that age, Jesse’s head and heart had brimmed with stories of his warrior ancestors. His father had told those tales to him all his life; his mother—born in the East, to parents who had never met an Indian until they met their new son-in-law—had read them to him from the children’s books she wrote and illustrated.
And so, of course, Jesse had been ready.
As soon as the sun began its slow rise into the heavens, he’d tilted his face to its light, arms outstretched, hands open and cupped to receive its gift of brilliance and warmth, and he’d offered himself, everything he was, to the spirit of the warriors who had gone before him.
His father had smiled with pride. His mother, told of his vow when he and his father rode home, had hugged him. Even as he grew older and slowly began to understand that the old stories were just stories and nothing more, he’d been glad he’d made the vow, glad his father had included him in this ancient tradition.
But by the time Jesse was in college, everything seemed changed. There was a war taking place in a distant land. Boys he’d grown up with were dying in it. He would not be drafted; college kids were not going to be put in harm’s way.
It seemed wrong. He was descended from warriors. What was he doing, hiding away in stuffy classrooms at a university where some had taken to ridiculing everything he believed?
At twenty, Jesse knew it was time to honor the vow he’d made when he was twelve.
He left college. Enlisted in the army. His father had been proud of him. His mother had wept. He went through basic training, was plucked from the others and offered the chance to become part of an elite group called Special Forces. He served with honorable men in what he thought was an honorable cause…
And watched everything he’d believed in turn to dust.
Cloud whinnied and pawed the ground. Jesse blinked, brought his thoughts back where they belonged, to this place where it had all begun, his descent into a way of life that had deceived him.
The solstice was starting.
The sky had taken on that faint purple light that marks the end of night as the sunlight began to fall on the mountain. Light filled the narrow space between the two great slabs of rocks placed there by his ancestors thousands of years ago.
The sun rose higher.
Jesse drew a deep breath.
The last time he’d sat a horse in this place, he’d been filled with childish idealism. Not anymore. He was a man, with a man’s knowledge of the world. He had lost everything: his father to cancer, his mother to despair only months later, his own honor to a war that had been a sham.
So, yes. He would make another vow here as the sun rose. He would vow to rid the world of superstition. He would sell the canyon, sell his thousands of acres, and if some ambitious snake-oil salesman decided to charge admission to view the solstice or the equinox or the moon-rise, let him.
He had already put a stop to the age-old tradition of permitting his people to ride here to view what they considered a sacred rite. Men—boys, especially—should not be taught to put their faith in things that could someday make a mockery of their beliefs.
This was a place of lies and ignorance. It was time to put a stop to it.
The sale papers were already on his desk. He would sign them, courier them to his attorney, and all this nonsense would be—
Cloud whinnied. Jesse looked straight ahead at the beam of bright sunlight beginning to slip between the two slabs of stone.
He drew an unsteady breath. His pulse was racing; he felt light-headed. Damn it, superstition could be a powerful—
What in hell was that?
He’d expected the shaft of light to fall on the so-called sacred stone. One thing about science: once you understood it, you could count on it to perform the necessary parlor tricks.
But what was that other light? That sudden green zigzag overhead?
There it was again. An electric bolt of color that shattered the sky.
His horse danced backward, shying with fear. Jesse grasped the reins in his right hand more tightly, murmured words of assurance to the horse.
To himself.
Lightning, in a clear dawn sky? Lightning without thunder? Lightning the color of emeralds? The weather could be unpredictable here. This was northern Montana, after all, a place of mountains and valleys and…
“Damn!”
Another streak of lightning sizzled through the sky behind the jagged peak. The sun vanished; darkness covered the land. Cloud rose on his hind legs and pawed the air, crying out with fear. Jesse fought to calm the agitated animal.
The sky lit again. Green lightning flashed between the stone slabs and pulsed at the heart of the sacred circle.
The stallion went crazy, screaming, trying to throw Jesse to the ground.
The breath caught in Jessie’s throat.
The lightning had stopped.
The darkness vanished.
The sun appeared, a bright yellow ball against a clear blue sky.
It lit the canyon, the peaks, the tenacious shrubs and lodgepole pines that clung to the inhospitable slope before him, but Jesse had eyes for only one thing.
A figure. A human figure that lay, still as death, in the very center of the sacred stone.
CHAPTER TWO
THE climb to the ledge was as tricky and dangerous as Jesse remembered, more like sixty feet instead of forty because of all the maneuvering necessary to find the right hand and footholds, and the rush of adrenaline pumping through him didn’t help. He could feel his muscles tensing.
Jesse stopped, counted to ten, took half a dozen deep breaths as the sweat poured off his tanned skin. If he fell, then there’d be two of them for the vultures to pick over.
Two of what? his brain said. Had he actually seen somebody up there?
Hell. There was no time for that. He had to keep moving.
The ledge was right above him now. This was the trickiest part; he’d have to lean back with nothing behind him but air to get a decent handhold. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if he’d gone through all this nonsense and the thing lying on the stone wasn’t human at all? There was lots of wildlife here. Elk, deer, but neither of those could have scrambled up this high. A wolf? No, again. A bear, maybe. Or a mountain lion.
He might have made this climb just for a look at the carcass of a dead animal. Or an injured one. Hunters might have ignored his No Trespassing signs. Nobody from around here. They knew better. But an outsider…
For God’s sake, you’ve seen what some of those idiots who call themselves hunters can do.
Why hadn’t he thought of that sooner?
A
