Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  No one spoke. Shan and Lhandro exchanged sad glances, and Shan knew the Tibetan and he were sharing the same thought. They had been brought up in a world where people went missing all the time, where almost no family was exempt from the pain of losing someone. People might walk into the mountains and never come back. People were dragged off to prison without warning, without announcement. People might come back from prison and find that all those they had known had vanished. Shan himself was missing, although he doubted his former wife or even his son cared, and would prefer to assume him dead. Shan saw that his companions were all staring at the American. Winslow lived in a truly different world.

  The entire caravan was visible above them now, climbing up a switchback trail on the slope above.

  "I don't know these mountains," Winslow said in a softer, pleading tone. "I just need a way in, so I don't waste my time finding the right trail."

  Still no one spoke. Suddenly the American sighed and handed Shan the radio. Shan held it in his hands a moment, then laid it on a flat rock, the American watching uncertainly. The Tibetans inched away. Shan grabbed a large stone, raised it over his head, and, as Nyma uttered a small surprised cry, slammed it down on the device. He hammered the radio once, twice, three times, until the case burst and bits of broken circuit board and wiring fell into the dirt.

  "Dammit," the American growled. "You could have just taken the battery."

  Shan ignored him, silently gathering the pieces of the radio and throwing them into a narrow cleft in the rock. "I still don't understand something," he said as he turned to face the American. "Why this pass? This woman could be anywhere in the mountains."

  Winslow stared at the hole where the shards of his radio had disappeared, shook his head, and turned to Shan. "I spent four days looking around her base camp to the north and found nothing. Her company had other field teams out searching for her body. I thought I would work from the south up. But I didn't know where exactly. Then today after that yak and I met, I stopped to study the map with my driver, on the road below this spot."

  The American hesitated a moment, pushing his hair back with a self-conscious expression. "A large bird, like a grouse, with white in its plumage, landed on a boulder nearby while I was working with the map. It kept staring at me. I walked over and it kept staring until it flew to another boulder a little way up the trail." Winslow shrugged and looked up sheepishly. "Like something was waiting for me up the trail."

  Lokesh nodded solemnly. Shan studied the man. When speaking of the day's events, he had not mentioned meeting Colonel Lin, only meeting the yak.

  "A bird," Nyma whispered soberly, to no one in particular.

  "Where is this base camp exactly?" Shan asked. "How far north?"

  "In one of the valleys where they are drilling. There's a mountain called Geladaintong, which holds the headwaters for the Yangtze. This place is twenty miles west of there, inside the ridges of another huge mountain. It's called Yapchi Valley."

  Lhandro let out a gasp of surprise. Lokesh began nodding his head, as if it all made perfect sense.

  Winslow stared in confusion as Shan replayed what had happened at the village. The American had emerged from the rocks to confront Lin after the colonel and Lhandro had spoken of Yapchi. He had not heard them speak of the distant valley.

  "The Yapchi oil project," Shan said.

  "Right. She works there."

  Shan sighed, looking into his friends' expectant faces. There would be no denying the American now. The Tibetans would say it was predestined that the American travel with them. He knelt and helped the American repack his bag.

  They camped that night below the pass in a field of boulders where the wind blew incessantly and they could light a fire only after building a small wall of rocks to shield the flame. The American offered to cook on his little stove but Nyma simply pointed to a figure climbing along the slope above them. It was Tenzin, who still seemed unable to complete a day without gathering dung.

  "It must have been a bad thing he did," Lhandro had observed when he had first seen Tenzin with his sack, exchanging a knowing glance with Shan. The rongpa, like Shan, had guessed that Tenzin was performing penance. Shan remembered Tenzin's strange behavior in the hailstorm, and later at the lake. Drakte had freed him from prison and he was going north because someone had died.

  Winslow studied the silent, stooped figure with a bewildered expression. "I don't think a cowboy could be a cowboy," he said slowly, in English, to himself, "if he had to collect cow shit every night."

  "Keeps you close to the earth," Shan offered in the same tongue.

  The American looked up in surprise. "You speak American well."

