Thunderhead

by Douglas Preston

  Nora opened her mouth to reply: You mean, other than the fact that you’re a brash, smug guy with an ego the size of Texas? But she stopped and turned away, realizing this wasn’t fair to Smithback. For all his eccentric ways, she had grown fond of the journalist. Now that she knew him better, she realized his ego was tempered by a certain self-deprecation that was charming in its own way. “I didn’t mean to snap at you just now,” she said. “And I don’t dislike you. You almost screwed up everything, that’s all.”

  “I did what?”

  Nora decided not to answer. It was too hot, and she was too tired, for this kind of discussion.

  They moved on slowly as the sun climbed toward noon. Though the trail was relatively easy to follow, tracking by eye was still exhausting work. The hoofprints took them through a weird country of broken rocks, knobs, and humps of sandstone. The prints appeared to be following a faint and very old trail. On horseback now, Nora kept them moving as quickly as she could without losing the track. The midday sun beat down relentlessly, burning off the glaring white sand, flattening and draining all the color from the landscape. There was no sign of water anywhere. And then, unexpectedly, they passed through a lush valley, full of grass-covered sand and prickly pear, sprawling in gorgeous bloom.

  “This is like a garden of Eden,” Smithback said as they made their way through the brief, verdant patch. “What’s it doing here in the middle of the desert?”

  “Probably the result of a heavy rainfall,” Nora replied. “Rain out here isn’t like it is back in the east. It’s very localized. You can get a huge downpour in one place, and a mile away see ground still parched and dry.”

  They made their way out of the lush valley and back into the stony desert. “What about lunch?” Smithback asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Well, it’s almost two. I like to dine fashionably late, but my stomach has its limits.”

  “It’s really that late?” Nora looked at her watch in disbelief, then stretched in the saddle. “We must have covered fifteen miles from the base of the ridge.” She paused a moment, considering. “Pretty soon we’ll be crossing into Indian land. The Nankoweap reservation begins somewhere up ahead.”

  “So what does that mean? Any chance of a Coke machine?”

  “No, the village is still a two-day ride from here, and it doesn’t have electricity in any case. What I mean is, we’ll be subject to their laws. Any Indians we meet aren’t likely to look too kindly on a couple of outsiders blundering in, accusing them of being horse killers. We have to be careful how we do this.”

  Smithback considered this a moment. “On second thought, maybe I’m not so hungry.”

  The faint trail seemed to go on forever, winding through a senseless tangle of arroyos, hidden valleys, shadowy ravines, and dunefields. Vaguely, Nora guessed that by now they had crossed into Indian country, but there was no fence and, of course, no sign. This was the kind of land that the white men had given to the Indians all over the West, she knew; utterly remote and useless for just about anything.

  “So exactly how did I screw things up?” Smithback asked suddenly.

  Nora twisted to look at him. “Huh?”

  “At the bottom of the ridge, you said that I almost screwed things up for you. I’ve been thinking about that, and I don’t see what I’ve done that you weren’t already doing yourself.”

  Nora urged Arbuckles forward. “I’m afraid that anything I say, you’ll just use in your book.”

  “I won’t, honest.”

  Nora moved forward without speaking.

  “Really, Nora, I mean it. I just want to know what’s going on with you.”

  Again, Nora felt a strange sense of pleasure from his interest. “What do you know about how I discovered Quivira?” she asked, returning her eyes to the trail.

  “I know how Holroyd helped you pinpoint the location. It was Dr. Goddard who told me your father was the one who originally discovered it. I’d been meaning to ask you more about that, only . . .” Smithback’s voice fell away.

  Only you knew I’d snap your head off, Nora thought with a twinge of guilt. “About two weeks ago,” she began, “I was attacked in my family’s old ranch house by a couple of men. At least, I think they were men, dressed up as animals. They demanded I give them a letter. My neighbor chased them away with her shotgun. At the time, I didn’t know what they were talking about. But then I came upon this letter my father had written to my mother, years and years ago. Somebody mailed it, just recently. Who, or why, I don’t know, and I can’t get that out of my head. Anyway, in the letter, my father said that he’d discovered Quivira. He gave directions—vague, but with Peter’s help, enough to get us here. I think those stalkers also wanted to learn the location of Quivira. So they could loot it, strip it of its treasures.”

