White Shell Woman Read online

  James D. Doss

  White Shell Woman

  A Charlie Moon Mystery

  For

  Linda Sue Pippins

  Abilene, Texas

  In the four directions from her house she undergoes a change. She comes out of her house an old woman with a white bead walking stick. She walks towards the East and returns middle aged; and she carries no walking stick. To the South she walks and returns a young woman. She walks to the West and comes back a maiden. She goes North and returns a young girl. She is called the White Bead Woman, Yol’gai esdzan. She has three names, and the second is Changeable Woman, Atsan a’layee. The third is Yol’gai atate, the White Bead girl. She has these three names, that is her power. Only one person knows the origin of her power, he is the Most High Power Whose Ways Are Beautiful.

  —Above as told to Aileen O’Bryan by the first of four chiefs of the Navajo people, Sandoval, Hastin Tlo’tsi hee (Old Man Buffalo Grass) in November 1928: “You look at me,” he said, “and you see only an ugly old man, but within I am filled with great beauty.”

  Contents

  Epigraph

  1

  THE UTE HORSEMAN had seen their stern faces in all…

  2

  AN EXCELLENT BREAKFAST of refried beans, pork sausage, and eggs…

  3

  AS CHARLIE MOON gripped her arm, Daisy Perika grunted her…

  4

  A group of university scholars, graduate students, forest service specialists…

  5

  PETE BUSHMAN, LONG-TIME manager of the vast ranch property, stood…

  6

  THOSE MOST IMPORTANT of modern conveniences are not to be…

  7

  NIGHT’S DARK CLOAK had faded deathly pale around the edges;…

  8

  IT WAS A few minutes past midnight. A silvery moon…

  9

  IT WAS TO be a glorious day. The dawning sun…

  10

  THE CHIEF OF police and the Ute tribal investigator stood…

  11

  HER ARMS FOLDED resolutely, Amanda Silk stood above the excavation,…

  12

  THE CHAIRMAN OF the Rocky Mountain Polytechnic Department of Anthropology…

  13

  AS IF PROTESTING this brutal exposure to abrasive asphalt, the…

  14

  THE FOUNDER OF the clan had been the principle citizen…

  15

  WHILE HIS VISITOR watched, Charlie Moon squatted in front of…

  16

  CHARLIE MOON’S AUNT had telephoned several times, insisting that she…

  17

  CHARLIE MOON SAT across the desk from Special Agent Stanley…

  18

  EXCEPT FOR THE dog, Charlie Moon thought he was entirely…

  19

  DAISY PERIKA HAD heard the painful creaking of Charlie Moon’s…

  20

  ANNE FOSTER LEANED on her man. “I hope Charlie’s okay…

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by James D. Doss

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  The baby was the White Bead Baby…and her cradle is called natsi’lid eta cote, the rainbow cut short.

  —Sandoval, Hastin Tlo’tsi hee

  THE TWINS

  THE UTE HORSEMAN had seen their stern faces in all seasons. Whether bathed in blazing sunshine or veiled in a lace of softly falling snow, they were always the same. Massive. Silent. Awaiting the End of Days.

  On this day, Julius Santos had taken no notice of the towering sandstone monoliths. The rider was blissfully beguiled by those sweet things a spring morning brings. On the mossy stream bank, startled willows trembling with excitement at the arrival of an unexpected breeze. A flood of melted snow crystals rippling over an avenue strewn with slippery cobblestones. The crisp whisper of a magpie’s wing, a startled darting of rainbow-dappled fishes. He was distracted by these pleasures. Any thought of trouble was far from him.

  But the giants were infinitely patient. Relentlessly, they pulled at the corner of his eye.

  Finally—unable to resist—Julius Santos turned his face toward Companion and Chimney Rocks. Separated by a three-hundred-yard gap, the towering brothers seemed isolated in stony loneliness. But it was all a matter of how one looked at them. The Ute knew of a special place—a unique, elevated point of view. From the Crag, it was possible to see the Twin War Gods as the ancients had seen them—standing near enough to exchange whispers.

