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

brush, and she the cougar lying in wait.” Stone Ghost wobbled when his foot snagged a root. “There is only one way to sneak up on a desperate predator.”
    “What is that, Uncle?” Browser asked from behind them. His voice sounded tired.
    “You must find her weakness, and then use it against her. Do you know her weakness, Nephew?”
    The silence stretched, and Stone Ghost concentrated on his feet.
    Finally, Browser said, “No. Do you?”
    “I think so.”
    Catkin turned to stare at Stone Ghost. “What is it?”
    Stone Ghost navigated across a treacherous bed of loose rocks. “It is a place, not a thing. A place I am not even sure exists. A—”
    “A place of legends,” Browser whispered.
    “Yes, I’m glad you remember, Nephew.” He had told Browser this right after the kiva burned at Longtail village. “We should be going. Soon. It may take us several days to find it, if it can be found.”
    Browser came up beside Stone Ghost, and his face gleamed in the firelight cast by the village. “If it exists, we can find it.”
    Stone Ghost smiled sadly and looked down at the village. People sat before evening fires, wrapped in blankets. A few children ran across the plaza, strangely quiet.
    “This is a witch’s lair, Nephew. It may exist, but it will be surrounded by traps, and cloaked in darkness.”
     
     
    I SLIP A hand from the darkness beneath the tumbled rocks of the First People’s shrine and grasp the sandstone. One by one, I remove the stones until the gap is wide enough to raise my head and peer out into the night.
    Old Stone Ghost is gone … and he has taken my prey with him.
    I rise from the hollow like a Spirit from the earth, and turn toward the distant fires of Dry Creek village, watching the wavering shapes of three people move through the greasewood toward the light.
    I sniff the air for their lingering scents. The breeze caresses my charcoal-smudged face.
    I was so close! If the old man hadn’t come …
    I wait until they walk back into the village plaza; then a throaty laugh breaks from my full red lips. Browser will come to me again. It is inevitable.

CHAPTER 3
    Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
     
     
    DR. DALE EMERSON Robertson froze in his tracks. He would have sworn he heard laughter, mocking and eerie. The faint sound seemed to dance on the cold desert night. As he cocked his head to listen, the sound faded. Moonlight washed the canyon with its pale brush, beaming whitely on the cracked rimrock, painting the rabbitbrush, chamisa, and sage.
    “Must have been the wind,” he whispered. Though no trace of a breeze could be felt in the chill air.
    He shook off the dark premonition and resisted the urge to climb back into the warm safety of his pickup. Instead he locked the door and started down the path that led west from the Tseh So interpretive site toward the ruins of Casa Rinconada.
    Chaco Canyon: a place of mystery. It spoke to every American archaeologist’s soul. It had always spoken to Dale, but on this night he would have preferred to forget the past and what this half-baked Halloween journey might mean for him. His eyes drifted over the moonlit landscape.
    Eons past, tectonic pressure, wind, and water had
carved the canyon through the Cretaceous Cliff House sandstone. People had come here, drawn by the alluvial soils in the canyon bottom where, as the rains came and went, corn, beans, and squash could be grown. Dale thought of the immense draw of Chaco Canyon, and how it had shaped men for thousands of years. It had reached a stunning climax over nine hundred years ago when the Anasazi charted the courses of the sun, moon, and stars. They had used that sophisticated astronomical information to lay out their enormous pueblos, schedule their complex ceremonies, and build hundreds of miles of roads.
    He looked up at the star-patched sky. The late October chill ate into his bones, sending a shiver coursing through him. It was Halloween; he should have been home dropping candy into sacks