Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(26)
The first thing he saw was a waterfall, its suds sweeping down a mansion-sized husk of jagged stone that looked like an appendage of the land. The waterfall flowed into a pond lapped with light currents that glistened in the moonlight. It was a true Texas moment for him, one of those times when he happened upon something that reminded him of the state’s prehistoric beauty. It was what he missed most about going to college in the big, bad Northeast, where normally the only sights were people, and no journey to another destination brought any surprises with it. Dylan knew people around his age who were proud of the fact that they’d never left Texas, and moments like this made him wonder if they had things right.
White Eagle’s room-sized log cabin sat perched at the edge of the pond. Outside, in an elegant circular assemblage of stones and rocks, he’d built a fire, which was crackling and sending embers wafting off into the night. The breeze carried those embers out over the pond, where they cut slivers out of the moonlight’s shine for a moment, until the surface of the still water claimed them.
Dylan felt Ela take his hand, more a practical gesture than a romantic one, since the ridge trail was uneven and strewn with loose stone that could cause a bad misstep in the darkness. She tried to let go when the spray of the firelight reached them, but Dylan held on because he liked the feel of her grip, as soft as it was strong. He knew both Caitlin and his dad had their doubts about her, but they’d never seen her working with the kids born autistic or learning disabled, thanks to fetal alcohol syndrome. They didn’t appreciate the fact that a girl this close to graduating and getting to live her own life would put it all on hold because those kids needed somebody to give them the same chance Ela herself had gotten.
Dylan squeezed her hand tighter, spotted what looked like a cave high up in the rock face, just out of the waterfall’s reach, a doorway-sized opening accessible by a ledge wide enough to accommodate a man willing to walk with the stone face bracing his shoulder. He thought he spied a flickering, shadowy shape inside the mouth of one of the caves, until the moon slipped behind a cloud and it was gone.
Then a second structure in the clearing claimed his attention. He took it for an old-fashioned outhouse, except it was built of logs heavier and thicker than those forming the cabin. He spied what looked like a door latch brightening in view in the firelight, making him think it was more likely a storage shed. Except he thought he heard something clanging inside it, followed by the muffled exchange of voices. Before he could discern any words, a shape stepped out before Ela and him, seeming to take its form the night.
“Welcome, Granddaughter,” greeted White Eagle.
Judging by his face, maybe he really had been born in the nineteenth century. It was not skin so much as a dried patchwork assemblage of wrinkles and furrows, crisscrossing each other in a battle for space across his parchment-like flesh. His coarse, gray-white hair was clubbed back in a ponytail. He stood eye to eye with Dylan, his hunched spine and bent knees having stolen at least six inches from the height of his youth. He smelled of mesquite and pine smoke from the fire and boasted the whitest teeth Dylan had ever seen in a man.
“And this would be the young man you’ve spoken of to me,” White Eagle said, staring more through Dylan than at him. “You told me he was white.” The old man worked a finger through the night, in front of Dylan, as if he were tracing Dylan’s face in the firelit air. “You look Comanche. You have any Comanche blood?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You look Comanche, because you have the warrior’s glow about you. No stranger to death already, are you?”
“I’ve seen my share of it,” Dylan admitted.
“Your mother?”
“How’d you know?”
The old man did that thing with his finger in the air again. “It’s written on your face, plain as day for those who can read it. Looks clear as the words in a book to my old eyes.”
“We need your advice, Grandfather,” Ela broke in.
White Eagle turned his whole head toward her. “I’ve been watching you stand against the posah-tai-vo,” he said, looking briefly back at Dylan. “Means ‘crazy white man.’ Warrior’s blood runs through you as well, Granddaughter. The spirits have chosen well for my successor.”
“We can’t beat them, Grandfather. Everyone’s against us, even my father. He says our people deserve to enjoy the spoils of our land, that we made a mistake not building a casino or making cigarettes, like other tribes, when we had the opportunity. He says this may be our last chance to right this wrong.”
“And you don’t agree with him, Granddaughter?”
“I’ve studied what such deals have done to other tribes. Made them richer, but not better, while poisoning their land. The White man’s money is the devil, but the elders don’t see it that way. The elders believe we’ve suffered long enough.”
Dylan watched the old man nodding along with Ela, as if her words were a recording he’d heard already.
“This happened once before, you know,” White Eagle told them both.
“We heard a little about that today,” said Dylan.
White Eagle started forward, his feet sheathed in ancient moccasins shuffling atop the ground. “Then let us sit by the fire so I can tell you some more.”
21
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS; 1874