Skeleton Man

by Tony Hillerman

  Craig smiled. “Confidential. Of course. No one will hear it except the four of us. You two, Mr. Tuve, and”—she tapped herself on her shirtfront—“myself. His legal representative.”

  Chee looked skeptical, glanced at Tuve. Tuve, he thought, had the look of an athlete—short like many Hopis, hard muscles, built like a wrestler.

  “Mr. Tuve. Did you retain Ms. Craig as your attorney?”

  Tuve looked puzzled. “I don’t think so. I don’t have any money.”

  “My work is related to the interests of a tax-exempt public charity foundation,” Craig said, her face slightly flushed. “My interest is in protecting Mr. Tuve from unjust prosecution.” She turned toward Tuve. “Mr. Tuve, do you wish to talk to these gentlemen?”

  Tuve shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Looking good, Cowboy. How’d you hear about this trouble? I’ll bet my mother sent you over here to get me.”

  Chee sighed, defeated. “Okay,” he said. “Ms. Craig, this is Deputy Dashee, with the Navajo County Sheriff’s Department.” Craig, he guessed, would not know Navajo County was across the border in Arizona, devoid of any jurisdiction here. “I presume you know that the only material evidence the state has to connect Mr. Tuve with the robbery-homicide at Zuni is a diamond he attempted to pawn. We are hoping to find concrete evidence that Mr. Tuve got that diamond exactly as he claims. To check it out, we want to get some more details from him about the circumstances.”

  Craig considered this. Nodded. “Have a seat,” she said. “Or join us at the table.” She moved her purse off a chair and put it on a closet shelf. The purse was a large and fashionable leather affair and it seemed to Chee remarkably heavy, even for its size.

  The Clark Gable Suite offered numerous comfortable choices for seating—a richly covered sofa, three overstuffed chairs, an ottoman, and four standard dining room chairs around the table. The windows offered a view to the east and north of the mainline railroad tracks, now carrying a seemingly endless line of freight cars toward California, the traffic flowing by on Interstate Highway 40, and beyond all that the spectacular red cliffs that had attracted Hollywood here to produce its horse operas so common through the middle years of the century. Through a double doorway Chee could see into the suite’s handsome bedroom.

  He selected an overstuffed chair and seated himself. Dashee, wearing a “what the hell” expression, chose the sofa.

  “We’re going to ask Mr. Tuve some questions, then,” Chee said. “And it appears we have a mutual interest in the answers. But first we’d like to know why the organization you represent has a fifty-thousand-dollar interest in this.”

  Joanna Craig pondered this a moment, studying Chee. “What organization is that?” she asked.

  “The one you just mentioned that sent you here to protect Mr. Tuve. The one that gave you the check to pay for bonding Mr. Tuve out of jail.”

  “Its identity is confidential.”

  “The check you provided to pay for the bond was written on a Bank of America account. It had your name on it.”

  Joanna Craig sighed, shrugged, nodded.

  “Why did your employers send you here?” Chee asked. “Why do they have a fifty-thousand-dollar interest in Mr. Tuve?”

  “You’ll have to ask them.” She smiled at him.

  “I will,” Chee said. “Give me the name and address.”

  She considered that awhile, shook her head.

  “I would, but they’d just tell you it’s none of your business. Just waste your time.”

  For a while the room was silent. Through the windows came the diminishing sound of thunder, already dim and distant, the jumbled noise of truck traffic on Interstate 40, and the nearer sound of cars on Railroad Avenue. Inside the room only Cowboy Dashee chuckling, and the click of his spoon as Tuve stirred sugar into his cup of coffee.

  “Well, then,” Chee said. “I guess we might as well just get down to business. Mr. Tuve, would you please tell us how you got that diamond.”

  “Like I already told the sheriff and that FBI man, an old man gave it to me,” Tuve said. “Didn’t look like a Hopi. Old. Had a lot of long white hair. Looked Indian, though, but maybe not. Maybe a Havasupai. They live down there in the bottom of the canyon, across the river, but they ought not be around our Salt Shrine. That’s just for Bear Clan people.”

