Sacred Ground

The drive out to the Springs was uneventful; sunset brought cooler temperatures, and she was able to roll the windows down instead of using the A/C. Heat lightning flickered in the clouds overhead, illuminating them for a brief moment in a flash of orange. The color always made her think of orange sherbet, a childhood hangover from nights spent sitting out on the porch, watching the lightning and the lightning bugs, and sharing a bowl with one of the cats.

Her next target lived a little out of town on a county road, and as she neared the house, she knew that this man, at least, was not off somewhere. His driveway was full of cars and trucks, and his yard held the overflow. The little white frame house was lit up inside and out, and it was clear that the owner expected all this company.

As she pulled into the driveway and parked her car behind the last one in the line (a red pickup), she had a sinking feeling that now she knew where everyone on her list was. Someone had gotten wind of trouble, and this was how they were dealing with it.

Too bad her father hadn't heard about this; it would have been nice to have had some warning.

Looks like I've walked right into a meeting, she thought grimly. And I don't think it's the Kiwanis or the Tulsa Pow Wow Club.

She turned off her car lights, and as she did so, she noticed the curtains at one of the lighted windows move.

I'd say I've just been spotted. Man-I wish I'd had some warning about this, though I guess if some of my buddies got blown up and people were looking for scapegoats, I'd get together with everyone else too. So I've got what, two dozen hostile people waiting in there? The prospect was not one she enjoyed. Still-on the bright side, it would save having to run them all down. And she could get all her rejections over with at once.

Aw guys, it would be so nice if you'd cooperate. It would look so much better on the report if you'd just play nice. . . . She squared her shoulders, put on her best professional manner, and opened the truck door.

As she came up the walkway and into the light from the porch lamps, she saw the curtains at the window move again, and a shadow move toward the door.

Here comes the welcoming committee.

Just as she reached the porch, someone opened the door and walked out to intercept her.

For a moment, a shock of recognition froze her.

He leaned up against the doorframe and crossed his arms, a sardonic expression-not quite a sneer-on his face.

She unfroze, took two more steps, and stopped, one foot on the low wooden porch. "Hello, David," she said, evenly. "I hope it's nice to see you again."

"Wish I could say the same. It depends on whose side you're on." Impossible to pretend she didn't know David Spotted Horse; not when he was the first guy she'd ever slept with, the guy her folks had thought for sure she was going to marry.

And the last guy she'd ever been at all serious about, as far as that went.

"I'm not on anyone's side, David," she replied, keeping her voice even, and not betraying what she was really feeling. "You ought to know that, if you pretend to know anything about me."

Her stomach was one tight knot; her heart fluttering. Rival feelings warred for possession of her body. It figures that he'd be here. A possible incident building, involving Native Americans, and right in his own stomping grounds? They must still be scrubbing the marks off the driveway where he peeled out of there. "There" being North Dakota, and "they" being the activist group he'd joined in college, right before he'd dropped out.. And right before they'd had that screaming fight that ended in a breakup.

She still couldn't figure out why he'd bailed out of college. When he dropped out, he was scuttling a promising career in law, and the Powers knew the Native American movement needed lawyers. But he said it was a waste of time. She stayed to graduate. His decision to bail had been only one of the reasons why they'd broken up. . .

He was posed right under one of the porch lights, and she couldn't help but make mental comparisons with the guy she used to know. The guy she used to know wouldn't have posed like that, making a macho body-language statement, clearly blocking her way. The old David would have stood a little to one side, to give her a chance to push past him. So he was used to blocking the way, to forcing a confrontation, whether or not the other party was prepared for one.

The years had improved him, that was for sure. Gone was the conservative haircut; his hair was almost as long as hers, now, parted in the middle and tied back with a thong decorated with a beaded redtail feather. She had no doubt he'd earned it; had no doubt that he'd probably earned eagle by now, and just chose not to wear it every day. He'd put on muscle; the open collar of his blue workshirt showed the strong throat, encircled by a hair-pipe collar, and it was pretty obvious from the straining seams across his shoulders and chest that he'd been exercising more than rhetoric since he'd been gone. She guessed he was actually wearing a size smaller jeans than he had in college, at least in the waist; the silver and leather concha belt buckled over his hips was new, and with that and the soft blue jeans, he looked good enough to be in the movies. The chiseled face and dark, farseeing eyes could still make her heart beat a little faster, if she ignored the sullen and challenging expression there.

That expression helped her get herself back under some semblance of control. Yeah, he's a babe-fest all right. But the years haven't improved his manners any. She grinned, but only mentally. Or his command of body language. Inscrutable warrior, my ass! He might as well be writing his intentions on a blackboard.

He was taking the offensive and aggressive path right from the start, and her efforts at keeping nonconfrontational weren't working. He'd already made up his mind about her, and she didn't think he was going to listen to anything she said. Still, she had to try.

"If you're not on our side, Jennifer, you're on The Enemy's side," he replied angrily, and giving "enemy" the emphasis that put a capital "E" on the word. "That's the way it is, and you'd better get that through your head right now. You may think you aren't on anyone's side, but you were hired by The Enemy, and you're The Enemy's shill, whether you know it or not."

Right. I thought that kind of thinking went out in the sixties! She kept her expression calm, although she was anything but. "First of all, David, it's none of your business who hired me. But that hardly matters, since secondly, you can't possibly know who hired me or what they want me to find out, because that kind of information hasn't made it out on the street yet, and believe me, I'd know if it had. And thirdly, you're right out of line, because you haven't the faintest idea of what you're talking about." She tried not to sound anything other than logical and cool, but nothing she said or did was going to penetrate that thick (and ridiculously attractive) head.

He sneered. He actually sneered. She hadn't thought anyone used that particular expression outside of bad movies and worse TV shows. "I know more than enough," he replied. "I know how you were when I dumped you, that you figured you could get along with The Man. I know that's shorthand for selling out. You're still letting wasichu tell you what to do, what to say, what to think. You haven't changed, Jennifer."

You dumped me? Yeah, fer sure, and I'm a blond. She didn't know whether to laugh at him or herself. Oh David, like you aren't a tool of The Man whether or not you admit it. The Man manipulates you just by being for something- even if it was good for you, you'd be against it. And don't think that smart people aren't able to figure that out after talking with you for two minutes. But she didn't say anything; she just sighed after a long moment. "Look, I have a job to do, and it happens to be for our people. Are you going to get out of the way?"

"There's nothing in there for you, Jennifer," he said, not moving. "There's no one in there who wants to talk to you."

Since he obviously hadn't asked anyone in the meeting if they were willing to talk to her, that patent untruth made her lose her patience. "I'd like to hear that for myself, thank you! And I'd like to get a chance to talk to someone who just might know something that could help all of us, instead of a fool who acts like a white man and makes assumptions without waiting to hear the facts."

She could have slapped herself for calling him a fool, but it was too late to take it back.

He didn't move. He just stood there with that scowl on his face, in what had to be an unconscious reflection of a James Dean poster. "That's what this meeting is all about," he said abruptly. "We're making up our minds about what we're going to do about this situation. There are at least some people here who have the sense to talk to experts instead of waiting to get trapped by smart cops."

"We?" she raised her eyebrow, which so far was the only change she'd made in her expression. At least she could take comfort in the fact that she had more control over her body language than he had over his. "I hadn't noticed you driving any bulldozers lately. Or have you suddenly turned into a construction worker in the past week?"

He ignored the remark. "I'm here to advise these people, before they get into something too deep to pull out of. We're going to vote on whether we should talk to anybody at all-whether we should take everything straight into the courts as a minorities harassment case. That way we get protection and bypass all the bullshit."

A harassment case? She was incredulous. There was blood spilled out on that site; some of his people and hers were dead. How could he possibly be thinking of something so- petty? How dare he reduce this situation to trivialities?

That was when her temper went the way of her patience. This was not a law-class exercise, this was the real world- and there were real people who were really dead.

"Dammit, David," she snarled, "there's more than just a harassment case going on when you've got a body count! You jerkoff, there's dead people involved here, kids whose daddies aren't coming home, and somebody's responsible for their deaths! That's murder in my book, and not some two-bit legal sideshow!"

She dug into her pocket and came up with a handful of business cards. She shoved the cards at him, feeling her blood pressure rise with every second. "When you and the boys get tired of playing Indians and cavalry, give me a call," she said sarcastically. "Maybe then we can start getting things settled, and maybe together we can find out who's responsible."

He didn't take the cards; they dropped to the ground at his feet.

She turned on her heel and walked off, so angry she could hardly see. She stalked stiff-kneed and stiff-spined all the way back to the truck, threw herself inside, started it up, and backed out with a spinning of tires and spitting of gravel. This time she left tire marks on the road.

But at the crossroads, her temper cooled; she pulled over and beat her hands on the steering wheel. She wanted to beat her head on it-but that would leave bruises, and a bruised forehead would be hard to explain to the folks.

Oh, I just ran into David Spotted Horse, and I started beating my head against a wall. . . .

Then again, they'd probably accept that.

"Good job, Talldeer," she muttered under her breath. "Really good job. Congratulations. You really made your point, didn't you. Damn, damn, damn-"

Why did he have to be there? Why couldn't it have been some other macho asshole from the Rights Movement? She could have handled a stranger. She wouldn't have lost her temper. She'd handled every flavor and color of macho jerk there was, including those of her own people who had accused her, openly or veiled, of selling out to the White Man. Of being an Apple-red on the outside, white on the inside. She'd done it successfully, too. If it had just been a stranger-

But it wasn't a stranger. It was him. All the old memories, all the old attraction-all the old baggage. If he wasn't such a jerk-

The hormones gave her another thrill along her nerve endings. They didn't care if he was a macho idiot. All they knew was that he had been cute and now he was a hunkarama, right in the same style and league as some of the gorgeous guys who'd been making beautiful scenery in Last of the Mohicans and Dances With Wolves. Yeah, it was all still there.

"If he wasn't such a jerk, you'd be in bed with him in a New York minute," she said aloud, scolding herself. "Jennifer, you are such a pushover!"

Jennifer, you are such a dope. The minute David shows up, you've got helium heels.

She put her head down in her hands, and tried to think around the hormones and the anger. I was yelling loud enough to be heard in the next county. I'm sure they heard me inside. If I'm lucky, someone in there will pick up one of those cards, or make David give him one. If I'm really lucky, it 'II be someone with the sense Wah-K'on-Tah gave a gnat, and he'II call me. If I'm not lucky, I'm going to have to try and talk one of these guys into hearing me out before he pitches me out on my butt.

Well, there was one man who would not be at that meeting. At least one of the men who'd been injured was still in the hospital and not so drugged up that he couldn't talk. Larry Bushyhead had had something fall on him when the dozer exploded; from the tally at the hospital the injuries were cracked ribs and broken ringers, but not much else. If she left now, she could make it before visiting hours were over.

He wasn't an ex-employee, either; he was a witness to everything that had happened before the explosion. He could have some valuable information about the guys who'd quit, and about what had happened that day.

And at least he wouldn't be someone who made her hormones prance around like performing dogs.

The hospital corridor was empty; most of the patients on this floor were drugged into happy-or at least pain-free- oblivion. They'd turned the corridor lights down for the benefit of those who wanted to sleep.

I really hate hospitals, she thought absently. The places always smelled like disinfectant and dead flowers, and they were always too cold. No wonder the nurses wore sweaters on duty. She listened to her own footsteps and the mingled sounds of a dozen TV and radio stations as she walked the empty corridor to a room halfway along its length.

"Hi," she said cautiously, poking her head around the doorframe. Larry was in a double, but there wasn't anyone in the other bed, and the nurse on duty said that his wife was out looking for some dinner. It was the usual hospital semi-private; Larry was in the bed nearest the window and the bathroom; Hillcrest had their bathrooms on the outside wall rather than the inside. The curtains were closed, and the TV was off, with only the light over his bed still burning. This was a good time to talk to him.

Heck, it was a great time to talk to him; if he felt like talking to her, he wouldn't be inhibited by the presence of a roommate or his wife.

"Hi," he said, looking up from the paper he was trying to read; from the way he'd been squinting at it, he wasn't having much luck with it. "What can I do for you?"

He looked interested, at least, and not like she was imposing on him. She took another step that put her in the doorway. Now that she was closer, there was no doubt of his Osage blood. Tall, rangy, with dark brown hair and mild eyes that were probably deceptive, he looked enough like her father to be a cousin. He'd gotten someone to bring him real pajamas, which was just as well, because she figured that, tall as he was, the hospital gown was just long enough to save him from technical exposure.

"I'm Jennifer Talldeer, and the insurance company that covers Rod Calligan hired me to ask some questions," she said, carefully. "I promise I'm not from Workman's Comp, and nothing you tell me will have any effect on your hospitalization. Do you feel like answering them? If you don't, I'll be happy to leave you in peace, but if you do, it might clear up a lot of things."

"I feel like just about anything other than watching a rerun or trying to read this paper," he said, giving her a wan but friendly grin. "They gave me a little stuff for the pain, and it makes fine print damn hard to read. Just don't make me laugh or ask me to shake hands, okay?" As he put the paper down, she saw that three of the fingers on his right hand were splinted and bandaged.

So, I got lucky, Davidwise. Either he doesn't like being bossed around by anyone, whether or not they're an activist, or they just haven't gotten to him yet.

Encouraged, she entered his room and took a seat beside the bed. "I'd like to start with some questions about some of the guys who quit," she said. "Was there bad blood between them and their boss?"

Bushyhead thought about her question for a moment, then shook his head. "Not really. A couple of them got better offers from the State, a couple got long-term offers from a road crew, and a couple of them just couldn't stomach plowing up good animal habitat for a stupid mall and went off to see if anyone else had a job opening. But I didn't ever hear any of them badmouthing him; they all got other work, and I hang out with most of them, off and on."

"So there were no threats against the company that you know of?" she asked.

"Threats?" His surprise was genuine. "Hell no, not that I ever heard of. Definitely not from the guys that quit."

"What about outsiders?" she asked. "You know there were a lot of protests over the choice of site."

He nodded. "I signed the petition. But once the county signed off, there was never anything seriously said or done. No threats, and that's for sure, or I'd have heard about that, too."

She gave him a skeptical look, and he grinned. "I sweet-talk the secretary; get her lunch sometimes so she'll let me know when something's up. She gets the mail first; if there were threats, I'd have known-these days, you can't be too careful. I worked on a site that got bomb, threats once, and once was enough for me. The wildlife people kept trying to post injunctions, but they never went through, and that is all I ever heard of. You know, what with some of the crazies that are out there, there's a couple of us that'd think twice about working a site with somebody making threats around."

He could be bluffing-he could simply be ignorant of what was going on. But she didn't think so. He had no reason to lie, and every reason to tell the truth.

Besides, all of her instincts were telling her he was divulging everything he knew.

She decided to try a different angle. "Do you think you can remember exactly what happened just before all hell broke loose?" It had occurred to her that he might have noticed something that would tell her what kind of hand had been behind this.

"Yeah, I think so." He nodded. "I went over this for the cops, though-"

"I'm not likely to get access to that," she pointed out. "Was there anyone hanging around the site that you noticed?"

"No, and we kind of watch for that," he told her. "We've had some problems with people pilfering stuff. In fact, the guys told me this afternoon that the dynamite inventory doesn't match the stores-"

Bet that's where the explosives came from. "Did anything odd happen that day?" she persisted.

"Uh-I didn't tell the cops this, but, yeah." He was frowning, and she asked why.

"Well, something really bad happened right before the explosion, only it wasn't the kind of thing the cops would consider bad." He hesitated a moment, then gave her a sharp look. "Can I ask you a question first? About your family?"

"Sure," she said, wondering what had caused the look, but getting the feeling in her bones that he was about to tell her something very important. "I don't see why not."

"Is your grandfather the Talldeer that's the Medicine Man?" Despite being fogged by drugs, he was watching her very closely-and the question startled her a little, and increased the feeling of urgency.

"Well, yes, actually." She wondered where he'd heard of her grandfather, and if she should say anything else, but he said it-for her.

"So you're the Medicine Woman, the kid he's been teaching-" He sighed and looked relieved. "Okay, you'll understand, then. You know, if this had happened the day before the dozer suicided, I'd have been sure somebody had planted a bomb because of it-but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before-"

He was rambling, possibly nerves, possibly the drugs, probably both. But in the ramblings, there were important clues. Suddenly, this wasn't just an insurance job. She suddenly felt like a hunter who has just heard the warning caw of a crow. She stiffened. "So what did happen?" she prompted.

"We-we dug up bones." He swallowed. "Old bones, pots, you know what I mean?"

"You're saying you found a burial ground. I mean, one of our grounds," she said, trying to control the feeling of danger that made her skin crawl. There it was. Out in the open. "Not just some old graveyard from around the Land Rush days."

"Yeah, at least that's what we all think." He shook his head. "It really spooked us, even the white guys. The stuff looked like it might be real old. And you know what digging up sacred ground means. ..."

He was getting more and more agitated the more he thought about it. "Yes," she told him. "I do. Can I help?"

He brightened at that. "Yeah, if you get a chance, would you ask your grandfather to come do a cleansing on me? Not that I'm superstitious but-"

"But you've already had enough trouble; no problem," she replied, mentally hitting a "reset" button and looking at the situation in a whole new light. Now it definitely was no longer just an insurance job. She had a real soul-stake in finding out what had happened, and too bad if the cops didn't like her poking around. "So you-ah-disturbed relics. Then what happened?"

"We backed off pretty quick, you bet-and we told the foreman we weren't gonna dig there. He got hot; called the boss on the cellular. The boss said we by god were gonna dig, and what was more, we were gonna burn the stuff we found or throw it in the river and not say anything about it." He gritted his teeth, and it didn't take a shaman to sense his anger. "He said if we told anybody, there'd be people from the college and everything coming in and stopping work."

She grimaced. "And you were mad-"

"I wasn't the only one!" he said. "We started arguing, and we even got the white guys on our side. I was just about to see if I couldn't sneak off and like, call the college or something, just to delay things, when-" He shrugged.

She sat silent for a moment. "So, what do you think happened to cause that?" she asked cautiously.

"Well-I thought it was just faulty equipment, but the guys said it was sabotage. My brains say somebody probably planted a bomb in the dozer, and god only knows why." He shook his head. "Nut cases, who can tell, with them? But my gut-"

She noticed he was sweating, and she knew why.

"-you know, I am really glad you're the Medicine Woman and all," he said, and he sounded genuinely grateful; "Anybody else would laugh at me for this, but-my gut says it happened because the Little People are after his ass, and they kind of got us because we were involved. You know how they are."

She did, indeed, know how They were. Mi-ah-luschka had a mixed reputation. Vindictive, vicious at times. "You didn't hear any-owls-did you?" she asked. "Just before the explosion?" The mi-ah-luschka, the Little People, often took the form of owls. ...

"Not that I'd noticed, but I wasn't noticing a lot except the fight between the foreman and the other dozer driver." He sighed. "That's why I'd really appreciate it if your grandfather could get on over here, you know?"