  She paused and licked her lips, painfully dry in the sun. “So I tried to keep the expedition a secret. Everything was coming together just right. And then you showed up at the marina, notebook in one hand and megaphone in the other.”

  “Oh.” Even without turning around, she could hear the sheepish note in the writer’s voice. “Sorry. I knew the purpose of the expedition was secret, but I didn’t realize the expedition itself was.” He paused. “I didn’t give anything away, you know.”

  Nora sighed. “Maybe not. But you certainly created quite a stir. But let’s forget it, okay? I overreacted. I was a little tense myself—for obvious reasons.”

  They rode quietly for a while. “So what do you think of my story?” Nora asked at last.

  “I think I’m sorry I said I wouldn’t print it. Do you suppose these guys are really still after you?”

  “Why do you think I insisted on taking this little field trip myself? I’m pretty sure that the people who killed our horses, and the ones who attacked me, might be the same. If so, that means they’ve learned where Quivira is.”

  Abruptly, the trail left the weird tangle of stone and topped out on a narrow, fingerlike mesa. Breathtaking views surrounded them on all sides, canyons layered against canyons, disappearing into the purple depths. The snowcapped peaks of the Henry Mountains were now visible to the east, blue and inexpressibly lonely in the vast distance. At the far side of the mesa stood some rocks, hiding the landscape beyond from view.

  “I didn’t realize we were gaining so much altitude,” said Smithback, stopping his horse and gazing around.

  Just then Nora caught a faint whiff of cedar smoke. She signaled Smithback to dismount quietly.

  “Smell that?” she whispered. “We’re not far from a campfire. Let’s leave our horses here and go ahead on foot.”

  Tying their mounts to sagebrush, they began walking through the sand. “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a bathtub full of ice and cervezas on the other side?” Smithback said under his breath as they approached the jumble of rocks. Nora dropped to her knees and peered through a gap in the rocks. Smithback did the same, creeping up beside her.

  At the naked end of the mesa, under a dead, corkscrewed juniper, was a small fire, smoking faintly. What appeared to be a jackrabbit, skinned and spitted, was propped between two forked sticks nearby. An old army bedroll lay unrolled in the lee of the rock, beside several buckskin bundles. To the left of the little camp the mesa sloped downward, and Nora could see a horse, picketed on a fifty-foot rope, grazing grass.

  The view from the point of the mesa was spectacular. The land dropped away in a great sweep of erosion, down into a wrinkled and violent landscape, dry, lifeless, webbed with alkali washes, dissolving into a badlands peppered with great rock megaliths, casting long shadows. Beyond lay the heavily forested Aquarius Plateau, a black irregular line on the horizon. A grasshopper scratched forlornly in the late afternoon heat.

  Nora slowly exhaled. It was a barren place, and she knew she ought to feel a little silly, crawling up the ridge, peering melodramatically through the rocks on hands and knees. Then she thought about the matted, hairy figures in the deserted farmhouse, a
nd about the coils of horse entrails, flyblown and steaming in the sun.

  The unshod tracks they had been following led around the rocks and straight into the camp.

  “Looks like nobody’s home,” whispered Nora. Her voice sounded loud and thin in her ears, and she could feel her skin prickle with fear.

  “Yeah, but they couldn’t be far. Look at that rabbit. What do we do now?”

  “I think we mount up and ride in, nice and easy. And then wait until they or whoever returns.”

  “Oh, sure. And get shot right out of the saddle.”

  Nora turned to him. “Got a better idea?”

  “Yeah. How about if we head back and see what Bonarotti’s got cooking for supper?”

