THE SUN WAS high in a cloudless sky when Tony set the picnic basket in the trunk and ushered Willa and Edith into the back seat. Spud, whom Edith guessed was at least as curious as they were to see the haphazard graves where the women’s bodies had been dumped, joined Tony in front.
Already Edith could see one small white puff hovering over Pedernal, a good fifty miles or more south and west of Taos. Clouds would begin to build soon with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico pushing north to bring the usual afternoon monsoon at this time of year.
Well, Edith thought, a little rain never hurt anyone and Tony would carry a tarpaulin to attach to the side of the car if they needed cover. They were late getting started because Mabel had invited them to her room for a second cup of coffee and then Willa, as promised, spent an hour with Nicolai Fechin to compare schedules and make plans for his portrait of her. His idea was to sketch Willa while they were in Taos and then arrange for additional sittings in New York to paint the full portrait.
“What a glorious day for a drive,” Spud gushed from the front seat.
Willa opened her window. Edith followed suit. The breeze would feel good. Tony pulled out the choke and pushed the starter. The engine caught immediately. What a blessing to have electric starters. Turning a crank made starting cars both difficult and dangerous. Edith was glad neither she nor Willa ever had to learn to drive. They walked or used public transportation to get around New York City and took trains everywhere else. Yellow cabs had been available in the City for almost twenty years, but they rarely chose to use them. They were skeptical, too, of Fred Harvey’s new Indian Detour campaign to draw people off trains and into his Harvey Hotels. In spite of difficult roads, Harvey Indian Detours were popular. Worse, they had learned from Mabel, Taos Pueblo was already a favorite destination.
Cars are not safe, Willa had declared, with a statement that covered all New York cabs and Harvey Indian Detours. Especially unsafe, Edith thought to herself, with drivers like Tony who drove wherever he wanted regardless of whether there was an actual road. Tony also drove as fast as he could. But in a place like Taos, Tony and his car were gold. He was a wonderful guide. He had so much personal knowledge about the mix of people and their rich history in northern New Mexico. Without Tony they never could have reached the places he took them. And, Edith finished her rambling thought, his passengers usually arrived where and when they intended without injury. She smiled. At least the two of them had experienced only mud and inconvenience when Tony’s car fell into a ditch near the ceremonial cave the previous summer.
Tony was clearly never timid about driving. Monsoons made no difference to him, even when the roads turned into deep slurry and threatened to carry the car into an embankment or slide it off into a ditch. Not everyone was like Tony, of course. They had had to wait for two and a half days at the Laguna Pueblo before anyone dared to take them to Acoma less than twenty miles away.
Caliche clay, the driver explained. Too slick, too sticky, too dangerous. He was right, of course. It rained hard for several afternoons in a row, and flash floods destroyed roads and cut new channels through arroyos. Even Tony might have delayed that trip. Caliche, sand, and rock seemed to be the only footing for roadbeds in New Mexico, and all three could prove dangerous. But no matter what was happening, Edith knew that when Tony took the wheel he would remain unperturbed and even serene. Tony loved his car and nothing pleased him more than an expedition. And a picnic. Without a picnic, this trip would be much too somber.
Adam set his easel under the canopy of the giant pine tree in front of Lawrence’s cabin. Sun filled the valley below but he stood in shade. The tree was so huge nothing else dared grow there. He dipped the tip of his brush in linseed oil and swished it in quick little circles on his pallet to lighten the shade of green he meant to use next.
He no longer had to think about what he was doing with his hands or brushes, but landscapes always posed a puzzle. How to get the suggestion of detail and movement and depth in a painting that contained no tangible images and whose surface simply covered a flat board. Some days he wished he had been born a century earlier and could be content with capturing exactly the scene in front of him. But then he would just have had different problems to solve. There were always problems and he enjoyed his experiments, turning colors and shapes into images that were just suggestive, nothing concrete.
The sounds at his back were pleasant, Maria sweeping the porch and singing softly. So delightful after yesterday’s fright. Maria didn’t mean to be heard, and he couldn’t understand her words anyway. A lullaby? Perhaps. Had she a child somewhere? A husband? Family?
He knew nothing about her. Not where she came from, how she got there, or who the brute was that brought her. Good riddance to him. Nothing had given Adam greater pleasure than hearing the sound of Blade’s horse’s hooves retreating down the trail and away from the cabin. His own horse and pack mule had nickered but not followed. He figured they knew evil when they smelled it.