"Oh, I know," she assured him. "Uh-wait a minute, let me check on something-"

She dug into her purse, vaguely remembering that trip to Lyon's and the one to Peace Of Mind earlier this afternoon. Some things she always had with her, of course, but others she didn't necessarily take with her all the time. She'd picked up some herbs for herself and Grandfather, as well as the goodies for her father. Had she taken the packages out of her purse yet?

No!

"Would you accept a Medicine Woman instead of a Medicine Man?" she asked him carefully. "I won't be offended if you'd rather it was Grandfather."

"You mean, you've got stuff with you?" Bushyhead looked ready to kiss her, and a little light-headed with relief. "I don't mind telling you, with the full moon coming up, I've been kind of nervous about sleeping."

A cleansing was one of the easiest ceremonies to perform. There was just one precaution she was going to have to take. She took a quick glance into the hallway, made certain that the nurse was still deep in her paperwork, and closed the door. Then she climbed up on a chair, and stuffed facial tissue into all the openings of the smoke detector.

Ten minutes later, the ventilator in the bathroom was clearing out the last of the tobacco-redbud-and-cedar smoke, and the nurse was none the wiser. Larry Bushyhead looked much happier, and Jennifer was back in her chair, her implements neatly stowed back in her purse. Just as if she hadn't been chanting and wafting smoke around with a redtail feather a few minutes ago.

"If it makes any difference, I didn't feel as if They had tagged you," she told him. "But if I were in your shoes, I'd have wanted someone to do the same. I-I don't suppose you got any kind of a look at what was dug up, did you? Enough to really, honestly, recognize whose ancestors you were messing with?"

He hesitated, frowning. "I'm not an expert," he said, after a long moment. "And you know how much swapping around there was between the nations, even a long time before the white guys took over."

"A guess," she urged.

"Well-it wasn't Cherokee, or Seminole, and it wasn't Cado. If I was guessing-I'd guess it was our people. Osage. That's what I thought at the time." He licked his lips, as if they'd gone dry. "But that's just a guess. Could'a' been Sac and Fox. Could'a'been Creek, or Potawatami."

"Do you have any idea what happened to those relics?" she asked. "Because no one has mentioned them-and you'd think with cops crawling all over the site, somebody would have."

"I got two guesses," he told her. "The stuff we first dug up was either blown to bits or buried again. And the stuff that didn't get blown to bits, Calligan probably snuck in and got rid of. If he hasn't yet, I'm betting he will. All he needs to do is bring in a bunch of white guys who don't give a shit, as soon as the cops clear out."

She nodded, thoughtfully, and looked at her watch. "Oh hell, visiting hours for us nonfamily types are up-" And right on cue, the nurse showed up at the door, to remind her of that fact.

She stood up, swinging her purse over her shoulder, and gave him her best smile. "Thanks, Larry-you were a really big help."

He grinned. "So were you, Jennifer."

She made her way out of the hospital and down to the parking lot, only half aware of her surroundings. A burial ground-well, that certainly explained the "trouble" Sleighbow had mentioned, and why she had the feeling that there had been something there. The problem was, there wasn't supposed to be one there.

That may not mean anything. We haven't charted all the old burial sites yet, not by a long shot. The Arkansas wandered around a lot before the flood-control and irrigation programs settled it in one bed with all the dredging and dams. But-right on the riverbank is an awfully odd place to put a burial site. Especially an old one. And there should have been cairns, not underground burials; the Old Ones hated underground burials. Shoot, they wouldn't even build the cairns until months after the wind and weather had their way with the dearly departed.

The ancestors had tried not to put burial grounds anywhere near the Arkansas or any other river for just that reason-there was no telling when it would change its course and wash out the site.

Still, if it's really old, like when the Osage got forced down here from the north, and they didn't know the Arkansas tended to wander-and if it got buried by some accident or other-

Without actually seeing any of the artifacts, she had no way of telling how old it was, and if that was a possibility.

With a start, she realized that she had reached her truck; she opened the door and got in, reflexively locking her door again. But she didn't move; she was still thinking things through.

Really old grounds that had been "lost" were being rediscovered all the time in the course of development. Some were even uncovered by digging deeper under a building that had just been demolished-that was how they'd found that bat statue in Mexico not long ago. Since there hadn't been anything built on that site before, maybe it wasn't surprising that no one knew anything about it-

But that felt wrong, somehow. It matched the few facts as she knew them, but not the feel of the place.

It felt as if there had been some very powerful, very old relics there-but the feeling was-transitory, I guess. As if they hadn't been there long.

But that wasn't consistent with the idea of it being a burial ground.

One thing it did explain, though, was the definite scent of Bad Medicine about Rod Calligan. If he'd violated sacred ground and then destroyed bones and relics, he had definitely incurred the anger of the Little People.

But an Osage burial site-there-it just didn't add up. .

Maybe if someone ripped the stuff off from another site and cached it there?

But who, and why would they have chosen that place to leave the loot? And why didn't they come back for it?

Could there be more caches around the site? Again, if she found anything, she would know right away if it was a cache or a grave-and that would at least put one question to rest.

Maybe I'd better go run a quick check on the construction area again. And maybe I'd better go check some of the old burial grounds too, the ones out in the boonies.

One thing was for sure; that feeling she got with just her brief glance at Rod Calligan meant that the Little People were after his hide-and given how vindictive they could be, the hides of everyone else connected -with him.

She shivered at the thought. That was not a position that she would want even her worst enemy to be in.

_CHAPTER SEVEN

it was a good thing that the traffic was light, because she had most of her attention on the possibilities of the mi-ah-luschka being involved in all of this. The prospect was not one she would have guessed when she took this job.

Mi-ah-luschka. The Little People-different from the other kind of "Little People," the Little Mysteries that stole breath and made people sick-were not something she wanted to get involved with, particularly not if they were very old and very powerful Little People. And if this burial ground was old enough that her people had even forgotten it existed-

Jeez, I can't even talk about this to anyone but Grandfather without them thinking I've been drinking too much Irish whiskey. Little People. I don't even know what other nations call them; I'd sound like a refugee from a St. Patrick's Day parade.

"Little People" was a poor translation of mi-ah-luschka, when all was said and done. They were spirits; some of them were the spirits of those who had not been recognized by Wah-K'on-Tah, who had died without paint, or been buried in such a way that Wah-K'on-Tah could not see them-or worst of all, had perished in a way that kept their spirits earthbound. Executed, murdered, died in cowardice, buried without the proper rites, without paint. . . not happy spirits.

She had seen them. Once. On Claremore Mound. Grandfather had sent her there specifically to see them; it was part of the trials of becoming a shaman, to recognize spirits on sight, to face down spirits and learn to deal with them. That time, they had been mannerly; but then she was a woman, and it was mostly men who had trouble with the mi-ah-luschka of Claremore Mound, who had perished quite horribly at the hands of a band of renegade scum. Even though they had met her gravely, and had not even played any relatively harmless tricks on her, she had sensed the power and the possible menace in them, and had been glad to accept the token that would tell Grandfather she had passed this trial so that she could get back to safer territory.

According to Grandfather, there were other kinds of mi-ah-luschka too, that had never been human, but she had never seen any of that kind. Sometimes mi-ah-luschka were only lonely-sometimes they were just interested in making trouble, of a harmless kind.

But only sometimes.

Real Jekyll-and-Hyde types. She knew far too many stories about the Little People for her own comfort; especially the ones that ended up with someone dead or driven mad.

But were there ever any stories with-oh-modern "weapons"? Like blowing up bulldozers? First time I've ever heard of them planting dynamite on something. . . .

Well, what if they were active around the site, but not responsible directly for the explosion? Or what if they were working through someone, using a person or persons who already had a grudge against Calligan? Pushing that person over the edge enough to make him commit murder?

It could happen. . . .

The one thing she had on her side was that it was very difficult for them to work in the daytime, and the time they worked best was during the full moon. That would give her some margin of safety to go check the site out a little more closely.

She pulled up at a traffic light, and began tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in a drum pattern. The Little People would be handicapped if they were operating against someone who not only was not Osage, but wasn't even a Native American. Still, if this particular lot was very old, and very powerful, they might be able to work right through that nonbeliever resistance. And every time they succeeded in pulling something off, it would make the next strike easier.

And potentially a lot more deadly.

If this line of reasoning was true, well-it meant that the explosion was not the end, but was only the beginning. There would be more incidents, unless she could pacify them. More things for which mortal humans might be blamed.

Now she was very glad she'd smudged Larry Bushyhead down. If the mi-ah-luschka were on the trail of his boss, they might be inclined to take out Believer targets first. If they had picked up the magical"scent" of Calligan when the first dozer unearthed the relics, they would not let go of the trail. His workers, his wife, his family, they would all be fair game. They would have his scent as well, and as arbitrary as they were sometimes, the Little People might just start sniping at random.

Honking behind her jarred her out of her reverie; the light had changed, and she was still sitting there like a dope. Flushing furiously, she tapped the accelerator and moved into the intersection.

Shoot, the Little People could be causing all kinds of "accidents" that I don't even know about! Things like-making a driver see a green light when it's actually red. Or, Wah-K'on-Tah give me patience, sending David here to get those poor guys into more trouble by thinking he's getting them out of it!

That would be like the mi-ah-luschka too, she thought sourly. Get everyone entangled in a big mess. What would be worse; going to jail for something you didn't do-or getting flattened at an intersection? And which would those construction workers pick?

Me, I'd prefer to get flattened. The idea of a prison cell gives me the creeps.

She turned down her own street, several blocks earlier than she usually did. The stop signs were all facing her direction along here, and if she was going to go all fog-brained, better to go along here than on the busier street.

Small brick-and-frame houses lined both sides of the street, set back under trees that dated back to the thirties. The street looked very safe and suburban without the sterility of the modern subdivisions. Little porch lights gleamed warmly down on curved sidewalks and small porches with a chair or porch swing waiting. No kids out tonight; just as well, given her inattentiveness right now.

If I want to see if there's Little People out there on that site-damn it all, I'm going to have to go out there at night. I don't want to see, but I have to find out. I might as well go tonight or tomorrow, before the full moon. If they catch me while they are not at full power, I can probably convince them I'm on their side.

But she had no intentions of prowling around a place where the Little People had any chance of appearing without some special preparations. Momma didn't raise any stupid children, oh no. Besides, what was the use of being the student of a Medicine Man if you couldn't ask his advice?

The driveway loomed up much faster than she had expected it to, and she overshot. She backed up slowly, making certain there weren't any kids playing in the street before doing so, and pulled the truck in as neatly as she could.

The unmistakable scent of pizza greeted her nose as soon as she opened the door.

"Don't try to hide it; I already smelled it!" she shouted, closing the door behind her and walking into the living room. As she had expected, Grandfather sat in front of the television watching CNN, a Domino's box in front of him, and a half-eaten slice of pepperoni still in his hand. He looked up at her with his beady black eyes, and grinned without a trace of guilt.

"You know very well that my cholesterol count was fine, the last time we had it checked," he said. "And besides, I was hungry, and you weren't here to fix me anything."

"As if you aren't a better cook than I am," she retorted, then threw up her hands in defeat. "All right. I give up. I just hope you saved me some of that."

He smiled again, affectionately. "I knew you'd be hungry too; the past two days you haven't had a single proper meal. You work too much and eat too little." He picked up the first box to reveal a second, and opened it up, tilting it to show her another intact pizza. "Mushrooms and black olives, your favorite. All for you. And I made apple cobbler, for later. You're never going to find a husband if you look like a stick."

She helped herself to napkins and a fat slice; he was right, she was starving, and right now she would have eaten the cardboard if there'd been cheese on it. "What are you, Jewish now?" she jibed, and mimicked a thick New York accent. "Eat, eat, eat, you're too thin, how you gonna get a husband, you so thin-"

"So? Maybe they've got the right idea about some things." He chuckled, and put another couple of slices on a paper plate for her. "There's French Vanilla ice cream to go with that cobbler."

Jennifer suppressed a groan; she was never going to be able to resist that combination. She had been even hungrier than she had thought; she inhaled the first slice and looked longingly at the rest before licking her fingers clean and opening the mail.

It was a Good Mail Day; two checks. One from a divorce case, and one from a client whose steakhouse was. being pilfered. That would take care of a couple of bills, while she worked this thing. . . .

This thing.

She picked up her second piece of pizza and cleared her throat, and Grandfather looked up quickly.

"The insurance case," she began.

"You smudged someone," he replied, before she could find the right words. "I smelled it on your clothes when you came in. So it isn't just.an insurance thing anymore, right? Now it's a Medicine Thing, too."

She sighed with relief. He had gone completely serious on her, every inch the shaman. "Right. Exactly. Let me give it to you as I got it, so you can see the path I was following-"

He kept quiet as she related the entire story from the beginning, only pursing his lips from time to time without interrupting her.

"So." He sat quietly, thinking for a moment. "I have to admit that I have never heard of that particular place being a burial site before. Of course, I don't know everything, and there have been plenty of things lost to us besides the locations of burial grounds. Still. I think you're right; I think that this business with the relics is very bad, and I would not be in the least surprised to find that the mi-ah-luschka have been aroused."

"Oh, hell. I was afraid you'd say that." She finished her meal and wiped her fingers clean, before settling back in the chair. "I wish I knew what else to make of this. Half the facts I have make Calligan look like a bad guy, and the other half make him look like some bozo who was just doing something stupid and incredibly selfish. Stupidity on one person's part shouldn't be punished by blowing up other people; selfishness is generally its own punishment, sooner or later. On the whole, if Calligan did plow up a burial ground and order the relics destroyed, I think a hefty fine from some kind of government agency and a bad mark on his record would do everyone a lot more good than setting the Little People on him. And where the devil did that bomb come from? The Little People never went around planting bombs before that I ever heard of!"

Grandfather shook his head. "I don't know what to make of that, either. If you are thinking that you need to get deeply involved in this because of the blood spilled, though-well, you are right. It is your duty, and not only to your own people. Murder must be balanced." He tilted his head to one side, and continued, very gently this time, "I am afraid that you made some very serious mistakes in the way you handled young David, though, little bird. You may have made an enemy out of him; you certainly shamed him before the other young men. He was never very good at dealing with blows to his pride before, and I doubt that he has improved with the passage of time. The young men he has taken as his mentors have the towering pride of most young hotheads, and it bruises easily."

"I didn't make him my enemy," she said, rather sourly. "He did that all by himself. He'd already made up his mind before I ever got there, and he never was one to let facts get in the way of a good opinion."

"True." Mooncrow nodded. "I suspect that you are going to have to go to this construction site yourself, either tonight or tomorrow night, to see if the mi-ah-luschka really are out there. I would suggest tomorrow night, very, very strongly. You will need a ceremony to prepare and protect you, and it will take more time than we really have tonight. I think that tonight you should simply cleanse yourself. You have had many stresses today, and you are not thinking clearly."

He had been very serious right up until that moment, but suddenly the impish twinkle in his eye warned her that he was about to zing her.

"You know, I could show you the Osage Blanket Ritual." He leered. "It would help you, the way you are right now."

"Thank you, O Wise One, O Wisest of the Little Old Men," she said with heavy irony. "Just like a man. Suggesting that the cure for all my problems is a good medicinal fuck."

In a way she had hoped to shock him a little with the vulgarity; she was doomed to disappointment. He chuckled, and continued to chuckle as she made her way back to her room.

Just as she reached it, the phone rang. She reached for it automatically, before Mooncrow's warning "It's David" could stop her in time to let the machine get it.

"Talldeer," she said, in as neutral a voice as she could. She didn't bother to wonder how Grandfather had known who it was; that was why he was the shaman and she was the apprentice.

"Home already?" David said, in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "Or couldn't you find anyone who'd fink for you?"

"Grow the hell up, David," she replied wearily, and hung up before he could launch into a tirade or a threat.

She sat down heavily on the side of her bed, and took the phone off the hook for a moment while she thought. He was not going to leave her alone. Maybe he had to keep coming at her until she conceded defeat; maybe it was more than just pride. Maybe he'd do anything just to renew the contact; maybe the hormones were getting to him as badly as they were her-

"And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt," she muttered.

Still, she knew that he was not going to give up tonight; she'd rattled his cage, and he was going to have to try to reassert his masculine superiority. He was either going to keep calling until he'd delivered his threats, or he was going to come over in person to deliver them. Probably on the front lawn at the top of his lungs if she wouldn't let him in the house.

All right, you jerk, I'll force your hand. If you're going to play games, you're going to do it on my turf.

She replaced the phone in its cradle, then dialed one of her clients quickly. This was a child-support case, and while she didn't strictly have to call Angela with the information she'd gotten two days ago, since she'd already turned it over to the state's attorney and to Angela's own legal-eagle, it would make Angela feel better to hear it from the source.

Besides, Angela was a regular one-woman talk show. She was good for tying up the line for at least forty-five minutes.

"Hello, Angela?" she said as her client came on, after being pulled away from "The Golden Girls" by her daughter. "Listen, this is just a follow-up, but I thought I should let you know what I dug up on Harry so you can go bug your attorney and the state about this, okay? . . . Yeah, I sent the copies to them yesterday, so tomorrow or the next day at the latest they should have all the files-"

Just as she had figured, Angela was only too pleased to have someone to talk to; there were at least six "call waiting" beeps as someone-David-tried to ring through. She ignored them gleefully.

Finally, when there hadn't been any more beeps for at least ten minutes, she exited the conversation gracefully, reminding Angela that they both had to work in the morning, and hung up.

She glanced over at the clock on the nightstand; it was 10:18. She watched the minute-hand move. At 10:22, the doorbell rang.

She got up, but only went as far as the living room. Grandfather gave her an inquiring look, and went to answer the door at her nod. They both knew who it was; David was being David so hard that the walls might just as well have not been there. So-first get him off-balance, by having Grandfather meet him. The bunch of activists he was working with at least had respect for the elders drummed into them three times a day by their leaders. Seeing Grandfather here would probably set him back a peg or two. He wouldn't want to be rude around Mooncrow, and he wouldn't know why Mooncrow was living with her, when he was obviously able-bodied enough to be on his own.

She hadn't told David anything about her medicine-training; she'd been very reluctant to talk about it for a long time-and then, when he might have been interested or at least impressed, it had been too late to tell him.

Mooncrow led David into the living room, playing the herald, with every iota of his dignity and power wrapped around him like an invisible blanket. From the odd look on David's face, she knew that their first trick had worked. He had been startled to find Grandfather here. He had been even more impressed by Mooncrow's aura of authority; his posture and the way he moved told Jennifer that Grandfather had asserted himself without saying a single word.

"David Spotted Horse is here to see you, Jennifer," Mooncrow said formally, then moved around behind her, leaving David standing on his own at the entrance to the hallway. As Mooncrow faced away from David, he gave her a slight wink; she took her cue from that, and used her own Power to augment her presence, just as he was doing. Then Grandfather was behind her, deferring to her, which should have told David that he was walking on dangerous ground.