  Billy Tuve took a sip of his coffee, glowering over the rim of the cup at the thought of that.

  “Let’s skip back, then,” Chee said. “Start from what you were doing down in the canyon, where you said it happened, and take it from there.”

  “Some of it I can’t talk about. It’s kiva business. Secret.”

  “Then when you come to the secret part, just tell it to Dashee. In Hopi. That will keep it confidential.”

  “We’re both in the Bear Clan but we didn’t get initiated into the same kiva,” Tuve said. “There’s some of it I couldn’t tell him, either.”

  “Well, just do what your conscience lets you do, then.”

  Joanna Craig frowned.

  Tuve nodded and began his account, Hopi fashion, from the beginning.

  Chee slumped back into his chair, relaxing, getting comfortable, preparing for a long, long session. He’d listen carefully when Tuve got through the religious preamble and began to discuss receipt of the diamond. Until then he’d consider whether Craig was actually a lawyer. Anyone could have posted Tuve’s bond. He’d ponder what she was doing here. If the opportunity arose, he’d try to find out what caused her purse to seem so heavy, even for its size. A tape recorder? A pistol? Meanwhile, he’d enjoy himself. He concentrated on thinking about Bernadette Manuelito. Happy, happy thoughts. About fixing up his place on the San Juan with her. They’d have to move in a double bed. Couldn’t use those little narrow foldout bunks after you’re a married couple. Have to get some curtains on the windows. Things like that.

  Tuve was talking now of having to go to a meeting in the kiva of the Hopi religious society to which he belonged. He was being considered for membership in an ancient organization that non-Hopis called the Bow Society, which wasn’t its real name. Anyway, he was going to take part in an initiation. That involved a pilgrimage by potential members from their village on Second Mesa all the way to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. From there they made the perilous climb down the cliffs—a descent of more than four thousand feet—to the bottom near where the Little Colorado pours into the Colorado River. But first Billy Tuve had to deal with the ceremonial eagle, tell Miss Craig how it had been collected from one of the nests guarded by his society, how a shaman brought it in, prayers were said, the proper herbs were smoked. Then the eagle was smothered, plucked, sprinkled with blessed cornmeal, and, as Tuve expressed it, “sent home to join his own spirits with our prayers to help him lead us on a safe journey.”

  Chee let his attention drift and his gaze shift from Ms. Craig’s face to the window behind her. The rainstorm had drifted east, and the red cliffs that formed their walls north of Gallup were streaked now with sunlight and shadow, varying from dark crimson where the rain had soaked them to pale pink where it hadn’t, leaving a dozen shades in between. And above them another great tower of white was climbing, with the west wind blowing mist from it, forming an anvil shape at its top and producing a thin screen of ice crystals against the dark blue sky. Some other parts of the Navajo Nation would be getting rain.

  Chee was remembering a chant a Zuni girlfriend had taught him from a prayer of her tribe’s A’shiwannis religious order:

  Send out your cloud towers to live with us,

  stretch out your watery hands of mist.

  Let us embrace one another.

  This had been before Chee met Bernadette Manuelito, and fallen in love with her, so that now even rain clouds caused him to think of her. Thinking now of embracing Bernie, instead of listening to Tuve, who was still talking, but not talking about diamonds. Who needed diamonds with ice crystals glittering against the blue, blue sky. With Bernie willing to marry him. With the time for that
already established.

  Behind him Tuve was now droning through the required ceremonialism of the Salt Trail, talking about feathers and prayer sticks being properly painted to be used as required at the springs, shrines, and sacred places they would be passing. And for Billy Tuve, conditioned as he was to getting the details of Hopi ceremonialism precisely correct, this took patient listening. And more time was taken because he often nodded apologetically to Chee and Ms. Craig, and shifted into Hopi to speak directly to Dashee, thus preserving the secrets of the tribe’s religions. When special affairs of his own kiva became involved, Tuve simply showed Dashee the palms of his hands and went silent.

