“What is this place?” he asked as he looked across at the sinuous lines of silt-filled ditches that snaked across the alluvial flat. A series of stones had been carefully placed in the arroyo bottom a stone’s throw to his right. A dam waiting for water that had never come.
“This is supposed to be a field.” Turquoise Fox blocked the fierce afternoon sun with a hard brown hand. “Those wooden contraptions over there where the ditches radiate, those are the head gates. Each of these little plots is owned by a different woman’s lineage. In order to work these ditches, she must have the right tchamahia, a symbolic hoe that is Blessed for this piece of land … for these ditches. To work these fields with any tool but the correct tchamahia is thought to anger the ground and cause the crops to fail.”
“From the looks of things, I’d say someone used the wrong hoe.”
Wind plucked at loose strands of black hair that had come loose from Leather Hand’s bun. He squinted in the hot sunlight, wondering at the sere yellow soil, the exposed outcrops of crumbling brown sandstone on the surrounding ridgetops, and the dry-cracked patterns of clay at his feet. Where he now waited a low ridge protected the fields close to the dry wash; it looked like the last place on earth where corn, beans, or squash would grow.
“Why are there holes in the middle of these little mounds?” He indicated the lines of bumps that pocked the field. “Isn’t that where they plant the seed?”
Turquoise Fox nodded. “Yes, War Chief. They make the mounds, then use a digging stick to poke a hole in the top when the soil is moist. Mounded like that, the roots get more water when the ditches flood these little fields.”
“But there have been no floods.”
“That is correct, War Chief.”
“Then why do each of these little humps have gaping holes in them? Did rodents do this?”
Turquoise Fox gave him an evaluative look. “Not rodents, War Chief. It was the people who did this. The corn never sprouted. What you see here, the reason each little hump is opened, was so that the people could retrieve the seed corn they had so laboriously planted this spring.”
“To save it for next year?”
Turquoise Fox slowly shook his head. “No, War Chief. It was ground, boiled, and eaten.”
The notion stunned him. The last morsel of food that a good farmer would allow to pass his lips was one made from the seed corn. A man who ate his seeds was eating his future. Only a fool, or a man touched by madness, would do such a thing.
Leather Hand shifted on his heels to claw at one of the little earthen humps. All he retrieved was dust. As it sifted through his fingers the wind whisked it away in feathery streamers.
“Have you sent the scouts?”
“I have.” Turquoise Fox gave him a knowing nod. “They are fanning out, following the tracks of the other raiders.”
“I want to recover every single kernel of corn that is left.”
“They’ll barely have time to get their cooking fires started. We are within but a short walk of the first farmstead. Tracker reports a scatter of buildings, perhaps twenty people.”
“Good.” He looked up at the low ridge where the man known as Tracker hunched like a squatting coyote, his body silhouetted against the hot, brassy sky. The wind made whips of his black hair, as if trying to pull it loose from the man’s head. Tracker, like the hunter he was, kept his vigilant attention on the surrounding flats.
“How many of these ‘Dust People’ are there?”
“I make it twenty to thirty farmsteads, War Chief. Maybe ten to twenty per settlement. Perhaps three hundred total. Some, those lucky enough to have relatives with food to spare, have moved back to the foothills of the Bearclaw Mountains to the south. The others are surviving by whatever means they have available.”
“Our punishment must be swift and sure.”
“War Chief,” Turquoise Fox hesitated. “Have you given any more thought to the incident at Deer Mother Village?”
“I have.”
Turquoise Fox indicated the dusty field where they waited. “Do you understand now why they won’t care if we only kill them?”
Leather Hand nodded. They have eaten their seed corn. How do you terrify a people who have devoured their future?
Bad Cast didn’t know what he feared more, the loose feeling in his bowels and the notion he might shame himself, or the fact that he might be dead before night fell.
As he pondered his dilemma he studied the backside of the man he followed. The warrior’s red shirt was dirty; white sweat rings stained the armpits and collar. The travel-worn garment did little to hide the broad shoulders that rippled with slablike muscle. Lowering his gaze, Bad Cast watched the warrior’s thick calves, like gnarled juniper, swelling and bulging with each step as they climbed toward Guest House.