Thunderhead

“Witch people from a distance,” Smithback repeated. “Move at night, without sound.” He grunted, shook his head.

Beiyoodzin glanced at the writer briefly, his eyes luminous in the gathering darkness, then looked away again.

“Let me tell you a story,” Beiyoodzin said, after a moment’s hesitation. “Something that happened to me many years ago, when I was a boy. It’s a story I haven’t told for a long, long time.”

A hot red ember flashed out of the dark, and Beiyoodzin’s face was briefly lit crimson as he drew on the cigarette.

“It was summer,” he went on. “I was helping my grandfather bring some sheep up to Escalante. It was a two-day trip, so we brought the horse and wagon. We stopped for the night at a place called Shadow Rock. Built a brush corral for the sheep, turned the horse out to graze, went to sleep. Around midnight, I woke up suddenly. It was pitch black: no moon, no stars. There was no noise. Something was wrong. I called out to my grandfather. Nothing. So I sat up, tossed twigs into the coals. As they flared up I caught a glimpse of him.”

Beiyoodzin took a long, careful drag on the cigarette. “He was lying on his back, eyes gone. His fingertips were missing. His mouth had been sewed shut. Something had been done to the back of his head.” The red firebrand of the cigarette tip wavered in the dark. “I stood up and threw the rest of the brush onto the fire. In the light I could see our horse maybe twenty feet away. He was lying on the ground, guts mounded beside him. The sheep in the pen were all dead. All this—all this—without even the sound of a mouse.”

The pinpoint of red vanished as Beiyoodzin ground out the cigarette. “As the fire died back, I saw something else,” he continued. “A pair of eyes, red in the flames. Eyes in the darkness, but nothing else. They never blinked, they never moved. But somehow, I felt them coming closer. Then I heard a low, puffing sound. Dust hit my face, and my eyes stung. I fell back, too scared even to cry out.

“I don’t remember how I made my way home. They put me to bed with a high fever. At last, they put me in a wagon and took me to the hospital in Cedar City. The doctors there said it was typhoid, but my family knew better. One by one, they left my bedside. Except for my grandmother, I didn’t see any of my relatives for a couple of days. But by the time they returned to the hospital, the worst of the sickness had passed. To the surprise of the doctors.”

There was a brief silence. “I later learned where my relatives had been. They’d returned to Shadow Rock, where we’d camped. They took the village’s best tracker with them. A set of huge wolfprints led away from the site. They followed the tracks to a remote camp east of Nankoweap. Inside was . . . well, I guess you would have to call him a man. It was noon, and he was sleeping. My relatives took no chances. They shot him while he slept.” He paused. “It took a great many bullets.”

“How did they know?” Smithback asked.

“Beside the man was a witchcraft medicine kit. There were certain roots, plants, and insects: taboo items, forbidden items, used only by skinwalkers. They found corpse powder. And up in the chimney, they found certain . . . pieces of meat, drying.”

“But I don’t understand how . . .  ?” Smithback’s question trailed off into the darkness.

“Who was it?” Nora asked.

Beiyoodzin did not answer directly. But after a moment, he turned. Even in the dark, Nora could feel the intensity of his gaze.

“You said your horses were cut in five places, on the forehead and two places on each side of breast and belly,” he said. “Do you know what those five places have in common?”

“No,” Smithback said.

“Yes,” Nora whispered, her mouth dry with sudden fear. “Those are the five places where the fur of a horse forms a whorl.”

The light had completely vanished from the sky, and a huge dome of stars was cast over their heads. Somewhere in the distance, out on the plain, a coyote began yipping and wailing, and was answered by another.

“I shouldn’t have told you any of this,” Beiyoodzin said. “No good can come to me. But maybe now you know why you must leave this place at once.”

Nora took a deep breath. “Mr. Beiyoodzin, thank you for your help. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t frightened by what you’ve said. It scares me to death. But I’m ru

This seemed to astonish Beiyoodzin. “Your father died out here?” he asked.

“Yes, but we never found his body.” Something about the way he spoke put her on guard. “Do you know something about it?”

“I know nothing.” Then the man was abruptly on his feet. His agitation seemed to have increased. “But I’m sorry to hear about it. Please think over what I’ve said.”

“We’re not likely to forget it,” said Nora.

“Good. Now I think I’ll turn in. I’ve got to get up early. So I’ll say goodbye to you right now. You can turn your horses out to graze in the draw. There’s plenty of grass down by the stream. Tomorrow, help yourself to breakfast if you like. I won’t be around.”

“That won’t be necessary—” Nora began. But the old man was already shaking their hands. He turned away and began to busy himself with the bedroll.

“I think we’ve been given the brushoff,” murmured Smithback. They went back to their horses, unsaddled them, and made a small camp of their own on the far side of the pile of rocks.

* * *

“What a character,” Smithback muttered a little later as he unrolled his bag. The horses had been watered and were now nickering and muttering contentedly, hobbled nearby. “First he spooks us with all that talk about skinwalkers. Then he suddenly a

“Yes,” Nora replied. “Just when the talk got around to my father.” She shook out her own bedroll.

“He never said what tribe he was from.”

“I think Nankoweap. That’s how the village got its name.”

“Some of that witchcraft stuff was pretty vile. Do you believe it?”

“I believe in the power of evil,” Nora said after a moment. “But the thought of wolfskin ru

“Maybe so, but it seems like a pretty elaborate plan. Dressing up in wolfskins, cutting up horses . . .”

They both fell silent, and the cool night air moved over them. Nora rubbed her arms in the sudden chill. She could offer no explanation for what had happened to her at the ranch house, the matted form ru

“Which way is downwind?” Smithback asked suddenly.

Nora looked at him.

“I want to know where to put my boots,” he explained. In the dark, Nora thought she could see a crooked smile on the journalist’s face.

“Put them at the foot of your bedroll and point them east,” she said. “Maybe they’ll keep the rattlers away.”

She pulled off her own boots with a sigh, lay down, and pulled the bag up around her dusty clothes. A half-moon had begun to rise, veiled by tatters of cloud. A few yards away, she could hear Smithback grunting as he flounced around, making preparations for sleep. In the calm darkness, the thought of skinwalkers and witches fell away under the weight of her weariness.

“It’s strange,” Smithback said. “But something is definitely rotten in the State of Denmark.”

“What, your shoes?”

“Very fu

From far overhead came the sound of a jet. Idly, Nora located its faint, blinking light, crawling across the velvety blackness. As if reading her mind, Smithback spoke: “There’s some guy,” he said, “sitting up in that plane, guzzling a martini, eating smoked almonds, and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle.”