But he seemed oblivious to the nuances; or else he had made up his mind and was resisting anything that might change it. He took another pose, scowling, trying to intimidate her.

On my own ground? I don't think so.

"I think you said everything you needed to, earlier this evening, David," she said calmly, before he could start in on whatever speech he'd memorized. "Unless, of course, you are here to apologize for misjudging me."

That triggered an explosion of temper. The scowl turned into a glare, and the warrior lost his cool. "Apologize? For what! Look, woman-I came here to give you one warning-"

She pulled her head up, and stopped him with a look. Behind her, she sensed her Grandfather doing the same- but this was her show, most of the Power was coming from her. What Mooncrow was doing was only enough to show solidarity.

And later, when David thought all this over, that might shake him up some, too.

Enough to make him really think? Not likely. But I'll have given him his chance.

"First of all," she said into the heavy silence, "I am not the enemy. I do not know what is going on over there. That's what I was hired to find out. I am neither judge, nor jury; I am impartial investigator. If the men working for Calligan are innocent, they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by talking to me. I am trained in investigation-you aren't and neither are they. I may see or hear something with their help that will allow us to find whoever did cause that explosion. What's more, you seem to be operating under some assumption that I'm working for the police or some other investigative organization. I'm not. The insurance company that hired me doesn't care if those men are innocent or guilty; all they want to know is if Rod Calligan concealed evidence that his company had been threatened before any of this happened."

That obviously took David aback. "They don't care? They-I get it, if Calligan was concealing threats, it would invalidate his claim, right?"

Jennifer had to give him credit; David could pick up on things quickly if he chose to. "Exactly. But there are plenty of people in Tulsa who would like to get an easy conviction. And if those workers are innocent, I might be able to convince some of the cops who are on the case that Calligan's men had nothing to do with it."

David's face hardened at that. "If?"

She let her own face assume the mask of the warrior. "Just what I said. If. Because if they're not innocent, they'd better truck their asses out of town as fast as they can, because sooner or later either I'll find out what happened or the cops will-and if it's me, I'll turn them in. I won't lie to you, David; I'll turn in anyone else who uses terrorist tactics and death to make a point."

His eyes narrowed, and his teeth clenched as his temper rose again. "That makes you a traitor, in my book-"

She cut him off, this time using the Power to choke the words in his throat. His mouth worked, without anything coming out. He was, however, so angry that he hardly seemed to notice.

Her own temper had reached the snapping point. "Just who the hell am I being a traitor to, David Spotted Horse?" she snarled. She couldn't help but think, perhaps with some conceit, that her temper was the trained warhorse-and his the wild mustang. "Why don't you go take a quick trip over to the morgue before you start on me? So far there are four people dead. Go look at what's left of the damn bodies, if you have so much courage! I did! A fair share of those dead bodies are our people, and red or white, their blood demands retribution!"

He continued to fight her control of him. She released her hold on his words before he really did choke. He spluttered for a few minutes before coming out with something coherent.

"Your problem is that you've forgotten that you're Indian-"

She choked him down again, reined in her temper to a walk, and gave him a Mooncrow Look from half-lidded eyes. "Oh, no. I haven't forgotten. But your problem, David Spotted Horse, is that you have forgotten the words of the greatest spiritual leaders of all our nations. You have forgotten that we are all human. You are Cherokee first, then Indian, then human." She finally let her temper show, just a little. It was enough to make him back up an involuntary step. "When you get your goddamn priorities straight, and figure out that it should be the other way around, you can talk to me. Until then"-she gathered her power, and sensed Mooncrow following her lead- "get out of my house."

She pointed, and Grandfather mirrored her, both of them using their power to send David away. David tried to fight them; his muscles tensed, and his face writhed as he tried to stand where he was and continue the argument. But it was no use, not against the combined force of Jennifer's anger and Mooncrow's sheer ability. He found himself walking out of the door, down the steps, and to his car at the edge of their property.

As a final touch, Grandfather made the door slam shut behind him.

She stayed where she was, listening for the sounds of his car starting up and pulling away. When they finally came, she let her temper and her power go, taking deep breaths to help her release her anger, letting it all run away into the ground.

Then she yelped in outrage, as Mooncrow pinched her rear. She pivoted, to see him several steps away, too far away to have touched her-

-physically, the old goat-

-with his arms folded, grinning like a coyote. "About that Blanket Ritual," he prompted, puckishly.

"When I can take you on a genuine Osage Snipe Hunt," she snorted; then he laughed, and she headed back to her room to finish cooling off.

For the next hour or so she sat quietly in the middle of her room, relaxing every muscle and nerve, trying to get rid of that incredible buildup of tension. There was more there than she had guessed. Was David making her that angry? Or was it something deeper than that?

And along with the anger, she was having to deal with a very sexual electricity, a force that had sprang up between them even while she was facing him down as if he were an enemy. Which might just be the reason why Grandfather had made that jab.

Odd. When I was really small, Grandfather was very open about everything. Never avoided any subject. Then when I hit puberty and I was feeling touchy and shaky about anything sexual, he kept things very low-key, and very clinical, and never brought it up unless I did. He never said anything about David or Saul or even Ridge, and I thought for sure he'd have a few choice comments about Ridge! But now, especially lately, it's like living with a New York street crew! He's flinging innuendoes at me all the time! Why? Is it because I can handle it now? Or is he trying to tell me something?

Like maybe I could use a good, therapeutic-

She shook her head, and bit her lip. No, it can't be that simple.

Mooncrow had not said or done anything "simple" for the past four or five years. Whatever he was trying to tell her, it must be something else entirely.

She shook her head, loosening her neck muscles. Maybe he's trying to tell me I should become a nun, she thought wryly. Shoot, I might as well, for all the action I've had lately. The safest sex there is-none.

Now she was feeling sorry for herself. Any more, and she'd start playing Morrissey records.

Sauna, then shower. Just sauna, simple steaming out of nerves and anger, no sweatlodge stuff. Then I'll see if I can't get some direction in dreams.

The sauna made her relax in spite of her tension, and the shower, turned to "massage" setting, pounded out every muscle in her neck, shoulders, and back. She concentrated on making everything that was bothering her wash out with the water and run down the drain, in one of the oldest cleansing rituals there was. Her people had always been ones for cleansing by water, both spiritually and physically; that was one reason why they always tried to camp beside running water. Even in the dead of winter, Osages would bathe.

Breaking the ice to take a bath. Glad I'm not living back then. I'd never survive a winter.

The missionaries had been appalled. They had been certain that so much bathing was immoral.

She came out of the steamy bathroom to find that Mooncrow had anticipated her needs, and had left a hot cup of-well, "tea" wasn't exactly the right word for what was on her bureau. It was black, so dark it looked like strong coffee; redolent with two or three dozen different herbs and plants, it was without a doubt exactly what she would need for a minor vision-quest among her dreams.

She lifted the cup in an ironic salute to the electronic beeping in the living room, and downed it in as few swallows as she could manage.

As expected, it was absolutely vile. With no honey in it to cover the taste. Grandfather had never believed in disguising bitterness, either in Medicine or in truth.

Which is why we are so much alike. And probably why we get on each others' nerves.

Lights out, she did not exactly fall asleep, but the kind of trance she achieved was much deeper than the kind she had in the sweatlodge. This time, instead of looking for an answer within herself, she took form as an owl rather than a kestrel. She needed the senses of a night-flyer; she was going to be looking at a world only a little removed from the "real." In this shape, she soared into a sky that was an analog of the real sky over Oklahoma. The buildings of Tulsa loomed beneath her, and she kited on the thermals rising from hot asphalt.

Where should I look next? That was the question she needed answered. She framed her problems carefully in her mind. First, where should she go for clues? Not the site-she already knew she would have to make a careful examination there. But where else should she look? Somewhere out there was evidence-and it might not be in obvious places.

Brothers, sisters, show me the places that are not obvious. I have a shattered jar, and only a few of the pieces. Show me the places where some of the pieces might be.

Although in the real world it was still night, dawn-red crept into the eastern sky. Without thinking, she shifted from owl to kestrel, for now she was completely in the Spirit World, and now she did not need the special night-vision of an owl. She widened the circle of her hunt. Below her the landscape blurred and shifted. Her prayer had been heard.

Movement below her caught her eye, a pair of redtail hawks crying out over a despoiled nest.

In this world, there were always deeper meanings to things that seemed obvious. There was a deeper meaning to this than a hawk pair who had lost their nest to some interfering human.

And the redtail was, above all other birds, the sacred bird to the Osage. It was the redtail whose skin went into the sacred Wah-hopeh shrine, the redtail whose tail feathers were as red as the sun at dawn and sunset, and the redtail who told the Osage when it was to be war, or peace.

So-she folded her wings, and dropped lower.

The hawks faded; the nest became a shrine. One of the sacred Wah-Hopeh shrines of woven grass that housed the hawk that guided her people. The shrine had been broken into and the pieces scattered.

She kited closer. The broken shrine became landscape; roads and hills that she recognized; a house and several barns. A place up near Rose; a burial ground that was on private property.

A place she recognized, with a feeling of personal violation. Her ancestors were buried here; most of the Osage in the area knew about this place, though no one was likely to talk about it to an outsider.

She wasn't certain whether to curse or be perversely pleased. This probably meant that the relics that had been bulldozed up had not been buried there originally. Which meant that this might be a case of two crimes and two criminals; one grave-robber, and one terrorist.

Or-

Another thought; what if the grave-robber had cached his stolen relics and had blown up the dozer to prevent them from being uncovered? The idea had enough merit that even if it wasn't true, she might be able to get the cops to take an interest in it and take some of the heat off the construction workers and the local activists, at least for a while.

She beat her wings rapidly to take her up into the sky again, and resumed her quest. She might get more answers. She might not. But in either case, now she had another place to start looking. And she had until morning to keep asking.

Brothers, sisters, where should I look next?

_CHAPTER EIGHT

toni calligan kept glancing apprehensively at the closed door of Rod's office every time she went past it, going between the kitchen, the utility room, and the kids' rooms. And not only glancing at it, but hurrying past it as quickly as she could without actually running. It gave her the creepiest feeling, as if there was something lurking behind the door, listening to her, waiting for her to turn her back on it.

It's the boxes, she thought, burdened with an armload of clothing from the hamper in Jill's room, wishing that Rod had never brought the things in the house. It's whatever's in those boxes. I keep having bad dreams about them. I feel like I'm in a grade B horror movie, and Rod is the evil scientist who's brought his work home with him. Ever since he dragged those boxes home. I keep getting the feeling that there is something in his office that is watching me, laughing at me, waiting for me to walk in there so it can get me.

This was not rational, and she knew it. There was probably nothing in those boxes but old papers. If she told Rod how she felt, he'd laugh at her in that way that made her feel about ten years old.

She began sorting laundry with one ear listening for Rod. Or if he's had a bad day, he 'II have a fit and chew me out until I feel as if I was six years old and mentally retarded to boot. It would depend on how he felt.

Well, everything depended on how Rod felt. Rod was the center of this little household universe, and everything revolved around him. That was why Toni didn't have a job, although she had been a good executive secretary, and had enjoyed the work. Rod had been so masterful; he had taken her out for dates, never accepting "no" for an answer, he had proposed and made all the wedding plans, he had insisted she quit her job immediately. And for a while she had enjoyed feeling dependent, leaving all the decisions to him. Now, she simply endured it, because that was the way it was, and Rod was a good provider. He always bought the best for her and the kids. He never raised a hand to any of them. Independence was a small price to pay for that kind of security. And if he was kind of finicky about things-if he was kind of demanding-well, he had earned it, hadn't he? Look at all the good things he provided for them.

So what if every moment of her waking hours was spent literally serving him? If she had to be available for whatever Rod might need, whether it be secretarial services, dinner, or whatever else he might require? Her "job," Rod had explained very carefully, many times, until Toni could recite the entire lecture by heart, was him. Even the kids were secondary, since they were only extensions of him.

"This is a cutthroat business. I have to be like a surgeon; I have to know that an instrument is there waiting for me when I put out my hand for it. You have to be the nurse that hands me the instruments. Things have to be perfect at home, so I can keep my mind on my work, or the work won't get done. It's your job, your full-time job, to keep them perfect."

How could she argue with that? He worked hard, and it was a cutthroat business. All kinds of things could be problems for him, things she hadn't even dreamed of. "You married the business when you married me." She must be sure that neither she nor the kids were anything other than a credit to him. That they didn't ever embarrass him. That people would look at him and envy him, because in the construction business an impression was everything, and the impression she and the kids made could gain or lose him a job. He had to know that if he brought a client home unexpectedly, the house would be spotless, the yard picked up and trimmed, the dinner ready and waiting, the kids well behaved and quiet. Always. There was no room for weakness, no vacations, no time-outs. If the kids were sick, they must be out of the way where they wouldn't interfere with business. If she was sick, she must not show it.

Not that he had ever brought home a client unexpectedly. There was usually so much fuss over a client's appearance that anyone would think he (never she) were visiting royalty.

And his office must be twice as perfect as the house itself. Everything must be squeaky clean, dusted and polished, every paper filed, every note attached to every file. He must be able to put his hands on anything he needed at any time.

So why had he brought home those four filthy cardboard boxes-and why was he keeping them in his office? No client was going to be impressed with them in there, smelling all musty, stained with oil and dirt, and looking as if he had pulled them out of some farmer's chicken coop.

Not that she wanted to get near them, even to clean. Ever since he'd brought the things home, she'd cleaned around them; she'd even been afraid to let the vacuum touch them. She hated to open the office door, but left it open during the day because she hated the feeling that something was hiding behind the door even more.

And now the kids had started getting bad dreams, too. Not so much Rod Junior, but the youngest two, Ryan and Jill, in particular, had been waking up in the middle of the night for the past three nights running. They couldn't even describe their dreams, but if they had been anything like hers, there wasn't much to describe-just dark shapes looming up out of the dark to grab, and a feeling of absolute terror and despair. But they did keep mentioning "the boxes," and she knew she hadn't said anything about the boxes in the office, so there had to be some other explanation for why the three of them felt so uneasy around the things.

Maybe it's just that they're so much like me, she thought, trying to keep her mind on sorting the laundry properly. One time she'd gotten a single red sock mixed up with the whites, and had spent the rest of the day with a bowl of color remover, bleaching out each article carefully, so that nothing was damaged. Maybe they're just picking it all up from me. It was true enough that there was no doubt whose kids the two youngest were; they looked so much like Toni that it was uncanny. Maybe they're just good at reading my body language, and I'm jumpy, so they're getting jumpy.

Certainly Rod Junior, who looked as much like his dad as Ryan and Jill looked like Toni, hadn't had any nightmares lately. Maybe it was all her imagination. Maybe she was letting her nerves run away with her.

It was easier to believe that than to believe there was some kind of malevolent force penned up in those boxes in Rod's office.

/ can't say anything; it all sounds so stupid. And the one thing that Rod absolutely would not forgive was any hint of what he called "nerves." He wouldn't even say the words "nervous breakdown." He didn't believe in any such thing-like the old British generals who had men shot in World War I for showing fear. If she ever gave him a reason to think that she was suffering from "nerves"-

Well, she didn't know what he'd do. Certainly there would be no visits to psychiatrists, or helpful prescriptions of drugs. He hated and despised psychiatrists, and loathed the very idea of medicating what should be taken care of by will-power alone. At least, that was what he told her.

She had one ear cocked for her morning signals, and heard the bathroom door open and shut again. She dropped the T-shirt she'd picked up and hurried back into the kitchen-

-past the door-

Then, with a sigh of relief, she reached the safe haven of the kitchen itself. Quickly, she broke eggs into a pan, started the toaster, heated precooked bacon in the microwave. As Rod settled into his chair, paper in one hand, she put a cup of coffee into his free hand and slid the plate of bacon, eggs, and toast onto the table in front of him. He'd eaten exactly the same breakfast every morning for the past twelve years. Two fried eggs, four strips of bacon, two pieces of buttered toast, one cup of black coffee. He had not noticed when she had substituted the precooked bacon for his freshly cooked bacon, so that saved her one step, at least.

He read the paper steadily, eating and drinking with one hand, oblivious to her. Or-seemingly oblivious. If she had done something wrong, had made scrambled eggs instead of fried, or burned the toast, he would have delivered a lecture on her job, her duty, that was as bad as a beating, while she stood there flushing with shame.

Rod didn't cut himself or anyone else any slack, as he always pointed out at the end of the lecture.

The three kids slid quietly into their chairs while Rod ate and read. Ryan got his Wheaties, Jill her Frosted Flakes, and Rod Junior his breakfast identical in every way to his father's except for the coffee. All three kids got orange juice and milk, by Rod's orders.

But this morning, Ryan and Jill seemed fidgety. All three ate in silence until Rod finally put down the paper, but the two youngest were obviously waiting for the few seconds when Rod would give them his attention before he went off to work.

Suddenly, it occurred to her what they might want to ask him about. Oh no-they aren't going to ask him about the boxes in the office, are they? I should have warned them-

But it was too late now.

"Uh-Dad?" Ryan said hesitantly. "Dad, is there something in your office? Something bad?"

For a moment, Toni would have sworn that Rod was startled. But the next minute, she thought she must have been seeing things. He wore the same bored, impatient look he always wore when he had to deal with Ryan or Jill. "No," he said shortly. "There is nothing in my office, bad or otherwise. What makes you say something that stupid?"

Ryan winced, but continued bravely on. "It's just that- Jill and me-"

"Jill and I," Toni corrected, automatically. Ryan gave her an "Oh, Mom!" look, but corrected himself.

"Jill and I, we've been getting nightmares. About something in your office, something awful-"

She suppressed a wince, knowing what was going to happen. When the kids said or did something out-of-time, it always came back to her. And as expected, Rod rounded on Toni, frowning. "What the hell have you been telling these kids?" he asked, accusingly.

She shook her head, helplessly, and spread her hands placatingly. "Nothing," she protested weakly. "Nothing at all! I don't-"

"Then you've been letting them watch too damn many horror movies on cable," he interrupted irritably. "Stephen King, Dracula, aliens; Christ Almighty, no wonder the kids are having nightmares! Every time I turn on the TV, there's a bucket of blood spilling across the screen. Don't you ever check to see what they're watching? What kind of a mother are you, anyway?"

It was no use to protest that the kids only watched what he approved, that he himself was the one who selected the programs. He'd simply accuse her of letting them watch things behind his back, and she had no way to prove that she wasn't doing anything of the kind.

"That's it" he said, slamming his hand down on the tabletop, making them all jump. "No more cable TV unless I'm here to supervise what you're watching."

Jill opened her mouth to protest, but fortunately Toni managed to silence her with a look. Poor Jill; no more afterschool Nickelodeon.

"What are we allowed-" Ryan began timidly.

