NOW Available! Excerpts of Chapter's 1 &2 of the upcoming release of the latest in the WILD Mystery Series, WILD SORROW by Sandi Ault ©2008 and beyond by Sandi Ault
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Chapter 1: The Predator

  The wind howled like a broken-hearted woman who had given up on life. I had not meant to come this far, but it was too late now. I had followed the blood, expecting to find a wounded animal. But not this.
  It was ten days before Christmas. Before dawn, a shepherd had fired a shot at a shadow that lurked in the scrub, while his sheep huddled into a knot in the arroyo where he'd brush-penned them for the night. He'd wounded the predator without getting a clear view of it, and could not identify what it was. The tribe had reported three sheep kills since they brought their flocks down from the mountains for winter grazing on the high mesas above Tanoah Pueblo. Rumors rose up that wolves, newly reintroduced in the region, were the cause of the attacks. But I suspected a mountain lion, and I rode horseback on the rangelands west of the pueblo with my wolf, Mountain, loping alongside, determined to find out. It was my job—I'm a resource protection agent for the Bureau of Land Management assigned as a liaison to the pueblo. My name is Jamaica Wild.
  I followed the tracks of a big cat through the afternoon—losing the trail, doubling back and finding it again as it led out onto a windswept, desolate canyon rim. A storm was building to the west, the billowing sky the color of steel and filled with heavy foreboding. I felt the moisture in the air, the temperature diving. Rooster, the young sorrel I rode, turned skittish, feeling the oncoming tempest. But the wolf didn't seem to notice. He led—darting along with his nose to the ground as we tracked the trail from blood spot to blood spot—stopping when he found sign and scanning the area with his senses. I scanned, too, but I was also calculating time and distance and the torment in the skies, the clouds growing more menacing with every moment.
  The ruin stood high on a knoll, visible from a mile away. As we approached, the sound of the gale rushing across the high mesa split into a chorus of voices as it swept along the jagged, stacked-rock walls, over the lips of long-abandoned kivas, and through the crumbling stone shells of the once-tall towers that marked an ancient village.
  I looped Rooster's reins around a stone on the ground outside of the ruin wall. Mountain watched me for cues—wolves hunt in packs. "You stay with me, buddy," I whispered. "You stay with me."
  I drew my rifle from the saddle scabbard and clicked off the safety. I made my way around the wall until I was downwind, Mountain moving low and close beside me. We climbed over a breach of collapsed flat rocks and I studied the interior of the pueblo ruin. Several subterranean stone circles clustered together in a corner. I walked cautiously toward them, across a hundred-yard carpet of pot shards peppered with nuggets of red chert. I felt the crunch of brittle pottery beneath my boots as the freezing wind blasted my face, tore at my hat brim and coat, and wailed over the walls, creating three distinct pitches, all of them piercing and plaintive.
  As we approached the rim of the first sunken circle, I signaled the wolf to stop. I crouched low and edged forward, peering over the round rock lip. Six feet below, a scrub juniper and a pile of toppled rock created a barrier near the interior wall. A mound of earth nearby indicated the ground had been dug out beneath. Mountain pushed forward to the kiva rim, sending a loose stone along the edge shooting down into the center. Before I could raise up and ready my rifle, two faces peered out from behind a limb covering the doorway to the den. Cubs! Two little mountain lions, no more than a few months old. As the wind blasted us, it carried their cries—these babies were hungry.
  I grabbed Mountain's collar, pulled a handful of jerky strips from my pocket, and pitched them into the kiva. The wolf was curious, but did not resist my hold as I led him away. I kept Mountain close as I explored the rest of the ruin. But there was no sign of the she-lion. I searched the perimeter for blood spots, then moved outward in concentric circles. No trace.
  From the high ground near the ruin, I surveyed my surroundings. The winds suddenly subsided, creating an eerie stillness. The air pulsed with gray-green light and electric anticipation. To the west, a wide, winding crack in the earth created a long, snaking canyon fed by an insufficient river. Arroyos leading out from the canyon fractured the high plain to the north. To the east, the way I had come, I could no longer see the blue silhouette of Sacred Mountain and the range that sheltered Tanoah Pueblo. To the south, set in a swale below, a massive old adobe compound seemed to be melting back into the earth.
  I mounted up and rode down the slope, the wolf following—the sky sinking around us like a heavy, black blanket, the sound of the horse's hooves pounding like a drum on the dry desert dirt.
  A high adobe wall, cracked and eroding, surrounded a U-shaped compound of buildings. Plywood over the windows had withered, splintered, and separated into gray ribs reminiscent of prison bars. There were no roads nearby—only a stretch of dirt track grown over from disuse that led downslope and dead-panned into a low area long ago washed out by spring floods boiling out of the canyon. As I approached the arched, mission gates in the wall, I heard a faint howling sound like the crying of children coming from inside. Or was it the cat?
  A brass plaque on the wall read:

