The Blessing Way

by Tony Hillerman

  McKee stared numbly through the juniper. Of course the Big Navajo had left nothing at all to luck. He had taken the ladder but left the guard behind.

  Eddie was combing his hair. His shoulder holster, with the pistol in it, was strapped over his vest. About twenty yards away, McKee guessed. He could cover maybe ten yards before Eddie saw him, and another five before Eddie could get the pistol out, and then Eddie would shoot him as many times as were necessary.

  The first plan McKee considered as he worked his way slowly back along the cliff edge involved waiting in ambush at the corner of the storeroom until Eddie mounted the ladder to bring them their breakfast. He imagined himself sprinting the fifteen feet before Eddie, encumbered with food, could draw the pistol, knocking the ladder from under him and triumphantly disarming him.

  It might work—if Eddie brought them breakfast. There was no reason to believe he would. Much more likely he would first check on his prisoners with pistol in hand.

  The second plan, even more fleeting, involved having Miss Leon raise a clamor—perhaps shouting that he was sick. This would probably bring Eddie up the ladder to look in the hole in the storehouse roof. But he would come cautiously and suspiciously. The third plan survived, a little longer because—if it worked—it did not involve facing Eddie’s pistol. He and Miss Leon would work their way—unmissed and unheard—to the east end of the shelf. There they would find the Hopi escape route in the chimney and would climb to freedom. It was a pleasant idea and utterly impractical. It was far from likely that Ellen could make the climb and impossible for anyone to make it without noise. McKee considered for a moment how it would feel to be hanging on hand-holds a hundred feet up the chimney with Eddie standing below aiming at him. He hurriedly considered other possibilities.

  One involved finding a hiding place back in the ruins and waiting in ambush, rock in hand, for Eddie to come hunting for him. The flaw in this one was easy to see. There would be no reason for Eddie to hunt. He would simply wait for the Navajo to return, believing there was no way off the cliff.

  It would be necessary to make Eddie come after him.

  McKee dropped on his stomach at the crawl hole.

  “I’m right here,” Ellen whispered. “I heard him whistling. Did he see you?”

  “No,” McKee said. “He’s cooking breakfast.”

  “You know what,” Ellen said. “I said it would take a magician to get out of this room. You’re a magician.”

  “Um-m. Look—make sure your watch is wound,” McKee said. “I want you to wait thirty minutes and then come out here and make some sort of noise. Knock a rock off the wall or something to attract him. But don’t run. Don’t give him any reason to shoot.”

  “What are you going to do?” Her whisper was so faint he could hardly hear it.

  “Remember. When he comes, give up right away. Put your hands up. And tell him I’m climbing up the escapeway back where the cliff is split at the east end of the ruins. Tell him I’m going for the police.”

  “Is there really a place you can climb out?”

  “I don’t know yet,” McKee said. “The idea is to get the jump on him.”

  “There isn’t any place. He’s going to kill you.” She made it a flat statement.

  If Ellen said anything else, McKee didn’t hear it.

  “Ellen,” he whispered. “Do you understand what to do?”

  “Yes. I guess I do. But is thirty minutes enough?”

  McKee thought about it. Every minute that passed might bring Eddie checking. Or it might bring the Big Navajo back. He was suddenly acutely conscious that he was probably setting the time limit on his life.

  “I think thirty minutes,” he said.

  It was eight minutes more than Eddie allowed him.

  It had taken very little time to defeat his hopes that the ruins would offer a point of ambush. Along the narrow pathway which followed the lip of the shelf, the walls were too crumbled to provide a place of concealment from which he could attack. Under the cliff itself the ruins were better preserved—some still standing in two stories—but they offered only a hiding place, no place from which to launch an attack. At the end of the shelf, where a massive geologic fault had shifted the earth’s crust eons ago and split the cliff, there was no effective cover at all. McKee edged his way carefully past the dwelling’s final crumbled corner.

  Here the path was buried under tumbled stones. A misstep meant a plunge into the crevasse left by the fault.

