which living people might figure in its perseverance and therefore in its alleviation. The absence of information now meant that she'd have to rely more on her ability to share the ghost's experience. She had always tried to set limits on the depth of her communion, sharing a ghost's world dream only with greatest caution. The reason was simple: Without preserving a clear sense of her own, separate identity, she could lose herself in the process. With this entity, a ghost who was an invader, a soul conqueror with a survival impulse that was functionally predatory, it had seemed imperative to keep some distance.
But increasingly it looked as if she'd have to rely on communion to learn what she had to. She'd have to merge with the entity. Surrender to it. She couldn't bear the thought, but neither could she bear the thought of what was happening to Tommy. Maybe she'd absorbed the impulse from Julieta, a mother's protective urge, but here was one other bitter certainty: She would do anything to get the thing out of him.
Desperation came over her again and she began scanning the horizon to the south, looking for some clue as to which way to go. She was squinting against the glare when Edgar's cell phone began vibrating against her thigh.
She dug it out of her pocket and pulled up the antenna with her teeth.
'Cree?' It was Joyce.
'So far, anyway, yeah. I think.' She held the phone away from her head, conscious of its emanations.
'Hey, don't joke around. How's reception? I've been trying and trying. You getting me now?'
'Spotty, but yeah, I read you. The country is rough here, breaks up the signal. I'm on a high place now.'
'You up at the sheep camp?'
Cree looked around at the wilderness of bare rock and silvery sky and decided not to give Joyce anything to worry about. 'I, um, I'm getting there, yeah.'
'Well, Ed and I are in St. Michael's. At St. Michael's-the priory or church or mission or whatever they call it? We've got something for you on the mesa. The ravine.'
'Good timing! I could use something to go on here.'
'Well… this… help.' Joyce's words came across interspersed with silence and static.
Cree turned to face south, tugged windblown hair from the corner of her lips and tucked it behind her ear. 'Say again?'
'Maybe this will help. The Franciscan brothers who started this place back in the 1800s kept good records. They were working on a Navajo-language dictionary, and they also wrote down observations of Navajo traditions, oral histories, and events in the region? So this guy who lives here, teaches at St. Mike's school, he's a friar or whatever, I don't know my Catholic stuff… Father Bryant-Brother Bryant? — he's working on a book, a collection of Navajo personal histories from back then. He half remembered the story when we told him about the lost goats. We went and looked it up in his files.'
The phone's radio waves were hurting Cree's mastoid bone, but this could be crucial. She kept it close to her ear, staring out at the distant smooth land to the south. High above, alone in the vast sky, a single puffy cloud floated, serene and mysterious as a cryptic smoke signal.
'You there, Cree?'
'I'm here.'
'Okay. So, 1863, Kit Carson and his men are exterminating the Navajos. The ones they can't kill or catch outright, they burn their fields and shoot their livestock, figuring the winter without food will finish them off. This is about six months before they're sent off on the Long Walk. Carson's got detachments of soldiers, some led by Dine'e'anai' guides, rounding up Navajos all over the place-'
'What kind of guides?'
'Oh, Dine'e'anai'. Means 'the People Who Are Enemies.' 'The Enemy People'-that's the term you got from your ghost girl, Cree! They were a group of Navajos who allied themselves with the whites. Traitors. Knowing the land, the language, they made it very hard for the other Navajos to escape.'
The thought saddened Cree: The division and conflict inside the Navajo soul had been there for a long time. As with every other people.
Joyce insightfully interpreted her silence. 'Yeah, it was bad. Everything was falling apart for the Navajos. They… it… time
…'
'Joyce, I lost that last part.'
'The Navajos called it the Time of Fearing.'
Time of fearing: a good description of this moment, too, Cree thought. Of what Tommy and the Keedays, and Julieta, were going through.
'So, this is the story a Navajo survivor told one of the Franciscans, thirty years later. A detachment of soldiers was down in the area where the school is now, and this one family group that lived near there was trying to escape. They're fleeing to the top of the mesa up that ravine, it's the only way up on the northern end. They're driving their goats and sheep with them. Two goats get loose, run back down the ravine. One of the sons goes after them, you can see why, they know they'll need the meat if they're gonna survive. Up on the top of the mesa, the family sees the soldiers coming, so the boy's sister gets scared and goes to call him back. The father and several uncles come down the ravine after her, but they're too late, the soldiers are there. There's a fight, both kids get killed, and the father and one uncle. The others got rounded up, sent to the concentration camp. Four years later, the surviving family members moved back to their home turf. They didn't resettle near the ravine, too much sorrow there, bad ghosts. After that they called it Lost Goats Mesa, don't ask me to say it in Navajo, sort of a testament to what had happened. Eventually, the first McCartys came, started mining, bought up the land. People moved away. A few generations later, the story was forgotten.'
Despondent, Cree couldn't answer immediately. Lost Goats. One little accident, the goats running back. Then tragedy.
'So what can you tell me about them?' she managed at last. 'Did they record the family's name?'
'Well, that's complex. It was the children's mother who told the story, thirty years later, right? She was called Yil' Dezbah, and she was of the Waters Run Together clan. Father Bryant says her name means 'Goes to War With,' a pretty common name. I know you'll be wondering if Tommy or Peter Yellowhorse is a descendant of that group, but tracing lineage'll probably be impossible. The clans mix up thoroughly, a lot of names got Anglicized, plus back then it was matrilineal, but for the last couple of generations people mostly use the father's name… Maybe the Keedays'll know the genealogy here.'
'The boy-how old was the boy?'
'Older than the girl, that's all I know.'
'Was his name Shinaai?'
'What? I lost that.'
'What was the boy's name?'
'Doesn't say. I asked Father Bryant about shinaai-he says it just means 'my older brother.' Sorry.' Joyce blew out a breath. 'Think any of this'll help?'
'Absolutely. Great work, Joyce.' It wasn't much, but having any data at all was like a tonic. Cree felt exhilaration rising in her. A moment later, her pulse kicked up still further as something flashed between the buttes to the south. Reflected sunlight. She tore off her sunglasses and squinted and after a moment saw what had caused it: about a mile away, the top half of a red pickup truck was just visible, skimming along above an invisible fold of ground. The county road! She'd been this close for the last half hour and hadn't been able to see it. At last she could find her way out of this godforsaken maze.
'Joyce, I have to tell you, you're the greatest!'
'Sorry, I didn't catch that. Say again?'
The phone was killing Cree, and the urgency of her mission had returned like gangbusters. She hurried around to the door of the truck.
'I said I love you, and please tell Ed I love him, too.'
'Hey, Cree-I don't like the tone of final farewell here.'
Cree heard it perfectly but opted to dodge: 'What? Sorry, I think we're losing reception. Talk to you soon, okay?'
She shut the phone and slid it back into her pocket.
