White Wolf

“Take your hard-edged, impatient, angry mannerisms and get rid of them once you step foot on the reservation, will you?”

His brows dropped.

“The Navajo are a very gentle people who believe in living in harmony with nature and with others. If you aggressively attack them, as if they’re a corporation to be raided, you aren’t going to get anywhere. You’ve got to cultivate some, er, diplomacy and patience.” She leaned down and picked up a piece of paper.

“You need to see this woman—her name is Luanne Yazzie. She’s a medicine woman in training. She lives out at Rough Rock, Arizona, about forty-five minutes from Chinle. Take some gifts with you—that might help.”

He jerked open the door. “What kind, good doctor?”

“Always bring groceries. Lots of them. Luanne is a councilwoman from Rough Rock and a lot of people from her community are very poor, almost starving. They come to her house and routinely ask for food or money. If you show up with food, it signals to Luanne that you’re a man of compassion.” The doctor’s smile broadened a little. “She’s got a master’s degree in education, and she’s smart as a whip. If you can make her your ally instead of an enemy, I’d bet she could tell you the whereabouts of this mysterious heyoka medicine woman.” With a shake of her head, Sarah added, “She certainly is a mystery. Tashunka Mani Tu could practice on her own reservation, in Cherokee, North Carolina, but she doesn’t. I hope you find her. I’d love to hear about your adventure, Dain. I wish you the best of luck on this. My hunch is if you can find her, she can help you.”

Dain saw the sincerity in the doctor’s eyes. In that moment all his mean-spirited and paranoid worry about her wanting him for his money dissolved. His mouth softened a bit. “Instinct and hunches. Doctor, you scare me to death. The only thing I believe in is what I can see with my eyes, hear with my ears, taste or touch.”

Sarah chortled. “So tell me, why are you chasing down this wild lead? It’s about as illogical and nonlinear as you can get.”

He shrugged and became pensive. “Did you tell me what her name means? Tashunka Mani Tu?”

Her grin broadened and she leaned her hips against the desk and folded her arms against her breasts. “The old medicine man said it means Walks With Wolves.”

Dain stood riveted to the spot, feeling a bolt of lightning strike him in the crown of his head, rip through his body and exit out his feet. A sudden wave of heat followed by icy cold washed through him like a tidal wave. His hand tightened on the brass doorknob until his knuckles whitened.

“What?” he rasped.

“You heard me,” Sarah said crisply. “Her name, when translated into English from Lakota Sioux, means Walks With Wolves.” Her eyes sparkled. “Who knows?” she whispered, emotion suddenly choking her voice, “maybe she’s been the one all along sending you a dream of the white wolf.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. Fear rippled through him, then disbelief. And finally hope. “What,” he rasped, “are you talking about?”

With a shrug, Sarah eased away from the desk. She dropped her arms to her sides. “I spent six months at the Chinle hospital working with Navajo medicine people. I saw a lot of things that traditional medicine can’t explain, Dain. One thing I heard about again and again was dreaming. Many patients had powerful dreams and the native healers would interpret them. It was commonly accepted that medicine people send dreams to those who are sick, to help them fight off whatever is attacking them. Maybe this medicine woman is already in touch with you, and has been from the start. Maybe she sent the white wolf to you.”

His nostrils flared and he gave a sharp, bitter laugh. “Oh, yeah? Then why the hell does that white devil rip my heart out of my chest every night?”

Gazing at him, Sarah whispered, “Go find her and ask her, Dain…”

Chapter Two

She felt his presence. Erin lifted her chin, surveyed her flock of forty sheep, which foraged restlessly across the red sand desert, then narrowed her eyes on the horizon. The megalith known by the Navajo people as Rainbow Butte stood like a magnificent tower rising up out of the surrounding landscape of the high plateau. He is coming. Her heart pounded briefly to underscore that knowing.

She smiled a little as she felt Maiisoh rub against her dark red cotton skirt, brushing the heavy material against her knee-high buffalo-skin boots. Looking down, she petted the white wolf’s massive head. He, too, was looking toward Rainbow Butte.

“So you sense his coming, my friend?”

Maiisoh whined and sat down, leaning his weight against her right leg.

Erin continued to pat his head. “Is this someone you have been visiting at night, Maiisoh?”

The wolf lifted his muzzle, his huge yellow eyes staring up at her thoughtfully.

Laughter rolling from her lips, Erin said, “You sly old wolf. If you didn’t enter people’s dreams they wouldn’t keep coming here.” Her smile turned slowly into a line of sadness as she continued to watch her flock. “The Great Spirit knows what is best,” she added with a sigh.

Maiisoh began to thump his big, brushy tail, dirty with red clay and tangled with sagebrush brambles. He had been chasing a jackrabbit, and the old, wise one had led him on a merry chase with no meal at the end of it. Instead, Maiisoh had found himself in huge clumps of sagebrush, muzzle buried in a hole where the old jackrabbit lived. It was an early morning ceremony performed every day by Maiisoh and that old rabbit.

“Oh,” Erin said wryly, “and of course, you know best, too. I can see by the pleased look on your face, Maiisoh.” Yet a stirring of great sadness overwhelmed her and her fingers tightened briefly on the herder’s staff that she always carried. Father Sun was just brimming the horizon and she silently offered prayers of welcome to him and to all her relations, thanking the Great Spirit for the beauty of yet another day being offered to her.