Rod hit his head with the heel of his hand. "Do I have to tell you kids everything? You can go outside and play, dammit! You kids spend too much time in front of that thing, anyway. You can play Nintendo if it's bad. You can even watch a movie from your special cabinet." His voice became heavy with irony. "You might even actually read a book/or fun. I know that may sound impossible, but people do read for fun. But no matter what, no more cable TV unless I'm here to supervise!"

Toni carefully refrained from pointing out that there were horror books, too. And it was hardly fair to take that tone with Ryan, who, if not a bookworm, was certainly a good reader. She just bowed her head submissively, and murmured something conciliatory.

Rod Junior kept right on with his breakfast, ignoring the whole thing. Rod finally turned to him after a moment and asked, "And what about you, son? Any stupid nightmares?"

Rod looked up, first at her, then at his younger siblings, and shook his head. "Nightmares are for babies," he said contemptuously, polishing off the last of his eggs.

Rod gave her a there, you see! kind of triumphant glance, as if that had proved something. Presumably that she should have somehow trained the younger kids out of nightmares by now, weaned them away from bad dreams as if she were toilet-training them.

All it proves is that Rod is his father's child.

And that Rod Junior knew how to say the things that his father wanted to hear. Young Rod was Rod's unconcealed favorite. He succeeded at the things Rod Senior thought were important; he had learned how to parrot every opinion his father had, whether he understood it or not. But most of all, it proved that he hadn't a gram of imagination.

Of course he doesn 't have nightmares. He doesn't have enough imagination to produce them. But she could hardly say that to Rod, who spoiled the boy something awful. Or even if she did-imagination wasn't the kind of thing that Rod valued. "Guts," "smarts," "brains," "gumption,"-all those mattered. Not sensitivity or imagination.

She wondered what that little "I don't believe in nightmares" remark was going to earn Rod Junior this time. Every time he came up with some comment that showed how much like his father he was, he generally got a reward by the end of the day. Probably the CD player he'd been wanting. Not that the other two had any real use for a CD player, but Rod Junior's room was stuffed full of the toys and treats his father brought him every time he said something his father considered clever. Or, in other words, proved himself to be a copy of Rod. It happened at least once a week, and it wasn't fair to the other two.

She sighed, though strictly internally. But life isn't fair. They're just learning that a little early. I think it's time to change the subject before he starts in on Ryan and Jill

"Rod, I hate to bother you"-she always began her requests with that phrase-"but the dryer is getting unreliable. I'd really like to call a repairman to come and look at-"

"Is it still running?" he asked, folding his paper neatly. Next he would get up, put on his suit jacket and tuck the paper in the inside pocket, then head for the office.

She made a little grimace of doubt. "Well, yes, it is, but-"

"Is it making any noises?" he continued, standing up, his own face reflecting his impatience.

Again she hesitated. "Well, no, but-last night, I thought I smelled-"

"You didn't smell anything," he said, interrupting impatiently. "You imagined it. I was right here last night, and I didn't smell anything. If I didn't smell anything, then neither did you. Or if you did, it was probably just some lint overheating. Clean the lint-catcher once in a while. I'll look at it later."

"Yes, Rod," she sighed, as he shrugged on his coat and headed out the door. A moment later, he pulled his car out of the garage, down the driveway, and was gone. She began picking up the breakfast dishes and setting them into the dishwasher. School had only been out for about a week, but already the kids had established their summer routines. Jill wandered back down the hall to her room; Rod Junior went out to ride his bike. Ryan stayed with her to help. She smiled at him, and hugged him comfortingly. He still looked disturbed and unhappy, and not just from his father's unkind words.

But her mind was on other things now. It's a good thing I turned off the dryer last night when I thought I smelled something burning, and remembered to unplug it first thing this morning, she thought, closing the dishwasher and starting it. With an electric dryer, you can't always be sure it's off unless you unplug it. I guess I'll just have to dry clothes on the line outside until he gets around to looking at it. I wish he'd let me call a repairman. . . .

Actually, she wished he'd let her buy a new dryer. One with some of those special settings for delicate things like Rod's silk shirts, and a door rack for the kids' sneakers. There was always enough money for new suits, but never anything for a new dryer. Probably because he didn't have anything to do with the dryer-

"Mommy!"

She jumped, as if shocked. The shriek was Jill's and it was full of terror. "Mommy! Fire!"

Her heart bounded into her throat; she came out of her trance of shock, dropped the butter-dish she'd been holding, and ran for the utility room. But Ryan streaked past her and into the hall, something large and red in his hands.

The fire extinguisher from the kitchen, under the sink- he'd been closest to it-

The smoke alarm went off, shrilling in her ears, galvanizing her with fear, as Jill broke into a wail of her own.

"Mom-EEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Her mind was stuck on hold, but her hands and body acted without any direction from her gibbering mind. As she reached the utility room and grabbed the extinguisher beside the door, Ryan was already emptying his own extinguisher on the blaze eating into the wallboard behind the dryer. Jill wailed in terror, plastered against the back wall of the utility room, clutching her stuffed bunny.

That's right, the bunny was still in the dryer. My God, she could have been electrocuted!

Toni joined her son, playing the chemicals from the extinguisher on the blaze, amazed that her hands and his were so steady. Doubly amazed that he had such enormous presence of mind for a ten-year-old. If he had just been a little taller, he could have reached over the dryer as she was doing and sprayed down behind it; from the looks of things, he'd actually tried, then given up, keeping his spray on the areas he could reach. But he had given her the extra few seconds she needed, confining the fire to the area in back of the dryer, keeping it from spreading any further until she could really put it out.

The last of the flames died. The plug, still in the wall socket, spat a spark; she dropped her now empty extinguisher, wrapped a rubber glove around the cord, and yanked, pulling it free of the wall.

Then she fell to her knees, gathered both her precious babies in her arms, and the three of them laughed and cried in fear and relief.

Then she called the fire department, told them what had happened, and had them send a truck over to make certain that the fire hadn't somehow gotten in between the walls. It made for quite a bit of excitement in the normally quiet neighborhood; Rod Junior came streaking in on his bike after the truck, and was nearly beside himself when he realized it was coming to his house. The first thing he wanted to know was if his room was all right. And predictably, by the time the truck left, Rod Junior had usurped Ryan's place in the tale of how the fire had been extinguished, at least where his peers were concerned.

It was only after the firemen had checked and found the house safe, only after they had made certain that it was the dryer plug and not the outlet that had shorted out, and only after she had called and left a message with Rod's service about the "accident," that she had time to think. And remember.

She had pulled the plug out of the wall this morning, just before she started sorting laundry. Rod never went into the utility room, and the kids couldn't possibly have reached it to plug it back in.

She had pulled the plug out of the wall. She had made absolutely certain to do so, in case one of the kids might go swimming at the neighbor's and throw a wet bathing suit into the dryer before she got a chance to stop them.

So who had plugged it back in?

Jennifer loved driving in the early morning at this time of the year. Mornings in June were just warm enough to be comfortable, and not so hot that you needed the air conditioner. In July-in July you would; the temperature often didn't drop below eighty, and sometimes stayed in the nineties until two or three in the morning.

But in June-the air was full of flower scent and bird song. Scissor-tailed flycatchers were performing wild acrobatic maneuvers in pursuit of bugs, and mockingbirds informed the rest of the universe that they knew every bird's song there was. Cows grazed placidly, knee-deep in ridiculously green grass, with adorable calves frisking alongside.

In June, the entire state looked like a travel brochure, or scenes from Green Grow the Lilacs. Not from the musical Oklahoma! that came from the play, though; the musical had been filmed by people who knew nothing about Oklahoma, and had perpetuated the myth of Oklahoma, Land of Flat and Treeless.

Where did they think all the wood came from to build all those wooden farmhouses, anyway? Hollywood. I'm surprised they didn 't film Lawrence of Arabia in the middle of the Serengeti Plain.

It was going to be such a nice day that she had packed a lunch; half a dozen apples and some cheese.

Not only was this part of Oklahoma anything but flat and treeless, once Jennifer got outside the city limits of Tulsa, the landscape looked a lot more like Brown County in Indiana than anything in Oklahoma!, the movie. Long, rolling hills; high, sandstone ridges topped with blackjack oaks; redtail hawks soaring above the highway, looking for road-kill. ... She tuned her radio to something she could sing along with, and resolutely enjoyed the drive, because she was probably not going to enjoy the march across country to get to the burial ground.

The farther north of Tulsa she got, the more rugged the country became, and the fewer the inhabited farmhouses. A lot of farmers had given up in the last ten or twenty years; had sold out to bigger ranchers, or just let the land go to the bank. This kind of land was no good for anything but cattle, really; full of stones, hard to clear, hard to plow, and utterly unforgiving in the years without much rain. Selfishly, she was pleased. The cattle could graze under the blackjacks without disturbing the general balance of nature too much; the land was going back to the kind of territory her people had known and roamed. There seemed to be more redtails this spring than ever before; she saw them perched every mile or so, on top of telephone poles, or in the tops of snags, the old, dead blackjacks that simply hadn't fallen down yet.

This was not "farmland" as people in the north or east, or even south, were used to thinking of farming land. Even during the Dust Bowl, this part of Oklahoma had not been affected much, because it had not been cleared much. This was almost all grazing land, wild and hilly, overgrown with poison ivy, sumac, tangles of wild blackberry vines, and wild plum thickets with thorns as long as a thumb. The blackjack oak reigned supreme here; a tree that was as tough and hard to kill as the Osage that used to call this land their home. Blackjacks seldom grew tall enough to attract lightning, except on the sandstone ridges; their thick, rutted bark resisted penetration, and the tannin in their leaves and bark discouraged insects. Their allies were the woodpeckers, red-bellied and downy, who probed their bark for boring insects persistent enough to stomach a bellyful of bitter tannin. In return, they sheltered birds of all kinds all through the winter, with leaves that turned brown but didn't fall until they were pushed off in the spring by new growth, and branches that bent down toward the ground in a prickly snarled tangle that left protected, predator-free spaces around the trunks.

It was hard to penetrate country like this, on foot. Jennifer wished she knew someone out here with a horse- unfortunately, the owner of the property didn't have one. If groves of blackjacks didn't block your way, in the open spaces between the groves, huge thickets of wild plum made it impossible to pass, and where they didn't grow, vines of honeysuckle waited to trip you, and wild blackberry bushes were perfectly prepared to act like tangles of barbed wire.

It looked lovely from the car, but Jennifer was not looking forward to forcing her way in to where the burial ground lay. In all probability, if it had been raided, the farmer on whose land it lay would not know. Out here, people often didn't bother checking over rough parts of their wooded pasturage on foot, unless there was an animal missing. And even then-well, ranchers and farmers weren't dumb; they quickly adopted every technological aid they could afford and get their hands on, and these days there were plenty of folks who checked over their herds from treetop level, in ultralight aircraft. You could even do some limited herding with an ultralight, she'd been told. The cattle didn't much like their noisy two-stroke engines, and would often move away from a circling farmer.

/'// ask at the house, she thought with resignation, as she approached the tiny village of Rose (population less than one hundred), hut he'll probably just tell me I'd better check for myself.

Tom Ware was home, and getting ready to clean out his henhouse and spray for mites when she pulled into his driveway. And he said exactly what she thought he'd say.

"Shoot, haven't been anywhere near that section since deer season," he replied, his eyes crinkling up with worry. He pushed his hat back with his thumb, and squinted in the direction of the burial ground, grimacing. "I didn't put any cows out there this year; figured I'd let the ground rest for a year. Shoot, the Ancestors aren't gonna like it if someone's been gettin' in there."

Ware was Osage, although his family had long since adopted Christianity. But even though he didn't follow the Old Ways, he respected them, and respected Jennifer and Mooncrow. Part of the reason he'd bought the ridge when it came up for sale years ago was to protect the old burial ground. While Jennifer shrugged, and made an answering grimace, he seemed to be making up his mind about something. "Look," he said, finally, "it's not easy gettin' back in there. I just broke a ridin' mule last fall for deer huntin'. "

You want to saddle her up and use her, I reckon she could use the exercise."

Well, that was going to make her job a hundred times easier!

"Thanks, Tom, I would really appreciate that," she said gratefully. "Just tell me where the tack is, I'm not so green I can't round her up and saddle her myself."

Tom's eyes crinkled up again, but this time with amusement. "I dunno about that, Miz Talldeer," he said, clearly holding in chuckles at the idea of her bringing in his mule. "She hasn't been under saddle much since fall."

She went ahead and laughed. "But I'm my grandfather's granddaughter," she pointed out. "I'll save you some work if I can, and if she won't behave, I promise at least that I won't spook her and send her into the next county."

Still looking amused and dubious, Tom Ware showed her where he kept the saddle, blanket, and bridle, then went on with his planned work. Jennifer took only the bridle with her when she went out into the field where the mule stood, ears up, under a tree, watching her from the middle of a cluster of very pregnant nanny goats.

Jennifer looked fixedly at the mule's tail-it being bad manners to stare any animal directly in the eyes-and relaxed, putting her mind in that peculiar state where she saw not only the mule, but Mule.

Sister, she thought, when Mule flicked her ears in acknowledgement of Kestrel's presence. Sister, will you help me? I need this younger sister's strong back and thick skin to get to the Sacred Ground.

Mule considered this for a moment. Will there be an apple? she asked, finally, on behalf of Tom's real-world mule; practical, like all mules.

Two apples, Jennifer promised, upping the ante. Mule's jaw worked at the thought.

Yes, Mule replied, after time to think about the effort involved in terms of reward. That was, after all, how mules operated, and why they had such a reputation for stubbornness.

As Mule walked forward out of the herd of goats, she dwindled, and became Tom Ware's old riding mule, responding to Jennifer's whistling and coaxing. She bent her head to take the bridle, and even accepted the bit with good graces. As Jennifer led her to the shed that held the rest of the tack, Tom Ware came out of the chicken coop, and his eyes widened.

"Well, I'll be!" he said, with admiration. "You are the Old Man's granddaughter! Never could see a critter that could resist him!"

"I just promised her apples," Jennifer replied, laughing. "Good thing I brought some with me!"

The mule remained well mannered, mindful of the promised apples, and didn't even blow herself up to keep the girth loose-an all-too-common trick mules and horses alike liked to play on inexperienced riders. Within ten minutes, Jennifer was in the saddle, guiding the mule in the general direction of the ridge but letting her pick her own way. Mules were better at avoiding tangles than any human, and had more experience threading their way through dense undergrowth.

Ask anyone who's tried to catch one that didn't want to be caught. It was just a good thing that since time immemorial, Mule never could resist a bribe.

She had more than enough to worry about at the moment, because there was one particular section of this burial land that only she and Grandfather knew about. There was only one, very ancient, cairn there--and even someone who knew about this site would probably not know about this particular grave.

Her vision had not been specific last night; it had only indicated that resting places had been looted, and not whose. She was hoping against hope that this one had not been found.

It was a very special cairn, covering a very special person. Moh-shon-ah-ke-ta. Watches-Over-The-Land. Her ancestor, from the days when Heavy Eyebrows first came up the river. The shaman who had a vision of things to come that was not believed. Or, if you used Kestrel's interpretation, the shaman who had seen so far forward in time that no one believed what he had seen, simply because their visions had not been of a future so distant and so wide.

Watches-Over-The-Land had seen something of what was to come, and what was currently happening far to the east; the encroachment of the Heavy Eyebrows and Long Knives, driving other Peoples before them. The loss of territory. The plagues of smallpox and typhoid. Further loss of territory. The end of the great buffalo herds on which the Osage way of life depended. And worst of all-that the old medicine ways would no longer protect the Children of the Middle Waters.

At first, he himself had not believed these things. At that time, the Heavy Eyebrows came as admiring postulants, seeking furs and protection from the tall Osage warriors. There were no other Peoples who could stand against them when they met in warbands of two or more gentes, and they roamed a territory that stretched from what became Illinois right down to the Texas border, and from Arkansas to almost Colorado. How could people who regularly defeated the Sac and Fox (whom they called the "Hard-To-Kill-People"), warriors who drove the Cado right down into Texas, ever be defeated? But the visions came, again and again, and more terrible in detail each time.

He determined to do two things. First, that he would learn all the medicine ways of the Osage in order to save as much as he could, and second, that his children and theirs would learn to hide among the Heavy Eyebrows as easily as he hid among the trees. So he sent out his son, Wa-tse-ta, to the Heavy Eyebrows traders, to learn of them the one trade that all Heavy Eyebrows needed, so that they would not scorn to bring money and work to a "redskin."

So Wa-tse-ta became both Moh-se-num-pa, Iron Necklace, and Tom Deer, blacksmith. He let his roach grow out, and hid his features under a bluff-paint of soot. And he learned two trades, that of the smith, and that of the shaman. As quickly as Watches-Over-The-Land learned the medicines of a clan and gente, so quickly did Tom Deer, his son, until as many of the medicines as could be learned were learned; both had become Medicine Chiefs, and Watches-Over-The-Land left his land and people for the Other Country.

Tom Deer taught his sons both trades; his son James Deer saw the warning signs that his grandfather had spoken of, and took his family out into the world of the Heavy Eyebrows for a time. When they returned, the whites thought that he was one of them; he settled on the reservation as an outsider, and only the Osage themselves knew that he was not. When the time came to register, he did not, nor did any of his descendants, all of whom were "Sunday Christians" and practiced their Osage ways in secret.

As a result, they lost their share of the oil money that finally came in, belated payment for all of the land that had been stolen, the Brothers and Sisters slaughtered for hides, and poor compensation for an entire way of life lost. That was not in James's time, but Kestrel doubted he would have cared. The money was not enough, not nearly enough; apologies at least would have been in order, and were still not forthcoming from the government that had robbed so many of so much.

Last night, Mooncrow had imparted another bit of tradition to his granddaughter. It seemed that James Deer had also begun another project mandated by Watches-Over-The-Land; he was the one who had begun changing the medicine ways he had learned, until once again, they began to work. That was not the traditional path of the Osage; the Osage way was not to change, but to add to a medicine path, like a spider adding to a web, making it ever more complex. But Watches-Over-The-Land had seen that this would not serve, and had charged his family with finding new ways, borrowing from other Peoples, but keeping the Osage ways as the center. James was the first, Mooncrow the latest, to follow that mandate. Instead of spinning a tighter and tighter web, the Talldeer spiders had descended from the web, becoming hunting spiders, and yet remaining, in all important ways, still spiders; still Osage.

If other Medicine People had received the same visions as Watches-Over-The-Land, they had not acted on those visions. At least, not so far as Kestrel knew.

Of course I can't claim to know everything, even if Grandfather would like me to believe that he does! There could be plenty more people like me in other Nations, and like me, they are next thing to invisible. . . .

That was moot; the important part was that Watches-Over-The-Land had been one of the most powerful medicine men of his time; perhaps of any time. Certainly right up there with Wo-vo-ka, also called Crazy Horse, or any of the other great Medicine Chiefs. He, however, had chosen Rabbit's way; to hide and be silent, in order to preserve things for future generations.