  "My father taught me English before he died."

  Winslow contemplated Shan, as if sensing a story in Shan's words, but did not press. "Don't see my bird," he said, switching to Tibetan as he gazed back over the slope. "I never believed in signs, until I started coming to Tibet. First couple trips, no big deal. Flew into the airport to meet the coffin of a former governor who had a heart attack climbing the Potola steps. Second time, I just went into Lhasa for a mountain climber who had died of altitude sickness. But the third time I was on the road to Shigatse and told the driver to stop for a monk who was looking for a ride." He paused, seeing the others had closed around the fire and were listening. "An hour later I told him to stop again," Winslow continued. "I got out without knowing why and stared at this high hill. Not really a mountain but big and steep, all rock and heather. I had to climb it. I still don't know why, it was like a dream. Afterwards, I thought maybe it was the medicine I was taking. But I started walking. Took almost an hour to get to the top."

  "What was there?" Nyma asked.

  "Nothing. Not a thing. Except an old piece of cloth jammed under a rock. An old square of silk with Tibetan writing on it. At the time I didn't even know it was one of those wind horses, a prayer flag. But I freed it so it flapped in the wind. Then I picked up a rock, a small red rock, and I threw it far down the slope without knowing why. It just struck me that the rock didn't belong there, that it needed to be thrown. Afterwards, when I got to the truck I told the two Tibetans. The monk nodded with this wise expression and said that clearly it had to be done, and thanked me for coming to Tibet to do it."

  The Tibetans at the fire nodded knowingly.

  Nyma filled her bowl with buttered tea, then shaped three butter balls and set them on the edge of the bowl. Shan had often seen dropka do the same thing, reserving the morsels for the deities. "I'm sorry," the American said. "I know I don't make any sense."

  But Nyma and Lhandro seemed not to be listening. Lhandro was pointing. There, thirty yards up the slope, a grey shape rested on a boulder. A large bird, watching over the camp.

  "It can't be," the American muttered, but he stared long at the creature, then turned away with an unsettled expression, as if he could not decide if the bird had come to guide him or haunt him.

  Movement caught Shan's eye and he saw Tenzin emerge from some rocks not far from the bird, his sack on his shoulder. A second figure came into view above him, leading a horse, extending a yak chip toward the mute Tibetan. They had not seen the Golok since the village.

  "He's with you?" the American asked. "He was riding above that village."

  Lhandro looked at Shan as though for help. "He's part of the caravan," Shan said, and was struggling to find more words to explain the Golok when Anya suddenly stepped close to the fire, wedging herself in a sitting position between Winslow and Shan. The American shared his mug with the girl and she drank heavily as Shan and Winslow gazed at the bird again.

  "I understand the sheep carrying salt," Winslow said after a few minutes. "I understand that some of you don't have papers. But," he said to Shan, "I still don't know what you are doing here."

  "The Chinese forced him out of China," Anya blurted out. "And now," the girl made a gesture toward the mountains, "now he has to be here."

  "Forced him out?"

  "He
has a tattoo," Nyma said with a loud whisper, leaning toward the American.

  "Jesus," Winslow muttered. "Lao gai." The American seemed to understand much about Tibet, or at least about China's role in Tibet. He studied Shan with pain in his eyes. "How long?"

  "Four years. Not so bad."

  "Not so bad? Christ! You were in slave labor for four years?"

  Shan looked at Lokesh, who was gazing with a look of wonder at the stars that were appearing over the mountains. "Not as bad as thirty."

  Winslow followed Shan's gaze toward the grizzled old Tibetan and his mouth opened. But all that came out was a small moan.

  As Shan studied the strange American again he recognized the awed, confused feeling that Shan, too, had experienced years ago when arriving in Tibet. Winslow was not just visiting the country, or encountering it like a stranger. The land was drawing him into it, beginning to change him in the deep, mysterious ways it had changed Shan. And no one, not Anya, not the lamas, certainly not Shan, could predict what Winslow would be when Tibet was done with him.

