Arroyo

Chapter One

Texas 1893

Ramona turned her head just in time to avoid busting her nose in the dirt when she fell. The side of her face took the brunt of the spill instead, setting her teeth rattling. "Madre de Dios, proteger tu nino," she gasped, spitting blood. For a moment she was eye to eye with a horned lizard. It raced across her head and over her back as she shuddered, helpless with her hands bound as they were.

Though he had been far ahead in the arroyo, striking a path through the boulders and cactus, in no time the Rajput was back pulling her up to her knees, jabbering at her in some alien tongue, and shaking her to death. His fierce black face stared into hers. He was very angry.

But suddenly he laughed. It was an ugly sound made uglier by his sneer. The Mexican woman sprawled at his feet had a wooden Indian chained to her back. She looked like she carried a large, obstinate child who refused to get off after a piggyback. And even after that fall she was gamely crawling away from him. He stopped her with a vicious jerk of her chain.

Daniel caught up to them while the Englishman gloated. Wouldn’t be too pleased with myself, Daniel growled at the turbaned princeling while looking to the east. We’re going the wrong way. He gave the wooden Indian a cursory glance while he waited for his traveling companion to process this information. Ramona didn’t merit his attention this very minute.

What? Sinjin McIntosh Narendra reluctantly tore his gaze from the panting woman and took a good look at their surroundings. He stood in a draw, a dried-up riverbed that stretched to either side of him farther than he cared to walk. Small boulders and shrubby thorn plants were its main features, apart from the dust and dirt.

Foppish, foolish and comical he’d been called many a time, but Narendra had never felt stupid until now. He couldn’t tell one part of the American West from the other. He’d ordered Ramona to take them west toward California. Were they in New Mexico right now, or was it Texas?

Where are we, you witch?

"If you kick me again, señor, I’ll cut you. Te voy a castrar," she hissed.

Struggling to stand and failing, she glared up at him with blood in her eyes. He watched with mouth hung open and astonishment on his face, but quickly the Rajput in him rose up. With what? He sneered and grabbed at the sword in his belt. Do you mean this little knife? he asked, whipping it out and settling it near her throat.

Sinjin whirled the blade around between his hands for show while she kept still, then seeing no threat in her, he carefully looked at the barkeep Daniel who was turned away from them. Daniel also was harmless. He replaced his blade reluctantly.

Seeing that, Daniel sidled up to him and spoke. Better get out of this riverbed. I’ll help you pull her out. Here, he said, squatting at the girl’s head and reaching for her shoulders. Damn it. Take the chains off her or get down here and pick her up, he ordered.

Narendra snapped to attention like the British soldier he was, but then he looked down on her and forgot himself. Ramona Cervantes no longer bore any resemblance to the beautiful Mexican girl he had captured in El Paso months ago. The long, lustrous black hair that was her crowning glory now hung in greasy clumps tangled in the chains draped along her back.

Ah, he said, finally, sadness in his voice at the change in his prize. Get back. I’ll take care of her.

Then when Daniel didn’t move, Narendra leaped forward. I said now, you white trash cracker! He kicked up red dust from the arid earth until it got in his eyes. In another minute he’d be waving his ridiculously decorated sword again.

At this point the Rajput was truly dangerous, and Daniel knew it; he pulled his hands off the girl immediately, as if she were piping hot. Then with his yellow hair dangling in his face, Daniel lumbered away from the pair. He didn’t dare go too far. As he used his dirt and sun-blackened hands to clear his eyesight, Daniel’s lanky, tall body cast a narrow shadow that nevertheless reached Ramona. He heard whispering. Couldn’t make out the words.

Get it off me! Sinjin, please!

Against all logic and faster than Daniel thought possible, Narendra grabbed the keys dangling from his belt and used them to unlock her bonds. Like a wild animal escaping its cage, the woman reared from under the wooden Indian’s dead weight and shouldered it aside, only to stagger uncertainly at the unaccustomed lightness of her body. She couldn’t stay on her feet. When Daniel rushed back to save her from falling he found himself face to face with the Rajput’s captive witch and not the innocent victim of the Rajput’s insanity. She bared her teeth. The wooden Indian that was the focus of all their recent mishaps lay unnoticed in the dirt, for now. It gave off menace like a cloud of dust.

Are you going to bite me, girl?

