That was moot; the important part was that Watches-Over-The-Land had been one of the most powerful medicine men of his time; perhaps of any time. Certainly right up there with Wo-vo-ka, also called Crazy Horse, or any of the other great Medicine Chiefs. He, however, had chosen Rabbit’s way; to hide and be silent, in order to preserve things for future generations.

Many of his medicine objects had been laid to rest with him. If his resting place had been looted.…

The mule picked her way delicately through a mess of blackberry vines that would have snared Jennifer and kept her tangled up for fifteen or twenty minutes. She glanced at her watch, and was surprised at how little time had passed.

Next time we have to come up here, if Tom’s mule isn’t available, I’ll find a way to borrow horses or mules from someone else. This beats thrashing through the brush all to heck!

As the mule rounded a stand of blackjacks, the ridge Jennifer wanted loomed right up in front of them, mostly tallgrass-covered slope. Persimmons grew at the foot, young blackjack saplings dotted the slope, and the older trees crowned the ridge. The slope itself faced west; that was what made it perfect for a “burial ground,” especially an old one. The Osage of the past exposed their dead to the sky and Wah-K’on-Tah for at least a season, to give the spirits time to rise. Afterwards, what was left was placed under a cairn of rocks. That was one reason why this ridge was covered with a rubble of small stones. Over time, a lot of soil had settled here, some of it blown in from the rest of the state during the Dust Bowl, burying the remains of the cairns and what they protected. Nature, and not man, had given these graves a covering of earth.

The burial site looked no different from any other brush-covered ridge out here, and if she hadn’t known what it was, she would never have been able to pick it out.

Normally. She halted the mule and squinted up at the ridge, shading her eyes with her hand.

The damage was obvious as soon as she was able to pick out what was shadow and what was disturbed ground. Oh, hell.

She nudged her mount forward and up the slope to the site of the looting, then pulled the mule up, ground-tied her, and dismounted. It was no better at second viewing. The shallow graves piled high with crude cairns of rocks were lying open. There were a few signs that the looter or looters had been in a hurry still lying about in the form of odd beads, broken pottery, crumbling baskets. Everything portable had been taken, down to the bones.

The bones. Theft of possessions would not have riled the Little People. Theft of remains, however …