People of Darkness jlajc-4

by Tony Hillerman

I am the Black God, arising with twilight, a part of the twilight.

  Out from the West, out from the Darkness Mountain, a buck of dark flint stands out before me.

  The best male game of darkness, it calls to me, it hears my voice calling.

  Our calls become one in beauty. Our prayers become one in beauty.

  As I, the Black God, go toward it. As the male game of darkness comes toward me.

  With beauty before us, we come together. With beauty behind us, we come together.

  That my arrow may free its sacred breath. That my arrow may bring its death in beauty.

  The song ran on and on in Chee’s mind, a pattern of repetitions, of slightly varied sounds and slightly varied meanings, exorcising the primal dread of death and preparing man and animal for the sacred hunt.

  Jimmy Chee was ready. The wind gusted again, sucking into the blowhole, eroding away another thousand infinitesimal grains of ash and moving icy air up Chee’s pant leg.

  I’m going now, Chee said. Stay quiet for a few more minutes, until it’s darker, and then slip out and find a sheltered place. But stay within shouting range. When it’s safe, I’ll call you.

  He raised himself to a crouch, surprised at how stiff his muscles had already become.

  I’ve got a better idea, Mary whispered. Give me the pistol, and I’ll go out and see what I can do. I don’t like this being the only one out here who can’t shoot back.

  Chee grinned. No; it’s my gun. I bought it with my own money.

  And with that, he slipped quickly out of the hole, dropped to the slab, and from the slab to the brushy ground behind it. If the blond man had seen the motion, he hadn’t seen it quickly enough to react.

  Chee moved as fast as caution allowed. He made a wide circle away from the butte, angling on a course that would cross the little arroyo they’d had trouble traversing. That’s where the blond man’s vehicle would be and that’s where Chee would find the blond man. Somehow, God knew how, he must have guessed the trail ended at the butte and that Chee would be there, and he hadn’t risked the noise of trying to grind up the steep arroyo slope. He had parked and come for Chee on foot.

  Chee had thought it through very carefully. The blond man had found Chee’s pickup truck, but he hadn’t found Chee. Hunting him in the brush and boulders around the butte would have been like searching the white man’s proverbial haystack for a dangerous needle. So the blond man would opt for another solution. He’d return to his own vehicle and simply wait. When he heard the engine on Chee’s pickup start and saw the reflection from Chee’s headlights, he would have plenty of time to set up his ambush. The arroyo would be a perfect place for it. Chee’s truck creeping down the steep arroyo bank. The blond man shooting Chee through the truck door. Shooting at point-blank range and with plenty of time for as many more shots as were needed if the first one didn’t get the job done.

  Where Chee reached the arroyo it was much shallower and broader. He hurried up it, moving silently on the sand. Wind and snow had almost stopped, but now the wind rose again, blowing in icy gusts against his face. The right direction for the hunter. Blowing scent and sound away from the prey. Even so, when the arroyo deepened, and when the dim light told him he was within a hundred yards of the point where the track dipped into it, he left the open bottom and moved slowly through the brush.

  The vehicle was almost exactly where he’d thought it would be. The blond man had simply nosed it down the arroyo and left it far enough off the track to be out of sight. Chee moved carefully along the extreme edge of the arroyo bottom, slipping from one bit of brush cover to the next. He held the pistol in his right hand at full cock, so that a touch of his thumb to the safety would make it ready to fire.

  The eastern sky was totally black now, but the west still filtered a dim twilight through the cloud cover. The blond man’s vehicle was a dark-blue gmc pickup truck. From halfway up the arroyo bank where he was crouched, Chee could see the right front and side and look slightly downward into the cab. The cab seemed to be empty. It was empty unless the blond man was prone on the front seat or sitting on the floor. That seemed unlikely. A long willowy wand jutted upward from the back bumperthe antenna of a two-way radio. That was how the blond man had known he could find Chee at Bisti. He had monitored the Navajo Police radio calls.

  With that thought came another. What had Chee said when he talked to Crownpoint? Had he mentioned Mary Landon in that call? Had he even said we ? Had he said anything that would have told the blond man that Mary was with him? Chee squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating, trying to remember. As always, his memory served. He had said we.

