35

John Canyon had never really prayed any of the traditional Diné blessings, nor had he ever been all that interested in learning the stories of his people. Not until he went to war. One night during his time in the Persian Gulf—after checking his sleeping bag for camel spiders and scorpions and settling in with the zipper cinched up tightly around his face for fear that the same arachnids, and worse, would try to snuggle in with him—he had recalled the prayers of his grandfathers…

In beauty I walk

With beauty before me I walk

With beauty behind me I walk

With beauty above me I walk

With beauty around me I walk

It has become beauty again

Hózhóogo naasháa doo

Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo

Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo

Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo

T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo

Hózhó náhásdlíí’

It had been those prayers—or at least the small portions he could remember—that helped John Canyon survive his time at war, and those same prayers that encouraged him to make a new way, not just for himself, but for the People.

He recited the lines of prayer in his head now as he thought of his son and what he would to do the man who had stolen him. John and Tobias had never been close, the elder having decided early on during his tenure as a father that he was better to let the boy’s mother handle the day to day maintenance, while he focused on leaving his son, and his people, a true legacy. Despite all the sacrifices he had made, Toby seemed to resent him. But he hoped that it was merely a phase all young warriors experienced, a rite of passage into manhood, and not the influence of the belegana culture.

The road ahead of him was still dark. Canyon sat behind the wheel of his pickup truck, a caravan of his men behind him in various vehicles, a war party on the march. The rest of the world slept. That was where he should have been, at home, in bed. Alone.

Canyon’s thoughts turned to his wife, Reyna. His bride—whose resentment of him seemed to outweigh the boy’s, had been spending most of her time holed up in the casino’s Presidential suite. He took responsibility for some of the chasm that had formed between them, but he knew that a bigger reason for her absence was the five grand a week she snorted up her nose, and his recent intervention of reducing her available supply. But all that had accomplished was causing her to spend all day in bed. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what she would have to be depressed about. She had everything. The queen of an empire, who was treated as royalty should be. It was certainly several steps above the gutter from which he had pulled her. He suspected that her ailments came from a combination of her drug abuse and her strange religious beliefs, and less from his neglect.

She didn’t know about Toby’s abduction, and he didn’t intend to tell her.

The road ahead wound its way through the hills and up to the top of a large bluff where some damn fool had decided to build a general store. The Red Bluff Trading Post, which served the scattered remnants refusing to leave an area mostly tainted by the belegana’s uranium mines, had went out of business when those who lived farther down in the valley had started frequenting the Walmart in Farmington.

Ramirez, one of his lieutenants, must have responded to his earlier lesson, since the kid had been the one to first discover where the outsiders had holed up. The former Marine had always been a good soldier for Canyon. This evening’s screwup and a struggle with addiction aside, Ramirez was another shining example of a child he had pulled from the gutter. Without his intervention and guidance of the boy, who had been adopted as an indentured servant by his wife’s Uncle Red, Ramirez would have been nothing, just another half-breed banger. Instead, he was a man with a future. A man with hope. Canyon supposed that was what he had really brought to his people: hope.

The belegana had sent his people down a dark road, but just as the headlights of his truck cut through the darkness ahead, he intended to shine a light for all of the Diné with no hope or prospects. He gave them gainful employment, nice homes, and an overall better life.

The caravan cut through a series of hills and then came down into a small valley that marked the bottom of Red Bluff. He couldn’t see the trading post yet, but he guessed they were less than a mile out.

His internal musings were cut short when his lights shined upon two men walking down the center of the road. Stopping dead, the others behind him following suit, he jumped down from the big F-150 and approached the two men. Both had been stripped to their underwear with their hands tied behind their backs and their pants stuck atop their heads, flowing down their backs like a headdress. The two were leaning on each other for support. Ramirez in particular seemed to be having trouble walking and now, not only was his hand bandaged from where John had smashed it with the stone tomahawk, but his calf and forearm were also bandaged with blood showing through the white of the cloth.

Ramirez wouldn’t make eye contact with him, and neither man attempted an excuse or explanation. They knew better.

Canyon looked from the pair of his incompetent underlings to where the old trading post sat atop Red Bluff like a castle on a hill designed to dispel intruders. He knew that the element of surprise had now been lost, which made taking down the man named Frank all the more difficult. His plan had been to roll up in force, drawing the attention of Frank and whoever was helping him, while Ramirez and his partner, who were already hidden and in position, would be able to slip in the back and take their enemy by surprise.

Canyon didn’t look at the two men as he said, “You were supposed to wait for us.”

Ramirez, eyes still on the hard-packed dirt road in front of him, replied, “It was my call, sir. We saw an opportunity to end this. Your man is badly injured and the only other person with him was the Nakai girl.”

“Liana Nakai?”

“Yessir, we overheard her and the outsider talking. She kept telling him that he needed a hospital and then he passed out, fell right off his seat, and face-planted into the floor. I saw a shot, and I took it.”

“How did that work out for you?”

“I don’t know how, but he must have known we were there. When we flipped him over—”

Canyon interrupted, “I think I can fill in the blanks from there.” Considering the intel about the injuries and the inside of the building that the two men obviously possessed, perhaps their screwup wasn’t a total loss.

“Sir, he totally blindsided us, and he’s armed to the teeth. We saw grenades, gun cases, ammo boxes. It looked like he was preparing for war.”

“Good. That’s what’s coming for him,” Canyon replied. Then, turning back to the caravan of his soldiers, he called Todacheeney over and said, “Toad, take these two idiots back to the ranch and get them patched up. I don’t want either of them dying before I have a chance to kill them myself.”