Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear Read Free Book Online

disease stalks your villages and ours, claiming us one by one. Where once children laughed, and young women smiled at youthful men, only silence and ruin remain. The bones of corpses litter empty kivas, their sightless skulls grinning in the darkness.
    “I and my party believe in Poor Singer’s prophecy. Because his promise is the only way to save our world, Matron. This war between the Flute Player’s warriors and the Katsinas’ People must be stopped or we will all be destroyed.”
    Blue Corn cocked her head. As the long moments passed, only the distant cry of the crows could be heard as they scavenged the refuse dumps behind the villages. Finally, she asked, “You know I do not approve of the katsinas. Why would you ask this of me?”
    Gray Thunder lifted his chin. “You let the Katsinas’ People come here, allowed them to rebuild the great kiva at Dusk House. Why would you do that if you were not at least tolerant of their beliefs?”
    “To see if it worked, young Gray Thunder. It didn’t. No opening to the underworlds appeared.” She chuckled. “You know that we’ve been killing each other. Warriors loyal to the Blessed Flute Player have destroyed whole
towns of Katsinas’ People. If the Katsinas’ People are defeated, dead, and but a memory, perhaps we can have peace again.”
    “Can you? With clans turning upon themselves and killing their own? Cousin against cousin? Brother against brother? How do you heal that kind of hatred?”
    “How would you, Fire Dog?”
    “By relating Poor Singer’s vision as it truly was, Matron!” Gray Thunder tapped his muscular chest. “The truth must be spoken. I am here to speak it. In Poor Singer’s words lie all of our salvations!”
    “It is an age of madness.” Blue Corn spread her arms. “And, that being the case, I am mad enough myself to see what would come of your silly mission. I will give you and your party shelter, Gray Thunder, and send a runner to find the new Matron of the Katsinas’ People. If she will see you, I will grant safe passage. If not, you may go in peace. But a party of my warriors will follow you to make sure you leave our territory.”
    Santa Fe, New Mexico
    “So, what do you think?” Dusty Stewart asked as they walked out into the frosty Santa Fe evening. He buttoned his coat and exhaled to watch his breath.
    “I think those are the best enchiladas I’ve ever eaten.” Maureen tucked her coat tightly about her middle and watched a big Ford Expedition roll down the narrow street. Santa Fe, it seemed, favored either opulent and shiny SUVs or battered pickups. She tucked her bison-hide purse to her side with an elbow and sighed, breath frosting in the air. Across the street, two Halloween party-goers—dressed in costume as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush—staggered down the sidewalk, arm in arm.
    She glanced back at the Pink Adobe restaurant. “All through supper I was thinking that this building was
constructed at a time when my ancestors were still living in longhouses and had just met Europeans. Of all the North American cities I’ve ever been in, Santa Fe is the most remarkable.”
    “It is that,” Stewart agreed as he led her to the Bronco. His blond hair and beard shone in the streetlights.
    She opened the sprung passenger door, climbed in, and looked around at the packed truck, the back filled to the roof with screens, coolers, and carefully labeled boxes full of artifacts from their recently completed dig at Pueblo Animas. A smart person ignored the floor, covered as it was in empty beer bottles, fast-food wrappers, and the detritus of a field archaeologist’s existence.
    She had been called down from her physical anthropology lab at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, by Dale Emerson Robertson. Dale needed her help to excavate a burned kiva filled with the charred skeletons of children and two butchered adults. Pueblo Animas would haunt her dreams, her mind’s eye replaying what those last horrible moments must