  We’re going nine miles northwest of the old trading post. We’ll be there until after dark. Those had been his words. So the blond man knew Mary was with him.

  Chee slouched back on his heels, his eyes still on the truck, and thought. He considered that the blond manapparently, at leastwas not waiting where Chee’s good sense told him the blond man should be waiting. So where was the blond man? He was back at the butte, hunting Chee and Landon. Or he was back at the butte, staked out, watching for them to return to their pickup. Either way he might find Mary, or she might, cold and confused, walk into his trap.

  Chee put the pistol carefully on a rock beside his boot. He extracted his billfold, and from the billfold the check Vines had given him. It was perfect for the message. The check itself would tell the blond man that Vines had been in contact with the police. He wrote carefully, trying for legibility in the darkness.

  Killing us won’t help. Vines is. dealing with fbi. He gets off light.

  Chee pushed his hand back into his warm glove, picked up the pistol, and moved cautiously to the truck. The door on the driver’s side was locked. Chee pulled out the wiper blade and wrapped the check around it securely. If the blond man got back to the truck, he couldn’t miss seeing it. It appealed to Chee’s Navajo sense of balance, order, and harmonythis business of using the check, the witch’s own poison, to turn the evil back against its source. It was the way Changing Woman had taught. Chee trotted off in the darkness toward the butte.

  An hour later there was no light at all left in the west. The snow was falling again, still dry, feathery flakes, now drifting almost vertically downward, now whipped by gusts which whistled and moaned around the cliffs of the butte and sent the snow stinging against the skin. Chee had scouted the ground carefully, using his pickup truck as a center and making cautious, time-consuming circles widening around it. He’d moved when the wind blew and crouched motionless, listening, when it dropped into calm. He’d checked every bit of cover that a man in ambush might use to watch the pickup. He’d found nothing. Now he squatted beside a scrubby juniper, thinking. He could see the shape of the pickup against the dark stone of the outcrop. Where could the blond man be? What was he doing? Chee reexamined everything he had been told of the man and everything he had observed himself. He considered the way the man had behaved on the malpais and in the hospital and what Martin had told him of his assassinations. Always meticulous care. Always caution. Never a chance taken. That was the key. No unnecessary chances. No overlooked possibilities. That was why Chee hadn’t found him in the two places where the man might logically have been. Because the man had thought it through, had realized that he might have been seen, had realized that Chee might be smart enough to expect a trap or an ambush. Chee frowned into the darkness. The blond man would hardly be floundering around the butte in darkness. He had to be hiding somewhere, waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for Mary and Chee to get into the pickup and drive into an ambush somewhere? Not if he suspected he had been seen. Then Chee would simply slip into the pickup and radio Crownpoint for assistance. The minute such a call was made, the blond man would be hopelessly trapped. Therefore, the blond man must keep him from his radio. Why isn’t he doing that? Chee asked himself. What is to keep me from slipping into the front seat and calling for help? Perhaps he doesn’t know that police disconnect the switch that turns on the courtesy light whe
n the door opens. Perhaps he is somewhere, waiting for that flash of light. But no, Chee thought. The blond man would know that. Perhaps he is waiting inside the pickup? No. Chee had left the truck locked. Even if the man picked the lock, hiding inside would be risky.

  So how was the blond man protecting himself against the radio call? Chee went over what he knew of the blond man again, incident by incident, from the hospital to the very beginning and the bombing of Emerson Charley’s truck in the parking lot. When he reached that, he knew exactly what the blond man had done and what he was waiting for.

  He had put a bomb in Chee’s pickup. Now he was off somewhere in the darkness, out of the wind and totally unfindable, waiting patiently for Jim Chee and Mary Landon to blow themselves to pieces.

  It took Chee only a few minutes to climb the outcrop. From atop that table of stone, he could look directly down into the bed of the truck thirty feet below. It was too dark to be sure, but he could see nothing in the pickup bed that hadn’t been there before. If the blond man had placed a bomb, it wasn’t likely he had put it in the same place he had used in his effort to kill Emerson Charley. Here, most likely, he would have placed it on the truck frame under the body. If the fbi knew what it was talking about, his bombs detonated when they were moved. Driving over the first bump would do the job. Under the cab, the effects would be certain.

