Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

"They shouldn't have arrested that old woman for helping orphans," Winslow said in a voice grown hoarse.

"What happened to her?"

"Died. She died in that jail and they sent her family a bill for cremating her."

Shan stared at the American's hollow face. Winslow's woes had started with government service in Beijing. Everything that happened in life was connected, Lokesh was fond of saying.

"But still," Shan said. "You came here without a body to collect."

Winslow offered a melancholy grin. "I lied to them, to my boss. The oil company had sent a copy of their personnel file on Larkin when she went missing. We figured there would be a body later, just not yet. I read the file. Same age as my wife. Marked by the company as a high achiever. Had been engaged to another company geologist, but he died in an avalanche in the Andes four years ago. After that she asked for the most remote assignments possible."

"So you felt"- Shan searched for words. "Lokesh might say you were on similar awareness paths."

Winslow's sad smile reappeared. "I told them I had a call, that her body had been sighted in the mountains. Only a little lie really. I'd be the one they would send eventually anyway."

They sat watching the wind wash the spring growth on the plateau. Finally Shan sighed and stood. "I've heard that noise, too, when the land speaks like a groan. A lama told me it happens sometimes, when the earth senses its impermanence. It just groans." Strangely, Shan remembered sifting grains of white sand in his hand. He felt an intense longing to be with Gendun, or at least to know he was safe.

As if on cue the land rumbled. The thunder came in three overlapping peals from the far distance. It seemed to be coming from the huge snowcapped mountain on the far side of the plain, the mountain that separated them from Yapchi Valley. But there were no clouds in the sky.

As the sound faded a shrill shouting replaced it, a torrent of furious Tibetan. Winslow pointed to a figure two hundred feet below on a rock spur that overlooked the plain. It was Dremu, his knife raised over his head, brandishing it toward the far side of the plain as if he were answering the strange rumbling.

The distance was too great for Shan to make out individual words but the anger in the Golok's voice was unmistakable. Anger at first, then a hint of fear, and finally what may have been desperation. Shan eased himself over the ledge they stood on and began climbing down.

Dremu was squatting when they reached him, throwing stones in the direction of the northern mountains. He spun about at their approach, then sheepishly looked in the direction of the horses. "All right, we can ride. Lhandro is taking that monk to the water by the trees," he said, and tossed a stone toward a pile of cans in the shadow of the boulder. "I found those up the slope at a campsite," the Golok said. "With a lot of bootprints, new boots. Expensive boots. Nothing else. It was a week old."

There were three empty cans, one of peaches, one of canned pork, and one of corn. Not Tibetan fare. The labels on the pork and corn were in English, the peaches in Chinese. Stuffed into one can was an empty wrapper for one of the protein bars they had seen below.

"How far are we from Yapchi Valley?" Shan asked.

"Maybe fifteen miles," Dremu replied.

"But why would the Americans be so far away from their oil project?" Shan wondered out loud, surveying the high ridge above them that defined the northern end of the plain. "What's beyond this? On the other side?"

"Nothing. A river. Steep ravines. Places only goats can walk."

Shan studied the Golok. "Who were you so angry with? Was it because of that sound?" He still knew very little about the fiery, bitter man, other than that the purbas had asked him to help.

"You wouldn't understand," the Golok said after a long silence.

"I think that sound made you angry. That sound like thunder."

"Thunder?" Dremu snapped. "You think it was thunder? Without a cloud in the sky? It was that damned Yapchi Mountain." He stood and raised his knife again, stabbing it toward the snowcapped peak. "It's the damndest mountain in the world. There's no mountain like it anywhere. Some say there's treasure buried in it, but I say it's full of demons." He had the air of a warrior about to do battle.

Shan looked back toward the horizon. The mountain, and the valley beyond, was their destination, the home of the chenyi deity.

"You speak like it was alive," Winslow said uneasily.

Dremu winced and rolled his eyes at Shan, as though asking to be saved from foreigners who were ignorant about mountain deities, then turned and started down the trail.

"The man you made a bargain with is dead," Shan said to his back. "You've been paid. It's not far now. Lhandro and Nyma can take me the rest of the way."

The Golok slowly turned, anger back in his face. But an odd melancholy quickly replaced it.

"I have little of value," Shan said, fighting the temptation to touch the ivory rosary in his pocket. "These old binoculars are the most valuable thing I own. But you can have them, and ride on, leave us. Just tell me one thing. Why are you angry at that mountain?"

Dremu walked to the edge of the ledge they stood on, facing the mountain that dominated the northern horizon. "I spent a month there once with my father."

Shan stepped to his side.

"Those Lujun troops," Dremu said with a much quieter voice, "after what they did in Yapchi Valley they passed through my family's lands. In those days Goloks were to be feared. The Chinese knew they had to show respect or they would lose men. So like everyone else they paid their respect and moved on. They had orders to hurry home."

"You mean they paid tribute," Shan suggested.

Dremu nodded. "It was a tax everyone paid. So Goloks wouldn't shoot from the top of gorges, and would make sure others didn't. It was just a business. But my people didn't know what those Chinese had done in Yapchi. A week later when we learned of the massacre, my family was shamed. We wouldn't have taken that gold if we had known," he said, speaking as if it had just happened. "So my grandfather's father rode out to find those Chinese, to get the eye back or return the gold piece he had taken from the Chinese." He fixed Shan with a sour expression. "To claim his honor back," he added in a defiant tone, and began fingering a small leather pouch that hung beside his prayer gau.

"It was very brave," Shan replied solemnly.

"They shot him. The general did it himself. They had Tibetans helping with horses who saw. Shot him in the head and laughed. Then they hired a dropka to take the body back to us. They had sewed the gold into his pocket. Later monks came and made my family go to Yapchi and apologize to the survivors, and help them build new houses. Even other Goloks hated my family afterwards. There were stories about how old monks came in the summer to Yapchi, and sick Goloks once would go there to be healed. But all the healing stopped after that because the people there hated the Goloks so much." He gazed toward the horizon again. "Of course we rode with bandits after that." He kicked a stone off the ledge.

"Those Lujun soldiers destroyed my family," he said. "My uncles rode away with bandits, or disappeared in cities. My father took me to that mountain one summer, looking for a monk, any monk who could help our family out of the blackness that had come over it. But by then there were no monks to be found anymore, so he meditated for days and days, trying to reach that Yapchi deity. But it only made him more sad. He knew the mountain was punishing him. He died not long after and my mother went to work in a city scrubbing Chinese floors. I was fourteen and had my own horse," Dremu added, as if it explained why he had stayed behind.