We assembled just after daybreak in the spiky shade of a pinyon pine. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just flat blue that threatened to whiten till it burned with a dazzling heat. Another roasting day in the desert. Riding for miles, with aching limbs and the sun frying our brains through our straw hats.
I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it.
Nor was anyone else, if the glum faces of our party were a guide.
Aunt Hilda had obtained a new outfit, and had a pair of fringed leather trousers to go with her ten-gallon hat. She looked weird, frankly, but then she never cares what anyone else thinks about her. Seeing her stomping about, ordering people around, getting the horses ready, packing provisions in the saddlebags, I wondered again if she ever regretted her lost opportunity for love with Gaston Champlon.
When I say we were all gathered for our departure from Chloride, I should say everyone except Waldo. It took my aunt a while to notice his absence.
“Where is that dratted boy?” she asked. “Kit, run up to his room and find him. He’s holding us all up.”
“I’d rather not,” I said.
Red Dobie, who had come to see we had everything we needed, offered to do it himself. But Aunt Hilda sent Isaac. Both of them came down from the saloon a while later, a forlorn Isaac dragging a sullen Waldo behind him.
“Well, what’s going on?” Aunt Hilda said.
Waldo didn’t reply, just looked mulish.
“I don’t think he’s coming,” said Rachel.
“WHAT?” Aunt Hilda exploded. “Of all the childish, ridiculous pranks to pull! I do not believe it of you, Waldo Bell. I’ve always had a lot of time for you, and I simply don’t believe you would let your team down like this. Kit is mortally sick, for pity’s sake.”
“I have no choice,” Waldo muttered. “Kit has made it clear she doesn’t want me.”
“Absolute nonsense. My niece may have a sharp tongue, but she apologized—very handsomely. It is you who is being childish and stupid. There, I’ve said it. Frankly, you are being ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“Get on your horse now.”
“NO!”
“Waldo, I command you.”
“There isn’t a stagecoach till next week so I’m going to ride to Las Vegas and get one from there.”
“FOR—” Aunt Hilda was puce-faced, building up to a major explosion. Though I was angry, hurt even, I kept my temper. If Waldo wanted to go, fine, he must.
“Aunt,” I cut in, “I think we should respect Waldo’s wishes.” I glanced at Candy, Red Dobie’s girl, who had also turned up to wish us goodbye. “It may be that he finds the amenities of Chloride too much to leave.”
Waldo looked at me as if he wanted to kill me.
“We should waste no more time,” I declared, putting my foot into the stirrup and hoisting myself onto Carlito. “The sun will be scorching soon; we must move if we want to avoid the heat of the day.”
So we left Chloride and left Waldo. I resisted looking back to see his dwindling figure standing under the pines as we rode out. Maybe he stood there watching us ride into the horizon. Or maybe he turned as soon as the dust had settled, and went back into the Last-Dance Saloon for a beer and a consoling chat with Candy.
Either way, I didn’t want to waste time thinking about it.
We followed the directions Boy had given us, riding due south out of Chloride. It was strange not having Cyril guiding us. I felt freer without his gloomy presence, but also a little adrift. He had led us, I realized now. We had been following his path and his plans.
Now we were riding on a whim—the chance that we would meet Boy and she would somehow give us the guidance we sought. We had no choice, because we had so little idea of our mission—just that we had to get to the Grand Canyon to seek the legendary tablet, the thing we hoped would free me from my illness. I had seen Cyril die; I had felt the presence of his brother. I was in no doubt about the urgency of our quest. If we didn’t find this Anasazi tablet, this thing of sacred antiquity, I would face certain doom.
Isaac was riding beside me, unusually quiet even for him. Abruptly he said, “You’ve made a big mistake.”
“Pardon?”
“Waldo puts up with you. There won’t be many that will.”
“I cannot see that this is your concern,” I said, glancing ahead to see Rachel riding silently beside my aunt.
“I’m your friend. I’m also Waldo’s friend. I can understand why he acted as he did. You are in the wrong. You should have gone down on bended knee and begged for his forgiveness.”
“Thank you for sharing your opinions,” I said, spurring Carlito on with my stirrups. There was a sour taste in my mouth. I set my head away from him so he could not see my flaming cheeks.
It was just before noon when we came to the rock shaped like a horse. It was a large boulder and it did look uncannily like Carlito’s head. The left side of it took the shape of a muzzle. I could see the flare of the horse’s nostril in a bit of chipped stone.
Boy was sitting on the sand in the shade of the rock. She must have been there for hours. She was so still that at first I didn’t notice her. Her deerskin tunic blended with the colors of sand and rock.
