The Ghostway jlajc-6

by Tony Hillerman

  But "Jim Chee" was only what his uncle would call his "white man name." His real name, his secret name, his war name, was Long Thinker, given him by Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai, the elder brother of his mother and one of the most respected singers among Four Corners Navajos. Since he had gone to Albuquerque to study at the University of New Mexico, he did not often think of himself as Long Thinker. But he did now. He stood on the talus slope above where he had found the Gorman corpse looking down at the Begay hogan as a Navajo would look at it. The east-facing door was boarded shut. (He had resealed it before he'd left, repairing the damage done by Sharkey.) The smoke hole was plugged. The chindi, which had left the body of Gorman at the moment of Gorman's death, was trapped inside—a summation of all in the dead man's life that was evil and out of harmony with the Navajo Way.

  Everything in Long Thinker's training conditioned him to avoid chindis. "If you have to be out at night, go quietly," his mother had taught him. "The chindis wander in the darkness." And his uncle: "Never speak the name of the dead. Their chindi thinks you are calling it." He had come to terms with these ghosts in high school and reduced them to rational terms at the university, converting them into something like the dietary taboos of Jews and Moslems, the demons of Christians. But from this talus slope, in the dying light, in the dead stillness of this autumn evening, the rationality of the university was canceled.

  And there was another side to all this. "You did it," Mary Landon would say. "When you stepped through that corpse hole, you proved that you can be a Navajo on an emotional plane but an assimilated man intellectually." And he would say, "No, Mary, you simply don't understand," and she would say…

  He turned away from that and considered what he'd learned. Almost nothing. He'd driven straight from the place of Joseph Joe and started his work here with a meticulous examination of the hogan yard. He'd learned that Hosteen Begay used his sweat bath more than most, that he kept goats as well as sheep, and that he owned two horses (one newly shod).

  Recent additions to Begay's garbage dump included an empty lard can, an empty Shurfine flour sack, and tin cans that had held peaches, creamed corn, and pork and beans. The garbage told him that Begay dipped snuff (an addiction unusual among Navajos), that he did not use beer, wine, or whiskey, and (judging from the discarded Dr. Scholl's footpads) that he suffered from bunions. None of that was helpful.

  Nor had he found anything helpful in the second stage of his hunt, an equally careful sweep up and down the arroyo behind the hogan and around the wooded slopes above and below Begay's little meadow. He simply confirmed what he'd learned on his original inspection. Begay had, as would be expected of any prudent shepherd, taken his flocks to downhill pastures weeks ago, before early winter storms could trap them. And when he'd abandoned this place, he'd ridden the newly shod horse and led the other, heavily loaded. He'd headed downhill, probably for some shortcut he knew to reach the road to Two Gray Hills. Maybe, Chee thought, he could follow those tracks far enough to get some hint of his destination. But that seemed wildly unlikely. Time, wind, and the dry season made tracking doubtful, and even if he could track, his work would also certainly simply lead him to the road to the trading post.

  Today's wind had been the sort any tracker hates—dry and abrasive, blasting sand against the face and erasing signs. But it had died away in late afternoon, and now the total calm of an autumn high-pressure area had settled over the high country. From his place on the talus slope Chee could see, across Begay's empty homestead, a hundred miles to the southeast all the way to the dark blue bump on the horizon that was Mount Taylor, Mary Landon's favorite mountain. (Now Mary would be finished with her school day, finished with her supper, out for her evening walk—sitting someplace, probably, looking at it from much closer quarters. Chee could see her vividly, her eyes, the line of her cheek, her mouth…)

  Old Man Begay had taken time to clean out his hogan and pack his stuff on his horses. Why hadn't he taken the time to collect the few yucca roots required to make the suds to wash his kinsman's hair? What had hurried him? Had it been fear? An urgent need to attend to some duty? Chee stared down at the homestead, trying to visualize the old man smashing with his ax at the broken wall where the corpse hole was formed, destroying what must have been important to him for much of his life.

