1
unexpected noise, the crack-crack of gunshots, stopped Bernadette Manuelito where she stood and put her instantly on alert.
She lowered her hand to her weapon and felt her body begin to flood with adrenaline. Instinctively, she flattened herself against the red sandstone cliff face. Her breath came in shallow bursts as she waited for more shots or whatever else came next.
It was December, Níłch’itsoh, a season when nature rested, calmly settling in for the challenge of deep winter’s long nights. The surprise of the gunshots shattered Bernie’s peace, but the winter evening rolled on as if the blast had never happened.
The more intently Bernie listened, the more the desert seemed to grow silent. Níłch’itsoh could be the time of great winds, but this evening was windless. She could barely make out the sound of a vehicle moving in the distance. She knew a powerful snowstorm was in the twenty-four-hour forecast. The dry earth would welcome the moisture. For now, anticipation hung heavily in the still air and a frigid, fierce winter loomed ahead.
Through the darkness a few feet from where she stood, she saw an owl’s slow, gliding flight, its swooping descent, and then the quick ascent with a struggling mouse in its talons.
The né’èshjaà landed on a rock that jutted from the cliff face, and after a moment she heard its call. The sound reminded her of something Jim Chee’s uncle had told her and Chee years before. He had explained to them that Owl was an envoy of the Holy People. She also knew that many considered owls to be omens of death, and she’d encountered more than enough of that recently in her job as a police officer. For a Navajo raised with abiding respect for the traditional ways, seeing an owl meant it was time to offer a prayer for protection. Bernie took a moment to do that.
She leaned against the cold stone and reflected on the word Níłch’itsoh and the meaning of the season. For her and Chee, her husband, the days had been filled with strong winds of change, a tornado of turmoil on the job and off. She had come to this special place, the Valley of the Gods in the shadow of the sacred Bears Ears Buttes, in search of a few hours of winter peace.
Relax, she told herself. She filled her lungs with the dry, frigid air, straightened her spine, ordered her shoulders down from her ears, and rolled her head from right to left and back again to release the tension in her neck. She stepped away from the rock face to look out over the expansive landscape. She took another soothing breath.
Finally, the stillness which had seemed threatening reassured her. The shots weren’t close and she reminded herself that in rural areas such as this, occasional gunshots were part of the human soundtrack.
BERNIE HAD NEVER VISITED THE Bears Ears National Monument, so last week when Chee invited her to join him, she’d eagerly accepted. Because Chee had an assignment in Bluff, he had arranged a time to speak with Desmond Grayhair. The hatááłii and leader from the Navajo Mountain community had suggested a spot at the southern edge of Bears Ears, and asked Chee to invite his wife so they could get acquainted. Chee had urged Bernie to go with him to meet the medicine man, gently mentioning that her energy could use some recharging and that Bears Ears was the perfect spot for that. Indeed, the power of Bears Ears as a place to heal was deeply embedded in Diné tradition.
When they had spoken earlier that afternoon, the old hatááłii had sensed her sadness and, instead of more conversation or a sweat lodge with the women, suggested she take a quiet walk among the imposing red stone monoliths of Valley of the Gods. Bernie agreed. She wanted a heart-stirring place to watch the sun
set, to hike, to think, to begin to figure out what came next for her. She needed a new plan, a map for the future, because what she thought would work clearly hadn’t.
Earlier that afternoon she had left their motel in Bluff, wanting plenty of light for her explorations, and driven herself to the beautiful Valley of the Gods while the medicine man, Chee, and other men participated in a sweat lodge ceremony. The valley sat at the edge of the expansive Bears Ears landscape—more than a million acres in southeastern Utah’s San Juan County. Bernie welcomed the opportunity to have some time alone and to see this special place, an area some people called a miniature Monument Valley, a reference to the Navajo Nation geological park forty-five minutes to the south. The area’s beautiful sandstone buttes and forms were similar to those of Monument Valley, each uniquely eroded. The formation called Lady in the Bathtub made Bernie smile; it didn’t take much imagination to see the profile of a woman with her hair piled atop her head sitting in the stone tub with a towel supporting her neck. It looked to Bernie as though the person in stone was enjoying a book along with her soak.
She had read that the valley was rich with archaeological and paleontological artifacts, and hoped she might find an arrowhead or find the outlines of an ancient bone in the eroded sandstone. She spotted a potsherd and then another, and began to search more closely. Abandoned dwellings of ancestral southwestern people dotted the Colorado Plateau and Bears Ears National Monument, but something triggered her suspicion. The potsherds lay everywhere on the bare ground, as though someone had scattered them from a bucket.