His fetid breath and body odor filled her nose, but Ramona refused to flinch from him again. Daniel deliberately blocked her view of Narendra. It was safer that way. She had worn the wooden Indian on her back for weeks and clearly did not know how to move without it. But staggering away from Daniel’s helping hands, she whirled unexpectedly onto the damned thing and lost her balance. Up she went, standing on it with both her feet, and then over. This time it was Narendra who caught and held her from further injury. For the moment his rage was contained.

The three of them, or was it four, she thought, presented a bizarre tableau out in the Texas desert arroyo she’d marched them into. A black prince from India by way of the United Kingdom, a young Mexican woman, and Daniel, whatever he was; this was their triumvirate.

"Tejas, she said, deigning to finally answer the black Englishman’s earlier question. Big Bend," she whispered unheard. Without paying attention he slapped her lightly across her face. She bit her tongue and again tasted blood.

The very next moment the three of them watched in horror as the wooden Indian idly rolled down the incline where it eventually was stopped by a big rock. They stared at its progress, shaken into speechlessness; it shouldn’t have moved.

Narendra was clearly more nervous than the others, Ramona noted triumphantly, but she trembled uncontrollably herself. Was it possible the poisonous spirit trapped inside was again going to exert its power over them? Without warning the Rajput abandoned his attentions to Ramona and ran down to it. It didn’t move anymore so he stuck out his foot and flipped the Indian idol over. It gave a sharp crack that made him jump away. When nothing else happened Ramona and Daniel walked down to him.

In a few minutes, when it did nothing else of interest, Narendra looked around him sullenly and seemed to lose interest. What’s this? he loudly exclaimed. We’re going east. We’ve been going the wrong way.

Ramona ignored him. He was repeating himself. Even Daniel snorted, rolling his eyes heavenward. Daniel then spat in the wooden Indian’s direction before backing away from his two companions. Where are we? Narendra demanded, his prissy, sing-song British accent evidently grating on Daniel’s nerves as well as Ramona’s who abruptly decided to tell him in English. Texas, she replied. West Texas.

She should have lied. She could almost read his mind, but before she could stop him, the Rajput rushed from her side and skipped quickly back up the gully. She figured he planned to chain her again and force her to continue their original quest, as that was where he was headed. The chains she’d worn were still twisted on the ground where she’d last fallen. Ramona followed his progress while also keeping an eye on the seemingly inert Indian statue almost at her feet. It was a dizzying task. The Indian or the uncontrollable Englishman dancing behind her back with the chains in his hands? Where was the true danger?

Before everything got out of control again, Daniel stepped up to handle the situation, this time braining the Rajput with a rock, creeping back from behind while Narendra danced in the dust and crowed about the chains. Before Ramona understood what she’d seen, the barkeep was at her feet pulling the wooden Indian idol away from her grasp. The unconscious Rajput lay up the trail behind her. With no hesitation, Ramona took her one chance and ran. With her long, black hair hanging in clumps down her back she rushed the far opposite embankment. She didn’t look back to see what Daniel was doing, or wonder if Narendra was alive, but kept running shakily to the freedom the plateau at the top represented. Then she began the climb. One handful of bristly, skin-shredding brown grass at a time got the buxom woman up the ridge, but near the top she lost all her strength.

She looked backwards as she lost her balance, sliding, and then falling down into the basin. Things had changed in the past few minutes. It was Daniel who now had dominance, standing with the Indian statue propped against his hip, calmly watching her. They’d followed her. In his shadow was the Rajput, almost drunkenly coming to. Ramona ended face down in the dirt. Playing for time and breathing shallowly, she pretended to be senseless. She cursed the day she had first coveted the Indian statue standing so proud and dignified in front of the general goods store in her town.

Stop playing possum, Daniel demanded, lightly prodding her with his boot.

Ramona continued to think. She needed to recoup. How had all this happened to her?

All the money the village women had given her for cloth and buttons and thread to make their clothes had somehow made it out of her pockets and into the store’s cash register without her ever taking her eyes off the wooden Indian. When she got it back to her village, they took one look at what she had, and then tossed her out of her own home with only the clothes on her back; and then they threw the wooden idol after her. They, at least, could recognize demonic possession when they saw it.

Ramona took a deep breath of the soil, and then she coughed. If you’re coming, you’d better get a move on, Daniel advised. She heard him dragging the Indian away. Her mind again veered back to where her life had changed so murderously. It had all gone so bad so quickly.

