Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear Page B

and walls? Or when Elder Walking Hawk had sent him north toward the Land of the Dead, had even that trace of him vanished?
    “So,” she asked softly, “just why did you ask me here, Stewart?”
    He rolled the half-empty Guinness bottle between his thick thumb and forefinger. She watched the tendons in his hand, remembering how strong it was when it came to lifting broken rock out of a ruined pueblo, or how gentle and delicate it could be when he used a dental pick like a precision instrument to free a long-buried artifact.
    “Thought you might need a place to sleep for the night.” He shot her a worried glance. “Why did you say yes?”
    She tried to look nonchalant. “How could I turn down the opportunity to sleep on a couch that was so important that not even three different thieves dared to steal it?”
    Dusty laughed.
    But why had she said yes? She was still thinking about that hours later as she lay on the foldout sofa bed. Dusty called this thing comfortable? It undulated like an accordion—each of its “ups” coinciding with her “downs.” Beyond the louvered windows she could hear the wind in the trees, the pattering of little feet that she suspected were mice in the walls, and the creaking of the ancient trailer. Her gaze kept straying to the dark hallway that led back to his bedroom. This was lunacy. Tomorrow, she would have him drive her to Albuquerque where she would buy a ticket and fly home. She belonged in her little white house in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and she had work to do back in the physical anthropology lab at McMaster.
    Yes, fly home tomorrow, and deal with the first day of the rest of her life.

CHAPTER 5
     
     
    CATKIN SWUNG HER battered war club as she walked. The sound of the stone head whistling through the air satisfied her, and lessened the turmoil in her chest. She had always been like this: driven to do something drastic when her emotions were frayed.
    She had been there, in the cavern, when Browser confronted Elder Springbank; she had heard when the Elder was revealed as the legendary witch, Two Hearts. She had seen the old man, slumped against the stone, blood leaking from his lips. She had heard him calling to Browser: “For the sake of the true gods, Browser! We shouldn’t be fighting! You are one of us! Join us and we will let your Made People friends live.”
    Browser had been told all of his life that he was one of the Made People. She knew him well enough to understand how disconcerting the old witch’s words had been. But had he meant it, that Browser was one of the First People? Or had it been a trick, a means of distracting Browser so that the White Moccasins could kill him? How in the name of the gods could Browser pack up and go off to who knew where in search of the old beast—if he still lived?
    It all smacked of lunacy. Gods knew, she’d lived enough lunacy in the last five sun cycles. Old Stone Ghost had been right about one thing, they were spiraling into a fiery pit. Every winter grew more desperate, every summer more violent and bloody. In the
kiva, Stone Ghost had asked if they knew more living than dead. She knew far more dead people.
    Her resolve stiffened as she stomped toward the little camp where Browser and Stone Ghost had retired after the council session in the kiva.
    “Catkin?” a woman’s voice called from one side. A dark shadow detached itself from one of the women’s fires.
    “Not now, Obsidian.”
    “Wait!” The woman hurried forward, her finely sewn fawn-leather cloak hanging around her. Long black hair cascaded over her shoulders. She wore high white moccasins decorated with antelope-hoof rattles that clattered with each step. Defiantly she matched Catkin’s pace.
    “I don’t have time right now.” Catkin looped her war club around on its thong in a suggestive manner.
    “I have just heard,” Obsidian said breathlessly. “The War Chief and Elder Stone Ghost are going after Springbank.”
    “You shouldn’t listen to rumor.”