After she had led Charlie Moon into the kitchen, Jacob Gourd Rattle’s wife stomped around, wringing her hands, looking this way and that. The pale woman’s eyes were wide with an expression of alarmed curiosity, as if she had never been in the room before this moment. A gray cat leaped onto the cluttered table, mewed at her mistress.
She stared blankly at the animal, then: “Oh, Bitsey—it’s you.”
The cat sniffed at a saucer. The dish was encrusted with a black smear that might have been the fossilized residue of King Tut’s chocolate cake. The animal licked at the sugary remnants with all the enthusiasm a haughty feline can be expected to demonstrate.
Kicks Dogs plopped herself onto a pine chair, propped her elbows on the table, cradled her chin in her hands. As if suddenly aware of the Ute’s presence, she cocked her head at him. “What brings you out here?”
Moon, standing with hat in hand, returned the peculiar stare with a patient smile. “I thought it was time we had a talk.”
“Talk?” The pale face assumed a suspicious expression. “About what?”
“About that night Jacob left you in the canyon.”
The woman watched a tiny yellow moth dart about above the table. “I’ll help you if I can. But these days, I have a hard time remembering anything that happened more than a few minutes ago.”
“I was hoping you could—”
Kicks Dogs pointed at a straight-back chair. “Siddown there, if you want to.”
Moon seated himself across the dining table from the woman.
She waited until the silence began to crush her like a vise. “What do you want to know?”
“I’d like to ask you some questions about your husband.”
Kicks snorted. “What husband?” She pointed at the bedroom door. “If I had me a husband, why would I be sleeping by myself every night? Can you answer me that?”
“No, ma’am.” He made another try: “When you showed up at my aunt’s place during that big spring snow, you said you and Jacob had spent the night in the canyon.”
Kicks patted her matted hair. “Did you know that I used the last of my savings to pay off the mortgage on this place?”
Moon shook his head.
“Sure you didn’t. And I bet you also didn’t know that I paid over eleven hundred dollars to put a new crank case in Jake’s clunky old van.”
Moon admitted that he was ignorant of that fact too.
“If Jake don’t come back pretty soon, all of his sneaky Indian relatives’ll swoop down on this place and take everything that ain’t nailed down. And most of the furniture is mine.”
“I’m sure you don’t need to worry about anyone taking your possessions. But if someone bothers you, you call me and I’ll see to it that—”
“You know what I need?”
Charlie Moon thought he should not respond to that.
“I need me a lawyer.”
“Uh—could we get back to what happened when Jake left you during the snowstorm?”
“Oh, I guess so.” She folded a soiled napkin into a small, thick triangle. “What do you want to know?”
“You said Jacob left you in Spirit Canyon.”
“Is that what they call it—Spirit Canyon?” She frowned, as if trying to remember. “I don’t think Jake ever mentioned the name of the canyon we was in.” The cat leaped off the dining table, came to lick at a sore on the woman’s ankle.
Moon continued politely, “About an hour after you reported Jacob missing, I met an SUPD officer in the canyon. We not only didn’t find your husband, Jacob’s van wasn’t parked on the mesa where you told us you’d left it. After the snow melted, the tribal police organized a thorough search—brought in about forty volunteers. They combed Spirit Canyon for three days. Never found a trace of Jacob.”
She pushed the cat away with her foot. “If nobody fund Jake, then he must’ve not been there. Which is not all that amazing, since I saw him walk away from his camp.”
He said it slowly: “The search didn’t turn up any trace of Jacob’s camp.”
Unfazed, Kicks Dogs found a blob of something sticky on the oilcloth, scratched at it with her thumbnail. “Maybe they didn’t look hard enough.”
The tribal investigator stared at the faint greenish yellow remnant of the bruise on her cheek. “Why did you stay with a man who knocked you around so much?” It was a highly personal question, but pertinent to his investigation.
She shrugged. “Jake wasn’t all that bad.”
