Kiss the Bees

17

They say it happened long ago that after the Tohono O'othham defeated the PaDaj O'othham-the Bad People-the Desert People settled in to live near Baboquivari-

I'itoi' s sacred mountain-which is the center of all things. Much later, when the firstMil-gahn, the Spaniards, came, they mistakenly called theTohono O'othham the Bean Eaters after some of the food the Indians ate. And even later, otherMil-gahn — the Anglos-came to call them Papagos.

But the Desert People have always preferred to call themselvesTohono O'othham. They have lived forever on that same land near the base ofBaboquivari. There they have raised wheat and corn, beans and pumpkins and melons. There they learned to make chu-i — flour, andhahki — a parched roasted wheat that is also called pinole. There they learned to make baskets in which to store all the food they raised.

Other people knew that the Indians who lived in the shadow ofBaboquivari were a good people-that they were always kind to each other. It was that way then, and it is the same today.

Together, Davy Ladd, Brian Fellows, and Lani Walker made their way on hands and knees down the long passageway to the hidden outside entrance. Only when the two men helped the girl to her feet did they realize that other than a pair of bloodied socks, her feet were bare.

"Where are your shoes?" Brian asked. "You can't be out here on the mountain in bare feet. I'll go back and look for them."

"No," she said. "Don't bother. I'll be fine."

The morning sky was blue overhead. Lani stretched out her bare arms and let Tash' s warm rays begin to thaw her chilled body. She was standing on her own when a sudden dizzying spell of weakness overtook her, causing her to sink down onto the warm ground itself.

Concerned, Davy knelt down beside her. "Are you all right?"

"A little dizzy is all."

"How long is it since you've had anything to eat or drink?"

"I don't know," Lani said. "I don't remember." For her, time had stopped the moment she sat down to pose for the man she thought was Mr. Vega.

Brian stood up. "I have a Coke down in the car, and a blanket, too. Wait here while I go get them."

"Did he hurt you?" Davy asked quietly after Brian had hurried away.

Lani looked down at her chest. There was a stain on her flowered cowboy shirt where the wound on her breast had seeped into the brightly colored material. The stain barely showed. "Not too badly," she said.

A moment later she glanced up at Davy with a puzzled frown on her face. "What day is it?" she asked. "How did you get here so fast, and how long have I been gone?"

"It's Sunday," he answered. "Candace and I flew in from Chicago early this morning."

"Sunday?" Lani repeated. "You mean I lost a whole day?"

Davy nodded. "You disappeared yesterday morning on your way to work. You never made it."

She looked at him and frowned. "And who's Candace?"

Davy ducked his head. "My fiancee," he said. "We're engaged. But tell me what happened. Did he run you off the road? What?"

"I went to pose for him," she said. "He was going to let me have a painting to give to Mom and Dad for their anniversary. It was stupid. I see that now. He offered me orange juice and he put something in it, something that knocked me out. He did the same thing to Quentin. What about Quentin? Is he dead?"

Davy shook his head. "Not yet. He's halfway down the mountain, and he's hurt. It looks pretty bad to me. Brian is going for help. Dad and Brock Kendall are over at the charco. They'll have to bring in a helicopter. We won't be able to carry him out on a stretcher."

"How did you and Brian know where to look for me?"

Davy looked off down the mountain. Before he answered, he found it necessary to brush something from his eye. "Candace," he croaked. "Wanda Ortiz had called the house and left word for Dad to meet him at Rattlesnake Skull. Brian met Candace and me at the airport and brought us along out here. We were getting ready to walk over to the charco to find Dad when Candace sat down to tie her shoes and found this."

Reaching into his shirt pocket, Davy pulled out the tiny people-hair basket and placed it in Lani's hand. As her fingers closed over the precious kushpo ho'oma — her hair charm-tears of gratitude filled her eyes.

"But how did you know to look in the cave?" she asked a moment later.