Many of his medicine objects had been laid to rest with him. If his resting place had been looted. . . .

The mule picked her way delicately through a mess of blackberry vines that would have snared Jennifer and kept her tangled up for fifteen or twenty minutes. She glanced at her watch, and was surprised at how little time had passed.

Next time we have to come up here, if Tom's mule isn't available, I'll find a way to borrow horses or mules from someone else. This beats thrashing through the brush all to heck!

As the mule rounded a stand of blackjacks, the ridge Jennifer wanted loomed right up in front of them, mostly tallgrass-covered slope. Persimmons grew at the foot, young blackjack saplings dotted the slope, and the older trees crowned the ridge. The slope itself faced west; that was what made it perfect for a "burial ground," especially an old one. The Osage of the past exposed their dead to the sky and Wah-K'on-Tahfor at least a season, to give the spirits time to rise. Afterwards, what was left was placed under a cairn of rocks. That was one reason why this ridge was covered with a rubble of small stones. Over time, a lot of soil had settled here, some of it blown in from the rest of the state during the Dust Bowl, burying the remains of the cairns and what they protected. Nature, and not man, had given these graves a covering of earth.

The burial site looked no different from any other brush-covered ridge out here, and if she hadn't known what it was, she would never have been able to pick it out.

Normally. She halted the mule and squinted up at the ridge, shading her eyes with her hand.

The damage was obvious as soon as she was able to pick out what was shadow and what was disturbed ground. Oh, hell.

She nudged her mount forward and up the slope to the site of the looting, then pulled the mule up, ground-tied her, and dismounted. It was no better at second viewing. The shallow graves piled high with crude cairns of rocks were lying open. There were a few signs that the looter or looters had been in a hurry still lying about in the form of odd beads, broken pottery, crumbling baskets. Everything portable had been taken, down to the bones.

The bones. Theft of possessions would not have riled the Little People. Theft of remains, however ...

Some five or six graves had been looted; from the grass sprouting in the turned earth, and the amount washed back into the holes, it looked as if it had happened right around April.

Damn, damn, damn.

This was more than Kestrel could handle easily; she wanted to start a mourning keen right here and now. But a mourning keen would not help, not now. So she put on her Jennifer mask and persona, invoked her experience as a P.I., and began collecting what little evidence there was. She had two cameras with her; a Polaroid and a 35-mm. Clinically, dispassionately, she began to fire off Polaroids, then took a full roll of 35-mm film for later development.

Meanwhile, she went mentally through all the possibilities for some sort of official investigation. I could call in the cops, but this is the county, and they 're overworked. The only way they'II catch whoever did this is if they come back, or start boasting. Even if they caught whoever did this, what could they do? If we were lucky, the perps would get the standard slap-on-the-wrist for graveyard desecration. Lucky, because this isn't a registered, official county graveyard, which might mean that the law wouldn't even allow us that much. What is the law about graveyards on private land? I don't even know that; it's never come up before.

She hung both cameras over the saddle horn by their neck straps once she had all the evidence there was to get. Then, biting her lip a little in apprehension, she went farther up the ridge, to the very top. Right where the sun lingered the longest, and the view was the best.

Right where the remains of a cairn were the most obvious to someone who knew what to look for. And where a hastily-dug hole in the ground was equally obvious, once you got past the bushes that screened the place from below.

Oh, shit.

Watches-Over-The-Land's resting place was as empty as the other six graves.

The strictly physical was easy to take care of, so long as she kept her Jennifer persona in place. There was absolutely no point in trying to sort out whose bits belonged to whom, and really, even for the medicine it didn't much matter. The spirits of those left here had long since gone into the West, and what had happened here would not materially affect that.

Unless, of course, the person who had taken the bones had been some kind of magician or medicine person himself. Then he could use the relics to draw those spirits back, against their will... imprisoning them in this world, making mi-ah-luschka out of them.

Which might very well be why the feeling of dark anger lay over this hillside, dimming the sunlight.

She picked the deepest of the holes, gathered everything that was scattered, and carefully laid it all on the bottom, covering it over with loose dirt and rocks. She hadn't brought a shovel, so she used her hands.

When she finished and straightened, she already knew it wasn't enough. The air vibrated with the rage of the Little People, exactly as if she stood in the middle of a swarm of angry bees.

The menace was there, not for her, but for whoever had done this. And there was a sense of frustration and bafflement, too, as if the mi-ah-luschka had somehow been prevented from tracking this person, or that he was protected in some way from their vengeance. . . .

Which argued even more for it being some kind of medicine practitioner.

Well, there was one thing she could do. Provided that none of the Ancestors had been drawn back, that is. She could invoke the fire of Wah-K'on-Tah, and burn away all connection between those spirits and their remains.

This was not something her own Ancestors would have known how to do; it was another of the innovations of the Deer/Talldeer family. An innovation made necessary by the number of Heavy Eyebrows stealing from gravesites, not only for museums and collectors, but for darker purposes.

Or even purposes they didn't realize were dark. How many turn-of-the-century Spiritualists had unwittingly called back spirits to be their "Indian Guides" to the Afterlife, using stolen bones? Probably quite a few, judging by the old papers of the Spiritualist Society. . . .

There was sage on the hillside, and sweetgrass; redbud along the creek bed, the blue mud for paint. Everything she needed was here. Maybe this was all that was needed for the Little People to settle down.

Maybe.

The sunlight seemed thinner on the hillside; she hadn't even worked up a sweat reburying the remains. And although she did get hot and sweaty collecting her redbud and sweetgrass, when she returned to the site it was like walking into a shadow.

Not a good sign.

She started her fire and her little smudge of smoke, painted her face with the charred end of a redbud twig, then stood tall and straight in the eyes of Grandfather Sun. She closed her eyes and raised her face, the warmth of the sunlight full against her cheeks, steadied her breathing until she reached a still, calm center and filled herself with Power.

Let it begin.

The creek was safe enough to wash in, although she would not have tried drinking it. She splashed cold water all over her face and arms, flushing off the paint, scrubbing away the dirt she'd accumulated.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the hillside, glad enough to be down off the site. The anger up there had diminished a bit, but it was still a potent force, and she would not want to go up there after dark. And although she had a certain level of calm-after all, she had at least done something-there was also a corresponding level of frustration. Some force was working against both the Little People and her own attempts to discover just who was responsible here. Something was clouding the trail. Yes, this site had been robbed. Yes, it was possible that the relics had been taken from here and cached at Calligan's development site. But the trail had been broken and muddied past all retracing, and there was no way of knowing for certain unless she could actually get her hands on an artifact from the development.

It was just as possible that whoever had robbed this site had no connection with Calligan at all-even though the vision quest she had undertaken had seemed to imply a connection. Medicine worked the way it wanted to, sometimes, and that vision quest could simply have been telling her, "that job is not important-here is something you should be doing something about."

There were seldom any black-and-white answers in Medicine, at least as Mooncrow taught it.

It took a while to get the dirt out from under her fingernails, but if there was one thing she hated-and one thing that gave people a really bad impression-it was dirty fingernails. By the time she finished, she was starving.

So she took just long enough to share her lunch with the mule, while she tried to think of something she had left undone, or anything else she could do. Finally she shook her head, and swung herself back up into the mule's saddle.

It was going to be an uneasy ride home.

_CHAPTER NINE

jennifer drove back to Tulsa with the radio off, her thoughts full of thunder, thirsting for revenge, and in no mood to appreciate the lovely weather.

She had put as much back into the vandalized graves as she had been able to find, and at least the bones could no longer be used for Bad Medicine, but most of the resident spirits-and more importantly, the Little People-had not been in any mood to settle. The feeling of the place was as bad as anything she had ever felt on Claremore Mound, and it was as plain to. her as the blackjacks on the ridge that the mi-ah-luschka were out for blood, arid nothing less would satisfy them. She didn't blame them, and in fact she would normally be more than pleased to let them have their way.

The trouble was, that wouldn't get back the medicine objects that had been taken from Watches-Over-The-Land's grave-and if someone who knew how to use them got hold of them-

Or worse yet, if someone who didn't know how but was open and vulnerable got hold of them-

Some poor fool trying to "get in touch with his roots"- or at least, the one-tenth of his roots that were some kind of Native American-oh, the mi-ah-luschka would have a wonderful time with someone like that. True, he'd be a bonehead to buy artifacts from someone who wasn't a reputable dealer, but being a bonehead didn't necessarily warrant the kind of trouble the mi-ah-luschka would visit on him.

They might even succeed in killing him.

And meanwhile-meanwhile there was the very real possibility that the things looted from Tom Ware's ranch were the same ones plowed up by Rod Calligan's men. And if that was the case, the Little People would be after every man on that crew like flies on a deer carcass. They certainly didn't deserve retribution! The mi-ah-luschka might even be indirectly responsible for the dozer explosion; that meant they'd already killed. Blood fed them; there would be more killings. And the Little People were definitely of the "kill them all and let Wah-K'on-Tah sort them out" philosophy.

She rubbed the back of her neck and stared at the road ahead, trying to think in practical terms. First, she needed to have someone alerted to the desecration, so if the relics came on the legitimate market they could be confiscated. Let me think. Nobody on either side of my family is registered with the B.I. A'., so there's no way I can lodge a formal complaint, either with the B.I. A. or with the Principal Chief.

Here was where the flip side of not being registered came up. There were ways in which Jennifer was handicapped in dealing with government authorities. Registration was a touchy point with a lot of Native Americans, and definitely with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was a touchy point with the B.I.A. precisely because of the whole reason the B.I.A. had been created in the first place; to control Native Americans. The Bureau had theoretical control over tribal lands, tribal moneys, over the stipends that whites thought were "welfare" and were really nothing more or less than the pittances the United States Government owed Indians for the lands that had been taken away from them, stipends paid out over so long a period of time that even some Indians didn't really know what they were for.

We take away your hunting grounds, we take away your lands, we take your children and your traditions, and in return, we will give you the food and shelter you need. That was how the treaties read, when you cut out the bullshit and fancy language. How the Bureau had carried them out was something else entirely.

Jennifer was already angry; the inevitable recollections of what the Bureau had done to every Native Nation only made her angrier. She gripped the steering wheel as if it had become a weapon.

All right, better just let the anger run its course, and not let it fester. She let the associated memories of long-ago wrongs play through.

More often than not, the Bureau read the treaties as an excuse to kidnap Indian children from their parents and lock them up in "boarding schools" where they were forbidden to speak their own language, practice their own customs, or worship anything but the White Christian God The Father Almighty.

And people wonder why so many of us became alcoholics.

The last treaties had been written with the understanding that the Indian was a vanishing creature, to follow after the buffalo, and the Great White Father would simply look after him in his decline and move in to take the little that had been left when he was gone. And in the case of some Nations, that was precisely what had happened....

O for a time machine, and a gunpowder and rifle factory. . . .

And registration was a touchy subject now with many Native Americans because it was easy for someone to claim to be a nonregistered Indian, and attempt to cash in on the stipends, and the Native Arts Movement. Or even to claim Medicine Power and set up as a New Age Shaman, crystals and all. There was a life and a spirit to Indian art that was hard to find elsewhere, and an ability to tune into nature that many people wanted.

Just proving how hard we are to kill, either in body, or in spirit.

As a result, there was money to be made, in everything from jewelry to fine-arts oil paintings. There were quite a few artists Jennifer knew who resented white people muscling in on that market. And a whole lot more folk who resented the New Age movement hauling their crystal vibrations into traditions that white folks had tried to destroy not that long ago. Rightfully ... in many ways.

But not being registered was going to make reporting the desecration a good bit more roundabout than Jennifer liked.

Well, that's the way it has to be.

Having brought the anger around to the end of its course, she was able to let it go. What was past, was past. It was time to take care of the present.

There was a slightly more direct route to authority ... through her father and mother. He was good friends with the Principal Chief on the Osage side.

And Mom used to go to school with Cherokee Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller before Wilma and her folks went off to California. But I'd rather deal with this from the Osage side. It's our burial site, and besides, Wilma has more than enough on her plate as it is.

She briefly considered bringing in Mooncrow; he packed a lot of clout when he cared to use it-mostly he didn't.

She knew why; he was saving that "clout" for a real emergency. This wasn't; not yet, anyway. Burial sites were looted all the time. There was no proof that this one had been looted with malice and intent.

She pulled onto the interstate behind a long-haul trucker, and settled in to let him set the pace. Clout is only good so many times; Grandfather is right. It's attacking, rather than persuading. We'd better save it for when we need it.

Given that-

On impulse, she took the Claremore turnoff. With luck, Dad would be home for lunch.

It felt kind of odd to be back here, sitting across from her father at the kitchen table, B.L.T. in both hands, windows wide open to the light breeze. The house had been built in the days when a lot of things went on in the kitchen; most of the social life of the family, in fact. The kitchen was one of the largest rooms in the house, big enough that one corner of it had been set up as her mother's office, with a phone, a fax machine, and a computer, and there was still plenty of room left over.

The kitchen table stood under one of the windows, and it was nearly as old as the house, big enough to seat eight comfortably; a real farmhouse table. Right now she and her father were the only ones occupying it. Every time she came home, she got hit with nostalgia, of eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with her brothers, of family holidays all around the big table, some of which did not correspond with things like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. . . .

"You ought to eat that instead of staring at it," her father said, after a few minutes of staring off into nowhere on her part. "Your grandfather says you don't eat enough to keep a bird alive."

She started, and grinned ruefully. "Grandfather doesn't see me hitting the fast-food stands, either," she admitted. "Man does not live by yogurt alone. There are also Frisco burgers, Rex chicken, and fry-bread and honey."

Dad laughed, and she obliged him by starting in on her own sandwich. Mom had redecorated the kitchen, with new miniblinds on the windows, and refinished the old kitchen table and the cabinets, taking them down to the natural wood. So while it held a boatload of memories, at least it didn't look the way it had when she was a kid.

She'd told Dad everything she knew-which wasn't much-concentrating on the desecration and looting of the burial ground, and trying to keep speculation to a minimum. She showed him the Polaroids, and left the 35-mm film to give to the Principal Chief. He in his turn had told her he'd asked around, and no one, no one, had heard anything about threats being made or even hinted at against Rod Calligan, either by hotheads or activists, before the explosion.

That had been the reason for staring off into space, while Mom's favorite mockingbird sang wildly from the tree in the backyard; thinking over what he had told her. It did not jive with the information Calligan had given the media, or the situation the insurance company had suspected. If no one had been threatening him, why had he told the media and the insurance company that they had been?

Unless he was deliberately constructing a scapegoat. But in that case, who had planted the bomb? And above all, why? Suddenly she had come to a dead end she hadn't expected, and a whole pile of loose ends that didn't match up with anything else.

She chewed thoughtfully; Dad made a darned good sandwich-the bacon was from a half-hog they bought every year, and the tomatoes were fresh from the garden. She had given her father half the Polaroids as well as the film; he had promised to give both to the Principal Chief, who would tell a little white lie and claim to have taken them himself. So at least Officialdom would be notified and if this was simply a coincidence-

-not likely-

-the looting would be registered and the legitimate market tightened up.

She noticed that her father was watching her with a little frown line between his eyebrows, although he was usually as hard to read as his arc-welder. When he continued to stare at her that way, she finally put the sandwich down and returned the stare. He was not easy in his mind, and although she suspected she knew the reason, she decided to get it over with.

"All right, Dad," she said. "You're worried about something. Cough it up."

He cleared his throat self-consciously. "I always worry about you, Jen," he temporized. She noticed that more of his hair had gone gray at the temples, and that there were a few new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "You know that. You picked a tough profession, tough even for a guy and a white-you being a woman and not, well-it's tougher."

That wasn't it, and she knew it, but it was a place to start. "I'm paying the bills," she pointed out. "And you know darn well I can take care of myself. Between marksmanship and martial arts, I'm not too bad-and overtrained for chasing philandering hubbies and deadbeat daddies!"

She chuckled, and he finally joined her. "I know," he admitted, "I know the only reason you didn't qualify for state trooper was because of your height."

"And whose fault is that?" she asked, archly, deciding to try and inject a little more humor into the conversation. "You're the one who wasted all those good Osage height-genes on my brothers! And left me the runt of the litter! I call that unfair!" She made a face when he laughed, and went back to the original subject. "Look, Dad, as a P.I. I can get things done that need to be done. Sometimes I can actually do more than the cops can. There's no one watching over my shoulder to make sure I have probable cause, telling me I can't bodyguard someone because her nutcase boyfriend hasn't already done something. And right now- well, I can do a lot for our people. My hands aren't tied, there's no one telling me I have to find a quick set of suspects, because CNN is watching and the mayor is embarrassed." She rubbed the side of her nose. "In fact, if I drop some hints to the cops, they're likelier to start watching their step, because they know me, they know I'm honest, and they know I'm watching."

He reached up and scratched his temple, making a slight grimace. "I know all that," he said uncertainly, "but honey, this job is different. Now, I know I told you that there wasn't anything going on with the young bucks before the explosion-but-well, there is now."

She sat straight up, sandwich forgotten. Outside, a blue jay called alarm.

"What?" she demanded. "Tell me!"

He sighed, and looked pained, but this time she could tell the frown was not for her. "I've been checking around some more, especially after I heard that David was in town and getting himself into this-well, I heard some things. For one thing, I heard Rod Calligan has been pointing a finger right at the Indians on his crews. 'Course, in some ways I can't blame him, since David seems to be so set on making himself a target." He shook his head. "But if you'd figured that Calligan and the cops would really like to pin this one on our people, well, you're right. I heard they've been getting pretty heavy-handed with some of the guys involved, and that they aren't looking real hard for any other suspects."

She put the sandwich down, all appetite gone. It was one thing to speculate; it was another to hear your worst mundane fears confirmed. "Have you heard anything else?"

"Yeah." The worry line came back. "I heard that David and his buddies were likely to play rough with anybody that gets in their way. Like-"

He left the sentence unfinished, but she finished it for him. "Like me," she snarled. "And I'll break his skull for him. Dad, if you have a way to hear from him, messages can go the other way. You let that bunch of overgrown adolescents know that there's a lot more going on here than he thinks-and that's not from Jennifer Talldeer, P.I., it's from Kestrel-Hunts-Alone, Mooncrow's designated apprentice. I think at least some of his friends will get the message and back off a little. I hope. If they don't-I am not going to place myself between them and a bunch of angry mi-ah-luschka. And that's my word on the subject." She sniffed disdainfully, as her father winced at the mention of the Little People. "That won't stop David, of course. He's probably gotten so damn sophisticated that he doesn't believe in anything anymore."

Her father was quiet for a long moment. "Well-that was the other-the real reason I was worried. I may not have the Medicine, but I've seen it at work. This is old and powerful stuff you're messing with. You weren't making any inferences, but I can read between the lines. Somehow, this looting and the explosion are related. Watches-Over-The-Land was an unusually gifted man. The medicine stirred up against someone who stole his bones is going to be pretty severe. I don't want you standing between the Little People and anybody."

