Yietso, the Giant, lived at Tqo’sedo…the Twins went there and waited for him…there was a great blinding flash of lightning and it struck the giant.
The Twins went to the Giant and cut off his scalp. They saw that he was covered with flint armor…clothing made of stone knives.
—Sandoval, Hastin Tlo’tsi hee
DRY BONES
THE CHAIRMAN OF the Rocky Mountain Polytechnic Department of Anthropology and Archaeology was by nature a garrulous man who enjoyed the company of his students. Particularly those who proved their worshipful respect by hanging on his every word. But these youthful members of the site survey crew were full of energy and tended to keep chattering long after there was anything worthwhile to say. On occasion, Professor Silas Axton tired of his disciples and would withdraw to conduct some private business. This was one of those times when he preferred to be alone with his thoughts. Having left the gaggle of graduate students up on the Crag, the scholar was shuffling along the west rim of Ghost Wolf Mesa. The place had many things to recommend it. For one thing, there was a measure of shade from the late-afternoon sun. For another, it was an isolated spot where one could be quite alone. And this edge of the mesa was a rather pleasant place, quite unlike the vertical cliffs to the east and south. While there was a drop of two or three yards in places, the remainder of the slope fell away from the sandstone tabletop in a gradual fashion and was well forested with ponderosa pine and towering picture-book spruce. Silas Axton paused by a massive sandstone outcropping that hung over the slope’s edge, cocking his ear to hear the happy warbling of a mountain bluebird. And heard something else. An odd, grunting sound.
Axton’s back went rigid. He moved forward cautiously, taking care not to step on a twig. And looked over the edge of the outcropping.
Not twenty feet below him was a man. Axton squinted. It was Dr. Terry Perkins, the impertinent paleoastronomer. Perkins was squatting like an aborigine, messing about with an oblong pile of rocks. From all appearances, he was making a large pile of stones into a smaller one.
Professor Axton posed two questions for himself: What in blazes is he up to? and What should I do about it? Being a methodical man, he considered his various options for almost a minute. Then smiled. Properly managed, this unexpected encounter would be great fun. Too bad I don’t have a camera with me. The professor silently cleared his throat, then bellowed: “Aha—you slippery rascal. I have caught you red-handed!”
Perkins’s alarmed response was more than Axton had hoped for. The younger scholar yelped, attempted to turn and face his adversary, tripped over his feet—and fell flat on his handsome face.
Axton leaned forward, hands resting on his knees, and guffawed at the comical sight. “So. Now we know what our brash young physicist does when he cannot discover a Stone Age astronomical site—he goes and builds himself one!” He shook his finger at the fallen man. “Shame on you, Perkins.”
The paleoastronomer got to his feet and began to dust pine needles from his chic canvas jacket. “Good morning, Silas.” You silly old shit.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” the anthropologist boomed, “I imagine you’ll have a remarkably opaque explanation for what you’re up to.”
Terry Perkins, having managed to regain some measure of dignity, glared up at his tormentor. “Not that it is any of your business—but I can explain what I am doing.”
“Don’t tell me—let me guess,” the anthropologist said with biting sarcasm. “You have discovered a prehistoric rock cairn used by those ancient astrologers you’re so fond of. But alas, it was not in quite the right place to align with Venus rising or Saturn occulting or something-or-other. And not a fellow to be defeated by mere facts, you are now in the process of moving this heavenly marker to a more suitable location. Now tell me, Terry, am I right?”
“This is no time for frivolity.” The paleoastronomer had assumed a sour expression.
Professor Axton, who had suffered much at the younger man’s barbs, thought Perkins a poor sport. But having had almost enough fun, he made a mocking bow. “I do apologize for anything I have said that may have offended in the slightest. Now tell me—what is so interesting about yon pile of pebbles?”
Terry Perkins took a deep breath. “It would appear that something is buried beneath them.”
“Absolutely astounding—you have found the fabled Anasazi treasure. Tell you what. I’ll keep your dirty little secret. For a half share.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Very well. I’ll settle for twenty-five percent.”
“There’s nothing here you’d want to cart away.”