Davy shrugged. "Brian and I saw it years ago on the same day Tommy first found it. Since the cave was right here and since we knew Quentin was involved, it was logical that's where you might be, that maybe he'd take you there." He paused. "According to Quentin, the cave is where Tommy died. He fell into a hole."

The same hole,Lani thought at once. It has to be the same hole. "Do you remember the story of Betraying Woman?" she asked.

"Yes."

"This is her cave, Davy," Lani said softly. "That old story Nana Dahd used to tell us was true. After the Tohono O'othham captured her, they brought her back here and locked her inside the mountain along with all her pots-her unbroken pots. Quentin had found the pots and was planning to sell them, at least he thought he was going to sell them. I broke them. All of them. Or at least as many as I could find.

"Afterward, when I was there in the dark and didn't know which way to go, kokoi — a spirit-showed me the way out. I think Betraying Woman's spirit led me to the passageway. Do you believe that? Is that possible?"

"Yes," Davy replied. "I believe it."

Lani laughed. "Probably you, but nobody else," she said. "I was in there for a long time," she continued. "At first I was so scared I could barely think, but then somehow I remembered the words to Nana Dahd' s old war chant, the one she sang to you that day in the root cellar. Do you remember? Repeating those words over and over helped me-made me feel brave, and strong.

"Later on, when the song quit working and I was scared again, a bat came to me in the dark. It touched my skin and taught me not to be afraid of the darkness. The bat showed me how the darkness could work against the evil Ohb. The next time I sang after that, the song wasn't Nana Dahd' s anymore. It was my own song, Davy, but it worked the same way hers did. You believe that, too, don't you?"

"Yes," Davy Ladd said. "I do believe it."

For a time he looked off across the wide expanse of desert. "It's happened, hasn't it, Kulani O'oks," he added quietly, with a rueful smile that was, at the same time, both happy and sad. "You've become Medicine Woman, Lani, just like the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees, just as Nana Dahd said you would. I guess it's time I got her medicine basket out of safekeeping and gave it to you."

"Her medicine basket?" Lani asked.

Davy nodded. "She gave it to me the day she died," he answered. "But only to keep it until you were ready. Until it was time for you to come into your own."

Davy watched Lani's face. He expected her to brighten-to be his little sister again, delighted by some unexpected surprise. Instead, she frowned. He reached out to her, but she drew away from him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I have killed an enemy," she said. "I will need to undergo e lihmhun in order to be purified. While I am here alone for sixteen days, I'll have plenty of time to make my own medicine basket. There are only two things from Nana Dahd' s basket that I would like to have-the scalp bundle and that single broken piece of Understanding Woman's pottery. The rest of it should go to you, Davy, to Nana Dahd' s little Olhoni."

Davy Ladd ducked his head to hide his tears. "Thank you," he said.

The first glimpse Brandon Walker had of his future daughter-in-law, Candace Waverly, she was on her hands and knees, huddled close to Quentin Walker's badly injured body. With her face close to his, she was comforting him as best she could while they waited for the med-evac helicopter to show up and fly him off the mountain.

Brandon Walker and Brock Kendall had left the charco and were heading for Gates Pass when the call came telling them that Lani had been found. The Pima County dispatcher reported that Lani was all right but that Brandon's son, Quentin, had been severely injured.

When it came time to climb Ioligam, the months of woodcutting served Brandon Walker well. He might have been fifty-five years old and considered over the hill by some, but he scampered up the steep mountainside without breaking a sweat, leaving Brock Kendall in the dust.

"Who are you?" Brandon demanded, looking down at the young woman crouched beside Quentin. He immediately assumed that she was somehow connected to the injured man. "And what the hell has this son of a bitch done to his sister?"

"You must be Mr. Walker," Candace said.

Brandon nodded.

"I'm Candace Waverly," she said. "Your son David's fiancee. Quentin wanted me to give you a message. He said to tell you that he didn't kill Tommy. He said it was an accident, that Tommy fell in a hole in the cave. By the time Quentin was finally able to get him out, Tommy was dead. Quentin didn't tell anyone what really happened because he was sure people would think it was all his fault."

