Listening Woman jlajc-3

by Tony Hillerman

  One of the disadvantages of the Short Mountain Trading Post location was that it was impossible for short-wave radio communication. To contact Tuba City, Leaphorn had to drive out of the declivity made by the wash, going high enough up the mesa so that his reception wasn’t blanked out by the terrain. He found Captain Largo suitably surprised at the Adams woman’s aim of visiting the Tso hogan.

  You want me to take her? Leaphorn asked. I’m going out to see the Cigarette woman and its sort of on the way. Same direction anyway.

  No, Largo said. Just find out what the hell she’s doing.

  I’m pretty sure she’s not going to tell me, Leaphorn said. She already told me it was none of our business.

  You could bring her in here for questioning.

  Could I? You recommending that?

  The pause was brief Largo remembering the reason for his original interest in Theodora Adams. I guess not, he said. Not unless we have to. Handle it your own way. But don’t let anything happen to her.

  The way Leaphorn had already decided to handle it would be to offer to drive Theodora Adams to the Tso hogan. If he did that there would be no conceivable way she could prevent him from learning why she had gone there. He would find the Adams woman and get on the road.

  But when he got back to the trading post, it was after 10 P.M. and Theodora Adams was gone. So was a GMC pickup truck owned by a woman named Naomi Many Goats.

  I saw her talking to Naomi Many Goats, McGinnis said. She came in here and got me to draw her a little map of how to get to the Tso place. And then she asked if you were headed back to Tuba City, and I told her you’d probably just gone off to do some radio talking because you was fixing to go out and talk to the Cigarette woman. So she got me to show her where the Cigarette hogan was on the map. Then she asked who she could hire to take her to the Tso place, and I said you never could tell with you Navajos, and the last thing I saw her doing was talking to Naomi.

  She get the Many Goats woman to drive her?

  Hell, I don’t know, McGinnis said. I didn’t see em leave.

  Ill guess she did, Leaphorn said.

  It occurs to me that I’ve been telling you a hell of a lot and you ain’t been telling me nothing, McGinnis said. Why does that girl want to go to the Tso hogan?

  Tell you what, Leaphorn said. When I find out, Ill tell you.

  » 7 «

  B

  y the relaxed standards of the Navajo Reservation, the first three miles of the road to the hogan of Hosteen Tso were officially listed as unimproved passable in dry weather. They led up Short Mountain Wash to the site where the anthropological team was excavating cliff ruins. The road followed the mostly hard-packed sand of the wash bottom, and if one was careful to avoid soft places, offered no particular hazard or discomfort. Leaphorn drove past the ruins a little after midnight. Except for a pickup and a small camping trailer parked in the shade of a cottonwood, there was no sign of life. From there, the road quickly deteriorated from fair, to poor, to bad, to terrible, until it was, in fact, no road at all, merely a track. It left the narrowing wash via a subsidiary arroyo, snaked its way through a half mile of broken shale and emerged on the top of Rainbow Plateau. The landscape became a road builders nightmare and a geologists dream. Here, eons ago, the earths crust had writhed and twisted. Nothing was level. Limestone sediments, great masses of gaudy sandstone, granite outcroppings, and even thick veins of marble had been churned together by some unimaginable paroxysm then cut and carved and washed away by ten million years of wind, rain, freeze and thaws. Driving here was a matter of following a faintly marked pathway through a stone obstacle course. It required care, patience and concentration. Leaphorn found concentration difficult. His head was full of questions.

  Where was Frederick Lynch? Where was he going? His course northward from his abandoned car would take him near the Tso hogan. Was Theodora Adams’s business at the hogan business with Frederick Lynch? That seemed logical if anything about this odd business made any logic at all. If two white strangers appeared at about the same time in this out-of-the-way corner, one headed for the Tso hogan and the other aimed in that direction, logic insisted that more than coincidence was involved. But why in the name of God would they cross half a continent to meet at one of the most remote and inaccessible spots -in the hemisphere? Leaphorn could think of no possible reason. Common sense insisted that their coming must have something to do with the murder of Hosteen Tso, but Leaphorn could conceive no link. He felt the irritation and uneasiness that he always felt when the world around him seemed out of its logical order. There was also a growing sense of anxiety. Largo had told him not to let anything happen to Theodora Adams. Most likely, Theodora Adams was somewhere ahead of him on this road, riding with a woman familiar with its hazards, who could drive it faster than could Leaphorn. Leaphorn remembered once again the face of Lynch grinning as he set Leaphorn up for the kill. He thought of the shepherds dogs savaged by the animal Lynch had with him. This was what Theodora Adams was going to meet. Leaphorn jolted the carryall over a boulder faster than he should have, heard the bottom grate against stone, and cursed aloud in Navajo.

