“He said this evil man meant to get power by helping the Long Knives, and that he would have done terrible things to the land itself.” Grandfather shook his head, and his eyes were very troubled. “That is why Watches-Over-The-Land had to try to defeat him and his thing. It was like a Wah-hopeh, the sacred hawk-bundle, but it wasn’t. It was like an evil Wah-hopeh, meant to destroy everything that was sacred, to contaminate everything that was good. That evil man would know where Watches-Over-The-Land was resting. He would see through all the protections, for he is very powerful. And he would take great pleasure in seeing the sacred things stolen, the bones taken.…”

Mooncrow’s voice trailed off, and he narrowed his eyes, his attention no longer really on her. Abruptly, he stood up.

“I must think on this,” he said, and left without another word, leaving her to stare at the chair he had sat in.

This does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling of confidence, she thought, unhappily. She particularly was not fond of the way that Grandfather had spoken of this “evil man” as if he were still alive. Or, at least, able to act.

Of course, if he was that powerful, he would be able to act. He would not leave this earth; he would not be at all interested in going into the West. If he left the earth, he would be weighed by Wah-K’on-Tah, who would not be very pleased with his actions. So it would be in his best interest to stick around and see if he could break the bindings that my ancestor placed on him, then find someone to act through.

If? From the look of things, he had. And some of the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together to form a very nasty pattern.

In the past, the evil one had worked against the Osage and with the whites, even if the whites had not been aware of it. And in the present—

In the present, there had been relics plowed up, a terrible explosion in which mostly Indians had been killed, for which Indians were being blamed, by whites. Some Indians were being stirred up against her, the ancestor of the evil one’s great enemy.

The two patterns matched.

Too well. Far, far too well.

CHAPTER TEN

DAVID SPOTTED HORSE stifled a yawn, wishing he hadn’t stopped smoking. A cigarette would at least have given him something to do with his hands.

The gathering in the back room of somebody’s cousin’s smoke shop was not going the way he’d planned. He wanted to warn the guys from Calligan’s construction site not to talk to Jennie, no matter what they heard on the grapevine. He hadn’t called this meeting to hear about superstitious crap, but that was what he was getting, especially from the Osage.