Revenge of the Manitou

EIGHT

Gradually, the police officers and medics returned to their posts, and the sergeant, although he was looking colorless and shaken, turned around to usher Harry and Singing Rook and Neil back to their pickup.

“What did you think of that, sergeant?” asked Harry. “Did you ever see anything like that before?”

The sergeant opened the door of the pickup for him and indicated that he should climb up.

“I’ve seen hundreds of stiffs in this job,” he said harshly. “One more doesn’t make no odds.”

Singing Rock looked at him carefully. Then he said: “I know how easy it is to become blase’, sergeant, but let me give you one good word of caution. Tonight, just for once, don’t be blas6. Look out for unexpected attacks. Take a lot of care.”

The sergeant wiped sweat from his forehead with his furry arm. “You talk like you know what’s going on here,” he said.

“I do,” said Singing Rock.

“Well, that proves you’re nuts,” replied the sergeant. “Anybody who thinks they know how a bus gets to shine like a dead mackerel, and how a woman gets herself frozen solid in the middle of September, they have to be going bananas.”

Neil said angrily, “Why the hell don’t you-”

“Neill” interrupted Harry. Then, more quietly, “It won’t do any good.”

Neil took a look back at the bus, still standing on the bridge with its windows frosted up. He could hardly believe that Toby was inside there, taking part in some unspeakable and unimaginable ritual. He could hardly believe that Toby had summoned down the squid-like Sak, and had actually sacrificed Mrs. Novato to him.

But he was here, on this gloomy and fearful night, sitting in his pickup at Lake Berryessa with an Indian and a sarcastic mystic from New York, and he knew that it had to be true.

He started the motor, and they drove off back down the highway.

Singing Rock fingered the amulets around his neck. *I think we’re going to have to bide our time until it gets dark,” he said. “Then we’ll come back and see what we can do to lay down a medicine circle.”

“How are you going to lay down a circle when the bus is on the bridge like that?”

“It’s going to be very difficult. That’s the reason Misquamacus chose to stop there.

Nobody can come near without his knowing, and nobody can surround the bus with all the magical paraphernalia that you’d need to keep him permanently imprisoned there.”

“So what’s going to happen now?” asked Neil.

Singing Rock rubbed his eyes. “I’m not sure. I think we’re going to have to play this the way it comes.”

They drove in silence for a while along the darkening road. But after a few minutes, Harry said, “There’s one small thing that’s been bothering me. Something we never checked out. I thought about it last night, but then it slipped my mind again. I think if we’ve got ourselves a couple of hours to kill, we ought to go look for it.”

“What’s that?” asked Singing Rock.

“It’s something that Toby mentioned to Neil real early on, when Misquamacus was first making himself known. He said something about the prophecy that is still buried on the stone redwood. Now, we never took the trouble to check out what that prophecy was, or where it was, or anything.”

Neil reached the steep junction with Route 128, and turned right toward Chiles Valley. “It was my guess Misquamacus was talking about one of the trees up at the Petrified Forest in Calistoga,” he remarked. “I never went there, but I heard there’s a huge stone redwood that’s still half-buried in the hillside.”

Harry turned to Singing Rock. “You want to go take a look? I think we ought to. If there’s something on that tree that we don’t know about, and Misquamacus springs a nasty surprise on us, then we’re going to regret it for the rest of our lives, which might be for five or ten minutes or so, if we’re lucky.”

“How are you doing for gas?” Singing Rock asked Neil.

“I’m fine. Let’s head on up there. Even if we don’t find anything, it’s something to keep my mind off Toby.”

The Petrified Forest was closed when they arrived. Although it was only a little after five, the sky was thunderously dark, and the rumblings and shakings of an approaching storm were growing steadily louder. They parked the pickup outside the gates, and then Harry walked around to the office and gift shop, where a single light was still burning. He rapped on the window, and mouthed, “Let — me-in.”

A pretty brunette in a brown overall came to the door and unlocked it. She said, “I’m sorry, mister, we’re all closed up. But we’re open again tomorrow if you want to drop by. The place is really worth a visit.”

“Look,” said Harry, “is the manager in?”

The girl shook her head. “Not this evening, he isn’t.”

“Is there anybody here who knows something about this place, apart from you?”