"Tommy?" a winded Brock Kendall gasped as he finally reached the limestone outcropping. "I thought we were here about Lani. What's this about Tommy?"

All the way out from Tucson, Brandon Walker had agonized over how he would treat his son, over what he would say. As a father, how could he forgive Quentin for hurting Lani? And now there was responsibility for Tommy as well?

Brandon's legs folded under him. He dropped to the ground and buried his face in his hands. This was too much-way too much. More than he could stand.

"Dear God in heaven, Quentin," Brandon Walker sobbed. "How could you do it? How could you?"

"Take it easy, Mr. Walker," Brian Fellows murmured, appearing out of nowhere and placing a comforting hand on Brandon's heaving shoulder. "Quentin didn't do it. He didn't take Lani, and he didn't hurt her."

Brandon quieted almost instantly. "He didn't? Who did then? Who's responsible for all this?"

"The man's name is Mitch Johnson," Brian answered.

"Mitch Johnson!" Brandon exclaimed. It took only seconds for the name to register. "The guy I put away years ago for shooting up those illegals?"

"That's the one."

"Where is the son of a bitch? I'll kill him myself."

"You don't have to," Brian said softly. "I think Lani already did it for you."

Pima County Detective Dan Leggett was used to calling the shots when it came to conducting interviews. He would have preferred talking to Lani Walker in the air-conditioned splendor of the visiting FBI agent's Lincoln Town Car, but the medicine man-the one Brandon Walker called Fat Crack-refused to let the girl come down off the mountain. Ioligam was well inside reservation boundaries. The road where the Town Car was parked was not. Short of escorting Lani down to the car at gunpoint, Leggett wasn't going to get her to leave.

And so the detective took himself up the mountain to her. He found Lani and Fat Crack sitting together off to one side of the entrance to the cave. Lani was still wrapped in a blanket, as though the increasing heat of the day still hadn't penetrated to the chilled marrow of her bones. She sat watching in somber silence while several deputies trudged down the mountainside lugging the stretcher holding the crushed earthly remains of one Mitch Johnson.

Detective Leggett was still mildly irritated with Mr. Tribal Chairman, Gabe Ortiz. After all, it was the medicine man's message, sent via his wife, that had pulled Brandon Walker, Brock Kendall, and a number of other operatives off on an early-morning wild-goose chase to Rattlesnake Skull Charco. As a police officer, Leggett didn't put much stock in medicine men even if Ortiz's prediction of where they would eventually find Lani Walker had been off target by a mere mile or two.

"If you'd excuse us for a little while," Detective Leggett said to Gabe Ortiz, "I'll need to ask Miss Walker a few questions now."

Lani motioned for Gabe to stay where he was. "I'd like Mr. Ortiz to stay," she said.

"If Mr. Ortiz were your attorney, of course, he'd be welcome to stay, but I'm afraid regulations don't make any provisions for medicine men…"

"I'm not an attorney, but I am the tribal chairman and this is tribal land," Gabe Ortiz said with quiet but unmistakable authority. "I am here as Lani's elder and as her spiritual adviser. Since this is my jurisdiction, if she wants me to stay, I stay."

Leggett may not have been much of an advocate of ethnic diversity when it came to medicine men, but the words "tribal chairman" struck a responsive chord.

"Of course," he said agreeably, turning back to Lani. "Since Miss Walker wants you here, you're more than welcome to stay."

The interview, conducted in the full glare of what was now midday sun, took an hour and a half. When it was over, Dan Leggett's shirt and trousers were soaked through with sweat, and he was so parched he could barely talk. Lani still sat swathed in her blanket.