  Getting this ceremonial procession from Tuve’s village on Second Mesa to the canyon rim and then to the riverbank involved describing several more stops for prayers and offerings, the placing of painted feathers in the proper places with the proper songs, and putting prayer sticks where the proper spirits traditionally visited. By the time Tuve had brought them to the Hopi shrines at the tribe’s cliff-bottom salt deposits, Joanna Craig had looked at her watch three times that Chee had noticed. Navajo fashion, he hadn’t glanced at his own. Tuve would finish when he finished.

  And, at last, Tuve finished. He spent less than a minute on the ceremony itself, declared that the group had collected the necessary salt at the Salt Shrine and clays of various colors along the cliff walls needed for various undescribed purposes.

  “Then I met the man who gave me the diamond,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and looked at each of them. Now it was their turn to talk.

  Dashee looked at Chee, waited.

  Chee frowned, considering.

  Miss Craig said, “You told me you didn’t know this man. Is that right?”

  Tuve nodded. “He didn’t say his name.”

  “Describe him.”

  Tuve made an uncertain face. “Long time ago,” he said. “Grandfather probably. Maybe even a great-grandfather. Old, I mean. Lots of white hair. Skinny. Sort of bent over. About as tall as Sergeant Chee there. Not a Hopi, I think. Some other kind of Indian. He had on worn-out blue jeans and a blue shirt and a raggedy jacket, and a gray felt hat. And he had a big wide leather belt with silver-looking conchas on it.”

  “How did you happen to meet him?”

  Tuve scratched his ear, looked thoughtful. “I was digging out some of that blue clay. Chopping it out with a little thing I got to chop roots with.” He looked at Craig, wondering if she’d understand. “Like that little shovel they use in the army. Short handle.” He illustrated with his hands. “And the shovel part then can fold down.” Another illustration, of folding and chopping. “Got it at one of those military surplus stores, and sharpened it up. Works good. Really cuts roots.”

  Tuve looked at Craig, awaiting approval. Didn’t get it. Craig was looking at her watch again.

  “And he walked up, or what?”

  “He said something, and I looked over and he was standing there watching me dig clay. So I said something friendly. And he came up and wanted to see my digging tool. And I handed it to him and in a minute he said he would trade something to me for it. I said what, and he got a folding knife out of his pocket and showed me that. I said no. He said for me to wait and then he came back with that diamond in a little pouch. And we traded.”

  That said, Tuve nodded, looked down at his folded hands. End of story.

  “All this talking with this old man,” Craig said. “That was in English, or Hopi, or what?”

  Tuve laughed. “I couldn’t understand his words. So it went like this.” He demonstrated with his hand and facial expressions.

  “And where did he go after you swapped your shovel for his diamond?” Chee asked.

  Tuve shrugged. “Down the canyon a little way, and then around the corner.” He shrugged again.

  Craig sighed, shook her head.

  Chee cleared his throat, looked at Craig, saw no sign she had another question to ask.

  “Do you remember where this happened?” he asked. “I mean, exactly where you were digging the clay?”

  “Sure,” Tuve said. “It’s real close to the place we leave prayer sticks and do our prayers for the Salt Mother. Down the river a little ways. Where we always dig that yellow clay for painting.”

  “Can you remember how long he was gone before he came back with the diamond?”

  Tuve pondered. “It was just a little while.”

  “Can you tell us like how many minutes?”

  Tuve looked baffled by that.

  “Maybe long enough to smoke a cigarette?” Chee suggested. “Or a lot longer than that?”

  “Didn’t have any cigarettes,” Tuve said.

  “Okay, then,” Chee said. “What did you get done while you waited? How much clay did you dig, for example.”

  “Didn’t dig. I got out my water bottle, and I sat down on a sort of rocky shelf there and took a drink, and got my boot off and shook out the sand that got into it and put the boot back on, and then I sort of asked myself why I was sitting there waiting for this old fella when I didn’t really want to trade my digging tool anyway, and got up to go and then he was back.”

  “Less than an hour?”

  “Lot less than an hour. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “From what I know about you Hopis,” Chee said, “you have your own special ceremonial trail down to those salt deposits. Is that the one you climbed down on that day?”

  Tuve said something in Hopi to Dashee. Dashee nodded, said, “Yes. That’s the one I was telling you about.”

