The Tail of the Arabian, Knight, page 12
“It’s spooky,” she said after a full minute of staring.
“I noticed. Nothing moves but the grass.”
She sat on a flat-topped rock and draped her hands over her knees, her knapsack between her legs. Staring at the ends of the ladder tied to thick stakes, she seemed to Lincoln suddenly more Indian than Anglo, and when she saw his look, she grinned.
“I was going to tell you before, back at the arroyo, but we were interrupted. My mother and Peter were the reason my father eventually divorced her. After Loraleen was born, they weren’t supposed to have any more children. Then I came along, right after they came out here on vacation. It took her husband three years to get up enough courage to throw her out for consorting with the natives.” A laugh, bright and without regret “She was a lot like Loraleen, if you can imagine it.”
“So Peter did the proper thing and married your mother.”
She nodded. “He has this ridiculous sense of right, if you know what I mean. I was their kid, Mother was without a husband, so it followed that I had to have a father, the real father. Peter also had the ranch, which didn’t hurt.”
The stake ropes creaked, and Wolf’s head popped out of the hole. “Greetings from the underworld,” he said.
Lincoln helped him, and said, “How’d you do it so fast?”
“Skill, tailor. Skill.”
Lincoln looked at his hands rubbed raw, brushed them slightly on his jeans, and picked up his pack. “Well, I’m using the road on the way down, let me tell you that now. So let’s get moving. I don’t think I want to be up here all night.”
Wolf agreed, and led them across the ceremonial field to a raised mound on the far side. There was a hole in its center, with the top of a ladder poking into the air. Wolf pointed. “It’s down there, in the kiva.”
“Kiva?”
“A chamber where the priests would go to fast and find their visions. No one else but them was allowed down. Anyone who tried was asked to take a giant step off the edge.”
Lincoln nodded, peered into the hole, and saw nothing but darkness. “I suppose your cultural heritage forbids you to go down there even now.”
“Hell, no,” Wolf said. “That’s how I found the chest. But it’s too heavy for me to carry up alone. You’ll have to come down with me. Annabelle can wait here.”
“Chauvinist,” she accused, but neither did she argue.
Wolf took the ladder quickly, and Lincoln followed. It was too dark to see once they’d reached the bottom, but he didn’t want to look around. Here, as well as up above, he could feel the dead and their sublime disapproval. The chest was at the ladder’s foot, and though they almost dropped it several times in the hauling, they were back up in less than ten minutes. Neither looked at the other; there was no need.
“So,” Annabelle said briskly. “This is it, huh?”
It looked like a pirate’s chest to Lincoln as he knelt beside it, running a hand lightly across its rusted iron bands, the chips and gouges in the age-darkened oak. The rounded top seemed to have taken a number of blows from a sharp instrument, as though someone had tried to open it long before the Konochine vanished. The lock was heavy, and run through with a stout chain. He tugged at it experimentally, then reached into his pack and pulled out his gun. “Hey,” Wolf said, backing away, “that’s not one of the Mantos’.”
“Right,” he said, standing and moving to one side. “I prefer my own fun, thank you.” And he fired twice, three times before the chain fell away and the lock unsnapped. But before the others could move in, he turned the gun on them and smiled. “I also prefer my own company sometimes. At least then I know where I stand.”
“Lincoln!” Annabelle gasped.
“This isn’t funny,” said Wolf.
“No,” he said readily, “but what is funny is how I always seem to be almost but not quite getting killed. I mean, it’s really awfully strange, don’t you think?”
“Lincoln,” Annabelle pleaded, looking fearfully at the gun.
“Now you see, I know the Manto family, and I know damned well they aren’t as incompetent as they have been on this little tour here—unless something shorted out in their genes along the way, which wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t think that’s the case. So on the way up I did a little thinking to keep my mind off my possible demise. You want to hear it?”
Annabelle shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again, then dropped onto one of the steps and spread her hands in confusion. Wolf, on the other hand, remained where he was.
