“That’s bullshit.” Skip glanced at the mechanic in disbelief. He so rarely bothered to pay for car servicing that now, having shelled out fifty-seven dollars just a few weeks before, his righteous indignation knew no bounds. “I tell you, I had zero brakes left. Zero. I might as well have tried to use a kickstand. I could have been killed. And now you want me to pay for the privilege? Yeah, right.”
“The brake system was dry as a bone,” said Elmo, doggedly, looking at the floor.
“See?” Skip slapped a balled fist against his palm. “That proves it. You should have seen that leak when the car was here before. I’m not going to pay for—”
“But there ain’t no leak.”
Skip halted in mid-rant. “Huh?”
Elmo shrugged, his eyes rolling toward Skip. “We pressure-tested the brake system. There’s no leak, no sprung seal, nothing.”
Skip stared at Elmo. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Elmo shrugged again. “Besides, there would have been signs of a leak. Look at that.” He grabbed a basket lamp and pointed it up at the Fury.
“It’s the underside of a car. It’s sandy and greasy. So what?”
“But none of that’s brake fluid. No drips, no spray marks. Nothing to show any leak at all. Where do you park it regularly?”
“In my driveway, of course—”
“You see a big stain on the ground lately?”
“Nothing I noticed.”
Elmo looked down again, nodding sagely, his big ears wagging.
Skip started to retort, then stopped, mouth open. “What are you saying?” he said at last.
“I ain’t saying nothing. Your brakes were drained clean.” Elmo’s rubbery lips twisted into what might have been a smile, and he licked at them with a red tongue. “Got any enemies?”
Skip scoffed. “That’s crazy. No, I . . .” He paused a moment thinking. “You mean, somebody could’ve drained them? Deliberately?”
Elmo nodded again, and inserted a finger into one ear, giving it a few hard twists. “Only problem is the brake fluid cap was rusted shut, so’s how it got drained is kind of problematical.”
But Skip was still thinking. “No,” he repeated at last in a softer voice. “The brakes were working fine one minute, gone the next.” He glanced at his watch, irritation once again welling up within him. “I’m late for work. I’ve got this boss who rips the balls off people who are late. And on top of everything else, you give me this—” He gestured at Elmo’s loaner car, an ancient Volkswagen Beetle with a crumpled rear fender and doors of mismatched colors. “I’d rather drive my own, even without brakes.”
Elmo worked his shoulders through their perpetual shrug. “It’ll be ready by five P.M. Friday.”
“And rework that bill while you’re reworking the car,” Skip replied. “There’s no way I’m paying six hundred for somebody else’s negligence.” With effort, he stuffed Teddy Bear into the Beetle, then lowered himself gingerly into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine.
He eased into first and chugged noisily out into traffic, pointing the car’s snout down the strip that eventually would bring him back to town, the Institute, and the waiting Sonya Rowling. He could feel a headache coming on, faint for the moment but getting stronger. It seemed to encircle his temples, like a headband. Despite his bluster, he felt profoundly disturbed, and his heart raced as he worked his way up through the gears. For a minute, he thought of heading back out to Teresa’s, checking the ground where he’d parked the car for a puddle of fluid. But even as the thought came to him, he knew he never wanted to see the place again.
Then, on impulse, he pulled the car onto the shoulder and slipped the gearshift into neutral. Something about this didn’t seem right, at all. And it wasn’t just the bizarre circumstances, either; the moment Elmo had mentioned enemies, a sudden chill had enveloped Skip.
He sat on the shoulder, thinking. Vaguely, very vaguely, he remembered his father, sitting at the dinner table, drinking coffee and telling him a story. For some reason, Skip couldn’t remember the story. But he remembered his mother frowning, telling Skip’s dad to talk about something else.
Something else . . . there was something else that had happened recently, something that dovetailed with all this in a strange and awful way.
Suddenly, Skip put the Volkswagen into gear and, with a quick glance over his shoulder, urged the car back into traffic. But instead of heading toward the Institute, he peeled off at the next corner and began threading his way through a maze of seedy side streets, urging the old car forward, cursing it, his fingers drumming impatiently on the wheel.