  Craig was listening to all this, looking thoughtful.

  “Mr. Tuve,” she said. “I want you to take me down there. We have to find that man.”

  “Can’t do that,” Tuve said. He laughed. “Not unless you can get into the women’s kiva. Have to be initiated, and that’s after you know all the rules.”

  “What are they?”

  “Women rules. They don’t tell men.”

  “Well, can you tell me a way to get down there? It’s the way to keep you out of jail,” she said. “To find the man who gave you the diamond. We need to get him so he can testify he gave you that.”

  Tuve was shaking his head. “Can’t do that,” he said, still smiling. “Against the rules of the kiva.”

  “Can’t you just explain it to the bishop, or whatever you call him? He’d understand.”

  Tuve’s smile had faded away. He looked extremely serious, thinking. “No,” he said. “Not unless it would be for something the spirits would like.”

  Craig stared at him. Checked Chee for comment. Got none. Glanced at Dashee. There was the mutter of thunder, very distant now. Their rainstorm was still drifting eastward.

  “Something the spirits would like,” Craig said. “Like helping somebody who has been hurt very bad. Somebody who really needs help. Would they like that?”

  Tuve stared at her, looked at Dashee, a question on his face.

  Dashee said, “We don’t do it. Don’t take white people down that trail. They are not initiated. They don’t know the prayers to say, don’t know what Masaw told us to do. If they go down for the wrong reason, with the wrong spirit, a Two Heart will make them fall.”

  Craig looked surprised, then interested. “Masaw? Who’s that?”

  Tuve ignored the question.

  Dashee looked at Chee.

  Chee shrugged. “I’m not a Hopi, you know, but we Navajos understand that Masaw is their Guardian Spirit of the Underworld. Sometimes he’s called Skeleton Man or Death Man because he taught the Hopis not to be afraid to die. Anyway, after the Hopis came up to the Earth Surface World, they say God made him sort of their guardian if I’ve got it right. And the Two Hearts are the sort of people who didn’t quite make the transition from what they were in the underworld into the human form. Didn’t get rid of the evil. Still have an extra animal heart. Sort of like the witches you white people talk about.”

  “Or like the witches Navajos call Skinwalkers,” Dashee said, with a sardo
nic glance at Chee.

  “Actually, we call them Long Lookers,” Chee said, looking slightly apologetic. “And we have several versions of them.”

  “I think the rain’s finished here for now,” Dashee said, trying to change the subject. “Moving over to the Checkerboard Reservation.”

  “One more question,” Chee said. “Mr. Tuve, who was that man who came to see you this morning?”

  “I don’t know him. He said his name was Jim Belshaw, and he said he wanted to know about getting me out of jail. And he wanted to talk to me about the diamond. He said he would come back later to get me out.”

  Tuve nodded toward Craig, who was watching this exchange. “I thought maybe this lady here sent him. She could tell you about him.”

  “I didn’t send him,” Craig said, looking startled and flustered. She glanced at Chee, a questioning look.

  “Oh,” Tuve said. “That seems funny.”

  She looked at Chee. “One of your people?”

  “Not us,” Chee said. “I don’t know who he was. Neither did the court clerk.”

  “Well, anyway, then,” Craig said to Tuve. “If you can’t take me down the Salt Trail—and I really don’t want to bother your Two Hearts—then we’ll just get down there another way.”

  Chee noticed that she was smiling at Tuve as she said it.

  9

  The thunderstorm was gone from Gallup now, drifting away to bestow its blessing wherever the wind or Pueblo rain dances took it. One of Billy Tuve’s numerous uncles had arrived to give him a ride back to Shungopovi on Second Mesa. Chee watched Joanna Craig chatting with Tuve, a conversation he didn’t manage to overhear, and then giving him his instructions on the requirements of those free on bond. Chee gave Craig his police card and a request that she stay in touch. Then Dashee led the way out into the hotel parking lot to Chee’s car.

  “Look at it,” Dashee said. “Clean. Didn’t recognize it. I never saw it like that before. You can even make out that Navajo Nation symbol on the door.”

  “Get in, Cowboy,” Chee said. “Let’s get something to eat.”