The Witch's Tongue

by James D. Doss

  THE UTE had almost finished his pie when an old friend happened by. Father Raes Delfino leaned on the table. “Hello, Charlie. May I join you?”

  Moon kicked out a chair. “Can I buy you something to eat?”

  “Thank you.” The Catholic priest seated himself, bellied up to the table. “A bowl of soup would do nicely.”

  The tribal investigator and the man of God discussed the comparable merits of green chili stew and chicken noodle soup. Father Raes settled on the latter. As he crumbled two crispy saltines into the bowl, the Jesuit frowned at his meal. “The bishop has approved my request for retirement. My replacement should be here within the month.”

  Charlie Moon could think of nothing useful to say. “Where will you be going?”

  Father Raes polished his spoon with a napkin. “Someplace remote and quiet, I hope. I am looking at a small cottage in Maine. It will need some fixing up, but it should meet my needs.”

  The Ute waited while Angel filled his coffee cup to the brim. “This cottage close to the ocean?”

  “Dear me, no.” Father Raes smiled. “That is quite beyond my means. I shall be deep in the inland woods.”

  Moon shook his head. “Maine is a long ways off.”

  “Meters and miles are illusions of the mind.”

  The Indian presented another objection: “They don’t get much sunshine in the wintertime.”

  “But it is very lush and green in summer.”

  “I hear the mosquitoes grow big as bats. And I won’t even mention the gnats.”

  “I appreciate that.” The priest tasted the soup, found it a tad too salty.

  “Besides,” Moon said, “they talk funny up there.”

  “I shall learn to like it.”

  And so they whiled away a small measure of the afternoon.

  When the retiree’s briny bowl was half empty, he could get no more past his lips.

  Noting the cleric’s hungry look, the rancher suggested something more palatable. A genuine cowboy recipe.

  Father Raes nodded as he listened. “That sounds rather enticing,” said he.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE WARNING

  Jim Wolfe was seated on a chrome-plated stool; his elbows rested on a sour-smelling pine bar that pretended to be seasoned oak.

  The rheumy-eyed woman on the other side of the counter pretended to be forty—the age of her daughter. She wiped away a smear of beer suds, offered the off-duty cop a painted smile. “So how come them Indians hired a white boy like you?”

  Wolfe stared glumly at the small glass of amber liquid in his hand. “For the promotion of cultural diversity, I imagine.”

  “What?”

  “I am the token matukach.”

  “What’s that?”

  He pondered how best to communicate with the woman. “Matukach is to Ute as Gentile is to Jew.”

  “Oh, I get it.” The drink pusher filled a plastic bowl with pretzels. “It’s some kind of religious thing.”

  Wolfe helped himself to a twisted snack. “Your insight is remarkably obtuse.”

  The barmaid nodded. “I was always the brainy one in my family.” She found a second bowl, filled it with salty beer nuts. “It’s just a matter of listening to what people say, then thinking things through. My daddy always said I was—” She looked up from her task. An expression of alarm pinched her pale face.

  Jim Wolfe felt the presence behind him. Without knowing how he knew, he knew it was the man who cast the long shadow. He turned on the stool, gawked at the tribal investigator. “How’d you know I was here?”

  “I smelled your aftershave a mile away,” Charlie Moon said. “And your Japanese horse is tied up out front.”

  “Ah, yes. My trusty Subaru steed.” Wolfe raised the whiskey glass in a mock salute to the alcoholic. “Can I buy you a fizzy soda pop?”

  “No, but thanks.” Charlie Moon nodded to indicate a table in the rear of the Bear Claw Bar. “How about we talk.”

  It was not a question. Not even an invitation. This was a summons. A flash of irritation glinted in Wolfe’s eyes. “I hope this ain’t business.”

  “Why do you hope that?”

  “I’m off duty.”

  “So’m I. This isn’t official—more like a professional courtesy.”

  The muscles in Jim Wolfe’s jaw and neck bulged. “I already know that Navarone’ll get sprung today. And I know his shyster lawyer has filed for a restraining order to keep me away from that piece of trash.”

