"Nothing's wrong," she lied. "Just restless. I think I'll go for a morning hike."
Ned started to rise. "Want me to go?"
Lucy pushed him back down. "No, it's your day off, cowboy," she said, as always both amused and flattered by his Old West gallantry. "Roll over and go back to sleep. Maybe when I get back we'll see if you've recovered sufficiently from last night's labors."
Ned lifted the quilt and glanced underneath before looking back at her with a mischievous grin. "I think I'm recovered just fine, ma'am," he said, allowing his eyes to take in her naked body as she sat on the edge of the bed. He made a grab for her, but she darted away with a giggle.
Just to tease him, Lucy made a show of stretching and at the same time looked at herself in the mirror. New Mexico had been good for her. She'd gained twenty pounds, having discovered an addiction to tamales and blue-corn tortilla burritos smothered in green pork chili. Every pound of it had been needed and all of it seemed to have settled in just the right places to give her a more womanly figure. The East Coast pallor that she'd arrived with had turned to a tan from spending a lot of time outdoors with Ned. Her face had filled out, too, which made the nose less noticeable, and she was a handsome, even beautiful, young woman.
Now Ned made a groaning noise, and she decided that she had better stop teasing him if she wanted to go for her walk. She quickly stepped into long underwear and wool socks, then pulled on polar fleece outerwear followed by a ski jacket until she was covered in warm things from head to toe. "I'll be back in a couple of hours, and you'd best be ready, pard'ner," she drawled with a western twang, which, given her abilities with languages, was right on.
"Count on it, ma'am," he drawled back as she opened the door and went out.
Lucy paused for a moment outside the door to adjust to the shock of the brisk December air, then walked quickly to the new Chevy F-10 truck her mother had bought for her after she returned from New York in September. As she walked, her boots squeaked in two inches of new-fallen snow and her breath puffed like a steam locomotive. She turned the ignition and the truck protested with a high-pitched squeal until it turned over and began to purr like a big circus cat.
A few minutes later, she was driving west toward the Rio Grande Gorge. With few other cars on the road, it seemed as if she had the entire high plains desert to herself-a white-blanketed, almost dreamlike landscape punctuated by lonely buttes and sudden gashes in the ground called arroyos that appeared suddenly in what had looked flat as a still pond.
By the time she reached the Taos Gorge Bridge, the longest single-span steel bridge in the world, the sky was just beginning to grow a shade lighter in the east. Once across, Lucy turned right, heading north along a four-wheel-drive track that paralleled the eight-hundred-foot deep gorge. At one point the road drew near the edge of the gorge and she had to look away. That was the place she and her mother had gone over the edge when the sheriff shot out one of their tires. Only the presence of a tree that grew from the side of the cliff had saved them from plunging to their deaths. Even then, the tree was giving way when Ned, who'd heard the shot from a distance and rode up on his horse, threw his lariat around her and pulled her to safety.
Of course, Grale would have said that she and her mother had been saved by divine providence. He would have pointed out that cowboys who rode their horses to the rescue of damsels in distress were a metaphor for the struggle between good and evil with the good cowboys-God's angels-triumphing in the end.
Again with Grale, she thought. He's dead. With an effort she turned her thoughts from the madman and the cliff's edge and toward a steep granite hill that jutted up and out over the gorge like a ship's prow.
A man stood on the edge, wrapped in a blanket, facing the east toward Taos Mountain. But she wasn't surprised; she'd expected to find him there.
John Jojola was another thread she suspected was part of the tapestry that connected her family to people like Grale. Even the Tighes and Lichners of the world, not to mention her father's latest and most dangerous adversary, Andrew Kane, were woven in and out, and without which holes would have appeared.
Lucy parked at the bottom of the path that led up the hill to the edge of the gorge. She walked up the path but paused below the summit, not wanting to disturb his reverie…or get too close to the edge.
"Good morning, Lucy," Jojola said after a minute. "Couldn't sleep?"
"No. Bad dreams," she replied.
Jojola was silent, his eyes fixed on the east as if it were somehow important to witness where the first ray of the sun would appear over Taos Mountain. He's looking for signs, she thought.
She knew from the times she'd spent with him, as well as conversations about him with her mother, that John Jojola was a man who believed that he could sometimes communicate with the spirit world. A trait, he said, that was not uncommon with his people, at least those who still practiced the old ways. It might be the appearance of an eagle where none had been a moment before, or a dream conversation with a coyote across a campfire. Sometimes it meant nothing, but other times the spirits, he said, would give him messages about the future-if he could discern what they meant-or guide him toward the answers to difficult questions.
Lucy was hoping he might impart some piece of ancient Native American wisdom, telling her not to worry about the dreams. But he just sighed and said, "Yeah, me too."
The resignation in his voice frightened Lucy. Outside her father, if there was a rock of a man in the world, he was John Jojola. As far as she could tell, he feared nothing, except maybe liquor. He'd returned from Vietnam a haunted man who'd lost his childhood friend, Charlie Many Horses, to a Vietcong leader he knew only by his Vietnamese nickname, Cop, the Tiger. He'd sworn to find and kill Cop, but the man had eluded him. Back in Taos, he'd turned to the bottle to quiet the ghosts of his friend, who was one of the spirits, as well as those of the many men he'd killed who haunted his dreams. Many Horses, however, had remained a friend and his advice was always helpful. Jojola's wife, herself an alcoholic, had left him and their son, Charlie, who'd been named for his friend. He'd sobered up and turned his life around for his son and immersed himself in the ancient ways of his people so that his son would know his heritage.
Jojola turned to face Lucy. Whenever she looked at him she thought of the sepia-toned photogravures by turn-of-the-century photographer E. S. Curtis of the western American tribes-the dark, searching eyes above the wide cheekbones and a nose that was even more beaklike than her own, although she thought of his as strong. His chest was barrel-shaped, his arms long and muscular. His bowed legs seemed too short for his torso, but she also knew from hikes with him that neither she nor Ned, who was no slouch, could keep up with him. And while they would be puffing and panting, he'd move effortlessly, his eyes constantly searching the ground and sky around him.
"So these dreams," he said, "is your friend David Grale in them?"
Lucy blinked but nodded. "Yes," she said. "And other men."
"Bad men."
"Yes…and…and my brother Zak."
Jojola nodded solemnly. "This takes place in a cave."
"You've had the same dream." It was a statement, not a question.
"Yes," he replied, then shrugged. "I guess. All dreams are different."