  Nora shook her head impatiently. “Then I’ll go in there alone, on foot. They’re not likely to kill a lone woman.”

  Smithback considered this. “I wouldn’t recommend that. If these are the same guys who attacked you, being a woman didn’t stop them before.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Smithback thought for a while. “Maybe we should hide ourselves, and just wait near here for them to return. We could surprise them.”

  Nora looked at the writer. “Where?”

  “Back up in those rocks, behind us. We can look down and over the end of the mesa. We’ll see them as they come in.”

  They returned to their horses, moved them well off the trail, and brushed out their tracks. Then they climbed up behind the camp and waited in a small nook between two large boulders. As they settled in, Nora heard an ominous, rattling buzz. About fifty yards away, in the shadow of a rock, a rattlesnake had reared up in an S-coil, its anvil-shaped head swaying slightly.

  “Now you can show me your brilliant marksmanship,” said Smithback.

  “No,” said Nora instantly.

  “Why not?”

  “That gun’s going to make a pretty loud doorbell. Do you really want to alert whoever’s out there?”

  Smithback suddenly stiffened. “I think it’s too late for that,” he said.

  There, on one of the flanking ridges behind them, Nora saw a lone man silhouetted against the sky, his face in shadow. A gun was hanging off his right hip. How long he had been waiting there, watching them, Nora could not say.

  A dog appeared over the ridge behind the man. As it saw them, it broke into a flurry of outraged barking. The man spoke a brief command and it slunk behind his legs.

  “Oh, God,” Smithback said. “Here we are, hiding in the rocks. This isn’t going to look too good.”

  Nora waited in indecision. The weight of her own gun felt heavy on her hips. If this was one of the men who had attacked her, killed the horses . . .

  The man stood motionless as the late afternoon deepened.

  “You got us into this,” Smithback said. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. Say hello?”

  “There’s brilliance for you.” Smithback raised a tentative hand. After a moment, the man on the ridge made a similar gesture.

  Then he stepped down from the ridge and began walking toward them, a curious walk on stiff, long legs, the dog trotting behind him.

  And then, in a instant of terrifying speed, Nora saw him stop short, draw his gun, and fire.

  35

  * * *

  INSTINCTIVELY, NORA’S HAND DROPPED TO HER own weapon as the rattler’s head blew apart in a spray of blood and venom. She glanced from the snake to Smithback. The writer’s face was ashen, his gun drawn.

  The man walked toward them with slow deliberate steps. “Jumpy, ain’t you,” he said, holstering his gun. “These damned rattlers. I know they keep the mice down, but when I go out to piss at night, I don’t want to step on any mousehunting coontail.”

  He was an extraordinary-looking man. His hair was long and white, and plaited in two long braids in the traditional Native American fashion. A bandanna was tied around his head and formed into a bun to one side. His pants, indescribably old but very clean, were at least eight inches too short. Beneath, dusty, sticklike legs plunged sockless into a pair of red high-top sneakers, brand-new and laced up tight. His shirt was beautifully made out of tanned buckskin, decorated with strips of fine beadwork, and a turquoise necklace circled his neck. But it was the face above the necklace that most arrested Nora. There was a gravity and dignity to the face; a gravity that seemed at variance with the glittering, amused liveliness of his black eyes.

  “You look a long way from home,” the man said in a thin, reedy voice, with the peculiar kind of clipped yet melodious tone common to many native speakers in the Southwest. “Did you find what you needed in my camp?”

  Nora looked into the mercurial eyes. “We didn’t disturb your camp,” she said. “We’re searching for the person that murdered our horses.”

  The man gazed back steadily, the eyes narrowing slightly. The good humor seemed to vanish. For a moment, Nora wondered if he would raise his gun again, and she felt her right hand flex involuntarily.

  Then the tension seemed to ease, and the man took a step forward. “It’s a hard thing to lose horses,” he said. “I’ve got some cool water down there in camp, and some roasted jackrabbit and chiles. Why don’t you come along?” He paused.