From the first, the wooden Indian had forced her to its will. The Rajput, busy pursuing a beautiful opera singer across the country, had crossed paths with Ramona almost immediately and was helplessly drawn into her trap. The dirty, foul-mouthed and frightening man she called Daniel attached himself to them after a fight at his bar near the tiny town of Marathon in Texas. Ramona still didn’t know if they were a group of three, or four. Or if the wooden Indian was really sentient.

After another deep breath of dirt, Narendra’s witch-woman finally pulled herself to her feet. Not too far away, Daniel dragged the wooden Indian behind him with the Rajput trotting wearily alongside, both men barely avoiding the cactus pods infesting the trail and just as carelessly leaving her behind. Despite the cuts on her hands, the bruises on her body, and the dirt in her hair, Ramona felt relieved to see them go. The damned wooden Indian was no longer chained to her back. Its poisonous whispers no longer filled her ears. Sinjin McIntosh Narendra’s outrageous British-Indian accent no longer polluted her mind.

But she wasn’t going to survive out here by herself.

After silently cursing her fate, Ramona limped and staggered her way to catch up to them. Finally she broke into a run. Leave it here, she cried. Let it die.

It fell to Narendra to clumsily circle back and accost her with his opinion. So some other blighter can come by and take it up? he said belligerently. No. The devil you know, and all that, he added. I mean you! he barked. At least if I see you waltzing up to me with a sharp object in your hands I know to protect my balls. Giving her a half-contemptuous glance he added, I can handle you.

But what about the thing masquerading as Daniel, she thought, shivering uncontrollably? Narendra misunderstood and looked abashed. All his bluster vanished; he became contrite. Didn’t mean to scare the gal, he muttered. Ramona picked up the pace, gave the Rajput a wide berth, and soon drew abreast of Daniel and the Indian artifact. Looking around while she waited for Daniel to notice her, Ramona suddenly realized there was no reason to have walked them all the way into Texas; any of the arroyos they had traversed earlier would have served just as well.

What? Where had that come from? Frightened, she sneaked a look at the wooden Indian. Was the damned thing getting to her again?

Daniel abruptly stopped. Ramona ran herself up onto the idol and screamed which brought the Rajput scampering over rocks and bushes to reach her. She beat frantically at her arms and then her clothes. "Se esta quemando! Burning!" she cried. She jumped and wiggled and shook her arms violently.

Daniel was closest. He grabbed Ramona by her voluminous skirt and jerked her free from the wooden Indian idol, throwing her onto the ground. As Narendra stopped to help her, Daniel kicked the idol far away from them and onto the rocks. Then he picked up one of the larger rocks and began systematically bashing the statue to bits. Narendra watched in consternation as Daniel pummeled the wood almost into toothpicks, but there was nothing he could do. He carelessly patted at Ramona’s shoulder.

After realizing her injuries were imaginary, Ramona recovered some of her sense of humor. These men had no idea what they were dealing with. She snorted. "No good, señor," she told them. She pointed to make herself clear. What had been smashed into pulp moments before was now reassembling itself into the red, green and yellow demon-infested albatross they’d inherited through her. Daniel gave her the evil eye as he backed away from the magical malevolence of its regeneration.

His bluer-than-the-sky eyes shot daggers at her. He knew she’d only pointed out the obvious, but still the barkeep pulled himself up to his full, gangly height and screamed his incomprehensible insults.

You incompetent daughter of a whore! he yelled. You demon-infested pestilence on two legs! God! he cried. Deliver me from this woman!

Silly curses, she thought. Silly man. Ramona watched with a smile on her face until the Rajput suddenly pushed past them again and headed for the idol a second time. No! she yelled, throwing out her arms to pull him back, but there was nothing she could do to stop him. He bowled her over and kept on going.

God damn you two! Daniel cried. Then he marched up to Ramona and kept her from interfering as the Rajput brutally kicked at the statue. This time it came apart in splinters as long as her forearms that went flying everywhere.

Narendra stooped suddenly over the mass of mangled timber and picked up a handful of slivers, unexpectedly shoving them into his pockets. Ramona’s eyes grew wide—surely he had impaled himself. But she heard him laugh. The splinters ripped through his pants and came out on top of his pointy-toed slippers. God damned country! he exclaimed, after hopping on one foot right into a cactus pod. Ouch! Then Narendra fell flat backwards right into it. Ramona saw the slivers of the wooden Indian shaken off his ridiculous shoes and out onto the sand. She remembered her premonition: a mass of curly hair spreading on the surface of the water, gurgles of unmanly panic and pain, and a bloody groin.