“I have joy to see you, Kit,” she said, standing up. Her chopped hair, black and straight, framed her lively, intelligent face. Her eyes were gleaming, her full mouth opened wide in a smile.
I jumped off my horse and was just about to fling my arms around her neck when I remembered that Apaches don’t like such displays of emotion.
“Friends of Kit, welcome,” she greeted the others. “But Yellow Hair—he has been shot?”
I guess it is natural in this violent land to always dread death by the bullet. I quickly assured her that Waldo was fine, had just decided to stay behind.
“A pity,” she said. “He is a fine warrior.”
We broke our ride then, to rest a little in the shade of the rock, to eat some dried beef and have a drink of water. The sun was overhead, beating down on us with fury. We all huddled into the sparse shade of the rock. Then it was time to go. Boy wanted to make good progress toward the canyon before we made camp for the night.
It was a relief to my wounded soul to have her with us. She seemed to anticipate what I was thinking, understand when I was weak or my head was filled with that odd combination of burning and dizzying lightness. Most of her attention was turned on me; she gave Rachel, Isaac and Aunt Hilda just politeness. To me, she was constantly kind. I didn’t know why she was so—perhaps she had been charged by her shaman to look after me and was taking her task very seriously.
And, of course, we were friends. She had been raised in a wickiup, a creature of the burning deserts. I had lived in a cream stucco house in Oxford with a governess and table manners. But somehow we understood each other.
“Boy,” I asked her once, “is it unusual for an Apache girl to be a warrior?”
She glanced at me, her eyes shining with amusement. “There is no shame in taking another path.”
I blushed. “Doesn’t it make you feel rather, I don’t know, different?”
“But I am different.”
“I know—but all the normal things. You know, getting married?”
“These things are not for me.”
“Isn’t there someone you like?”
“I have told you—this is not my way.”
The look she gave me as she said this was intense. Remembering her tragic story, all the death and destruction she had seen, I took her at her word. Anyway, she was right. Why does every girl need to go down the same path? Some English ladies are explorers, like my aunt. Though not many, I admit. I could see that Boy, with her wild hair, strong limbs and fierce spirit, was unique.
Proud and free and untamed.
So we rode across the desert, through sand and rock and the strange prickly Joshua trees, toward the craggy mountains. Several times I had the feeling, looking back, of a malevolent presence following us. A shadow, a darting figure, a startled bird. I wondered about Cecil Baker. Even more since Cyril’s death I had come to feel his presence all around. In the glare of a desert fox, or the shadow of a vulture wheeling far above us in the burning sky. Where was he now? What was he planning?
My mind was on these things, not really on the desert around me. Apaches find beauty in the desolation, but I felt only bleakness. I was tired of riding, of the weakness in my body. Cyril’s death had made me feel frailer than ever.
That is my excuse, anyway. I was in a fog, not really paying attention to my mount, even though we were racing along at a fair clip. Then Carlito stumbled. I found myself flying sideways, my left leg caught in the stirrup. I would have tumbled to the ground, bashing my head and possibly breaking my leg, if Boy, with stunning swiftness, had not leaned over and caught me.
“You fool of a girl,” Aunt Hilda yelled at me. “Your head is so full of Waldo you’re not paying the slightest attention to your horse.”
I had not been thinking of Waldo, and was going to say so, but Boy interrupted and shushed my aunt. I could see that she was very angry as she leaped off her own horse and went over to Carlito. The animal was very distressed, his sweaty flanks heaving, his eyes rolling. At first it seemed as if he was lamed, but luckily it was only that a thorn from one of the spiky cacti had caught in his shoe. Boy managed to remove it, then gently she comforted him, feeding him a handful of something, which was clearly a treat, for the horse gulped it down.
“Rolling Thunder needs rest,” Boy said. “You will ride with me. He will come by our side.”
I agreed readily enough. The fall had shaken me and I felt nervous about controlling the huge black stallion. I could see that Boy understood and commanded him in a way I did not. Anyway, I was tired and it comforted me to ride behind my friend, to feel her, warm and confident, in front of me.
I realized that Boy was taking care of me, that it was not just for Carlito’s sake that she had made me ride with her.
The mountains rose abruptly in fantastical broken shapes from the edge of the desert. They looked like shattered toys, as if some god had hurled them down in a fit of rage. We rode up a perilous cliff path. As the sun was setting, in a wash of scarlet that made the whole land glow with fiery heat, Boy said we would make camp for the night. We had no tents to put up, so we simply gathered a few fragments of scrubby bush and thorn in a hollow and made a makeshift fire. In our one cooking pot Boy brewed up a stew made of mutton, wild sage, roots and sharp-tasting red berries she had gathered. We ate it out of our tin cups, spooning the slush straight into our mouths. It was delicious.