  Then he heard the sound.

  It came to him on the still, cold air, distant but distinct. It was the sound of a horse. A whinny. The sound came from the arroyo—from the spring or from Begay's corral just beyond it. Chee had been there two hours earlier and had spent thirty minutes establishing from tracks and manure that no animal had been there for days. Nor was this the season for open range grazing this high in the mountains. Livestock had been taken, long since, to lower pastures, and even strays would have moved downhill, out of the intense morning cold. Chee felt excitement growing. Ashie Begay had come home to collect something he'd forgotten.

  The horse was exactly where Chee expected it to be—at the spring. It was an elderly pinto mare, roan and white, fitting the description of the one stolen from Two Gray Hills. It wore a makeshift rope halter on its ugly hammer head. Another bit of rope secured it to a willow. Hardly likely that Hosteen Begay, who owned horses of his own, would have taken it. Who had? And where was he?

  The night breeze was beginning now as it often did with twilight on the east slope of mountains. Nothing like the morning's dry gusts, but enough to ruffle the mare's ragged mane and replace the dead silence with a thousand little wind sounds among the ponderosas. Under cover of these whispers, Chee moved along the arroyo rim, looking for the horse thief.

  He checked up the arroyo. Down the arroyo. Along the ponderosa timber covering the slopes. He stared back at the talus slope, where he had been when he'd heard the horse. But no one could have gotten there without Chee seeing him. There was only the death hogan and the holding pen for goats and the brush arbor, none of which seemed plausible. The thief must have tied his horse and then climbed directly up the slope across the arroyo. But why?

  Just behind him, Chee heard a cough.

  He spun, fumbling for his pistol. No one. Where had the sound come from?

  He heard it again. A cough. A sniffling. The sound came from inside Hosteen Begay's hogan.

  Chee stared at the corpse hole, a black gap broken through the north wall. He had cocked his pistol without knowing he'd done it. It was incredible. People do not go into a death hogan. People do not step through the hole into darkness. White men, yes. As Sharkey had done. And Deputy Sheriff Bales. As Chee himself, who had come to terms with the ghosts of his people, might do if the reason was powerful enough.

  But certainly most Navajos would not. So the horse thief was a white. A white with a cold and a runny nose.

  Chee moved quietly to his left, away from the field of vision of anyone who might be looking through the hole. Then he moved silently to the wall and along it. He stood beside the hole, back pressed to the planking. Pistol raised. Listening.

  Something moved. Something sniffed. Moved again. Chee breathed as lightly as he could. And waited. He heard sounds and long silences. The sun was below the horizon now, and the light had shifted far down the range of colors to the darkest red. Over the ridge to the west he could see Venus, bright against the dark sky. Soon it would be night.

  There was the sound of feet on earth, of cloth scraping, and a form emerged through the hole. First a stocking cap, black. Then the shoulders of a navy pea coat, then a boot and a leg—a form crouching to make its way through the low hole.

  "Hold it," Chee said. "Don't move."

  A startled yell. The figure jumped through the hole, stumbled. Chee grabbed.

  He realized almost instantly he had caught a child. The arm he gripped through the cloth of the coat was small, thin. The struggle was only momentary, the product of panic quickly controlled. A girl, Chee saw. A Navajo. But when she spoke, it was in English.

  "Turn me loose," she said, in a breathless, frightened voice. "I've
got to go now."

  Chee found he was shaking. The girl had handled this startling encounter better than he had. "Need to know some things first," Chee said. "I'm a policeman."

  "I've got to go," she said. She pulled tentatively against his grip and relaxed, waiting.

  "Your horse," Chee said. "You took her last night from over at Two Gray Hills."

  "Borrowed it," the girl said. "I've got to go now and take her back."

  "What are you doing here?" Chee asked. "In the hogan?"

  "It's my hogan," she said. "I live here."

  "It is the hogan of Hosteen Ashie Begay," Chee said. "Or it was. Now it is a chindi hogan. Didn't you notice that?"

