Charlie smiled, too, and had to agree. His own keys were hidden under the front bumper in a black plastic magnetic box in case someone got separated or should return before the others.
Harley grinned. “I always thought it was funny how people did that… and with everyone else knowing they do it too. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?” He chuckled as he put the map away. “I always just left my keys in the truck… back when I had a truck… back when I had a license to drive one.” The smile left his face as he pondered this progression of events from his drinking days.
Thomas looked over at him. “I remember that truck. It was the one with the bumper sticker that said I Survived Boarding School. He chuckled. “I doubt it was ever in any danger of being stolen… As I recall, you eventually had to pay the wrecking yard to come get it.”
Harley frowned across his saddle at Thomas and changed the subject. “We only got about an hour more light; that’s gonna put us back at the vehicle a good ways after dark.” Harley didn’t like crossing strange country at night. Too easy to get rimmed up and end up spending a night out. Not that he hadn’t done it before, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do it again. And, too, there was still that possibility of a chindi roaming around out there, somewhere… just waiting to jump on a person.
Harley led the way and assured them he had the route pretty much set in his mind. He thought they could work their way around the upper end of the watershed that still separated them from their vehicle. Thomas and Charlie fell in behind the mule, which for the first time felt it was on the right track for home, and picked up the pace accordingly. The two horses weren’t convinced and wanted to stay on the main trail. They were hungry, too, but like most good trail horses knew better than try to eat along the way. It was nearly sundown when the trio hit the big sage flats that divided the watersheds. Harley pointed out a scattered band of sheep, watched for a moment, and knew almost instantly something was wrong. They were all over the place, obviously without a herder, and no dog in sight. You didn’t often see that in this country. The three of them scanned the horizon, but it was Thomas who first saw the old woman. He had to look twice, thinking he might have imagined the movement at the upper end of the flats.
When the figure was pointed out to him, Harley reluctantly pulled Shorty to a halt. “Looks like that old lady could use some help with her sheep. Coyotes, or maybe a bear, musta’ got into ’em.”
Thomas grinned. “Or maybe she just fell asleep and let them get away from her.” Then he frowned. “Seems like their dog would have kept them together, though.” It was inconceivable to Thomas that someone would have a band of sheep out in this country without a dog. You might get away with that some places, but you wouldn’t up here.
The three sat their mounts in silence and peered through the gloom to see what the woman would do about the sheep. To their surprise she came straight through the scattered flock and was obviously headed their way. She seemed to pay no heed to the sheep whatsoever and was making good time across the broken sage flats.
Charlie sighed and said, “I guess we better go see what she wants. Looks to me like she might have a problem.” The three rode abreast toward the old woman, who seeing them finally heading her way, broke into a shuffling run. As she drew near, the men could see she was quite clearly exhausted and somewhat unsteady on her feet.
“Yaa `eh t`eeh,” Harley called, though she was still some way off.
“I don’t think she can hear you yet, Harley.” Thomas cocked his head at the old woman. “There’s something bad happened, I think,” and kicked his horse into a lope, with the others close behind. The woman stopped short and waited for Thomas to come to a sliding stop. He was off the horse before it could even regain its feet, and stood in front of the old woman amazed. She looked even older than he first guessed. Her head was lifted and she sucked in great gulps of air, unable to speak—barely able to stay on her feet. He took her arm to steady her and spoke quietly in Navajo as the others moved closer. “Easy, shimásáni, rest a little and catch your breath. You should not be running so hard at your age.”
There were tears of relief in the old woman’s eyes as she realized these men intended to help her. She went almost to her knees, but Harley caught her other arm, and between them he and Thomas supported her and patted her on the back to help with her breathing.
When the old woman had calmed somewhat and regained the ability to speak, she peered from one to the other and asked them in Navajo, “Have you seen my granddaughter hereabouts, shiy’ké?” using the old Navajo word for my sons. “I cannot find her, though I have searched since before daylight. She did not come back last night with the sheep, and the dog came in early this morning and was badly cut in two places. That dog, he died right away after he came in, and I do not know now where he left my granddaughter. He never lets her out of his sight and would not ordinarily come back without her.”
She raised her hands to her face, and the men were afraid she would cry again, but she didn’t, only wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “This is all too much for an old woman. We are alone, the two of us out here, now that my husband is gone. This girl is all I have. I don’t have no one else, only my granddaughter.” Charlie and Thomas looked at one another and something passed between them that the old woman caught a sense of. She peered hopefully at the two. “Do you know something about this, my boys? Have you seen the girl?” She shaded her eyes with one hand, gazed out across the country, then went on in a low voice almost as though talking to herself, “Her mother sent her to stay with me until I arrange my life and sell the stocks and all. We wanted to wait until end of summer, when the lamb price might go up.” All the time the old woman was talking she watched in every direction, searching the horizon.
“Where is your hogan, Grandmother…? Are you close by?” Charlie’s Navajo was not as good as the others, but he understood the woman and felt his heart sink as he thought what might have happened to her granddaughter.
Thomas and Harley remained silent and waited for her answer.