SAN PEDRO DE ARBUÉS INDIAN SCHOOL ESTABLISHED 1898

  As I read this, the cloud deck quaked with bellowing thunder. Tiny white pellets of ice began to strike my hat, my coat, making small, dull ticks, the rhythm growing faster and more intense until there was a barrage of unbroken clattering and a white carpet covering the ground. Rooster bridled, his withers quivering, and he threw his head to the side and looked at me with one wild, obsidian eye, his nostrils inflating and collapsing in a frantic rhythm, his ears back. All at once, he reared and stood on hind legs, pounding the dried wood of the gates. I started to slide, clinging to the reins—which yanked Rooster's head back—and he responded by bucking violently. As he threw himself forward, I felt his hindquarters rise like a surging storm wave, and then my own backside left the saddle, as I flew up and forward, hard into the gate and the path of Rooster’s heaving hooves.
  My shoulder slammed into the iron hinge that spanned the width of the wood. I slid to the ground, splinters shredding the sleeve of my coat and scraping my skin, and I landed on one knee and hand in a bed of cactus. But I forced myself to roll to the side just as Rooster's powerful front hooves boomed beside my ear, exploding a weathered slat, trapping his foreleg in the hole he had just made. The rhythm of his tirade interrupted, his front foot snared, Rooster's weight surged forward, off balance, and he crashed through the right half of the gate, his big body like a long-legged locomotive speeding toward me, his massive red rear yawing to the left and threatening to pin me against the side of the gate still standing.
  I was down already; there was no time to rise and run. I dove under his belly as the horse came at me. The metal stirrup struck my forehead with a thwack, and I hit the ground just behind him as Rooster rammed into the gate, an explosion of dirt, shards of wood, and snow pummeling my body.
  Mountain had stayed well away from the action. He came to me now and sniffed at my face. "I'm okay, buddy," I said, as I got to my feet, feeling my forehead where the stirrup had hit. Rooster was down on one side, lying in the center of the entrance, both gates flung open by the force of his slide. He looked at me over one shoulder and then struggled twice to right himself, finally springing to his feet. A shard of wood extended from his right foreleg, and I cooed to him as I approached, patting his rump, running my hand along his side, catching hold of the reins and petting his nose. I pulled out the big splinter and the horse flinched, but he let me examine the area afterward. The leg seemed good, and as I walked him to test it, a granular snow drove down around us as if the clouds had opened a too-full chute and dumped a winter's worth of payback all at once. A boreal cold accompanied this downfall, and Rooster's breath froze in a cloud around his face.
"We gotta get inside," I said, leading Rooster into the yard of the school, where I tied his reins to a hitching post inside the wall. The wolf raced ahead of me, into a blinding white blur. I followed, and he led us right to the doors of a chapel across from the entrance. A slat had been nailed across the double doors, but it was loose, and I easily pried it away. "This looks good, buddy," I told Mountain.
  I pushed on one side, and the heavy door groaned and screeched, its bottom scraping and then jamming against the hard floor, permitting barely enough opening for me to slide through. I took a moment for my eyes to adjust, brushing the snow from my shoulders and sleeves, and then Mountain wriggled through the gap and rammed into the backs of my knees, sending me sprawling toward the floor. I thrust out my hands to break my fall. That was when I felt cold flesh.
  The body beneath me was frozen, blue-white, and stiff. Two sightless eyes stared through me; a round mouth opened onto a deep, black cave. I screamed and sprang to my feet, backing to the door, where Mountain gave a nervous whimper.
  From here, I could see the whole scene, my eyes having adapted to the minimal light. An elderly Anglo woman lay dead on her back with legs spread wide, a dust-covered, black dress reaching below her knees. A collar of twisted sage and feathers decorated each ankle. Her hair had been razored off at the scalp, her face painted with two yellow lightning bolts. A sign hung from her neck. I had to move close to read it. Scribbled in red crayon were the words I am not an Indian.