Despite her ordeal, Lani answered his questions with a poise that was surprising to see in someone so young. She responded to simple and complex questions alike with calm clarity. Her harrowing version of Mitch Johnson's physical assault with the kitchen tongs was enough to make Leggett feel half sick, but Lani recounted her ordeal without seeming to be affected by what she was saying. Her steadiness made Leggett wonder if she was really as fine as she claimed or if, perhaps, she might still be suffering from shock.

"That's about it," he said, closing his notebook after the last of his questions. "I think we probably should get you into town and have you checked out by a doctor."

"No," Gabe Ortiz said firmly. "Lani has killed an enemy. She can't go to town. She has to stay out here by herself, away from her village and family, until she finishes undergoing the purification ceremony."

"How long will that take?" Leggett asked, imagining as he did so an evening's worth of cedar drumming.

"Sixteen days," Gabe Ortiz answered.

"Sixteen days? Even though it's most likely self-defense, there'll have to be an inquest or maybe even a preliminary hearing."

"They will have to wait for the sixteen days," Gabe Ortiz told him.

Leggett looked around at the empty desert. "She's going to stay here? In the middle of nowhere?"

Ortiz nodded. "I've already sent my son off to pick up a tent and whatever other supplies she may need. I myself will bring her food and water. Her wounds will be treated in the traditional way."

For the first time in the whole process, Lani Walker's eyes filled with tears. "Thank you," she said.

Diana met Brandon at the door when he came home from the hospital late that evening. "Is Quentin going to make it?"

Brandon paused long enough to hang his keys up on the Peg-Board. "Probably," he said.

"And the bones?"

Brandon sank down beside the table and Diana brought him a glass of iced tea. "I called Dr. Sam," he said. "He ran the dental profile through his computer. The bones they found at Rattlesnake Skull belong to Tommy, all right."

Dr. Sam was short for Swaminathan Narayanamurty, a professor of biometrics at the University of Arizona. Together Dr. Sam and Brandon Walker had come up with the idea of amassing a database of dental records on reported Missing Persons from all over the country. Brandon Walker's effective lobbying before a national meeting of the Law Enforcement and Security Administrators had enabled Dr. Sam to gain some key seed money funding years earlier. That initial grant had grown into a demonstration project.

During the election campaign, Bill Forsythe had brought that project up, implying that Brandon's interest in the project had been based on personal necessity because of his own son's unexplained disappearance rather than on sound law enforcement practices. Personal or not, the connection had been strong enough that on this warm summer Sunday, Dr. Sam had been only too happy to interrupt a week-long stay in a cabin on Mount Lemmon to run the profile of the skull Dan Leggett had retrieved from Rattlesnake Skull Charco.

"Detective Leggett says he thinks Quentin was in the process of moving the bones out of the cave for fear Johnson would see them, when Manny Chavez stumbled into the area. Quentin must have panicked and attacked the man."

"I'm sorry," Diana said. "About Quentin and Tommy."

"Don't be sorry about Tommy," Brandon told her. "At least we know now that it was over quickly for him, that he didn't suffer. It's closure, Di. It's something I've lain awake nights worrying about for years."

The doorbell rang. "Oh, for God's sake," Brandon grumbled irritably. "Who can that be now?"

A moment later, a sunburned Candace Waverly appeared in the kitchen doorway. "It's Detective Leggett," she said. "He was wondering if he could see you two for a few minutes."

Wearily, Brandon rubbed his whisker-stubbled chin. "Sure," he said. "Send him on in."

"Sorry to bother you," the detective said, placing a worn Hartmann briefcase on the kitchen table. "I know you've both had a terrible two days of it, but I wanted to stop by and show you some of this before I turn it over to the property folks."

Opening the case, he pulled out a pair of latex gloves. While he was putting them on, Diana glanced at the loose piece of paper-a faxed copy of a mug shot-that lay fully exposed in the open briefcase. A sharp intake of breath caused both men to look at her with some concern as all color drained from her face.

"Diana, what's the matter?" Brandon demanded. "What's wrong?"