Then she saw the tools. Modern tools, not those used by the ancient ones. The sunset’s soft light reflected on the metal of picks, shovels, chisels, and hammers, and made the wooden handles of trowels and brushes glow. Someone had left sieves and buckets on the red sandstone. Teams looking for pots and yucca sandals could use these tools, but she sensed that something else was happening here. She moved closer to investigate and, with one final step, lost her balance.
The tumble left her breathless, lying on her back in the dirt below ground level. The fall had come so fast that it took a moment for her to process what had happened. Had she stepped into an open grave?
No, she realized; it was shallower than a grave, but just as narrow. It was a trench, probably part of whatever sort of excavation was going on here. But a trench like this should have been marked.
She lay still a moment, assessing herself for possible injury. Her hip and back might be bruised, but nothing was broken. Bernie was grateful for two things: she’d come to no major harm, and Chee hadn’t witnessed her clumsiness.
She sat up. Then, using her embarrassment as a prod, she boosted herself to standing and climbed back to ground level. As she brushed the dirt from her jeans and coat, she noticed that she had scraped the palms of her hands on her climb out of the hole. She readj
sted her red knit cap. She’d gathered her hair in a high ponytail; it provided good insulation on this chilly late afternoon.
Bernie surveyed her surroundings more closely. Tall, smooth sandstone walls towered above the trenching. She saw what seemed to be a panel of petroglyphs carved into the sandstone. The ancient images banded the rock about five feet from the cliff base, but as far away as she was, she couldn’t clearly identify the symbols. Because of their unique beauty, she knew petroglyphs were sometimes referred to as rock art. She wasn’t surprised to see them, given the area’s long history of human occupation.
She realized that these images painstakingly created by pecking or carving directly on the rock surface were more than just pretty pictures. As symbols, some might silently speak to the cultural and spiritual beliefs of the ancient ones who created them. Other petroglyphs represented tribal, clan, kiva, or society markers, perhaps the people’s equivalent of a logo. Some might have been messages to those who passed by, or symbols that referred to traditional stories perhaps now forgotten.
Bernie’s Diné ancestors had considered Bears Ears a sacred place, and modern Navajos continued that practice. Ute, Paiute, Zuni, Hopi, and other Indigenous people also came here to pray, to hunt, to gather firewood, and to harvest plants and seeds for meals and for ceremonial uses.
She looked away from the rock art toward the huge natural structures of stone that gave the valley its name, the earth’s creations to which American newcomers had given descriptive titles: Seven Sailors, Rooster Butte, and more. The early sunset gilded the desert with a gentle pink glow, warm hues reflected in the sky as well as in the rocks. The full moon had risen, adding another element to the beauty that surrounded her.
Bernie told herself she could enjoy being here a bit longer. She had just enough light, before the first star appeared, to hike up to the cliff base for a closer look at the rock carvings. Then she would head back to Bluff and her cozy motel room. The trench and misplaced sherds left her uneasy.
She slipped into a rhythm as she climbed toward the hillside and thought about the things she’d been avoiding: how to move forward with her career after being rejected for a job as detective; what to do to help Darleen and Mama; and, of course, the experience she was too sad to name. But instead, she told herself to take it easy as she hiked toward the ancient figures, noticing that they were well shielded from the elements by their position on a wall beneath a protective overhang. She turned on her phone’s flashlight—the only thing the device was good for out here, with no service—to penetrate the shadows. Its bright beam found human-like figures the old ones had left here.
She felt a chill up her spine and stepped away, averting her eyes.
The faces of the images had been scratched off, destroyed. White people called that defacement vandalism, but it was something bigger
to the Diné. For them, the now-faceless people etched into the sandstone spoke of witchcraft. She didn’t want to look at the images, but she was a good cop. She forced herself to take some photos so she could report the damage to the Bureau of Land Management tomorrow when she got cell coverage. She would send the pictures along with her report of the disfigurement, the unmarked pit, and the seemingly abandoned tools. The BLM and the Forest Service cooperated in providing law enforcement to the area, and she knew this part of the monument was BLM territory.
Bernie had earned a college degree in botany and then, inspired by a family heritage of service, went on to practical, no-nonsense law enforcement training. But she had grown up listening to the stories of mysterious evil, of witches and skin walkers and chindis. The damaged images made her uneasy; time to head back to Bluff. Darkness came quickly after sunset in December, and she had underestimated how long it would take her to return to the vehicle.