Pulling up at last in front of his apartment, he half ran, half leaped up the flight of stairs, dragging Teddy Bear behind him, fumbling with his keychain and unlocking both locks as quickly as he could.
Inside, the apartment smelled of unwashed socks and ancient half-eaten meals. Jerking the chain of an overhead light, Skip made a beeline to the cinderblock-and-plywood bookshelf that leaned precariously against a far wall. Kneeling in front of the lowest row, his finger traced across the old spines of the books that had been his father’s, the faded titles etched faintly in lines of dust.
Then his finger stopped on a thin, battered gray book. “Skinwalkers, Witches, and Curanderas: Witchcraft and Sorcery Practices of the Southwest,” Skip softly breathed the title aloud.
The urgent rush that had propelled him back to the apartment was now replaced by hesitation and uncertainty. There was terrible and hideous knowledge in this book, he recalled. More than anything, Skip did not want to have that knowledge confirm the fear that was now growing inside him.
He knelt there, by the old books, for what seemed a long time. Then at last he gripped the volume in both hands, carried it to the orange couch, opened it carefully, and began to read.
34
* * *
AS THEY EMERGED FROM THE GLOOM OF the slot canyon into the cottonwood valley, Nora could tell at a glance something was wrong. Rather than being scattered indolently across the sparse grass, the horses were bunched together by the stream, snorting and tossing their heads. She quickly scanned the valley floor, the stone ramparts, the ragged form of the Devil’s Backbone. There was nobody.
Swire snugged the revolver into his belt and led the way to the horses. “You take Compañero,” he said to Smithback, reaching for a saddle. “He’s too dumb to be scared.”
Nora found her own saddle from among the pile, located Arbuckles, and threw it over his back. Then she held the horses still while Swire knelt to remove the shoes. He worked in silence, using a chisel to get underneath the clinched end of each nail and bending it straight, taking great pains not to clip or crack the nailhole. Once all the nails were straight, he pried the shoe from the hoof with a clinch cutter. Nora found herself impressed by his skill: shoeing and unshoeing a horse in the field without an anvil was neither a common nor desirable practice.
At last he stood up, wordlessly handing Nora fresh nails along with the shoes, hammer, and clincher. “Sure you can do this?” he asked. Nora nodded, and the wrangler gestured for Smithback to mount.
“There was a lot of wind in the valley last night,” Swire said, cinching the saddle tight and handing the reins to Smithback. “Maybe that’s why there ain’t no tracks down here in all this loose sand. Might have better luck on top, or down the far side.”
Nora secured the saddlebags, tested the saddle’s fit, then swung up. “Smithback’s going to need a gun,” she said.
After a moment, the wrangler silently handed over his pistol, along with a handful of bullets.
“I’d rather have the rifle,” the writer said.
Swire shook his head. “If anybody comes over that ridge, I want to have a good bead on him,” he replied.
“Just make sure it isn’t us,” Smithback said as he mounted Compañero.
Nora looked around for a final time, then turned to Swire. “Thanks for the horses.” She nosed Arbuckles away from the group.
/> “Just a minute.” Nora turned back to see Swire looking at her evenly.
“Good luck,” he said at last.
They rode away from the stream, angling across the uneven land toward the heavy bulk of the ridge ahead, in shadow despite the bright morning sun. Over the thin murmur of the stream and the call of the canyon wrens, Nora could now hear a different sound: a low, steady drone, like the hum of a magneto. Then they topped a small rise and two low forms came into view: the remains of Hoosegow and Crow Bait. A black cloud of flies hung over them.
“Jesus,” Smithback muttered.
Arbuckles began to prance and whinny beneath her, and Nora veered left, giving the carcasses a wide berth on the upwind side. Even so, as they passed she caught a brief glimpse of coiled ropes of entrails, bluish-gray and steaming in the sun, webbed in black traceries of flies. Beyond the scene of the massacre, she stopped.
“What are you doing?” Smithback asked.
“I’m going to take a minute to look more closely.”
“Mind if I stay here?” Smithback asked in a strained voice.