  The point where the outcrop jutted from the face of the butte was littered with chunks of fallen stone. Chee picked up one that weighed perhaps twenty pounds and carried it to the edge. He placed himself carefully, over the center of the truck bed. In the same motion he tossed the boulder and jumped backward away from the edge.

  The crash of the boulder striking metal was engulfed a minisecond later by a great flash of light and sound. Chee, already off balance, found himself sprawling on hands and knees, his ears ringing and his eyes seeing only the red and white circles imprinted on his retinas by the flash. He lowered himself on the surface of the stone, waiting for sight and hearing to recover.

  Soon he could hear a second sound through the receding ringing and see a flickering light through the flash blindness.

  The truck was burning. At first the flames from the burning gasoline flared above the rim of the outcrop, but they quickly lost their force. Now Chee lay in the darkness looking out across a landscape illuminated by the fire. It was the ideal place to be. When the blond man came to make sure of his victims, Chee would shoot him. Chee lay on his stomach, the cocked pistol held in front of him, waiting.

  The wind rose, fanned the flames into a roar, and then died away. The snow drifted straight down again, still dry and feathery. The rock around Chee, blown clear by the most recent gusts, collected another thin layer of snowflakes. Gasoline and oil were almost exhausted now, and the fire fed itself on rubber and upholstery. Chee could smell the rancid black smoke of burning tires and plastic. The landscape the blond man would be crossing was white now. He would be easy to see in the firelight. But the blond man did not come. Through the sound of the fire below him, Chee heard the sound of a starter, and then of a motor, grinding in low gear. Across the ridge where the blond man’s pickup had been parked, there appeared a fan of light reflecting in the falling snow. Chee jumped to his feet. The light tilted upward, two visible beams jutting into the snowy sky. The truck was climbing out of the arroyo bottom. But the headlights were pointed away from the butte. The blond man was driving away. Chapter Thirty-One

  They built the fire in the crevasse between two of the great fallen slabs in a sheltered cul-de-sac protected from the wind. Chee had picked the spot carefully and then had made a walking circuit, assuring himself that no light, even dimly reflected, was visible. The blond man had driven away toward the Bisti road. Chee had watched the truck lights moving eastward until finally they no longer reappeared through the falling snow. The blond man probably wouldn’t return. There was no reason for him to do so. But he might.

  Now, finally, they were out of the wind. Mary Landon sat across from him, back against the vertical stone, her denimed legs stretched straight in front of her. Above them the wind gusted past the butte top with a hooting noise. Between these walls of fallen stone, it only caused the fire to flicker. But Mary shivered and hugged herself.

  I think it was a mistake, she said, leaving that note about Mr. Vines.

  Why?

  Because, Mary said. Because maybe he’ll go and shoot Vinesand you don’t know for sure Vines killed anyone. You don’t have any proof.

  I know for sure, Chee said.

  You don’t have anything to prove it with. You’re not a judge.

  Chee thought about that. The firelight was red, burning the rosin of dead pion. It reflected on Mary Landon’s face, casting deep shadows where her hair fell across her forehead.

  Yes, Chee said, I am a judge. If the blond man kills Vines, then that’s justice. But he’s not going to kill Vines. He won’t have time. He can’t get there tonight because of the weather. If we get three inches of snow down here, there’ll be two feet of it up on Mount Taylor. The road won’t be open until they get a snowplow on itand that won’t be until tomorrow morning. They’ll be using the snowplows where there’s more traffic.

  Still, you don’t have any right to

  We don’t have much violence, we Navajos. What there is is mostly associated with witchcraft. Changing Woman taught us how to cope with the Navajo Wolves. We turn the evil around so it works against the witch.

  But first you have to know for sure he’s the witch, Mary said.

  The snow started again, larger flakes now. The wind moaned around the butte top and the snowflakes eddied and swirled above them, lit by the redness of the fire. Some settled into the cul-de-sac. They landed on Chee’s knee, on Mary’s hair, on stone surfaces. Some drifted into the fire and vanishedcold touched by the magic of heat.

