Dragon Horn Read online

  I introduced myself, “I’m Mike. Is it all right if I call you Black Hoof?”

  “I would like that very much.” He walked up to Dante and kneeled down on one knee. He extended an open hand. “And what is your name, young man?”

  Dante eyeballed him suspiciously. “I’m Dante.”

  “You look like a warrior. Would you like a Shawnee warrior name?”

  Dante smirked and nodded. Black Hoof said, “Tecumseh. That will be your warrior name.” He leaned down and rubbed his thumb against the soggy earth. Using a steady thumb, he wiped a wide streak of mud under each of Dante’s eyes. “Tecumseh will be your name. It means panther crossing across. You’re a little panther who will one day grow strong and wise.”

  Dante smiled. He hardly ever smiled. As a new parent, I was taking notes from the master. Colossus nestled up against Black Hoof’s leg. The man scratched right behind my dog’s ears as if he knew it was the canine’s favorite spot.

  “His name is Colossus. So what did you want to see me about?” I figured it was time to get down to business.

  He rose up from his knee. He walked up to the fire and grabbed a torch that was resting against the gray stones of the pit. He lit the torch and looked at me. “We should walk and talk.” He gestured toward the woods off to the left of his house.

  We followed Black Hoof into the woods, which got dimmer by the step. Walking along a narrow dirt path in a single file line, I kept peeking back for Dante. Instead of worrying constantly, I slowed down and let him in front of me so I could keep an eye on the kid.

  Black Hoof didn’t look back, but spoke loud enough for me to hear. “Do you know anything about the Shawnee?”

  I felt embarrassed that I hadn’t done a little studying before jumping in the car. “Not much at all. Sorry.”

  He kept walking as he talked, “Don’t be. The reason most people don’t know about them is because they were never highly populated. The latest census showed that there are only fourteen thousand in America right now. There’s only four groups and three of them are located in Oklahoma. So even though they originated here, they are better known in the southwest.”

  “Why Oklahoma?” I wanted to know.

  Black Hoof slowed down a bit and raised his voice, “The Shawnee originally dwelled in Western Pennsylvania until around the 1660s. They were chased out by the Iroquois. The Shawnee returned in the 1730s only to be pushed westward by the Europeans. They went from Missouri to Kansas before the majority of the Shawnee settled in Oklahoma.”

  “Okay.” It all made perfect sense now.

  Black Hoof continued, “The Shawnee are the only tribe that believed we were created by a woman. Kokumthena. It means Our Grandmother. She’s also known as Great Spirit. We believe that she created the world. So naturally, she’s the only one who can end it.”

  I ducked under a low hanging branch and continued on the dirt path as we plunged deeper into the misty woods.

  Our guide went on with the story, “Bear with me for just a few moments longer. Cyclone Woman is a spirit, but that spirit is housed within an ageless human body. She once had a sister named Four Winds. When Four Winds died about fifty years ago, Cyclone Woman inherited all of her powers. The combination makes her the ultimate weather spirit who also controls the winds. Her long braids can cause tornadoes and she controls the thunderbirds.”

  I wondered where my good man was going with all this. Being in the back, I didn’t have to constantly look down at the path so I just continued to listen to Black Hoof.

  “Cyclone Woman is missing.”

  Oh shit. Now we were getting somewhere.

  “If she dies and somebody can tap into her spirit, he or she will inherit the control of the weather of Northeast America. And that isn’t the worst part.”

  “Well what is worse than that?” I had to know.

  Black Hoof stopped and turned around. “Kokumthena loves Cyclone Woman like a daughter. This disappearance could draw Kokumthena out into the open. And as I said, if she dies, the entire world might go with her.”

  A chilling thought to say the least. We approached a natural oval opening at the base of a hill. It was shaped like an eyeball and Black Hoof gestured for us to follow him in. He trailblazed ahead of us with the burning torch. As soon as we entered, I heard a steady stream of water.

  We walked through an underground labyrinth, following the flickering firelight ahead. We passed several offshoots stemming from the main path. Or I assumed this was the main path. As we ventured further into the earth, I hoped Black Hoof knew exactly where he was going.

  Black Hoof turned right and we both had to duck to follow the new tunnel. Hunched over, I walked awkwardly for another forty feet and our leader stopped. He moved to the side and pointed at a circular opening with a rectangular stone slab next to it.

  Black Hoof said, “This is where Cyclone Woman lives. She hasn’t been around for four days now. At first, I thought she might be visiting her sister, Whirlwind. However, she would have told me about it considering I see her every day.”

  “Why do you see her every day?” I started to wonder if my new friend had supernatural abilities.

  “I feed her. I was approached in a dream by the Great Grandmother many years ago. Her spirit awakened me from the dream and led me to this spot right here.” He pointed to the opening. “The Great Grandmother told me that this was the home of Cyclone Woman. She told me these were dangerous times and that Cyclone Woman needed to remain hidden.”