  On horseback, the sacred overlook was barely an hour away. It would be necessary to cross Ghost Wolf Mesa, a knobby formation dotted with kiva and pit-house ruins. A dozen winters had passed since he had ventured near that silent, sinister place where old bones moldered under lichen-encrusted rubble. But there was no other way to approach the Crag. A narrow, precipitous causeway of crumbling sandstone connected the mesa rim to that upraised, wedge-shaped platform where the Old Ones had built a splendid temple to honor the Goddess of the Moon.

  During his last visit, Santos had stood on the very tip of the stone triangle, contemplating the gigantic sons of White Shell Woman. While he’d stared at the Twins, something outlandish had happened. He had found himself leaning heavily on one leg…then the other—as if a trillion tons of sandstone pitched and swayed under his feet. The startled pilgrim had been overwhelmed by the illusion that he was on the deck of an enormous, storm-tossed ship. It seemed the illusory vessel was under full sail, toward some dark, alien harbor.

  But that had been years ago. He sat in the saddle, squinting at the distant mesa—that dark, haunted space that must be crossed to approach the sacred platform. In the Ute’s lurid imagination, the lumpy sandstone formation was a massive hand reaching up from Lower World—with all fingers folded except one. That long, crooked digit pointed suggestively toward the Twins. And on this morning, it beckoned to the lone horseman.

  To ward off this enticement, Santos closed his eyes. In doing so, he encountered the inner darkness. And looked too deeply. The old vision enveloped him.

  He is on the Crag, standing on the very tip of the soaring bow. Santos gazes over interlocked waves of space and time. A splendid illusion grips his mind. Just ahead—separated by the merest slice of sky—the towering giants stand shoulder to shoulder, knee-deep in petrified talus dunes. They are anchored to the depths of a ghostly sea, waiting for their mother’s pale face to appear between them. These are the slayers of monsters. Ready to take on sinew and muscle over bones of stone. And—as in the Beginning of Days—slay those unspeakable monsters that feed on human flesh.

  Santos’s peculiar fantasy was interrupted by a sudden stamping of the horse’s hoof; a heavy shudder rippled through the animal’s frame. The rider took a deep breath, and turned his face away from the Twins. He assured himself that the vision was nothing to be concerned about. It was a mental deception—a mystical mirage. The Ute turned his mount south. Toward home. This was a sensible decision. But…

  The giants whispered their urgent summons.

  You are needed.

  Today you are needed.

  The long finger beckoned.

  Come.

  Come quickly.

  Santos pretended not to hear the call. But he turned his horse toward the mesa.

  THE ENCOUNTER

  Though he was not a traditional Ute, Julius Santos did accept those particular elements of his culture that he considered helpful. This included sage advice on maintaining mental balance. And so—to the extent that he was able—he did not think bad thoughts. Not that a healthy man could possibly submerge his soul in gloom on such a fine day as this. The breeze was crisp as a new dollar bill and refreshingly cool against his face, the mornin
g sun a warm smile on his back. He had a good horse between his knees. Moreover, he was feeling uncommonly young for his years. The moderately vain fellow considered himself a fine figure of a man. And believing so, he was. Santos was long and lean; his spine straight as a young aspen. He sat easily in the saddle—a fluid, graceful rider who seemed grafted to his mount.

  Having ascended to the crest of the mesa, his spirit was likewise lifted. This was not really a bad place. There were purple and yellow blossoms blooming in splashes of sunlight; patches of melting snow hiding in the shadows of fragrant juniper. The rider directed his mount to the rim of the sandstone cliff. Snuffy was a steady beast who would step over a prairie rattler without so much as a shudder. She approached the edge of the precipice.

  Santos inhaled a deep breath of sage-tinted sweetness.

  It seemed that a man could see to the very edges of the earth. The Ute slitted his eyes, so the grand vision would not be absorbed too quickly. The endless space and deep silence engulfed and nourished his soul.