  “I thought maybe you’d heard, that’s why I—”

  Something snapped in Wolfe’s alcohol-soaked brain. “And I am plenty tired of getting pushed around by lying Apaches, slime-ball lawyers—and big-shot Utes!” The white man got to his feet.

  “I only want to have a civil word with you.” Moon spoke softly. “But if you have something else in mind, I’ll do my best to accommodate you.”

  Wolfe held his ground, looked the legendary Ute up and down. I can take him. But I might need a club. He eyed a whiskey bottle near at hand.

  The woman behind the bar felt the tension in all of her limbs, wondered what was going to happen. Hoped it would be something terrible and bloody that she could tell gory stories about.

  What happened was this: Charlie Moon began to unbutton his jacket.

  Somewhat sobered by this development, Jim Wolfe coughed up a hollow laugh. “Hey, you want to do me a professional courtesy? Well, that’s fine with me.” He led the way to the table the Indian had selected, twirled a dirty chair backward, straddled it.

  Charlie Moon seated himself across from the white man, back to the wall.

  They were within spitting distance of the broken men’s room door. An ammoniac stink of urine hung in the dank atmosphere.

  “Great location,” Wolfe said with a sniff. “Has a certain air to it.”

  Behind the door, a leaky toilet burbled a caustic response.

  Moon stared at the belligerent white man.

  The Ute’s silence was unnerving. “Charlie, this conversation is highly stimulating. I’m not even sure I need this whiskey.” Jim Wolfe tossed it down anyway, slammed the glass on the table. “I guess the decision to cut Navarone loose was just standard tribal politics.”

  “What’s done is done,” Moon said. “The less you know about the details, the better you’ll sleep tonight.”

  “It’s my own fault. I should’ve broke that tree-climbing thug’s neck when I had the chance.”

  Moon shook his head. “That is not the right kind of attitude.”

  “Sure it is,” Wolfe said with an air of unassailable logic. “If I’d of terminated Navarone when he jumped outta that tree on me, it would’ve been a clear and unequivocal case of self-defense. There’d be one less felon on the streets.”

  “You’ve already threatened to kill Felix Navarone,” Moon reminded him. “And in front of a half-dozen cops. Cops who would be called to testify against you if Navarone’s case went to court. And any one of those witnesses would be compelled under oath to repeat what you said.”

  Wolfe glared at the tribal investigator. “Including you?”

  Moon nodded. “If I was in the witness stand, I’d tell the truth.”

  The SUPD cop rolled the glass between his hands, took a deep breath. “Is that what you dropped by to tell me?”

  “I wish it was.” Moon tried to think of a way to present the truth so it wouldn’t look quite so ugly. But that would be like smearing lipstick on a warthog’s snout. So Moon told Wolfe straight-out: “The chairman has been getting threats from Navarone’s lawyer, and he’s taking them seriously.”

  Wolfe glared at the man who was trying hard to help him. “What does that mean?”

  “Here’s the bottom line—from the tribe’s point of view, you have become a liability.” Charlie Moon took the empty shot glass from Wolfe’s hand, turned it upside down on the filthy table.

  The white cop stared at the thing.

  Moon watched the man’s bloodshot eyes
. “You got any change in your pocket?”

  Officer Wolfe attempted a grin. “You want to play the juke?”

  The Indian waited.

  The puzzled SUPD cop found a few coins, dumped them onto the table.

  The Indian selected a shiny nickel. He balanced it on the upturned bottom of the shot glass.

  Jim Wolfe squinted at the aristocratic profile of Thomas Jefferson.

  Moon nodded at his construction. “You know what this is?”

  The subject of the inquiry studied the display. “Well, this is just a wild guess—but it bears a striking resemblance to a nickel on a whiskey glass.”

  Moon shook his head.

  “No?”

  “The nickel is your job. Maybe even your future in the law-enforcement business. One careless little bump from you…” He left the rest to the white man’s fertile imagination.

  Mesmerized by the delicately balanced coin, the SUPD cop held his breath. Finally, he exhaled. “So how’ll it fall, Charlie…heads or tails?”

  “Don’t matter,” Moon said softly. “Either way, you lose.”

  “Then I guess I better be careful not to shake the table.”

  Moon smiled at his pupil. “You’re beginning to get the gist of the situation.”

