When all the mud men were alive,I'itoi gathered them together and showed them where each tribe should live. The Apaches went to the mountains toward the east. The Hopis went north. The Yaquis went south. But theTohono O'othham- the Desert People-were told to stay in that place which is the center of things. And that is where they are today,nawoj, my friend, close to Baboquivari,I'itoi's cloud-veiled mountain.
And all this happened on the First Day.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, Gabe Ortiz climbed into his oven-hot Crown Victoria, turned on the air- conditioning, and sat there letting the hot air blow-dry the sweat on his skin. He loosened his bola tie and tossed his Stetson into the backseat, then he leaned back and closed his eyes, waiting for the car to cool.
All the back-and-forth hassling was enough to make Gabe long for the old days, before the election, when most of his contacts with the whites, the Mil-gahn, had been when he towed their disabled cars or motor homes out of the sand along Highway 86 and into Tucson or Casa Grande for repairs.
Why was it that Anglo bureaucrats seemed to have no other purpose in life than seeing that things didn't happen? Delia Chavez Cachora was a fighter when it came to battling the guys in suits, but even she, with her Washington D.C.-bureaucrat experience, had been unable to move the county road-improvement process off dead center. Unless traffic patterns to the tribal casino could be improved, further expansion of the facility, along with expansion of the casino's money-making capability, was impossible.
Delia was bright and tough-a skilled negotiator whose verbal assertiveness belied her Tohono O'othham heritage. Those traits, along with her D. C. experience, were what had drawn Gabe Ortiz to her during their first interview. He was the one who had championed her application over those of several equally qualified male applicants. But the very skills that made Delia an asset as tribal attorney and helped her forward tribal business when it came to dealing with Anglo bureaucracies seemed to be working against her when it came to dealing with her fellow Tohono O'othham.
Gabe had heard it said that Delia Chavez Cachora sounded and acted so much like a Mil-gahn at times that she wasn't really 'Indian' enough. She was doing the proper things-living with her aunt out at Little Tucson was certainly a step in the right direction-but Gabe knew she would need additional help. He had developed a plan to address that particular problem. Delia just didn't know about it yet, although he'd have to tell her soon.
Davy Ladd was a young man, an Anglo who had been raised by Gabe Ortiz's Aunt Rita. A recent law school graduate, Davy was due back in Tucson sometime in the next few days. By the time he arrived, Delia would have to know that Gabe had hired Davy to spend the summer months and maybe more time beyond that working as an intern in the tribal attorney's office.
Gabe thought it would be interesting to see how Delia Chavez Cachora dealt with an Anglo who spoke her supposedly native tongue far better than she did. Not only that, Gabe was looking forward to getting to know the grown-up version of his late Aunt Rita's Little Olhoni.
Next to his ear, someone tapped on the window. Gabe opened his eyes and sat up. Delia herself was standing next to his car, a concerned frown on her face. 'Are you all right?' she asked when he rolled down the window.
'Just resting my eyes,' he said.
'I was afraid you were sick.'
Gabe shook his head. 'Tired,' he said with a smile. 'Tired but not sick.'
'Are you going straight home?' she asked. 'We could stop and get something to drink.'
'No, thanks,' he said. 'You go on ahead. I have to visit with someone on the way.'
'All right,' she said. 'See you Monday.'
As she walked away from the car, Gabe noticed she was stripping off her watch and putting it in her purse. When Gabe had asked her about it, she had told him that on weekends she tried to live on Indian time; tried to do without clocks and all the other trappings of the Anglo world, including, presumably, the evils of air conditioning, he thought as she drove past him a few minutes later with all the windows of her turbo Saab wide open.
Gabe put the now reasonably cool Ford in gear and backed out of his parking place. Instead of heading for Ajo Way and the road back to Sells, he headed north to Speedway and then west toward Gates Pass and the home of his friends, Brandon and Diana Walker.
