Thunderhead

“He can’t go any—” Nora began. Then she stopped short.

Ahead of them, at the sharp bend in the trail, a shape had appeared: a clot of black against the dimly shining rockface. The heavy pelt steamed, and the fringe of fur along its bottom edge was caked in blood. It took a shambling step toward them, then stopped. Sick with fear and horror, Nora could hear the rasping breath being sucked in through the blood-soaked mask. Through the dimness, she thought she could make out red pinpricks of eyes, glowing with anger, pain, and malice.

Unexpectedly, Beiyoodzin moved forward. Reaching the outcropping of rock before the switchback, he stepped out onto it carefully. The skinwalker watched him, motionless. Digging into his clothing, Beiyoodzin drew out his medicine bag, tugged it open, and reached inside. Never taking his eyes from the skinwalker, he sprinkled a small, almost invisible, line of pollen and cornmeal onto the narrow ledge between them, chanting softly.

As Nora watched in silent dread, the skinwalker took a step forward, toward the line of pollen. Beiyoodzin spoke a word: “Kishlinchi.”

The skinwalker stopped, listening. Beiyoodzin shook his head in sorrow. “Please, no more,” he said. “Let it end here.”

Still the skinwalker waited. Now, Beiyoodzin held an eagle feather outstretched before him. “You think evil has made you strong. But instead it has made you weak. Weak and ugly. Evil is the very absence of strength. I am asking you to be strong now, and end all this. This is the only way to save your life, because evil always burns itself up in the end.”

With a growl of anger, the skinwalker unsheathed an obsidian knife. It took a step forward, breaking the line of pollen, and raised the knife, standing within striking distance of Beiyoodzin’s heart.

“If you will not come back with me, then I beg you to stay here, in this place,” Beiyoodzin said quickly, his voice cracking. “If evil is your choice, then stay with evil. Take the city, if you must.” He nodded in Nora’s direction. “Take these outsiders, if nothing else will satisfy your blood lust. But leave the people, leave the village, alone.”

“What are you saying?” Smithback cried in outraged surprise. But neither the skinwalker nor Beiyoodzin seemed to hear. Now, the old man reached deeper into his clothes and pulled out another buckskin bag: much older, worn almost to a paper thi

“You know what this is,” Beiyoodzin said. “This bag holds the Mirage Stone of the Fathers. The most treasured artifact of the Nankoweap People. Once, you treasured it, too. I offer it to you as earnest of my promise. Stay here, trouble our village no more.”

Slowly, reverently, he opened the bag, then held it forward, his outstretched hands trembling, whether from fear or age Nora could not tell.

The skinwalker hesitated.

“Take it,” Beiyoodzin whispered. The matted figure moved forward and reached for it, leaning outward.

Suddenly, with lightning speed, Beiyoodzin thrust the open bag toward the skinwalker.

A heavy cloud of dust erupted from within, flying up into the figure’s mask, spraying in long gray lines across the bloody pelt. The skinwalker roared in surprise and outrage, twisting around, tugging violently at the mask, growing more and more off balance. With the agility of a cat, Beiyoodzin leaped from the outcropping of rock back onto the trail. The skinwalker kicked frantically, teetering a moment at the edge of the precipice. Then it went over with a howl of fury. Nora watched the plunge into the violet, moon-drenched shadows: matted pelt flapping crazily, limbs scrabbling at the air, mask pulling free as the blood-curdling cry meshed with the roar of the flood beneath. And then, suddenly, it was gone.

There was a moment of stasis. Beiyoodzin looked at Nora and Smithback, and nodded grimly.

Painfully, Nora helped Smithback up the trail toward Beiyoodzin. He stood at the switchback, looking down into the abyss.

“I’m sorry to have scared you like that,” he said quietly, “but sometimes, the only defense left us is to play the coyote, the trickster.”

Still looking downward, he reached out and took Nora’s hand in his. The old man’s grasp was as cool, light, and dry as a leaf.

“And so much death,” he murmured. “So much death. But at least the evil has burned itself out.”

Then he looked up at her, and Nora saw kindness and compassion, as well as an infinite sadness, in his eyes.

For a moment, there was silence between them. Then Beiyoodzin spoke.

“When you are ready,” he said, in a small, clear voice, “let me take you to your father.”

Epilogue

Moving at a steady, easy pace, the four riders made their way up the canyon known as Raingod Gulch. John Beiyoodzin, atop a magnificent buckskin, led the way. Nora Kelly followed, riding abreast of her brother, Skip. The massive form of Teddy Bear padded alongside, his back almost grazing the bellies of the horses as he weaved in and out beneath them. Bill Smithback brought up the rear, his unruly hair imprisoned beneath a suede cowboy hat. The exhausting course of antibiotic treatment he and Nora had undergone ended two weeks before, but beneath the hat brim the writer’s skin was still struggling to regain a healthy color.

The late August sky was sprinkled with light cumulus clouds, drifting over a field of brilliant turquoise. Wrens flitted about, filling the sweet little canyon with their bell-like cries. A merry stream, shaded by fragrant cottonwoods, ran sparkling across a bed of soft sand. At almost every bend in the canyon were small alcoves, Anasazi dwellings tucked inside them: none more than two or three rooms, but lovely in their humble perfection.

Nora let her horse keep its own pace, concentrating on nothing but the sun beating down on her denimed legs, on the murmur of water nearby, on the swaying of her mount. Every now and then, she smiled to herself as she heard Smithback behind her, leveling curses at his balky mount, who stopped frequently to nibble a patch of clover or bite off the top of a thistle, completely ignoring the dire threats and imprecations of his rider. The man just had no talent with horses.

She realized how lucky she was to have him here; how lucky she was to be here herself. Briefly, her thoughts returned to their struggle out of the wilderness a month earlier: Smithback weak, Nora herself growing steadily weaker as the fungal infection took hold. If Skip and Ernest Goddard had not met them halfway down the trail with fresh horses—and if there had not been a powerboat waiting at the trailhead, or helicopters idling at Page—they would probably have died. And yet, for a time, Nora almost thought it would have been easier to die than to tell Goddard the news: how their incredible discovery had turned into such a terrible personal tragedy for him.

Here, thirty-odd miles northwest of the ruin of Quivira, the countryside seemed built on a smaller scale: friendly, verdant, well-watered. John Beiyoodzin had paused in his long story—he had paused frequently during the ride, giving his narrative time to sink in.

As they rode on through the sunlit silence, Nora allowed her thoughts to move gradually from Goddard to her own father, and of what she had so far been able to piece together of his own last trip up this canyon. He had taken very little from Quivira. In fact, far from being a pothunter, he had carefully refilled what excavations he had made in a way that would have pleased even Aragon. But in doing so, he had exposed himself to a concentration of the fungal dust, and grown sick. Riding north in hopes of finding help, his sickness had worsened to the point where he could hardly sit his horse. Nora wondered how he would have felt. Would he have been terrified? Resigned? As a child, she remembered hearing him say that he wanted to die in the saddle. And he had done just that. Or almost: eventually becoming too sick to ride, he had dismounted. Then he turned his horses free and waited to die.