Hour of the Hunter

but now cowardly tears sprang to his eyes.

“Don’t let him kill my mommy, Nana Dahd,” he sobbed. “Please don’t let him.”

“Quiet!” Rita ordered.

Davy was startled by the harshness in Nana Dahd’s voice. Never had she spoken to him so sharply. “Listen. Come help me with the medicine basket. I can’t get it out by myself.”

Davy scrambled over the priest’s prone form. He felt around Rita’s body until he located the medicine basket still hidden beneath the ample folds of her dress. The basket was too large to slip out without first unfastening some of the buttons.

“Hurry,” she urged as he struggled in the dark with the buttons and the slippery material. When the basket came free, it popped out and fell to the floor. “Find it,” Rita ordered. “Take off the lid and give me the owij.”

Davy groped on the floor until he found the basket with its tight-fitting lid still securely closed. After some struggle, he finally pried open the lid and fumbled inside until his fingers closed around the awl.

“Here it is,” he said.

“Good. Put it in my good hand, then come close. Hold your hands steady and as far apart as you can.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

For an answer, she poked at the twine around his wrists with the sharp point of the awl, the same way she had poked it through thousands of strands of coiled cactus. Pulled taut, the twine cut sharply into Davy’s wrists. The child yelped with pain.

“Quiet,” she commanded. “Don’t make a sound, Olhoni, no matter how much it hurts.” He bit his lip to stifle another cry.

“Once we are free,” Rita continued, “we must stand on either side of the door and be absolutely silent. When the door opens, the ohb will be there. He will expect us to be tied up just as he left us. When he does not see us, he will step into the cellar. I will try to hit him with my cast or stab him with the owij. We will have only one chance. You must not wait to see what happens. Like I said in the song, you must run somewhere and hide.”

“But what about you and my mother?” Davy whispered.

“No matter what happens, you must stay hidden until morning, until someone you know comes to find you.”

Looks At Nothing sat hunched forward in the speeding tow truck as though by merely peering blindly ahead through the windshield he could somehow remove all obstacles from their path. “How soon will we be there?” he asked.

Fat Crack was driving flat out, red lights flashing. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, not daring to take his eyes from the road long enough to check his watch. “Ten if we’re lucky.”

For a time, there was no sound in the cab other than the wind rushing through the open windows. “We will probably have to kill him, you know,” the old man said finally. “Before it’s over, one of us may kill the ohb. Have you ever killed before?”

It was a startling question, asked in the same manner Looks At Nothing might have inquired about the weather, but this was no rhetorical question, and it demanded a serious answer. “No,” Fat Crack replied.

“I have,” Looks At Nothing continued. “Long ago. When I worked in the mines in Ajo, I accidentally killed a man, another Indian. Afterward, there was no one to help me paint my face black, no one to bring me food and water for sixteen days. That is one of the reasons I’itoi took away my sight. If you are the one who kills the ohb, I will bring you food and water. If I do, will you bring it to me?”

As a child, Fat Crack had heard stories of how ancient Papago warriors who killed in battle were forced to remain outside their villages, purifying themselves by eating very little and by praying for sixteen days until the souls of those they killed were finally quiet. This was 1975. He was driving a two-ton tow truck, not riding a horse. After- battle ceremonies should have been a thing of the past, but they were not. Looks At Nothing was absolutely serious, and Fat Crack could not bring himself to deny the medicine man’s request.

“Yes, old man,” Fat Crack replied. “If you kill the ohb, I will bring food and water.”

Louella Walker left Toby’s bedside long enough to use the rest room down the hall. When she returned, she touched Brandon’s shoulder. Although his eyes were wide open, he jumped as though wakened from a sound sleep. She nodded toward the door, and he followed her into the hallway.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s a phone call for you at the nurses’ station.”

He seemed dazed. “A phone call? For me?” he asked vaguely.

She nodded. “Over there.”

Watching him go to the phone made her heart ache. He looked much as his father had looked years earlier- the same impatient gestures, the same lean features. But Brandon was almost a stranger to her. She had expended so much energy and concentration denying what was happening to Toby that she had totally lost touch with her son.

Putting down the phone, he turned back toward her with his face contorted by anger or grief, Louella couldn’t tell which. She wondered who had been on the phone. From his look, the news must have been as bad or worse than what was going on beyond the swinging door of her husband’s room.

“Brandon,” she said, reaching out to him. “What’s wrong?”

He pushed her hand aside and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said irritably. “It’s work.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Louella flared. “It isn’t nothing. It must be important. I can see it in your face.”

To her dismay, Brandon exploded in anger. “You’re right. It is important. Terribly important, but what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t be in two goddamned places at once!”

With her child of a husband far beyond help, Louella searched her heart for strength enough to once more be a mother to her child. “It’s all right, Brandon,” she said, giving his shoulder a reassuring pat. “You do what you have to. Your father and I will stay right here. We’ll be fine until you get back.”

As Davy’s hands came free, Rita’s heart overflowed with thanks to Understanding Woman for giving her granddaughter the owij, for teaching Dancing Quail to be an expert with it. There was no tool Rita knew better, nothing she had held in her hands longer.

At once she reached down and went to work on the twine binding Davy’s feet. It was important that he be totally free and capable of running, even if her own knots were still securely tied.

Breathing shallowly, the priest lay still, while no sounds at all came from the rest of the house. The ominous silence filled the old woman with misgiving. She knew some of what had been done to Gina, and she hated to think what that ho’ok, that monster, might be doing to Diana. Whatever it was, at least Davy wouldn’t see, not if he followed her directions and did as he’d been told.

The twine around Davy’s legs tugged free at last. Rita turned her attention on her own bindings. With one arm in a cast, it should have been much more difficult, but her craftsman’s fingers quickly learned the secrets of Andrew Carlisle’s crude knots, which melted apart beneath the probing point of her awl.

With Davy quaking beside her, Rita began to pray. First she addressed I’itoi, asking that the boy and his mother both be granted strength and courage. Then she spoke to Father John’s God, asking that the priest be spared from dying there on the root-cellar floor. Finally, to comfort herself as much as the boy, she took up the refrain of her song, crooning softly in the darkness.

“Remember what I say, Little Olhoni,

You must run swiftly and not look back.

That is the only way to help your mother.

That is the only way to help me.

Be like I’itoi, little Olhoni.

Hide in a crack and do not come out.”

“Get dressed,” he whispered in her ear, snapping her head back with a savage pull on her hair that loosened some of it from the roots. As tears sprang to her eyes, the ghost of an elusive memory fluttered briefly, but she