“I cannot bear the suspense—what have you found?”
Perkins turned to stare at the assembly of stones. “Bones.”
“Of what species?”
“Human, I should think. Though tibias and clavicles are not my specialty.”
“Which is to say—you have no sense of humerus.” Axton chuckled at his joke; this made his belly shake.
The paleoastronomer glared up at the older man.
“Forgive me,” Axton apologized. “I have been in a whimsical mood all day. But I now repent.” He put on an ugly scowl. “Look up solemn in the dictionary, and you will find my likeness there.” He leaned to squint at the makeshift grave. “These are prehistoric human bones, I hope.”
Perkins sniffed. “Judging from the odor of decaying flesh, I’d say not.”
“In that case,” the anthropologist said with a dismissive wave, “they hold not the slightest interest for me.”
DURANGO, COLORADO THREE DAYS LATER
Special Agent George Whitmer’s desk was littered with reports from the Bureau’s D.C. forensics laboratory. The federal lawman addressed his words to his partner. “There were slight traces of aromatic hydrocarbons found in the burned remains of the Tavishuts woman’s body. Says here”—he ran his blunt finger across the paper—“‘Consistent with petroleum-derivative fuels.’”
Newman banged his fist on the older man’s desk. “Aha—I knew somebody torched the body with gasoline.”
“Not necessarily,” Whitmer said. “The forensics scientists say the trace hydrocarbons could be explained by the old tent Charlie Moon put over the corpse. It was probably soaked with emissions from camp-stove fuels. Anti-wetting agents in the fabric. That sort of thing.”
“Damn. Why did Moon have to interfere with the crime scene.”
“To protect the evidence from the rainstorm,” Whitmer reminded his partner.
Stanley Newman leaned on Whitmer’s government-issue desk. “So what else have we got to work with?”
George Whitmer squinted through bifocals perched near the tip of a bulbous nose. “ME’s report confirms that the latest corpse Dr. Perkins discovered at the Chimney Rock Archaeological Site was the Ute rancher who was reported missing last April—Mr. Julius Santos.”
Newman straightened himself, hung his thumbs under tight red suspenders. “Santos. The guy who went horseback riding.”
Whitmer nodded. “Horse came back. Mr. Santos didn’t.”
“And his remains show up on Ghost Wolf Mesa.”
“Just over the edge of the mesa,” Whitmer said.
Newman ignored the technical correction. “At a location not all that far from where the Tavishuts woman was murdered. And he disappeared weeks before her death. George, something bothers me about this.”
“Right. Like why didn’t we find his body when we had a couple dozen cops on the mesa looking for evidence in the Tavishuts murder.”
“Maybe because we were searching for footprints, a murder weapon—a live suspect. We weren’t looking for another body. And you generally don’t find what you aren’t looking for. What bothers me more is how this smart-aleck college professor happens to find Santos’s remains.”
Whitmer leaned back, entwining sausagelike fingers behind his neck. “Dr. Perkins claims he was walking along the edge of the mesa, looking for evidence of prehistoric astronomical markers. Maybe another petroglyph nobody had noticed before. Maybe a boulder with a notch in it. He just happened to look over the edge—and spotted the pile of rocks.”
“So being an inquisitive sort of fellow,” Newman mumbled, “Dr. Perkins climbs down to have a closer look. Under the rocks, he spots something that looks like a piece of cloth. So he starts taking some stones away. And finds some bones. Then Professor Axton comes along.”
There was an uneasy silence while the federal lawmen mulled the testimony over in their minds.
Whitmer spoke first. “You think this Perkins geek knows something he isn’t telling us?”
“Maybe.”
A primly dressed middle-aged woman knocked lightly on the facing of the open door.
Whitmer didn’t look up. “Come in, Marty.”
She placed a blue folder on his desk. “This just arrived.” The secretary left silently.
The older of the special agents thumbed through the report, then whistled.
Newman found this behavior mildly annoying. “Okay, George, what is it?”
Whitmer didn’t offer his partner the document. “Another forensics report from D.C.” He looked up over his spectacles. “Remember that fingerprint our tech found on that flake of obsidian at the murder scene?”
