had once been Rattlesnake Skull Village. It was late in the season. Most of the other charcos on the reservation were already dry and would remain so until after the first summer rains came in late June or July. But no one ran any cattle near Ko'oi Koshwa. Without livestock to reduce the volume of water, Manny reasoned that he might still find water there-at least enough to get him the rest of the way to the highway.
Earlier, as Manny walked, he had heard and seen a four-wheel-drive vehicle making its way both up and down part of the mountain. Suspecting the people inside of being Anglo rock-climbers, Manny had given the tangerine- colored older-model Bronco a wide berth. He'd be better off on the highway, trying to hitch a ride in the back of an Indian-owned livestock truck, than messing around with a carful of Mil-gahn.
Now, though, as Manny approached the charco, he was surprised to see that same vehicle parked nearby. A man-an Anglo armed with a shovel-was digging industriously in the dirt. Manny may have been nawmki — a drunkard-but he was also Tohono O'othham, from the top of his sand-encrusted hair to the toes of his worn-out boots. The thought of this Mil-gahn blithely digging for artifacts on the reservation offended Manuel Chavez.
'Hey,' he shouted. 'What are you doing?'
The man with the shovel stopped digging and looked up. 'You can't dig here,' Manny said. 'This is a sacred place.'
For a moment the two men stared at each other, then the Anglo, who was much younger than Manny, climbed out of the hole he was digging in the soft sand. He came at Manny with the shovel raised over his shoulder, wielding it like a baseball bat.
There was no question of Manny standing his ground. He looked around for a possible weapon. Off to his right was a small circle of river rock surrounding a faded wooden cross, but the rocks were too far away and too small to do him any good. Turning away from the Mil-gahn's unreasoning fury, Manuel Chavez tried to run. He tripped and fell facedown in the sand.
The first blow, the only one he felt, caught him squarely on the back of the head.
David Ladd lay in the darkened hotel room waiting to fall asleep and grappling with the overwhelming fear that another panic attack would come over him and catch him unawares. The plague of attacks and dreams had left him feeling shaken and vulnerable. He knew now that another attack was inevitable. The only question was, when would it come? What if it happened while he was with Candace? What would she think of him then? He was young, strong, and supposedly healthy. This kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen to people like him, but it was happening.
At last, emotionally worn and physically exhausted, David Ladd fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Sometime later, he was jarred awake by the sound of a key in the lock and then by the opening door banging hard against the inside security chain.
'David,' Candace called through the crack in the door. 'Are you in there?'
Groggily, he staggered over to the door and unlatched the chain. 'It's you,' he mumbled.
Dropping several shopping bags to the floor, Candace stood up on tiptoe and kissed him. 'Who else did you think it would be?'
'I was just taking a nap,' he said. 'I'm still half asleep. I'll go take a shower and see if it wakes me up.'
'Sure,' Candace said. 'Go ahead.'
He had finished his shower, shut off the water, and was just starting to towel himself dry when Candace knocked softly on the door. 'Can I come in?'
'Sure,' he said, wrapping the towel around his waist.
Candace burst into the room wearing little more than a glowingly radiant smile on her face.
'Oh, Davy,' she said, throwing both arms around his neck and crushing the soft flesh of her warm breasts against his damp chest. 'I love it. It's absolutely gorgeous. And it fits perfectly. How did you know what size?'
For a moment or two, David Ladd didn't understand what was going on or grasp what she was talking about. Then, catching a glimpse of Astrid Ladd's ring on Candace Waverly's finger, he realized she had found it just where he had left it-on the nightstand table with his watch.
Crying and kissing him at the same time, Candace seemed totally oblivious to the droplets of water on his still-wet body. 'And the answer is yes,' she whispered, with her lips grazing his ear. 'Yes, yes, yes! Of course, I'll marry you, even if it means living in your one-horse hometown.'
Marry!At the sound of the word, David Garrison Ladd's legs almost buckled under him. For the length of several long kisses he was too stunned to reply. And by the time Candace's impassioned kisses subsided, it was pretty much too late. By then she was leading him back across the artificially darkened room to the bed.
Sinking down on the mattress, she pulled David down on top of her naked body, drawing him into her while her eager hips rose up to meet him. That wasn't the time to tell her that this was all a terrible mistake-that he had never planned to give her Astrid Ladd's ring in the first place. He did the only thing that made sense under the circumstances-he kissed her back.
Other than that, he kept his mouth shut. And after their lovemaking, while he was drifting on a pink haze, she snuggled close and kissed his chest. 'What a wonderfully romantic surprise,' she murmured. 'But I have a surprise for you, too.'
'What's that?'
Candace reached over on the nightstand and picked up a piece of paper. A check. 'What's that?' he asked.
'Look at it,' she said. 'It's made out to both of us.'
When he looked at it more closely, David Ladd's eyes bulged. It was a personal check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars, made out to David Ladd and Candace Waverly Ladd and drawn on a joint account belonging to Richard and Elizabeth Waverly.
'What's this?' David asked.
'A bribe,' Candace answered with a grin. 'For eloping. Daddy says it'll only work as long as Mother knows nothing about our engagement and hasn't had time to plan anything until it's too late. Once she gets wind of it and starts arranging things, the deal is off. He's already married off two daughters, and he doesn't want to do another one. And I don't blame him.'
'Eloping,' David Ladd echoed. 'What are you talking about? Us? When?'
'Today, dummy,' she said, snuggling under his chin and nuzzling his neck. 'Right now. I thought you'd catch on as soon as you saw all the suitcases. I have it all figured out. We can drive through Vegas on our way to Tucson and get married there. It's not that far out of the way. I already have a dress and everything.'
'What about your job?' David Ladd mounted one small but clearly futile objection.
'With Dad's firm? What about it? I got laid off,' Candace beamed. 'Yesterday afternoon. So not only do I get the time off, I can collect unemployment benefits, too. Isn't that a great deal?'
'It's great, all right,' David Ladd muttered while that post-coital pink haze disintegrated into a million pieces around him. He managed to infuse the words with a whole lot more enthusiasm than he felt, although 'great' wasn't exactly the word he would have chosen.
'And I love the ring,' Candace continued. 'It's gorgeous.'
'I'm glad you like it' was all David could manage. After all, what else could he say?
After making a quick trip down the Sasabe Road to take a report on a one vehicle/one steer accident in which only the steer had perished, Deputy Brian Fellows stopped off at the Three Points Trading Post to buy himself a much-needed Coke to get him through the rest of his long afternoon shift.
As summer heated up, daytime temperatures on the arid Sonoran Desert made working the night shift suddenly far preferable to working days. One of the local radio stations held an annual contest, offering a prize to the listener who successfully guessed the correct day, time, and hour when the 'ice broke on the Santa Cruz.' Loosely translated, that meant the day, hour, and minute the thermometer finally broke one hundred for the year. From that time on, from the moment daytime temperatures crossed that critical century mark until well into September, Brian, along with any number of other low-totem-pole deputies, found himself working straight days.
With school out for the summer, the trading post was full of ten or so kids-two Anglo and the rest Indian- milling around between the banks of shelves. Brian smiled down at them. The Anglos grinned back, while the Indians shied away. The deputy liked little kids, and it hurt his feelings that the Tohono O'othham children were frightened of him. Because he knew some of the language, he tried speaking to them in Tohono O'othham on occasion. That always seemed to spook them that much more. Was it the color of his skin? he wondered. Or was it
