Beside him Susanne sucked in her breath and made a strangled sound. Leaphorn's pistol rose in her hand. It shattered the moon with a great flash of light and blast of sound. Now there was the smell of exploded powder. The echo rolled away around the mesa walls. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Finally it melded into the other night sounds and faded away. The bird was gone now. Leaphorn could hear only the sound of crying. His hand fell from his leg and crashed into the ground. Leaphorn willed for a moment that it would rise again and restore itself to its perch away from the stony ground. But the hand simply lay there and Leaphorn retreated from it, and lost himself, falling, falling, falling into a glittering psychedelic dream in which the cold moon again pulsed in an inky void and a hunter sat naked on a ridge, working with infinite patience, chipping out lance points from pink ice, breaking them, dropping the broken parts onto the earth beside him, taking defeat after defeat without a show of anger.
Much later he became aware that Susanne had again fired the pistol. There was a thunder of sound all around him which forced the moon back into the sky. He was cold. Freezing, he thought. His hands were freezing. He managed some sort of sound, something between a sigh and a grunt. "You're all right," Susanne's voice whispered at his ear. "Your breathing sounds good, and your pulse seems O.K., and I think everything is going to be all right." She picked up his hand, turned it, looked at his wristwatch. "It's been almost four hours now, so maybe that stuff won't be working much longer." She stared into his face. "You can hear me, can't you? I can tell. You're getting awful cold. Your hands are like ice. I'm going to build a fire."
He focused every molecule of his will on an effort to say "No." He managed only a grunt. The psychedelic dream was gone for the moment and his mind was clear of hallucinations. She shouldn't build the fire. The Man Who Wore Moccasins might still be out there, waiting. By firelight, he might have light enough to shoot them. Again he managed a grunt, but the effort exhausted him. Susanne was away in the darkness. He could hear her moving. Gathering sticks. The moon had moved now, climbing up the sky and edging southward far enough behind the rim of the mesa so that the shadow extended ten yards beyond his feet. Outside the shadow, the landscape glittered gray and silver with moonlight. Nothing moved. His hearing still seemed to be unusually acute. From far, far away he heard the song of the coyote again, so dim by distance that it seemed to drift down from the stars. And then there was the sound, from much closer, of a hunting owl. The grotesque bird he had seen in his hallucination, the bird that had vanished after Susanne fired at it, must have been a kachina mask. Leaphorn thought about it. He recognized the mask. The bristling black ruff around the neck, the fierce plume of eagle feathers atop the head, the long tubular beak.
He had seen the mask before, in the moonlight behind the hogan at Jason's Fleece, and painted in the mural in the Zu¤i mission. It was the Salamobia, the warrior who carried a whiplike sword of tight-woven yucca. He tried to summon from his memory what he knew of this kachina. There were two of them at Shalako ceremonials, dancing attendance on the other members of the Council of the Gods. But each of the six Zu¤i kivas was represented by one-so the total must be six. So six such masks must exist. And each would be carefully guarded by the Zu¤i who had been chosen by his kiva for the honor of personifying this figure. The mask would be kept in its own room, provided with food and water, and the spirit which resided within it honored by prayer.
Susanne was lighting the fire now. Having accepted that it was impossible to warn her, Leaphorn ignored this. What would be, would be. He would enjoy being warm again. Now, while he could, he would think. But no more of the mask. The genuine masks would be guarded, but anyone could make a counterfeit.
The flame spread through the pile of leaves and twigs, crackling, casting a flickering yellow light. The dart had been intended for George. Apparently not meant to kill him. At least not immediately. Why not? Was it because this person-like Leaphorn-wanted to talk to the boy?
And why had George taken the gall from the deer? Dried, it would be useful as medicine, for use in curing ceremonials. And why take the fat from under the deerskin? There was something Leaphorn should remember about that. Something to do with Zu¤i hunting procedures. He had heard about it from his roommate. He and Rounder had compared Navajo and Zu¤i origin myths, emergence myths, migration myths, methods of doing things. Part of it, he remembered, concerned hunting.
The Navajo myth cautions against killing any of the sixty or so beings which had joined the First People in their escape from the Fourth World to Earth Surface World, which limited hunting pretty well to deer, antelope, and a few game birds. The Zu¤i legend told of the great war against Chakwena, the Keeper of the Game, which was won only after the Sun Father created the two Zu¤i War Gods to lead them. There had been beer and talk far into the night. He forced his mind to recall it. Rounder, his moon face bland, telling them how Father Coyote had taught Clumsy Boy the prayers that would persuade the deer that the hunter brought not harm, but evolution into a higher being. The fire flared up through the dry wood and Leaphorn felt the heat against his face. He felt, again, that odd sense of being detached from himself. He was slipping into another hallucinogenic nightmare. The sound of the fire became a clamorous rattle and crackle. The stars were brighter than they should be on such a night of moon. Yikaisdahi, the Milky Way, the billion bright footprints left by spirits on their pathway across the sky, glittered against the night. Leaphorn forced himself to concentrate. He could see Rounder, slightly drunk, his two hands framing the beer mug on the table, his face earnest, chanting it in Zu¤i, and then the translation:
"Deer, Deer.