The old woman straightened slightly. She did not return Charlie’s gaze, but did appear to settle herself, and finally replied, “I am She Has Horses.” She used her Navajo name, as she could see all three men understood the language not everyone did these days. She raised an arm and it went crimson in the brilliant glow of the setting sun. “We are over there, only a short way, on the edge of Little Salt, above Water Comes Running.” The woman had now said all she could manage for the moment and grew quiet.
Charlie shook his head saying, “I’m going to have to go back to the truck and call this in.” He looked up at the darkening sky and then at his friends. “Maybe you two could help this woman gather her sheep and get them home. Harley, you might let her ride Shorty—I doubt she can ride Thomas’s horse, and it doesn’t look like she’s up to walking much farther. Maybe she’ll have something for you to eat.” He concentrated on the task before him. “I’m close enough now that I can find the truck. I’ll take the topo map— I’ve got a flashlight in my saddlebags. I’ll be back up here with the truck and trailer as soon as I can, but it might be morning before it’s light enough to find this place again.” He threw Thomas a warning glance as Harley retrieved the map. “You be careful tonight. I’m having some second thoughts about all this.” With that, he clapped Harley lightly on the shoulder, took the map, and swung into the saddle. He nudged the sorrel to a ground-eating trot, a gait that seemed to suit the horse. He suspected he could have Search and Rescue out there by morning, possibly, even before he himself could make it back.
5
The Wreck
When the van flung itself off the road and rolled over and over to the bottom of the arroyo, the six illegals sleeping in back were battered and thrown from top to bottom—two of them partially out windows—and one thrown through the big sliding door when the latch failed. The mojado had not ridden in many cars but figured if the driver was buckled in there had to be a good reason for it. Luca had been
fortunate to be in the seat beside the driver and also buckled in. It was not luck, exactly. He had demanded the seat and no one was man enough to argue. He got sick riding in the back, he told them, though he didn’t have to tell them anything at all. They’d seen the homemade prison tattoos on his neck and forearms, knew the significance of the designs, and guessed how he came to be there. They had also seen the thin switchblade knife he used to cut the apple the driver had given him at the rest stop. The coyotero was a cautious man and wanted to stay on the good side of this obviously dangerous passenger. He would have much preferred the company of one of the two young women in the group, but both had earlier turned down that opportunity.
There were no other seatbelts, so only Luca and the coyotero were spared the worst of the deadly crash. It would not have been quite so bad if the juniper tree had not been in their flight path, but it was, and it nearly broke the airborne vehicle in half.
When he recovered from the initial shock and gut-wrenching jolt of the seat belt, he found his right arm had at some point been caught between the twisted door and the frame and now had no feeling. He didn’t think the arm was broken—perhaps it would get better in time. It was good, he supposed, that he was left-handed. It was now clear none of the other six illegals would make it, though one young woman was taking shallow, rattling breaths, and mouthing what he took to be a prayer. Prayers would not help her this night.
Truly, he thought, God worked in mysterious ways. He had been worried that some of these people might eventually talk about the tattooed man whose face had been all over Mexican television. The news of the escape had dominated the media in Sonora State.
He looked over at the driver, who was breathing heavily, unconscious, or more likely in shock. He was bleeding profusely from head wounds inflicted by the shattered window glass. In the green glow of the instruments, particles embedded in the man’s scalp glimmered like emeralds. Maybe the coyotero would live, provided someone reported the accident in a timely manner. This highway 491 between Gallup and Shiprock was a lonely stretch, especially at night, but that was why the coyotero had chosen the back-way into Colorado in the first place. No one wanted to be on this road late at night. There were no “profilers” out here—tribal police had not had the benefit of that training, and rightly so, most thought.
He felt under the seat for the tire iron he’d seen earlier when they had stopped at the abandoned rest area. It didn’t take much, a hard rap behind the ear of the stirring driver and worry of discovery in this new country was greatly reduced.
He didn’t know exactly where he was but had looked over the driver’s shoulder as he studied the roadmap outside Douglas. It was a circuitous route, highlighted in yellow, one carefully thought out. The coyotero had good luck with it in the past and had no reason to think it would be otherwise this time.
Luca did remember the driver saying this was one of the largest Indian reservations in world, but that didn’t bother him. He was mestizo himself, not so different from these people, who themselves had a long history with the Mexicans. He had no way of knowing it, but there was even a clan, Naakaii dine’é, The Mexican People, still heavy in that blood some imagined. In the old times there was much trading and stealing of women on both sides. Some even figured this ongoing “molina de sangre,” with the Mexicans and others was responsible for the continued strength of the Diné—one of the few North American tribes on the increase.
When at last he was able to extricate himself from the gore of the mangled van, he was surprised that, aside from the arm, everything seemed in order. His legs were bruised and his knees hurt from being shoved up under the dash, but for the most part he was better off than he had any right to be, but then, he had always been lucky that way, and no one could say why.