  The next morning the Yapchi farmers offered the American a horse for the steep climb up the pass, but Winslow refused it. The American took his place behind Shan, near the end of the line, leading one of the pack horses as they climbed through a thick snow squall for thirty minutes, then broke into brilliant sunlight as they entered the high pass.

  No one spoke as they wound through the dangerous passage. A twenty-foot-high ledge of ice and snowpack, rendered unstable by the spring winds, loomed close on the left, leaning over the trail. A nearly vertical wall of splintered shale rose on the right, and down the center of the high winding trail ran frigid melt water, turning the path into a long narrow track of cold mud.

  When they cleared the pass Shan turned to see the American had paused and was staring back at the treacherous wall of snow that seemed about to collapse. "Geologists sometimes set off explosions," Shan observed. "Avalanches can happen."

  Winslow nodded his head solemnly. "Especially oil geologists. There's probably a thousand places like this where she could have died in an accident."

  "Why would she be alone?" Shan asked as he gazed out over the barren landscape they had passed through. There were indeed a thousand places to die. And a thousand places for the dobdob or Lin's troops to hide. "Geologists need a team for support. People to collect and carry samples. People to take measurements. People to watch people," he added, meaning that if a foreign scientist was wandering the mountains Public Security would be interested.

  Winslow nodded again. "A team of four or five. She took two Tibetan assistants up a slope five miles from the field camp and sent them off to collect rocks at a ledge she saw through binoculars, told them to meet her in three hours at another ledge. She never showed up. They backtracked. They called in a company helicopter the next day. They even took dogs to search. Nothing." Winslow paused, turning to stare at the long high plain the pass had led them to. Suddenly he pointed. Something was moving across it, a rider galloping toward them, raising a long plume of dust behind him.

  Lhandro, at the front of the column, raised his hand for them to halt, then jumped on a rock to better see the rider as the others anxiously gathered around him for a report. But Shan did not need to be told. He knew it was Dremu, and the Golok was frightened.

  Dremu wheeled his horse around Shan. "He's out there," the Golok said, gasping, shaking his head as though in disbelief. "It must be that demon again." He extended his hand and pulled Shan up behind him as Lhandro began stripping the bags off the lead packhorse.

  They rode hard out onto the plateau, Shan not understanding what to look for, part of him fearing the Golok had led them into a trap. But when they had gone less than a mile the horse stopped so abruptly that Shan almost flew off. A body lay on the path, a man in a red robe.

  Shan and Dremu leapt off, the Golok circling the man, facing outward, his long knife in his hand. Shan knelt by the man's side. The monk lay outstretched, his arm extended toward the south. One leg was bent under him as if he had been crawling when he had collapsed. The short-cropped hair on his scalp was matted with blood. His mouth lay open against the earth, a trickle of fresh blood running onto the soil.

  Chapter Six

  Shan turned the monk over. He was breathing, but barely. A long tear in the side of his robe exposed a green-black welt along his ribs. Another long bruise ran almost the entire length of his forearm. His hands and arms had several long cuts and scratches, from which thin lines of dried blood ran. Shan could find no other injuries. The man had been savagely beaten, perhaps even flogged, but not stabbed or shot.

  As Shan pulled off his coat and placed it over the monk a second horse wheeled to a halt, carrying both Lhandro and Lokesh.

  "A holy man!" Lhandro gasped.

  Lokesh knelt by the battered man and lifted his left hand, arranging his three fingers along the man's wrist to take a pulse, then touching his neck. "He has had a terrible shock to his system," Lokesh declared after a few moments. "A violent beating. But he is young. His blood is strong."

  "Who is he?" Lhandro asked in alarm, then began walking around the man, pulling his hat low as he surveyed the landscape. "What is a monk doing up here?"

  Shan lifted the man's right hand. There were black smudges on his fingers, and similar smudges on the bottom of his robe. He touched one and pulled his hand away, rubbing his fingers. It was soot. But there was no sign of a fire. And there were no other monks, no minibus from Religious Affairs, no vehicle of any kind, not even a horse. The monk must have been on a retreat, or perhaps a solitary pilgrimage.

