The only alcohol the medicine man consumed was the cactus wine made once a year from fruit of the giant cactus. He smoked only the native tobacco, gathered from plants growing wild in the sandy washes.
The single exception, his post-World War H Zippo lighter, was more a concession to old age than it was to the Mil-gahn.
As the burning sticks of rolled tobacco moved back and forth between them, and as the smoke eddied away from them into the dark sky, Fat Crack could see why this particular tobacco smoke might still retain some of its ancient power.
'What do you believe caused the accident?' Looks At Nothing asked at last.
'A steer ran across the road in front of the truck,' Fat Crack answered.
'When she tried to miss it, the tire caught on the shoulder and the truck rolled. That's what Law and Order told me.'
'That may be how the accident happened,' Looks At Nothing said, 'but it's not what caused it. Do you know this Anglo child Hejel Wi'ithag lives with, the one she calls Olhoni?'
Fat Crack nodded. 'Davy Ladd. His mother is a widow. Rita lives with them and looks after the boy. What about him?'
'The boy is the real cause of your aunt's accident.'
'Davy Ladd? How? He's only six. He was at the hospital.
He sure wouldn't hurt her. They say he saved her life.'
Looks At Nothing's cigarette glowed softly in the night.
He passed it back to Fat Crack. 'The boy is unbaptized.
His mother was born a Catholic, but he himself has never been inside a church. Do you know the old priest from San Xavier?'
It took a moment for Fat Crack to follow what seemed like an abrupt change of subject, but finally he nodded and smiled. Looks At Nothing and Father John were contemporaries, but the medicine man thought the Anglo was old.
'Yes. My mother told me about him. He's retired now, but he still helps out sometimes.'
'He was once a special friend of your aunt's. We must go to him tomorrow, in Tucson. We will tell him about this problem and ask his advice. I will call for singers to treat the boy in the traditional way, but Father John must do the other.'
This is crazy, Fat Crack thought. He was familiar with the old superstition that claimed being around unbaptized babies was dangerous and caused accidents, but supposedly only Indian babies were hazardous in this fashion. That's what he'd been told.
'Why are you doing this?' he asked. 'Why bother with two kinds of baptism when the boy isn't even Indian?
Besides, the accident already happened.'
'The boy is a child of your aunt's heart,' Looks At Nothing said softly.
'It doesn't matter if he's O'othham or not, and the accident isn't the only danger.'
'It isn't?'
'While she was in the ambulance, Hejel Wi'ithag saw buzzards, three of them, sitting sunning themselves in the middle of the afternoon, not in the morning like they usually do. It is bad luck to see animals doing strange things. It means something bad is coming, something evil. Not only is it dangerous for your aunt, but for two other people as well.'
The old man paused to smoke, and Fat Crack waited.
'There is something very puzzling in all this,' Looks At Nothing continued finally. 'The evil seems to be Ohb, and not Ohb, Apache and not Apache.'
Fat Crack was struck by the medicine man's use of the old-fashioned word that means, interchangeably, both Apache and enemy.
'Yes,' Fat Crack murmured under his breath, agreeing without knowing exactly why. 'You're right. It is Ohb or at least Ohbsgam, Apachelike.'
'You believe this to be true?' Looks At Nothing demanded.
Fat Crack stared up at the sky. Here was an undeniable answer to his earlier prayer for help. He hadn't expected it to come this soon, and certainly not in the guise of an old, blind medicine man, but surely the connection he had felt that afternoon was here again and stronger than ever.
'Do you remember my cousin, Gina, Rita's granddaughter?'
Looks At Nothing nodded. 'The one who was murdered?'
'Yes, near the charco of old Rattlesnake Skull Village.
'I remember.'
'There were two men involved, two Mil-gahn. One of them was the little boy's father, Olhoni's father. He committed suicide afterward. The other man went to jail.' Fat Crack paused briefly.
'Go on,' Looks At Nothing urged.
'One of the men bit off Gina's wipih, her nipple. At the time it was said the dead man did it, that he was the one who bit her, but now I don't believe it. The same thing has happened again, just yesterday, to another woman