I come following your hoofprints.
Sacred favors I bring as I run.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. "
And then showing them, using the beer mug as the muzzle of the deer, how the Zu¤i hunter breathed in the animal's last breath. And the prayer. How had it gone? Leaphorn remembered only that it was a statement of thanks that went with the drinking of the Sacred Wind of Life. And then the details of how the deer must be dressed, and of the making of the ball of deer fat and gall and blood from the heart and hair from the proper places, and some fetish offerings to be buried when the deer had fallen.
Suddenly Leaphorn could hear Rounder's drunken voice. "Don't eat in the morning. The hungry hunter scents game against the wind." And he was seeing Rounder's placid face against the sky just above the brightness of So'tsoh-the North Star-between the constellations Ursa Major and Cassiopeia, which the Navajos called Cold Man of the North and his wife. Then the nightmare was on him again, worse than before. The sky filled with the chindi of the dead. They wore deerskin masks and their great beaks clacked. He saw Slayer of the Enemy Gods, standing on a rainbow bright against the sky, but above him towered something with a great blue face and a tall white forehead, its chest covered with prayer plumes, holding a great wand edged with obsidian. Leaphorn knew somehow that this was Uyuyewi, the Zu¤i War God, and he felt a hopeless dread. Then there was a face against his, breathing his breath, taking the wind of his life as it left his nostrils. And next, the hand of Susanne on his face, her voice in his ear. "Mr. Leaphorn. It's all right. It's going to be good again. Don't be afraid."
There was cold gray light against the eastern horizon now. And the fire was nothing but hot embers, and Leaphorn's mind told his shoulder muscles to huddle against the cold. And they did huddle, and his hand, told to rub his icy shoulder, rubbed it. Leaphorn was suddenly wide awake, the hallucinations a memory. Susanne was curled by the fire, asleep, the pistol by her hand. Leaphorn tried his legs. They, too, moved to command. He felt a fierce joy. He was alive. He was sane. He tried to push himself to his feet. Made it. Staggered for two steps, and then fell against the stone cliff with a clatter. He could control some muscles well, others not so well. The noise awoke Susanne.
"Hey, you're O.K." She had dead leaves in her hair, dirt on her face. She looked absolutely exhausted and tremendously relieved.
It wasn
't until after sunrise that Leaphorn had full control of all his muscles. His stomach bore a swollen red bruise where the dart had struck and fired its charge. He felt weak and sick. He suspected that would go away. He had planned to head for the lake, to try to reach it by sunrise-the sunrise of the fifth day, when Ernesto Cata's spirit would arrive to join the Council of the Gods. But while he could walk a little, he couldn't walk straight. So instead they had waited by the saddle on the slight chance that George Bowlegs had not been frightened by the sound of pistol shots during the night and would be passing by. George did not appear. Leaphorn exercised as quietly as he could, concentrated on regaining full use of his legs. And he thought about a diversity of things. About what Ernesto Cata had told Father Ingles, about the odd way in which George Bowlegs had behaved, about Zu¤i hunting ritual, about Ted Isaacs' speculation on how a Stone Age hunter had made his lance points, and about Halsey and the pale young man named Otis whose psychedelic nightmares Leaphorn could now better appreciate. He thought about why whoever had set the trap for George Bowlegs had used a hypodermic gun instead of a shotgun, and of other matters. And when, finally, his right ankle would respond exactly as ordered, he told Susanne they would return to the deer carcass and then head back for the truck.
"We'll cut off enough venison for some breakfast," Leaphorn said.
They did that. And after he had made a fire on which to roast it, he examined the ground around the carcass. He found a place where a small hole had been cut into the earth beside the carcass. Buried in it was a still soft ball of clay, blood, tallow, gall, and deer hair, the fetish offering Rounder had described for the fallen animal. Leaphorn carried it back to the fire, sat on the boulder, and pulled it apart carefully. Inside the ball he found a turquoise bead, the broken tip of a stone lance point, and a small bit of abalone shell.
Chapter Seventeen
Friday, December 5, 2 P.M.
JOHN O'MALLEY made a tent out of his hands and looked past Leaphorn at something at the back of the Zu¤i Tribal Courtroom. "To sum it up," he said, "we still don't know where to put our hands on George Bowlegs."
He shifted his eyes slightly to look at Leaphorn. He smiled. The action made a dimple in each cheek and crinkled the skin around his blue eyes. "I hope you'll stick to that chore. I'd put somebody on it to work with you if there was anybody. But everybody is working on something else. I think that kid knows something about why Cata and Shorty Bowlegs were killed. And I think he can tell us something about that commune." The eyes shifted away and the smile turned off. "We really wanted to talk to him today."
Leaphorn said absolutely nothing.
"Second, you think somebody else is hunting George. Maybe so," O'Malley said. "I don't doubt it. I can see why maybe some people would want to shut him up. But it looks like he's hard to catch." The smile came on again. "And it's too bad you getting shot by that coyote trap or whatever it was. We'll keep that syringe. Maybe we can track down where it came from and who bought the serum." The smile turned into a grin. "However, I think there's going to be enough charges to file when we get this broken so we may not need to worry about making a case on whoever committed that particular assault."