  Okay, so he was more of a shepherd.

  He traced his hand over the stone covering. “The Great Grandmother gave me the important job of feeding Cyclone Woman. Three times a day I come here and leave her food. Sometimes she talks to me and sometimes she does not. But I can always tell that she is there.”

  Black Hoof shoved the torch in first and then poked his head through the opening. He came back out, and said, “You won’t be able to fit in there, but you can look. I don’t see anything that would tell me who has done this, but maybe your eyes can.”

  He handed me the torch and I squeezed by Dante and Black Hoof, my back scraping against the dirty wall. I put my hand into the hole and followed with my upper body. My shoulders were too wide to squeeze in, but I could put my head in and look at the room. Illuminated by the dancing fire in my right hand, the small room screamed of stark simplicity.

  The single room was about ten feet wide and ten feet deep. It rivaled a prison cell for spaciousness. There were carvings on the walls whose significance that I didn’t understand.

  A stuffed hemp mattress with feathers spilling out the side had been smashed into the corner of the room and several red candles were lying on their sides. A trail of wax indicated that the candles had been knocked over while they were lit. The scene clearly screamed of a struggle. I noticed some little figures that appeared to be talismans in the far corner of the room. Other than that, I didn’t find any solid clues to form a suspect list.

  I pulled my head out of the hot cave. “Do you have any idea of who might want to cause harm to her?”

  Black Hoof responded, “No one that I know of. As I said, this might be part of a greater plot to get to the Great Grandmother. However, just having control of Cyclone Woman can put a person in control of the weather and winds. It doesn’t sound like much, but the destruction could be apocalyptic.”

  I agreed, “Natural disasters have often been featured in many doomsday scenarios. One of my friends says, ‘if you control the weather, you can control the world.’ I hate to say it, but this plot seems to be converging with the end of days theme.”

  “I am just a simple man who lives off the land. I came to you because my friend told me that you might be able to get to the bottom of this,” Black Hoof explained.

  I asked, “Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

  “I have not. You and my friend Terry that you talked to are the only ones. I haven’t any idea of who to talk to other than you.”

  I told him
, “I do have some connections that might prove beneficial. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of this. You haven’t seen any suspicious characters around here, have you?”

  “I have not. I try to be very careful when I take meals to her and you saw how difficult the underground pathway was.”

  He had a great point. I didn’t remember how to get out of there. “Are there any other clues you’ve noticed? Even maybe tire tracks in the mud or anything like that. I just need a crumb to go on.”

  He shook his head, tightlipped. “That is the problem. I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary except for the slab covering the tunnel being shoved to the side and the inside of Cyclone Woman’s cave.”

  An idea struck me. “Dante. Why don’t you climb in there and see if you can find anything that might have been left behind?”

  The inquisitive boy didn’t need to be asked twice. He grabbed the torch out of my hand and burrowed right into the cave.

  In the dark, I asked, “Is there any other information that might help?”

  “Only what I’ve told you. Anyone familiar with Native American mythology, especially the Shawnee know of her power. It could be a wolf, or a wolf wrapped in sheep’s clothing. There is only one other conclusion I can think of.” He let the last words linger.

  “What is that?” I needed to know.

  Black Hoof explained, “That she fell in love with someone and left with this person. That is what I want to believe. I want to believe that she is safe and not in harm’s way. But common sense tells me the chance of that is slim.”

  Dante popped out of the cave and passed the torch back to Black Hoof. Dusting his pants off, the kid said, “I found this in there.”

  He handed me a small scrap of paper. It appeared to have been torn from a Manila folder and had foreign writing on it. I held it closer to the torch Black Hoof was holding and tried to decipher the language. It was definitely Asian, but nothing I was familiar with.

  I showed it to Black Hoof and he shrugged his shoulders. Shaking his head, the man said, “I am not familiar with those symbols.”

  “Neither am I. That doesn’t look like anything Cyclone Woman would make, right?”

  Black Hoof confirmed, “No. It does not.”

  I stuffed the clue into my back pocket and planned to ask Felix about it. Considering he was half-Japanese, he was the only connection that came to mind who could help with this. “Good job, buddy.” I patted Dante on top of his head.

  He squirmed away. “Stop it.” The little demon was transitioning into an embarrassed human kid, not wanting his father to touch him.

  We walked back to Black Hoof’s house and he convinced us to stay for a meal and meet his family. He made us feel so welcome that I felt like I’d known them for years. His wife and two daughters prepared a delicious meal for us featuring a hearty soup made with charred venison offal. That was the mystery meat roasting on the spit earlier. The side of spicy jalapeño cornbread was my favorite though.

  A few hours later, feeling like part of the family and not wanting to leave, I dragged Dante and Colossus back to my apartment. I’d talked to Felix on the ride home and planned to meet up with him in a few hours to decipher the writing on the clue.