He tried another approach: “Can you think of any reason why your husband would have gone away?”
“Men are always going away.” She flicked this particular member of the gender an angry look. “That’s just the way they are.”
The tribal investigator watched her eyes. “What was Jacob doing in the canyon?”
The pale woman curled her fingers, examined the chewed nails. “He was there because of those dreams he’d been having.”
“He went to Spirit Canyon because of a dream—that’s all he told you?”
A slight shudder rattled her thin shoulders. “Jake—he said what he was doing in that canyon wasn’t for a woman to know—it was men’s business. And I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody he was there.” She darted a glance across the table at her guest. “Would you like something to eat? I got some prunes in the fridge. And some candied yams.”
“That’s very kind of you, ma’am—but I’ll pass.”
“Something to drink then? I could brew up some herbal tea.”
Moon shook his head. “Is there anything about that night you could tell me about?”
“What night?”
“When Jake left you alone in Spirit Canyon.”
“I already told the police and the FBI everything I can recollect.” Her face brightened. “Would you like to hear about what I dreamed that night in the canyon?”
The tribal investigator looked at the ceiling. Suspended on a brass chain, swinging slightly in a draft, was a blackened sixty-watt bulb. It wore a cone hat of greasy white plastic that was cocked at a jaunty angle. Anchored between the corroded chain and a dusty pine beam, a ragged spiderweb billowed like a macabre sail. If I wait for a little while, maybe she’ll forget about the dream.
This was wishful thinking.
She followed his gaze. “I dreamed about those demons and things up there on the ceiling, hanging over me while I tried to sleep.”
“Demons?”
“Oh yeah. I spotted ’em with my little flashlight.”
He heard himself mumble. “You saw demons with your flashlight.”
“Sure. I had a fresh set of double-A alkaline batteries. And you can bet your eyes that after I fell asleep—” She bit her lip. “I’m sure it was the spotted lizard that put the double whammy on me.”
Charlie Moon tried to appear interested. But as her nasal voice droned on, he drifted away to that perfect refuge, the Columbine. He imagined himself a mile south of the ranch headquarters. Standing on the pebbled bank of the glacial lake. Casting a feathered lure onto the mirrored surface. As he was strictly a bait fisherman, this was odd. But there—just under the mirrored surface—the darting form of a twenty-six-inch rainbow flashed in the sunlight. He tensed. Attaboy. Take it and run. From far away, he heard someone call.
“Hey!”
Moon jumped, blinked at the woman.
“When a lady is talking, you should pay attention.”
“Uh—yes, ma’am.”
“Do you want to hear my dream?”
“Sure I do.” Forgive me, Father, for I have lied.
“Okay then.” Kicks Dogs tugged at an unruly ringlet of corn-yellow hair; an expression of certitude glinted in her watery eyes.
Surreptitiously, Moon glanced at his wristwatch.
The cat rubbed her spindly ribs against his boot, a fine-tuned purr rattled in the feline throat.
“I was laying there on my back.” She looked up at the lightbulb, her pupils shrunk to tiny black dots. “It seemed like the c
louds was all yella, kinda glowing. And I thought I heard somebody talking, only not in any earthly language.” She gave him a knowing look. “It sounded like aliens.”
“Aliens, huh?”
She bobbed her head in a jerky nod. “But I want to be perfectly honest and tell you that I’d had just a little sip of my sleeping tonic—which is a little-bitty, teensy-weensy dab of whiskey in a pint of hot water. With lots of sugar.”
Moon wondered how much better his life would be if he resigned his appointment as part-time tribal investigator.
In a mildly theatric gesture, Kicks Dogs put her hand over her eyes. “Anyway, through the mists, I see Jake coming. He stops just a little ways off. For a minute or so, he just stands there, looking up into those clouds.”
Moon watched the cat chase a cockroach across the linoleum. I should check the oil in my fancy new truck. And rotate the tires.
