Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries Read Free Page A

the slope to the greasewood flat below. Did he feel her eyes on him even now?
    Stone Ghost gazed back across the valley. The first fires cast their glow on Dry Creek village. The small rectangle of mud-plastered rooms nestled beneath an eroded sandstone ledge. In the forgotten past a basin had been dug into a seep below a crack in the sandstone. It provided a dribble of water. The supply had been consistent enough that over the years a settlement had sprung up. Room after room had been added to Dry Creek village until a block of twenty-six rooms stood beside the seep. Now, with refugees from Longtail village, every room was crowded. The overflow lived in brush shelters. The Katsinas’ People couldn’t
stay here. Last summer’s rains had been few and far between. The seep provided Dry Creek village with just enough water in times of drought to irrigate their pitiful crops. The process was laborious, plants watered one by one from a ceramic pot. The ditches that normally diverted runoff from Dry Creek had remained parched. Corn had withered, the harvest poor.
    “Why did you pick this place to hunt for her?” Stone Ghost looked around at the low sage and the crumbled stone shrine.
    “It has the best view of Dry Creek village,” Catkin said, “and it’s far enough away that the dogs wouldn’t smell her and bark.” Worry etched her delicate face. She served as War Chief Browser’s deputy, one of the most blooded and skilled warriors in the world.
    Browser nodded. “She’s here, somewhere. Or was. Until you walked out here and announced our positions, Uncle. Now she knows we’re hunting her.”
    Stone Ghost exhaled and his breath rose against the darkening lavender sky. “She didn’t need me to know your positions, Nephew. She’s been watching you all day. She is the most dedicated of all hunters, her mind twisted like a yucca rope, bent and kinked until it is no longer human but something animal. She hasn’t taken her eyes from your movements all day, so she already knew you were here, waiting for her.”
    Browser did not respond. His gaze darted over every shadow.
    Stone Ghost stared back at the lights twinkling in Dry Creek village. “I came to tell you that Matron Cloudblower has decided to take the Katsinas’ People to Straight Path Canyon. She plans to rebuild the great kiva at Streambed Town. She thinks that perhaps that was the First People’s kiva—the one where they climbed into this world.”
    “Why would she think that?” Browser’s round face was gilded by the fading light.
    “Because it might be,” Stone Ghost said simply.
“And because Dry Creek village, despite Matron Rock Dove’s warm welcome, cannot shelter us through the winter. Matron Cloudblower sent me to summon you that you might help her plan the move.”
    Browser nodded. “Very well. Tell her I will be there soon.”
    Stone Ghost dropped his voice to a whisper. “No. Now.” He gripped Browser’s sleeve. “You must never hunt her in the darkness, Nephew. She will kill you before you know it.”
    Catkin fingered her war club. “It is we who are hunting her, Elder.”
    “Is that truly what you think?” Stone Ghost laughed softly and began picking his way down the dark slope toward the flats below. “Do you remember that first night, Catkin, when you came to my house down at Smoking Mirror Butte? Do you remember what I told you?”
    “You told me a great many things, Elder. As I recall, you even talked to a skull in a sack.”
    “Yes, my old friend, Crooked Nose. I wonder how he’s doing down there. I miss his company.” Stone Ghost took a breath. “Do you recall what I told you about the Blue God?”
    Catkin put a hand on his elbow to steady him as they walked, and he patted her fingers in gratitude. “You said she was a bloody-headed woman, that she met the breath-heart soul as it climbed out of the grave. I told you I didn’t believe in her.”
    “And I told you that your disbelief made you the rabbit in the