She shook her head. “There’s only Professor Thoren. But he’s not really a tree professor. I should drop by in the morning if I were you.”

“Who’s Professor Thoren? What does he do?”

She frowned. “I’m not too sure. I’m only looking after the place while the manager’s out. He’s up at the Tunnel Tree right now.”

“The Tunnel Tree? What’s that?”

She smiled. “I don’t know why you don’t come see for yourself when we’re open. It’s real impressive. There’s this stone redwood and it’s more than three hundred feet long, lying on its side, if you understand me. It was buried deep in the rocks, and ever since about the turn of the century they’ve been tunneling alongside of it so that people can walk down the tunnel and take a look. It’s real neat.”

“And that’s where Professor Thoren is right now?”

The girl nodded. “He’s been here a year or so, trying to work out the Indian writing.”

Harry stared at her. “I don’t believe it. There’s Indian writing on that tree? You mean that?”

“Sure there is. It was in all the local papers. They found it round about two years ago, when they were digging the tunnel along further. It’s only scratches. What they call picture writing.”

Harry said, “Of course. In Misquamacus’s time, it must have been still hidden under the rocks.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked the girl.

“It’s granted,” said Harry. He felt ridiculously excited. For the first time since he’d flown over to help Neil, he felt he was making some headway. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It was an advance against Misquamacus, instead of another terrified retreat.

“I want to ask you a favor,” he said. “I know you’re closed, and everything, but I really need to speak to Professor Thoren.”

The girl looked suspicious. “Do you know him personally? I mean, are you a friend of his, or something?”

“No, I’m not. But that picture writing he’s looking at is something my friends and I have to see.”

“Well, I’m sorry. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”

Harry gave the girl his deepest, most sincere expression, the expression he reserved for elderly lady clients who threatened to cross his palm with insufficient silver.

“You have to believe me,” he said, “this is the most important thing in my whole life.

I’ve been searching for ten years to see picture writing like this. Across Alaska. Down through Arizona. Everywhere. Ten years of hardship and struggle. And you’re telling me to come back in the morning?”

The girl frowned at him, sympathetic but confused. “Well, I guess you could take a quick look,” she told him. “But you’d have to pay the regular admission.”

“I’ll do it,” said Harry. “And I’ll pay for my friends, too.”

“Friends?” she queried, but he was already peeling off six dollars.

Once the girl had reluctantly handed over three tickets, Harry walked quickly back to the pickup and rapped on the window. Neil and Singing Rock had been listening to the radio news, and they hushed him for a ‘* moment. Then, when the news — was over, Singing Rock said, “They tried to get to the bus with half-a-dozen specially trained men. As far as they can tell, all six of them were struck down and killed.

They’re just lying in the road.”

Neil said, “It sounds hopeless. How the hell can we fight against something as powerful as that?”

“I think I’ve got a clue,” said Harry. “There’s a Professor Thoren working up here, translating some Indian picture writing they found on a petrified tree about two years ago. Apparently it was all in the papers when they discovered it, but I don’t remember reading it myself. Mind you-that was before I met Misquamacus. I wasn’t much interested in Indians then.”

“But Misquamacus said the writing was still hidden,” said Neil.

“What did he know?” asked Harry. “I don’t suppose they get the San Francisco Examiner in the great eut-side. And this petrified forest was only discovered around 1860, after his last reincarnation.”

“How do you know that?” asked Singing Rock.

Harry turned and pointed. “It’s painted on a sign right up on that tree over there. I thought Indians were supposed to have sharp eyes.”

Singing Rock grunted in amusement. Then he climbed out of the pickup, and the three of them walked through the turnstile, under the shade of an ancient oak, into the park itself.

To reach the Tunnel Tree, they had to walk around a sloping path, up past a hilly meadow, and along the edge of a ridge. It was silent in the forest, except for the rustling of leaves and the scurrying of squirrels, and then- footsteps sounded loud on the dry, leaf-strewn ground. Neil had brought along the flashlight from the pickup, but the woods were still dark and shadowy under the cloudy sky.

