goggles, and began descending the stairs. Within moments the silence became complete, broken only by the sound of dripping water. They were entering another world.
Fifty-Seven
Here, at the highest point of land in Cry County, the mesocyclone had reached its highest pitch of intensity. The ground looked like a battlefield, littered with jetsam scattered by the ruinous winds: twigs, plant debris, clods of dirt picked up from fields many miles away. Up ahead, the still-invisible trees fringing the Mounds thrashed and groaned, leaves and limbs tearing at each other with a sound like the crashing of surf on rocks. The world of the Ghost Mounds had been reduced to sound and fury.
Turning his head and leaning into the wind, Pendergast made his way along the track toward the Mounds. As he approached, the roar of the storm became more intense, occasionally punctuated by the earsplitting sound of cracking wood and the crash of a branch hitting the ground.
Once in the relative shelter of the trees, Pendergast was able to see a little more clearly. Wind and rain boiled through, scouring everything with pebbles and fat pelting drops. The great cottonwoods around him groaned and creaked. The greatest danger now, Pendergast knew, came not from rain and hail, but from the possibility of high- F-scale tornadoes that could form at any time along the flanks of the storm.
And yet there was no time for caution. This was neither the time, nor the manner, in which he’d intended to confront the killer. But there was no longer any choice.
Pendergast switched on his flashlight and arrowed it into the gloom beyond the copse of trees. As he did so, there came a terrific splitting noise; he leapt to one side as a giant cottonwood came tumbling out of the darkness, hurtling down with a grinding crash that shook the ground and sent up a maelstrom of leaves, splintered branches, and wet dirt.
Pendergast left the trees and stepped back into the teeth of the storm. He moved forward as quickly as he could, eyes averted, until he reached the base of the first mound. Placing his back to the wind, he played his light carefully around its flanks until he had fully established a point of reference. And then—in the pitch of night, in the howling storm—he straightened, folded his arms across his chest, and paused. Sound and sensation alike faded from his consciousness as, from a marbled vault within the Gothic mansion of his memory, he took up the image of the Ghost Warriors. Once, twice, three times he ran through the reconstructed sequence from his memory crossing—where they had first emerged from the dust, where once again they had vanished—carefully superimposing this pattern upon the actual landscape around him.
Then he opened his eyes, let his hands fall to his sides. Now—walking slowly, taking precise steps—he moved across the central clearing to the far side of the second mound. Soon he stopped before a large limestone outcrop. He moved slowly around it, back to the storm, oblivious to the wind and pelting rain, inspecting rocks with great care, touching first one, then another, until he found what he was looking for: a half dozen small, loose boulders, casually lying caught in a crack of the rock. After examining them for a moment, Pendergast rolled the smaller boulders aside, one by one, exposing an opening. He rapidly shifted more rocks. The ragged opening exhaled cool, damp air.
The route through which the Ghost Warriors had first appeared, then vanished. And—unless he was sadly mistaken—the back door to Kraus’s Kaverns.
Pendergast slipped through the hole, flicking his beam back around to the inside face of rockfall, behind and above him. It was as he suspected: the smaller opening was inside what had once been a much larger natural opening.
He turned away, raking his light into the passageway that sloped downward. Pebbles rattled away into the listening dark. As he started descending, the appalling fury of the storm faded away with remarkable quickness. Soon it was nothing more than a memory. Time, the storm, and the outside world all ceased to exist in the changeless environment of the cave. He had to reach Corrie before the sheriff and his impromptu little SWAT team did.
The passageway broadened as it descended, leveled out, then turned abruptly. Pendergast moved carefully up to the turn and waited, listening, gun drawn. Total silence. Quick as a ferret, he spun around the corner, illuminating the space ahead with his powerful flashlight.
It was a giant cavern at least a hundred feet across. An astonishing but not unexpected sight met his view. The only moving things in the cavern were his pale eyes and the beam of his flashlight, passing back and forth over the bizarre spectacle that lay before him.
Thirty dead horses, in full Indian battle dress, were arranged in a kneeling position in a ring at the center of the cavern. They had shriveled and mummified in the air of the cave: their bones stuck out of their hides, their dried lips were drawn back from their yellow teeth. Each was decorated in the Southern Cheyenne style, with streaks of brilliant red ochre on their faces, white and red handprints along their necks and withers, and eagle feathers tied into their manes and tails. Some carried beaded, high-cantled Cheyenne rawhide saddles on their backs; others had a blanket merely, or nothing at all. Most had been sacrificed by a massive blow to the head with a studded club, leaving a neat hole punched directly between each pair of eyes.
Arranged in a second circle, inside the first, were thirty Cheyenne braves.
The Ghost Warriors.
They had laid themselves out like the spokes of a wheel—the sacred wheel of the sun—each one touching his dead horse with his left hand, weapon in his right. They were all there: those who were killed in the raid as well as those who had survived. These latter had been sacrificed like the horses: a single blow to the forehead with a spiked club. The last one to die—the one who had sacrificed the rest—lay on his back, one mummified hand still clutching the stone knife that stuck from his heart. The knife was identical to the broken knife found with Chauncy’s body. And each brave had a quiver of arrows exactly like the arrows found near the body of Sheila Swegg.
They had been here, bearing witness beneath the earth of Medicine Creek, since the evening of August 14, 1865. Those warriors who survived the raid had sacrificed themselves and their horses here, in the darkness of the cave, choosing to die with dignity on their own land. Never would the white men herd them off to a reservation. Never would they be forced to sign a treaty, board railroad cars, send their children to distant schools to be beaten for speaking their own language, to be robbed of their dignity and culture.
These Ghost Warriors had seen the inexorable roll of the white men across their land. They knew what the future looked like.
