The Blessing Way jlajc-1

by Tony Hillerman

  "Whereabouts on the west slope?" he asked. "Law and Order know where he is?"

  "General idea," Leaphorn said. "But it would be better if he came on in himself. You know. Otherwise we'll go in there and get him. Make it worse for everybody."

  "Horseman," the Big Navajo said. "Is he…"

  Leaphorn was waiting for the rest of the question.

  "What'd you say this kid looks like?"

  "Slender fellow. Had on denims and a red shirt. Wears his hair the old way and ties it back in a red sweatband."

  "I don't know him," the big man said. "But it would be good if he came in." He hoisted the box under his arm and walked toward the door.

  "This man's a college professor," Leaphorn said, pointing to McKee. "He's looking for some information out here about witches."

  The Navajo shook hands. He looked amused.

  "They say there's a Wolf over toward the Lukachukais," McKee said. "Maybe it's just gossip."

  "I heard some of that talk." He looked at McKee and smiled. "It's old-woman talk. A man out there's supposed to had a dream about the Gum-Tooth Woman and about a three-legged dog coming into his hogan and he woke up and he saw this dog in his brush arbor, and when he yelled at it, it turned into a man and threw corpse powder on him."

  The Navajo laughed and slapped McKee on the shoulder.

  "Horse manure," he said. "Maybe the Wolf is this boy the policeman is hunting for." He looked at Leaphorn. "I guess you'll be after that boy if he don't come in. Are you hunting for him now?"

  "I don't think we're looking very hard yet," Leaphorn said. "I think he'll come in to see us."

  The Big Navajo went through the door.

  "Be better if he came in," he said.

  It was almost sundown when Leaphorn pulled the Law and Order carryall onto the pavement of Navajo Route 8 at Round Rock. Two hours' drive back to Window Rock.

  "Pretty fair day's work for me," McKee said. "But I think you wasted your time."

  "No. I got done about what I wanted."

  McKee was surprised.

  "You still think Horseman's back in there? Nobody had seen him."

  Leaphorn smiled. "Nobody admitted they'd seen him. There wasn't any reason for them to admit it. They know how the system works. But that old man who came in the wagon…" Leaphorn picked his clipboard of notes off the dashboard and inspected it. "Nagani Lum, it was. He damned sure knew something about it. Did you notice how interested he was?"

  "Lum was one who was telling me about a witching case," McKee recalled. "Pretty standard stuff." A two-headed colt had been born. Lum hadn't seen it but a relative had. The brother-in-law of an uncle, as McKee remembered it. And then the boy who herded sheep for his uncle's brother-in-law had actually seen the Navajo Wolf. Thought it was a dog bothering the sheep, but when he shot at it with his .22, he saw it had turned into a man. But it was getting dark and he didn't think he'd hit it. As usual, McKee thought, it was a little too dark to really see and, as usual, the source was a boy.

  "I think that joker who was buying himself the new hat knew something about Horseman, too," Leaphorn was saying. "The one who was kidding you about your witch stories."

  "He said he didn't."

  "He also said somebody stole his hat."

  "What do you mean?" McKee asked.

  "Did you see that concho hatband? Why would anybody steal an old felt hat and leave behind all that fancy silver?"

  They had passed Chinle now, Leaphorn driving the white carryall at a steady seventy. The highway skirted the immense, lifeless depression which falls away into the Biz-E-Ahi and Nazlini washes. It was lit now by the sunset, a fantastic jumble of eroded geological formations. The white man sees the desolation and calls it a desert, McKee thought, but the Navajo name for it means "Beautiful Valley."

  "Can you tell me why that man would lie about somebody stealing his hat?" Leaphorn asked. His face was intent with the puzzle. "Or, if he wasn't lying, who would steal an old felt hat and leave that silver band behind?"

