The Witch's Tongue

by James D. Doss

Spaces out here could easily deceive the inexperienced eye. He looked at her stiff new boots, then at the distant shore and beyond. “It’s a lot farther than it looks.”

  “I’m not in any hurry.”

  “All right then.”

  “One more thing. While we walk, will you hold my hand?”

  He said that he would. And did.

  Minutes passed without effort, as did a mile. And then two.

  “I want to ask you something.” She had slowed her pace to a meander. “Something important.”

  A virginal bride lightly veiled in a diaphanous mist, the pristine lake filled his eyes. He waited for the question.

  “Are you happy?”

  Surprised, he played for time. “You mean right this minute?”

  “Yes.”

  He pondered this weighty question for so long that she thought he was not going to respond. After a hundred heartbeats and then a dozen more, he said, “I’m not sure.”

  A shadow passed over her face.

  “But if I’m not entirely happy, this’ll do just fine.”

  It was an acceptable answer. Lila Mae McTeague squeezed his hand. “Let’s not talk.” Let’s just walk.

  And with the man leading the horses, the woman at his side, so they continued. It seemed a shorter way than it was. They strolled past a field of granite boulders that resembled patient old soldiers waiting for that final battle to begin. Through an exclusive neighborhood of straight-spined aspens, all with their heads in the air. Along the edge of a dry arroyo, where the fossilized ribs of an ice-age bison were exposed.

  Far off in the distance, toward the highway miles away, there was a lonely wail. A mournful whistling. It might have been the wind.

  Or one of Daisy’s friends.

  It reminded the lovely woman of something quite pleasant. A happy experience from her childhood. “Have you ever ridden on a train?” She smiled at a hummingbird darting about a cluster of purple asters. “I mean—one of the really old ones. With a steam engine.”

  “Yes I did,” he said. Sixteen coaches long…

  “When?”

  “About three years ago.” While I was dead.

  She saw the faraway expression, knew she should not ask.

  The breeze was against their faces, the edge of the lake at their feet. Charlie Moon looped the horses’ reins over the delicate arm of a white-barked aspen. As they stood watching sunlight dance and glance over the waters, their shadows stretched along the narrow beach. It may be that some wordless communication passed between their palms. Or perhaps it was a whisper between two like souls. However it was managed, they knew precisely when it was time to turn back. And without exchanging a word or a glance, they mounted the muscular horses, departed from the lake.

  As they approached the log cabin, the man was still singing. But now he sang a different song.

  The Ute’s sharp ear picked up the words before the city-bred woman heard the sounds. He listened with unusual intensity.

  As they came closer, McTeague heard the man’s voice.

  Sinner do you—love my Je-sus

  His hour of prayer seems to be over. The slender woman turned in the saddle, fixed the violet eyes on her companion. “May we stop and say hello?”

  Moon looked toward the cabin. “Most of the folks on the Columbine are here because they don’t like living in town. This one likes to spend his time alone.” Seeing the disappointment on her face, he quickly added, “But I’ll ask him if you can drop by next time you’re here.”

  “Very well.” That sounds very much like an invitation. She turned away to smile.

  As they rode past the cabin, the haunting challenge of the Negro spiritual followed them.

  If you love him—why not serve him

  Loath to depart from the hymn singer, McTeague slowed her mount to a walk.

  Charlie Moon seemed lost in a trance.

  His pretty companion began to wonder what sort of man she was riding with. “Shall we go by the stream again?”

  He nodded. Somewhat vacantly, she thought.

  They turned their mounts toward the fragile willows and gnarled cottonwoods clustered along the rocky riverbank.

  They rode slowly beside the rushing, rolling waters.

  Charlie Moon dismounted, let his animal drink from the cold river.

  The woman did the same.

  From somewhere deep inside the man, a great laugh boomed out.

  She considered this quite extraordinary.

  He gave her a boyish grin. “Special Agent McTeague, I have a serious question to ask you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Are you on duty today?”

  She did not quite like the look in his eyes. “Well—it is hard to say.”

  “Give it your best shot.”