  Jim Wolfe watched the Ute get up, walk across the barroom floor, and disappear through the swinging doors. He muttered a curse, banged his fist on the table. In that agonizing slow-motion where pink roses blossom and wither, billowing clouds form and vanish, the off-duty cop watched the nickel roll off the inverted shot glass. Onto the filthy table. Off the edge. By the time it bounced onto the floor, Wolfe had emerged from the spell.

  The waitress yelled, “Hey, you—what’s wrong over there?” Getting no answer, she hurried to the dark corner.

  The off-duty cop was under the table, clawing at the floor like a starving dog scratching for a buried bone.

  This one’s had too much to drink. “Whatta you think you’re doing?”

  Jim Wolfe found a folding knife in his pocket, flicked out the blade. “My nickel—it went in a crack.” And if I don’t get it back…

  “Well, don’t go cutting up the floor for it.” Cheap bum. The hardworking woman reached into her apron pocket, where her tips jingled. “I’ll give you another nickel.”

  “No!” He hacked wildly at the half-rotten wood. “I gotta have this nickel.”

  He’s drunk and crazy.

  MUCH LATER that night, when Charlie Moon should have been in bed, he was not. He was hunched in front of a television screen. He pressed a button on the VCR remote control, advancing the videotape frame by frame.

  In the slowest motion imaginable, Felix Navarone spread his arms in tiny, jerking movements—and launched himself from the limb. There was no room for doubt. He definitely did not fall, he jumped. The Apache’s leap from the cottonwood branch amounted to a deliberate physical assault on SUPD officer Jim Wolfe. Having been an eyewitness to the event, Charlie Moon was not surprised.

  It was what happened after Navarone landed on the white man that fascinated the tribal investigator—there was something about this wrestling match that did not look quite right. For the most part, it was a regular rough-and-tumble, grunt-and-gouge, give-and-take battle where each of the combatants seemed to be doing his level best to obliterate his opponent. But for just a moment—and in a most peculiar fashion—one man was either doing all the taking or all the giving. Charlie Moon could not decide which. Or why.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE OPPORTUNITY

  Not long after Charlie Moon left officer Jim Wolfe in the Bear Claw Bar, Felix Navarone was released from the tribal jail in Ignacio.

  Despite Moon’s stern warning to stay clear of the man he had threatened to kill, Wolfe felt compelled to follow the jubilant exprisoner’s 1957 Chevrolet pickup out of town. From long experience, the policeman knew that tailing was an iffy proposition. Blink an eye, your ninety-year-old grandmother would lose you in a half-empty Wal-Mart parking lot. And if your target suspected he was being followed, you might as well forget it and go home. This being so, Officer Wolfe was properly cautious.

  A few miles south of Bayfield, Navarone turned off the paved highway onto a gravel road. From time to time, the pickup’s taillights would disappear over a ridge. This made Wolfe uneasy; he kept his distance at a good quarter mile. But when he topped a particular rise, Wolfe was confronted with an unexpected complication—a fork in the road. There was not even a distant puff of dust to indicate which direction the Indian had chosen. Well, this is just dandy. On a hunch, Wolfe took the right branch of the fork, goosing his Subaru Forester to speeds that were reckless on the gravel. If he’s up ahead, I’ll spot him pretty quick. But after several miles there was no sign of Navarone’s pickup. Cursing his bad luck, Jim Wolfe did a sliding U-turn, raced back to take the other fork. He doggedly spent an hour searching for a trace of the ancient Chevy pickup. It was no use. The Apache had slipped away.

  He considered the situation. The left and right branches of the fork had multiplied into a multitude of smaller lanes, and most of these ended at isolated dwellings or locked gates. As far as he could tell, there was no through road on either branch. Which meant that Navarone must eventually return to the split in the road. But when? Tonight? Tomorrow? Sometime next week?

  Having nothing better to do, Jim Wolfe decided to wait for a few hours. He parked his car a few yards off the road in the concealment of a clump of willow bushes. He slipped a Judy Collins disk into the CD player, settled down, watched. There was only a dribble of traffic. When Ms. Collins had played out, he substituted Emmylou Harris. As twilight came and went, he watched the blood-red sun slip behind a distant mesa—then go in free fall to the bottom of the world. When the darkness was complete, he shut the CD player off. The occasional sound of an approaching automobile would arouse his interest, but mostly he listened to crickets chirp and wished a hundred times that he had taken the left fork.