  It was a foolish question. After all, he'd just caught her coming out of the corpse hole. She didn't bother to answer. She said nothing at all, simply standing slumped and motionless.

  "It was stupid going in there," Chee said. "What were you doing?"

  "He was my grandfather," the girl said. For the first time she lapsed into Navajo, using the noun that means the father of my mother. "I was just sitting in there. Remembering things." It took her a moment to say it because now tears were streaming down her cheeks. "My grandfather would leave no chindi behind him. He was a holy man. There was nothing in him bad that would make a chindi."

  "It wasn't your grandfather who died in there," Chee said. "It was a man named Albert Gorman. A nephew of Ashie Begay." Chee paused a moment, trying to sort out the Begay family. "An uncle of yours, I think."

  The girl's face had been as forlorn as a child's face can be. Now it was radiant. "Grandfather's alive? He's really alive? Where is he?"

  "I don't know," Chee said. "Gone to live with some relatives, I guess. We came up here last week to get Gorman, and we found Gorman had died. And that." Chee pointed at the corpse hole. "Hosteen Begay buried Gorman out there, and packed up his horses, and sealed up his hogan, and went away."

  The girl looked thoughtful.

  "Where would he go?" Chee asked. The girl would be Margaret Sosi. No question about that. Two birds with one stone. One stolen pinto mare and the horse thief, plus one missing St. Catherine's student. "Hosteen Begay is your mother's father. Would he…?" He remembered then that the mother of Margaret Billy Sosi was dead.

  "No," Margaret said.

  "Somebody else then?"

  "Almost everybody went to California. A long time ago. My mother's sisters. My great-grandmother. Some people live over on the Cañoncito Reservation, but…" Her voice trailed off, became suddenly suspicious. "Why do you want to find him?"

  "I want to ask him two questions," Chee said. "This is a good hogan here, solid and warm, in a place of beauty. Good firewood. Good water for the cattle. Enough grass. Hosteen Begay must have seen that his nephew was dying. Why didn't he do as the People have always done and move him out into the air so the chindi could go free?"

  "Yes," Margaret Sosi said. "I'm surprised he didn't do that. He loved this place."

  "I have heard Hosteen Begay lived the Navajo Way," Chee said.

  "Oh, yes," Margaret said. "My grandfather always walked in beauty."

  "He would have known how to take care of a corpse then? How to get it ready for its journey?"

  The girl nodded. "He taught me about that.

  About putting a little food and water with the body. And things it needs for four days."

  "And what you do so the chindi will not follow it?"

  "Oh, yes," she said. "After you make the yucca suds and wash the hair, you reverse the shoes." She pantomimed the act of switching. "So the chindi will be confused by the footprints." As she finished the sentence her voice trailed off, and she glanced at the corpse hole, the irregular broken doorway into the darkness of the hogan. She looked, and Chee felt her shiver under his hand. Seventeen, by the record, he thought, but she looks about fifteen.

  "I wouldn't have gone in there if I had known it wasn't Grandfather." She looked up at Chee. "What do I have to do? What can you do when you've been where you catch the ghost sickness? How do I get rid of the chindi?"

  "You're supposed to take a sweat bath," Chee said. "And as soon as you can you have a sing. Tell your family about it. They'll call in a Listener, or a Hand Trembler, to make sure you have the right ceremonial. Usually it would be part of the Night Way, or the Mountaintop Way. Then your family will hire a singer, and…" It was occurring to Chee that Margaret Sosi didn't have much family to depend on for such familial duties. "Is there somebody who can do that for you?"

  "My grandfather would do it," she said.

  "Anyone else? Until we find him?"

  "I guess just about everybody went to Los Angeles," she said. "A long time ago."

  "Look, Margaret," Chee said. "Don't worry about it. Let me tell you about chindi. Do you know much about religion?"

  "I go to a Catholic school. We study religion."

