A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [6]
“I’ve come to settle my bill,” Prudence said.
“No bill,” Maria said firmly. “I saw your rifle on the windowsill. I don’t think you would have shot Nathan. Come back tonight. I am making peach pie.”
Prudence put her coin purse away. “Thank you, and I just might.”
She collected Buck and Trick from Ricardo. The horses’s coats and their tack gleamed. Buck nibbled with sleepy contentment along her arm, telling her he’d been treated very well indeed. Prudence paid what was asked without dickering and added a tip besides. Then she rode for the cottonwoods.
It was a nice stand, plenty shaded, with a pole corral and stone fire circle already in place. Prudence pitched her tent, then built a fire, going a bit afield to gather something other than cottonwood. Cottonwood burned hot and messy, tending to flare out of control.
Like some folks I know, Prudence thought.
She didn’t go into town for dinner, but sat by her small fire. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen her taking the single piece cartridges she had bought from Mr. Eli and methodically changing the lead bullets for some she took from a box she took out of her own gear. These bullets shone brightly as she inspected each in the firelight . . . shone like silver.
Prudence had banked her fire to dull coals and settled her head against a rolled blanket when she heard stealthy footsteps approaching. She was reaching for her six-shooter when she smelled peppermint.
“May we come in?” came a hushed, female voice.
Prudence hadn’t heard this voice before, but she knew who it must be. She didn’t put the gun aside, but she did ease her finger off the trigger.
Two small figures came into her camp and stood where she could see them, but where they would not be visible from outside the camp. One was the little girl she’d seen in Eli’s mercantile. The other was a Navajo boy just slightly taller. He smelled of wood smoke, mutton, and sage, spiced with peppermint.
Interesting, Prudence thought.
“Welcome to my fire,” she said. “Coffee?”
“No, thank you,” came the girl’s voice. “And thank you for the peppermints. They’re my favorite, but Grandpa only gives me a few at a time.”
“Good for the digestion,” Prudence said. “I don’t see any harm in them.”
“Your name is Prudence Bledsloe,” the girl said, rather as one confirming a fact, not asking a question.
“It is. And you are Miss Eli?”
“Miss March. April March. April. My mama was an Eli. This is my friend, Vernon Yaz.”
Ah-hah! One mystery solved.
“Pleased to meet you both. Does your grandpa know you’re out, Miss March?”
“I . . . well, no. I piled up the blankets in my bed, though, and he and Grandma are well and truly asleep.”
“Still, you shouldn’t stay out late, just in case. I think you and Hosteen Yaz have something to tell me?”
The boy laughed softly. “Hosteen” was a Navajo title of respect, roughly translating as “old man.” He had caught her joke and appreciated it.
“You were asking questions,” he said. His words were flavored with the accent that marked a Navajo speaker: ts and ds blending, gs vanishing, vowels elongated. The syllables were run together, as if the speaker was accustomed to much longer words. “I heard Maria telling Nathan—he’s my mother’s brother—what Reverend Printer told you, but Reverend Printer doesn’t know it all. April said you should hear this.”
“So there is a Navajo side to the trouble, too,” Prudence said. “I thought there might be.”
“We have lost sheep. We don’t have cattle, but the peaches have been ruined on the drying racks. And our children—three little ones—have been stolen. There are whispers that a witch is at work.”
“Tell me more.”
Vernon did so, going into great detail. Prudence listened carefully, making little noises to indicate that she had understood, but otherwise not interrupting. She needed to hear what Vernon had to tell, but if children were disappearing, the last thing she needed was to have these two found in her camp.
Vernon’s story matched what Reverend Printer had told. The thefts showed a level