Dismounting and giving her reins to Smithback, Nora walked back over the rise. The flies, disturbed by her approach, rose in a roaring, angry mass. The high winds had scoured the ground, but here and there she could make out old horse tracks and some fresher coyote prints. Except for the marks of Swire’s boots, there were no human footprints. As Swire had said, the entrails had been arranged in a spiral pattern. Brightly colored macaw feathers, shockingly out of place in the arid landscape, protruded from the eye sockets. The carcasses had been stabbed with some painted and feathered twigs.
As she was about to turn away, she noticed something else. A circular patch of skin had been cut from the foreheads of both horses. Examining these more closely, Nora saw that similar patches had been removed symmetrically from a spot on either side of the horse’s chests, and from two more spots on either side of their lower bellies. Why there? What could this possibly mean?
She shook her head and retreated from the killing ground.
“Who could do such a thing?” Smithback asked as she remounted.
Who indeed? It was the question Nora had been asking herself for the last hour. The answer that seemed most likely was too frightening to contemplate.
Within twenty minutes they had reached the base of the ridge. In another twenty, following the gentle trail up, they crested the top of the Devil’s Backbone. Nora brought the horses to a stop and dismounted again, gazing slowly over the vista ahead. The great divide looked out over thousands of miles of slickrock canyons. To the north, she could see the distant blue hump of Barney Top, and to the northeast, the silent sentinel of the Kaiparowits.
And, directly ahead, were the narrow vicious switchbacks that led down the face of the hogback ridge. Somewhere at the bottom lay Fiddlehead, Hurricane Deck, and Beetlebum.
“Tell me we’re not really going down that again,” Smithback said.
Nora remained silent. She dismounted and took a few steps from the horses, scouring the patches of sand that lay among the rocks. There were no signs of a horse; but then, the wind at the top of the ridge would have swept them away.
She looked back down the way they had come. Though she’d kept a careful lookout as they climbed, she had seen nothing but old hoofprints. She shivered; she knew very well there was no other way into the valley. And yet, somehow, the mysterious horse killers had left no sign of their passing.
Tearing her eyes away, she looked back around to the steep trail ahead of them, leading down the front of the Devil’s Backbone. It seemed to simply disappear over the edge into sheer space. She knew it was always more dangerous to descend than to ascend. The terrifying memory of how she’d scrabbled at the cliff face, feet kicking in dead space, returned with redoubled force. She rubbed her fingertips, now free of bandages but still tingling with the memory.
“I’m going to hike down a ways on foot,” Nora murmured. “You wait here.”
“Anything to stay off that trail,” Smithback said. “I can’t imagine a worse way down a cliff than that. Except falling, of course. And at least that’s faster.”
Nora began to pick her way down the steep trail. The first part, all slickrock, not surprisingly showed no signs of the mysterious rider. But when she reached the rock strewn part of the trail, she stopped: there, in a small patch of sand, was a fresh hoofprint. And it was from an unshod horse.
“Are we going down?” Smithback asked with a distinct lack of enthusiasm as she returned to the top of the ridge.
“Yes,” she replied. “Swire wasn’t seeing things. Somebody did come up here on horseback.”
She took a deep breath, then another. And then she began carefully down the ridge, leading Arbuckles. The horse balked at the lip of the trail, and after some firm coaxing Nora got him to take one step, and then another. Smithback followed, leading Compañero. Nora could hear the horse snorting, the scrape of bare hoof on stone. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the trail ahead, breathing regularly, trying to keep them from straying over the edge into the infinite space below. Once, instinctively, she looked over: there was the dry valley below, the strange rock formations like tiny piles of pebbles, the stunted junipers mere black dots. Arbuckles’s legs were shaking, but he kept his head down, nose to the ground, and they inched their way down. Having been up the trail before, Nora was now aware of the most difficult spots, and worked to guide her horse past them when it was most necessary.
Just before the second switchback, Nora heard Arbuckles’s hooves skid, and in a panic she dropped the lead rope, but after a brief scrabble the horse stopped, shaking. Clearly, the unshod hooves had better purchase on the trail. As she bent down to pick up the rope, two crows, riding air currents up the face of the cliff, hovered past them. They were so close, Nora could see their beady eyes swiveling around to look at them. One let fly a loud croak of displeasure as he passed by.