  “This is my day off. But I’m always on call.” She pushed a long strand of black hair off her face. “Why do you ask?”

  He came close to her. “If you are on duty, what I’m wanting to do could get me in some serious trouble with the federal government.”

  She smiled at the unpredictable man. “Then perhaps you had better reconsider.”

  “Perhaps” is good. “It’s way too late for that.” He reached for her; ever so gently, ever so slowly, pulled her to him.

  Lila Mae made no attempt to escape the embrace. Before she knew she had, she was hugging him back.

  The river flowed on toward the salty sea.

  After an eternal instant, he whispered in her ear. “I’m sure now.”

  She closed her eyes, sighed. “Sure about what?”

  “What you asked me about.”

  The woman listened to his heart beat. “Please explain.”

  Charlie Moon laughed, lifted her off the earth. “I am a happy man.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CAÑON DEL ESPIRITU

  Before the first warm hint of dawn, Charlie Moon parked the Ford F-350 on the crest of Three Sisters Mesa. By the time the tribal investigator made his way down the rocky trail into Spirit Canyon, the sun had shown its crimson brow over the fuzzy bulge of Burro Mountain. Now the blazing disk was halfway across the sky.

  The Ute hiked up the big canyon until it was reduced to a dark, narrow cleft in the base of the mountains. He conducted as thorough a search as a man could make in half a day, but had found not the least evidence that Jacob Gourd Rattle—or anyone else—had camped in Cañon del Espiritu in recent times.

  Moon found a seat on a variegated-sandstone outcropping, removed a thick ham and cheese sandwich from one jacket pocket, a pint Thermos of honey-sweetened coffee from the other, proceeded to eat his lunch.

  The food was good, but he found no pleasure in his thoughts.

  Kicks Dogs either had imagined the whole episode or was lying through her teeth. Or some of both. Maybe the woman had spruced up her visions and dreams with a few well-fashioned falsehoods. But that did not throw any light on the central question—exactly what was she doing in Spirit Canyon that morning? He took a man-sized bite of the sandwich. Smiled at the memory of the woman’s strange ravings. Kicks Dogs had blamed her bad dreams on a spotted lizard. Moon was about to take another bite. He lowered the sandwich. Jacob Gourd Rattle’s wife had said she’d slept under an overhang at the cliff’s edge. Any decent rock shelter would have been used by the Anasazi. Maybe Kicks had turned on her flashlight, looked up at a smoked stone ceiling, saw a lizard petroglyph. But Charlie Moon had roamed Spirit Canyon as a boy and seen most of it ten times over—if there was a spotted lizard in Spirit Canyon, it would be news to him. So she had probably dreamed about a spotted lizard. Even so, something nagged at the murky depths of his consciousness, tried ever so hard to bubble to the surface.

  A shaft of noonday sunlight moved across the canyon floor, illuminated him.

  Of course.

  When Kicks Dogs showed up at Aunt Daisy’s home that morning, she had not said she had been in Spirit Canyon—Kicks had simply said she had been in “the canyon.” Moon�
�s aunt had assumed that the distraught white woman had emerged from the larger of the canyons, because the mouth of Cañon del Espiritu was closest to Daisy’s home. And when the tribal elder had voiced this perfectly reasonable assumption, Kicks Dogs had not disputed it; she didn’t know any of the canyons by name. It had never occurred to Daisy that a traditional Ute like Jacob Gourd Rattle would have little enough sense to set up camp in that other canyon—on the other side of the Three Sisters. That was a very bad place.

  Moon hurriedly finished the remnants of his sandwich, gulped down the sweet coffee, headed for the trail that would take him to the crest of Three Sisters Mesa—that miles-long slab of sandstone that separated Cañon del Espiritu from Cañon del Serpiente.

  In half an hour, the tribal investigator was on the floor of Snake Canyon.

  Above him was a basalt formation that protruded rudely from the Three Sisters side of the narrow canyon. On the opposite wall was its smaller sister. Moon plumbed the murky memory of his childhood. What had the traditional Utes called it? The answer came to him. The larger was the Witch’s Tongue, the smaller the Witch’s Thumb.