Daniel was first to see the rattlesnake hidden in the shade.

Chapter Two

The snake propelled itself away from the side of the gully in a leap through the air that sent it directly on a collision course with Sinjin McIntosh Narendra’s throat. The Rajput shrieked, threw up his hands to ward it off, and then suddenly remembered just who and what he was. Without taking his eyes off the certain death diving at him, the Rajput pulled his sword from his pants and sliced upwards.

Ramona heard a whoosh and then a clump. She couldn’t look. Daniel saw the snake’s head severed from its body and go in the opposite direction from the rest. Narendra experienced fractured time that abruptly changed back to normal as he reached up to catch at the head. Daniel got to it first, knocking it out of the way. Don’t touch it you fool. It can still bite.

Narendra jerked his hand back. Then he saw the rest of the snake, still coiling and uncoiling onto itself. It’s five feet long! he gasped.

Daniel gave it an unconcerned glance before agreeing. Yep, he said. The Englishman bent to the ground to touch the snake which was in the grip of its death dance. It took two hands and several tries to manage the severed body. As the Rajput finally raised it from the ground, the snake casually wrapped itself around his waist. Good God in Heaven! he exclaimed, letting go, but the snake clung to him. Down and down he frantically pushed it.

His pants came off with the snake now puddled at his ankles. Narendra shrieked.

Without ceremony Daniel bent down and jerked the dead snake from Narendra’s pointed-toed shoes and then kicked it aside. Where’s the head? he asked calmly, as if he didn’t see the man’s nakedness right in front of him.

Ramona answered by pointing. "Por ahi," she added. She could not contain the smirk on her lips at Narendra’s unexpected exposure. After marching her for weeks with the statue chained to her back she felt he deserved no pity. The man was black from head to toe, she noted. Uninterested in naked men, she turned then to look at the idol.

The snake head rested snugly atop the wooden Indian statue as if it were a hat. The idol had reconstituted itself for a third time and lay murderously waiting for them in the rocks. Ramona stared at it in religious awe. Windigo, she whispered.

Daniel snapped his head around. Don’t name it, he warned. You know better than that. And keep away from it.

Damn, he thought. Windigo this far south? By naming it did the witch create it? He glanced at her. Did she have this kind of power?

As Daniel watched, Ramona crept closer to her former burden, telling herself she only wanted to see if the chains were broken and unusable. She didn’t want to admit that it was talking to her again. "Nieta, it hissed. The snake head moved its dead jaws with the greeting. Me muero de hambre. Hungry," it said. She stood hypnotized.

There it is! Narendra galloped right up beside her, breathing heavily from his run. He broke the spell. Ramona quickly reared back in horror. It had nearly taken her again, she realized. The Rajput used his sword and ran it gingerly through the reptile’s mouth to get it off the wooden Indian statue, all the while gently nudging Ramona aside. Immediately the snake head clamped its fangs onto the steel; just as abruptly the Rajput screamed, swung the sword high through the air, and tossed the head far ahead of them on the arroyo floor.

While he stood stunned by what he’d just accomplished, Ramona came back to herself. The Englishman had broken the spell. Needing to thank him, she pried the sword from his rigid hands and proceeded to clean it, first with the dirt and sand at their feet, and then with the folds of her skirt. What the hell are you doing? Narendra cried. He grabbed his possessions back from her.

"Gracias, señor, she said. Gracias." She kept her eyes lowered and backed slowly away from him.

Narendra looked bewildered for a moment, then proud. There, he announced. I’ve taken care of it.

The snake head was gone, but the demon in the wooden Indian remained. Ramona knew this. Daniel knew this. They exchanged wary glances. Why didn’t the Rajput realize this as well? What did Narendra think he had really accomplished?

Narendra recovered himself. Nothing, he said loudly and evidently to no one. He shook his head, then with a stern look both at Ramona and the idol at their feet, he finally nodded to the girl. "Gracias, señorita, he said. Then with much more intelligence than she’d given him credit for he said, By gad, the thing’s unstoppable! How do we kill it?"

Without thinking she answered. "Fire, señor. Or water. Earth, tal vez."

I say we just leave it behind.

Sinjin McIntosh Narendra and Ramona Cervantes turned as one to stare down the third of their party. The barkeep didn’t flinch. For a moment Ramona saw something that wasn’t there, something bright and shining. And true, she was thinking. Then just as suddenly it was only their dirty and miserable Daniel standing before her.