He did know he should probably get away from the accident as quickly as possible, and after a quick look around for the roadmap, which he could not find, he grabbed one of the milk jugs of water from the wreckage and headed for the nearby but rugged country of the Carrizo mountains to the west. Ultimately he must turn more northward, but for now it was best to lose himself in that isolated area he remembered from the map. It was mid-summer, he’d grown up in this kind of country, he would be fine here—but no one must know. That was the key.
~~~~~~
When Charlie finally returned to the old woman’s hogan the next morning, there were several trucks in the yard. The girl’s body had already been found. The dogs had taken only an hour and forty-five minutes to locate her, stuffed in a cleft of a rock outcropping. The opening had been walled up to hide the body, but it was a rough job and the hounds had no trouble going directly to it. A volunteer rode a four-wheeler back to tell the old woman the news, and though he was trained in such things, it had been difficult for both of them. He had been told Charlie would likely already be there, and filled him in on the morning’s happenings. He was the group’s EMT, he said, but when he had seen he wouldn’t be needed, offered to go back and inform the anxious old woman that her granddaughter wouldn’t be coming back. After she had gone back inside the hogan to fix the men coffee (no situation was so cruel a guest couldn’t be offered something to eat or drink). Charlie asked the EMT what they had found.
The man didn’t answer at first, only shook his head and stared back the way he had come. He was surprisingly young, and Charlie imagined the thing was hard for him, and so didn’t push him, instead just asked if he had seen Thomas and Harley.
“Yes, they showed us to where the sheep were when they first came across them last evening. It only took the dogs about an hour to find her from there.” He exhaled loudly and then took his time explaining exactly how things were out there. The girl had been slashed repeatedly with a large knife, a butcher knife maybe. The medic had been in residence at the clinic in Shiprock for over a year and had seen his share of knife wounds, but none like this. “It seemed almost like she was killed in some sort of mindless fury. She had been stabbed several times, even after she was dead, already bled out… The stab wounds were clean… didn’t bleed,” he said.
The medic was interrupted by two other grim-faced volunteers returning on four-wheelers, with the search dogs footsore and tired out, trailing behind. They loaded the hounds and were gone without speaking to anyone. The old woman, She Has Horses, stood forlornly at the hogan door, gesturing with the coffeepot and watching them go. Her features took on a vacant expression as she returned, unseeing, to the quiet refuge of the dwelling.
Her dog, the one that came home to die, was still where the old woman laid him in the brush shelter next to the hogan—her “summer hogan” she called it. Charlie and the medic went for a look, and according to the EMT the wounds appeared pretty much the same as those suffered by the girl.
The medic followed Charlie back to the hogan, where they thanked the old lady for the coffee and moved out of earshot.
The medic seemed hesitant. “We‘re only here in a search and rescue capacity…or recovery in this case. Your investigators, the tall one anyway, said they would try to find where she was killed and what happened. The chunky little guy wrote everything down in a notebook, and then they just rode off. They seemed to know what they were doing. A couple of our people will stay with the remains until law enforcement arrives.” He shrugged. “Your guys are still out there doing whatever it is they do, I guess.”
Charlie didn’t change expression or give any indication he was surprised by this information, just nodded, and after gulping his coffee, waved goodbye to She Has Horses, then went directly to the trailer and re-saddled the gelding. Those two will be my undoing. I’m sure of it now.
Harley Ponyboy and Thomas Begay had the only horses out there, so they weren’t hard to follow, even for someone like Charlie. When he caught up with them, they were already halfway back to the old woman’s place.
Harley, who was out in front, saw the look on Charlie’s face and immediately avowed, “It was not my fault!” He gave Thomas a hard look. “He just took over lik
e he always does. What else could I do?” Charlie didn’t even look at him as he rode past.
Thomas Begay sat his horse, waiting for the inevitable. “Now, Charlie… buddy… before you say anything…”
“YOU, don’t say another word.” Charlie’s voice had an edge. “How in the hell did you think you could pull this off? You two don’t even look like investigators.”
Thomas shrugged and looked down at his saddle horn. “Yeah, that’s what they said too,” then brightened, “But they ain’t the law either… They didn’t really care.” He winked. “We probably won’t hear any more about it.”
Charlie shook his head. “You better hope you don’t. Do you know what kind of trouble you two could get into impersonating a law officer?”
“We never impersonated no one.” He waggled a finger at Charlie. “I told them you were an investigator with Legal Services, and we worked for you. That’s all I said—they were the ones who thought… whatever it was they thought.”
Charlie sighed, rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and shook his head.
“Look at the upside, Charlie. This time we were first at the crime scene. We didn’t mess it up neither. And we discovered a few things that no one else might have caught…”
Charlie snorted. “First of all, you and Harley were first at the last ‘crime scene,’ …and if you hadn’t been afraid of dead people, we might have learned something that would have prevented this murder. And secondly, anything you may have found out here is considered evidence. You could be charged with tampering. You two are digging yourself a hole—one I may not be able to pull you out of.” Charlie whirled the sorrel and rode off at a lope.
Harley quietly looked over at Thomas. “I tol’ you it was a bad idea.”
Thomas watched Charlie ride off. “Maybe… maybe not.”
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