  It was going to be a long, frigid night, and there was nothing that could be done until there was a little light. When it was light, the pipeline companies would be scouting their collection systems to make sure the abrupt drop in temperature had cracked no exposed metal, separated no joints, jammed no valves. The little slow-flying planes would be up looking for signs of gas leaks. Whatever those signs were. Spurts of blowing dust, Chee guessed. He remembered they had crossed the El Paso Natural Gas trunk line between Bisti and the butte. When dawn came, they would walk to it and build a smoky fire and wait to be spotted. Until then there was nothing to be done, except help time pass, avoid freezing, and think.

  I am born a Slow Talking People, Chee said. I’m also a member of the Red Forehead Clan because my father was one. And I’m connected with the Mud Clan, because my unclethe one teaching me to be a singerhe’s married into the Muds. All of those clans have the same tradition. To become a witch, to cross over from Navajo to Navajo Wolf, you have to break at least one of the most serious taboos. You have to commit incest, or you have to kill a close relative. But there’s another story, very old, pretty much lost, which explains how First Man became a witch. Because he was first, he didn’t have relatives to destroy. So he figured out a magic way to violate the strongest taboo of all. He destroyed himself and recreated himself, and that’s the way he got the powers of evil.

  I never heard about that, Mary said. I thought for a minute you were changing the subject. But you’re not, are you?

  I’m not, Chee said. Lebeck decided to be a witch. He destroyed himself. And he came back.

  Mary was frowning at him. Lebeck? The geologist at the oil well?

  Yes; the geologist, Chee said. Think about what we know. We know the oil well was drilled through uranium, because the Red Deuce is now mining that deposit where the oil well stood. Lebeck was what they call the ‘well logger’—the one who inspects samples of the rock they’re drilling through and maps the deposits. Very shallow, maybe down just fifty feet or so, the bit goes through pitchblende, a thick layer of the very richest uranium ore. So Lebeck suddenly knows something that’s worth hundreds of millions of doll
ars. How can he cash it in? He can cash it in only if this oil lease is allowed to expire. Then he can file his own mineral lease claim. So he falsifies the log.

  Mary was leaning forward, intent. Hey, she said. You looked at the log. Did he? Why didn’t you tell me? How could you tell?

  Chee made a wry face. I couldn’t tell, he said. I checked out that log and a couple of other ones from other wells drilled in Valencia County, and they all looked about alike. The oil companies were all looking for a shallow oil sand, just down about two thousand feet. I was looking for God knows what down at the bottom of the well, down at the end where they were deciding to shoot the tubing with the nitro. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I didn’t see anything.

  But you should have seen something, Mary said slowly. You should have seen they’d drilled through the uranium ore.

  Exactly! Chee said. I’ve heard that Red Deuce deposit is a couple of hundred feet deep. It should have been noted on the log. Chee felt an overpowering urge to smoke. He hadn’t had a possibility of lighting a cigaret since the blond man’s arrival at the butte. He fished out a Pall Mall, offered it to Mary. She shook her head. He lit it.

  Those things will kill you, Mary said.

  Actually, I think now he must have falsified the log twice. Once when they drilled through the ore and again at the end. I think they found the oil sand they were looking for, and Lebeck put it down as something else and had them drill right through it. Or maybe he had the log show they were drilling into a geological formation which should be below the oil sandwhich would mean the sand didn’t exist at this particular place. Anyway, he wanted them to shut down the well and let the lease lapse, so he could get a lease on it himself. If they struck oil, the lease would be renewed by the oil company and he would never get the uranium. So when the company decided to shoot the well, Lebeck must have known there was a good chance that would start the oil flowing. He couldn’t risk that. Chee inhaled a lungful of smoke and let it trickle from between his lips. It made blue swirls in the slowly moving air, drifting upward while the white flakes drifted down. Far above at the butte top, the north wind, the evil wind, began hooting again. Chee puffed out the last of the smoke, destroying the pattern with his breath. And so Lebeck decided to blow everything, and everyone, sky high. Lebeck decided to become a witch.