“Then up he goes.” She frowned at the Ute. “Are you listening to me?”
“Sure.”
“Then what’d I just say?”
Uh-oh. “You were telling me about…your dream.”
She seemed satisfied with this response.
That was a close one.
Kicks returned her gaze to the lightbulb above the table. “Then Jake starts climbing.”
He thought it best to show some interest. Once she gets past the dreaming, maybe I can get something useful out of her. “Climbing what?”
She presented a little-girl smile. “Now that’s the sixty-four-dollar question. In my dream, I couldn’t hardly see what it was my old man was climbing. But I’m sure it had to be something that was magical.” With her finger she drew an invisible line on the tablecloth. “Do you know what I mean?”
He knew a trap when he saw one. “Uh…more or less.” Mostly less.
“I believe Jake was climbing a moonbeam in my dream.” An expression of intense self-satisfaction brightened her face. “And it was the spotted lizard that caused me to have that dream.” She fluttered her eyelashes as if she knew a delicious secret. “Do you want to hear the rest?”
The defeated man nodded.
“Right after I had that vision of Jake climbing the moonbeam, I had this other dream. I was a sassy dance-hall gal all decked out in a shiny red dress and I was working in one of them old-timey saloons. All of a sudden, these wild and woolly cowboys came roarin’ in—they was half-cocked and loaded for bear.” She paused and squinted at nothing in particular. “If I remember right, two of ’em was John Wayne and Gabby Hayes. Well, this bunch started to yellin’ and sluggin’ it out with the other customers, which included Teddy Roosevelt—who is my most favorite president. First thing you know, there’s this big free-for-all brawl. A real knock-down-drag-out.”
Charlie Moon gave her a glassy-eyed stare.
“Well, I ran outta the saloon and then I dreamed that I saw old King Kong get hit right in the snout by a little airplane and fall off of the Empire State Building—thump! And I do mean to tell you, when that big ape hit the street it sure did make the earth rattle and shake.” She paused, as if recalling a pertinent detail. “It was all in black-and-white, like one of them old movies. I wish it had been Technicolor, like most of my dreams.”
After an hour or more of patiently listening to the lady pitch fairytale and fable, Moon finally got up from the table. He thanked the eccentric woman for her time, said his good-bye.
Kicks Dogs stood at a window, watching through a slit in the curtain as the Indian drove away into the gathering darkness. Her pale eyes squinted until the tail lights faded into the distance. I bet he thinks I’m crazy.
Sitting beside her mistress, Bitsey chewed contentedly on a cockroach.
CHAPTER FORTY
A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
Pete Bushman sauntered up to the Columbine headquarters porch, scratched enthusiastically at his unkempt beard. “Fine day we’re havin’.”
Charlie Moon nodded. Waited for the next scratch.
The foreman scratched his ear. “I was talkin’ to old man Henry yestiddy mornin’.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Oh, his arthritis is kickin’ up again.” Bushman shot the boss a look. “He’d sure like to sell the Big Hat to you.”
“I’d like to buy it, Pete. And if cow pies was greenbacks, I’d have the Big Hat deed in my hip pocket right now.”
“He’s come down on the price.”
“How much down?”
Bushman told him.
Moon leaned against the porch railing, thought about it from six different directions. “That’s still a lot more’n I could come up with.”
Bushman chewed on a wad of Red Man Tobacco. “There’s more’n one way of raisin’ cash.”
“I know,” Moon said. “But robbing banks is risky business.”
Ignoring the crack, the foreman reminded the boss that the Columbine acreage on the far side of the paved highway was of no use to them at all. “And I just happened to run into that hot-shot land developer yesterday afternoon.”
“Where did you just happen to run into him?”
“In his office in Granite Creek. On the third floor of the Goldman Building.”
“Pete, you are a meddling busybody.”