Diana's hand trembled as she reached out and picked up the paper. "It's him," she moaned. "Dear God in heaven, it is him!"

The paper fluttered out of Diana's hand. Brandon caught it in midair and studied it himself. "That's Mitch Johnson, all right," he said.

"It may be Mitch Johnson, but it's Monty Lazarus, too," Diana whispered. "He looked older and he wore a red wig, but I'd recognize him anywhere."

"Monty Lazarus!" Brandon repeated. "The reporter who interviewed you?"

"Yes."

Confused, Detective Leggett looked from husband to wife. "Who the hell is Monty Lazarus?" he asked.

Brandon put both hands protectively on Diana's shoulders before he answered. "The publicity department at Diana's New York publisher set her up to do an in-depth interview yesterday with someone named Monty Lazarus who was supposedly a stringer with several important magazines. Except it turns out he isn't a stringer at all. He isn't even a writer. He's Mitch Johnson, ex-con, somebody who vowed that he'd get me one day for sending him up."

Leggett shook his head. "It's actually worse than that," he said. "These are documents I've just now removed from Mitch Johnson's motor home out on Coleman Road."

Saying that, he handed Diana Walker a pair of gloves and a pair of manuscript boxes. One was packed to overflowing while the other was less than half-full.

"You might want to take a look at these, Mrs. Walker, but put on gloves before you do it. Fingerprints and all. Meantime, Brandon, there's something I need to show you out in the car."

Brandon Walker followed Leggett out to the driveway where the detective popped the trunk on his Ford Taurus. There, illuminated in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun, lay Mitch Johnson's awful charcoal nude of Dolores Lanita Walker.

"Where did this god-awful thing come from?" Brandon choked.

"From Mitch Johnson's motor home," Kendall answered. "I smuggled it out. Along with this one, too." He took out a second sketch, one of Quentin Walker. "Neither one of these is on any of the evidence lists. I brought them here so you'd have a chance to get rid of them."

"Thank you, Dan," Brandon Walker said gratefully. "I'll take care of them right away."

With Brandon carrying Lani's picture by the corners, holding it as though it were the rancid carcass of some long-dead thing, and with Dan Leggett lugging the sketch of Quentin, the two men walked into the backyard. There Brandon grabbed an armload of chopped firewood from his never-ending stack and threw several branches into the barbecue grill. Minutes later, the two offending pictures had been reduced to a pile of paper-thin ashes.

"That's that," Brandon said, dusting soot from his hands and onto his pant legs.

"There are two other pictures," Dan Leggett said quietly.

"Of Lani and Quentin?"

"No," Leggett said somberly. "If there are others of them, we haven't found them yet. The two pictures I'm talking about are of someone else. They're titled 'Before' and 'After.' "

"They're both of the same man," Leggett replied. "Before and after a murder. Unless I'm sadly mistaken, the victim will turn out to be Mitch Johnson's ex-wife's second husband. That big-time developer who got carved up down in Nogales a few months back."

"Larry Wraike?" Brandon Walker croaked in surprise. "But I thought a prostitute did that."

"So did everybody else," Leggett replied. "Me included."

The two men went back inside. In the kitchen they found Diana sifting through a stack of papers. Her haunted eyes met Brandon's the moment he stepped into the room.

"Fat Crack was right," she said. "The danger did come from my book."

"What do you mean?" Brandon asked.

"Some of this is Andrew Carlisle's personal diary, Brandon," she told him, holding back the single detail that some of the passages had been addressed directly to her, that even back in 1988, Carlisle had intended that someday Diana Ladd Walker would read what he had written.

"Carlisle and Mitch Johnson were cellmates for years up in Florence," Diana continued. "It's all here in black and white. It started the first day when I went to Florence to interview Carlisle for the book. That's when Carlisle found out Quentin was up there, too. They targeted him that very day, Brandon. They set him up, and that's what this whole thing is about-revenge. Andrew Carlisle was still after me and Mitch Johnson was after you. Lani was the perfect way to get to us both. And that's not all."