After twenty more heart-stopping minutes, Nora found herself at the bottom of the trail. Turning, she saw Smithback make the last pitch to the bottom. She was so relieved she almost felt like hugging him.
Then the wind shifted, and a terrible stench reached her nostrils: the three dead horses, lying perhaps fifty yards away, draped over some broken boulders.
Whoever had come this way would no doubt have inspected those horses.
Giving Arbuckles’s reins to Smithback, she walked in the direction of the dead horses, fighting rising feelings of horror and guilt. The animals lay widely scattered, their bellies burst open, their guts thrown across the rocks. And there, too, were the tracks she was seeking: the tracks of the unshod horse. To her surprise, she saw the tracks had not come up from the south, as their expedition had, but led instead from the north: in the direction of the tiny Indian village of Nankoweap, many days’ ride away.
“The trail goes north,” she said to Smithback, indicating for him to dismount.
“I’m impressed,” the writer replied as he slipped to the ground. “And what else can you tell about the trail? Was it a stallion or a mare? Was it a pinto or a palomino?”
Nora pulled the horseshoes from a saddlebag and knelt beside Arbuckles. “I can tell it was probably an Indian’s horse.”
“How in the hell can you tell that?”
“Because Indians tend to ride unshod horses. Anglos, on the other hand, shoe their horses from the moment they start them under saddle.” She fitted the shoes to Arbuckles’s hooves, tapped the nails through, then carefully clinched them down. Swire’s horses, their hooves soft from years of wearing horseshoes, could not be left shoeless a moment longer than necessary.
Smithback pulled out the gun Swire had given him, checked it, then replaced it in his jacket. “And was there somebody on that horse?”
“I’m not that good a tracker. But I sure don’t think Roscoe’s the type to be seeing things.”
Nora fitted the shoes onto Smithback’s horse. Then, leading Arbuckles by the guide rope, she began f
ollowing the single track, which showed two sets of prints: one going, the other coming. Although the wind had scoured small sections away, the trail was clearly visible as it wound north through the scattered clumps of Mormon tea bushes. For a while, it ran along the base of the hogback ridge, and then it veered away, into a series of parallel defiles hemmed in by low ridges of a black volcanic rock.
“Where’d you learn to track, anyway?” Smithback asked. “I didn’t know the Lone Ranger was still on the lecture circuit.”
Nora shot him an irritated glance. “Is this for your book?”
Smithback looked back in comical surprise, his long face drooping. “No. Well, yes, I suppose. Everything is fair game. But mostly I’m just curious.”
Nora sighed. “You Easterners think tracking is some kind of art, or maybe some instinctive ethnic skill. But unless you’re tracking across rock, buffalo grass, or lava, it’s not all that difficult. Just follow the footprints in the sand.”
She continued northward, Smithback’s voice vexing her concentration. “I can’t get over how remote this land is,” he was saying. “When I first got here, I couldn’t believe how ugly and barren it all was, not at all like the Verde Valley where I went to school. But there’s something almost comforting in its spareness, if you think about it. Something clean in the emptiness. Sort of like a Japanese tea room in that way. I’ve been studying the tea ceremony a lot this last year, ever since—”
“Say, do you think you could hobble that lip?” Nora interrupted in exasperation. “You could talk Jesus out of going to heaven.”
There was a long moment of blissful silence. Then Smithback spoke again. “Nora,” he asked quietly, “what is it, exactly, you don’t like about me?”
Nora stopped at this, turning toward him in surprise. The writer wore a serious expression, one of the few she remembered seeing on his face. He stood, silently, in the shadow of Compañero. The cowboy clothes, which had seemed so ridiculous a week before, had now become a real working outfit, creased and dusty, well suited to his long frame. The pasty complexion was gone, replaced by a ruddy tan that matched his brown hair. She realized, with a small shock, that this was the first time she had heard him call her by name instead of the odious “Madame Chairman.” And although she couldn’t analyze it—and didn’t have the time, even if she felt inclined to do so—a part of her was pleased to think Smithback was concerned about how she felt about him.
Thunderhead Page 28
