Free The Summoning God: Book II of the Anasazi Mysteries by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear Page A

the ladder, and left you.”
    He gestured with his teacup. “There is one other important thing. Remember I told you about the girl? While the woman was arranging the hides and weighting them down with the ladder, I heard the little girl’s voice.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She called the woman ‘Mother.’”
    “You mean you think there were two women last night? Working together? One trapped you while the other occupied my attention?”
    He ran a hand through his hair, squeezing out the water. It cascaded down the collar of his elkhide coat. “It could have been one woman, I suppose, but that means she would have had to hide her daughter somewhere while she distracted you.”
    “Maybe she sent the girl up the western trail with instructions to
hide in the forest. After I left, the woman could have gone to find the child and run away.”
    Browser finished his tea, set the cup down, and pulled a strip of jerky from his pouch. As he ate, his eyes searched the rain-drenched forest. Juniper branches trembled in the wind, rattling like old bones, and the rich pungent fragrance of wet cedar enveloped them. His gaze roamed the tufts of cloud on the distant hilltops.
    “I think I’ve told you everything important,” he said, and looked back at her. “Now. What of your night? The wounded woman crawled up and told you I was in the kiva. What else did you see?”
    Pale blue flames danced at the base of the largest log. Catkin focused on them, remembering: “I spent a good deal of time examining the mummy. I think they forced her to walk through fire, Browser. She had burn scars on her feet and legs, and her toes were gone. At first, I assumed someone had cut them off, then stanched the blood with fire. But”—she shook her head—“it would have taken more than that to cause such hideous scars. I think they made her walk through fire until it burned off her toes and roasted her legs.”
    Irritated, he said, “What does that have to do with Aspen village?”
    She shrugged.
    He propped his sandal on one of the warm hearthstones and gestured with his jerky. “Remember everything you can. Matron Flame Carrier will wish to hear the details when we return.”
    Lightning flashed right over their heads and they both hit the ground on their bellies, their clubs in hard fists, ready to strike the first thing that moved. Rain dripped into Catkin’s eyes.
    When the Thunderbirds flew away, Browser got to his knees and gave Catkin a disgruntled look. Mud coated his chin and the front of his coat. He said, “We should leave before we kill each other by mistake.”
    She pulled herself up and brushed at the mud on her cape. “If we run straight through, we might make it home before dawn tomorrow. Perhaps Matron Flame Carrier and the other elders will understand these things better than we do.”
    Determination lit Browser’s eyes. “On my souls, Catkin, I will gather the village elders as quickly as possible to ask them. I will find the answers.”

7
    T HE HOT WIND WAS UNUSUAL FOR THE MIDDLE OF OCTOBER, bearing with it the smells of sage, dry earth, and the tang of coal dust from the Four Corners power plants. Showers of yellow leaves blew from the cottonwoods and spiraled away in the murky river current.
    Dusty stood chest-deep in the kiva, balancing precariously on the uneven footing. Beside him, Steve Sanders stopped and wiped sweat from his ebony face. He had doffed his shirt a little before ten; now, at two-thirty, the temperature had reached the high eighties. Mud mottled Sanders dark skin and accented the rippling muscles in his back and shoulders.
    “Gimme a hand, boss,” Steve called, bending down to grasp a protruding rock.
    Dusty found a grip and levered the big square chunk of sandstone from the ground. Together, he and Steve tossed it up into the wheelbarrow four feet above their heads; it landed with a hollow clunk.
    “Charcoal,” Dusty said, squinting down into the hole left by the rock. He looked around the