It wasn't a trip Gabe was looking forward to because he didn't know what he was going to say. However, he knew he would have to say something. It was his responsibility.
'Brandon?'
Over the noise of the chain saw, Brandon hadn't heard the car stop outside the front of the house, nor had he noticed Gabe Ortiz materialize silently behind him. Startled by the unexpected voice, Brandon almost dropped the saw when he turned around to see who had spoken.
'Fat Crack!' he exclaimed, taking off his hat and wiping his face with the damp bandanna he wore tied around his forehead. 'The way you came sneaking up behind me, it's a wonder I didn't cut off my leg. How the hell are you? What are you doing here? Would you like some iced tea or a beer?'
Now that he was tribal chairman, Fat Crack was a name Gabe Ortiz didn't hear very often anymore, not outside the confines of his immediate family. The distinctive physiognomy that had given rise to his nickname was no longer quite so visible, especially not now when he often wore a sports jacket over his ample middle. The dress-up slacks, necessary attire for the office and for meetings in town, didn't shift downward in quite the same fashion as his old Levi's had. Still, he reached down and tugged self-consciously at his belt, just to be sure his pants weren't hanging at half-mast.
'Iced tea sounds good,' Gabe said.
The two men walked into and through the yard and then on inside the house. With the book fresh in his mind, Gabe looked around the kitchen. It had been completely redesigned and upgraded since the night of Andrew Carlisle's brutal attack. The wall between the root cellar, where Rita Antone and Davy Ladd had been imprisoned, had been knocked out, as had the wall between the kitchen and what had once been Rita's private quarters. The greatly enlarged kitchen now included a small informal dining area. The cabinets were new and so were the appliances, but to Gabe's heightened perceptions a ghost from that other room-the room from the book-still lingered almost palpably in the air. The damaged past permeated the room with evil in the same way the odor of a fire lingers among the ruins long after the flames themselves have been extinguished.
Acutely aware of that unseen aspect of the room, Gabe looked at the other man, trying to gauge whether or not he noticed. As Brandon bustled cheerfully around the kitchen, he seemed totally oblivious. A full pitcher of sun tea sat on the counter. He filled glasses with ice cubes from the machine in the door of the fridge, added the tea, sliced off two wedges of lemon, and passed Gabe the sugar bowl and a spoon along with the tall glass of tea and a lemon wedge.
'How are you?' Gabe asked. Spooning sugar into his tea, he was thankful Wanda wasn't there to tell him not to.
Brandon shrugged. 'Can't complain. Doesn't do any good if I do. Now to what do I owe this honor?' Brandon sat down across the table from his guest. 'Not some hitch with Davy's internship, I hope. He should be leaving for home within the next day or two.'
Gabe took a sip of tea. 'No,' he said. 'Everything's fine with that.'
'What then?' Brandon asked.
The two men had been friends for a long time. Fighting the war with Andrew Carlisle and living through the courtroom battles that followed had turned Brandon Walker and Gabe Ortiz into unlikely comrades at arms. And their political ambitions-Gabe's within the tribe and Brandon's in the county sheriff's department-had led them along similar though different paths. Gabe had stood for election to the tribal council for the first time at almost the same time Brandon Walker took his first run at Pima County sheriff. Both of them had won, first time out.
With Gabe working in the background of tribal council deliberations and Brandon running the sheriff's department, the two men had managed to create a fairly close working relationship between tribal and county law enforcement officers. Gabe's elevation to chairman had happened only recently, after Brandon Walker had been burned at the polls and let out to pasture. With Brandon Walker no longer running the show at the sheriff's department, the spirit of cooperation that had once existed between Law and Order-the Tribal Police-and the Pima County Sheriff's Department was fast disappearing.
'Is Diana here?' Gabe asked.
Frowning, Brandon looked at his watch. When he left office, they had given him a gold watch, for Chrissakes. He hated the damn thing and everything it symbolized. He wore it all the time in the vain hope that daily doses of