“Of course not. I’ve completely forgotten about the single piece of hard evidence in the hottest reservation murder we’ve had in twenty years.”
“And the dead girl’s stepfather—Alvah Yazzi—remember the burned powder and stuff we found in that old Navajo guy’s empty clothes?”
“Come on, George, give.”
Whitmer managed to look quite smug, as if he’d done the laboratory analysis himself. “Forensics has come up with a match for the print. And they’ve got some really interesting things to tell us about the ashes and bone chips in Yazzi’s duds.”
“So tell me.”
“If I told you, Stan, you wouldn’t believe a word I said.” Whitmer offered his partner the forensics report. “So you’d better read it yourself.”
Newman scanned the document. Then read it more carefully. “George, this is really weird. We’ll have to rethink this case. Right from page one.”
The older agent nodded. “Charlie Moon has our witness stashed up there on his ranch. We’d better check on the both of ’em.”
Newman, who had the Columbine number memorized, punched it into his cell phone. There were four rings before he heard the Ute’s recorded voice. “Damn. I’m getting his answering machine.”
“I imagine Charlie’s out on the range somewhere.” Whitmer said this with a wistful look. “I bet he’s doin’ some neat cowboy stuff.”
“Sure,” the Easterner muttered. “He’s probably down at the old corral, punchin’ a cow.” He heard the end of Moon’s recorded message, and a beep. “Charlie—this is Stan Newman. There’s some important new developments in the Tavishuts homicide. Soon as you hear this, call me at the Durango office—or buzz me on my cell phone.” He pressed the Off button. “We’d better head up to Charlie’s ranch.”
Whitmer was already pulling on his jacket. “I bet him and that student are sitting out yonder by a campfire somewhere. Singing somma them sad old cowboy songs.”
Newman snickered.
Whitmer raised an eyebrow at his contemptuous partner. “I bet you couldn’t name one cowboy song if your life depended on it.”
“I could name a couple of ’em—just in case your life was in danger too.” Newman checked the clip in his 9mm automatic. “‘Bumbling Tumbleweeds.’ ‘Low Riders in the Sky.’”
The older man sighed. “I think we’d best be careful out there.”
THE BADGER HOLE
It was a dark purpose that drew Daisy Perika on her trek into the Canyon of the Spirits. The Ute shaman—despite stern warnings from her Catholic priest—was seeking an audience with the pitukupf. Despite the scoffings and snickerings of younger members of the Southern Ute tribe, Daisy knew that the dwarf was quite real. For as long as she could remember—and probably for hundreds of years before she was born—the little man had lived in a badger hole in the Canyon of the Spirits. No one knew for sure when he had first attached himself to the People. But the pitukupf was a source of considerable power to the shaman. And almost as important, the dwarf was a source of information. Nothing went on among the People that he did not know about. Daisy—who was full of years—had enjoyed a long and profitable acquaintance with the peculiar little fellow. There were protocols to be followed, of course. You did not visit his home without a gift. Today, she had brought a bag of pipe tobacco, two candy bars, and a roll of green cotton cloth that he might use for making himself a new shirt. She had even added a half spool of brown thread, a fine steel needle, and a plastic thimble. If you wanted to get serious help from the dwarf, you could not skimp.
On the way into Cañon del Espíritu, the elderly woman had stopped several times to rest. Now at her destination, Daisy leaned on her stout oak staff, breathed hard. She wiped sweat from a dark, furrowed brow, then looked up at the sandstone walls towering three hundred feet. It would be pleasantly warm up there on the top of Three Sisters Mesa. But here in the cradle of the canyon, under soft covers knit from shadows, the remnant of winter slept. Dreaming frigid dreams of next October. Icy winds. Heaping drifts of snow.
Grunting at the painful stiffness in the small of her back, Daisy half-leaned and half-squatted to drop the gifts into the entrance to the pitukupf’s cavern. The well-meant offering was swallowed up, sinking down the earthen throat into the dark innards of the dwarf’s underground domicile.