To deepen the mystery, Maria had shown Adam a series of scratches on the interior wall of the little cabin where Maria continued to stay. Maria shook her head vehemently when he pointed to them and looked at her. They were not hers. They were down low behind the door. No one would notice them when the door stood open.
He wouldn’t have noticed had she not taken him by the arm and led him to them. One set with six vertical scratches, with a seventh scratch crossing through the cluster. Seven what, he wondered. Days? Why? When he looked again at Maria, she wiped her eyes as though she had been crying. But then she shrugged and so did he.
Seven what? Nothing occurred to him but an attempt to keep track of time. Why a need to track time? Had someone or some ones been imprisoned in that cabin? That wouldn’t have happened when Lawrence was there. Spud told him that cabin had been occupied by Lawrence’s friend and hanger-on, a deaf woman, a painter named … what. Adam had to think. So many whats in his mind. Brett, that was it. A bit odd, Spud said. Used a hearing horn. But surely not odd enough to scratch seven short lines on the wall near the floor of her cabin. For no apparent reason. She’d have had to do it on her knees. Adam found his thoughts coming in spurts. Then they stopped altogether.
Another sound had begun to interfere with Maria’s song. This one came from the valley below. Adam could see nothing moving there, but the noise grew louder and closer and Adam finally recognized it as the rat-a-tat of a woodpecker. Probably a pileated woodpecker, he guessed, though he didn’t think they inhabited this area. But banging like that could only be made by a large bird, a strong one.
Finally he saw a rustle of leaves in a distant cottonwood and caught a glimpse of red and buff as the bird burst out and flew to another tree. Not a pileated woodpecker but a flicker. Big, too, and with the same rat-a-tat. Birds of a feather, Adam smiled, but he also realized just how tight his nerves were, how much he was on edge. Noises, movements, minute changes in his surroundings. He noticed them all with a flinch.
Damn that Blade. This was supposed to be Adam’s return to nature with freedom from people and material worries. He put down his brush and leaned against his stool to study again the scene below. Well, he would ignore the mystery of Maria and focus … FOCUS … on his work. He knew how to be disciplined. And he would be. That’s all there was to it.
The trail had become increasingly narrow by the time Tony took his foot off the gas pedal. “Maybe here?” he finally asked.
Willa poked her head out the window behind him. “Up there,” she gestured, “that’s it.”
The car tilted at a rakish angle and Edith had to raise herself up from her seat to see where Willa was pointing. She hadn’t remembered that the trail ran along such a steep ridge. Maybe it was the perspective from horseback that made it seem different. But there it was. A shallow depression a couple feet below the car on the driver’s side, with yellowish dirt and small rocks that clearly had washed there from higher up. And where Willa pointed, a deeper depression, one that had just barely held the woman’s body the summer before.
Tony Luhan’s Car
Tony pulled the parking brake. The wheels on the driver’s side rested on the trail, the high point of the ridge. The ground fell away quickly on the other side, where cascading stones also suggested a lack of stability. The Cadillac listed dramatically toward the passenger side. Clearly this was no place for a car to be. But there they were. Edith opened her door and slid out. Willa tumbled right behind, almost landing on top of her. Spud was already standing, his feet braced. He helped Edith and then Willa right themselves. Tony didn’t move.
“You look.” Tony rested his right hand on the steering wheel. That was his only motion.
They first had to edge their way along the side of the car and use its fender to help them reach the center of the trail. Once there they didn’t quite know what to do.
“Well,” Willa said, walking a few feet up the trail, “it’s been a year. Probably isn’t anything to see, really.”
Spud stepped into the depression, squatted, and ran his hands through the dirt and stones along its sides. Edith watched him for a moment then let her eyes wander over the area beyond the depression and back down where they came from. Dirt and stones from the depression had surely washed that way. If anything had been left behind when they retrieved the woman’s body it would be farther down the shallow ditch.
Edith moved slowly down the trail looking for signs of where rainwater might have created a runoff. A couple of tiny, dry rivulets ran off toward sparse bunches of blue grama grass, but they held only a few small stones that were indistinguishable from the rocks. She turned back. Willa had already returned to the depression where Spud squatted, still running his hands through the dirt. Willa was sitting on the side of the trail, her feet planted next to Spud’s. Edith joined them and saw that Willa’s eyes were closed.
“Meditating?”
“Shhh,” Willa responded before opening her eyes. They were deep blue at the moment. She pushed a stray hair under her hat and brushed off her jodhpurs. “Just trying to get the feel of the place.”
“Feels creepy,” Spud stood up. His wide-brimmed hat shaded him to his knees.
“Not as creepy as I expected.” Willa rose to her feet and stamped the dust off her boots.