  Shortly past midnight, he decided to give it up. Wherever that Apache is, he’s holed up for the night. I might come back in the morning—

  He was startled by the whine of an engine. As the vehicle got closer, it began to take shape in the moonlight. Wolfe strained to see whether it might possibly be an old Chevrolet pickup. It was. Looked like a 1957. The off-duty cop laughed out loud and muttered to himself, “Navarone—you are dead meat.” He cranked the Subaru’s engine. Leaving the lights off, he slipped quickly behind his prey.

  After a mile or so, the pickup in front of him slowed to a crawl.

  FELIX NAVARONE leaned forward to look through the ’57 Chevy pickup’s sand-blasted windshield. He squinted to make out the little-used dirt lane that led out to the natural gas field near Butterfield Mesa.

  JIM WOLFE adjusted his speed to match the Apache’s truck. What now, Navarone?

  The Chevrolet pickup came almost to a stop. Started again. Moved slowly, as if searching for something. Turned off the gravel road. Moved slowly into the brush. Vanished.

  Wolfe passed the location where the pickup had turned, took a hard right, bumped down the shoulder into a dry streambed. He shifted to low, snailed along for a hundred yards. When he saw no sign of the pickup’s headlights, it occurred to him that Navarone might have already stopped. If he has, he might hear my engine. Wolfe switched off the ignition, removed the bulb from the dome light. He checked his sidearm, opened the car door as silently as possible, did not close it. He walked slowly toward where he thought the pickup might be, taking care not to step on a dry twig that might snap. Juniper and piñon cast black shadows in the silvery moonlight.

  What is Navarone up to? A possibility had been gnawing at the police officer. He might have spotted me behind him and figured he’d suck me into an ambush. Well, my momma didn’t raise no fools. Wolfe dropped to his hands and knees, crawled to the crest of a grassy ridge. He scooted along on elbows and belly until he could see what lay beyond—an open, almost flat valley, bisected by a deep a
rroyo. Towering above the valley was a broad mesa, with a split chimney towering from its crest. There was no sign of the old pickup. He cursed. I’ve lost him again! But as his eyes gradually adjusted to the moonlight, he saw a hint of parallel lines in the sand. The tire tracks ran along a barely discernible lane that snaked through the low brush. Wolfe got to his feet, fell into a crouching run, crossed a shallow arroyo. He found the pickup’s tire tracks but did not hear any engine sounds. And then he saw it—the truck was parked in a narrow neck of valley, between a gigantic pair of sandstone mesas. The Indian had taken no particular trouble to hide his wheels. Which could mean that he didn’t expect anyone to follow him into this wilderness. Or that he didn’t care if someone did. Someone whose name was Jim Wolfe. The troublesome thought pounded in his head.

  Could be an ambush. I need to get to higher ground.

  He selected a knobby hill sprouted with sage and piñon, made his way to the top, and took up his position by a pillow-shaped outcropping of sandstone.

  Nothing moved around the Indian’s truck.

  Time passed without the ticks and tocks of mechanical clocks.

  The lawman watched. Waited. Thought his troubled thoughts.

  White-hot stars winked and sparkled. Unseen by the eye of man, a four-billion-year-old, pea-sized meteorite gleamed in the dark sky for one final glorious moment. Mindless of the mortal and his minuscule concerns, the Milky Way whirled ever so slowly—as spiral galaxies are required to do.

  Somewhere out there in the faraway, a lonely coyote yip-yipped. There was an answering yodel from the crest of a craggy mesa. Then another.

  An owl, hungry for her nightly mouse, began to hoot. She was joined by her mate.

  A pleasant night breeze played with the juniper branches.

  Presently, a heavy cloud skimmed across the heavens, cloaking the world of men in inky darkness.

  Jim Wolfe was squinting, vainly attempting to see the pickup. If I get my hands on that Apache, I’ll give him the beating of his life.