She climbed down carefully and took pictures of the excavation trench and shovels before beginning the hike toward Chee’s truck—their truck now, because her Tercel was parked in Shiprock. She zipped her jacket up to the soft fake-fur collar. The white coat was new, a color impractical for the desert, but she loved how warm and cocooned she felt inside it. As she walked, she listened for the rhythmic bleat of a nighthawk or the occasional rustle of an unknown creature moving earth to create a burrow, or perhaps a place from which to ambush passing prey.
Long after she had convinced herself that the gun blasts amounted to nothing more than a distant rancher shooting at a coyote, with the sandstone cliffs providing acoustic resonance, a different, fainter sound captured her attention. Engine noise again. As it grew louder, she categorized it as a pickup truck heading in her direction. A minute later she saw the flicker of headlights.
The lights paused when they came to the area where she had parked, perhaps two miles from where she’d seen the petroglyphs. Then the illumination proceeded along the rough dirt road, at a speed that reflected the confidence of someone who knew where the ruts and rocks lay. She reminded herself that Diné families lived out this way as she watched the lights bounce over the empty road, approaching her and the excavation site. As the vehicle grew nearer, she could see in the moonlight that it was a dark pickup with something shaped like a thick, elongated cylinder on the grille.
Her training and experience in law enforcement flashed a warning about standing alone in the dark in a white coat far from civilization at a place where she’d already heard shots and a petroglyph had been vandalized. She used the moonlight to navigate as she moved away from the easy walking terrain the road provided and started jogging into the rougher mesa country.
The truck also turned off the road, the headlights now shining on the open sand, shrubs, and rocks. It was coming toward her, almost as
if on purpose.
Stay calm, she ordered herself, and she began a survival checklist. She put her hand on her loaded gun and estimated the distance it would take to get to the relative safety of her and Chee’s truck. Too far. She looked around for a place she could hide, but could see none.
She started to run.
The truck headed directly for her. There was no mistaking it now.
She swerved as quickly as she could, glad that she’d worn boots instead of her jogging shoes. She stumbled over a dead tree limb, recovered her balance at the last possible moment, and kept moving, looking for cover. The truck was gaining. Her legs felt like rubber. Her heart pounded, and her lungs burned. She was sweating despite the cold air.
The truck was still gaining.
In the growing darkness, she could make out an indentation in the earth that looked like an arroyo, with cliffs on the other side. She sped toward it, hoping the rougher terrain would deter the truck. The vehicle lost ground, looking for a smoother path. Bernie struggled out of her beloved new white coat, which now made her a perfect target. She stripped down to her red turtleneck sweater and tossed the jacket as far from her path as she could. Then she zagged away from the truck’s headlights, staying low in the arroyo. She cataloged her advantages: she could hide in places the truck couldn’t go, could change directions faster, and she was an experienced, fit runner. And, of course, she had a gun.
The truck slowed, inching through the arroyo. Bernie held her breath until it had rolled past her and then raced away from the lights toward some larger rocks that offered the only possibility of a gap that would hide her. Seeing a dark crevice that might work, she took the chance and sprinted toward the cliff face. She pressed herself between two sandstone slabs almost large enough to conceal her, but as cold as death.
Her breath now came in gasps. The truck’s lights shone near her feet but moved on. She kept the truck in sight, hoping to catch the license plate number, but the dim light and distance made it impossible.
Then, in the moonlight, the truck changed course, again heading in her direction. An arm extended from the passenger window. An arm holding a rifle. She heard a shot.
The shooter had aimed for the white spot in the dark landscape, the brightness of her jacket, snagged on a bush. The cab light came on as the passenger-side door opened and the shooter climbed out, but Bernie couldn’t discern any details. The person picked up the coat and stood holding it a moment, then shook it, dropped it, and stomped on it before heading back to the truck.
She smelled the dust in the air as the truck and its people rumbled away from the jacket she’d loved, away from her hiding place.
When Bernie could no longer see the taillights and her heart had stopped pounding so fiercely, she began to hike back to her vehicle, hoping
no harm had come to it. She was cold and shaken, but as she neared her truck, anger replaced her fear. Whoever had been driving and whoever had shot the rifle had messed with the wrong woman.
Officer Bernadette Manuelito did not make a good crime victim.