  As he braked the carryall to a halt, he became aware that something was in the vehicle with him. Some sense of motion, or unexplained sound, reached him. He unsnapped the holding strap over his pistol, drew the hammer quietly back to the half-cocked position, palmed it, and spun in the seat. Nothing. He peered over the back of the seat, the pistol ready. On the floor, cushioned by his sleeping bag, lay Theodora Adams.

  I hope you didn’t get stuck, she said. That’s what happened to me banging over the rocks like that.

  Leaphorn flicked on the dome light and stared down at her, saying nothing. Surprise was replaced by anger, and this was quickly diluted by relief. Theodora Adams was safe enough.

  I told you we had a rule against, riders, Leaphorn said.

  She pulled herself from the floor to the back seat, shook her head to untangle the mass of blond hair. I didn’t have any choice. That woman wouldn’t take me. And that old man told me you were going out here anyway.

  McGinnis?

  Theodora Adams shrugged. McGinnis. Whatever his name is. So there wasn’t any reason for me not to come along.

  It was a statement that could be argued, but not answered. Leaphorn rarely argued. He considered his impulse to order her out of the carryall, to be picked up on his way back.

  The impulse died quickly, anger overcome by the need to know why she was going to the Tso hogan. Her eyes were an unusually deep blue, or perhaps the color was accentuated by the unusual clarity of the whiteness that surrounded the iris. They were eyes that would not be stared down, which fixed on Leaphorns eyes-unabashed, arrogant, slightly amused.

  Get in the front seat, Leaphorn said. He didn’t want her behind him.

  They jolted through the boulder field in silence and onto the smoother going of a long sandstone slope. Theodora Adams dug into her purse, extracted a folded square of notepaper and smoothed it on the leg of her pants. It was a pencil-drawn map. About where are we?

  Leaphorn turned up the dash light and peered at it. About here, he said. He was conscious of her thigh under his fingertip. Exactly, he knew, as she knew he would be.

  About ten miles?

  About twenty.

  So well be there pretty soon?

  No, Leaphorn said, we wont. He down-geared the carryall over a hump of stone. The carryall rolled into the shadow of an outcrop, making her reflection suddenly visible on the inside of the windshield. She was watching him, waiting for the answer to be expanded.

  Why not?

  Because first were going to the Cigarette hogan. Ill talk to Margaret Cigarette. Then well decide whether to go to the Tso hogan. In fact, there was no reason to reach the Cigarette place before dawn. He had intended to find it and then park for some sleep.

  Decide?

  You’ll tell me what your business is. Ill decide whether we go on from there.

  Look, she sai
d. I’m sorry if I was rude back there. But you were rude, too. Why don’t we

  . . . She paused. Whats your name?

  Joe Leaphorn.

  Joe, she said, my name is Judy Simons, and my friends all call me Judy, and I don’t see why we cant be friends.

  Reach into your purse, Miss Simons, and let me see your drivers license, Leaphorn said.

  He pushed the handbag toward her.

  I don’t have it with me, she said.

  Leaphorns right hand fished deftly into the handbag, extracted a fat blue leather wallet.

  Put that back. Her voice was icy. You don’t have any right to do that.

  The drivers license was in the first plastic cardholder. The face that stared from the square was the face of the woman beside him, the smile appealing even when directed at the license bureau camera. The name was Theodora Adams. Leaphorn flipped the wallet shut and pushed it back into the handbag.

  Okay, she said. Its none of your business, but Ill tell you why I’m going to the Tso place.

  The carryall tilted over the sloping stone. She clutched the door to keep from sliding down the seat against him. But you’ll have to promise to take me there.