"I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, Dad," she replied flippantly, but then sobered, and smiled at him reassuringly. "Remember, I have Mooncrow. He's a horny old coot, but when things get serious-well, he's as good as they get. If we can't handle this together, no one can."

Finally her father's expression of concern faded. "I guess you're right, and I really can't make any good assessment- it'd be like you trying to figure out a weld. You know what you're doing, honey. And you know what you need to do. So does the old man, as far as that goes, though sometimes I wonder how you put up with him living with you."

She shrugged, secretly pleased that her father had given her the ultimate accolade of an adult-"you know what you're doing."

"Maybe I'm more than a little contrary myself," she admitted. "After all, it's man's medicine that I'm learning-"

Her father sighed. "Now you know I wouldn't be a good parent and a good Osage if I didn't worry about that, too." She tilted her head to one side, giving her reply a lot of thought. This was the first time he had actually come out and said that, and it deserved a decent reply. "I can understand that. But please, remember that he is the Teacher; I was the one he chose, it wasn't the other way around. Not using this power-" she shook her head, "-no, I couldn't let it just lie there, it would be-it would be denying a responsibility. As if I had all the ability of a great artist and refused to draw. No, that's not right either." She considered for a moment more. "It's a demand on me, in my heart. It's more than that, because it's not just something for me, it's something for my family, my clan, my gente, my nation- it's more as if I got elected president and refused to serve. I kind of got elected to this, so it really would be the wrong thing not to do what's right with the power. ..."

She let her voice trail off; he looked into her eyes, and finally nodded. "I think I understand. You know, the old man told me once that the only time I really touch the Power is when I'm dancing-and I know what you mean about it being a demand on your heart. When I'm dancing, even in competitions, I feel like I'm doing something, something important, even if I don't understand what that is. I wouldn't give up dancing, even if they quit having competitions, even if only women danced, even if it were illegal the way it was in his father's day." She held his eyes and smiled, feeling a wonderful warmth - and relaxation come over her. Oh, he would still worry, because he was a parent, it came with the territory. But now he understood.

"Thank you," she said softly. "That means a lot." Then she cleared her throat, and took a more normal tone. "Look Dad, if you can, just pass on what I told you, all right? It might at least keep some of those poor construction workers out of the line of fire. And see if the law will move its fat ass about the vandalism." She sighed. "Not that I have much hope-but since there's a county election coming up in September, maybe the sheriffs department will feel some pressure, especially if it comes from the Principal Chief. Osage oil stipends are still a major source of county income up there."

He nodded. "I'll try," he replied. "You've got a good point about the stipends. I sure wish David Spotted Horse would be a little more-more-"

"Sensible?" she supplied, doing her best not to sound too snide or catty. "Reasonable? Thoughtful? I'm afraid those are pretty foreign concepts to Mister Spotted Horse. I learned that the hard way. His way is to overreact to everything, and his overreaction is one of the reasons we broke up."

She got a sudden suspicion from the way her father's eyes narrowed that he was about to bring in personal matters.

She wasn't mistaken.

"You know," he said carefully-and a little hopefully, "your mother and I always kind of hoped you'd get a little more serious about David."

She dashed his hopes by groaning. "Puh-lease! He was way too busy being the Big Man in the Movement." After a moment of consideration, she decided to let him in on a little personal secret that had finally stopped hurting. "I never told you what it was that finally precipitated my breaking up with him. He quoted Huey Long at me."

"Huey Long?" Dad replied, puzzled. "Wasn't he a Black Panther or something? What was the quote? How could that break you two up?"

"You'll know how when I tell you." She cleared her throat. "I was trying to point out why bailing out of college was a bad idea, especially for someone who claimed he wanted to do some good for our people. I even pointed out how much good I could do, being both in criminal investigation and in the Movement. He said, word for word, 'the only place for a woman in the Movement is on her back.' "

Her father stared at her for a moment, and his face spasmed. "I don't imagine you put up with that-" he choked, trying not to laugh.

She shrugged. "For his pains, I egged him into trying to shove me around, then I put him on his-to let him get an idea of how it felt."

That was too much for her father; he broke up laughing, and she grinned, feeling just a little smug now that the confrontation was old, old news. It had hurt at the time. What had hurt even more was that she had known, then and now, that it was meant to; David had an uncanny ability to pick the most hurtful words possible and use them.

"Well, he thought the reason I was taking tai chi was just to keep the fat off my hips and make me a good dancer. Boy, did he get a surprise!"

Her father chuckled. "I'll bet he did. And I'd be the last person to tell you he didn't have it coming, after a crack like that."

She shook her head. "Needless to say, when I told him as much, he called me a flint-hearted bitch-among other things-I called him a male chauvinist pig-among a lot of other things-and we called it quits."

Her father picked up a napkin and wiped his eyes. "That's my daughter. If you hadn't, and I'd found out about it, I'd have disowned you myself."

She picked up her sandwich again, and stared at it, before taking a pensive bite. "You know, Dad," she said after swallowing it, "it isn't easy being a flint-hearted bitch. It takes a lot of work."

To her surprise, he reached across the table and patted her free hand. "You mean," he said, quietly but firmly, "that it isn't easy being a warrior. That is what you are, and only a foolish young man with no experience and unable to get past his own ego would fail to see it."

She looked up at him in complete shock.

He nodded, and gave her a smile warm and bright with approval. "Just promise me this. Watch your back very closely. Not because you need to, but to please your old man, who probably worries too much about the girl he remembers as a baby in his arms."

She blinked, and agreed.

"Good," he said with satisfaction. "That is all I have any right to ask you. Now-can I force some strawberry cobbler on you?" He arched his eyebrows at the refrigerator. "There's fresh homemade ice cream to go with it," he continued temptingly.

All she could do was laugh, and agree.

She was thinking about the conversation as she made notes in her office after she got back. It had been a very enlightening and surprising little talk, on a lot of levels-

"Sometimes it would be easier not to be such a rebel," Grandfather said from behind her, making her jump. "Easier on you, as well as your parents. But sometimes it is something that you must be."

She swiveled her chair around. There he was, standing in the door to her office, looking inscrutable. "Are you eavesdropping on my brain again?" she asked, shaking a fist at his ear. "Dirty old men shouldn't eavesdrop on ladies' thoughts!"

He ducked, and chuckled at her, waggling an admonitory finger at her. "No respect," he chided. "You kids have no respect for the elderly and wise-"

It was hard to stay even annoyed with him for more than a minute when he was in this mood. "If you were either, I might," she retorted. "You're an oversexed sixteen-year-old contrary, an Osage heyoka and there isn't any such thing, and you're just disguised as a wise old medicine man! You've got my real Grandfather tied up in a closet somewhere. You're Coyote, that's what you are, and not Mooncrow at all!"

His eyes crinkled up as he grinned. "Could be, could be," he replied. "But I was just reading the thoughtful look on your face when you came in, and put it together with the pan of your mother's famous cobbler in the fridge. That meant you stopped to see my son, and since you brought the cobbler home, he must have let you know he's worried because you're so different, but since you aren't annoyed, he told you he knows you can take care of yourself. Hmm?"

She shook her head. "I am never going to be able to do that. You sound just like Sherlock Holmes, and I feel as stupid as Watson," she sighed, then hooked a chair with her toe and kicked it over to him. "Sit, Mooncrow, my Teacher. I am troubled, and in need of counsel. We have a lot of problems that should fit together and don't. I need your help, Little Old Man."

He took the chair, losing his smile. When she called him that-which was a title of high honor among their people- he knew the situation was more than simply serious. And he knew that she would not ask him for help unless she really was out of her depth.

She told him what she had told her father, but with more details, particularly the Medicine details. Although he was wearing his very best stoneface, as befit a Little Old Man, she thought that he became alarmed when she told him about Watches-Over-The-Land's looted grave.

He began to ask her some specific questions about what graves in particular had been looted where, and she had to confess that she had been so upset that she couldn't remember precise details.

"That's why I took these," she said, pulling out the Polaroids, and handing them to him. "Each set is from a specific grave; see, I put a number on a note right in the middle of each one, so you can tell which was which. I put everything back that I could, but with the bones gone, I got the feeling that my ceremonies were about as effective as blowing smoke into the wind. I did at least break the spiritual connection to the bones, but the mi-ah-luschka are looking for blood payment."

He leafed through them, carefully, his face gone stony and cold. Finally, when he came to the last set, he took a quick intake of breath. That was all, but it was enough to tell her that he was as upset as she had ever seen him.

He closed his eyes for a moment, simply holding the photographs in his hands. When he finally opened his eyes again, though, he did not look the way she had expected.

He was angry, but that wasn't all. He was disturbed, and perhaps a little frightened. Something had happened that he had not expected.

"You are correct in remembering that this was Watches-Over-The-Land's resting place," he said, after a long silence. "As I have told you, he was a Medicine Chief, and a very great one."

He paused, and she waited. He would tell her what he knew, but he was clearly thinking this through as he spoke.

"There is something wrong-besides this vandalism," he said after that long pause. "I am looking at these pictures, and there is more malice in the last looting than in the rest. There are no bits of pottery or beads left there; absolutely everything was taken. Further, no one but you, or I, or some other immediate ancestor, should have been able to find that grave. Not simply because it is-was-hard to find. Because they should not have been able to see it. Because it was protected."

She nodded, slowly, and then with vigor. Of course! That was what the back of my mind was trying to tell me! Of course the place would be protected-how could it not have been, with a son who was a Medicine Chief himself seeing to the cairn? And with every descendant since watching over the site?

Magics like that were only supposed to grow stronger with time, not weaker. And now she knew what Mooncrow had been up to, each time they had visited the place. He had been reinforcing those protections.

So what had gone wrong?

"So something has gone wrong," he said, echoing her thoughts. "Something has gone very wrong with all of the protections that we tried to keep in place." He pondered again for a moment. "So, here is something new to add to your equation. A new story for you, and it is one of ill omen; one I would have told you when I taught you the rituals to protect our Ancestor. There was a-a thing-that Watches-Over-The-Land defeated. This was later, after his visions, or he would not have been strong enough to defeat it. It was something evil, and he defeated the evil man that created it as well, killed him, and buried him with all his evil things. Watches-Over-The-Land told his son that he had seen another set of visions, visions that showed that if he did not defeat this man and his evil object, the Osage would go the way of the Hard-To-Kill-People, and disappear; and lose all that they had to the Long Knives, like the Thing-On-Its-Head-People did."

The Osage disappearing, like the Sac and Fox, where I don't think there's a single pure-blooded member of the tribes left. And losing literally everything, like the Cherokee, who were driven out of the lands in the South, had homes and farms and businesses stolen from them by government order. ...

"He said this evil man meant to get power by helping the Long Knives, and that he would have done terrible things to the land itself." Grandfather shook his head, and his eyes were very troubled. "That is why Watches-Over-The-Land had to try to defeat him and his thing. It was like a Wah-hopeh, the sacred hawk-bundle, but it wasn't. It was like an evil Wah-hopeh, meant to destroy everything that was sacred, to contaminate everything that was good. That evil man would know where Watches-Over-The-Land was resting. He would see through all the protections, for he is very powerful. And he would take great pleasure in seeing the sacred things stolen, the bones taken. . . ."

Mooncrow's voice trailed off, and he narrowed his eyes, his attention no longer really on her. Abruptly, he stood up.

"I must think on this," he said, and left without another word, leaving her to stare at the chair he had sat in.

This does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling of confidence, she thought, unhappily. She particularly was not fond of the way that Grandfather had spoken of this "evil man" as if he were still alive. Or, at least, able to act.

Of course, if he was that powerful, he would be able to act. He would not leave this earth; he would not be at all interested in going into the West. If he left the earth, he would be weighed by Wah-K'on-Tah, who would not be very pleased with his actions. So it would be in his best interest to stick around and see if he could break the bindings that my ancestor placed on him, then find someone to act through.

If? From the look of things, he had. And some of the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together to form a very nasty pattern.

In the past, the evil one had worked against the Osage and with the whites, even if the whites had not been aware of it. And in the present-

In the present, there had been relics plowed up, a terrible explosion in which mostly Indians had been killed, for which Indians were being blamed, by whites. Some Indians were being stirred up against her, the ancestor of the evil one's great enemy.

The two patterns matched.

Too well. Far, far too well.

_CHAPTER TEN

david spotted horse stifled a yawn, wishing he hadn't stopped smoking. A cigarette would at least have given him something to do with his hands.

The gathering in the back room of somebody's cousin's smoke shop was not going the way he'd planned. He wanted to warn the guys from Calligan's construction site not to talk to Jennie, no matter what they heard on the grapevine. He hadn't called this meeting to hear about superstitious crap, but that was what he was getting, especially from the Osage.

He couldn't believe they were wasting a single moment of time on this. He leaned back against a stack of heavy cardboard cartons, and crossed his arms over his chest, trying to at least keep his face straight. First Jennie and her cute little stagetricks, making the door slam on me, and now this. And if I don't at least listen to them, they won't listen to me.

The guys on Calligan's construction project had all gone back to work the day before yesterday-against his advice-when Calligan had promised to cordon off the particular corner of the property that seemed to be "sacred ground" now that the cops were done playing at evidence-gathering. He'd been dead set against them going back, on the grounds that they were playing right into Calligan's hands, but some guy named Rick had said stubbornly that if they didn't go back to work, it would pretty well prove that Calligan was right about one of them being in cahoots with terrorists. "The best way we can prove we're innocent is to act like we're innocent," he had said, over and over, until the rest agreed with him.

But now, from all the stories being told here, as soon as they went back, everything started to go bad again. Not just heat from Calligan, either, although the bastard was there every minute of every damned day, supervising everything himself. Probably making certain nobody slacked off, although the guys said he told them he was watching for more sabotage. No, it seemed like every time somebody turned around, there was one accident after another.

Weird stuff, too; stuff that couldn't have been like the dozer explosion. Holes opened up right in the path of equipment, big ones, and equipment would fall in and have to get hauled out, wasting time. A load of steel pipe broke its straps and came down right on one guy, who was lucky to get off with a broken leg. Every piece of heavy machinery was out of commission by the end of today, with gaskets blown, fuel lines leaking, hydraulics shot, piston arms broken. Something had gotten into the dynamite shed and chewed on every single stick, letting in damp-which made them likely to be unstable and useless. The only thing stupid enough to chew on dynamite was a possum, but there weren't any holes under the shed or in the roof big enough to let a possum get inside. And it was a good thing that the guy going after the dynamite had looked it over good, or the bad sticks could have killed someone.

He hadn't heard such a litany of woes since Hurricane Andrew.

And of course, every single one of those accidents was "proof" that the Little People were angry, that there was a curse on the project.

How can people who are so smart be so gullible? he asked himself for the thousandth time. These guys aren 't stupid; it takes a lot of brains to horse one of those rigs around. I should look on the bright side. When they stop jawing, I can probably talk them into staying off the job now. But how can guys who laugh at people who're afraid of black cats turn around and believe in the Little People?

He used to believe in all that nonsense-well, maybe not Little People, since that was an Osage thing and not Cherokee, but in spirits, and totemic animals, vision-quests, and all the rest of it. Medicine. Stuff that got all the New Age, Dances-With-Credit-Cards crowd so misty-eyed.

Newage. Rhymes with sewage, and the same watered-down crap. He suppressed a smile at his own cleverness.

He had more sense than that now; it was just one more way for people to delude themselves. Look what had happened to Wovoka and the Ghost Dance Movement! More of the People had been shot down because they believed that those stupid white shirts would keep them bulletproof. . . .

Peyote, and too much imagination. That's all right if you're making a painting, or writing a poem, but we're trying to keep some People out of jail, here.

Oh, he went to various rituals; even Peyote ceremonies, although he wouldn't go so far as chewing the stuff himself. Partially because he didn't like giving up control to anything, he liked knowing he was always completely in control of his mind and all his senses. But he went because his mentors pointed out it was important to go-"politically correct," as it were. It would look bad if he didn't participate, as if his spirit wasn't in helping his People.

And he did believe that there was something Sacred out there, that there were special places that had a special power for the Peoples. Hell, even white people had places like that, places where powerful things happened, like Lourdes, Mecca and Jerusalem. It only made sense that there were places like that for everyone. And the earth itself was sacred, if only because it was the only place to live that humans had, and when they didn't treat it like it was sacred, they messed it up.

And there's something out there that's for us, all the Peoples, something that doesn't fit the white idea of God the Caucasian Father. That only makes sense too. The Judeo-Christians don't have a lock on truth any more than anyone else does.

But he just couldn't handle all this superstitious stuff. He believed in the power of Lawyers, not Little People; of Media Pressure and not Medicine. You could smoke a sacred pipe till you choked; it wasn't gonna do you a damn bit of good against a bunch of U.S. marshals with guns.

I'd rather have a restraining order on my side than all the eagles in the country overhead when I'm facing the Feds.

He sighed, and continued to listen to the latest story. The way he had it pegged, the mystics were deluding themselves . . . confusing the symbols of power with the real thing.

But if it makes them get their act together to save their tribal identity and maybe do something so that the whites are forced to get their act together, well, fine.

And despite Jennie's accusations, he had a larger goal in mind, too. The way he saw it, the Native Movement should be taking a larger role in ecological matters. Since so many of the eco-freaks were looking to the Indians for spiritual guidance, the Peoples had damned well ought to give it to them. We have to do something to save the world from poison. If it takes talking to crystals, it's all right with me, as long as they start cleaning up the air and water too.

We all have to live here. The whites aren't going away, and that's reality. So the best we can do is get as much back as we can, and shame them into cleaning up the rest. . . .

At least Jennie has that part right.

He frowned a little, and caught himself. He took a quick look to see.if the latest speaker had seen the faint grimace, but the guy was so wrapped up in his own story that David could probably have stuck his tongue out without the man noticing. The smell of tobacco back here was overpowering. Made him really sorry he'd given up smoking. But damned if he was going to let a stick of dried weeds rule his life.

But that made him think of Jennie again, since she'd been on him all the time to quit, and that just reminded him of that last confrontation. He was really glad none of the guys here had known anything about that. How the hell had she managed to get him to leave when he hadn't wanted to? The door trick, that was easy to figure out, but not the rest. He'd still had plenty to say to her-but somehow he hadn't been able to get the words out of his mouth, and he'd found himself walking right out the door on top of that!

That crazy old man, her grandfather, was with her, too. Shit, he used to be able to do some weird things, back when we were kids. ...

Hell, now I'm starting it! That stuff the old man did, it wasn't anything more than sleight of hand and the suggestibility of kids!

What was the old man doing living with her, anyway? That only complicated matters. Especially since a lot of the guys here held the old man in pretty high esteem.

"We've got to talk to old man Talldeer, that's what," the guy holding the floor was saying, and to David's dismay, there was a murmur of approval, even from some of the guys who weren't Osage. It was obvious from that it wasn't just some of the guys, but all of these guys had respect for the old man. Hell, that was all he needed!

