Dance of the Bones

He tossed another log on the fire, but the boy still seemed troubled, and Lani suspected there was more to come.

“Henry Rojas was a bad man,” Gabe said at last. “Do you think Mrs. Rojas will stay in Sells? I heard that she’s thinking about moving back to the Navajo.”

Lani nodded. “That’s what I heard, too. After everything that happened, I don’t blame her. I don’t believe Lucy had any idea about what Henry was doing behind her back. And the evil Anglo woman he was working with—-the woman who had the José brothers smuggling diamonds for her—-reminds me of the Evil Giantess in the story of Little White Feather. Do you remember that one?”

“I remember some of it,” Gabe said. “I think you told it to me a long time ago.”

Lani smiled. “I’ll tell it to you again someday—-next winter maybe.”

“I had a dream last night,” Gabe continued after another pause. “It was a weird one. I think it was about the -people that evil woman killed—-not just Carlos and Paul and Henry, but the other -people, too.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I was walking through a cemetery—-a Milgahn cemetery somewhere in town, not here on the reservation. The graves opened up and skeletons started coming out of them. They made a circle around me, and even though they were only bones, I could tell them apart and knew all their names. They were holding hands and dancing. I should have been afraid, but somehow I wasn’t. That’s what was so weird. I wasn’t frightened.”

“That’s one of the things a medicine man or a medicine woman can do,” Lani said. “They can look at a dream and see what it means. The bones were dancing because after all this time the person who murdered them is finally facing justice. They were happy. You weren’t frightened of them because they weren’t scary.”

“Do you think I’ll ever be a real medicine man like my grandfather was?” Gabe asked.

“I think you can become one,” Lani replied. “You’ll have to study hard and learn a lot. Your father told me you said that I gave you some divining crystals.”

Gabe lowered his head. “That was a lie,” he said. Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, Gabe pulled out four tiny stones and held them out to her in the palm of his hand, where they sparkled in the firelight.

“You didn’t give them to me. I found them in the jar of peanut butter Tim left for me. I took out a spoonful of the peanut butter, and when I washed everything else away, these were what was left. I’ll give them back if you tell me I should, but they worked,” he added. “That night when I was in the hospital, I used them. When I held them in my hand and sang to them, they told me you would be all right. That you would be safe.”

Another long silence followed. “I don’t think you need to give them back,” Lani said at last, taking Gabe’s outstretched hand and closing his fingers around the glittering diamonds. “I think you should keep them. Put them back in your pocket and keep them safe. You know how the Ohb would take scalps when they defeated their enemies?”

Gabe nodded.

“They took them as trophies. And that’s what these diamonds are—-they represent a piece of the evil Milgahn woman. You have a trophy, and so do I.”

“You do?” Gabe asked, putting the diamonds back in his pocket.

“Yes,” Lani said. She reached into her backpack and pulled out her medicine basket, the one she had woven during her sixteen days of exile. Removing the tightly fitting cover, she extracted the tiny pot and passed it to Gabe. “Can you see the design?”