Witch Dance (3 page)

“No, I’m not a daredevil,” she said. Just a weak mortal with a mission.

“Welcome to Witch Dance,” Deborah said, then revved the engine till her Jeep was straining and shuddering like a stallion eager for the race.

Kate said good-bye, got her bags out of the car, and went inside to meet her mentor.

Charleston was another world away. Her life of atonement had begun.

Chapter 3

Houston, Texas

Summer 1989

Eagle Mingo worked without a shirt, striding around the construction site with the intensity of a warrior and the proud bearing of a full-blood. Descendant of a long line of Chickasaw chieftains, including the great Opya Mingo, or Piomingo, as the history books called him, he carried the mark of his ancestors—high, finely defined cheekbones, fierce black eyes, and smooth bronze skin.

Marcus Rayburn kicked back in his swivel chair in the trailer that housed the temporary offices and watched the show. Brenda and Betty, the two secretaries, couldn’t do their typing for gazing out the window, and Rosalind, the head bookkeeper, left her books so many times to go to the water cooler that Marcus got up a bet with Jim Clancy about when her next trip would be.

“Bet she won’t last five minutes without coming to get some more water,” Marcus said.

“Ten.” Jim wadded the paper he was working on into a ball and tossed it into the garbage can. He missed, and the paper ball lay on the floor with a dozen others that had missed their mark.

“What d’you want to bet?”

“A cold beer.”

“Make it two, and you’re on.”

Five minutes later the door to Rosalind’s office opened and she sashayed out, fluffing up her hair and pursing her freshly painted lips.

“Thirsty, Roz?” Marcus said.

“It’s this heat.” Her face turned pink.

“Yeah, it’s the heat all right,” Jim said after her door closed behind her. “Body heat. Brought on by a pilgrimage to the Chickasaw shrine.”

“I won,” Marcus said. “Damn. It’s going to be dull around here when he leaves.”

“Yeah. No more swooning females.”

“No more competition. Not that he ever notices. You’d think he was made of cast iron or something, the way he can resist temptation.”

“Resist bait, you mean. The way the women go after him, it’s pure bait.” Jim stood and stretched his long, bony frame. “I for one will be glad to see him go. He’s giving the rest of us a bad name, working out there in the heat like a hired hand.”

“I wish I could say he’s all brawn and no brain, but my mama taught me never to tell a lie.” Marcus got his hard hat off the top of his cluttered desk and rammed it onto his head. “Besides that, I like the guy. Best damned engineer I’ve ever seen. It’s going to be a shame to lose him.” He stalked toward the door. “Up and at ‘em, Clancy. We’ve got a job to do here . . . if Mingo hasn’t already finished it while we dawdled.”

The trailer door banged behind them as they went out into the bright, hot Texas sun.

Eagle stood beside a stack of galvanized pipe and watched them come—Marcus with his wry wit and deep drawl, Jim with his easygoing ways and his locker- room humor. He was going to miss them.

“Ever think about puttin’ on a shirt to make it easier on the females,” Jim said, grinning.

“I like the feel of the sun on my skin.”

“Yeah, well, if I let the sun on this skin, I’d look like a speckled egg.”

“You do anyhow, Jim,” Marcus said. “Hey, Mingo. Have you reconsidered?”

“No. I must go home.”

“Witch Dance. That’s a hell of a name for a town.” Jim pulled off his hat and scratched his head. “What’s it like?”

“Like no other place in the world.”

Just hearing the name conjured up lovely images for Eagle, and such longing, he wished he could leave now instead of waiting until the following day. Indian paintbrush would be in bloom, and red-tailed hawks would be sailing the blue skies. The air would be so sweet and clear, a man could see the mountains and beyond. And the Blue River would be singing its ancient song. He could almost hear its music.

Witch Dance. He’d fished its streams, raced across its meadows, and hunted in its mountains. Witch Dance. A land of vast expanses and green sanctuaries and relentless beauty. It called to him across time and space, and in his heart he answered.

“Listen, pal,” Marcus said, “if it’s about pay, I’ve heard through the grapevine that old man Shamus would double your salary to get you to stay.”

“This is not about pay,” Eagle said. “It’s about commitment.”