“Thank you—I work hard at it.” Bushman chewed a few chews, spat tobacco juice into a scattering of pebbles under the gutter spout. “He’ll give you twelve hundred dollars an acre for the land that’s within a mile of the paved road. Eight hundred for that what’s farther back. O’course, they’d have to have some water rights.” He did not mention the developer’s interest in building six three-story condominiums and a nine-hole golf course.
Despite his love for the land on both sides of the highway, the Ute was sorely tempted.
The foreman kicked a chunk of gravel toward a sandstone pillar that supported the corner of the redwood porch. Missed it by a yard. “Whatta you think?”
“I’ll think I’ll think on it.”
“Don’t think too long. At the price old man Henry’s dropped down to, some know-nothin’ city slicker’ll snap up the Big Hat before you can say—”
“We’ll talk about it later, Pete.” Moon had seen a spot of dust in the distance. “I have company coming.”
The foreman turned to squint. “Who?”
“Unless I’m wrong—and I don’t think I am—it will be a representative of the federal government.”
At this news, Bushman swore and stalked away.
AN OLD, SWEET SONG
CHARLIE MOON and Special Agent McTeague mounted a matched pair of copper-colored quarter horses. They rode under cottonwood branches on the bank of the river, then uphill past a creaking windmill that pumped cold water from a deep well and generated surplus electrical energy for the Columbine. The tall woman was decked out in trim khaki slacks, a long-sleeved white blouse, shiny new Roper boots. The Ute wore his workaday ranch clothes—scuffed cowboy boots, faded denim jeans, a blue cotton shirt. This ensemble was topped off by his black John B. Stetson hat.
McTeague cleared her throat. “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked if I could stop by this morning.”
“No. I naturally thought you desired the pleasure of my company.”
The hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “You were right.”
“Not that I’m surprised.” He patted the horse on the neck. “But right about what?”
“The burial where we found Officer Wolfe’s remains—there were two blood types on the stones. Wolfe’s A-positive and a John or Jane Doe with type O.” She patted her mount on the neck. “My partner still doesn’t buy your two-bodies-in-the-grave theory. Stan believes the person who killed Wolfe must’ve been injured during the struggle, and bled on the rocks while he was concealing Wolfe’s body.”
Moon had a look on his face she had not seen before.
She frowned. “What is it?”
“I am puzzled about something.”
“Want to tell me what?”
“No
t right now.”
They passed by a sturdy corral attached to a small stock barn. The ensemble was shaded by a pair of knotty ponderosas. As they moved up a rise, their mounts crossed a narrow snowmelt stream on its way to the river. They topped a rocky crest, entered a thick glade of aspen and spruce. Shrouded in the midday twilight, a jungle of ferns, blueberry bushes, and curled lousewort sprouted from a carpet of bright green pyrola. The damp undergrowth was furiously alive with sounds of invisible creatures scurrying about to accomplish their daily business.
The pair came so suddenly into the sunlight that the woman lifted a hand to shade her eyes. The air was now crisp and dry. The lightest of breezes caressed them with perfume offered by wild pink roses, twining honeysuckle, purple lupine.
Farther out in the grasslands was the most exquisite lake she had ever seen.
Off to their left, nestled in a dark stand of spruce, was the sort of log cabin that a realtor would list as “rustic.” The square-cut logs were chinked with concrete, the chimney was constructed of a dozen types of local stones, the pitched roof was painted a dark, rusty red. McTeague heard something, reined her mount to a halt.
It was an older man’s voice, but sweet and pure—like the sundrenched stream that splashed down the grade to feed the lake.
Sweet hour of prayer—sweet hour of prayer,
that calls me from a world of care…
She looked to her companion for an explanation.
With the barest nod, Moon let her know that they must ride on.
When they were near the edge of the lake, Lila Mae McTeague got off her horse.
The Ute also dismounted, took the reins of both animals.
She turned her pale face, looked up at the silent man. “Charlie?”
He looked down at the big eyes. This woman gets prettier every time I see her.
“Shall we walk around the lake?”
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