Halfway along the ridge, they came to an enormous fallen redwood, fenced off with chain link. Neil shined his torch on it, and the wood glistened and sparkled. Like all the petrified trees in the forest, it had been infiltrated with silicas from volcanic lava, which had turned it gradually into stone. The massive trunk, over four feet across and hundreds of feet long, disappeared into the rocky hillside, and beside it ran a narrow tunnel cut into the limestone and shored up with planks.

From within the tunnel, they could see lights.

“Okay,” said Harry. “I think I’d better lead the way.”

They entered the tunnel, heads bent, and walked along the boarded floor until they reached the end. There, sitting on a campstool in front of the petrified tree, with a battery of flashlights and cameras and drawing equipment, was a middle-aged man in jeans and a lumberjack shirt, peering closely at the bark through magnifying spectacles.

Harry stood beside him and waited. But the professor was so engrossed in what he was doing that he stayed where he was, his head bent, his heavy eyebrows drawn

‘together like aggressive caterpillars, his hairy hand poised to draw a line of India ink on his drawing pad.

It was clammy and warm in the tunnel, and Harry tugged at his collar.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Are you Professor Thoren?”

The professor’s body flinched. Then, very slowly, he sat back on his campstool and turned toward them. His eyes were so grossly enlarged by his magnifying lenses that Harry felt a ridiculous momentary shock. But the professor took the glasses off, and replaced them with a pair of normal eyeglasses.

“Do you have any idea of the concentration it takes to make sense of these hieroglyphs?” he said, in a deep, New England accent.

Harry grinned and shrugged, and the professor sighed, “No, you obviously wouldn’t.

But your interruption, let me assure you, has cost me two hours’ train of thought.”

Singing Rock said, “We wouldn’t have interrupted you at all, professor, but it’s desperately urgent. Many lives are at stake.”

“Urgent?” queried Professor Thoren. “How can anything to do with these hieroglyphs be urgent! They’ve been here for two thousand years, or even longer. This tree has lain here for six million years. In this sort of business, nothing is ever urgent. How can it be?”

Singing Rock said, “I can’t explain, professor, and I think if I did you would find the situation too difficult to grasp. But I must assure you that we are serious, that we are perfectly sane, and that we must know urgently what it says in that prophecy.”

Professor Thoren looked at Singing Rock carefully. “You’re an Indian, aren’t you?

This is nothing to do with Indian rights, is it? Nothing to do with that Wounded Knee business?”

“I was there, at Wounded Knee, advising and helping,” said Singing Rock. “But this particular problem has nothing to do with it whatever. This is a problem of Indian magic.”

Professor Thoren got up off his campstool and folded it away. He was a tall, broad-faced man, and he had to stoop inside the confines of the tunnel. He said, “What makes you think these hieroglyphs are a prophecy? Do you know anything about them?”

“Nothing at all,” said Singing Rock. “But they were mentioned in the context of an Indian legend.”

“Well, you surprise me,” Professor Thoren told him. “I thought I knew all the Indian legends there are to know. But nobody’s ever mentioned to me that this could be a prophecy, and I’m only just beginning to come around to believeing it could be some kind of mystical prediction myself. Either you know something I don’t know, or else you’re way ahead of me.”

“Let’s just say we have inside information,” said Harry uncomfortably. He didn’t like runnels much, they gave him claustrophobia, and he was praying that Professor Thoren would finish saying what he had to say and let them get out.

The professor looked at him quizzically. “Inside information? It sounds as if you heard it from Gitche Manitou himself.”

“Not quite,” said Harry. “But near enough. You know how these manitous gossip.”

Neil said, “Professor Thoren, I have an eight-year-old son. He’s in terrible danger right now, and these men are trying to save his life. If you could see your way clear to cooperating with them-well, I’d appreciate it.”

Professor Thoren looked at their faces in the lamplight. Then he said, “I suppose I’ve heard of nuttier things. What do you want to know?”

Harry pointed to the hieroglyphs scratched on the rock-hard surface of the giant redwood. “Do you know, basically, what all of this means?” he asked the professor.

The professor ran his fingers over the lines of hieroglyphic script. There were triangles, curves, figures that looked like birds, circles, and dots. He said, “Basically, I suppose I do. I’ve translated it into literal English. The hieroglyphs are remarkably close to the inscriptions found on ancient stones in New England and middle America. I don’t know who carved them, or why, or even how, because this petrified tree is as hard as anything you’ll ever find. But it must have been an important message, because somebody took a lot of trouble to make sure it was preserved. It could have been here for two thousand years, or maybe a hell of a lot longer. It comes right out of the ancient past, right out of a time when this land was Indian country, all the way from the east coast to the west.”