“Briefly,” said Lincoln, “I figure it this way—Peter here discovers the legend of Knight in the stories of his people, knows the trouble Farren has and how gullible he is for anything that would help him save his life. So he lets on about it, convinces Farren it has to be found, and convinces him as well that yours truly ought to fetch it. Yours truly gets roped into it, you’ll excuse the expression, and contributes his back to the affair because Peter was right, that chest is a bitch to move around.”
“No,” Annabelle said. “That’s silly, Lincoln. Peter didn’t have to go through all that. He knew where it was. He could have gotten one of the hands to help him move it.”
“Oh no,” Lincoln said sadly. “No, he couldn’t. Because the Mantos didn’t want just one of the hands. They wanted me.”
“Mantos?” Annabelle said, looking to Peter.
“To be honest,” Lincoln said, waving Wolf back with the gun, “I didn’t figure it out until just a few minutes ago. I think, you see, what threw me is that Peter suspects there’s more in that chest than a horse’s tail.”
“Mantos?” Annabelle said.
“Farren said it was woven together with gold thread and baubles. Knowing the Arabs, my guess is those baubles are worth a fortune.” Wolf kept backing up.
Lincoln beckoned Annabelle, had her grab the other end of the chest’s rounded lid, and lift.
“See, the horse’s hair would be probably long gone, even out here in the desert. But what would be left—”
The lid screeched on its iron hinges, fell back with a dust-raising thud, and Annabelle licked her lips as she looked cautiously inside. “Not bad, huh?” he said, glaring Wolf into freezing.
“Lincoln.”
“I’m sorry,” he said truthfully. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Lincoln.”
“What now?”
“Look.”
He did.
“Well, son of a bitch,” he said. “Damnit, Annabelle, you didn’t tell me about this.”
FIFTEEN
Annabelle gasped in wonderment as Lincoln reached into the chest and pulled the object out. Wolf took an involuntary step forward, stopping only when he saw the barrel of Linc’s pistol remind him of his status.
“Lincoln, it’s real!”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it.”
“My god, it’s really real.”
He held it by the end that was bound and braided into a tight, almost wood-hard grip six inches long, scarcely believing it himself. The rest of it, nearly three feet of it, was a complex spiraling of fine gold thread and Knight’s intense black hair, and spaced regularly throughout were dozens of red stones. Rubies. Of all sizes, all of them polished, all of them flaring as the sun struck them. The color of the gold itself was deep, almost sullen, and cold when he ran a light finger down its length.
“I didn’t believe it,” Annabelle said quietly, leaning close and squinting, a hand out and drawn slowly back. “All this time, and I never really believed it.”
Lincoln said nothing. He could see that both were quite understandably mesmerized by the talisman’s beauty and strangeness, but he could not tell them about the sudden curious feeling that had crept into his hand and along his arm. It was much like the faint tingle of electricity, much like the deep thrumming of a powerful underground machine reverberating through one’s soles, and it was like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was power, a power that made him instantly and silently ask for Upshire’s forgiveness.
Without a single shred of proof, he was convinced that it would do everything the legends claimed.
He held it higher, level with his face, and saw that the gold was not simply spun and entwined about the strands of hair, but faceted as well by some artisan’s skill long since forgotten. The facets mirrored the rubies, mirrored the sun, and masked the shadows he also saw lurking deep within it. It took no imagination to see how powerful Abadar had been in his times, and how much of that magic had been invested in his mount. It must have been, he thought, one hell of an animal.
“Lincoln?”
He blinked away the near trance that had infected him, and struggled to keep himself from grinning like a fool. “Yes?”
“Now what?”
He looked at Wolf, who had taken a seat on a rock and was watching him calmly. “Now we go back down, get back to the airport as fast as we can, and take this thing to your uncle.”
“Oh.”
He frowned at the tone of disappointment in her voice. “You have a better idea?”