"Maybe we oughta talk to Jennie Talldeer too," said another. "Larry did; he said she's got the right stuff. Last time I asked the Old Man for a blessing, he had Jennie do my work for me, and she's good. Old man Talldeers training her right."

Another murmur of agreement-

"She showed up at the first meeting," said someone else, giving David an oblique glance. "Spotted Horse wouldn't let her in. He said she was there for Calligan, but what if she was trying to give us some Medicine help? What if the old man sent her?"

Oh shit. Now how was he going to convince them not to go to her when she had the old man in her corner?

So far none of them had gotten wind of the message she'd sent to him by way of the Osage Principal Chief; if they did, there'd be no keeping them away from her or her grandfather. And he wasn't sure if what she'd sent him was a trick, or if she really believed it herself-

But the message had been, couched in no uncertain terms, that there was Bad Medicine involved in this Calligan mess, and that he'd better butt out or get involved in some constructive manner.

How can she believe that stuff? She went to college! .

How had she forced him out of her house when he didn't want to leave? And how come ever since then, any time he dialed her number, no matter what phone it was from, he always got the "your call did not go through" message? She hadn't changed her number, and it happened even when he went through the operator. The operator had been just as confused, and had muttered something about a short in the line.

On the whole, for the last day or so, things had not been happening according to David's idea of a logical and predictable universe. In a perverse sense, he would have liked to blame it all on Jennie, but he doubted that she had gone out and dug holes in Calligan's land for equipment to fall into. Short of ascribing supernatural powers to her. . . .

Dammit. And what the hell do they mean by "old man Talldeer's training her right?'' Now that he thought about it, hadn't her message said something about being her grandfather's apprentice? Shit, maybe she did believe all that crap!

The entire bunch was looking at him now, waiting for him to say something.

He almost grimaced, and covered it in time. No matter what he said, he lost in some way. If he told them not to talk to Jennie or the old man, he'd lose them completely. They had that shaky, panicked kind of look about them. Then they'd go do whatever Jennie told them to do.

"Well," he said slowly, keeping his expression just a shade on the dubious side, "you can talk to the Talldeer girl if you want, if you're really going to insist on it, but if you do, don't be surprised if everything you tell her shows up as evidence on Calligan's side when he takes you all to court. You know she's a private eye, and none of us know who hired her, but I'd bet on Calligan before I'd bet on anyone else. And anything she hears, if it has any bearing on the explosion, she has to tell the cops."

I wouldn't, but she will. Little People, my ass.

"What's she gonna tell him?" the man asked, scornfully. "That we think the jerk's got a curse on him? She already knows that, and so does he! We told him to his face, more than once! And last time I looked, curses weren't admissible in court!"

Ah hell, I have lost them. Bitch.

They turned their backs on him and began deciding who was going to approach the Talldeers, and whether they were going to go straight for the old man or work through the girl first. He finally got up and left; it was obvious that he'd lost this round.

Time for round two. He pushed through the stockroom door and passed through the front of the smoke shop, empty except for the cousin at the counter. The cousin kind of grunted good night; he returned the courtesy, and walked out into the earlier dusk. His car was off to one side of the tiny parking lot, under a cottonwood.

He hadn't meant to start clandestine operations this soon, but it looked as though he wasn't going to have any choice. Whether or not Jennie was working with Calligan was' moot. If she was-well, he was about to show these guys how stupid they were being. If she wasn't-

Then at least he'd have collected some other evidence. People always left paper trails; they couldn't help it. There would be something in that office he would be able to use, if only by-leaking it to the press.

He had the document camera, the rubber gloves, and the lock-pick set all hidden in the side panel of the front door of his Jeep. Tonight would be a good night to go raid the office at the site. The cops had all gone away, and with the workers back on the job, Calligan had no reason to be nervous. And no one with any sense broke into a site office; there was never anything worthwhile there. Not even pawnshops took electric typewriters anymore. That, and oversized calculators and beat-up old office furniture was all anyone ever kept at a site office.

And, of course, records. . . .

Not that I've ever been caught, he thought, not bothering to hide a smirk, since he was halfway to his car and there wasn't anyone to see it. Damn, I'm good. . . . We'll just see if there's something in those records at the site that leads back to Jennie-or anything else that can be used against Calligan himself.

Kestrel-Hunts-Alone was on the hunt-armed to the teeth, metaphorically and spiritually speaking-crouched at the edge of the fence surrounding Calligan's construction site. It was very dark out here with no moon and only the light of the stars and very distant streetlights, but she wasn't depending entirely on her night vision. She had already spent some time here before sundown, memorizing the positions of bits of cover, planning the route she would take to get to the ground that had held the relies.

Both she and Mooncrow had decided that it was time to do a little more investigation; after dark, during the Little People's most active hours, this time. Mooncrow had armored her to the best of his ability, and she had layered on her own protections and "assurances" on top of his. At best, the Little People would recognize her as an ally against the real enemy. At worst, she had enough defenses that she would not need to fear their anger.

She hoped.

There was only one way to be sure, however, and that was to test it all under fire, in the field.

No one had plowed anything else up since the explosion, but that was because Calligan had put off digging any further into the disputed corner until after the forensics and university people got done checking the area out. Calligan was pretending to cooperate; at least, she thought it was pretense, despite his claim that he had contacted people at O.U. to come check out the disputed area. Of course, he could have assumed that the explosion had powdered every relic left. He could be assuming-probably correctly-that O.U. was too short on money to send anyone to do a real archeological investigation. Or he could have come in on his own and removed everything-it would have been a little harder with the cops here, but it could have happened.

One thing was certain; if she could rely on her own Medicine senses, this place was not a real burial site. She had sought visions here both while in her car and crouched at the edge of the fence as near to that corner as she could get. There simply weren't any of the appropriate signs, or the proper "feel" to the place. There had been a faint echo that something had been kept there, briefly-and there seemed to be a bright point, as if there was still some kind of relic out there, but it was all in one place, not spread out as it would be if this really were a burial ground. But there was nothing more, and she was not going to go into a full Medicine trance in a place where she was so physically vulnerable. So-that probably meant that what had already been dug up was a cache of some kind, as she had guessed. And she needed to find out now if there were any more caches out here, or if that point of power meant only a relic or two still intact after all the turmoil. Even one object would tell her if what had been dug up had actually come from the Osage cairns.

The only way she could do that was now, at night, when there would be no one around to interfere-or try to blow her away for uncovering their stash.

She slipped under the wire fence-ridiculously easy to do, since it wasn't anchored very firmly, and it was obviously there just to define the area of construction and not to form any kind of protection.

Didn't Larry tell me that there'd been some missing supplies? I'm not surprised, if this is the level of their security. An amateur could break in here.

She froze for a moment, scanning the area, then scuttled silently to another patch of cover, a stack of something with a tarp over it.

Working her way carefully across the site, moving from shadow to shadow, occupied all of her attention. She did not bother to "watch" for Little People; if they wanted her, they would be able to ambush her without any difficulty. They were spirits, after all, and it was rather difficult to keep a spirit from materializing in front of you if it wanted to!

She had gotten halfway to the "forbidden" corner, when she realized that she was not alone.

And whoever was out here was at least as good at being "invisible" as she was, or she would have noticed him? her? long before this. In fact, the only reason she had spotted the other invader was because he had run in front of a light-colored piece of equipment just as she looked at it.

Oh shit!

It occurred to her then, as she cowered in the shadow of a huge bulldozer and watched for some sign that she had been spotted, that she just might have run into the original looter. If there was an "original looter." The signs sure pointed to one. And if so-he would also be the most likely candidate for saboteur, trying to wreck the equipment before it dug up his cache.

Just what I needed for my birthday. The guy who wired a dozer with dynamite and killed four people. Not likely he's going to play nice and surrender if I catch him. Not likely he's going to congratulate me on my expertise if he catches me!

Assuming this person was human at all. That was. not a good assumption,, really. The Little People could take on all the attributes of a flesh-and-blood human when they chose, and there were other spirits that could do the same.

This might not be a looter, a saboteur. This might be something much worse.

She was afraid to move, lest she be spotted, and afraid not to move. She certainly couldn't stay here forever! She strained her eyes against the darkness, but she couldn't make out much more than a darker shadow against a pile of sand or gravel. If she hadn't seen him move there, she wouldn't have known he was in that blotch of .darkness. She'd never have guessed that the shadow was alive if she hadn't seen it in action.

Then it moved again; so quickly that her heart jumped up into her throat. It was spooky; maybe a couple of pieces of gravel fell, but otherwise the lurker was silent. It was heading over in the direction of the roped-off corner.

So, does that mean it's the looter, another would-be scavenger, one of the Little People, or somebody else altogether?

She followed, heart pounding, palms sweating, and wishing she had a night-scope.

Then it occurred to her that she did have a kind of night-scope, after all. The only problem was that it was hard to move if she went into the kind of mental state where she could See things, see the purely physical, and See Medicine things. If this other lurker was something other than human, he would really betray himself at that point. But she would be severely handicapped-

That's why you're a Medicine Woman, stupid. "Hard" doesn't mean "impossible. " Just try not to move too fast when you're double-sighted, or you'll trip over something.

She froze for a moment, putting herself in the right frame of reference.

She knew she'd matched it, when instead of only the shadow of a human lurking over by the dirt dug up by the new-wrecked dozer, she saw not only the stranger, but a stag, standing beside him.

Interesting. So her unknown had a medicine-animal self. At least that meant he wasn't one of the Little People; they didn't have medicine-animals, spirit-totems, since they were spirits. And it meant he was indeed a "he"-it was a stag, after all, and not a doe-and that he probably wasn't white. Although she had met white people who had medicine-creatures, there weren't many of them in the Tulsa area. He didn't fit the profile of someone who would be grave-robbing, either; a medicine-animal would have left him, if he'd done something as appalling as that. No one she knew had a stag for a medicine-animal. ...

But he didn't seem aware of his medicine-animal; at least, he paid no attention to it, staring instead very fixedly at something lying just inside the roped-off area.

That was really odd; how could he not know he had a spirit-guardian? And for one to appear, to try to force him to become aware of it, he had to be in some kind of danger. ...

The stag was very agitated, frantic; surely he had to feel somethingl Even if he was only marginally in touch with his spiritual self, he had to feel it! The stag kept alternating between threatening gestures with its horns toward the man's right, and pawing at the earth, threatening something there, where the man was looking.

She concentrated a little more, and narrowed her focus Whatever this is, it's very small-and I think it's in that area where I spotted something earlier.

Finally, something clicked, and she saw it, or rather, save the medicine-self that was the echo of its physical self.

It was a single artifact, a small one. A medicine-pouch hardly bigger than the palm of her hand. She had missed seeing exactly what it was the first time because she had beer "looking" for a mass of relics, not a single piece.

A real, physical light flashed on, startlingly bright in all the darkness. The other person had a penlight and was shining it on the object, and she cursed him mentally for a fool, showing any kind of light out here at night! Anybody driving by would see it; anybody keeping watch for saboteurs or troublemakers would see it! How could he be so stupid?

That's the same kind of dumb trick David would pull- Whoever the idiot was, he didn't act as if he'd expected to find the pouch there, and she wondered how he had spotted it in the first place. Maybe he was marginally sensitive-

Maybe pigs sing arias. He probably saw something reflective.

He was studying it, carefully. Although it was too much to hope for that he'd leave it there. . . .

Dammit. That alone would have told me if it was from one of the looted graves. But I won't know that unless I can get my hands on it, and get the "feel" of it, to see if it matches the "feel" of any of the gravesites.

The stag feinted toward the right again, and this time movement there, movement in the spirit world, made her focus her attention in that direction. Oh hell. Oh no-

Little People. Lots of them. In human form, in the dress of her people from the time of the first French traders, but with faces too wild and too hungry to ever pass for human. Waiting and watching, avidly, their eyes glowing with a feral, anticipatory light that made her shiver. They crouched in a group, making her think of a waiting pack of coyotes, or a mob of crows. Waiting for dinner to kill itself. Watching some supremely stupid young creature, who was just a heartbeat away from doing something fatal.

Fatal?

She turned her newly sharpened spirit-sight back toward the medicine-pouch, following the gaze of the Little People. Yes, that was what they were watching; it looked as if they had been waiting for this man to find it-

Fatal? She strained her abilities to the limit, and prayed a little for good measure-and knew, suddenly and completely, what it was that was "fatal" about the pouch.

It was the bait to a very mundane trap-it was wired to a bomb!

She didn't stop to think; she just acted. She flung herself across the intervening space, hurled herself at him, tackled him and rolled him sideways, just as he started to reach out to pick it up.

Together they rolled right into the crowd of Little People, who flowed about them in confused eddies, momentarily deflected from their purpose.

She felt their anger, hot on her skin; their rage, at being cheated of their rightful victim. And she looked up to see them surrounding both her and the stranger.

David had intended to head straight for the portable office on the site, but something made him take a little detour instead. A feeling that there was something out in the "forbidden" area that he really should know about.

He hadn't been certain about the hunch, but it was too strong to be denied. But he'd stopped, right by a pile of dirt, feeling a little stupid at following a "hunch," and played his penlight over the area-

A flash of pale blue caught the light, and he aimed the circle of illumination there, expecting to see nothing more than half an old plastic cup.

Instead, the light shone on the deep reds and blues of really old beadwork, surrounded by the remains of quill work, all set into what had to be a truly ancient medicine pouch.

He stared at it, transfixed, unable to look away. He forgot what he had come for in the first place. After a few moments, the fascination turned to something else.

Desire. He had to have this thing. It was meant for him It had called him to take it, called to him out of the dark-ness. He must take it-

He reached out for it, slowly, with his free hand-

And something hit him from the side, knocking all the breath right out of him, sending him sprawling.

He had not been ready; he had not even been close to ready. He hit his head on the hard ground as he toppled over, and that partially stunned him. On top of that, his attacker had knocked the breath out of his lungs with the blow, something that hadn't happened since the last time he'd been "sucker-punched" in grade school. He and his assailant rolled over and over in the dirt, finally coming to a halt a few feet away from where he'd been hiding.

He tried to suck in air, flailing around for balance, or to put up a pretense of defense. All he could manage was a vague idea that his attacker must have been one of Calligan's hired stooges, a rent-a-cop or something. But he was too busy trying to force a breath into his lungs, which burned with pain, and felt as if they'd collapsed. His attacker ignored him, and scrambled to his feet.

Finally, after a terrible muscle spasm, his chest unclenched, and he sucked in a long and painful breath in something close to a sob; a breath that hurt so much that his eyes watered. He looked up, through tearing eyes, to see who had hit him-

Jennie? What the hell?

She stood over him, her face set in a tight, fierce mask, a she-wolf defending her cub. That was when he looked at what she was looking at.

And nearly stopped breathing all over again.

His mind babbled that he wasn't seeing this-he couldn't be seeing this-that it was all a hallucination.

No. Oh no-I'm going crazy. I'm seeing delusions. I'm still knocked out-

But shaking his head didn't make them go away. And despite all his rational thinking, college learning, and disbelief, they were still there.

The Osage Little People.

He knew what they were; old man Talldeer had spun a tale or two for him and the rest of the neighborhood kids, back when he and Jennie were both in grade school. And any Indian kid in Claremore knew about Claremore Mound, the Little People there, the things that would happen to males who were stupid enough to climb it; boys used to dare each other to go up on it, and none of them ever would.

Yeah, he knew what the Little People were supposed to look like. And they had to be spirits; for one thing, they were transparent, and for another, no Osage had dressed the way they were dressed for the last hundred years or so. Wearing only gypsum-rubbed deerskin leggings, with roaches of deer-tail hair and turkey-gobbler beard attached to the long roaches of their own hair, which had been shaved in the style that the whites called a "mohawk," they surrounded him and Jennie, their eyes gleaming with mingled rage and hunger.

Their eyes glowed.

And one other thing told him that they were Little People, and not ordinary spirits.

No feathers. No face paint. Each of them should have been wearing an eagle feather in his roach; either a soft, under-tail covert if he was of the Tzi-sho or a full tail-feather if he was Hunkah. The Little People wore neither, nor were they painted. If they had once been human, they had died in such a way that they had no honor, and must go through a strange afterlife stuck here on earth and not in the Summer Country, existing without paint or eagle feathers. . . .

Just as old man Talldeer had whispered to them, on those long-ago October nights.

"They are hungry for blood. They search for prey-"

If they had once been human, they could have been killed by his people, in the raids that left no one in an entire village-every man dead, every woman and child made a slave. To die a slave-to die in a sneak attack and rot where you fell, without paint or ceremony-that would leave your spirit wandering.

At any other time than the night of the dark of the moon, you might be able to talk them into sparing you. They might even content themselves with simply pulling a trick on you. " But during the dark of the moon, they became pretty single-minded killing machines.

David did not need to scan the sky; he knew it was the dark of the moon. He'd planned on that, when he'd decided to make his little raid tonight.

The Little People were ignoring Jennie for the most part, staring avidly down at him. Whatever was going on, she seemed to have some kind of protection from them. He didn't.

I'm dead, he thought, his mouth going dry with a terror so profound it couldn't even be called fear.

Then Jennie pulled something out of the inside of her jacket; a beaded feather-no, two feathers, eagle-tail and eagle-covert bound together with beadwork, like a peyote-fan, but different in a way that felt important. She held it before her like a shield-

He blinked to clear his eyes of the strange triple vision that suddenly came over him, but the vision remained. There was Jennie, legs braced slightly apart, the Jennie he knew, in blue jeans and a beat-up jacket decorated with Osage ribbon-work embroidery and ribbon-weaving-

And Jennie, in full Osage regalia, but with some additions; a kind of shell necklace he knew was only supposed to be worn by men, a beaded Tzi-sho eagle feather braided into the hair on one side of her head, and a beaded Hunkah feather on the other, a modified warrior's roach, and some other things that she didn't wear to the powwows-

And over all that, a bird. A kestrel. And the second and third images were a lot stronger than the "real" one.

The Little People slowly raised their eyes, and stared instead at Jennie, and David began to hope that maybe he wasn't going to die after all.

One of the Little People straightened up from his crouch. He stood much taller than Jennie; he must have been at least six feet in height, and towered over her, but she didn't seem the least intimidated.

He said something in what David recognized as Osage; he didn't know much of the language, but it was Siouan in derivation, and he knew Lakotah. He understood just enough to get the basics.

You have interfered with our hunt. This is our rightful prey.

She shook her head, and replied in the same tongue.

David didn't understand any of what she said, and it was a fairly long speech. The rest of the Little People straightened and surrounded her, looking down at her, ignoring him.

Oh, please don't make them mad, Jennie. I don't think kung fu, or whatever it is you know, works on them.

Finally she finished with something he vaguely understood. Sorry about this, but he's with me. He's a little stupid, please forgive him.

He didn't know whether to kiss or kick her. Maybe he'd better not do either. They might not like it.

