“The trouble is a man wouldn’t know how to act over yonder. In this country there’s so many foreigners and strangers we don’t pay them much attention, but in a place like that …
“How would you get food, for instance? Do they have eating places? Or do they eat at home? What would you ask for? If you went over there you wouldn’t even know the names for things or where to go to find out anything.”
Raglan agreed, then added, “The cliff dwellers lived by farming. The Hopi are very skillful dry farmers, and the Hohokam had extensive irrigation projects. So, unless there was some drastic change, the Anasazi probably continued to develop as an irrigation civilization, and most such develop very rigid governments. Somebody has to control the water so it can be evenly distributed, and that calls for authority.”
“What about this evil they talk about? They say the Third World was evil.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. What is evil? Our conceptions of evil are a result of Judeo-Christian ethic, but their conceptions of evil may be entirely different. The Maya and the Aztec, who were probably kin to these people, indulged in human sacrifice on a grand scale. If you go over there you might find yourself stretched out on an altar.”
“That’s for you, Raglan, not me. I’ve my own work to do.”
Long after they slipped into their sleeping bags, Mike Raglan lay awake, listening.
Listening and thinking. The night was very still and cold, and although he heard nothing outside, he heard Chief growl deep in his chest. Yet the big dog did not rise, so the danger, if anywhere except in his dreams, was not close.
At dawn he was out of his sleeping bag and making coffee when Gallagher came in from outside. “Been looking around,” he commented. “Took a look at that kiva.”
“It’s more than I’ve done. I’ve been shying away from it.”
“Can’t see anything through that window,” Gallagher said. “Might be anything in there, and it’s right on the edge of the cliff thataway—”
“The dog went through. I suppose Erik did, too, but I don’t know.” Raglan paused. “Gallagher? Do you know this country right close around here? A canyon with a lot of trees?”
“Are you kidding? This isn’t tree country except for some cedar and an occasional cottonwood in the bottom of a wash.”
“If that kiva offers an opening to the Other Side, it is an opening right into their hands, but according to what I’ve heard there are other openings, and one of them is a canyon with trees. I’m going to have a look.”
“I got to get back to town.” Gallagher reached for the pot. “For heaven’s sake, take care of yourself. All I need is another guy disappearing around here.”
They drank coffee and talked; then Gallagher got up and started back to his Jeep. When he reached it he turned and looked back, hesitating as if reluctant to drive away. Then he got in, swung his car around and headed back toward the highway.
Raglan stood listening to the sound of the motor until it died away, then turned back to the ruin. He put together a small pack, checked his gun, and called Chief. “Come on, boy, we’re going for a walk.”
On the old canvas map, No Man’s had pointed like a gigantic finger. Pointing at what?
The way was rough, but he took his time, glad he had hiking boots rather than the western boots he usually wore. He walked around one of the red rock domes and then down into the gully beyond. He had to pick his way with care, for there was much loose rock and the solid rock was uneven. A “hole” in western lingo might be any basin, hollow, or even a canyon, and over here somewhere was something of the kind. Several times he paused to look around, to choose his way but also to see if there was anyone following him.
He saw nothing—only an eagle high against the sky, only a lizard that darted into the shade of some brush. It was a world of silence, with no sound but those made by his own passage. Across the river and stretching off to the south was No Man’s Mesa, huge, ominous, mysterious. He worked his way down a precarious sandstone slope. Any misstep might send him pitching down a hundred feet or more. A broken leg out here alone could be the end of him. He paused near a juniper and crushed a leaf in his fingers, liking the faintly pungent smell, listening to the song of a canyon wren. There was no other sound.
He worked his way, Chief sometimes following, often leading, down a steep canyon wall. He glimpsed the bright-green of foliage that indicated the presence of water, but it needed another hour of hard clambering and climbing before he was within sight of the trees.
They were there, all right. At first only a clump was visible, but when he reached the edge of the canyon he could find no way down. The canyon wall bulged outward and there was no edge. To walk farther out was to fall off. For an hour he worked his way along, seeking for some break in the wall down which he might work his way. There was none.
Occasionally he glimpsed trees down below, and once he thought he caught the gleam of water. Finally, he made camp under a rocky overhang, gathered wood for his fire, and prepared a camp for the night. A good-sized cedar shielded his fire from observation, although the reflection against the back wall might be seen.
There was considerable deadwood lying about and he gathered enough for the night, most of it cedar washed down the canyon from higher up. As the crow flies, he doubted he was more than two miles from the ruin and its kiva, but even with the flashlight he carried he had no desire to try to cross that rough country in the dark.
A coyote spoke inquiringly into the night, and somewhere out in the darkness, a rock loosened by one of the many natural causes, fell into the canyon, bounding from ledge to ledge. Only a small rock, but one more item in the continual change wrought by frost, rain, sun, and wind.
He had only a small fire, and he did not lie down but leaned against the backwall, a blanket around his shoulders. He dozed, added fuel to the fire, and dozed again.
The night waned, the moon arose, flooding the canyon with ghostly radiance. The towering spires above the canyon wall took on shadows, and he let the fire die down to red coals, adding just enough fuel to keep them alive, with an occasional bright-yellow flame as the new fuel was attacked. The wood from the cedar smoke smelled good, and he thought how often cedar had been used, in many countries, for sacred ceremonies. He himself had watched a medicine man waft smoke over tribal elders with an eagle’s wing to purify them before an important conference.
He took cedar bark and added it to the fire, and then, suddenly, as his hand reached out to the fire, it stopped, arrested in movement by some small sound, a sound not normal to the night. Chief also sensed its presence.
Something, far up the narrow canyon, had moved in the night. Something that was not a rock falling or a wind stirring the junipers. It was something alive.
Alive? At least something that moved, alive or not. Something that came nearer in the night, something carefully moving, something approaching, something that tried to make no sound.
He was seated well back in a corner of the rock, not easily visible, his fire a few feet away, the shadow of the cedar looming large before the cave, but with openings on either side. He could see a star over the rim of the rocks opposite.
The coyotes had ceased their chatter. The night was still, waiting, and now he heard no sound.
Under his blanket his fist gripped a gun butt, but what use was a gun against a ghost? Yet, did ghosts make small whispers in the night? Something brushed against brush; something ceased to move, something that was looking, peering, trying to make him out, the small light from the fire making the finding of him more difficult.
His shoulders were against the rock. One hand held the blanket edge, the other the gun.
XIX
“May I speak?” The voice was low, not unpleasant.
Raglan waited for several seconds, then said, “Come forward, into the firelight. Come very carefully.”
The man was tall, with high, thin shoulders and a scholar’s face. He wore a turban, small and tight-fitting, and a sort of robe gathered at the waist by a broad leather belt. On his feet he wore hard-soled moccasins. He carried no weapon that Raglan could see.