  Chapter 5

  Joseph Begay awakened earlier than usual. He lay still a moment, allowing consciousness to seep through him, noticing first the pre-dawn chill and that his wife had captured most of the blankets they shared. Then he registered the rain smells, dampened dust, wet sage, piñon resin and buffalo grass. Now fully awake, he remembered the sudden midnight shower which had awakened them in the brush arbor and driven the family to shelter in the hogan. Through the open hogan door, he saw the eastern horizon was not yet brightening behind the familiar upthrusting shape of Mount Taylor, seventy miles away in New Mexico. Reaches for the Sky was one of the four sacred mountains which marked the four corners of the Land of the People, and Joseph Begay thought, as he had thought many mornings, that he had chosen this site well. The old hogan which he and his brothers-in-law had built near his mother-in-law's place had been located on low ground, near water but closed in with the hills. He had never liked the site. When the son they had called Long Fingers had died of the choking sickness in the night-died so suddenly that they had not had time to move him out of the hogan so that the ghost could go free-he had not been sorry that they had to leave the site. He had boarded up the door himself and covered the smoke hole so the ghost of Long Fingers would not bother his in-law people and had decided right away that this place on the mesa would be the place for the new hogan.

  And, when he had built it, he had not faced the door exactly east as the Old People had said it must be faced, but very slightly north of east so that when he awoke in the morning he would see Reaches for the Sky outlined by the dawn, and remember that it was a place of beauty where Changing Woman had borne the Hero Twins. It would be a good thought to awaken with, and because he had not made the door exactly east he had been very careful to follow the Navajo Way with the remainder of the construction. He had driven a peg and used a rope to mark off the circle to assure that the hogan wall would be round and of the prescribed circumference. He had put the smoke hole in exactly the proper place and, when he had plastered the stones with adobe, he had sprinkled a pinch of corn pollen on the mud and sung the song from the Blessing Way.

  Joseph Begay slipped off the pallet and pulled on his pants and shirt, moving silently in the darkness to avoid awakening his wife and two sons, who slept across the hogan. He moved around their feet, with the Navajo's unconscious care not to step over another human being, and ducked through the door. His boots, forgotten in the brush arbor, were only slightly damp. He put them on as he heated water for a cup of coffee.

  He was a short, round-faced man with the barrel chest characteristic of a Navajo-Pueblo blood mixture, from a clan which had captured Pueblo brides and with them the heavier, shorter bone structure of the Keresan Indians. He poured the coffee into a mug and sipped it while he ate a strip of dried mutton. The rain had been light, a brief shower, but it was a good omen.

  He knew the Callers of the Clouds had been at work on the Hopi and Zuñi reservations and that along the Rio Grande, far to the east, the Pueblo Indians were holding their rain dances. The magic of these pueblo dwellers had always been strong, older than the medicine of the Navajos and more potent. It was a little early for this first shower and Begay knew that was promising.

  Begay finished his coffee before he allowed his thoughts to turn to his reasons for rising early. In a very few hours he would see his daughter, his daughter whom he hadn't seen since last summer. He would drive to the bus stop at Ganado, and the bus would come and he would put her suitcases and her boxes in the pickup truck and drive with her back to the hogan. She would be with them all summer. Begay had deliberately postponed thinking about this, because the Navajo Way was the Middle Way, which avoided all excesses-even of happiness. The shower at midnight and the smell of the earth and the beauty of the morning had been enough. But now Begay thought of it as he started the pickup truck and drove in second gear down the bumpy track across the mesa. And, as he drove, he sang a song his great uncle had taught him:

 
; "I usually walk where the rains fall.

  Below the east I walk.

  I being Born of Water,

  I usually walk where the rains fall.

  Within the dawn I walk.

  I usually walk where the rains fall.

  Among the white corn I walk.

  Among the soft goods I walk.

  Among the collected waters I walk.

  Among the pollen I walk.

  I usually walk where the rain falls."

  It was brightening on the eastern horizon as he shifted into low gear to wind down the switchback down the long slope toward the highway. The descent took almost fifteen minutes, and at the bottom, skirting the base of the mesa, was Teastah Wash. If it had rained harder elsewhere on the mesa, he might not be able to drive through the wash until the runoff water cleared. He stopped just as his truck tilted down the steep incline, put on the emergency brake, and stepped out. The headlights, illuminating the bottom of the wash, showed only a slight trickle of water across the sandy expanse. What little runoff there had been was mostly gone now.

