Hour of the Hunter

pink nipple lay invitingly exposed before him, inches from his face and teeth. It was the fantasy feast Andrew Carlisle had always dreamed about from the time he began dreaming of such things, but it was something he’d only sampled once before in his life. The temptation to do it again was all too powerful.

Leaning down, he took the still-warm nipple between his lips and sucked on it thoughtfully for a moment. Then he bit it-hard, bit until the soft flesh gave way beneath his teeth and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He let it linger on his tongue for only a moment before he spat it out. It was far too salty. What Andrew Carlisle really wanted right about then was another beer.

Davy loved the drive to Ioligam, as Rita called the mountain that lay like a huge sleeping lion overlooking a broad, flat valley. Nana Dahd had explained that ioligam means manzanita, a low-growing desert brush that thrives on the mountain’s rocky sides. From a distance, the brush gives the mountain its bluish tint. Diana, however, always referred to the mountain by its Anglo name of Kitt Peak. Davy preferred Ioligam.

He liked the way the air seemed to clear and the sky turned bluer as they came up the slight rise near the shaded rest area and the turnoff to the village of Ban Thak where they would be going later for the feast.

“Tell me again why they call it Coyote Sitting,” Davy begged. “Do coyotes really sit there?”

Rita smiled indulgently. “Only in the winter,” she said, “when they tell one another stories.”

As they continued on, Davy took a keen interest in the crosses that dotted the roadside here and there along the way. Like Gina’s, many of them were now dressed up with vivid new wreaths and candles. In one place, four separate crosses were clustered together.

“Did four people die there?” he asked, testing the reliability of his newfound knowledge.

Nana Dahd nodded. “A car wreck,” she answered.

She had told him they would have to hurry to get to the gift shop on top of the mountain before the road closed, but when they turned off the highway onto the much smaller one leading up to Ioligam itself, Davy puzzled over what would close it. The road with its Open Range sign seemed straight enough, at least at first, and there was nothing wrong with the weather.

Davy knew, for instance, that during heavy rainstorms, running water could sometimes fill dry creek beds and washes and make roads impassable, but on this cloudless day, that seemed an unlikely possibility. He puzzled over the question as they wound their way up the mountain. A road closing for no reason seemed as mysterious as lighting a candle in broad daylight.

Finally, he broke down and asked. “Why will the road close, Nana Dahd?”

“Those men up there,” Rita said, nodding her head in the direction of the observatory buildings, which shone in the sunlight like so many white jewels clustered in a rough crown around the top of the mountain. “Those men who look at the stars through their big telescopes don’t like light. They say headlights from cars make it so they can’t see the stars.”

“But doesn’t I’itoi mind having all those white men living up there and making regular people stay away?” Davy asked.

The I’itoi legends were the Papagos’ traditional winter-telling tales. Elder Brother stories were told only during those months when the snakes and lizards were hidden away from cold weather. It was said that if Snake or Lizard overheard someone telling an I’itoi story, the animal might swallow the storyteller’s luck and bring him harm.

During the previous winter, while Diana Ladd was taking a graduate night course at the university in order to maintain her teaching certificate, Rita had entertained both Davy and herself by recounting all the traditional I’itoi tales she could remember. A few she had made up on the spot.

She had told Davy how in the old days Ioligam had been I’itoi’s summer home, the place he went to relax when he left his regular home on Baboquivari, another peak many miles to the south. She had told him how, when the Anglo scientists had come to the tribe and asked for permission to build their star-gazing telescopes on the sacred top of Ioligam, the tribal council had insisted that a special clause go into the lease that declared that all caves on the mountain belonged to I’itoi. They were sacred, and not to be disturbed.

Now, though, as Davy’s words slipped into her heart, Rita Antone realized that he regarded the Anglo scientists as different somehow, as a people apart from his own kind. For the first time, she wondered if she had done the right thing.

Nana Dahd loved her little Olhoni more than life itself, but had she gone too far? Did blond-haired Davy Ladd believe he was disconnected from “those white men” and their telescopes? Had she created an Anglo child who would always watch westerns on television and in the movies with an Indian child’s inevitable dread of impending defeat?

Rita Antone had wanted desperately to pass on her legacy of wisdom, knowledge gleaned from her own grandmother, a much-respected Ban Thak wisewoman. She had expected that wisdom to flow through her own son, Gordon, to Gina, her granddaughter. But Gina had been stolen from her, and during the terrible troubles that followed Gina’s death, Diana Ladd alone had been Rita’s constant ally. That was a debt that demanded repayment, and she was paying it back in the only wealth she had at her disposal.

When Olhoni was born, Rita had looked at the fatherless child and had known instinctively that Diana’s ability to mother the child had somehow been obliterated with the death of the child’s father. So Rita had stepped into the breach, taking on the role of godmother and mentor to the little bald-headed baby. She had been happy to find willing ears into which she could pour all that she knew. The old woman had lavished on Davy the kind of love Diana Ladd couldn’t wring from her own rock-hard heart.

At sixty-five years of age, Nana Dahd usually knew her own mind. She lived with a Papago’s stolid and abiding faith in life’s inevitabilities. This sudden attack of uncertainty caused new beads of sweat to break out on her forehead.

While Davy dozed contentedly in the sunlit rider’s seat, Nana Dahd struggled with her conscience. Down by the shrine where Gina had died, Rita had crossed herself and prayed to the Anglo God, to Father John’s God, her mother’s God, asking for His blessing on Gina’s eternal soul. But here, on Ioligam, on I’itoi’s sacred mountain, the Anglo God seemed far away and deaf besides.

“Ni-i wehmatathag I’itoi ahni’i,” she whispered, her voice almost inaudible beneath the groaning engine of the laboring GMC. “I’itoi, help me.”

But she wasn’t at all sure He would.

Chapter 3

At almost seven thousand feet, a brisk breeze struck their faces as Rita and Davy stepped down from the GMC. After the heat of the desert floor far below, the cool mountain air felt almost chilly.

In the sparsely occupied observatory parking lot, Rita left Davy to unload baskets while she limped toward the gift shop. A little blond-haired girl sitting on sun-soaked steps regarded the Indian woman curiously as she tapped lightly on the visitor center’s side entrance. At this hour, visitors inside would be watching a movie. Rita disliked walking past them on her way to the craft shop.

Edwina Galvan, manager of the shop, came to the door. Edwina, a Kiowa transplant to the Papago, had fallen in love with and married a young Papago fire fighter who now, as a middle-aged man, served as tribal-council representative from Ban Thak.

Even in her forties, Edwina’s classic Plains Indian features and good looks met and exceeded all the visiting tourists’ “real Indian” expectations. She augmented a stunning natural beauty with a varying wardrobe of antelope bone or squash-blossom necklaces that she wasn’t shy about removing and selling on the spot if a likely purchaser showed sufficient interest.

Since coming to the Papago and assuming management of the Kitt Peak gift shop, she had developed a reputation as a shrewd and knowledgeable basket trader, one with an unerring eye for superior craftsmanship. For years, the Kiowa woman had been Rita Antone’s sole customer.

Edwina smiled when she saw Rita’s broad weathered face waiting outside the door. “So,” she said. “If you’re here, it must be June. It’s sure a good thing. Your baskets are all gone.”