  McKee looked at his watch. He had used thirteen minutes and accomplished nothing. Here at its mouth the crevasse was about fifteen feet across. Beyond it the shelf continued. It was slightly lower and after a few yards tapered away to nothing.

  From where he stood it was impossible to see what the crevasse in the cliff offered. The Anasazis had built their structure to the very base of the cliff wall. The exterior wall had fallen outward over the precipice, but the spreading limbs of piñon screened the narrow opening.

  He moved carefully over what remained of partition walls, pausing once to look down into the crack. The split was sheer, and although the narrow slot was partly filled with broken slabs of rock flaked off the walls above, it was much too far to jump.

  McKee hurt his hand again climbing what remained of the back wall. He had forgotten the finger for a moment in the overpowering need to know if the crevasse held some possibility for him, and had shifted his weight to it. He was still sick with the pain when he lowered himself into the darkness behind the wall. A minute ticked away as he sat in the dust, holding his hand stiffly in front of him, letting the throbbing diminish and his eyes adjust to the darkness. What he saw both disappointed and encouraged him.

  There was no natural pathway into the crevasse as he had hoped. The shelf did not extend into it. But the Anasazis had cut foot and hand holds into the sandstone, making it possible for a person to work his way back into the slot. Somewhere back in the darkness where the crack narrowed, where a man could brace himself between the opposing walls, there would be a way to the top. If he could dispose of Eddie, he could make it. But what about Eddie?

  McKee studied his position. There were two ways into this dark cul-de-sac where he now sat between wall and crevasse—over the crumbled wall as he had come, or by pushing past the out-thrusting branches of the piñon. Eddie would probably come over the wall for exactly the same reason he had done so. The piñon had angled outward toward the sunlight. One could force his way past it, but bending by the heavy branches would require a tightrope walk along the very lip of the crevasse. Not knowing where McKee would be, Eddie wasn’t likely to risk that. He would choose the wall.

  McKee thought about it. If Eddie came over the wall fast—moving from the bright morning light on the shelf into this darkness—then there would be a chance. But that wasn’t likely to happen. Eddie would be taking no risks. He would climb the tumbled rocks of the wall slowly, pistol ready. He would pause at the top, studying the gloom. And, if he did, McKee would be a mouse in a trap.

  He tested the extending main branch of the piñon. If he could pull it back enough and tie it to something, the route past the tree would be inviting. He could use his shirt as a rope, and tie one end well out on the branch. By putting his full weight against it, he could bend the tree well back from the lip of the cliff—opening an easy walkway. But where could he tie it?

  A second after the ideas came to him, he heard Ellen.

  Her voice was high, almost hysterical. He heard Eddie, an angry sound, and Ellen again—shouting now. And then the shot. A single crack of noise which released a rumble of echoes to bounce up and down the canyon.

  “And now she is dead,” McKee thought. “Canfield is dead and she is dead.”

  He bit the corner of the khaki shirt collar between his front teeth, pulled it taut with his left hand and split it gingerly with the knife. The pain was there when he held the knife, but he could tolerate it. He ripped the shirt down the back, twisted the two sections, and knotted them to his ma
keshift rope. Then he pulled out his belt and looped it around an outcrop of stone beside the wall.

  Now it would reach. He pulled against the tree, thinking numbly that Eddie had not given him thirty minutes and that Ellen had chosen to shout a warning in the face of Eddie’s pistol. He strained against the rope of shirt, pulled it through the looped belt, and wrapped it twice. His right hand was no help with this heavy work and he used his teeth to pull the knot tight. In a moment he would confront Eddie.

  He was almost ready. He laid the knife on a rock protruding from the wall, sorted through stones in the dust at his feet and chose one which fit well in his left hand. In a very few minutes it would be over. Eddie would come. If Eddie walked past the tree, he would cut the shirt and the limb would slash at Eddie. And, as he cut the rope, he would come over the wall with the rock. If Eddie had been blinded by the whipping limb, or hurt, or even confused, he would kill Eddie. Either way, it would be over then. McKee thought of that. It was better than thinking of Ellen’s voice and the sound of the pistol.