Hoping the cranky little man would be pleased, Daisy shuffled away to the company of a fragrant juniper. She seated herself on a flat outcropping of gray limestone left behind by an ancient sea. The weary woman leaned against the trunk of the twisted tree and closed her eyes, unaware of a bluefly that buzzed busily around her forehead. Within moments, her breathing was even. Quite soon after this she fell into a deep, restful sleep. And the shaman did dream.
Floating in front of her, Daisy saw the kindly face of Father Raes Delfino. The little Jesuit’s features were sorrowful to know that this troublesome member of his flock was straying once more. “Daisy, Daisy…what am I to do with you? I have warned you, so many times—it is dangerous to commune with the pitukupf. He is not of our Lord’s kingdom.”
“I wasn’t actually communing,” the dreamer protested. “I just brought him some things to eat. Pipe tobacco. And cloth for a new shirt.”
“Ahh,” the priest said with a wry smile, “and you did this with not the least thought of receiving anything in return from the dwarf-spirit?”
“That’s just the way it was,” the shaman said earnestly. “It was Christian charity that made me want to help that poor little fellow.”
There was a loud noise, like the sound of a branch snapping. The image of the priest vaporized. Daisy Perika opened her eyes. The shaman was not—as she had expected—in the eternal twilight of the dwarf’s underground cavern. She was sitting on the limestone shelf, under the juniper. It seemed that she had slept for some time. The shadow of the tree reached almost to the canyon wall; the evening sky had the mottled gray texture of sour milk. She was disappointed by her failure to communicate with the little man. But it was getting late in the day—no time to linger in this place where the spirits of the dead walked. With the intention of getting to her feet, Daisy reached for her walking stick.
And then she saw him.
The pitukupf was seated on a piñon stump not two yards away. As was his way, he pretended not to notice the presence of his visitor. Having impaled the discarded wrapper on a cluster of yucca spears, he was munching on a candy bar.
“Nasty little litterbug,” she muttered.
And so they sat opposite each other. Time, gauged only by the rhythm of Daisy’s heartbeat, passed slowly.
Finally, she spoke. “I hope you like the stuff I brought you.”
The pitukupf, having consumed the candy bar, scratched his belly. And belched loudly.
Being a civilized woman, she found this behavior offensive. But being sensible, she understood that though the pitukupf was extraordinarily powerful, immeasurably old, and extremely peculiar, he was also a helpless product of his gender—a little man much like other men. And so Daisy wisely decided to accept this small vulgarity as an expression of appreciation. Or at least an acknowledgment of her gift. She resumed her monologue. “Nice weather, we’re having. For this time of year.”
He grunted.
So she got right to the point. “You may not know that April Tavishuts was killed over at those Chimney Rock ruins.” She had no doubt that he knew. But he was a taciturn little fellow. And one way to get him talking was to suggest that there might be something of importance to the People that he did not know. This ploy never failed to tweak his vanity.
He took a deep breath, puffing up his chest.
“Nobody knows who killed poor April,” Daisy said.
Using an archaic version of the Ute tongue that even the Ute elder could barely follow, he told her that who had done the killing was unimportant. Why it had been done was what mattered.
Daisy did not agree, but she kept her lips pressed together.
The dwarf told his visitor why two terrible crimes had been committed. Why a horseman had died at Chimney Rock. Why April Tavishuts had met her terrible end. The cause he described was a tale about a single creature. An old man. A gray wolf.
The shaman listened intently.
His story completed, the pitukupf pointed a crooked finger at the earth.
The shaman looked at her feet, and saw viscous streams of blood flowing by. At a great distance, she heard anguished cries from those whose throats had been slit. She began to tremble.
The little man pointed at the sky.
Almost against her will, Daisy Perika looked up.
Great drops of rain—the size of a man’s fist—were falling.
She asked what this could mean.
The dwarf told her.
Daisy was greatly relieved to hear that these were White Shell Woman’s tears—shed for the sacrificial victims of the Anasazi priests. But even as the Ute elder watched, each of the precious drops of fluid was transformed into a fiery coal of blue-white fire.
As the flaming cinders fell to earth, the shaman saw more. Much more.