His people needed him. When he’d left twelve years before to earn his engineering degree, he hadn’t intended to stay away so long. But there had been so much to learn, so much he needed to know.

“You will return, my son?” his father had asked.

“I will return.” He’d clasped his father’s shoulders. “I won’t let you down. Nor my people.”

“There will be temptations.”

There had been many temptations: easy money, big cities, fast women. But always Eagle had kept his vision before him. His people needed the prosperity and progressiveness of the new ways as well as the purity and strength of the old. They needed the modern roads he knew how to build and the strong bridges he could construct. They needed the hospitals and schools and banks and factories.

He could build them all. And he would . . . on tribal lands for the benefit of his people.

“I can’t argue with that, Mingo.” Marcus clapped him on the shoulder as the five o’clock whistle sounded and workers on the construction site began their noisy leave-taking. “How about a farewell match at the old dartboard in Sally’s Bar? Best three out of five. I need to redeem myself.”

Eagle reached for his shirt, grinning. “Marcus, the thing I’m going to miss most about you is your eternal optimism.”

“Prepare to lose your shirt, Marcus,” Jim said.

“Does that mean you’re going to bet against me?”

“I always put my money on the winner. Mingo hasn’t lost a game yet. It’s damned voodoo magic or something.”

“It’s the Chickasaw motto. Unconquered and unconquerable.” Eagle was smiling when he said it, but Marcus and Jim didn’t doubt for one minute that he meant every word he said.

Later that evening as Marcus consoled himself over his resounding defeat—he’d lost all five games—he saluted Eagle with his beer.

“My mama didn’t raise no fools, and I can tell you one thing, I’d hate to get in a real battle with you.”

“You’d lose, Eagle said.

 o0o

Witch Dance

Eagle stood on the bluff with his arms lifted toward the sky. A red-tailed hawk arose screaming from his nest and bands of Indian paintbrush nodded their scarlet heads in the wind that swept across the plains. Below the ridge he could hear the music of the Blue River.

With his arms uplifted, he paid homage to four Beloved Things above—the clouds, the sun, the clear sky, and He who lives in the clear sky.

“Loak-Istohoollo-Aba,” he chanted, addressing the Holy One above. “
Alail-o
.” The ancient words filled him with power, and he tipped his face upward so he could feel the welcome sun of his homeland. “I am come,” he said. “I’ve come home.”

All the years he’d been gone melted away, and he was once again a native son, fully, passionately in love with the land. Soon he would exchange his car for a Chickasaw horse so he could ride wild and free, feeling the wind on his face.

His mother would be waiting at home to greet him— and also his father, Winston Mingo, governor of the Chickasaw Nation. He’d see his twin brother, Cole, and Cole’s wife and children whom he’d never met. His younger siblings, his beloved sister, Star, and his brother, Wolf, would be so grown-up, he’d hardly know them.

Eagle was eager to reunite with his family, but his most pressing need was to embrace the land, to bond once more with the mountains and the river and the sky that had spawned him.

Leaving his car parked on the ridge, he made his way down to the river. The lone hawk sailed low, calling its plaintive welcome. A cottontail rabbit scrambled out of the bushes, studied him with pink eyes and twitching nose, then disappeared over the horizon. In the distance the mountains watched him with silent majesty. The only sounds were the music of the animals and the music of the river.

He was alone, alone in the magnificent, far-reaching land he called his own.

 o0o

The watchers were there again, standing on the hillside above the building site in a solemn, silent semicircle, their enmity evident in the set of their faces and the rigid lines of their bodies.

Kate put down her hammer and wiped her face with a faded bandanna. Anxiously, she glanced at the intruders. Dr. Colbert poured two cups of water from the thermos and offered one to her.

“Don’t worry about them, Kate. They’ll get used to you in time.”

“How can I be their doctor if they hate me? How can I cure their ailments if they won’t even come near me?”

He laughed. “You’ve been here only a week; the clinic is nothing more than a vision in our minds, and already you’re worried about the sick. Patience, Kate.”

“You’re always saying that to me.”

“Could it be that you need to listen?”