He glanced up at Singing Rock. “I don’t particularly sympathize with Indians who want to change things back the way they were,” he said. “But I know what you probably feel about America. If it had once been my country, I’d feel the same way.”

Harry took out a handkerchief and mopped his face and neck. The tunnel seemed closer and hotter than ever, and quite apart from that, it was almost six-thirty, and there wasn’t much time left before the moon rose.

“Professor Thoren?” he said. “The translation?”

“Well, I don’t know how it’s going to help you,” shrugged the professor. “But here it is.

The first hieroglyph here is a kind of opening announcement. You could almost say it means ‘Now hear this.’ But the rest of it reads: ‘After the days when the greatest of the chiefs has passed beyond, and after the days when all the lands and the beasts that run on the land have been lost, then the magicians outside shall wait for nine hundred ninety-nine moons in darkness, until the day of the invisible stars, when they shall unite and call down Pa-la-kai and Nashuna and Coyote, the terrible ravager, and also call upon Ossadagowah, son of Sadogowah, and those outside who are in no human shape.’ ”

Professor Thoren paused, and looked up. “I don’t suppose it makes any sense to you so far,” he said. “But I can explain it if you want.”

Harry, pale-faced and sweating, shook his head. “We know what it means, professor.

Just get on with it.”

Professor Thoren was about to say something, but then he assumed a resigned face and turned back to the petrified tree. “Okay. Right here, on the sixth line, it says: ‘The wonder-workers shall take their due for the stealing of their lands and the beasts that run thereon, etcetera, and they shall also raise for this purpose that *which sleeps below the surface of the waters and which has been waiting since elder times.”

He looked up. “There is no corresponding word in the English language for that which sleeps below the surface of the waters, although it’s represented here by just one glyph. It doesn’t mean a fish, or a prehistoric monster, or anything like that. If you translated every nuance of this character, it actually means ‘the great and feared god of ancient times who was banished below the waves and has been dreaming ever since of his return to the shores of earth.’ ”

Singing Rock’s face was strained. He said, “Is there any more?”

Professor Thoren frowned. “You really take this seriously, don’t you? You’re not kidding around.”

“Professor,” insisted Singing Rock, “can you please tell me if there’s any more?”

“There’s one more line,” said the professor. “It says something like: ‘That which sleeps below the surface of the waters shall rise on that day on the bidding of Ossadagowah, and the massacre of the thousands shall begin.’ The word they’ve used here for ‘massacre’ could mean ‘butchery’ or ‘dismemberment.’ It’s a very ancient glyph which was often used to describe sacrificial rituals.”

Singing Rock was silent for a while. He seemed to be searching deep down inside of himself for something he had heard years and years before, from the lips of the medicine men who had taught him when he was young. Professor Thoren glanced at Harry inquiringly, but all Harry could do was shrug.

At last, Singing Rock said, “Professor, I think we have to leave now. I’m very glad we found you here, and I want to apologize for sounding so abrupt and demanding.

You’ve been most helpful.”

“Hold up,” said Professor Thoren. “You can’t just waltz in here and take a whole year’s work and then waltz out again without offering something in return.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Singing Rock, and he reached into his coat pocket. “Would an ounce of chewing tobacco do?”

“Mister,” said Professor Thoren impatiently, “what I’m talking about is a little cultural cross-pollination. I know what these hieroglyphs say but I don’t know what they mean. I’ve never heard of anything like this. You can’t simply walk out without telling me what you know about it.”;

“Professor,” responded Singing Rock seriously, “the reason you don’t know what they mean is because of all Red Indian legends this is the most feared and the most secret. It is the legend of the greatest of the elder gods and it has been kept from the white man for centuries, because of what the white man might unwittingly raise up if he spoke the sacred spells.”

“You believe this?” asked Professor Thoren. “You actually believe that if the spells were cast, you’d raise up some kind of ancient god?”