  "A lot of religions have rules about what not to do, what not to eat, things like that. The Koran tells the Moslems not to eat pigs. When the wise men were writing that, a lot of diseases were spread by eating pork. It was smart to avoid it. Same with some of the Jewish rules about foods. Most religions, like us Navajos, have rules against incest. You don't have intercourse within your own family. If you do, inbreeding makes bad stock. And with us, Changing Woman and Black God taught us to stay away from where people have died. That's wise too. Avoids spreading small-pox, bubonic plague fleas, things like that."

  Even in the twilight, Chee could see Margaret's face was skeptical.

  "So the ghost is just disease germs," she said.

  "Not exactly," Chee said. "There's more to it than that. Now we know about germs, so when we violate the taboo about a death hogan we know how to deal with any germs we might catch. But we also know we've violated our religion, broken one of the rules the People live by. So we feel guilty and uneasy. We no longer have hozro. We no longer live in beauty. We're out of harmony. So we need to do what Changing Woman taught us to do to be restored in the Navajo Way."

  Margaret's expression was slightly less skeptical. "Did you go in there?"

  "No," Chee said. "I didn't."

  "Are you going to?"

  "Only if I have to," Chee said. "I hope I don't have to." The answer surprised him. He had avoided the hogan, and the decision, all afternoon. Suddenly he understood why. It had something to do, a great deal to do, with Mary Landon—with remaining one of the Dinee or with stepping through into the white man's world.

  "I would break the taboo because it is my job," he said. "But maybe it won't be necessary. You stay right here. I've got a lot of questions I need to ask you."

  The hole had been made by chopping the logs forming part of the lower wall of the hogan away from the frame that held them. Chee aimed his flashlight through the hole. In the center, directly under the smoke hole, five partly burned logs lay on the hearth, their charred ends pointing neatly inward. Just beside the hearth, Begay's cooking stove stood, a heavy cast-iron affair that he must have taken apart to haul in. Nothing else had been left behind. A clutter of cardboard boxes lay near the boarded east entrance with a red Folger's coffee can standing near them. Except for that, the packed earthen floor was bare. Chee swung the flash around, examining the walls. Wooden crating had been fashioned into shelving on both sides of the east entrance and a wire was strung along the south wall, about chest high. Chee guessed Begay had hung blankets across it, screening off about a third of the hogan's floor space for privacy. He let the beam of the flashlight drift along the logs, looking for anything that might have been left in the crevices. He saw nothing.

  He switched the flash back to the cardboard cartons. Obviously Sharkey and Bales had examined them. Must have. No reason for him to go inside. What would he do if he went in? Run his fingers between the logs. Poke into cracks. Looking for what? There was no reason to go inside. No reason to step through the hole into the darkness. What would he tell Margaret Sosi to make her believe that?

  As soon as he turned away from
the hole, into the redder darkness of the dying twilight, he realized he wouldn't have to answer that question. Margaret Sosi was gone.

  "Margaret!" he shouted. He exhaled through his teeth, a snorting sound expressing anger and disgust. Of course she was gone. Why wouldn't she be? Gone with the important questions left unanswered. Unasked, in fact, because he, in his shrewdness, had left them for the last, until the girl had time to come to trust him. The obvious questions.

  Why did you run away from school, run to your grandfather's hogan, steal a horse in your hurry to get here? Why did you tell your friend at St. Catherine you were worried about your grandfather? What did you expect to find here? What did you hear? How did you hear it?

  Chee stared out into the darkness, seeing nothing but the shape of trees outlined against the night sky. She couldn't be far, but he would never find her. She would simply sit down and wait, silently, while he floundered around. He could walk within six feet of her and not see her unless she betrayed herself with panic. With Margaret Sosi, he thought, there was no chance of that whimper of fear, that panicky movement that would betray concealment. She was young and thin, but Chee had seen enough to respect her nerve. He remembered the quick control of fear when he'd grabbed her. The quick tug to test his grip. Margaret Sosi would not lose her courage.