Glory cried out in alarm.
9
HOWARD WAS ALREADY in position to fire, his .45 in one hand, his flashlight in the other, illuminating the figure that had come out of the desert. It was no glowing-eyed monster, just a gray-haired old Indian man in a headband, carrying a lantern, a very wolf like German shepherd at his side.
“Hold it right there!” called Howard. “What do ya want?”
“I am here to help you,” said the old man.
“Help us?” Howard replied. “What the hell can you do that we can’t?”
“Bob,” Glory whispered in a chastising tone. “Be civil, at least.”
The old man seemed entirely unfazed by the gun, as if he knew it was empty. He smiled, and said, almost in a chant, “The hatted bear has a temper. The pale fish is sensitive. The red horse is full of passion and nurturing.” He swept his arm, indicating the desert. “Tonight the animals were walking in their sleep, and I came out to wake them up.”
“To which animals are you referring?” asked Lovecraft. “The three you’ve just mentioned or those that kept us hostage?”
“Tonight all the animals were sleepwalking. I have been waiting for you. Come to my home, and we shall talk about why you are here.”
“I say you just go back the way you came,” said Howard, jerking his pistol. “We had enough trouble as it is. How do we know it wasn’t you, huh? With that Injun mumbo jumbo. Keep that wolf of yours away from us.”
“The pale fish man,” said the old man, his voice very patient. “He carries a thing that brings evil. He carries a thing that was hidden in the mind of a holy Kachina, and now it has no protection. He comes from the seashore to the desert to ask the bear for help, and the two friends have found the red horse woman at the home of the lion man. I have known this for many years. And I have known that you will come with me. So come to my home and we shall talk.” He said some thing under his breath, and the dog pounded off into the darkness.
“Who are you?” said Lovecraft.
“I am Imanito Shakes-the-Gourd.”
“You a witch doctor?” asked Howard. “A medicine man?”
“Yes. I am a healer of those who are sick.”
“We ain’t sick.”
“You are injured. You are having evil dreams. You are sick.”
“You gonna heal us?”
“No,” said Imanito. “I can only tell you a story that will help you heal yourselves.”
“Figures,” said Howard.
“Please, I have been waiting many years to help you. I have prepared my role. I can even help you repair your automobile.”
“It ain’t broke, so it don’t need fixin’,” said Howard. “The car’s fine. Just needs a good washin’ to get all the blood and guts off. You got water out there?”
“I will gladly help you wash your car.”
That seemed to please Howard, and now, although Lovecraft and. Glory expressed their misgivings, he was agreeable to following the old man. “How can you just accept his story?” Glory whispered. “Especially after what you’ve been through today?”
While the old man waited with his lantern, Howard made his way to the front of the Chevy to close the hood. “Everything bad’s given me a bad feelin’,” Howard replied. “This old Injun gives me a good feelin’.”
“That’s hardly enough to base an important decision on.”
“God damn!” Howard exclaimed, leaning into the engine compartment, one hand still holding up the hood.
“Bob?” Lovecraft appeared with his flashlight.
“Shine it down here, HP.”
When Lovecraft turned the beam of his flashlight down to the earth, Glory saw that the ground was dark with water. Drops were still falling from somewhere under the hood.
Howard twisted off the. radiator cap and cursed again. “Must have been the snake,” he said. “We got a punctured hose, and I ain’t carryin’ enough spare water to make up for this.”
“Mr. Imanito said he had water,” Glory offered.
“You would almost conclude he had sent the animals himself,” said Lovecraft. “But you’re right, Bob. He gives me a good feeling also.”
“More likely it was that bucktoothed bastard back at the gas pump in Thalia that did it,” said Howard. “But it don’t matter. We need water now.” He turned to the old man. “We ain’t walkin’ in the dark and gettin’ bushwhacked, so climb in. There’s enough water to get to your teepee.”
“I think the proper term is ‘hogan,’ ” said Glory. “Mr. Imanito is a Navajo. Mr. Imanito?”
“Yes, I happen to live in a hogan. But my people are closer to the Hopi.” He climbed into the backseat with Glory, balancing his lantern carefully between them.
Howard started up the Chevy and eased it forward. “I thought all the Hopis lived in Arizona,” he said. “Ain’t never heard of any in New Mexico. This is Navajo country.”
“That is true,” said Imanito. “I do not live among my people at the moment because I have been awaiting you.”
“Stop the bullshit, old man.”
Imanito smiled. “Come to my home, and the bull will give you many more droppings.”
Howard looked momentarily puzzled at this unexpected response, but then he broke into a grin. “Well,” he said, “what are we waitin’ for then? Which way?”
Imanito gave directions from the back. There were no real turns to make after he looked once out the window and established their bearing by the stars. From the front seat, Lovecraft confirmed the old man’s sense of direction based on his own long experience as an amateur astronomer, something he pointed out to Imanito. Once Howard got accustomed to steering around the few shrubs and cacti in their way, it was slow but steady going.
“So who are your people?” Lovecraft asked. “I am especially intrigued by the existence of an ancient elder race of Indians in this region.”
“I dwell among the people whose name comes from ‘Hopitu,’ which means ‘the peaceful people,’” said Imanito. “They have remained peaceful, and they have kept the old ways because they are keepers of the old stories.”
“The Hopi are the only tribe that kept to the pueblos,” said Glory. “They hold to the purest form of pre-Columbian life in North America.”
“You’re sounding rather like a professor,” said Lovecraft. “Is primitive societies a topic you studied in college?”
“No. I met an anthropologist once while I was working one of the oil towns. He talked a lot. Studying for his Ph.D. exams.”
Imanito’s eyes glinted with amusement. “Most of my people live on three mesas north of what you call Winslow in Arizona. We have only a dozen villages left, and the old ways are dying.”
“My impression was that sagacious old men of the Indian tribes were rather taciturn,” said Lovecraft. “And they usually refer to their own people as ‘we.’ ”
“There is little time and there is much I must tell you,” Imanito said, avoiding the implied question.
“Why didn’t you write it down for us if you’ve been waiting all these years?”
They had little sense of distance in the dark without landmarks, and they reached their destination before they knew it. Imanito’s home loomed ahead of them so suddenly it seemed to have sprouted out of the earth. What the headlights illuminated in the middle of nowhere was a hogan, but a decidedly odd one, constructed of adobe brick, mud, twigs, wood scraps, and what appeared, against all logic, to be driftwood. They climbed out of the car. Howard left the engine running and went with Imanito immediately to fetch water.
“Now that is decidedly odd,” Lovecraft said to Glory. “Shouldn’t they shut the motor off if it is in imminent danger of overheating?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”