Singing Rock stared at him defiantly. Then, in a slow voice that was rich with dignity, he said, “Yes, professor, I believe it. I believe in the gods because they have often come to my aid when I was weak and uncertain. I believe in the gods because they still live and breathe and speak to me from the lands that once belonged to my people. I believe in the gods because they will care for my manitou when I pass to the great outside.”

“Very well,” said Professor Thoren, a little abashed. “Then what god is this, the one who sleeps below the waves?”

“There are many stories about him,” said Singing Rock. “He was said to be cloudy and amorphous, and sometimes to be of such a size that he would tower over the earth. His face was a hellish confusion of serpents, and his jaws were like a chasm.

So the stories say, anyway.”

“He sounds pretty alarming. Who managed to banish him below the waves? It must have been someone with real magical talent.”

“It was,” agreed Singing Rock. “But in those days, almost every Indian wonderworker was amazingly powerful. It was said that many of them could juggle with miniature suns, and cross the waters without a canoe. The wonder-worker who banished this particular god, though, was the greatest of all the wonder-workers.

It was Misquamacus, sometimes known as Quamis, or Quanquus. The stories say that Misquamacus dismissed him below the waters of the earth and placed a spell on the waters so that the god could never emerge again through the watery portal into the world of humans. He couldn’t send the god back to the great outside, of course.

Gods of that magnitude will only return of their own free will. But Misquamacus protected his people sufficiently well for them to flourish and grow, without being molested for human sacrifices or massacred as they slept.”

“But it says here that the god is going to be raised again,” Professor Thoren pointed out. “If he preyed on red men as well as white men, why would the wonderworkers want to do that?”

“A god who is released from a spell bears a debt of gratitude to those who let him out,” said Singing Rock. “That is part of the exact balance of Indian magic.”

“Even if whoever lets him out is the same person who put him under the spell in the first place?” asked Harry.

“It makes no difference,” nodded Singing Rock. “You see, the god wouldn’t have been put under the spell at all if he hadn’t been savaging or frightening the wonderworker’s people, and so the balance would be maintained.”

Professor Thoren said, “Does this elder god have a name? Something I might recognize?”

“Most of the elder gods have hundreds of names,” said Singing Rock. “The Natick Indians of Boston used to call this god Paukunnawaw, the Great Bear, because he came at night like a bear and left their people hideously mauled. When Cotton Mather talked to the Na-ticks in the seventeeth century, he asked them what they knew of the stars, and they pointed up to the sky and said Paukunnawaw. Mather was delighted, because he thought the Indians miraculously knew the European name for the constellation of the Great Bear. What he didn’t realize was that they were telling him about the elder god who came from the stars and devoured them.

“Some Indians called him a long unpronounceable name which means The-Being-Without-Shape of-the-Estuaries. But I guess the most widespread name was Ka-tua-la-hu. It’s hard to tell you what it means exactly, just like those hieroglyphs are hard to translate. The Sioux say it means ‘he who lurks in the deepest lakes.’

Harry said, “I think I’m going to go for some fresh air. This is like holding a seminar in a subway train.”

Neil chimed in, ‘I’ll join you.”

Singing Rock held out his hand to Professor Thoren. “I must leave, too. We have a crisis on our hands tonight. But please understand how much you have helped us.

When this is finished, we will return, if that is possible, and I will tell you everything I know of Ka-tua-la-hu. You deserve to know.”

Professor Thoren gave a lopsided smile. “From what you say about him, I don’t know whether I do.”

They shook hands, and then Singing Rock turned and made his way back along the lighted tunnel into the darkness of the Petrified Forest.

“Well?” said Harry, as he emerged.

“It’s much worse than I thought,” said Singing Rock. “Ka-tua-la-hu was always the most grotesque and bloodthirsty of the elder gods. He was so feared that his name outlived the religion itself, and you can still hear some of the coastal Indians call someone they fear ‘a ka-tua.’”

Neil said, “I don’t really understand. You mean that Misquamacus is going to raise this god?”

Singing Rock nodded. “That was the second reason he chose this region for the day of the dark stars, apart from the strength he could draw from the old Wappo victory over the white settlers. Lake Berryessa is deep and wide, and an ideal place to call for a manifestation of Ka-tua-la-hu. You see, when Misquamacus banished him under the waters, he banished him under all waters, not in any particular spot, so he can raise him from any lake or reservoir or estuary or whatever he wants. It just has to be a big enough stretch of water to re-create the greatest and most horrible demon that ever was.”