Edith glanced at Tony still perched above them in his car. His eyes were closed. Meditating, praying, napping. Edith couldn’t guess.
“I think it’s time for lunch,” Willa declared. “We can’t very well eat here, so let’s move on. What do you think?”
“I think we need to work our way back into the car first.” Spud grinned. “Or would you rather walk until Tony finds some level ground?”
“No level ground here,” Tony’s eyes were open again. “Get in, please.”
Easier said than done, Edith thought. Willa had to grab the back of Tony’s seat but still couldn’t pull herself all the way in until Edith braced herself and gave Willa a shove. Spud shut their door and asked Tony whether he would like him to stay outside and help steady the car.
“Too much danger,” Tony responded, so Spud eased himself in next to Tony. Once the starter caught Edith realized she had twined her arm around Willa’s and fairly clamped the side of her body against Willa. Willa was leaning uphill, too, with her head out the window and her left hand gripping the sill. Her right hand patted Edith’s arm and then held it tight against her side. Edith heard the clutch release and bit her lip when gravel spun away from under the rear wheel on her side of the car. Tony eased up on the accelerator after what seemed a very long time and the wheel gained traction. The Cadillac crawled forward, but Edith didn’t begin to breathe again until she could see the ridge widen ahead and felt the Cadillac begin to right itself. Then she took several very deep breaths and let go of Willa’s arm.
Spud sat cross-legged next to Tony’s car, a sharp knife in his right hand. Hope the next stops are on level ground was all he had said, but Tony’s driving had unnerved them all. Spud carved a piece of white meat off the roast chicken Amelia packed for their lunch and offered it to Willa.
They had spread their picnic cloth on sandy soil next to the car. Sage and cactus dotted the sand around them. Tony had provided shade by stretching the tarpaulin from the roof of the Cadillac to a pair of poles he kept in the trunk. Now he sat cross-legged on the cloth next to Spud. No sign of rain clouds but also no trees nearby, and the sun had become increasingly brilliant and hot as it moved though its arc.
Shade and a gentle breeze were all they needed to be comfortable for the moment. Edith rested her back against the car’s running board. From here they could see for miles in every direction. But there was nothing to see. Edith looked off to the south and east. Mountains in the distance, she corrected herself. Taos Mountain to be exact. They were actually surrounded by mountains, some relatively near, some far, some hiding behind others. And in between, Taos, Taos Pueblo, Taos valley and the invisible Rio Grande flowing so deep and dark through the gorge. With more mountains and mesas beyond. Vista, Edith sighed. Nowhere in the world is vista like this.
“You seem miles away,” Willa interrupted Edith thoughts. “Where did you go?”
Spud paused his chewing for a moment, apparently waiting for Edith’s reply. Tony reached for an apple.
“Just admiring the view,” Edith smiled at the three of them. “And enjoying this chicken,” she raised her plate in Spud’s direction. “I’ll have another wing if there is one.”
Amelia actually had sent the four of them off with two roasted chickens. “You’ll work up an appetite and your day will grow long,” she assured Edith. She was right, and of course, Edith guessed, Amelia wanted there to be food enough to feed the four of them and anyone else who might happen by. Chicken, tortillas, cheese, fruit, and fresh water. Perfect combination and so far today no one had happened by. Often men from the pueblo would show up miles from home. No explanation, no apparent plan, no hurry. And often as not, they would be on foot. Edith never could figure out what they were doing. Tony simply said hunting or farming with no elaboration.
Such an odd couple, Willa observed when they first met Mabel and Tony. Not only was their marriage in many places considered illegal — a white woman married to a Pueblo Indian — but Mabel was wealthy and garrulous, while Tony came from a culture where money meant little and using a lot of words showed weakness.
In Tony’s world, words had power and should never be spoken without forethought and intention. Mabel liked more than anything to use words and loved a good argument. Words were her primary means of entertainment, whether she was pleasuring herself by writing her memoirs or listening to others in one of the salons she created and filled with visiting intellectuals and artists wherever she lived.
In Taos Mabel had resorted to importing guests for her conversations. Not unlike themselves, Edith had to acknowledge, though they paid their own way. Tony generally ignored Mabel’s conversations. After dinner, while Mabel entertained guests in their living room or her library, Tony slept in his chair or drummed and sang quietly in the background. Yet he was never rude and Mabel and her guests took no offense. In fact, Edith thought, Tony’s silence might well be the reason Mabel fell in love with him, and why she never got bored, as she had with her previous husbands.