"Not all?" Brandon echoed. "How could there be more?"

"This," Diana said. She held up what seemed to be the title page of a manuscript.

"What is it?" Brandon asked.

"Do you remember when Garrison died I told you the manuscript he was working on disappeared?"

Brandon nodded.

"This is it," Diana said. "I recognized the typeface from his old Smith-Corona the moment I saw it. It's called A Death Before Dying. It's supposedly a work of fiction about a college instructor-a handsome man-presumably happily married to a lovely wife. Gary didn't have sense enough to change things very much. The husband taught freshman English; the wife was an elementary school teacher."

"So?" Brandon asked a little impatiently. "I've heard you say yourself that first novels are always autobiographical."

Diana nodded. "They are, and there was an ugly secret running just below the surface of this one. All the while the teacher thinks she's happily married, the husband is carrying on with another professor-a male professor. Believe me, it's a very special relationship to which the young wife proves to be an unyielding obstacle."

"You're saying Garrison and Carlisle had something going, something sexual?"

Diana nodded. "I think so," she said.

"That would make sense then," Brandon said. "It would certainly explain some of the hold Carlisle wielded over the man."

"Some of it," Diana agreed. "The kicker is here, though, on the very last page. The last written page because the manuscript is clearly incomplete. The last scene is mostly a dialogue between the two men. They're sitting in a bar, talking. Planning exactly how they're going to unload the inconvenient presence of that meddlesome wife."

"You?" Brandon asked.

Diana nodded. Her voice sounded far more self-possessed than she felt. "If I had gone to the dance with them that night," she said, "my guess is I would have been the one who died at Rattlesnake Skull Charco, not Gina Antone."

For sixteen days and nights Lani Walker stayed in the tent Baby and Fat Crack Ortiz had erected for her near the base of Ioligam. She spent her days weaving a rectangular medicine basket. When it was finished, the lid fit perfectly. Lani held it up to the light and studied the final product with no small satisfaction. It was not as well done as one of Nana Dahd' s own baskets, but it would do.

Each evening, about sunset, Gabe Ortiz would arrive by himself, bringing with him an evening meal and the next day's salt-free food. The traditional dictates of the enemy purification process- e lihmhun-specify a period of fasting and of avoiding salted food.

On the final day of her purification exile, with the medicine basket complete, Lani took a flashlight and ventured into Betraying Woman's cave one last time. There, shoved up against the stalagmite behind which she had hidden for hours, Lani found one of her two missing boots. She picked it up and took it with her when she continued on into Oks Gagda' s burial chamber.

This time when Lani entered the earthen-floored chamber, there was a feeling of utter emptiness about it. The spirits- kokoi-that had once inhabited the place were no longer there. Careful not to touch or disturb the decaying bones, Lani placed the shoe beside Betraying Woman's bones as a kind of memorial, then she stepped over to the wall where all the broken pieces of blasted pottery lay in a dusty heap. Kneeling down, Lani picked up one shard of clay after another, examining each in turn, looking for one that would speak to her, the one that was worthy of inclusion in Lani Walker's newly woven medicine basket.

The fragment she finally settled on was all black, inside and out. She chose it because the fine black texture reminded her of the touch of the bat's wings against her skin. Pocketing her treasure, Lani was about to stand up and leave when she caught sight of something else reflected in the glow of the flashlight, something that would have remained completely hidden had she not moved several pieces of the pottery.

When Lani saw the tiny bones, she thought at first that she had discovered the skeleton of a tiny baby. It wasn't, though. When she picked it up and the bones fell apart, she realized that what she had found was the moldering skeleton of a bat's wing.

Awareness made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. I'itoi had given her a sign. Dolores Lanita Walker was Mualig Siakam — Forever Spinning, and Kulani O'oks — Medicine Woman as well. But she was also Nanakumal Namkam — Bat Meeter. Elder Brother had led her to this place and had shown her it was true.