  It was when he was turning to climb back into the pickup that he saw the owl. It flew almost directly at the truck, startling him, flitted through the headlight beams, and disappeared abruptly in the dawn half-light up the wash. He sat behind the wheel a moment, feeling shaken. The owl had acted strangely, he thought, and it was known that ghosts sometimes took on that form when they moved in the darkness. It looked like a burrowing owl, Begay thought, but maybe it was a ghost returning with the dawn to a grave or a death hogan.

  He was still thinking of the owl as he let the pickup ease slowly down the steep bank and then raced it across the soft bottom. And he was thinking of it as the truck climbed out of the arroyo, its motor laboring in low gear. But by now the mood of the morning had recaptured him and he thought that it was just a burrowing owl, going home from the night's hunting and confused by his headlights. It was just beyond the rim of the shallow canyon, just after the pickup had regained level ground and he had shifted into second gear, that he saw that he was wrong.

  The body lay just beside the track and his headlights first reflected from the soles of its shoes. Before he could stop, the pickup was almost beside it. Joseph Begay shifted into neutral and left the motor running. He unbuttoned his shirt and extracted a small leather pouch hung from his neck by a thong. The pouch contained a small bit of jet flint in the crude shape of a bear, and about an ounce of yellow pollen. Begay put his thumb in the pollen and rubbed it against his chest. He chanted:

  "Everywhere I go, myself

  May I have luck,

  Everywhere my close relatives go

  May they have their good luck."

  The ghost was gone-at least for the moment. He had seen it flying up Teastah Wash. He got out of the truck and stood beside the body. It was a young man dressed in jeans and a red shirt and with town shoes on. The body lay on its back, the legs slightly parted, right arm outflung and left arm across the chest with the wrist and hand extending, oddly rigid. There was no visible blood but the clothing was damp from the rain.

  As Begay drove the last mile down the bumpy track toward the highway, driving faster than he should have, he thought that he would have to report this body to Law and Order before he went to the bus station. He tried not to think of the expression frozen on the face of the young man, the dead eyes bulging and the lips drawn back in naked terror.

  Chapter 6

  It was midmorning when the news of Horseman reached Leaphorn's office. In the two hours since breakfast, McKee had sorted through two filing cabinets, extracted Manila folders marked "Witchcraft" and segregated those identified as "Wolf" from those labeled "Frenzy" and "Datura." The datura cases involved narcotics users, and most frenzy incidents, McKee knew, centered on mental illness. If he had time, he'd look through those later. He was marking Wolf incident locations on a Bureau of Indian Affairs reservation map, coding them with numbers, and then making notes of names of witnesses, when the radio dispatcher stopped at the door and told Leaphorn that Luis Horseman had been found.

  "When did he come in?"

  "Found his body," the dispatcher said.

  Leaphorn stared at the dispatcher, waiting for more.

  "The captain wants to know if you can pick up the coroner and clear the body?"

  "Why don't they handle it out of the Chinle subagency?" Leaphorn asked. "They're a hundred miles closer."

  "They found him down near Ganado. You're supposed to pick up the coroner there."

  "Ganado?" Leaphorn looked incredulous. "What killed him? Suicide?"

  "Apparently natural," the dispatcher said. "Too much booze. But nobody's looked at him yet."

  "Ganado," Leaphorn said. "How the devil did he get down there?"

  It was forty-five minutes to Ganado and Leaphorn spent most of them worrying to McKee about being wrong.

  "Congratulations," McKee said. "You're forty years old and you just made your first mistake."

  "It's not that. It just doesn't make sense." And then, for the third time, Leaphorn reviewed his reasoning-looking for a flaw. The Gallup police had reported the car Horseman had taken after the knifing was last seen heading north on U.S. 666, the right direction. It had been found later, abandoned near Greasewood. The right place, if he was returning to the west-slope canyon country of his mother's clan. And there was every reason to think he would. Horseman was scared. The territory was empty, and a fugitive's dream for hiding out. His kinsmen would feed him and keep their mouths shut. And at Shoemaker's Leaphorn was certain that at least two of those he had talked to had known about Horseman. There was the old man with the witch story and it was even more obvious with the boy who had come in late. He had clearly been relieved to hear the Mexican hadn't died and clearly was in a hurry to end the conversation and go tell someone about it. And then there was the Big Navajo. "He was interested," Leaphorn said. "Remember he asked me to describe Horseman. And Shoemaker said he was new around there. Why would he be interested if he hadn't seen him?"

