The Shaman Laughs Read Free Page A

that separated his world from the infinite vacuum of space. A pair of red-tailed hawks circled over a giant cottonwood on the bank of the Los Pi-fios. They floated without effort, as if lost in a dream. The smallest detail of his domain appeared to be exactly as nature had ordained. But it was not. Something watched. And waited.
    Homer Tonompicket was maneuvering Charlie Moon into just the spot where he wanted him, and this put him in an exceptional mood. The Game Warden threw his head back and bellowed the latest melancholy ditty from Nashville:
    "Now sweet Sally's gone… my heart I would of give
    her… She'd swallered enough gin -to pickle all the catfish in
    Mud River
…
Sally's eyeballs they turned yeller, she'd shake and
    she'd shiver…
    But the bartender told me: 'What killed her was her liver!' "
    Homer stopped to catch his breath and glanced at the driver of the Blazer. "Old Gene Autry—now there was a singin' cowboy that could ride and shoot and rope."
    Charlie Moon grinned. For one of the People, Homer had a peculiar fascination with cowboys.
    "And," Homer reminded his companion, "Gene always got the pretty girl." A dark scowl fell like a curtain over the game warden's face. "Dammit, Charlie! Why ain't there no more singin' cowboys?"
    Moon eased his boot off the accelerator. "I guess nothing stays the same." The policeman turned off the blacktop of County Road 321; he shifted into second gear and steered the Blazer down the rutted incline toward the fenced forty-acre pasture.
    "Old Gene, he give up his singin'," the game warden whispered in a tone of disbelief. "Went and bought hisself a baseball team." Homer, who was a purist, had terminated his annual pilgrimages to Nashville after "they" moved the Grand Ol' Opry out of the small downtown theater and into the gaudy suburban acreage dubbed Opryland. This had happened decades ago but to the recalcitrant old man it was only yesterday. Disneyland in Tennessee, that's what it was. All that was missing, he had told everyone in Ignacio who would listen, was that big black mouse that talked like a girl. "It's the end of real country music, that's what it is," he complained bitterly to other Utes who wondered why Homer cared what those
matukach
yodelers did in Tennessee.
    Moon shifted into low. "You ready to tell me what this little trip is all about?"
    The tribal game warden pointed a stubby finger across the dashboard and shouted over the roar of the V-8 engine. "Over there, Charlie."
    Charlie Moon braked, the Blazer to a lurching stop near a stack of baled hay and cut the ignition. He followed Homer
    Tonompicket toward the gate in the barbed wire fence. "There," the game warden said, pointing at a heavy chain that secured the dual steel gate at the center. "You see that?"
    Moon leaned over and squinted at a new Master padlock. "This lock looks okay to me." He straightened up and looked down at Homer's face, which was partially hidden under the black Stetson's dusty brim.
    "That's the whole point, Charlie. That lock ain't broke. You're my witness."
    "You brought me out here at sunrise to show me a padlock that's not broke?"
    "Now," Homer said, "take a look out there in that pasture. Whadda you see?"
    Moon scanned the fenced forty-acre pen. There wasn't much to see. Some grama grass, a few clumps of sage, the crumbling ruin of a house at the northwest corner. And, of course, Never Stops Talking. The aged buffalo cow stood near the rectangular stock pond, oblivious to the presence of these official representatives of the Southern Ute Tribe. Except for a slight wagging of her head, she might have been a statue. The old buffalo cow had earned her name by her habit of snorting and bawling almost continually. This morning, she was unnaturally quiet. And very still, more like a taxidermist's product than a living creature. Moon frowned at the game warden. "I see an old buffalo cow. Why didn't you move her to the new pasture, with the rest of the herd?"
    "Decided to leave