Harry sniffed. There was something in these dark woods to which he was allergic.

He said, “What about Nashuna and Osso-bucco and all the rest of the demons?”

Singing Rock told him, “Demons and gods have to be summoned according to a hierarchy. First they summoned Sak, the guardian of the gateway, and with Sak’s help they’re going to summon the lesser demons. Then they’re going to call Ossadagowah. For any kind of revenge, I would have thought Ossadagowah would have been quite terrible enough. But Misquamacus is obviously hell-bent on using Ossadagowah to call on Ka-tua-la-hu, and that’s going to be devastation time.”

Neil said, “We’d better get back there, huh? Back to the bus? I know this stuff is really important, and all that, but Toby-”

Harry put his arm around Neil’s shoulders. “We’re going to do the best we can, Neil, and a little bit more besides.”

They made their way down the gloomy path of the Petrified Forest, down a flight of rough, log steps, until they reached the turnstile and the gift shop again. The girl was waiting for them anxiously, and she was obviously relieved that they weren’t trying to bust their way out with a petrified tree under their arms.

“Did you see the professor?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Harry. “Everything’s fine.”

“Did you enjoy the forest?” she asked.

Harry shook his head. “No. I was petrified.”

They drove cautiously back along the highway to Lake Berryessa, but they needn’t have worried about being intercepted by the Highway Patrol. The bridge across Pope Creek and its immediate surroundings were in chaos. Floodlights now illuminated the bridge from all sides, and there were police cars and press cars and armored half-tracks from the National Guard parked all over the road. Helicopters clattered in and out, bringing television teams and police officials, and there was a constant echoing blare of amplified comments from a loudspeaker system.

The night was still warm, but it was unusually dark already, and the air still trembled with the vibrations of a coming electric storm. Along the hills on the opposite shore of Lake Berryessa, across the deep, troubled waters, lightning forked like the fangs of a poisonous snake.

A cop held his hand up as Harry and Neil and Singing Rock slowly approached the bridge area in their pickup.

“I’m a parent of one of the children,” said Neil, and produced his driver’s license again.

“Okay, okay,” said the cop. “Just pull over there and keep your head down. We’ll let you know if anything changes.”

Neil parked, and they climbed out of the truck. This time, Singing Rock took his suitcase with him, and they walked along by the side of the road until they reached the edge of the creek. There they stood against the railr ings and tried to see what had happened since the Highway Patrol had sent them away.

The school bus was still parked across the middle of the bridge, but now, even brighter than the arc lamps from either side of the creek, it was shimmering with a white, unearthly light of its own, and producing a constant high-pitched whine that set Harry’s teeth on edge.

Neil said, “What’s happening?”

Singing Rock set down his suitcase. “They are almost finished preparing the gateway. As soon as the moon goddess appears, they will emerge in their real form.”

“What’s the time?” asked Harry. “I think my watch died of claustrophobia in that tunnel.”

“There’s about a half-hour to go,” said Neil.

Singing Rock opened his case and took out a small spherical cage made of curved bones bound together with human hair. He set it carefully on top of one of the uprights of the fence, and then hung strings of beads and ribbons around it.

“Is it rude to ask what that is?” said Neil.

“Not at all,” smiled Singing Rock. “It’s a caged spirit that’s particularly sensitive to the presence of other spirits. Rather like a canary that miners take down the mine shaft to detect the presence of methane. When that cage starts rattling, we’ll know that the first demons are drawing near to the bridge.”

Neil peered at the cage worriedly. “A spirit? What kind of a spirit? A human spirit?”

Singing Rock laughed. “No/ It’s the spirit of a wolf. I borrowed it from one of the elders.”

Harry said, “What about a medicine circle? Can you do something to hold those medicine men inside that bus? The way you did the first time Misquamacus appeared?”

“I don’t think there’s a chance,” said Singing Rock. “Apart from the fact that it’s physically difficult to get out there and draw one, your policemen will try to stop me, and so will Misquamacus. I think I prefer to conserve my energy for the battle itself.”