  Lokesh produced a bottle of water and began to gently wash the monk's face, speaking in soft tones, first telling the man he was with friends now, then beginning a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha. Lhandro began clearing a circle of bare earth and collecting rocks. He was going to do what Shan had always seen herdsmen and rongpa do when someone was injured. Lhandro would light a fire and make buttered tea.

  As Shan knelt opposite the limp form of the monk the man's eyes fluttered open and he jerked his hand from Lokesh. "You will need weapons! You must have weapons to stop the thing!" he groaned. His eyes widened, and he squinted at Lokesh as though trying to recognize who, or what, the old Tibetan was. Then he faded back into unconsciousness.

  Moments later the caravan began to arrive. The Yapchi villagers rushed to the monk's side, murmuring excitedly, confusion and fear twisting their faces. No monk had come to their valley for many years, Lhandro had said. Tenzin quickly produced the sack of fuel carried by one of the packhorses and helped Lhandro ignite a fire in the circle of rocks. The American pulled the sweatshirt from his rucksack to make a pillow for the man, then produced his first aid kit, from which Lokesh selected small squares of sterile gauze to dab at the worst of the monk's wounds.

  Shan pulled out his battered fieldglasses and stood on a flat boulder to survey the high plateau. The land was surprisingly fertile, carpeted with the spring growth of plants, many of which were unfamiliar to him. He carefully studied the entire terrain without seeing any sign of life, then began again with the northwest side of the plain, the direction from which the monk seemed to have been crawling. For a moment he thought he saw a wisp of smoke in the distance, then it was gone.

  "What kind of bastard would do this?" a deep voice near Shan asked. "A harmless monk." Winslow was aiming his compact binoculars in the direction Shan had been looking.

  "I thought I saw smoke," Shan said.

  "Smoke?"

  "The monk has soot on his hands and robe."

  Shan turned back to the caravan. A pan was being unpacked, with a kettle and churn. Lhandro had decided to make their midday camp early, to cook tsampa and check the bindings on the sheep packs. Shan caught Winslow's eye and motioned toward the two empty packhorses that now stood grazing on the sparse spring growth.

  "If the monk does not strengthen we will stay here tonight," the rongpa headman said when he saw Shan and the American lead
ing the horses away. "But if we are not here when you return, ride to the grove of junipers at the far side." Lhandro pointed to the high ridge that defined the northeast side of the plain, perhaps ten miles away. "On the other side is a ruined gompa where there is better shelter."

  Shan and Winslow trotted side by side over the rough terrain, stopping to follow a flash of movement on the side of the high ridge they had passed through that morning. After a moment they saw in their glasses that it was a family of goats. As they started again Winslow raised his hand. The sound of pounding hooves made them turn. Dremu was bearing down on them.

  "You have to stay with it," Dremu growled in a scolding tone to Shan as he pulled his horse to a sudden halt.

  "It?" Winslow asked.

  The Golok replied with a frown. "You're looking for that fire?" he asked.

  "Did you see a fire?" Shan asked.

  "No, but I smell it. Not yak dung. Not wood," he said, and kicked his horse into a trot toward the northwest corner of the plateau.

  A quarter hour later Shan and Winslow dismounted behind Dremu, who stood at the edge of a shallow bowl perhaps fifty yards wide, marked by a two-foot-high cairn covered with lichen. The bowl differed from the rest of the landscape because it was lined with a uniform growth of a short grey-green plant, ten inches high, that Shan had not seen growing elsewhere on the plain. But half of the small hollow was blackened, the spring growth burned to the ground. A pungent smell, at once sweet and acrid, filled the air.

  "Why a fire here?" Winslow wondered. "Lightning?"

  "A campfire," Dremu interjected, and pointed to a low, dark six-foot-long mound on the far side of the bowl, adjacent to the scorched earth, ten feet from the cairn of rocks.

  They walked their mounts slowly around to the mound, their pace slackening the closer they approached, each man glancing warily toward the slope above. Shan could not escape the sense that they were being watched, but he saw no sign of life on it other than a family of pikas scurrying over the rock talus.