  Precious moments passed away, but eternity was not diminished.

  Santos was well short of the sacred overview, but even from the rim of Ghost Wolf Mesa the towers of Companion and Chimney Rocks seemed to stand near enough to touch elbows. According to the Zuni and Hopi, these were the Twin War Gods, sons of White Shell Woman. She was the moon, her muscular children the monster-slayers. The Twins had destroyed those mythical beasts who gorged themselves on human flesh. By this heroic act, the sons of the moon had made the world safe for human beings. It was a fine story, but Santos had watched the flickering television screen while men walked on the moon’s dusty-gray surface. He knew for certain that the pockmarked sphere was nothing whatever like a woman. And to this modern Ute, the War Gods were the stuff of fanciful Zuni myth. Moreover, he did not believe in monsters.

  Any child knows better.

  Julius Santos was summoned back to earth by the shrill call of a falcon. The dreamer wondered how much time had passed. And wisely decided that it did not matter.

  He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Let’s head up toward the sacred place, Snuffy.” The Ute was content to let the mare proceed at a slow pace. When they got to the narrow neck of land that connected the mesa to the lofty Crag, he would get off and lead his mount. It was a narrow, twisting path, with steep talus slopes on each side.

  Had the Ute kept to his plan, the future would have been quite different. But history is forever altered by the most casual decision, the seemingly irrelevant event.

  The rider experienced a sudden desire to avoid the slightest evidence of modern humans. He would shun the carefully laid-out trails prepared for the summer visitors to Chimney Rock Archaeological Site. For him, no signs with printed words about an excavated pit-house ruin or the great kiva or the mysterious stone basin or what the Anasazi probably used this or that plant for. At a nudge of his knee, the mare abandoned the graveled road that led to the U.S. Forest Service parking lot—the jumping-off place for sightseers from Tokyo and Chicago and Berlin, who plodded along carefully kept pathways behind uniformed guides. Not that there were any tourists or guides around today. The archaeological site would be closed until mid-May, when the last of the snows had melted. Santos urged his mount across a shallow arroyo, into a thick grove of piñon. He was approaching a lonely region where the pit-house ruins had not been excavated. In this twilight place, the bones of ancients remained undisturbed. And at peace, he hoped. But upon the earth or beneath it, peace is a scarce commodity.

  As he ducked to miss an encounter with a juniper branch, the Ute smiled at the memory of what his mother had told him countless times. He could almost see her wagging a finger at him, hear her voice: “Julius—you stay away from the places where them Múukui-ci used to live. Them crumbly old ruins are bad places. Some of them Múukui-ci ghosts are still there. Just waiting for a foolish person to come too close.”

  Santos assured himself that he cared nothing for the old superstitions. The Anasazi were long gone, and best forgotten. Not that he laughed at the notion of ghosts. He had seen his father sitting on the porch steps one Tuesday afternoon last autumn, hands resting on his knees. The old man had leaned forward, as if ready to arise and greet his son. And then he simply wasn’t there. This had happened three days after his father was buried in the Indian cemetery at Ignacio. Julius Santos had seen the proof with his own eyes; something did remain of those who had passed over to the other side.

  But what harm could a spirit do? Even if there were Anasazi ghosts lingering about these old ruins, they must be tired of nothing but each other’s company. Santos forced himself to smile. They would be happy to see a man ride by on a fine horse.

  Snuffy raised her black nose in the air. Sniffed.

  He spoke softly. “What is it, old swayback?”

  Her eyes bulged with fear. The animal tossed her head, snorted.

  The skin on his neck was prickling. Maybe she smells a mountain lion. There were rumors of a big she-cougar slinking around Chimney Rock. Santos had a long-barreled .357-Magnum revolver stashed in the saddlebag. That should be more’n enough to scare off a big cat. Good thing Snuffy don’t mind gunfire. He had shot elk from her saddle without as much as a flinch from his mount. He patted the horse’s muscular shoulder. “Move along, old girl. I intend to go amongst the old ruins—to where the ghosts are.” A joke was the best way to dispel fear.