She reached the truck, climbed in, started the engine, and put on an old coat Chee kept for emergencies. She had miles to drive before she found cell service to make her 911 call, then to reach Chee to explain why she was later than she’d expected, and then, finally, to get to bed. Her hip ached from the fall, and she was uncomfortably chilly. And when the truck started to warm up, she realized she was bone tired.
As she drove, she thought about the attack and watched for the lights of the truck that had threatened her. It could be on the road in front of her, or it might have pulled over to a side road to wait in case she drove past. Perhaps the people in it were drunk or crazy. She’d been hiking on public land, so they couldn’t claim she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that neither the shot nor the truck itself had struck her seemed to be a blessing from the sacred bears that protected this place—Shash Jáá, Bears Ears.
Bernie knew that in her culture’s tradition, the bear was not only a guardian but also a spiritual guide that represents strength and self-knowledge. The spirit animal Shash, the bear, stands as a symbol of deliberate action, introspection, soul searching, and insight. Many believe that bears have great healing power, and she was in need of all of that now.
As fatigue gained ground, Bernie turned off the heater, lowered the window, and focused on the horizon, searching for different lights, the subtle glow that indicated the small town where they were staying.
Bluff, now a community of about four hundred hardy souls founded by Mormon pioneers in 1880, sustained itself with tourism and outdoor recreation. It and nearby Blanding and Monticello offered the most convenient supply stops for hikers, explorers, and campers on their way to Bears Ears.
Even though she’d never been here before, Bernie knew that Shash Jáá was a place of both blessings and controversy. The Bears Ears themselves, twin buttes that jut into the horizon, guarded federal land rich in resources, nature largely untouched by human interference. Local conservationists had excitedly welcomed President Barack Obama’s decision to create Bears Ears National Monument in 2016, only to have their hopes crushed when the subsequent president had slashed the monument’s more than a million acres to a fifth of its original size. She and Chee had been relieved when President Joe Biden restored the original boundaries.
Bernie knew that the return to the larger allotment had received broad support from a coalition of Native American groups. But others, including many Diné who lived in the area, opposed the national monument. Some Navajo healers who came to gather native plants and certain items essential for specific traditional pr
ctices worried that their work could be restricted by new federal regulations. Area families had long collected firewood for winter warmth in the Bears Ears forests, a legacy that could be ended under the national monument status. And she knew Utah Navajos who firmly believed that too much of their state was already under federal control. But now that a coalition of five tribes—Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, the Ute Mountain Ute, and the Ute Indian Tribe—were part of the management, Bernie had more confidence that the monument designation would help protect this sacred place.
She looked at the clock on the truck’s dashboard. If all went well, she’d get back to the motel in another twenty minutes, much later than she’d planned. Chee would be worried about her. She decided she would tell him about the truck and the person with the rifle in the morning. She didn’t want to deal with his protective side tonight, even as she realized this would be yet another secret withheld from the man she loved.
Her phone seemed to ring the moment she had service again.
“Hey, you. Everything OK?” Chee sounded tired.
“I’m fine. On my way back. I’ll be there soon. How was your evening?”
“Oh, OK.” The flatness in his voice surprised her, but that could have been the exhaustion talking. “See you soon. Wake me up if I’m asleep.”
“OK.”
“I’ll be counting on it. I need to know you’re here safely.”
“No problem.”
But a few minutes later, a problem arose. She noticed the vehicle ahead of her—not the dark pickup but a sedan—weaving dangerously on and off the pavement. It was the only car she’d encountered on this route, and it pulled her back to reality.
2
Not only was the old sedan with a burned-out taillight in front of Bernie veering, it sped up and slowed down erratically. Watching it drift onto the sandy shoulder, she tapped her brakes again and flashed her lights. The car slowed down, crossed the center of the road, briefly returned to the correct side of the highway, then went off the road again. This time, the sedan stopped.
She pulled her truck onto the shoulder a safe distance behind the car and turned on her emergency flashers. Another drunk driver, she assumed as she took off her seat belt. They were lucky no one had been driving in the other lane. After everything that had already happened, an ugly collision was the last thing she needed.
The driver’s door of the sedan opened, and a young Navajo man raced toward her, leaving his car’s lights on and his vehicle running.
She lowered her window. “Yá’át’ééh. Everything OK with you?”
“No, ma’am, not OK. We’ve got a situation.” She read the distress in his face as he rushed to the truck. She was glad she didn’t smell beer on his breath.
“What’s up?”
“My wife, she’s having a baby.”
“Right now?”
He nodded. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
