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
