People like him. Nonwhites, so long as they were not Apache. Or perhaps men of any race who had bathed and were not drunk. Ayatas tilted his head, wanting clarification. “You charge more to feed a white man?”
“Cowboys are always drunk and causing trouble, so they pay more. You have a problem with that, I can charge you more too.”
“No.” Ayatas waved one hand between them, as if to wave away the smoke of a fire. “Cornmeal bread and three eggs with beans. Yesterday’s, please.” He pulled the necessary change from a pocket that held little and gave the coins to the baker.
“Coming up.”
“Thank you, baker of bread.”
“Name’s Mrs. Lamont.” She shut the door in his face.
Ayatas sat on the stoop to wait and to think about women and their power in the world. They were often weak because of childbirth and because of the blood they shed each month to bring life. But when they were no longer burdened with children, they were stronger than any man. The baker, Mrs. Lamont, ran the only place for many miles where the men ofthe land could go to buy bread. The baker would be a woman with influence and power in the town, even though the male leaders would not know it. His mother and his grandmother had been such women of power. He had been gone from Indian Territory many years. He did not know if they still lived, but he remembered the lessons he had learned at their feet.
The door opened and Mrs. Lamont handed him a tin plate wrapped in a frayed cloth. Ayatas took the offered food and bowed his head. “Thank you, Mrs. Lamont.”
“Leave the cloth on the hook by the door and the plate on the step when you’re done. The chickens’ll peck it clean.” She shut the door, and Ayatas sat back on the stoop. He ate with his fingers, and the food was delicious, filled with salt and spices and red peppers. When he was done, he wiped his hands clean on the cloth, hung it on the hook, and placed the pan on the stoop. As soon as he did, four laying hens and a small rooster raced out from beneath the house and attacked it, pecking at each other as often as at his leavings.
Hunger satisfied, Ayatas decided to look over the town. It was the biggest place he and his fire woman had been to since they went to San Francisco. He had been lost there. Surrounded by wealth and filth, amazing things to buy, countless new things to eat, many different ways to live, and dead men lying in the streets. He never wanted to go back. He and Etsi stuck to the smaller settlements where she could gather information and send it to the newspaper that paid her half pennies for the words she sent in. The stone-and-adobe town of Agua Caliente was small and cleaner than most places white men lived. Someone here knew how to build a decent latrine, and the abundance of hot water meant clean people and clean clothing. The hot springs meant wealth would come.
A prospector riding a mule, leading a heavily laden donkey, passed him at a slow walk, tin pans tied to the pack on long tethers, clanking softly. A woman wearing a starched blouse beneath a well-mended waistcoat and full skirts swept by him, carrying a satchel. A cowhand lay in a pool of vomit in a small alley, his pockets turned out. Three children passed, faces clean, clothes mostly so, metal lunch tins dangling, heading for school. He passed the church, its shutters closed; the saloons, which stank of piss, alcohol, and vomit; the site of the inn, walls rising asstonemasons and bricklayers were already at work, trying to get as much of the day’s construction completed as they could before it became too hot to labor. They would sleep in the heat and return to work in the cool of evening.
He had the layout of the town in his mind, a mental map that told him where the wealth was, where the power was, and where the poor and the victims were. He returned to the inn and sat in the street to wait, as was expected of people of his race. Fortunately, a small screwbean mesquite tree had grown up, and it cast some shade.
“Are you sleeping, Aya?”
“Dreaming of you, myIgohidv Adonvdo.” Ayatas didn’t open his eyes but let a small smile cross his face.
“And if I had not been alone and you had been overheard?”
“The white men in this town would have dropped me into tar and then rolled me in the feathers of Mrs. Lamont’s chickens. I would have shifted into my jaguar to heal. And then I would have killed them all.” He opened his eyes and smiled up at her. Her face was no longer as taut as when he first met her, her eyes not quite so brilliant blue, her hair not so fiery, but she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Though she always wore a hat, her face was tanned and lines fanned out from her eyes. She smelled clean again, and her hair was down in a long braid. “Beautiful woman, such torture would have been worth this single vision,” he murmured.
“Oh, pish.” But she blushed like the girl he remembered. “Come. Walk with me. What have you discovered? The wind told me you have been out and about for half the night.”
Her magic was the power of the air, and it would have told her. Ayatas stood, his body long and lean, lithe as the day he left the tribal lands. He took his place a little behind her, his hands behind his back. Etsi wore her dark blue dress and matching short jacket with a white shirt. She carried a matching dark blue parasol and wore a wide brimmed hat against the sun. Her gloves had been washed overnight and were nearly white again. Her leather shoes scuffed the earth, and her skirts swung with the motion of her strong legs. She smelled of the blue flowers she loved, lavender.
Etsi said that barring accident, she was likely to live to one hundredyears of age, which meant that if he could keep her safe, they might be together for many years. While he... Skinwalkers didn’t age as others did. He still looked like a young man of twenty years.
Speaking softly, he told her about the men at the baths. About the captive woman and her vile husband. He described the Peacock Saloon and the location of room seven. He shared about Mrs. Lamont. About the workers and the inn. Described the ranch and the town to her.
“Dreadful,” she murmured when he was done. “But it will make a wonderful story.”
His Everhart woman sent in stories of the Wild West to the newspapers of the east, using the name E.V.R. Hart, stories that were a strange mixture of truth and lies and were called fiction. When the newspapers published her stories, Etsi made much money. E.V.R. Hart had been approached by a publisher about writing a novel set in the Wild West, and she had begun the story. His best memories were the two of them at the fire at night, while she read the day’s words aloud.
“Did you hear the name of the rancher’s wife?” she asked.
“He called her Amandine. His name was Jessup Turner.”
“Interesting names for the owner of Carleton’s Buckeye Springs Ranch. I postulate that Amandine’s father owned the ranch, and when he died, he willed it to his daughter. And when she married, the husband assumed ownership. Let’s take a walk out toward the ranch before the sun is too hot so that I might visit my dear old friend Amandine. Then perhaps I’ll stop by Mrs. Lamont’s bakery and ask some questions.”
“Perhaps,” Ayatas said, amused.
“You have your gun?”
“It is strapped to my leg inside my pants, hidden beneath my shirt and scarf.” Ayatas wore his shirt outside his pants in theTsalagiwarrior way, tied with a scarf that could double as a turban, and could be tied about his neck when he shifted shape, so he might carry his clothing to dress in when he shifted back. Today, he wore boots, which they had purchased in San Francisco, but his moccasins were tied in his scarf, and his skinwalker necklace was tied around his neck, strung with the teeth and bones of predators. Should he need to shift, to fight, or heal, he could choose from among several big cats, a gray wolf, and a large boar. He preferred thejaguar. The cats were strong and swift, though rare in the desert. As they walked, the heat continued to rise, and sweat trickled down his spine and darkened Etsi’s clothes.
—
It was near ten a.m. when they reached Carleton’s Buckeye Springs Ranch. The house was long and lean, with thick adobe and stone walls and narrow windows that kept out the heat. There were arches in the Spanish style around the wraparound tiled porch and plants in large clay pots. He called to the house, and when the door was opened, he stepped into the shade and passed the small child the business card of his Everhart woman. The card summoned a small, pretty, dark-skinned woman in an apron who told them that Mr. Turner was out on the range.