  Eddie came almost too soon. McKee settled himself high on the rubble and looked over the top and Eddie was there. He was standing on the pathway at the corner, where the shelf was cut by the crevasse, studying the ruins. McKee shrank back behind the screen of piñon limbs as Eddie turned toward him. The gunman’s vest was unbuttoned now and he held the pistol in his right hand, close to the body. The barrel, McKee noticed, always pointed with his eyes, like the flashlight of a man searching in the dark.

  McKee felt a pressure in his chest and became aware he was holding his breath. He released it and gripped the rock.

  Eddie moved now. He walked directly along the edge of the crevasse, just as McKee had done, stepping carefully over the tumbled partition walls. Twenty feet away he stopped and stood in a half crouch, studying the tree and the wall.

  “McKee,” he said, “I had to shoot your woman.” Eddie’s tone was conversational. He stood for a moment listening—no more than the polite pause for reply.

  “Killing you is going to cost me thirty thousand dollars,” Eddie said. “It’s going to cost George twice that much.” He paused again. “Are you going to make me do it?”

  McKee found he was holding his breath again. Eddie was examining the wall, making his choice.

  McKee looked at the rock in his hand. He turned his body, braced himself, and threw it in a high arching toss up the crevasse. There was a sudden echoing clatter as the stone bounced from wall to wall. Eddie took five quick, almost running, steps down the path and then stopped abruptly just short of the piñon.

  McKee held the knife blade against the taut cloth. Eddie looked up along the wall and then squatted, peering past the lower branches of the piñon, so close now that McKee could only see his left shoulder and part of his back.

  It happened very quickly then.

  Eddie moved swiftly into the gap between tree and crevasse and McKee slashed downward with the knife. He knew even as the rope parted that Eddie had stopped again. He had underestimated the gunman’s caution.

  Coming over the wall, McKee saw only part of what happened. There was the blast of Eddie’s pistol, fired into the swinging mass of the limb. Then the blond man, with lightning reflexes, leaped backward in a spinning crouch—swinging the pistol barrel toward him.

  Eddie, suddenly, was no longer there. There was a cry—a sound mixed of surprise and anger and fear—and a crashing thump. Eddie’s reflexive leap had carried him off the edge of the cliff into the crevasse.

  When McKee first looked into the crevasse he presumed Eddie was dead. The man had apparently struck a sloping slab of sandstone about twenty feet below the shelf, bounced from that against a block-shaped mass of black rock, which jammed the center of the crack, and then fallen another ten feet. He was caught in an awkward jackknifed sitting position between rocks about fifteen feet above the sandy floor of the crevasse. Eddie’s pistol lay on the sand, about forty-five feet down. McKee stared at it longingly. It was as unreachable as the moon.

  And then he saw Eddie’s head move. Eddie was looking up at him. His nose was bleeding, McKee noticed, and he was breathing through his mouth. McKee stared at the man, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and pity.

  “I fell off,” Eddie said.

  “Yeh,” McKee said. “When you jumped back from that tree.”

  He started to say he was sorry, but caught himself.

  “Can you get down here to me? I got to have help.”

  “I don’t know,” McKee said. “George took the ladder down. You know any other way?”

  “I was going to draw forty-five thousand dollars,” Eddie said. “They had it written up so I’d get fifteen thousand when they were finished and then thirty thousand if nobody knew about it a year from now. That’s why we had to have you write that letter.”

  The blood from Eddie’s nose ran across his chin. He coughed. “I can’t feel anything in my arms.”

  “Who are they?” McKee asked. “What are you doing in here?”

  “George was getting more because he made the contract and it was up to him,” Eddie said. “After this one, if we got it all, I’d of had almost two hundred thousand dollars saved up.” He coughed again. “You don’t pay taxes on it.”