  “We’d be happy to,” said Nora. They followed him down the rockpile and into camp. He gestured for them to find a seat on the nearby rocks, then he squatted by the fire and turned the jackrabbit. He poked a stick into the ashes and pulled out several tinfoil-wrapped chiles, piling them at the edge of the fire to keep warm. “I heard you folks coming, so I decided to head on up there and check you out from above. Don’t get a lot of visitors out here, you know. Pays to be careful.”

  “Were we that obvious?” Smithback asked.

  The man looked at him with cool brown eyes.

  “Really,” said Smithback. “That obvious, huh?”

  The man pulled a canteen out of the sand in the shadow of a rock and passed it to Nora. She accepted the water silently, realizing how thirsty she was. The man stirred the ashes of the fire, freshened it with a few pieces of juniper, then turned the jackrabbit again.

  “So you’re the folks down in Chilbah Valley,” he said, sitting down across from them.

  “Chilbah?” Smithback asked.

  The man nodded. “The valley over the big ridge back there. I saw you the other day, from the top.” He turned to Nora. “And I guess you saw me. And now you’re here, because someone killed your horses and you thought it might be me.”

  “We only found one set of tracks,” Nora said carefully. “And they led right here.”

  Instead of answering, the man rose, tested the rabbit with the point of his knife, then sat back down on his heels. “My name is John Beiyoodzin,” he said.

  Nora paused a moment to consider this reply. “Sorry we didn’t introduce ourselves,” she replied. “I’m Nora Kelly, and this is Bill Smithback. I’m an archaeologist and Bill is a journalist. We’re here on an archaeological survey.”

  Beiyoodzin nodded. “Do I look like a horse murderer to you?” he asked suddenly.

  Nora hesitated. “I guess I don’t know what a horse murderer should look like.”

  The man digested this. Then the glittering eyes softened, a smile appeared on his face, and he shook his head. “Jackrabbit’s done,” he said, standing and flipping the spit up with an expert hand. He leaned it on a flat rock and expertly carved off two haunches. He placed each on a flat thin piece of sandstone and handed them to Nora and Smithback. Then he unwrapped the chiles, carefully saving the tinfoil. He quickly slipped off the roasted skin of each chile and handed them over. “We’re a little short on amenities,” he said, skewering his own piece of rabbit with a knife.

  The chile was almost indescribably hot, and Nora’s eyes watered as she ate, but she felt famished. Beside her, Smithback was attacking his own meal avidly. Beiyoodzin watched them a moment, nodding his approval. They completed the little meal in silence.

  Beiyoodzin passed the canteen
around and afterward there was an awkward pause.

  “Nice view,” said Smithback. “What’s the rent on this joint?”

  Beiyoodzin laughed, tilting his head back. “The rent is in the getting here. Forty miles on horseback over waterless country from my village.” Then he looked around, the wind stirring his hair. “At night, you can look out over a thousand square miles and not see a single light.”

  The sun was beginning to set, and the strange, complicated bowl of landscape was turning into a pointillist surface of gold, purple, and yellow. Nora glanced in Beiyoodzin’s direction. Though he had never actually denied it, somehow she felt certain he was not the one they were searching for.

  “Can you help us find out who killed our horses?” she asked him.

  Beiyoodzin glanced at her intently. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “What kind of survey you doing?”

  Nora hesitated, uncertain if this was a change of subject or the beginning of some revelation. Even if he hadn’t killed the horses himself, perhaps he knew who had. She took a deep breath, confused and tired. “It’s kind of confidential,” she said. “Would it be all right if I didn’t tell you right now?”

  “It’s in Chilbah Valley?”

  “Not exactly,” said Nora.

  “My village,” he said, gesturing northward, “is that way. Nankoweap. It means ‘Flowers beside the Water Pools’ in our language. I come out here every summer to camp for a week or two. The grass is good, plenty of firewood, and there’s a good spring down below.”

  “You don’t get lonely?” Smithback asked.

  “No,” he said simply.