  Where had the white woman slept?

  He approached an impressive overhang beneath the Brujo’s Lengua, noted the sooty campfire coating that was evidence of occasional human habitation over several centuries, perhaps millennia. The Ute stood under the arching ceiling, gazed up at an assortment of stick figures. Human beings with arms outstretched. Four-legged animals that might have been deer and elk, a few horses added by more recent artists.

  And in the center of the blackened canvas, a fat, open-mouthed lizard—with spots that gave it a comical polka-dotted look.

  So Kicks had been telling the truth—at least about sleeping under the spotted lizard. She had, if her story could be believed, come to this place to take her brutal husband home. But what had Jacob Gourd Rattle been doing in Snake Canyon? Having no ready answer, Moon left the menagerie of fabled animals behind.

  At the center of the rock-strewn canyon floor, he came upon something quite unexpected—a rectangular spot where not a sprig of grass grew. The tribal investigator estimated it to be about seven feet long, more than thirty inches wide. As he stared at the patch of sterile earth, the Ute had the beginning of a notion.

  Within a yard of the patch that had the appearance of a grave was a dry streambed. On the off chance that something of interest had been washed away by the snowmelt, Moon walked along the rocky surface. This is a real long shot. But after a half-dozen paces, he knelt to get a closer look at the long, tangled strand of rawhide. Attached to one end of the leather cord was a thin blade of polished bone. It was not quite two fingers wide, and as long as his hand. Engraved on one face of the object were four wavy lines. On the opposite side were three deeply incised zigzags.

  He touched his thumb to one of the beveled edges. It was as sharp as a butcher knife.

  Charlie Moon stared at the singular instrument. I should leave it here, let the FBI deal with it when they excavate the grave. But if I do, it might wash away with the next hard rain. Having rationalized his way to where he wanted to be, the Ute wrapped the rawhide cord and sliver of bone in his handkerchief.

  He continued to search for another hour, found nothing more.

  When the shadow of the west cliff was slipping over the canyon floor, Moon’s gaze swept up the wall of Three Sisters Mesa, past the Witch’s Tongue. He recalled Kicks Dogs’ dream about Jacob Gourd Rattle climbing a moonbeam into the clouds. But after she had awakened at dawn, Kicks had seen her husband walking away with his buffalo robe. Or so she said. Maybe her dreams are closer to the truth than what she sees when she’s wide awake.

  After a return hike up the trail to the summit of Three Sisters Mesa, he approached the cliff over Snake Canyon. It had been a highly productive day, and sunset was only a couple of hours away. He stood as still as one of the stone Sisters, staring down at the extended black basalt tongue, the sandy canyon floor. Charlie Moon considered many things—some quite odd, others mundane. It was like peering through a telescope at a past that was slipping in and out of focus while it receded. Though there was still a fuzzy patch here and there, portions of the image would occasionally become more distinct. The tribal investigator thought he knew why Jacob Gourd Rattle had come to Snake Canyon. Why the man had sent his wife home. Why there was something in the canyon resembling a grave.

  One absurd image still nagged at him—Jacob the moonbeam climber. Sensible folk believed that what went up would generally come down again, though the reverse was not necessarily true. How to do it was the issue. By force of habit, the tribal investigator’s gaze examined everything great and small. Over and over again—the earth under his boots, the Witch’s Tongue, the dry streambed meandering through Snake Canyon.

  Without knowing why, the solitary man began to hum an old, familiar tune.

  Then he began to sing it: We are climbing…He listened to the words fill his mouth.

  In an instant, the truth dawned. For an electric moment, he was stunned. It was so simple.

  As he recovered from the shock of discovery, the Ute began to consider what must be done. When the time was right, he would bring Special Agent McTeague to this place, show her the excavation one person had dug, another filled. But right now there was more urgent work to do. Jacob used what he found that night. I’ll use what I’ve already got. It took a few minutes to formulate his plans in detail. I’d better head back to the truck. And a fine pickup it was—with all the bells and whistles. Every hardworking man ought to own one. Charlie Moon boomed out a hearty laugh.

