A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [10]
Prudence took an involuntary step away from her brother. Jake looked healthy, but not quite the same. His shoulders were broader, his body hair a bit thicker. His eyes—once a pale brown much like her own—were yellow. He wore his hair longer, touching his shoulders. Something about the way it grew and caught the light reminded Prudence of fur rather than hair.
“You’ve settled here,” she echoed, catching on something safe to say.
“I made a friend and he convinced me this was the place for me. I knew you’d been tracking me, figured you’d catch up. Heard Nathan Yaz saying something last night, and knew you were here.”
“Nathan Yaz?”
“My friend is Navajo. He’s what they’d call a skinwalker, a witch. That’s why he hasn’t introduced himself to the locals. The way the Navajos treat those they figure are witches makes what the Salem folk did seem mild. In Salem, at least, a witch got a trial.”
Jake smiled a slow, easy smile. Were his teeth whiter, the canines a bit sharper? Prudence thought they were.
Jake made a wide, inviting gesture. “Come along, Sis. Gather up your horses. I’ve a place for them out of the sun.”
Prudence went. She’d been seeking Jake. It seemed foolish to leave when she’d finally found him, but she sure wasn’t certain what she was going to do now that she had.
She’d expected to find Jake raving mad. In her thoughts Jake had already been good as dead. What she’d been doing was going to put down a mad dog—or wolf. Again, her mother’s words came to her.
“We’re responsible for our renegades. We alone know their weaknesses. Alive they soil the reputations of both our communities and those of the wild wolves. We must put them down lest they do more harm.”
But this . . . Prudence didn’t know what to think of this Jake. He seemed much like himself, but improved.
Jake’s new home was in one of those surprising little canyons that crop up even in the badlands: an oasis of scrub growth and tall grass. The grass was drying with late summer, but still succulent enough that Buck whickered appreciatively.
“Surprised the sheepherders haven’t found this place,” Prudence said, trying to sound conversational. If Jake’s sense of smell was as improved as he claimed, he’d smell her apprehension, but she had her own self-respect to consider.
A male voice spoke from the shadows. The cracked notes of old age did not disguise the Navajo accent.
“The Navajo will not come here,” the old man said. “Not only is there no good grazing between here and their sheep camps, but it is said that a witch lives in these rocks.”
From under a jutting ledge, the speaker emerged. His browned skin was deeply lined and his hair iron grey. He wore what was rapidly becoming Navajo traditional dress. Trousers, shirt, vest, and round-crowned hat might have been worn by any cowhand, but the wide sandcast silver and turquoise concho belt and the broad squash-blossom necklace were too large and gaudy for most American women, much less for an American man.
Prudence swallowed a derisive snort.
Your partner guards himself with silver, Jake. Have you noticed, or is this skinwalker hiding his armament in plain sight under the guise of “native dress?”
Jake paused and made a waving gesture with his hand, as if making introductions at some society function.
“Prudence, meet my partner, Clyde Begay. Clyde, this is my sister, Prudence Bledsloe.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Begay,” Prudence said politely.
The old man narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. His response was much more ambiguous.
“Your brother has spoken much of you, Miz Bledsloe.”
Jake cut in. “Pru, bring the horses over here. That sun’s too damn hot.”
Prudence obeyed. The space under the ledge provided good shelter for the horses. Behind it, a wide- mouthed cave sighed out cooler air.
Buck and Trick were happy to settle into a pole corral under the ledge. There was no evidence that Jake kept