  Eddie’s head tilted forward. He seemed to be staring at the rock in front of him. McKee knew he was looking at death. If Eddie had been Navajo, soon his ghost would have been escaping to wander eternally, combining all that was weak, and evil, and unnatural in the man, and leaving behind all that was natural and good. Only the Dinee who died before their first cry at birth, or of a natural old age, escaped this fate and enjoyed simple oblivion. Eddie’s ghost would be a greedy one, McKee thought, always coveting material possessions—the Navajo ultimate of unnatural wickedness.

  Eddie coughed.

  “Eddie, where’s George now? How long will it be before he comes back?”

  It took Eddie a moment to raise his head. “Today’s when they were trying to get it finished. George had to go out and uncover the sets and after that…” Eddie paused to cough again. “Then we were going to pull out of here. One more day for George to clean up and then we’d be finished.”

  “But when will George be back?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Eddie said.

  “Please,” McKee said. “I have to know.”

  “No. It wouldn’t help. He works out of Los Angeles, but I heard about him all the way back East. They say he never broke a contract.” Eddie coughed again. “Never screwed up a job. He’ll kill you and your woman and then he’ll go on away.”

  McKee felt a sudden surge of hope. It lasted only a second.

  “Didn’t you kill her?”

  “Oh,” Eddie said. His voice was weak. “I forgot for a minute.”

  He peered up at McKee, frowning. “Told her not to yell,” he said. “Maybe it didn’t kill her.”

  McKee left him talking. He ran, hurdling the crumbled walls, back to where Ellen would be.

  She was lying almost out of the crawl hole. She had apparently been emerging on hands and knees when Eddie shot her. McKee stood a long moment looking at her, feeling infinitely lonely and terribly tired. It wasn’t until he lifted her that he realized she was still alive.

  The bullet had cut through her cheek, deflected past her jawbone, struck the top of her shoulder, and torn out through the back of her shirt. McKee brought water, canned food, the first-aid kit, and one of the sleeping bags from the campsite. He laid her on the bedroll and examined the wounds. The slug apparently had hit her right shoulder blade, breaking it. It had deflected out through the back muscle, leaving a hole around which a seep of blood was beginning to clot. He rinsed the wounds, powdered them with disinfectant from the kit, bandaged her face, and applied a pad of gauze to the ragged tear where the bullet had finally emerged.

  There was nothing else to do. He trotted back to the crevasse. Maybe Eddie could tell him something useful. Eddie was still staring at the rock in front of him, b
ut now Eddie would answer no more questions.

  McKee stared down at the body, thinking of what the blond man had told him. The Big Navajo was from Los Angeles. Probably, McKee thought, a “Relocation Navajo”—a child of one of those unfortunate families moved off the drought-stricken Reservation to urban centers during the 1930’s. It had been one of the most disastrous experiments of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, turning hungry sheepherders into hungry city alcoholics. If George had been raised in Los Angeles, it would explain his weak command of the Navajo gutturals, and why what he knew of witches came from books. And maybe it would explain an Indian with the underworld connections which Eddie had seemed to imply. But it didn’t explain why George and Eddie had been assigned to scare sheepherders out of this canyon country. or why it was so important that no one learned they had been here.

  The metal of Eddie’s pistol reflected the early-morning sun. With that, McKee thought, he could simply wait for the Big Navajo to return, shoot him, carry Ellen down the ladder and take her to the hospital in the Land-Rover. But the pistol was beyond recovery. No way down into the crevasse and no way up if he got down.

  He thought about it. Without the pistol he could probably keep the Big Navajo off the cliff. There were food and water at the camp. He could wait the big man out. But Ellen would be dying.

  McKee chewed on his lip, trying desperately to think of the best solution. It was then he remembered the truck. Old Woman Gray Rocks had said it was parked in Hard Goods Canyon, nine miles up from the mouth of Many Ruins. That must be close—within two miles at the most. He made his decision.

  It took him only a few minutes to hide Ellen Leon where the Big Navajo might not be able to find her. He carried her on the sleeping bag back into the ruins under the cliff. He put her in a room, with food and water beside her, and readjusted the bandage on her face. He saw then that her eyes were open.