She hesitated. “No, it is not. It is much worse. It is more … more barren.”
“You need not go back.”
Her eyes met his and shifted quickly away. So she had been thinking of that?
“How could I live?” she wondered aloud. “What would I do?”
“Your income is from them?”
“Of course. Anyway, I could not. I am watched. Everybody is watched. We are not trusted. If they knew of what we talk I would be taken back. I would be killed.”
“There is somebody who watches you?”
She shrugged. “Of course. I do not know who. I do not know how.”
“Is your house bugged? You know the expression?”
“Of course. I read your newspapers.”
“You must have income. You live well. How are you paid?”
“It is not like that. We are given gold, sometimes gems to sell. Nobody is paid, as you say it, except that those who work with me are given gold or money by me.”
“And how do you get yours?”
“It is brought to me from over there.”
“And you have no superior here? You said you were watched?”
She shrugged. “By someone, I do not know who. Sometimes messages come telling me to meet someone. I do not know how, but it is arranged. It was so I met the governor, several senators, and men in your army. Invitations came to me.”
He stood up. “Remember: forty-eight hours. Erik must be returned or I go after him.
“Think about it, Eden. You have a chance. You could move away from here, go to Washington, to Paris, London! You could be far from anywhere they could reach you. Help me and I shall help you. You could find happiness here.”
“I? I shall find happiness nowhere.” Her tone was suddenly bitter. “There is no happiness for me. Long before I could think, my way was made for me.” She looked at him suddenly, sharply. She was beautiful, really beautiful. “You have not guessed? I am a Poison Woman!”
XXIV
Mike Raglan drove away from the house of Eden Foster, watching his back trail. He did not like what he was learning nor want to believe it. The Indian people he had known were not like this, and he had known many in his younger years. What he had to realize was that these were not like any people he had known, and their reactions would be different.
Forty-eight hours! What scared him was that he had laid down an ultimatum for himself as well. If Eden Foster could not arrange Erik’s release within that time, he now had promised to go in after him.
Tazzoc was the man he must see, but how to find him? He had believed the man would come to him, stirred by his scholar’s curiosity, but Tazzoc had no way of finding him when he was away from the mesa. Hence, he must return, make himself available. Tazzoc could not only tell him about the Forbidden area but could also tell him how to come to him once he was inside.
No one, he remembered, was permitted to wander about within those precincts. Once inside, one had to go directly to one’s destination. After that …
He shivered. What the hell was he getting into, anyway? He loved this country. Being here again brought back all his old feelings for it. He knew exactly how Erik must feel.
He would live here himself, when he finally settled down. He loved this wide, beautiful land of desert, mountain, and canyon. In the old days, little time as he had spent here, he had made friends among both Navajo and Ute. An old Navajo medicine man had taught him about wild plants and their values as food or medicine. He had wandered the rough country with him, listened to his stories, and had developed a deep love for the country itself.
His thoughts suddenly returned to Volkmeer. Who would have dreamed that that tough old cowhand would become a wealthy man? It just proved one never knew. He was a tough old boy, and even in the days when Mike Raglan had known him, he owned a few head of cows wearing his own brand.
Well, that had been a start. He chuckled. What a fool he had been! He had believed he was enlisting the support of an old cowhand who would like to make an extra dollar helping a friend. And he was about to offer a deal for a few dollars to one of the wealthiest men in the state! Fortunately, he had not embarrassed himself by making his offer. Nevertheless, Volkmeer was the man he needed.
He returned to the motel, gathered together what he would need, and put it in the car. Then he drove down to the cafe and parked the car where he could see it. Gallagher was not around, so he ate alone, watching the street and thinking. He would drive to the mesa, look around, and hope for a meeting with Tazzoc. He would wait most of forty-eight hours and then he would drive out to meet Eden Foster.
When he left his car at the closest point to the ruin and let Chief out for a run, he saw nothing of Volkmeer. He had been hoping the man would be there, just for company. It was still bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky when he reached the ruin.
Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He went to the kiva and looked in. It was like any other he had seen—just a little better preserved, that was all. He shied from the window, but looked at it anyway.
Just a window, looking no different than any other. The trouble was, it was different!
He went back, picking up wood as he went, although there was little around. He broke some dead branches from a pifion, picked up a couple of pieces of cedar lying among the rocks at the mesa’s edge. Seeing several good pieces farther down, he climbed down to get them, and when he looked up, Tazzoc was there.
“I wait for you,” Tazzoc said. His tone was wistful. “We know so little. Our world is isolate. To the west is desert.”
“It has been explored?”
“Oh, no! It is forbidden. What lies beyond we do not know. The Hand says we are all. There is no more. To ask questions is not good, but we see old ruins, and some of us wonder.
“It is spoken that we live today, and we live tomorrow. What is past is finished and we do not look back.” He paused. “I am Keeper of Archives, once important. Now forgotten. I fear to speak or they might be destroyed.” His voice lowered and he looked from one side to the other as if fearing to be overheard. “I am forgotten, too, but I wish to know! I study our Archives, and so many questions arise! There is no one to whom I can talk, I—”
“You can talk to me, but are there no others? None like yourself, who wish to know? And to remember?”
“No doubt there are but they fear to speak. The Hand has listeners everywhere.”
He sat down on a slab of rock. “When I am gone there will be no other.” He looked up at Raglan. “Always there has been a son, but I have no son. The doors will be closed, the Archives forgotten.”
“We should have them. Such a record is priceless.”
The sun was warm on the rocks where they sat. “I think this is true, what you say. We who have been Keepers, we believe it is so.”
Tazzoc closed his eyes for a moment. “It is wonderful, your sun. So bright, so warm.”
“Yours is not so bright?”
“Oh, no! Not bright at all! Our sky is not what you say … clear?”
“About the Archives? Does no one come there? No one at all?”
“It is rare thing. Long ago many come—that was when The Voice spoke.”
“The Voice?”
“It was what you call oracle. A voice that spoke what was to be, and we stood silent to hear. The Voice ruled, The Voice foretold, and The Hand did what The Voice said. Then The Voice became unclear, and The Hand would explain what The Voice intended. After a while The Voice ceased to speak and we had only The Hand.”
“You say people used to come when The Voice spoke. Was there a connection between The Voice and the Archives?”
“The place of the Archives was what you call temple. A place in which to pray.” Tazzoc paused, looking around at him. “All men need moments of silence. All men need to pray, if it is only to speak to themselves in the silence, to formulate their desires, and to say to themselves what they wish to be. Some of our people believed in the old gods, some did not, but all needed to pray.”