“We could sell it,” she suggested offhandedly. “Can you imagine what some museum would pay for this? Or some rich private collector? I could … we could be independently wealthy by the end of the month.” She smiled dreamily. “Think of it, Lincoln, just think of it. No more shoveling out stables, no more tacos, no more worrying about whether the air-conditioning is going to break down and fry you in your bed.” She looked up at him and sighed deeply. “Oh, brother.”
“Sure.”
The wind came up then, warm and dry, and the gold sparked, the rubies red as the tail turned slowly in his hand, back and forth, its colors reflecting on their faces, on the ground, in their eyes.
Suddenly, he snapped his arm down and held the tail behind him. Annabelle gave a small cry of despair, then staggered back as if she’d been struck. Her hands covered her eyes briefly, and lowered. Wolf rose, hands in his pockets.
“Gee,” she said. “God, that’s strong medicine.”
He took a deep breath and blew it out in stages, lowered his gaze to the tips of his boots and shook his head. No wonder that priest had been so influential, and had been so brutally murdered when he could no longer heal because the Konochine wouldn’t let him have his talisman. The damned thing was like a cobra just waiting for its victim to look into its eyes. The idea of that latent power now began to frighten him, and he quickly placed it back in the chest and slammed the lid shut.
“Do we leave now?” Annabelle asked.
“Eat first, leave second,” he said, kneeling to open his knapsack. “And somewhere in there we’re going to have to find something to cover that thing up or we’ll be wandering around like zombies. We can’t take the chest, it’s too heavy, and we can’t have it hanging out where everyone can see it.”
“Okay,” she said, and knelt beside him, pawing through her own sack to find the sandwiches she’d made that morning. When she held one up triumphantly, he took it, opened it, and offered her a silent toast with baked ham and cheese. She grinned. He grinned back.
And Peter Wolf leaned over the chest and rested the barrel of a gun softly against Linc’s temple.
“Bang,” he said. “You’re dead.”
“No,” Lincoln said as he laid his own weapon on the ground beside him, “I’m stupid.”
“Maybe,” the Indian said agreeably, “but right now you’re still alive, so don’t tempt me to revert to the barbaric nature of my ancestors.”
He gestured, and Lincoln backed away from the chest into the middle of the ceremonial plaza. Annabelle stood where she was, hands limp at her sides, and he wished that she would finally make up her mind whose side she was on. All this uncertainty was making him a nervous wreck.
Wolf dug into his knapsack and pulled out a length of rope which he threw to his daughter. She caught it, surprised, and was even more surprised when she was ordered to tie Linc’s hands and feet. It was apparent that the man didn’t consider her to be on anyone’s side but her own and wasn’t about to trust her. Linc admired his caution and deplored his sense of timing.
Wolf stood over her, then, while amid a spate of apologies and a few random but applicable curses, she bound his wrists, looped the rope around his ankles and effectively prevented him from doing anything but lying there on the hot, dusty grass. After she was finished, Wolf grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the kiva. Linc turned to watch, just in time to see the man clip her alongside the head and dump her into the underground room. Then he pulled up the ladder and dragged it to the mesa’s rim, balanced it, and tipped it over with a gunhand salute. When he was assured it wouldn’t stop until it reached the desert floor, he walked over to the chest and opened it.
“Hell of a way to treat your own daughter,” Linc said.
Wolf shrugged. “She won’t die. She’ll find a way out, or you will, and you’ll get down. Besides, she’s too much like her mother. I didn’t much care for her, either.”
“Then why did you marry her?”
“She had a lot of land, Mr. Blackthorne. A lot of land. You may not think that’s much, but this poor dumb Indian doesn’t have a college education. That’s sort of limiting when you’re trying to make it in a world that doesn’t want any part of you.”
“That’s awfully cold thinking, Peter.”
“That’s realistic, Blackthorne. Now why don’t you just relax and think of a way you two can get out of your mess.”
“You’re pretty sure we will, aren’t you?”
“You’re clever, Mr. Blackthorne. You’ll find a way.”