  "You're hung up on the hat thing," McKee said.

  "All right," Leaphorn said. "You explain the hat."

  "Sure. He took the hatband off and while it was off, somebody stole the hat."

  "When's the last time you took off your hatband?"

  "I don't wear silver conchos on my hat," McKee said.

  They picked up the coroner-justice of the peace at a Conoco station in Ganado, a man named Rudolph Bitsi. Bitsi told them to drive south.

  The late morning sun was hot by the time they arrived at the edge of Teastah Wash and the Navajo policeman who had been left with the body had retreated into the shade of the arroyo wall. He climbed into the sunlight, blinking, as the carryall stopped. He looked very young, and a little nervous. Leaphorn said the policeman was Dick Roanhorse, just out of recruit school.

  "Find anything interesting?" Leaphorn asked.

  "No, sir. Just this bottle. The only tracks are the ones made by Begay's pickup. Rain washed everything else out."

  "The body was here before the rain, then," Leaphorn said. It was more a statement than a question, and the policeman only nodded.

  Leaphorn pulled the blanket off the body. They looked at what had been Luis Horseman.

  "Well," Bitsi said, "looks like he might have had some sort of seizure."

  "Looks like it," Leaphorn said.

  Bitsi squatted, examining the face. He was a short, middle-aged man, tending to fat, and he grunted as he lowered himself. He sniffed at Horseman's nose and lips.

  "Alcohol. You can just barely get a whiff of it."

  Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's legs. McKee noticed they were rigidly straight-as if he had died erect and tumbled backward, which wasn't likely.

  Bitsi was still examining the face. "I saw one that looked like that two, three years ago. Crazy bastard had made him a brew out of jimson weed to get more potent and it poisoned him."

  Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's left arm. The watch
on his wrist was running, which would mean he had wound it the previous day-probably less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was a cheap watch, the kind that cost about $8 or $10, with a stainless-steel expansion band. Leaphorn stared at the left hand. The arm lay across Horseman's chest with the wrist and hand extended, unsupported.

  "Pretty fair booze," Bitsi said, holding up the bottle. The label was red and proclaimed the contents to be sour-mash whiskey. About a half ounce of amber liquid remained in the bottle.

  "Looks like he overdid it," Bitsi said. "Looks like he strangled. Fell down while he was throwing up, and passed out and strangled."

  "That's what it looks like," Leaphorn said.

  "Might as well haul him in," Bitsi said. He rose from his squat, grunting again.

  "No tracks at all?" Leaphorn asked the policeman.

  "Just Begay's. Where he got out of his pickup and came over to look at the body. Nothing but that.",

  There were plenty of tracks now. Mostly Roanhorse's, Leaphorn guessed.

  "Where was the bottle?"

  "Four or five feet from the body," Roanhorse said. "Like he dropped it."

  "O.K.," Leaphorn said. He was looking across the flat through which Teastah Wash had eroded, an expanse of scrubby creosote bush with a scattering of sage. At the lip of the wash bank, a few yards upstream from the road, two small junipers had managed to get roots deep enough to live. Leaphorn walked suddenly to the nearest bush and examined it. He motioned to Roanhorse, and McKee followed.

  "You pull a limb off this for anything?"

  Roanhorse shook his head.

  There was a raw wound on the lower trunk where a limb had been broken away. Leaphorn put his thumb against the exposed cambium layer and showed it to McKee. It was sticky with fresh sap.

  "What do you think of that?"

  "Nothing," McKee said. "How about you?"

  "I don't know. Probably nothing."

  He started walking back toward the body, through the creosote bush, searching. Bitsi, McKee noticed, had climbed back into the carryall.

  "Look around across the road there," Leaphorn said, "and see if you can find that juniper branch."