  A few yards away, a pair of eyes watched.

  The horse—who had begun moving forward cautiously—balked so suddenly that the rider was pitched up against her neck.

  He shouted, “What the hell is the matter with—”

  And then it was upon them with a wild, furious shriek.

  Santos did not give a thought to the revolver in his saddlebag. Terror sets its own agenda.

  Consciousness returned very gradually, as if he were awakening from a long, deep sleep. For a confusing moment, Julius Santos could not remember where he was. With a concentrated effort of will, he began to put the day together. One small piece at a time.

  I got outta bed right after the seven o’clock news was on the radio. Took a shower. Had breakfast…ham and eggs. Then I saddled up Snuffy. Was going to take an easy ride along the creek, but I changed my mind. Headed over toward the big mesa. Where the ruins are. Oh yeah. Now I remember. Stupid horse was spooked by something. I must’ve got thrown. He had no doubt his mount was long gone. And it was a six-mile walk home. Dammit anyway! Hope I don’t have no broken bones.

  Santos squinted as the bright world above his face gradually came into focus. A gnarled piñon, bent like an old man’s spine against the prevailing westerlies. A perfectly painted cloud slipping across a pale blue canvas. The Ute was surprised that he felt no pain. But except for the earthy pillow under his head, the fallen man felt…nothing at all. He tried to move, but could not. What does it mean? Am I dead? Strangely, this possibility did not frighten him. All things of this earth must come to an end. As Julius Santos pondered his situation, a shadowy form moved over him, blocking out the sky.

  This frightened him.

  What in hell are you?

  And then he knew.

  Santos heard his voice. “No—no—don’t—”

  A searing, white-hot pain splashed across his face. Then cool, soothing darkness.

  It was finished.

  Santos went away. To where the ghosts are.

  2

  All of a sudden she heard something behind her. Looking around she saw a great white horse with black eyes. He had a long white mane, and he pranced above the ground—not on the earth itself…. And there was a young man sitting on the horse. The young man’s moccasins and leggings and clothing were all white. All was as for a bride.

  —Sandoval, Hastin Tlo’tsi hee

  THE SHAMAN

  AN EXCELLENT BREAKFAST of refried beans, pork sausage, and eggs (fried in the popping sausage grease) was finished. When the sun got a smidgen higher, Daisy Perika’s nephew would drive her t
o Ignacio for Sunday-morning mass at St. Ignatius Catholic Church. The Ute elder stood at the window, her thin forearms folded over a purple woolen shawl. Squinting at the gaping mouth of Cañon del Espíritu, she licked her lips in preparation for what must be said. And said it. “I won’t be in Middle World much longer.” The grim pronouncement was directed at the visitor in her trailer home.

  Charlie Moon, his seven-foot frame folded over the small kitchen table, was engrossed in a copy of the Southern Ute Drum.

  She waited.

  Nothing.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Big jughead.

  The former tribal policeman—now a cattle rancher—did not look up from the article about falling beef prices. “Yeah.” Aunt Daisy had been predicting her imminent death for two decades. She’ll likely live to bury me.

  She knew what he was thinking. “Won’t be long till you’ll be at my funeral.”

  He looked up to smile affectionately at the aged woman’s bowed form. “You not feeling well?”

  Daisy put a hand to the small of her back and groaned. “Haven’t had a good day since that peanut farmer was president.”

  Charlie Moon folded the tribal newspaper, downed the last dregs of an extraordinarily strong cup of coffee. “So what’s the matter?” He knew the answer. Too many years.

  “Too many years,” she said.

  “It’ll take more than old age to do you in.”

  He always says that. The tribal elder shook her head and sighed. Charlie was too young to understand. “When you get really old, things start to stop workin’. That’s when you know the end isn’t far off. And,” she added with a knowing wag of her head, “the signs are plain enough.”