COLUMBINE RANCH, THE FOREMAN’S HOUSE
Dolly Bushman was a kindhearted woman, slow to anger. And not given to complaining. But her man was getting on her nerves. She let her knitting drop into her lap. “Peter.”
Pete Bushman did not hear her. He was engrossed in his noisy work with the number two bastard file.
“PETER!”
The Columbine foreman glanced up from the crosscut saw, which he had been sharpening tooth by tooth. “Eh?”
“Go do that somewhere else.”
He feigned an innocent expression, which was hidden under the bushy beard. “What’s the matter?”
“That awful noise is driving me to distraction.”
“Where’n hell’s that,” he drawled. “Somewheres down south of Grouchyville?”
“If you don’t stop,” she said with a menacing gesture of the knitting needle, “I’ll push this thing in one of your ears and pull it out of the other. Without hitting anything in between.”
He was trying to think of a snappy response when the telephone rang. Pete Bushman bunched his bushy eyebrows at Mr. Bell’s invention.
“You get it,” Dolly said, clicking her needles.
“Why?”
“I got it last time it rang.”
“But that was on Tuesday.”
“PETER!”
“Okay.” He got up, grumbling under his breath about how Dolly had turned out to be just like her cranky old mother who had driven her husband to drink. Which made him think about a small taste of blackberry wine. He pressed the black plastic device to a hairy ear. “Yeah?” A pause. “Oh. It’s you.”
Dolly wondered who might be calling. She realized from his tone that it was someone her husband didn’t like. Which did nothing whatever to narrow things down.
He scowled. “No, I don’t know where he is.”
There was a lengthy silence as Pete Bushman listened, occasionally interrupting as he tried to slip a word in.
“Well, when he gets back I’ll—”
“Lissen, there’s no need to—”
“He don’t generally tell me where he’s headed and I don’t—”
He gave the instrument a pop-eyed look, slammed it onto the cradle.
Dolly looked up from her knitting. “Who was it?”
The Columbine foreman took his seat before the fireplace. He stared at the crosscut saw as if wondering what on earth it was.
“Pete, who was on the phone?”
He snorted. “That nasty old woman.”
Dolly sighed. “Does she have a name?”
“There’s a few I could give her.”
“All right—don’t tell me.”
“It was the boss’s Injun auntie. You know the one—Dizzy Pear-Creek.”
“Daisy Perika,” Dolly said. “What did she want?”
The old cowman waved his thin arm dismissively. “Some foolishness about the boss. Said she’d called the big house, got his machine. Wanted to know where he was and right now. I told her I didn’t have no idea. Then she commenced to yellin’ at me—like I was some kinda sorry-assed nincompoop.”
“I know where Charlie is.” Dolly made this announcement with a superior air. “He stopped by on his way out. It was right before lunch. I fixed him a cheese sandwich.”
Bushman shot a yellow-eyed look at his wife. “It’s a wonder he didn’t stay and eat us out of house and vittles. That’s the hungriest redskin I ever saw.”
“Charlie’s a nice man.” The needles clicked rhythmically as she worked. “I wonder why Mrs. Perika was so upset.”
Bushman chuckled. “Because she’s an old fool. You know what she told me to tell him when he showed up?”
“Now how in the world would I know?”
“I’m to tell the boss not to go nowheres near that place where that Injun girl was murdered.”
The needles stopped clicking. “Those old ruins at Chimney Rock?”
He nodded. “Charlie Moon’s auntie says if he does, he’ll die sure as possums eat grapes.”
Dolly set her knitting aside. “Pete.”
“What is it now?”
“That’s where Charlie told me he was headed. Chimney Rock.”
The ranch foreman did not like to hear bad news. He pulled a tobacco-stained mustache. “You sure that’s what he said?”
She was already pulling her coat on. “Get the pickup started right now, so it can warm up.”
“Now, Dolly, you lissen to me—that’s over a hunnerd miles and Charlie’s got a good four-hour head start. Hell, he’s prob’ly already on his way back here by now.” He took a deep breath. “And besides that, all we got to go on is a crazy old woman’s—”
She gave her husband a withering look. “Peter Bushman, are you so bone lazy that I have to go by myself?”