“I think it’s pretty clear what’s happened,” he told them. “The medicine men needed to draw on the strength of an Indian victory to help them in their reincarnation. It’s difficult to explain it exactly, but they’ve used the massacre at Las Posadas as a focal point for their rebirth, like a politician trying to make a comeback by reminding people of his past achievements. The massacre was what Misquamacus meant when he was referring to the gateway. He didn’t want you to disturb the historic vibrations that he had been setting up with Allen Fenner’s guidance. You—because you’re a Fenner yourself—would have been more likely to upset things than anyone.”

Neil asked, “But why did Dunbar appear? Misquamacus wouldn’t have wanted him around, surely?”

Singing Rock slowly shook his head. “I’m not entirely certain. The most likely explanation is that all this spirit activity connected with the incident in which Dunbar died was enough to disturb his manitou, and he began to make ghostly appearances. You have to remember that this is the single most powerful psychic incident that has ever occurred in modern America, and it involves more upheaval of the ethos than you can possibly imagine. Why do you think you can feel all this tension? The spiritual planes are in chaos and crisis. No wonder a few shades from the past are turning over in their graves.”

Harry said, “What we really need are the ghosts of the entire Seventh Cavalry. Do you think you could manage to raise them up?”

Singing Rock smiled. “You’d be sorry if I did. The Seventh Cavalry was a great deal more vicious than the Indians most of the time.”

Neil looked over Singing Rock’s shoulder at the school paintings. “Do these words mean anything to you?” he asked. “I couldn’t make them out at all.”

Singing Rock picked up one or two of the paintings. “They’re in different dialects,” he said, “but they all seem to refer to the day of the dark stars in one way or another. Ta-La-Ha-Lu-Si was the name the Patwin Indians used for Napa Valley. It simply means ‘beautiful land.’ Kaimus was the Wappo name for the town of Yountville, which is halfway up the valley, as you obviously know. These words here, though, sokwet and oweaoo and pados are all Algonquian.”

“What’s a ‘sokwet’ when it’s at home?” asked Harry. “It sounds like the first requirement for double pneumonia.”

“Sokwet is the Alqonquian word for ‘eclipse.’ It seems to be tied in here with the word wata, which means ‘star.’ So I think we can safely assume that one of these children was talking about the day of the dark stars itself. The word oweaoo means ‘circle,’ and pados means ‘boat,’ but since they’re written here in isolation, they’re not particularly helpful. I suspect we’ll discover what they mean, though.”