the ceiling. The place looked similar to his.

  “I hope you don’t mind staying alone. My house doesn’t have another bed.” He slipped behind an old door, the kind that easily broke if someone fell against it. This one looked like someone had accidently kicked it. He emerged with a blanket.

  She took the blanket. “This is fine, thanks.” Nora wasn’t sure if Benny had kidnapped or saved her but, as Abigail taught her, it never hurt to be polite.

  At the thought of her mother, Nora’s throat tightened and tears pricked her eyes. Burns were painful. And what about disfigurement? Was her face ravaged by flames?

  “Are you going to be okay?” Benny asked.

  She swallowed. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

  He nodded and left.

  The quiet of the village, along with all the creepiness of the night and the native-ness of the whole place, pushed against her. She hugged the blanket and sank to the couch. The light would stay on tonight.

  Thirty-Six

  Sometime later the chill forced her to move her stiff muscles and wrap the blanket around her. And later still she must have dozed.

  Panic blasted through her sleep and vibrated in the blackness. She gasped and sat up. Darkness covered the room so deeply she barely made out shapes of furniture. The bare bulb she’d left burning no longer glowed.

  There it was again. A terrible crashing on the roof must be what woke her. It sounded like a boulder dropped overhead with a shower of smaller rocks and pebbles following.

  Nora huddled into the blanket, imagining Alex outside. Of course he knew she hid on the rez and came to terrorize her. It was only a matter of time before he burst through the front door with a knife. Or maybe only his bare hands to shut off her windpipe. How stupid to think she was safe here. Maybe Barrett lurked outside. Probably not; his style called for a silent assassin or a quick shove. He had no interest in toying with his victims.

  The noise stopped. Nora waited. And waited. Apparently Alex only wanted to scare her because no one stormed through the front door.

  How she could have dozed despite the anxiety over her mother, the threat of death, the very real attack by Alex with his rocks and boulders mystified Nora. But she jerked awake to more of the rocks crashing on the roof and windows.

  It happened two more times before the first hint of dawn penciled the horizon. Each time Nora clutched the blanket to her and stared at the front door, expecting someone to break it down and find her alone and unarmed. But the attacks broke off abruptly each time and, eventually, exhaustion overtook her again.

  Come dawn Nora turned the doorknob with a shaking hand and creaked open the door. Her fear conjured the image of Alex on the other side, ready to wring the life from her. But no one was in sight.

  She crept from the house, sure there would be a pile of loose debris and rocks. But the dirt surface in front of the house sat empty. She climbed a low stone wall and worked her way up another ancient building until she surveyed the roof of her nighttime shelter. No rocks. No pebbles. Just a flat roof.

  The sun slept just below the horizon, casting enough light to convince her the morning would arrive soon. The snatches of sleep she’d gotten in between rocky crashes hadn’t done a thing to soothe her nerves. She had to get out of this place before Alex or someone like him killed her and tossed her somewhere in the wilderness never to be found. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing; at least if Nora were gone, her mother would be safe. That was assuming Abigail recovered from the blast.

  But if Nora never made it back to Flagstaff, would Heather warn Abigail about Barrett’s true colors? Her empty gut clenched at the image of Big Elk’s surprised eyes, his last gurgle, all that blood.

  Nora ached with worry for Abigail and Charlie. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference if she were at the hospital for them, but she needed to be there all the same. As soon as she saw her mother was okay, she’d report Big Elk’s murder and get Barrett locked up.

  Nora barely discerned a footfall, a tiny scratch of sand on rock. Her heart leapt up her throat and she swallowed it, fearing she’d look down and see an enemy.

  But that’s not what made the noise.

  Standing below her was the little kachina man. What had Heather called him? Nakwaiyamtewa—Nora had sounded out the word in her head several times since Heather showed her the photographs in the book.

  He looked up and his calm, deep eyes searched hers. Without a word, he walked away. He made no sound, and Nora suspected he purposely made the earlier noise to get her attention.

  Like a kitten in a tree, Nora found climbing down the building much tougher than climbing up. She searched for each foothold and eventually got low enough to drop the rest of the way. Her landing in the quiet dawn sounded like a buffalo stampede.

  She hurried after the little man. As if he’d been waiting for her to catch up, she caught sight of him as he rounded the corner in what appeared to be an alley. Although she’d seen newer buildings in the first village yesterday—some made of cinder block, some framed and covered with cheap government siding—this village consisted of stone structures snugged closely together. It felt ancient and primitive.

  The little man continued toward the edge of the mesa at his calm pace, limping a bit on his left foot. She shouldn’t go out there. Maybe it was a trap; the area was completely exposed. But then, the little man had saved her before. He never made her feel threatened; a little freaked out maybe, but not in danger.

  She wondered if she was acting
like the stupid waifs in the black-and-white horror movies, stepping up to the attic in the dead of night while Count Dracula waited hungrily. But she felt compelled to follow the old man.

  The sun inched toward the horizon, taking the chill off the frightening night as the little man stopped at the edge of the mesa. He reached into a small leather pouch hanging around his neck and brought out his thumb and forefinger pinched together. In a quiet voice he made strange noises.

  Sure, he would probably say he sang, and it did have a certain rhythm, but Native American songs never really sounded like music to Nora. His voice wavered with age and he dipped his head to the east. Just then, the sun burst out with surprising warmth and fire over the horizon. He held out his hand and let whatever he held in his fingers loose into the calm air. It looked like a fine dust.

  Tears sprang to Nora’s eyes. She might not understand what he said or all the implications, but she knew he prayed with thankfulness for the new day. It didn’t matter to whom he addressed the prayers. The gratitude and beauty of the dawn seeped into Nora’s heart.

  He motioned her forward without turning. Nora obeyed, not even worrying about how close to the edge she stood.

  He held out the pouch and nodded to her, indicating she take whatever it contained.

  She reached inside, felt a rough powder, and pulled out what looked like a pinch of crushed corn. The little man did the same. He sang again in a quiet voice and tossed his pinch toward the sun. His eyes urged her to her own prayer.

  His eloquence, though she didn’t know his words, made her feel like a galumphing elephant. Stiff with embarrassment at her inability to say a simple prayer of thanks, she felt her face grow red.

  The little man began his song again. The quiet bleating of his old voice sounded like a lullaby.

  Nora’s tears flowed, melting her reserve. She longed to sing, to offer thanks for another day. But she didn’t know who to thank.

  What was she so damned thankful for, anyway? Another sunrise and a chance for whoever wanted her dead to succeed? A day of painful recovery, at best, for her mother? The first day of the rest of her life fighting battles alone?