Why not four names?Lani thought with a laugh. After all, all things in nature go in fours.

On that last night, Fat Crack brought along Looks At Nothing's medicine pouch. After Lani and he had eaten, the medicine man drew a circle on the ground, a line that encircled both man and girl. The two of them settled down on the ground inside the circle.

"It's time for your first Peace Smoke," he told her. "Davy and Candace flew out of Tucson for Vegas this afternoon. They're supposed to get married tomorrow, but before he left, Davy brought me these. He said they belong to you."

Opening the medicine pouch, he pulled out two items and handed them to her. She recognized them at once as the treasures from Nana Dahd' s old medicine basket-the piece of pottery with the distinctive turtle design etched into the clay and the precious scalp bundle.

"Thank you," Lani said. Opening her basket, she put the two additions inside and closed the lid.

"What else do you have in there?" Fat Crack asked.

"Nothing much," Lani said. "My people-hair charm. A finger from a bat's wing. And a piece of Betraying Woman's pottery."

"Bring it," Fat Crack said. "The piece of pottery, I mean. After we have the Peace Smoke, you and I will study the pottery together."

Using Looks At Nothing's old Zippo lighter, Fat Crack carefully lit the wiw. And then, one puff at a time, they smoked the bitter-tasting wild tobacco, passing the lit cigarette back and forth, saying "Nawoj" each time it changed hands.

"How is Quentin?" Lani asked.

"Out of the hospital," Fat Crack replied. "But he checked himself into a drug and alcohol rehab program."

"Will he be better?" Lani asked.

Fat Crack shrugged. "Maybe," he said. "He has let go of the secret of his brother's death. Secrets like that can be very bad. They eat at you. Perhaps now, he'll be able to get better."

"Perhaps," Lani agreed.

They were quiet again. Far off to the east, flickers of lightning touched the horizon. The summer rains were coming. They would be here soon-by the end of the week at the latest. In a way, Lani was sorry that when the deluges began she would be living back inside the house in Gates Pass with a regular roof over her head rather than a canvas tent.

Lani Walker wasn't a smoker-not even of regular cigarettes. By the time the last of the wild tobacco smoke had eddied away into the nighttime air, she felt light-headed.

"Have you ever heard of divining crystals?" Fat Crack asked. His voice seemed to come to her from very far away.

"I've heard of them," she said. "But I've never seen any."

Fat Crack reached into the medicine pouch and pulled out the chamois bag. Untying it, he held open Lani's hand and poured the four crystals into it.

"Looks At Nothing said I should keep them until I found a successor worthy of them," he said. "It was through using these that I knew to look for you near Rattlesnake Skull that morning. Now I want you to try it."

"Me?" Lani asked. "But I don't know what to do."

"Take your piece of pottery," Fat Crack directed. "Look at it for a time through each of the different crystals and tell me what you see."

One at a time, holding them up to the firelight, Lani examined the pottery through each of the first three crystals. "I'm not seeing anything," she said, when she put down the third. "It's not going to work."

"Try the last one," Fat Crack urged.

This time, instead of putting the crystal down, Lani continued staring at it for a long time. First a minute passed, and then another. Finally she looked up at him.

"The Apache warrior- Ohb-s-chu cheggiadkam-came back here looking for his lover, didn't he? He came looking for Betraying Woman. Somehow his spirit found its way into Andrew Carlisle."

Fat Crack nodded. "That's right," he said. "And into Mitch Johnson as well."

"And now they're free?"

"Yes," Gabe Ortiz answered. "When you broke Betraying Woman's pots after all this time, you set all of them free."

Gabe reached out. One at a time he picked up each of the four divining crystals and returned them to the bag. When the bag was tied shut, he placed the crystals-chamois bag and all-inside Lani's medicine basket.

"They belong to you now, Bat Meeter," he said with a smile. "They are a gift from Looks At Nothing to you, from one wise old siwani to a young one. Use them well."