J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

She reached up with both hands and pulled Garrison Ladd’s face down until his lips once more grazed hers.

“I won’t tease you,” she whispered fiercely. “Not ever.”

And she kept her word.

It is said that from then on the people were very jealous of Little Bear and Little Lion. They wanted the boys’ beautiful birds to use the feathers on their own arrows. One night the boys’ grandmother warned them, “Tomorrow the people will come here. They will kill me and try to steal your birds. You must take the birds far away from here and throw them off the mountains in the east.”

The next morning, it happened just as she said. The people came to the house and killed Wise Old Grandmother, but Little Bear and Little Lion escaped, taking their beautiful birds with them. Back then, the people had not yet lost the ability to follow tracks, so they followed the two boys across the desert.

As Little Bear and Little Lion started up the far mountain, they heard the angry people close behind them. Little Bear was too tired to go on. “Here,” he said to his brother. “You take my bird as well. I will wait here for the people. They may kill me, but at least the birds will be free.”

And that is what happened. Little Bear kept the people with him long enough for Little Lion to throw the beautiful birds with their multicolored feathers off the mountain. And that, nawoj, is the story of how Sunrise and Sunset got their colors.

They say a certain type of criminal always returns to the scene of his crime, and Andrew Carlisle fit that mold. He was curious. He wanted to know if anyone had discovered Margaret Danielson’s body yet; not that he would actually have gone up the mountain to see for himself, but he couldn’t resist pulling off into the rest area at Picacho Peak since it was on his way. He was rewarded by the collection of law-enforcement vehicles parked haphazardly around the picnic and playground area, which told him what he needed to know.

The highway patrol had cordoned off almost half the rest area, but a few tables were still available. He took his Thermos to one of those and settled down to watch the fun, which included several milling television cameramen, some reporters, and a few stray newspaper photographers.

“What’s going on?” Andrew asked a man who came by lugging a huge television-equipment suitcase.

“An Indian killed a woman up there on the mountain,” the guy said. “They’re just now bringing the body down.”

An Indian? Carlisle thought. No kidding. They think an Indian did it? He couldn’t believe this stroke of luck. For the second time in as many chances, fate had handed over the perfect fall guy for something Carlisle himself had done, someone to take the blame. Sure, he’d gone to prison for Gina Antone, mostly because the cops thought he’d driven the truck that had inadvertently broken her neck. They had never suspected the real truth, not even that wise-ass of a detective, because if they had, it would have been a whole lot worse. Now, here he was again with somebody else all lined up to take the rap.

One thing did worry him a little. It hadn’t taken long for the cops to find her. He hadn’t expected them to work quite this fast, but he was prepared for it anyway. He was glad now that he’d taken the time to clean the bits of his flesh from under her fingernails. With something like that, you couldn’t be too careful. His mentors in Florence had warned him not to underestimate cops. The crooked ones had a price-all you had to do was name it. Straight ones you had to look out for, the ones who were too dumb to take you up on it when you made them an offer they shouldn’t refuse.

“Mom, if Rita dies, will we put a cross on the road where she wrecked the truck?”

They had just driven by the Kitt Peak turnoff on their way to Sells. With all the emergency vehicles gone, there was no sign of the almost-fatal accident the previous afternoon.

“Probably,” Diana answered, “but Rita isn’t going to die. I talked to her sister this morning. She’ll be fine.”

“Does my daddy have a cross?”

The abrupt change of subject caused Diana to swing her eyes in her son’s direction. The car almost veered off the road, but she caught it in time. “Why do you ask that?”

“Well, does he?”

“I suppose. At the cemetery. In Chicago.”

“Have I ever been there?”

“No.”

“Is that where he died?”

“No. Why are you asking all these questions?” Diana’s answer was curt, her question exasperated.

“Did you know Rita puts a new wreath and a candle at the place where Gina died? She does that every year. Why don’t we?”

“It’s an Indian custom,” Diana explained. “Papago custom. Your father wasn’t a Papago.”

“I thought you said I was going to turn into an Indian.”

“I was kidding.”

Davy fell silent for several miles, and his mother was relieved that the subject seemed closed. “Did you ever kill anything, Mom?” he asked at last. “Besides the snake, I mean.”

Jesus! She had almost forgotten about the snake. It was two years now since the afternoon she was inside and heard Bone barking frantically out in the yard. Alarmed, she hurried out to check.

She found all three of them-boy, dog, and snake-mutually trapped in the small area between the side of the house and the high patio wall. The rattlesnake, a fat four-footer, had been caught out in the open sunning itself.

It’s said that the first person can walk past a sleeping rattlesnake but a second one can’t. Davy had walked past the drowsing snake unharmed and was now cornered on the rattler’s far side. Bone, barking himself into a frenzy, was smart enough not to attempt darting past the now-coiled and angry snake.

Diana Ladd was usually scared witless of snakes. As a mother, this was her first experience in dealing with a life-or-death threat to her child. Instantly, she became a tigress defending her young.

“Don’t move, Davy!” she ordered calmly, without raising her voice. “Stand right there and don’t you move!”

She raced back to the garage and returned with a hoe, the only weapon that fell readily to hand. She had a gun inside the house, a fully loaded Colt.45 Peacemaker, but she didn’t trust herself with that, especially not with both Davy and the dog a few short feet away.

She had attacked the snake with savage fury and severed its head with two death-dealing blows. Only after it was over and Davy was safely cradled in her arms did she give way to the equally debilitating emotions of fear and relief.

“How come your face’s all white, Mom?” Davy had asked. “You look funny. Your lips are white, and so’s your skin.”

“Well?” Davy prompted once more, jarring Diana out of her reverie. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Ever kill anything besides the snake?”

“No,” she said. “So help me God, I never did.”

As the sun rose above her hospital room window, Rita’s life passed by in drowsing review.

Traveling Sickness came to Ban Thak the year Dancing Quail was eight and again away at school. The sickness crept into the village with a returning soldier, and many people fell ill, including all of Dancing Quail’s family, from her grandmother right down to little S-kehegaj.

Desperately ill herself, but somewhat less so than the others, Understanding Woman sent word to the outing matron asking that Dancing Quail be brought home from Phoenix to help. Understanding Woman also sent for a blind medicine man from Many Dogs village, a man whose name was S-ab Neid Pi Has, which means Looks At Nothing.

At fifteen, Looks At Nothing left home to work in Ajo’s copper mines. Two years later, he was blinded by a severe blow to the head during a drunken brawl in Ajo’s Indian encampment. The other Indian died. Looks At Nothing, broken in body and spirit both, returned home to Many Dogs Village. The old medicine man there diagnosed his ailment as Whore-Sickness, which comes from succumbing to the enticing temptations of dreams, and which causes ailments of the eyes.