Narendra repeated his earlier command. We will not leave this obscenity for anyone else to find. It’s not honorable. No British gentleman would consider it for a second.

This time it was Ramona and Daniel turning as one to stare at the third of their group. Ramona didn’t understand what Narendra was babbling about, but agreed the Indian could not be abandoned. Not until after the arroyo, she thought. When the English is dead.

Though the woman barely noticed her afterthoughts, she immediately felt ugly and soiled. Why had she thought that, she wondered. Narendra dead? To distract her, Daniel laughed long and hard at the Rajput’s naked legs. He needed her to get back on track. Gesturing finally to the pantless, turbaned, pointy-shoed former soldier in their midst, he said, You’re no Britisher. You just think you are. Put your damned pants back on.

With studied dignity the Rajput re-dressed. And to make his point, Narendra also took the time to re-dress his hair. It was a painstaking task, but he removed his turban with the care of a woman tending her best frock, and then he brushed out his long, tangled, black and curly hair. It reached his waist when he was done and shimmered in the sun.

Ramona had seen this meticulous grooming before; it didn’t impress her this time. While Narendra entertained himself, she took a chance they weren’t watching her and studied the Indian statue in the foreground. There was a power building in the idol; clearly Daniel should feel it just as well as she.

But Daniel was captivated by something other than the danger they were in. He stared at Narendra in wonder.

All this hair, Daniel whispered to himself. Just which one of these avatars was which? He looked around them. And what damage have I done already? He shook his head. Why did I get dropped on my head, for God’s sake? I can’t remember which is which.

Almost too soon the Rajput finished his routine and tucked and smoothed all his hair back under his red turban. We’re going the wrong way, he announced. He had returned to his obsession with the opera singer.

From the near distance came the unexpected: a second voice, none of their own. Starving, the voice hissed. Hungry, it said. Get me food. Or I’ll get it. You’ll be sorry.

Before Ramona even formed the words, Daniel jumped at her. Don’t say it, he ordered. Don’t even think it. Get you mind on something else or I’ll knock your brains out.

She paid no attention. Staring intently into the arroyo shade she saw a skeleton-thin man-shape stretched out in the dirt and slobbering onto its own shoulder. Hungry, it cried. It wasn’t slobber; slobber isn’t red, she realized. It was biting into its own flesh, tearing a hole up near its clavicle.

Windigo, she gasped, reaching out to it but not walking any closer.

Daniel struck her down with a single punch. Damn it! he cried. Don’t name it. Don’t you ever name it.

But he was too late. No longer a wooden Indian statue, the mannish thing slithered right to the trio of travelers. The Rajput was closest. It attached itself to the Rajput’s legs with skeleton fingers and toes dripping flaccid flesh. Upwards it dragged itself, climbing Narendra as if he were a pole set up to fly a flag. Hungry, it hissed, its face, its mouth almost to the Rajput’s crotch before either of the other two thought to stop it.

No! Ramona yelled, absurdly remembering her own threat to neuter the Englishman. She threw herself with almost supernatural strength at the unnatural obscenity. It was over in seconds. Narendra collapsed under the weight of her charge, a high moaning squeal escaping his lips as the Windigo nestled closer to his thighs. Then it scuttled from his legs to his chest and then over his head like some sort of giant brown scorpion running from the crush of a boot heel.

When Narendra raised himself to look, the thing was back where it had been; a chitinous, scrabbling thing hovering over the wooden Indian on the rocks before disappearing in waves of scratchy sighs and moans. Belatedly Narendra checked himself for missing parts, grinning hugely after his inventory. All here, he announced, unable to contain his relief, needing to tell them so.

And so is that thing, Daniel added, waving desultorily at the wooden Indian that barely contained and controlled the Windigo spirit within. I say we bury it.

Daniel had no sooner made his suggestion than both Narendra and Ramona felt the gasping, choking sensation of being covered by six feet of dirt and rocks in a box so small they couldn’t move their limbs. The illusion did not go away. Narendra grabbed at his throat, his already blackish skin turning deep blue, his eyes rolling back in his head. Ramona fainted dead away. Daniel smiled slightly.

I say we burn it, he said to the air, knowing whatever unpleasantness came from his actions that both Narendra and Ramona had many adventures before them yet unlived and would not be permanently harmed. He wanted to see what the Windigo would do next.

Ramona remained unconscious, but smoke curled from under her feet and it swiftly wafted