O'Malley folded the finger tent. The grin went away. He stood up.
"It might help," Leaphorn said quickly, "if you'd fill me in on what you've been learning."
O'Malley peered at him curiously.
"I gathered someone recognized Baker as a narcotics agent," O'Malley said. "He is." The silence stretched. That was all. Leaphorn realized with incredulous anger that this was all O'Malley was going to tell him.
"O.K. Then you think the commune is a cover for a narcotics drop-heroin or what have you," Leaphorn said. "And the killings were done to protect it?"
O'Malley said nothing.
"Is that right?" Leaphorn insisted.
O'Malley hesitated. Finally he said, "It's pretty obvious. But we haven't gotten everything we need yet to get the indictments. We need to talk to George. Among other things."
"Can I guess that Baker was working on this before the killings? That you've got enough so you don't have any doubts about it?"
O'Malley grinned again. "I'd say you could guess that."
"What have you got?"
The grin faded. "For a long time," O'Malley said, "our policy has been that every officer working a case is told everything he needs to know about the part he is working on. But we don't fill everybody in on everything that comes up if it doesn't have anything to do with the angle they're on. For example, I can tell you that we'd really like to talk to George today-but I don't guess that's likely?"
"Why today?"
"Tomorrow's this big Zu¤i Shalako ceremonial. Thousands of people here-strangers from all over. It would be a good cover for somebody to come in and make a pickup."
"Anybody in particular?"
There was another pause while O'Malley thought about it. He unzipped the briefcase on his desk and pulled out a sheaf of photographs. Some were official police mug shots. Some were candid shots of the sort stakeouts collect through telescopic lenses. Leaphorn recognized Halsey in a photograph that seemed to have been taken on a college campus, and the pale boy called Otis in a police mug photo. There were five others he didn't recognize, including a balding fat man and a young man with an Indian face in a paratroop uniform. Leaphorn picked up this photograph and examined it.
"If you see any of these birds around tomorrow, I want to know about it," O'Malley said.
"This guy a Zu¤i?"
"Yeah. He got the habit in Vietnam and he's been involved in dealing some since he got back."
Leaphorn put the photograph on the desk.
"That's the motive for the killings then?" he said. "Keeping a narcotics operation covered up? You got enough to be sure of that?"
"That's right," O'Malley said. "We're sure."
"O.K.," Leaphorn said. "So I'll just stick to finding George for you."
Pasquaanti wasn't in his office but his secretary-a small, cheerful girl with a very round face and a striking display of squash blossom jewelry-sent someone to find him after being persuaded it was important. Pasquaanti listened impassively while Leaphorn told him about seeing the kachina at the commune, about the ambition of George Bowlegs to become a Zu¤i, about the note the boy had left for his brother, and about what had happened on the mesa. The Zu¤i interrupted only once. He asked Leaphorn to describe the mask.
"It had a thick ruff of feathers around the neck," Leaphorn said. "Black. Probably crow or raven feathers. Had a beak maybe six inches long and round, like a broom handle. And the mask was rounded on top, with a sort of wand of feathers pointing quills-forward as a topknot. Then there was a design drawn on the cheek. I think it was a Salamobia mask."
"There are six of those," Pasquaanti said. He took out his fountain pen and made a quick sketch on notepaper. "Like this?"
"Yes. That's it."
"What color was the face?"
"The face? It was black."
Pasquaanti looked old. Leaphorn hadn't noticed that before.
"Mr. Leaphorn," he said. "I thank you for telling me this."
"Is there anything you can tell me?"
Pasquaanti thought about it. "I can tell you that the Salamobia you saw was not genuine. Black is the color of the Hekiapawa kiva, the Mole kiva. That mask is safe. It is always safe. So are the other masks. You can be sure of that."
"Then could someone have taken another mask?"
"There are two kinds of masks," Pasquaanti said. "Some are the actual kachina and the kachina spirit lives in them and they are fed and watered and taken care of with prayer plumes and everything they want. They are." He paused, searching his English vocabulary for the right words. "Sacred," he said. "Very holy." He shook his head. Neither phrase was exactly right. "The other kind of mask is different. They are borrowed, and repainted to be used for different kachinas, and the spirit is not there."
"So perhaps someone might have taken one of those and cha
nged it to look like a Salamobia?"
Pasquaanti considered this. His fingers folded and unfolded on the desk. "There are the bad among us," he said finally. "Some of us drink, and have learned the whiteman's greed, and aren't worth anything. But I don't think a Zu¤i would take the mask of his family and use it like this."
The two men looked at each other silently. What Leaphorn described had been a hideous desecration. Worse, it had happened in the most holy period of the Zu¤i liturgical year-in the days of sacred retreat just before Shalako. If this ceremonial was not properly done, rain did not fall, crops did not sprout, and sickness and bad luck were loosened across the land.
Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 02 - Dance Hall of the Dead Page 14