Maiisoh suddenly rose off his haunches and leaped away from her. Being a good guard, he didn’t run through the herd, but around it, loping easily toward the east and following a desert track that many vehicles had followed. The rain two days ago had turned the red clay of the desert into slick, slimy goo that no car or truck could traverse—at least, not out here to the middle of the Navajo Reservation. Until it dried, foot and horse traffic were the only kind that could make it to where she lived.

Bothered, but not knowing why, Erin continued to lead her sheep in the direction her white wolf had gone. She watched him work his way around a small hill that wore a crown of dark green Navajo tea brush and sage. Someone was coming. Who? Would he make it to where she lived? Only the Great Spirit knew those answers, and as Erin ambled down the damp red clay already beginning to dry beneath the rays of Father Sun, she hoped in one small compartment of her heart that whoever the visitor was, he would grow weary, give up and turn back.

The bleating of the sheep soothed her worry. Soon she would begin to weave her next rug from the wool she gathered from them in midsummer. Right now, their coats were heavy, growing thick in preparation for winter, which would start in mid-November on the res.

Winter… She loved winter because it meant she would be cut off from everyone—and everything. It was the time of year when she sat cross-legged at her frame and began to weave the strong, soft strands of wool into another magnificent rug. Each rug told the story of the year that had gone before. Erin didn’t try and weave as the Navajo women wove; her symbols were Eastern Cherokee, and she wove colorful picture stories across her rugs. They were never shown to anyone; she kept them carefully rolled up and tucked away in a huge old cedar trunk. But the rugs were a living, breathing testament of the last ten years of living in the hermitlike world she preferred. Each rug detailed what had happened to her that had been important to her growth.

As she slowly placed her booted feet upon the ground, she felt the energy of the land, the throbbing quiver reminding her that Mother Earth was very much alive beneath her. It was a soothing feeling, one that opened her heart like a flower, one that calmed her fractious state and made her feel loved and nurtured.

He is coming.

Halting, Erin looked toward the butte in the distance. The only way into her area was a road around the bottom of that spire. Since it had been raining heavily for the past two days, the track was still muddy. Whoever was coming had chosen a very poor time to try and find her. He was doomed to failure, she told herself, her fingers wrapping more strongly around the aged saguaro cactus staff.

Or was he?

He is coming.

A broken sigh tore from her lips. Why did she feel such consternation? Such anxiety? That had not happened before. Oh, she always knew when someone was coming. That was the easy part, for if Maiisoh did not alert her, then that secret part of herself that was connected to the living River of Life energy that glistened and gleamed through and around all things in the colors of the rainbow, would tell her of the approach of her next visitor.

It was a man.

How strange. With a few exceptions, her patients were usually women. Few men had the patience, the perseverance, the utter commitment to find her hogan, to find her. In fact most of her patients over the last ten years had been women. Only two men had made it to her home and asked for help. And they were Navajo, not white men, thank goodness.

She smiled a little as the flock moved energetically along the rutted track vehicles had followed to her hogan. The sheep seemed almost elated and moved quickly—which was unlike them. Sheep foraged slowly. They didn’t go trotting briskly down the road, ignoring sparse yellowed strands of grass here and there.

Mystified, Erin picked up her pace to follow the herd, which suddenly seemed to know exactly where it was going. Of course, Maiisoh had already run down this way, because she could see his huge, wide paw prints embedded in the thick, gooey clay. She hurried to keep up.

The tracks led around a small, round hill and then continued to wind around other hills of varying sizes and shapes. Erin knew that a good two miles away, the road dipped down into a wash where many a vehicle had become stuck—but good—after a rain. Keying her hearing, she thought she heard the faint sounds of a car engine in the distance.

He is coming.

The sheep were trotting now, heading straight for the wash. Erin had to trot herself to keep up with her flock. She never allowed them to range out here alone, for fear of coyotes grabbing one of them. There were wild dogs, too, which were more of a danger. The dogs often came from the reservation. Because the Navajo didn’t have money to feed them, the animals took off looking for food. Other disowned dogs would find them, and the animals would band together. Erin knew from sad experience that a pack of dogs starving to death would easily claim one of her vulnerable sheep and kill it without a thought. Wild, hungry dogs were a greater problem than the coyotes that owned this land.

He is coming.

Erin heard the grinding gears of a car now. Slightly winded, she saw her flock, as if guided by an invisible hand, continue to trot knowingly along the faint track, which had been washed out during the recent rainstorm. With a shake of her head, she acknowledged the invisible powers that surrounded her. Off in the distance, she saw Maiisoh standing on a hill that overlooked the wash far below. His tail was wagging expectantly and she knew Maiisoh saw the man who was trying to find her.

Well, she might as well surrender to the Great Spirit’s demand. Men were not her strong suit, never had been, but if that was what was decreed by the greatest, most loving force in her universe, then she would bow to it and move toward her destiny. That did not mean Erin wasn’t afraid. She was. The Great Spirit knew the fear that rested in her heart. Her deep, dark secret of the past still lay open and continued to ooze grief and loss. She had never tended that wound within herself, hoping to cover it, hoping to forget it with time.

He is coming.

“Great Spirit, guide me with this man who comes looking for help. Give me the words, the wisdom, the vision of my heart to see him clearly, so that a healing can take place within him.”

How many times had she spoken that reverent prayer with all her soul? Erin had lost count, but she meant each word with every cell in her body as she continued down the slight incline. Less than a mile away was the wash. She knew without even seeing it yet that the man who looked for her was stuck there with his vehicle.