Excerpt 1:
The Bilagaana woman’s eyes were wide and staring, and even if she wasn’t a ghost-witch Haastiin Sani thought maybe she was crazy. Only someone crazy would have been out here alone in the dark and the rain. Crazy people must be treated with care, and the same for ghost-witches. It didn’t help to make them angry.

He looked at the woman, considering. 

She was trembling now, as if cold, but witches and crazy people both were known to be clever. The sooner he saw her off the better, and he jerked his chin toward the direction of his camp and motioned the woman to follow. He would show her every hospitality and then gently nudge her on her way.

She looked somewhat better when he gave her a cup of hot coffee and offered the frybread his daughter had left for him, inviting her with a nod to take it, and tears came into her eyes as her lips and chin began to tremble. 

Very much like a normal person, but it could be a ruse to cause him to relax his vigilance so she could blow corpse dust over him. He busied himself with the fire and wished fervently to be rid of this evil.

Marin knew she made this man very uncomfortable, and she thought she even knew why, considering where and how he had found her, but she didn’t know how to relieve his fears without making things worse.

“Thank you,” Marin murmured to the old man. “Ahéhee’,” she repeated. 

She studied the man on the other side of the fire. His face was seamed and wrinkled, his frame was tall and spare beneath the loose shirt of red cotton tied with a woven sash. His gray hair was worn long, and there was a turquoise bead woven into a strand of hair near one temple. 

A hogan was built higher up the slope, a blanket hanging across the eastern door, and an empty sheep pen was tucked into a rocky cliff a short way from it. A handsome bay horse wearing a rope halter stood nearby, sheltering under overhanging boards propped between a few corral poles and the cliff. 

She looked around for the sheep she knew must be somewhere close by, and the dogs, but they weren’t in sight. She didn’t see any sort of vehicle either, or any other person besides the old man, watching her surreptitiously.

The old man cleared his throat suddenly, and she flinched, startled, but instead of speaking, the old man rose to his feet and walked toward the corral. 

She stood as well, thinking he meant for her to follow, but he gave no sign, and she paused. 

Passing Marin without word or look, he ducked under the hogan’s blanket door, emerging a moment later with an ancient-looking saddle, a bridle, and a thick saddle blanket woven in red and black yarns.

Silently, he began to saddle the horse, smoothing the blanket across the horse’s back and throwing the saddle over, pulling the cinch tight. He put the bridle on last, settling the bit into the horse’s mouth before reaching to adjust the braided ear straps. Without looking at her, he walked back, thrust the reins towards Marin, and spoke for the first time.

“You go now,” he said, and pursed his lips, pushing his chin toward the east.

Marin opened her mouth to object to taking his horse and slowly closed it again. The old man was giving her a way to get down the mountain, and she had no wish to bring trouble to him if Tolliver managed to follow her here. 

She took the reins.

Haastiin Sanii grunted and stepped away toward the fire, and Marin tied her jacket to the saddle, surprised when he returned and pushed the remainder of the frybread into her hands. 

“Over there,” he said, pointing again with his chin, “is a good way down.”

She waited for any more words the man might offer, for he seemed to be listening and thinking carefully, but he said nothing. He slapped the horse on the rump and stepped away.

“You go now,” he repeated.

Marin mounted, then turned in the saddle. “I’ll leave the horse at a trading post below,” she said.

Haastiin Sanii shrugged, relieved, as he watched her ride away. She was someone in a lot of trouble or someone bringing a lot of trouble, but he had done the best he could. 

He looked down at his sash and fingered the gun he had found beside the spring, then looked down the trail at the woman on his grandson’s horse. He wondered if she knew a flashflood was coming and if she knew enough to stay out of the canyon.

He shrugged again, figured a ghost-witch would know and a crazy person wouldn’t care.

 

Excerpt 2:
The wheels of the big Chevy truck came to a sliding halt beside Marin’s small sports car, churning sand and scattering rocks, and Bud Tolliver stepped out before the vehicle came to a full stop, a flashlight in his hand.

He spoke to Cecil as he slammed the truck door.

“She’s got to be close by,” he said. “Probably hiding in the rocks.” 

He leaned into the driver’s window of Marin’s car. “Keys are gone,” he said and reached to flip open the glove box. “She must have her wallet and phone on her. She’s hiding alright.” 

“Or running,” Cecil said.

Tolliver swore and started for the rocks a few yards away, and Marin lay unmoving in her hiding place, trying to silence the sound of her own breathing.

“Get the headlights on those rocks, Cecil.” 

“Bud, listen. We’ve got what we wanted. She’s off the main roads, she’s alone, there’s nobody out here to help her. There’s no way she can make it back to the highway with us watching the road. Let’s let it go, come back at daylight.”

“Let it go?” Bud turned and spat into the sand. 

“Look around, Bud. Where’s she gonna go? We’re miles from anywhere and our instructions,” he paused and repeated the words, “our instructions were to keep her out of Shiprock.”

“Maybe my instructions were more explicit than yours,” Bud said. 

“Nothing was said about hurting her,” Cecil insisted.

Tolliver laughed. “Who’s going to hurt her? We’re just going to hold on to her for a while.”

“Is that what was going on today, Bud? You were just holding on to her? You got us mixed up with the Navajo Police, and that wasn’t part of either of our instructions!”

Bud took a quick step toward Cecil and pushed him against the door of the truck. “I need your help, Cecil, but not so much that I can’t do without it,” he said. 

Marin didn’t move, her heartbeat loud in her ears. A drop of sweat ran across her nose and into one eye, but she didn’t move, and she heard her small car’s hood slam shut a few minutes later. 

“Make sure you got the coil pack,” Tolliver barked, and her heart sank at the loss of the car. “I don’t want her going anywhere when she decides to come out of hiding. We’ll come back at first light. With any luck, she’ll freeze to death.” He lifted his voice into a shout, and the hair rose on Marin’s arms.

“We know you’re out here, in the dark, on foot, alone. Alone!” he yelled. “You hear me? Alone!”

Marin heard him. His words echoed long after she heard the Chevy truck start up and drive away, but she remained still, shivering, afraid of a trap. 

All remained quiet, the normal nighttime sounds of the desert resuming around her, and gradually she began to believe she was alone. It was time to think of more immediate matters, like getting through this night…

It was slow going, walking cross-country in the dark, and she vowed never again to be without a flashlight. When she walked into the branches of a small juniper tree, she stopped, defeated, deciding to wait for the moon to top the mountains. She slid down against the tree trunk and wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself for warmth and singing quietly under her breath.

“…gazing at the moon ’till I lose my senses…” but the words reminded her of Vangie, and she let the song die away. 

She pulled her jacket tighter, lonely and homesick—no family to miss her or wonder where she was…lost, cold, and alone.

Suddenly the full moon appeared, floating up and over the rainclouds in the eastern sky until gradually the clumps of sage and the gnarled branches of the juniper tree were washed in its silver light. She could see to walk now, but she sat for a minute longer, staring at the moon as it rose higher, the rabbit clearly visible, tilted to one side. 

She was like that rabbit, perpetually struggling to stand upright, trying to find an even surface in an unfair world. Tonight, she was as vulnerable as any rabbit fearing the whoosh of wings or the pad of clawed feet. 

She fingered the gun Tolliver had left in her jacket pocket. 

Maybe not quite that vulnerable, and she stood, pulled Edison’s red cap down tight, and walked into the mountains.