  She waited for an answer, staring at him expectantly. Leaphorn said nothing.

  I have a friend. A Navajo. He’s been having a lot of trouble. Leaphorn glanced at her. Her smile disparaged her good Samaritan role. You know. Getting his head together. So he decided to come home. And I decided I would come out and help him.

  The voice stopped, the silence inviting comment. Leaphorn shifted again to cope with another steep slope.

  Whats his name?

  Tso. He’s Hosteen Tsos grandson. The old man wanted him to come to see him.

  Ah, Leaphorn said. But was this grandson also Frederick Lynch? Was he Goldrims?

  Leaphorn was almost certain he was.

  Joe, she said. Her fingertip touched his leg. You could drop me off at the Tso place and talk to Mrs. Cigarette on the way home. It wont take any longer.

  Ill think about it, Leaphorn said. Mrs. Cigarette probably wasn’t home. And what ever Margaret Cigarette could tell him seemed trivial against the thought of confronting Goldrims of taking the man who had tried, so gleefully, to kill him. Is he expecting you?

  Look, she said. You’re not going to take me there first. You’re not going to do anything for me. Why should I tell you anything about my business?

  Well go there first, Leaphorn said. But whats the hurry? Does he know you’re coming?

  She laughed. There was genuine merriment in the sound, causing Leaphorn to take his eyes off the track he was following to look at her. It was a hearty laugh, a sound full of happy memories. Yes and no, she said. Or just yes. He knows. She glanced at Leaphorn, her eyes still amused. That’s like asking somebody if they know the suns going to come up. Of course its going to come up. If it doesn’t, the world ends.

  She is a formidable young woman, Leaphorn thought. He didn’t want her with him when he first approached Hosteen Tsos place. Whether she liked it or not, shed wait in the carryall while he determined who, or what, waited at the hogan.

  » 8 «

  H

  ad Leaphorns timing been perfect, he would have arrived on the mesa rim overlooking the Tso hogan at dawn. In fact, he arrived perhaps an hour early, the moon almost down on the western horizon and the starlight just bright enough to confirm the dim shape of the buildings below. Leaphorn sat and waited. He sat far enough back from the mesa edge so that the down drift of cooling air would not carry his scent. If the dog was there, Leaphorn didn’t want it alerted. The dog had been very much on his mind as he found his way down the dark wagon track toward the hogan and up the back slope of this small mesa.

  Leaphorn doubted that it would be out hunting, but anything seemed possible in this peculiar affair. The thought of the dog had increased his caution and tightened his nerves.

  Now, sitting motionless with his back protected by a slab of stone, he relaxed. If the animal was prowling, he would hear it in time to react to an attack. The danger if indeed there had been danger was gone now.

  Silence. In the dim, still, predawn universe, scent dominated sight and hearing. Leaphorn could smell the acrid perfume of the junipers just behind him, the aroma of dust and other scents so faint they defied identification. From somewhere far behind him there came a single, almost inaudible snapping sound. Perhaps a stone cooling and contracting from yesterdays heat, perhaps a predator moving suddenly and breaking a stick, perhaps the earth growing one tick older. The sound turned Leaphorns thoughts back to the dog, to the eyes staring at him out of the car, to what had happened to the sheepdogs at the water hole, and to witch dogs, the Navajo Wolves, of his peoples ancient traditions. The Navajo Wolves were men and women who turned from harmony to chaos and gained the power to change themselves into coyotes, dogs, wolves or even bears, and to fly through the air, and to spread sickness among the Dinee. As a boy he had believed, fervently and fearfully, in this concept of evil. Two miles from his grandmothers hogan was a weathered volcanic up thrust which the People avoided. In a cave there the witches supposedly gathered to initiate new members into their Clan of Wolves. As a sophomore at Arizona State, he had come just as fervently to disbelieve in the ancient ways. He had visited his grandmother, and gone alone to the old volcano core. Climbing the crumbling basalt crags, feeling brave and liberated, he had found two caves one of which seemed to lead downward into the black heart of the earth. There had been no witches, nor any sign that anything used these caves except, perhaps, a den of coyotes. But he hadn’t climbed down into the darkness.

