“What proof did anyone have in them days?” asked Billy Ritchie. “The land was rough and the folks were rougher. You stayed alive if you were hard and dogged and used your gun without thinking twice. But the stories say that Fenner was the only white man who came out of that massacre alive, and that’s suspicious in itself. He said that he left the settlers, and rode back along Conn Creek to bring help from his Mexican soldier friends, and there’s nothing to say that he didn’t. But if he did bring help, it was a sight too late to save anyone; and what was oddest of all, the settlers’ bodies were all scalped, and their ears cut off.”

“What was odd about that?” asked Neil. “The Wappos were pretty fierce sometimes, weren’t they?”

“Oh, they could be. But what they didn’t do was take scalps, or ears, or genitalia, like some of the Indians did. It wasn’t their style. They were diggers, not fighters, and all they cared about was protecting their good agricultural land from the white men. They weren’t interested in trophies.”

“You’re saying that Fenner took the scalps? A white man took white scalps?”

“You don’t have to look so shocked. It wasn’t unusual in them days. In fact, some of the old-timers say it was white men who taught the Indians to take scalps in the first place.”

“That’s horrific,” said Neil.

Old Billy Ritchie shrugged, and swilled some bourbon down with a mouthful of beer.

Neil said, “Did you ever see a picture of Bloody Fenner? An engraving or anything like that?”

Billy Ritchie shook his head. “The only drawings I ever saw of Napa Valley in them days were landscapes. Mainly forests, it was. But I don’t think nobody ever took it into their heads to draw Bloody Fenner.”

“There’s something else,” said Neil. “Did you ever hear of a prophecy connected with Bloody Fenner? Something that was supposed to be written on a stone redwood tree?”

Billy Ritchie thought about that, and then shook his head again. “No, sir, I can’t say that I ever did.”

“Then how about the day of the dark stars?”

Billy Ritchie lifted his head slowly and stared at him. For the first time since Neil had walked into the house, he stopped stroking the cat, and his old hand lay on her black fur like a dead, dried leaf.

“Did I hear you right?” he said, in a soft, unsettling tone.

“The day of the dark stars,” repeated Neil. “That was all I said.”

The old man quivered in his chair, as if a cold wind had blown across the room. But the air was still, and growing stuffy, and outside it must have been close to 100 degrees.