  The happy sound echoed off towering sandstone walls.

  LONG BEFORE the weary man reached the Columbine, darkness had slipped across the high plains. A cold rain was peppering the F-350 windshield. He lowered the window at his elbow. The smell of wet sage and fragrant juniper refreshed him.

  Sidewinder met the big truck near the Too Late bridge, plodded along behind to the ranch headquarters. Before Charlie Moon knew he was there, the peculiar old hound vanished into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  THE CAMEL’S BACK

  A wet night had yielded to a damp, gray dawn.

  Charlie Moon pulled the red pickup onto the paved driveway, braked it to a stop at the main entrance to the Cassidy mansion. Sidewinder, who had hitched a ride, awakened, raised his head, yawned to display an intimidating array of yellowed teeth. The beast took a look out the window, rattled a low growl, turned to give the Ute a questioning look.

  Moon cut the engine, patted the hound’s shoulder. “Don’t fret. I won’t be gone long.”

  Overhead, thunder mumbled an ominous warning. A few fat drops plopped on the windshield.

  The tribal investigator buttoned his denim jacket, took long strides toward the porch. A new door had been installed since his previous visit, presumably to deter burglars. Familiar with such equipment, the lawman knew there would be a slice of quarter-inch steel plate sandwiched between the heavy oak panels. Also new was the brass knocker. It was a smirking monkey’s face, biting on a heavy ring. Ignoring the simian grin, he rapped his knuckles on the reinforced door. After a moment, there was a dry crackling of static behind a metallic grille, then Bertram Cassidy’s high-pitched pixie voice on the intercom speaker: “Pray, who is it tapping on the manor door—some homeless soul in search of a crust of black bread, a mug of mulled mead?”

  Moon heard the hum of a television camera hunting impotently for a target.

  Bertie’s voice took on a nervous edge as he mumbled to himself, “Oh parrot pimples and tadpole feathers—I cannot see a thing on this pathetic monitor.”

  Moon smiled at the monkey face on the door knocker, which bore a remarkable resemblance to Bertram Cassidy. He imagined the chubby man twiddling with the controls on his aunt’s complex new protective system. “Try turning up the brightness control,” he said. “And it might help if you adjusted the contrast.”

  There was a tone of hope in Bertie
’s response. “Charlie Moon—are you the owner of that disembodied voice?”

  The rain began to fall in sheets.

  The remote-controlled camera swiveled, a burst of ultrasound automatically focused a telescopic lens on the Ute’s profile. “Ah yes, I can make you out rather clearly now.” Quite pleased with his control over the high-tech toy, Bertie chuckled like a happy little boy. “What do you want?”

  Moon turned to return the camera’s cold, Cyclops stare. Water dripped off the brim of his black Stetson. “For starters, I’d like to come in outta the rain.”

  “Well, of course you would—great toasted marshmallows, where have my aristocratic manners gone? Just a moment; I must find the right button to poke.” After a few muffled mutterings from Jane Cassidy’s nephew, there was a heavy snap as a solenoid bolt was activated. The doorknob turned.

  But it was Jane Cassidy’s face that appeared in the doorway. Wrapped in a blue silk robe, the hatchet-faced woman carried a tumbler of amber liquor in her hand. She glowered through whiskey fumes at the Ute. “You might have called, Mr. Moon. I am not accustomed to entertaining unexpected guests at this hour of the morning.”

  Moon presented his most disarming smile. “I know just how you feel, but—”

  “Do not interrupt me. I have something to say.” She took a deep breath, aimed a bony finger at his chest. “Charles, I am highly disappointed with you. You made a recommendation that I offer a huge reward for the return of my stolen property, coupled with a stern threat. I took your advice. Not that I am entirely blameless—I should have known better than to be counseled by a half-witted country rube.”

  Moon opened his mouth to speak.

  Jane raised a pale, vein-ribbed hand. “You will hear me out, Indian chap. Then you may have your say.” She frowned at the whiskey glass. “Where was I?”

  “Ah—if I could get a word in edgewise—”