There was a nip in the air. We were all thankful that Red Dobie had packed us blankets. We rolled ourselves up in them and lay by the fire, listening to Boy’s tales of the old Apache ways.
We believe that the Indians are heathens; certainly they are less sophisticated than us. They have not invented guns and railways and telegraphs and other modern marvels. But the way she spoke of their union with nature, how they lived in harmony with the spirits of tree and bird, of coyote, elk and bear, made me believe that they possess a deep wisdom. A wisdom, perhaps, that is lost to us.
Boy told us how the Indians believe that we were not put on Earth to shape it to our will, to make great cities rise from the desert. Instead, they believe, we are just a speck in an endless natural flow. This includes not just all living things, the swallow above and the worm underfoot, but the great Earth itself. And the clouds drifting through the sky and the rain they bring.
Even Aunt Hilda listened in a sort of trance, for Boy’s voice was low and lilting, as natural and soothing as a breeze. I fell asleep with firelight glinting red in my eyes, warmed by the stories of ancient gods.
I awoke with a start, a great wrenching lunge. There was screaming all around me, the frantic neighing of horses. I was colder than I have ever been in my life. My hands were icy, my lungs freezing, my eyes rimed in frost.
Where was I? Who was I? Just chill in my bones and the deathly, glacial heart of a creature who does not care for a living thing.
I looked down. There was a knife in my right hand. It was covered in blood. I was bleeding. All around me were the coal-black shapes of the horses, stark against the murk of dawn.
I knelt down. Slowly my hand moved upward to slash at the horse’s flank. I lusted to hurt. To wound. I craved the beast’s howl of agony. All I knew was the knife, heavy in my hands, gleaming dully.
Carlito shrieked, neighing, jerking at his rope. A shot rang out. A shot out of nowhere. I jerked, and fell to the ground, veins pulsing, head throbbing, flesh tingling.
“What the blazes?” Aunt Hilda was towering over me, looking in horror at the bloody knife in my hand. “Kit. What in heaven’s name are you doing?”
“I-I …” A stutter came out of my mouth.
Carlito, a cut in his glossy black flank. Warm blood pouring out of it. Whinnying in pain.
“I don’t know.” I began to cry. Tears streamed down my face. Great juddering sobs coughed up from my lungs. “Please.” I looked at the knife in my hand and couldn’t begin to understand what it was doing there.
“You hurt Carlito. You were trying to lame him,” Isaac wailed. “I saw you.”
“No,” Rachel said. She was just rising from her blankets. “Kit would never do that.”
“I saw her. I woke up and saw Kit was over there and I was going to say something. But then she had the knife and I saw she’d cut Carlito and I was so horrified I couldn’t …” Isaac said, in one long, agonized breath.
“That is not Kit.” Boy had appeared in our midst, her copper face shining with certainty. “She was possessed. It was the skinwalker who attacked Rolling Thunder.”
“The skinwalker?” I gasped. I felt like retching. Intense pain seared my arm where the snake glided. I was shivering, trembling uncontrollably. The knife slipped from my grasp and fell to the ground. My knees were too weak to hold me.
“You were possessed. This I truly believe.” Boy looked down at the frothing Carlito, neighing in agony from his cut. The anger stood out on her face. “To hurt a horse like Rolling Thunder. A perfect animal.” She paused, looked at me. “If that shot had not come—it broke you from your possession. If …”
“Thank you,” Aunt Hilda said to Boy. “You saved her.”
“No. It wasn’t me.”
We looked at each other. Five faces in a ring, alarm and horror stark on all.
“If it wasn’t you, Boy,” Aunt Hilda said, “who was it?”
Then, from the darkness, another shot rang out.
A single loud bang.
“Who did that?” Rachel shrieked.
None of us had fired it. The bullet had come from behind me.
Someone was watching us. Out there in the darkness someone was stalking us.
There was a silence. Cecil, the skinwalker. The evil magus. It must have been him. An unseen presence, creeping after us, following every move. We had guessed at him in the boarding house. Sensed him trailing us. But why would he want to shock me out of my trance if he was possessing me?
More to the point, was he still out there?
“Who is it?” Boy asked, drawing her pistol. “Show yourself.”
A tall figure stepped out of the shadows into the candlelight.
“It was me,” a cold voice said. “I saw it all.”