“Who, me?” She did an elaborate pantomime of the innocent, with widened eyes and rounded mouth. Then, laughing, she sank onto the ground and crossed her moccasined feet. Deborah at the general store had sold her the moccasins. She’d tried to sell her a hat too, insisting that Kate would burn her fair skin in this hot country, but Kate loved the wind in her hair. There would be no hats for her.

“You’re too generous with me, Dr. Colbert. I’m not sure that I have the temperament to carry on all this.” She waved her arms to encompass the clearing in the trees, the studs that would soon be walls of a clinic, and the watchers on the hill.

“I chose you for the job because you are perfect.” As always when they had these discussions about the clinic, Clayton Colbert kept his darker motives hidden. No one would be served by the truth—least of all, Kate Malone.

She gazed at him with such luminous trust that he had to turn his back.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” He busied himself by filling his carpenter’s apron with nails. Soon,
soon
he’d have to leave, or all his dreams would go up in flames. “Go sight-seeing. Take a picnic. It’ll be good for your soul.” And perhaps the salvation of his own.

“Doctor’s orders?” she teased.

“Doctor’s orders.”

She needed no further urging. A stop at the general store to buy wine and cheese, then a quick run to Dr. Colbert’s house to rinse the sawdust off her face and put her purchases in a picnic basket, and she was all set to explore.

Soon she was striding along the wide open spaces, basket in hand. She scooped her hair off her neck with her free hand, then let it go flying about in the wind as she released it. White clouds were piled as high as cotton candy in a sky so relentlessly blue, it hurt her eyes. She’d brought her bird-watching book and her binoculars, but the thing she wanted to do most was get to know the land she now called home.

It was a beautiful land in a raw, exciting kind of way, and Kate was already in love with it. A wilderness, her father had called it. But it was her wilderness, far away from the jurisdiction of the senator from South Carolina.

She skipped along the way she had when she was fourteen and her two younger brothers thought she was the next best thing to buttered popcorn. Since there was no one around to cover their ears, she opened her mouth to sing . . . and that’s when she saw the man in the river.

Mesmerized, she stood on the bluff, gazing down at him. It wasn’t his nakedness that held her enthralled, but the sheer beauty of it, the glorious perfection.

He was standing with his face tipped skyward and his arms outstretched, every well-toned muscle and finely tuned sinew clearly delineated by the sun. The artist in her swooned, but the doctor in her exulted. He was a magnificent specimen, exuberantly male, passionately Chickasaw.

She didn’t drop to her knees and try to hide behind the small scrub bushes, but stood tall on the bluff, watching him with unabashed pleasure. He looked as if he not only belonged to the land around him, but was a part of it.

He spoke strange and beautiful words in a powerful voice that sent shivers down her spine, then waded deep, where the water became swift and turbulent.

Unconsciously, Kate clenched her hands on the handle of the picnic basket. The water was chest-high on him now. With one last look at the sky he plunged under.

Kate held her breath, waiting, watching for him to resurface. Overhead, a large bird screamed. Hairs along the back of Kate’s neck stood on end.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Come on.” She shaded her eyes, straining for a glimpse of his dark head rising above the rushing river.

Could she have missed it? Was he too far downriver for her to see?

Clutching her basket, she began to make her way down the side of the bluff. There was still no sign of the Chickasaw.

He’d gone under and he wasn’t coming back up. Kate began to run, blood roaring in her head . . . and memories filling her mind, always the memories.

“Kate, Kate.” A pair of hands clutched at her, glanced off her swimsuit, then disappeared. She couldn’t see. Wind and rain whipped the ocean into a frenzy. Where were they? Where were they?

She must not panic. She must not. Brambles tore at her shorts and scratched her legs as she raced down the bluff.

“I’m coming,” she screamed. “Hold on. I’m coming.”

Her picnic basket hit the ground as she let go, bounced once, then overturned.

The sailboat was overturned. She couldn’t get it to stay upright. The wind had been too strong . . . and the waves. She fought the panic that made her arms and legs heavy. Couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop swimming now. She had to find them. Where were they?

She was beside the river now. Sharp rocks bit into her moccasins as she hit the shallows running. Hoping the water was deep enough, praying she’d be strong enough, she arched her body into a perfect bow and sliced the water.