The Dark Wind

brought to the Hopis the gift of sorcery. That had been its ceremonial contribution to Hopi society. And of course, the sorcerers were the powaqas, the 'two-hearts,' the Hopi culture's peculiar version of what witches were like. There was something about the Bow Clan, too. What? Chee's reliable memory served up the answer. He'd read it in some treatise on Hopi clan history. When the Bow Clan had completed its great migrations and arrived at the Hopi Mesas, it had accumulated such a reputation for creating trouble that the Bear Clan elders had repeatedly refused its request for lands and a village home. And after it had finally been allowed to join the other clans, the Bows had been involved in the single bloody incident in the history of the Peaceful People. When the Arrowshaft Clan at Awatovi had allowed Spanish priests to move into the village, the Bows had suggested a punitive attack. The Arrowshaft males had been slaughtered in their kivas, and the women and children had been scattered among the other villages. The Arrowshaft clan had not survived.

'This man we're going to see,' Chee said. 'What's his clan?'

Cowboy eyed him. 'Why you ask that?'

'You said it was the Fog Clan village. I heard somewhere that the Fog Clan had died out.'

'More or less,' Cowboy said. 'But the Hopis use a sort of linked clan system, and the Fog is linked to the Cloud Clan and the Water Clan and…' Cowboy let it trail away. He shifted into second gear for the steep climb along the mesa cliff.

The road reached the saddle of the narrow ridge. It climbed straight ahead to Walpi. Cow boy jerked the patrol car into the narrow turn up the other side of the saddle toward Sichomovi and Hano. The rear wheels skidded. Cowboy muttered something under his breath.

Chee had been watching him. 'Had a bad day?'

Cowboy said nothing. Clearly Cowboy had had a bad day.

'What's bothering you?' Chee asked.

Cowboy laughed. But he didn't sound amused. 'Nothing,' he said.

'You'd just as soon not be doing this?'

Cowboy shrugged.

The patrol car edged past the ancient stone walls of Sichomovi… or was it Hano now? Chee wasn't sure yet where one of the villages ended and the other began. It seemed inconceivable to Chee that the Hopis had chosen to live like this—collecting right on top of each other in these tight little towns without privacy or breathing room. His own people had done exactly the opposite. Laws of nature, he thought. Hopis collect, Navajos scatter. But what was bothering Cowboy? He thought about it.

'Who is this guy we're going to see?'

'His name is Taylor Sawkatewa,' Cowboy said. 'And I think we're wasting our time.'

'Don't think he'll tell us anything?'

'Why should he?' Cowboy said. The tone was curt, and Cowboy seemed to realize it. When he continued, there was a hint of apology in his tone. 'He's about a million years old. More traditional than the worst traditional. On top of that, I hear he's sort of crazy.'

And, Chee thought, you hear he's a powaqa. And that's what's making you a little edgy. Chee thought about what he'd heard about powaqas. It made him a little edgy, too.

'Not much use appealing to his duty as a law-abiding citizen, I guess,' Chee said.

Cowboy laughed. 'I don't think so. Be like trying to explain to a Brahma bull why he should hold still while you're putting a surcingle around him.'

They were clear of Hano now, jolting down a stony track which followed the mesa rim. The cloud loomed in the southwest. The sun on the horizon lit the underface of its great anvil top a glittering white, but at its lower level its color varied. A thousand gradations of gray from almost white to almost black, and—from the dying sun—shades of rose and pink and red. To Cowboy Dashee's people such a cloud would have sacred symbolism. To Chee's people, it was simply beautiful, and thus valuable just for itself.

'Another thing,' Cowboy said. 'Old Sawkatewa don't speak English. That's what they tell me anyway. So I'll have to interpret.'

'Anything else I need to know about him?'

Cowboy shrugged.

'You didn't tell me what his clan is.'

Cowboy slowed the patrol car, eased it past a jagged rock and over a rut. 'He's Fog,' he said.

'So the Fog Clan isn't extinct?'

'Really, it is,' Cowboy said. 'Hardly any left. All their ceremonial duties—what's left—they're owned by the Water Clan now, or Cloud Clan. It was that way even when I was a boy. Long before that, I guess. My daddy said the last time the Ya Ya Society did anything was when he was a little boy—and I don't think that was a full ceremony. Walpi kicked them out a long time ago.'

'Kicked them out?'

'The Ya Ya Society,' Cowboy said. He didn't offer to expand. From what Chee could remember hearing about the society, it controlled initiation into the various levels of sorcery. In other words, it was a sensitive subject and Cowboy didn't want to talk about it to a non-Hopi.

'Why did they kick 'em out?' Chee asked.

'Caused trouble,' Cowboy said.

'Isn't that the society that used to initiate people who wanted to become two-hearts?'

'Yeah,' Cowboy said.