Hour of the Hunter

hung upside down on the bottom of the branch.

When this happened, the birds began to laugh. I’itoi heard them laughing and came to see what was so funny. When he saw what they had done, I’itoi was very pleased. He told the birds that they might make baskets for themselves. He said they should call their baskets nests and use them for homes.

And that is why, my friend, the u’u whig, the birds, make nests even to this day, and all this happened on the Third Day.

Diana had barely moved the first stack of boxes out of the root cellar and into the kitchen when the phone rang. She looked at it warily, afraid of who might be calling. Her number was unlisted, but there were probably ways to get unlisted numbers if you knew how to go about it.

“Hello,” she said.

“Diana Ladd?” questioned a strange male voice.

“Who’s calling please?” she asked, while her heart hammered in her throat and her knees wobbled.

“My name is Father John. I’m the associate priest, semi-retired actually, out at San Xavier Mission on the reservation. Is Diana Ladd there? I need to speak to her.”

A priest? She didn’t know any priests, not any at all. Why would a strange priest be calling her? Was this a trick? Was it Andrew Carlisle pretending to be a priest? She wouldn’t put it past him.

“This is Diana,” she said at last.

“Good. I’m sure this is all going to sound very strange,” the man continued, “but I was wondering if it would be possible for me to stop by and pay you a visit?”

Pay a visit? At the house? Did he know where she lived? “Why?” she asked.

“We have a mutual friend,” he said mysteriously. “Rita Antone, the lady who lives with you.”

“Funny,” Diana returned. “I don’t recall her ever mentioning your name.”

“I’m not surprised. We had a falling out years ago. I’m just now getting around to mending fences.”

“Look,” Diana said impatiently. “Rita isn’t here. If you want to talk to her when she gets back. .”

“It’s you I need to talk to, Mrs. Ladd,” the priest interrupted. “It’s about Rita, but I don’t need to see her. In fact, it would probably be better if I didn’t. I saw her in the hospital yesterday. I’m afraid my visit upset her.”

He sounded priestly. The inflections were right, the tone of voice, the attitude. “Father,” Diana said, “I’m very busy right now. Couldn’t this wait a few days?”

“It’s a matter of life and death,” he insisted. “I must see you today.”

“Where?”

“I could come there.”

“No,” she said at once. “Absolutely not.” She wasn’t dumb enough to invite a strange man into her home. “I could come out to the mission, I suppose,” she suggested.

If the caller had been Andrew Carlisle posing as a priest, that would have been the end of it. Instead, he agreed readily. “Good,” he said, “but would you please not bring the boy?”

“I have to bring him,” Diana told him. “Rita is my only sitter. She isn’t here.”

“Well,” he said, “all right then, but I must speak to you in private. Perhaps the boy can go over to the convent and visit for a little while. One of the nuns over there, Sister Katherine, is particularly good with children. I’m sure she would be happy to watch him for us if I ask her to. How soon can I expect you?”

“By the time we get cleaned up and ready to go, it’ll probably be around an hour.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll be waiting in my office, which is just behind the bookstore. Ask anyone, and they’ll direct you.”

Diana hung up the phone. So Father John wasn’t a fake, but why would a former friend of Rita’s want to talk to Diana? That was more than she could understand.

She went to the back door. Davy was swinging high on the metal swing set his grandparents from Chicago had sent as his previous year’s Christmas present. On her own, Diana never could have spent that much money on a single toy.

“Come on, Davy,” she called. “You have to come in now and get cleaned up.”

“How come? Me and Bone are playing.”

“Bone and I,” she corrected firmly. “Come on. We have to go to church.”

He came to the door, frowning and sulking. “To church? I didn’t know this was Sunday,” he said. “And why do we have to go anyway? Rita goes to church. You never do.”

“Today’s an exception,” she said. “And it’s Monday, not Sunday, so wipe that frown off your face and let’s get going. If you’re lucky, maybe somebody out there will be selling popovers.”

“Popovers?” he asked, brightening. His mother might just as well have waved a magic wand.

“That’s right. We’re going to San Xavier. There are usually ladies selling popovers in the parking lot.”

The very mention of popovers put Davy in high gear. Tortillas and popovers. Beans and chili. He much preferred Indian food to Anglo. Maybe she would have to break down and learn to cook Indian food after all, and not just tortillas, either.

Chapter 17

T hey say this happened long ago. Cottontail was sitting next to a tall cliff when Ban, Coyote, saw him sitting there. Coyote was very hungry. “Brother,” he said to Cottontail, “I am going to eat you up.”

“Oh, no,” said Cottontail. “This you must not do, for I am holding up this cliff. If you eat me up, it will fall down and crush us both.”

Coyote looked up at the tall cliff, and he was afraid that Cottontail was right. “Come over here, Coyote,” said Cottontail. “You stand here and lean against the cliff. You hold it up while I go around to the back of the mountain and find a big stick to help hold it up.”

“All right,” said Coyote, and that’s just what happened. He came over and stood beside Cottontail to help hold up the cliff. As soon as Coyote was standing there, Cottontail ran off somewhere. Coyote stood there for a long, long time, leaning against the cliff, holding it. He waited and waited, but Cottontail didn’t come back.

Finally, Coyote got tired of just standing there. He thought that if he ran very fast, perhaps he could get out of the way before the cliff could fall on him. So Coyote let go of the cliff and ran as fast as he could. But when he let go, the cliff didn’t fall down after all. That was when Coyote knew Cottontail had tricked him.

This made Coyote very angry. “I will follow Cottontail’s trail,” he said. “The next time I see him, I will eat him up.”

And that, nawoj, is the story of the first time Cottontail tricked Coyote.

They stopped in front of an old two-story house along Speedway. “What’s this?” Myrna Louise asked.

Andrew reached in his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Run this inside for me,” he said. “They’ll give you another envelope.”

“But what is this place?” she asked again.

“It’s a rental agency,” he said. “They’re helping me find a place to live. I’ll wait here in the car. Give them this and tell them your name.”

Myrna Louise started to say that she was a lot older than he was, and if anyone was going to sit in the car, it ought to be her, but it didn’t seem worth starting an argument when the day was going so well. She got out of the car.

Inside, behind a counter, a young woman was busy talking on the phone. Myrna Louise grew impatient standing there because the receptionist was only talking to her boyfriend. While waiting, she looked around. Nothing indicated that this was a real estate office. Shouldn’t there have been signs, something that said what kinds of properties they rented?