“Dust cloud,” Tony cut into Edith’s thoughts. “Behind you.”
Edith turned around to look.
“Horses? Wagon? Car?” Spud wondered.
“Too slow for a car,” Willa shaded her eyes, “but faster than a wagon.”
“Who on earth would be coming this direction?” Edith asked. “So far out of the way. We’ve been off any kind of road for quite a while now, haven’t we?”
“Whoever it is is coming the same way we did,” Spud squinted. “May even be following our tracks, I’d say.”
“Trail,” Tony reminded them.
“Mmm,” Willa nodded, still shading her eyes, “but a little-used trail. I’m beginning to see now that it was last year we made a wrong turn, not yesterday. This trail looks barely used. Yesterday’s seems like a major thoroughfare by comparison.”
Tony shook his head. “This trail is not used. The road is close,” he offered by way of explanation, “no need for trail.”
“But there are trails all around here,” Spud objected.
“Once a trail starts,” Tony’s smile was kind, “it never dies. Sometimes elk make trails.”
“I see,” Willa’s hand dropped to her lap. “No rain, no vegetation.”
“Whenever anyone crosses through, a trail appears and simply stays put whether others follow or not,” Edith finished Willa’s thought.
“Yes. And I suppose it’s impossible to know just how fresh a trail is or how frequently used.”
“Good trackers know,” Tony assured Willa.
“All trails must go somewhere,” Willa was thinking out loud now.
“Trackers know where and what,” Tony added. “Trackers know elk, deer, cattle, coyote, horse. Human, too.”
“Yes, of course.”
Edith wondered with more urgency just who used the trail to the camp they found yesterday, when and how often. This trail, too, she glanced ahead. It had become almost impossible to see the tracks now that they were in sand. No rain, no vegetation, yes, she thought, but wind and sand can make a trail disappear, too. So could rocks. She remembered the many outcroppings they crossed this morning on the way to the first burial site. Still, Tony always seemed to be able to pick up the trail again. Good trackers know, Tony’s words repeated in her mind.
The distant rider was much closer by the time Spud began to gather their plates and pack up what was left of their meal.
“Here, let me help you,” Edith offered.
“Not now,” Tony touched Spud’s arm. Spud settled back on his heels. “Rider comes here.”
“I thought perhaps we should leave before he gets here,” Spud appealed to Willa and Edith with his eyes. “We don’t know who he is. He may not have the best of intentions on this trail.”
“No,” Tony reiterated, “special agent.”
“You can see that far?” Edith shaded her eyes. The rider, well beyond the first burial site where they had seen him pause to look around, had urged his horse into a jog trot again. Edith could just make out that he was wearing a ten-gallon Stetson like the one Tom Mix made famous. She had enjoyed meeting Tom Mix. He was nicer than some of the movie stars she had to deal with in arranging advertising photo shoots for J. Walter Thompson. And Tom Mix’s horse Tony was a gem.
“Yes, I can see, too,” Willa also shaded her eyes. “Big man, isn’t he?”
“With a hat like that he should be one of the good guys,” Spud nodded. “Guess we should wait and see what he’s up to,” he closed the picnic basket and returned to his earlier sprawl. He didn’t have long to relax.
“Second rider.” Tony announced, indicating the opposite direction from where the special agent was once more carefully picking his way toward them. “See her?”
Edith did her best to suppress a smile at Tony’s use of pronouns. Gender clearly meant nothing to him.
“Who on earth?” Spud leapt to his feet.
Willa and Edith turned in unison. They stared in silence. This rider was moving rapidly, standing in his stirrups, his horse moving at a brisk trot, the kind that would throw a rider high in the air if he were to try sitting it. A Remington rested in the scabbard strapped beneath his stirrup leathers, and a large dog ran along side, a German shepherd, Edith guessed, with markings like Rin Tin Tin’s.
This rider was closer than the special agent but moving toward them from the opposite direction and on a different trail. The riders would pass each other before the special agent reached their picnic site, but they probably would not see each other. Nor would this new rider see them, Edith decided, because he was on a trail well below their own. Neither he nor his dog or horse looked up. They were aware only of what was directly ahead of them.
“Downwind,” Tony said, his voice flat.
Unlike the special agent, this man wore jodhpurs and rode with a certain stiffness. Older. Edith guessed his joints must ache with that fast trot. He wore his low-crowned hat pulled down tight. Edith couldn’t see his face.
“Isn’t that Manby?” Spud wondered aloud.
Tony nodded.
“Manby?” Willa shaded her eyes.
“Manby,” Edith repeated.