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into his lungs, puffed a pair of smoke rings. “What do you think about all this, Charlie?”
    Wolfe’s cigarette was reduced to a butt before the Ute responded. “I think I’m ready to call it a day.”
    “It’s a long walk to your aunt’s place.”
    The Ute did not deny this.
    “Hitch a ride with me,” Wolfe offered.
    Moon tipped his hat to salute the notion. “Let’s hit the road.”

CHAPTER SIX
THE MOONBEAM CLIMBER
    Jacob Gourd Rattle’s matukach wife wiped a crumb off her chin, cast a hopeful glance at the Ute woman’s propane stove. “You sure do know how to make good biscuits.”
    Daisy Perika had baked a second batch. She opened the oven, brought the blackened pan to the table.
    “Oh, thank you!” The guest snatched the largest of the flaky pastries. “Can I have some butter?”
    The old woman plodded over to the small refrigerator, returned with a plastic tub of margarine, banged it on the table beside the biscuit pan. “Is there anything else I can get for you before I sit myself down?”
    “Thank you kindly, but I don’t think so. I expect this’ll hold me for a while.” Kicks pried the biscuit open, smeared a generous helping of the yellow spread into the warm interior. She tried to hide a yawn. “I don’t know why I’m so sleepy.”
    Daisy seated herself across the table from the peculiar woman. “You probably didn’t get enough rest last night.” The old woman’s tone suggested that she was merely making polite conversation.
    Kicks Dogs’ head bobbed in a nod. “That’s the truth. Even after I had me a little sip of my sleeping tonic—which is one part whiskey and ten parts water—”
    More likely, the other way around . Daisy’s eyes twinkled.
    “—And plenty of sugar, well—what little sleep I got, I kept having these crazy dreams. One of ’em started with this weird sound. It was something like this….” She drew in a deep breath.
    “Vooooom.”
    Louder: “ Vooooom ”
    Louder still: “ VOOOOOM! ”
    The Ute shaman, whose dream was lost in the mists of her mind, squinted at the white woman. Why does this sound familiar?
    Jacob Gourd Rattle’s wife snapped off a chunk of biscuit, chewed. “Sometime later on, I dreamed I saw Jake’s legs.”
    His legs? Daisy cocked her head. “Where was the rest of him?”
    Kicks Dogs looked up, as if seeing the vision again. “I guess it must’ve been up there with his legs.”
    Daisy joined the narrator in gazing at the dusty plastic light fixture on the ceiling.
    Kicks returned her attention to the biscuit. “He was up above me, in those smoky clouds. At first, all I could make out were his legs and his feet. Well, I couldn’t actually see his feet— I mean I could see Jake’s boots . And then after he kept on climbing, I couldn’t see anything at all.”
    “Climbing?”
    Kicks nodded. “That’s what it looked like.” The white woman had a vacant, dreamy look as she waved a hand over her head. “He was just sorta floating up there in the air. But I thought to myself: Jake’s visions has come true—he is actually climbing up a moonbeam!”
    The Ute elder leaned closer to the storyteller. “Did you say moonbeam? ”
    “Oh, did I forget to tell you about that? Jake had been dreaming for weeks that he was in that awful, scary canyon—climbing up a moonbeam.” She finished off the biscuit, licked her fingers. “Mmmm. That was good.” She regarded the Ute woman with pity. I hope when I get that old I don’t look like a wrinkled old toad . “You want to hear about my other dreams?”
    Apprehension was all over Daisy’s face. “There’s more?”
    “Oh, sure. When I start to dreaming, it’s just one after another all night. I had this one about these rootin’-tootin’ cowboys having this knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out brawl. And then I saw King Kong fall off of the Empire State Building.” She hugged herself. “I wish I could have fun dreams like that every night of the week.”
    I wish this wild-eyed