“And when I do?”
Wolf took off his shirt, dropped it over the talisman, and picked the bundle up again. “Then all you have to do is find the road and hitchhike.” He smiled. “Just stick out your thumb and show your legs. No problem.”
Wonderful, he thought; the man’s a Claudette Colbert fan.
He looked up at the sky, then, ducking his head away from the blinding blue and the white-hot sun. It was just close to noon, and all the shadows in the pueblo had retreated to the crumbling walls. Perspiration had already drenched his shirt and turned his hair into a skullcap, and though his gaze then fixed on the mouth of the kiva for several long seconds, he could hear no sound from within. With a minimum of effort, Wolf proceeded to pick up the weapons, close the chest, and make sure the knapsacks had been tossed far out of reach. He disappeared for a while behind one of the buildings, and Lincoln took the opportunity to test Annabelle’s knots. They were perfect. When he attempted to stretch the rope, he felt as if his wrists were going to be shredded and his ankles torn from his legs. That, he thought, is what you get when you get involved with a cowgirl.
Wolf returned, picked up his shirt, and walked to the ladder. Using the sleeves, he tied the bundle around his waist, stuck his gun in his belt and started down.
“Hey, Peter!”
Wolf paused, his expression amused.
“What if the Mantos didn’t make it?”
“What if they didn’t?” he said. “They’re not the ones who want the tail, anyway.”
“Tremain?”
Wolf nodded.
“And you know where he is.”
Wolf nodded again.
“You going to give me a hint?”
Wolf laughed, hummed a few bars of “O Canada,” and disappeared. The rope creaked and groaned against the stakes for a long time, and Lincoln couldn’t help but stare at them, willing them to pry loose from the ground, praying that the rope would fray and eventually snap. But the movement gradually slowed, and he lost track of how much time passed before there was no movement at all.
Wolf was down, and the talisman with him.
Canada, he thought; that sonofabitch was still alive, and still in Canada.
A puzzled frown creased his brow. That didn’t make much sense. Tremain Manto was not known for sending others to do his work for him. Especially not his kin. Either Wolf was trying to throw him off the trail, or there was yet something else nobody had told him about this whole mess.
A resigned shrug as best he could under the circumstances. And why shouldn’t there be something else? Why should things be easy now?
Nuts.
Damn.
He turned then, and puffed his cheeks, checked the sky again in case there was a miracle storm on its way, and looked as best he could over his shoulder at the way Annabelle had trussed him. A sigh for her efficiency, and he rolled over until he was facing the kiva’s mound. He called, listened, and shook his head at the wind as it gusted across the mesa, moaning in the ruins, raising brief clouds of smoky dust that seemed too much like the ghosts he’d imagined when he’d arrived. A second call, and he cursed the wind when he thought he heard a faint reply.
A cloud drifted across the sun. It was white, thin, and served only to set a temporary haze in the air.
“Lincoln?”
His eyes closed in relief. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” It was eerie, that voice deepened by the mouth of the kiva, given a slight echo because of the chamber’s size. “Are you going to get me out?”
“Annabelle—’”
“It’s dark down here, and my head hurts.”
“Annabelle, listen, I—”
“Boy, you just don’t know your own parents sometimes, you know it?”
He tried rolling closer so he wouldn’t have to shout, but the rope burned into his wrists, and he hissed at the pain.
The heat intensified. He heard a faint buzzing in his ears.
“Lincoln?”
“Annabelle, I can’t help you, for heaven’s sake.”
“Why? Are you still mad because of the lamp?”
“No, because you tied me up, that’s why.”
“Oh.”
He shifted again, wincing at a stone that dug into his hip. A glance around the plaza, and he found himself staring at the ruined building Wolf had visited before he’d left. He wondered if the man had rigged a trap of some sort back there, ready to go off the moment either of them managed their escape. But there was nothing to see but the weather-pocked walls and the high weeds growing at the base, and he decided to ignore it until he was, in fact, free of his bonds.