There were now only ten minutes to moonrise. A little way away, just beyond a cluster of NBC television reporters and cameramen, Captain Myers of the Highway Patrol had set up a radio link post. He had obviously been outranked by the arrival of two police inspectors and a colonel from the National Guard, but he was tenaciously keeping in touch with the siege, and sending his men here and there to bring him news of what the military and the FBI were doing.

In the tense, warm night, under the unnatural brilliance of the floodlights, a burble of military voices came over the radio as the National Guardsmen were deployed along the hills overlooking the bridge, punctuated with occasional terse comments about the state of the school bus.

“She’s still glowing. No brighter now. But still glowing.”

“I don’t know why the goddamn gas tank doesn’t blow, the way that’s shining.”

“It doesn’t blow because it’s cold out there. Do you know how cold it is out there?

That’s ice on the handrail. You see it? That’s ice.”

“Crosby and Margolies in position, sir. We got a good view of the bus door.”

“Where’s that half-track? I want that half-track across the road. I don’t want anybody entering or leaving unless we say so.”

“Do you think the children are dead?”

“Who knows? Who knows what the hell’s going on?”

Singing Rock lifted his eyes to the thunderous sky. “We won’t see Nepauz-had when she appears,” he said quietly. “How long is it now?”

“Two minutes,” said Neil.

A Marine helicopter appeared from the southwest, and hovered around the bus for a while, taking reconnaissance photographs and trying to see into the iced-up windows. The draft from the helicopter’s rotors washed fiercely around them, and Singing Rock’s ribbons and beads flapped from the fence like the wings of ominous birds. Clouds of dry dust rose from the creek bed, and then gradually settled again as the helicopter sloped away southwest again, and disappeared.

“About a minute,” said Neil.

“Then it’s now,” whispered Singing Rock. “Now is the moment.”

The keening whine from the bus suddenly died away. The police and the troops didn’t notice at first, but then gradually the hubbub from both sides of the creek diminished and sank into silence. Everybody turned and stared at the bus. There was total quiet under the floodlights, as if they were all waiting for the first take of a movie sequence.

Over the radio transmitter, a voice said, “What’s happening now? All of a sudden, it’s like a graveyard around here.”

The school bus, in absolute silence, exploded. An intense ball of fire rolled right out of the middle of it, and pieces of debris flew into the darkness and littered the roadway.

“They’ve killed them! They’ve killed all the children!” yerbed an NEC reporter. “The bus just exploded right in front of our eyes, and it must have killed everyone in it!”

A circle of fire still blazed on the roadway, and billows of smoke obscured their view.

But then Singing Rock touched Harry’s arm and said, “Look.”

In the flames themselves, standing in a circle, were the tall figures of the twenty-two greatest Red Indian medicine men who had ever lived. They were dressed in their full ceremonial robes of buckskin and buffalo hide and elaborately woven robes, and their headdresses were decorated with horns and feathers and the tails of cougars.

Among them, in a robe of black and red that shimmered with gold and silver threads, with, a headdress of outspread eagle’s wings and carrying a mystical, carved staff, was the greatest of the greatest, the wonderworker whose name was still whispered by the grasses and the trees of the wide American continent. His high cheekbones were.painted with blue and yellow and white, in the war decorations of the Iroquois, and his deepset eyes burned with pride and with a desire for righteous vengeance.

Neil, with a feeling of breathlessness and fear, knew that this was the being who had possessed and overwhelmed his son; who had come to life as a man of wood and tried to destroy him. It was Misquamacus.

Singing Rock said, “Gitche Manitou, protect us. Gitche Manitou, aid us. Gitche Manitou, see that our desire for peace is good, and guide our hands.”

He was about to cast the powders in front of them for protection, when Harry tugged at his sleeve. “Singing Rock-for Christ’s sake! Look what they’re doing!”

Through the barricade of police cars and armored trucks came a squad of ten National Guardsmen, young and fresh-faced under their khaki helmets. They formed a line across the road, and then knelt down, aiming their rifles at the medicine jnen.

Singing Rock, almost desperate, shouted: “They mustn’t! Don’t let them shoot! They mustn’t]”

But over the transmitter the order snapped: “Aim- fire!”