  Now for many minutes, Leaphorns imagination had been suggesting a dim opalescence along the eastern horizon, and presently his eyes confirmed it. A ragged division between dark sky and darker earth, the shape of the Chuska Mountains on the New Mexico border.

  At this still point, another sound reached Leaphorn. He realized he had been aware of it earlier somewhere below the threshold of hearing. Now it became a murmuring which came and died and came again. It seemed to come from the north. Leaphorn frowned, puzzled. And then he realized what it must be. It was the sound of running water, the San Juan River moving over its rapids, sliding down its canyon toward Lake Powell. At this season the river would be low, the snow melt of the Rockies long since drained away.

  Even in this stillness Leaphorn doubted if the sound muffled by the depth of its canyon would carry far. One of the river bends must bring it to within a couple of miles of Tsos hogan. Leaphorns eye caught a flick of movement in the gray light below an owl on the hunt. Or, he thought, sardonically, the ghost of Hosteen Tso haunting the old mans hogan.

  The east was brightening. Leaphorn eased himself silently from the stone and moved nearer the rim. The buildings were clearly visible. He examined the setting. Directly below him, drainage had eroded a cul-de-sac from the sandstone face of the mesa. This must be where Listening Woman had communed with the earth while her patient and her assistant were being murdered. He studied the topography. It was light enough now to make out the wagon track that connected the Tso hogan tenuously with the world of men. Down this track the killer must have come. The investigators had found only the tracks of Mrs.

  Cigarettes pickup, and no hoofprints. So, the killer had come on foot, visible from the hogan for more than three hundred yards. Tso and the girl must have watched death walking toward them. They had recognized no threat, apparently. Had they seen a friend?

  A stranger? Below Leaphorns feet the track swerved toward the cliff, passing within a dozen yards of where Mrs. Cigarette had sat invisible behind a curtain of stone while the killer had walked past. What had he done then? He would have seen the ritual design painted on the old mans chest. That should have told him that Tso was undergoing a ceremonial diagnosis, that a Listener, or Hand Trembler, must be somewhere nearby. He might have believed the teen-age girl was the diagnostician. But not if he was a local Navajo. Then he would have known the truck belonged
to Listening Woman. Leaphorn studied the grounds below him, trying to recreate the scene. The killer apparently had left immediately after the killing. At least, nothing was known to be missing from Tsos belongings. He had simply walked away as he had comedown the track forty feet below Leaphorns boot tips. Leaphorn retraced this line of retreat with his eyes, then stopped. He frowned, puzzled. At that same moment, he smelled smoke.

  The east was streaked with red and yellow now, providing enough light to illuminate a wavering thin blue line emerging from the smoke hole in the Tso hogan. The man was there. Leaphorn felt a fierce excitement. He took out his binoculars, adjusted them quickly, and studied the ground around the hogan. If the dog was to be part of this contest he needed to know it. He could detect no sign of the animal. The few places where tracks might show bore only boot prints. There was no sign of droppings. Leaphorn studied places where a dog would be likely to urinate, where it might sprawl in the afternoon shade. He found nothing. He lowered the glasses and rubbed his eyes. As he did, the door of the hogan swung open and a man emerged.

  He stood, one hand resting on the plank door, and stared out at the dawn. A largish man, young, wearing an unbuttoned blue shirt, white boxer shorts, and short boots not yet laced. Leaphorn studied him through the binoculars, trying to connect this man enjoying the beauty of the dawn with the grinning face seen through the windshield of the Mercedes. The hair was black, which was as he had remembered it. The man was tall, his figure foreshortened by the magnification of Leaphorns binoculars and the viewing angle.

  Perhaps six feet, with narrow hips and a heavy muscular torso. The man examined the morning, showing more of his face now. It was a Navajo face, longish, rather bony. A shrewd, intelligent face reflecting only calm enjoyment of the morning. Discomfort in his chest made Leaphorn realize that he had been holding his breath. He breathed again.

  Some of the tension of the night had left him. He had hunted a sort of epitome of evil, something that would kill with reckless enjoyment. He had found a mere mortal. And yet this Navajo who stood below him inspecting the rosy dawn sky must be the same man who, just three nights ago, had run him down with a laugh. Nothing else made sense.