The leader looked down at her, taking her measure; looked down at David, and there was no mistaking the contempt in his eyes. Finally he raised his chin in agreement, though it was obvious that he did so grudgingly. The glitter in his eyes spoke volumes. Here was a man, saved by a woman who was more warrior than he was, at least in the estimation of the Little People. David felt his ears reddening.

The leader folded his arms across his chest, and slowly faded from view; the rest of the Little People followed him a heartbeat later. And the strange triple vision of Jennie faded as well, leaving only the Jennie he knew. David finally remembered to breathe. He thought that Jennie would say something, probably scathing, but she ignored him. Instead, she tucked her feathers back into her coat and returned to the place where he'd been crouching, and dropped down to sit on her heels and stare at the medicine-pouch he'd found. . . .

Which was no longer so desirable. In fact, he didn't want it at all anymore; his earlier lust for it made him a little nauseous.

She stayed there for an awfully long time as he slowly picked himself up out of the dirt and assessed the damages. Not bad, really. A couple of bruised ribs, some other bumps and bruises and scrapes. She didn't seem the least interested in him anymore, and he was torn between being fawningly grateful and really pissed off. If there was a death worse than fate-well, she'd just saved him from it.

If the Little People had gotten hold of me, they'd have killed me, and they'd have taken their time about it. Not only that, but I'd have had to join them. ...

He shuddered, and his nausea increased. An eternity of hunger and frustration, never being able to leave the earth, never doing anything constructive . . . and he could just imagine the reaction Calligan and the press would have had to finding him cold-dead on Calligan's property.

Calligan would have had a field day, and David probably would have inadvertently taken a lot of innocent people down with him.

Not an hour ago, he'd scoffed at the Little People as being no more than superstitious drivel. Oh, he was a believer now.

Jennie continued to ignore him. He decided not to say anything. In a strange way, he was actually afraid of her. Where had she gotten that kind of power?

Maybe the stuff she had done the night he'd come over wasn't all stage-magic crap after all.

Maybe? Get real, Spotted Horse. She's got it, whatever it is. You should be glad she just shoved you out of her house, instead of a million other things she could have done to you for talking to her like that.

In his mind, she took on a kind of mythic status; a kind of Great Mother, like Spider Woman or Changing Woman. He wondered if he should just try to slip away before she noticed him again.

Then she spoke, and the sarcastic tone and completely ordinary words shredded his building mental image of her to rags.

"You blow your own mouth off often enough," she said quietly, "you happen to know anything about bombs?"

Bombs? He blinked, suppressed an automatic and equally sarcastic reply, and walked over to join her.

She had his penlight in her hand; evidently he'd dropped it when she hit him. She had it focused on the medicine-pouch, and she had moved some of the dirt from around it. Now he saw the trip wires leading to it-and now he knew why the Little People had been waiting for him. They hadn't been planning on killing him themselves; they were going to let him blow himself to pieces.

"Happens I do," he said, carefully. "At least, I do know about things that are this primitive. We had to learn how to look for bombs in our cars, and booby traps people would set up in barricades."

She glanced at him sideways, but didn't comment. She didn't have to; it was all there in her glance. He took a deep breath to calm himself; he'd earned that particular doubtful glance.

"Honest," he said, with complete truthfulness. "Jennie, I can swear to you that I have never set a bomb in my life, and I only took apart bombs that whites set on Native property. Okay?"

She nodded. "Okay. So, how about if I hold the light and you deal with this one?"

He was still wearing his rubber gloves; she couldn't possibly have missed that, but she didn't say anything about it. The bomb was ridiculously simple to take apart, leaving them with a potentially dangerous device, and a "device" that was probably equally dangerous, in another direction entirely.

"Now what?" he asked.

"Now we take this sucker back to my car to store as evidence," she said. "You carry it; you've got the gloves, and if there are any latent prints I don't want them messed up. I'd let you take it, but since you're a known activist, if anyone got probable cause to search you and your property-"

"Yeah." She was right, dammit. "Why not just leave it here for the cops to find?"

She tucked the medicine-pouch inside her jacket and dusted her hands off before answering him. "Because I'm afraid it won't be here in the morning," she finally said. "I'm afraid it's going to mysteriously disappear. It was meant for me. You just happened to fall over it."

He didn't quite snort at what he would have considered an outrageous statement a few hours ago. He simply amended it. "You, or anyone else who might have recognized it for what it was. There are supposed to be some O.U. people here, sooner or later. It would really look bad to blow one of them up."

She held one hand over the lump in her jacket where the medicine-pouch was, and nodded, slowly. "That's true, and I can't explain it, but I know it was meant for me. And I would probably have done just what you started to do if you hadn't gotten there first and sprung the trap. I wasn't looking for a trap like that."

He thought about the sudden avarice that had overcome him at the sight of the pouch, and his mouth went dry again. This was getting to be a lot more than he had bargained for.

She continued, gesturing for him to pick up the remains of the bomb. "I didn't even see the bomb until after I spotted you, and I-ah-let's just say I used medicine to find out who and what you were."

He let out his breath in a sigh, and shook his head. "If I say I'm confused-it's been a strange night." He gathered up the explosives and the rest of the component parts and followed her. Presumably she'd parked her truck somewhere nearby.

Strange night, hell. I've been figuring she was just pushing buttons, and here she is talking about and using Medicine like it was part of her. Maybe it is. . . .

"Yeah." That was all she said, but it sounded, if not conciliatory, at least a little less hostile.

Apologize, Spotted Horse. Get it over with.

He gritted his teeth, then unclenched his jaw, and calmed himself enough that the words wouldn't sound forced or false. "Jennie, I'm sorry. I've said a lot of stuff that was out of line. I think maybe we are on the same side. Maybe we ought to start at least talking a little more."

She made a little skeptical sound, but she didn't tell him to go jump a cactus. Finally, as they reached a looming shape that turned out to be her little Brat, she answered.

"Put that stuff on the floorboards and follow me home," she said, sounding more tired than brusque. "We need to talk."

_CHAPTER ELEVEN

jennifer finally sent David back to his motel at about three in the morning, after she realized she had begun to repeat herself. Her eyes felt swollen, and they had begun to burn with fatigue-although Grandfather was still wide awake and perfectly prepared to sit in on the discussion if it carried on till dawn.

At least they were friends again-or as much friends as she, wary and watching, would permit. Grandfather had helped with that.

So had the fact that David had apologized.

David hinted he wouldn't mind staying; she ignored the hints. He gave her a mournful look as she opened the door for him-in the normal fashion this time. She blithely waved good-bye and shut the door as soon as he was on the sidewalk.

She rested her back against the door for a moment, then locked it, and walked back through the house to her bedroom, turning off lights as she went. Grandfather was already in his room; as she passed his door, light shone from the crack underneath it. Just as well; she wasn't up to any more deep discussions at the moment.

At least she and David had achieved a truce, if not precisely a reconciliation. And at this point, she wasn't certain she wanted a reconciliation, with all the emotional baggage that came with one. She wasn't even certain she wanted a relationship that didn't involve a reconciliation! It wasn't as if she didn't have her hands full.

Full in more ways than one. She still had the mundane investigation for the insurance company, a couple loose ends to wrap up for other clients, and her own private investigation of Calligan and the looting of the burial ground to deal with. The last thing she needed at the moment was David Spotted Horse on her doorstep.

Or in my bed.

Even if he had completely changed his ways, there were still certain demands to be met when one had a lover. . . .

She closed her bedroom door, and shook her head. "No," she said aloud. "I don't think so."

Not with what Grandfather had taken to his room to complicate an already complicated situation. David had turned the trap, bait and all, over to her with only minimal argument. The medicine-pouch was Osage, was from one of the plundered cairns, and there was no way to tell how it had gotten there, or even how long it had been there.

She had turned it over to Grandfather after determining where it had come from. Handling it was not her concern at the moment. There was another car in the back drive-it was Mooncrow's and he was a perfectly good driver. He could very easily take the pouch back and reinter it, if that was what was needed.

She shook her head, and went straight to bed, wondering if she would ever learn anything more than that.

Unfortunately, the bomb wasn't likely to tell her much of anything. The trigger had been a simple one, a trip wire. The explosives could be found at any construction site where blasting might be needed, including any of Calligan's. In the morning she would dust the bomb for prints, but even if she found them, unless the owner of said fingerprints had a criminal record, it wasn't likely she'd find a match. Her request for a match check would go into a long queue of other similar requests from private agents-which had a lower priority than the requests from law-enforcement agencies. So even if she found prints and the bombmaker did have a criminal record, she might never get an ID until I after the case was solved or something forced her off of it.

Mooncrow couldn't make anything more of the pouch than she could, except to assure her that although Watches-Over-The-Land had made it, it had not belonged to him. In a way that was both reassuring and disappointing. It would i have been good to recover at least one of her ancestor's looted possessions, but she wasn't certain she had whatever it took to handle something once belonging to a shaman as [ powerful as her forefather had been.

In the end, when she looked at the clock in her headboard and saw the time, she realized that all she was going to do now was think in circles. Almost four in the morning, and she knew very well she was completely exhausted. She stripped and climbed into bed; but once she turned off the lights, she stared up at the ceiling, unable to go to sleep.

Well, I can force myself, she thought. I can make myself relax if I want to. But do I want to? Obviously there's still something bothering my subconscious. I suppose if I don't deal with it, it 'II be showing up in my dreams. I sure as hell don't need that.

It wasn't hard to figure out what that something was. David Spotted Horse, that's-what. He'd come back like the proverbial tomcat.

Though tonight he'd probably lost one of his nine lives from fright alone. He'd had a good scare thrown into him by the Little People. . . .

But now that she thought about it, she wasn't entirely certain that he had been in real danger after she knocked him on his ass. A scare might have been all they intended after that moment. They were so unpredictable; they were perfectly capable of changing their minds within a few seconds.

They 're almost as contrary as Mooncrow. Hard to tell what they intend from one moment to the next. Certainly the leader had been willing to listen to her, and although he had given in, it had been without much of a protest, much less a fight. Was that due to the effectiveness of her protections, to her own ability, or to the fact that they had decided not to bother with David, anymore and accept that she was protecting him? There was no way to tell besides asking them, and no guarantee that they'd tell the truth if she did.

Oh, if David had managed to get himself killed, they'd have taken him, all right. He fit right into the category of "those condemned to roam the earth, out of the sight of Wah-K'on-Tah" There wouldn't have been enough left of him to paint if the bomb had gone off in his face; he'd have been lawful prey. Messing with stolen Osage relics, dying without paint, being buried without paint-she had the feeling they'd have had him even if he'd been white.

Granted, he was a Cherokee, and normally Osage of her forefather's time hadn't much use for the Thing-On-Its-Head People, but these were mi-ah-luschka, and they were a law unto themselves. It didn't take much to wind up swelling their ranks, if they decided to take you.

But after she had saved him from blowing himself to bloody bits, and had confronted them, they had truly seemed less angry than resigned. There hadn't even been any serious argument when she claimed David was already under her protection and implied that he was acting on her behalf.

They did make certain he saw every single one of them, though, and they took a great deal of glee in his obvious fear. It was probably the first time he had Seen something not of the physical world, but of the Medicine world, at least as an adult. It had obviously come as quite a shock. And she had to admit, she had taken just as much enjoyment in his fear as the Little People had.

Maybe they knew that; maybe that was why they hadn't given her much of a fight.

So now he was a believer-in the Little People, at least. And she thought he might have seen her two spirit-echoes as well, her Medicine Woman-self and her Kestrel-self. The way he kept giving her strange looks when he thought she wasn't watching was proof enough that he had seen something odd about her.

Grandfather had hinted obliquely at something of the kind, and David had gotten a queasy look. David hadn't wanted to believe. He was one of those for whom the old legends were wonderful, but hardly applicable to modern times.

Odd. She should have been the one with that attitude. She was the one living in the Heavy Eyebrows' world, making her living their way. She was the one who actually fit into that world, at least outwardly. He was the activist, the rebel, who wanted at least a partial return to the Old Ways.

But that wasn't the oddest thing she'd had to deal with lately. On the face of it, she was as contrary as Mooncrow....

At least David's experiences had made him a lot more tractable when it came to persuading him that there was a lot more going on with this situation than what appeared on the surface.

After talking with him for four hours, she had to concede that he had changed some over the years. He wasn't as much of a chauvinistic brat as he had been. He wasn't as narrow-minded as she'd assumed, either. He still wasn't going to I win the Nobel Peace Prize by any means, but he wasn't as bad as he had been; he could compromise; he could be flexible when he chose.

He might even be a useful ally in this mess. He could go places she couldn't, and Calligan's men were already talking to him. She could get information back to them. He could be very useful, really.

She grimaced into the darkness. Face it, Jennie, you want more than an ally. You really didn 't want to send him off to his motel tonight.. . not when there's a nice bed in here, quite big enough for two.

Well, she had wanted to send him away, and at the same time, she hadn't. She had-because it gave her a lot of satisfaction to prove to him that not only was he not the hot stud he thought he was, but she could resist his blandishments with ridiculous ease. As good-looking as he was, he probably had no problem getting all the women he wanted. He wasn't used to being turned down, particularly not by a woman he thought was already "broke to his saddle." The brief look of incredulous shock as she closed the door had been worth it.

The trouble was, she had .to admit to herself that it had been very difficult to resist him. It would have been nice to be able to say that she was going to sleep tonight without any desires more carnal than a yearning for a bowl of the chocolate-fudge-brownie ice cream in the freezer-but not even a bowl of ice cream was going to make her forget the way the lamplight gleamed on his hair, or the broad shoulders under that black turtleneck, or the warmth in his eyes when he looked at her. Ice cream was no substitute for what she really craved.

Nope. You're not a pushover, Talldeer, but you're really going to have to watch your step with him. It would have been all too easy to suggest he spend the night instead of driving back across town. And then it would have been even easier to suggest that he save his money and move in with her until- Until what? He didn't have any particular place he called "home," he'd made that very clear. His folks were uncomfortable with his kind of activism, and he was doing his best to keep them out of it by keeping clear of them. He had no regular job, and everything he owned fit in the trunk of his car. So why should he move out again once he'd moved in?

Oh no. That was too easy a trap to fall into. And it was a mistake she didn't intend to make. If David Spotted Horse moved back into her life, he'd better be prepared to take her as an equal.

And he'd better get a clean bill of health before he does it. I don't know where he's been-and I wouldn't even take Mooncrow's word on the subject of HIV without a test. So there.

And she would want to be certain that he understood all the rules as clearly as she did before anything got any further than "colleague."

Still.....

David-my equal? In Medicine matters, he isn't even in the running! she scolded herself. He hasn't even got both feet on the path yet! Oh no, if I get involved with him again, he had better have it clear that in Medicine, if I say something, I'm the expert. And in P.I. work, too. Maybe he knows the legal system better than I do, but I have my own areas of expertise. He has got to understand that and accept it.

And all the veiled compliments and broad shoulders in the world weren't going to change that.

Still. ... .

Finally her libido decided it wasn't going to win the argument with her brain and gave up, and she got to sleep.

Calligan had hoped to be called to the mall site by the police some time during the night. He was certain his trap would be sprung, and the explosion would wake up everyone within a mile of the river. When the alarm went off without emergency call, he woke feeling vaguely disappointed.

He'd been so positive that the Talldeer girl would take the bait. He'd never been so certain of anything in his life.

Well, if not tonight, then maybe tomorrow, he told himself. She can't stay away forever, and she can't resist an artifact. I left the thing right where anyone prowling would be certain to see it-and she would have been looking for exactly that kind of object. She just didn't show up, that's all. No big problem; she won't stay away forever. Probably she's making certain I don't have a night guard on the site. I'll get her when she finally does show.

So even though his wife seemed a bit jumpy this morning, he ignored her nerves. She hadn't slept well for the past several nights, and he couldn't get her to take a pill. Maybe he ought to tell her to go to the doctor . . . except that her restlessness hadn't disturbed his sleep any.

No, no point in making her see a doctor. Doctor visits were expensive, especially for things as intangible as "nerves." It was probably just hormones anyway. Women were slaves to their bodies, and half the time he thought they enjoyed it that way. It gave them excuses to become hysterical.

He ignored the slight shaking of her hands and the dark circles under her eyes. If he ignored this nonsense, she'd probably drop it. No point in reinforcing bad behavior by giving her attention for it.

He timed his arrival at the site so that he got there a good fifteen minutes before any of the men would. That would give him enough time to dismantle the trap and hide it away before anyone got there and became curious. He'd thought about leaving it in place-but some fool was only too likely to spot the pouch and try to pick it up. Or worse than a fool, a kid, messing around where he shouldn't be.

No, it was better to get rid of it during the day. He could hide the whole setup easily enough, then put it back after everyone was gone. That wouldn't be hard; the men left the site at quitting time fast, the goldbrickers. Not a minute of unpaid overtime on their sheets.

But when he got to the roped-off area and looked down, he got a severe jolt.

The pouch was gone. So was the bomb. Not buried, as he thought in his first burst of incredulous thought, but completely gone.

The first thing he thought of was that some stupid critter had decided to mess with it. He looked for signs of animal tracks or other disturbances, certain that something must have carried the trap off somewhere. How an animal would have done that without being blown to bits, he had no idea-but mice carried bait off out of traps all the time without springing them, and maybe a possum or raccoon had found the pouch and carried the pouch and explosives off. Maybe a dog had gone after it. Maybe a cat thought it looked tasty.

Nothing. Only the signs of enough digging to free the tripwire and bomb, and footprints of common sneakers all around.

His next indignant thought was-They stole it! The bastards stole it! I'm calling the-

Calling who? The cops? And do what, report that an illegal booby trap baited with stolen artifacts had, in turn, been stolen? Oh, that would be just brilliant.

Now he was glad he'd set the thing up wearing gloves. If Talldeer had taken it-

Well of course she took the pouch; who else would have? But how in hell did she know it was wired? He was absolutely furious; his neck and face burned for a moment with rage. How had she known? And how dared she take his trap and bait?

Another thought occurred to him, then, as he stared at the place where the bomb had been. If she had found it, she must want to know who had set it. So far, he thought he had managed to keep his trail clean. The cops didn't consider him enough of a suspect to watch. But what about Talldeer?

Could she be watching now?

He got to his feet and dusted his hands off, then moved to another area of the roped-off section, trying to look as if he were checking the entire corner for artifacts that might have turned up as the soil settled or something. He even brushed at the surface a bit, as if he were looking for something. The coarse, sandy soil came apart as he touched it, breaking down into dust. He'd have a hell of a time getting the stuff off his pants.

At least she wouldn't be getting any prints off the pouch or the bomb. While he didn't exactly have a criminal record, he didn't want to take a chance on finding out his prints were on file somewhere. The government had files on everybody, and with all the computers around these days they were probably doing searches via computer. There was always a chance someone, somewhere, in some law-enforcement agency, had filed a set of his prints away. Hell, the local cops might even have them. They'd certainly taken a set of prints after they'd dusted the remains of the dozer after the explosion. Would she get access to that file? She might, if she had friends in the department.