Leaphorn passed around his cigarette pack again.
"When was it he shot those sheep?"
"Night just like this," Billy Nez said. He looked at the moon, which was two nights short of full phase.
"Be about twenty-six, twenty-seven days ago. One moon back."
"And when did you go after the witch?" Leaphorn asked.
"Well, my uncle's father came over to our place with some of the other men of the outfit and they talked it over. And then they got that Hand Trembler in and he sang the hand-trembling songs and held his arm out over my uncle and it shook and shook. He said the reason he'd been having these dreams was this foreign witch was bothering him."
Billy Nez took another deep drag on the cigarette.
"Or maybe it was the ghost of the witch. Anyway, after that they tried it out by having a blackening. My uncle slept that night with the ashes on him and he didn't have any dreams, so they decided the Hand Trembler was right. The ghost couldn't find him with those ashes on him. So the next night they got together again there in our hogan and decided they ought to find a Singer who knew the Enemy Way."
Billy Nez paused again.
"And my cousin told them he would find the Wolf and carry the scalp," the younger boy said.
"My grandfather didn't want me to do it. He said it was supposed to be an older man who got the scalp. Somebody who'd had an Enemy Way sung over him. But finally they said I could do it."
"You know the Tracking Bear Song?" Leaphorn asked.
"My grandfather taught me that," Billy Nez said. He laid his cigarette on the ground and chanted softly:
"In shoes of dark flint I track the Ute warrior,
In armor of flint I slay the Ute enemy.
With Big Snake Man I go, tracking the warrior.
I usually slay the Ute men and slay the Ute women.
Tracking Bear I go, taking Ute scalps."
Billy Nez stopped, suddenly embarrassed, and recovered his cigarette.
The three sat in silence a long moment. The chanting had started at the fire again, another sway dance. This time the song was old, a pattern of rhythmic monosyllables which had lost coherent meaning somewhere in time.
"How did you know where to look for the scalp?" Leaphorn asked.
That had taken time, Billy Nez said. His uncle had drawn for him the way the tracks of that truck had looked.
"Like this," Billy Nez said. He smoothed the bare earth with his palm and opened his pocket knife.
"The front tires had a track like this." He drew the tread pattern in the earth. "And the outside of the track, it wasn't as deep. Like he needed a front end job on his truck. Tires wearing on the outside. And the back tires were like this." He drew the pattern of high-traction mud treads. "Cut real deep. I thought I could find them."
"And I guess you did," Leaphorn said.
It had taken Billy Nez almost a week. Three hard days on a horse before he had picked up the first of the tracks-old ones, already almost erased by the wind. On the fourth day, he had caught a glimpse of the Land-Rover. He had been on Talking Rock Mesa and had seen it moving down a wash into the Kam Bimghi Valley. After sunrise the next day he found where the witch was working-clearing a track for his truck up the sloping backside of Ceniza Mesa. And, later that day, he had made his scalp coup.
"I left my horse hobbled up there on top," Billy Nez said, "and I hid out there in the rocks, down near where he was working. He was rolling those rocks out of the way and cutting brush to clear the track. Finally he stopped a while and sat down under a piñon there and ate some stuff and some canned peaches and threw away the can. I thought maybe I'd get that can he'd ate out of for the scalp but that wouldn't be very good and so later on I got the hat."
"Tell how you got it," the younger cousin urged.
"Well, along later in the afternoon the clouds built up the way they do and it got shady and the wind got up. He was wrestling with those rocks and his hat kept blowing off. So the next time he moved that truck farther up the slope, he left that hat there on the seat of the truck. When he was working again, I slipped up there and got it."
"And took off the hatband and left it behind," Leaphorn said.
Billy Nez looked surprised. "Yeh. It was silver conchos."
"There was a rifle there in the truck," younger cousin said.
"Think it was a Remington," Billy Nez said. "Had a long barrel and a telescopic sight. Looked like a .30-06 deer rifle."
"Anything else in there?" Leaphorn asked.
"There was a map folded up there over the dashboard. I think it was a map. And a paper sack on the seat. Maybe part of his lunch. And there was a set of pulleys in the back." The boy paused, thinking.
"A block-and-tackle?" Leaphorn suggested.
"Yes," Nez said.
"Anything else?"
"No. I didn't look much. Just got that hat and then I thought I didn't want to steal that concho band so I took it off. Tied a yucca thong to that hat and tied it on the scalp stick like my grandfather said to do with the scalp-that's so you aren't handling it with your hands so much. And then when I got back up on the mesa away from there, I sang the Tracking Bear Song and used pollen and rode on back to the hogan."
Leaphorn gave the boys each a third cigarette.
"And now," he said, "I want you to tell me about your brother. I want you to tell about Luis Horseman." He tried to read Billy Nez's face. Was it surprise, or fear, or anger? The boy looked at the tip of the cigarette, and then took a long drag and blew out the smoke.
"I heard Law and Order already found him," Billy Nez said. "I heard Luis Horseman is dead."
"We found his body," Leaphorn said. "He was way down by Ganado when we found him, a hundred miles south of here. We don't know how he got there."
"I don't know," Billy Nez said. "He was staying up there on the plateau between Many Ruins and Horse Fell canyons."
"And you went up there to tell him that he didn't kill that Nakai at Gallup-that the man got well and he should come in and talk to us about it," Leaphorn said. "You did that, didn't you?" His voice was gentle.
"I heard you telling that at Shoemaker's," Billy Nez said. "And I thought you were right. It would be better if Luis Horseman went in to Window Rock and didn't try to run and hide any more. But when I went up there to tell him and take him some food he was gone."
"That was four days ago," Leaphorn said. "Tuesday. The day I was at Shoemaker's?"
Nez nodded.
"What time did you go? What time did you get there?"
"I waited until it got dark," Billy Nez said. "Luis Horseman told me to do that so nobody would see. But he wasn't there. I got there maybe two hours after midnight and he was gone."
"Blue Policeman," the smaller boy said, "my cousin found something strange there."
"I looked around where he was camping in some rocks and I thought he had taken everything he had with him," Billy Nez said. "And then I looked around some more and I found that the food he had left was buried there-just covered up with sand."
"Were the ashes covered up, too?" Leaphorn asked.
"Covered up with sand and smoothed over."
"Did you see anything else?"
"It was dark. I rode on down into the Chinle Valley and slept until it was light and then I went back up again. Then I found those tracks again."
"The tracks like the Land-Rover left?"
"Same tracks," Billy Nez said. "Up there on the mesa, maybe a half mile from where Luis Horseman was." He paused. "My brother would have taken that food with him. He wouldn't have spoiled it like that."
They sat, smoking in silence.
"I told Luis Horseman that wasn't a good place to stay. Too many houses of the Old People down in those canyons," Billy Nez said. "Too many ghosts. Nobody likes that country but witches."
The boy was silent again, staring at the fire where the sway dancers were again being moved by the drums in two rhythmic lines.
"I think that Wolf killed my brother," Billy N
ez said. His tone was flat, emotionless.
"Listen, my nephew," Leaphorn said. "Listen to me. I think you might be right. But you might be wrong." Leaphorn paused. It would do no good at all to warn this boy against any danger. "This is our business now-Law and Order business. If you hunt this man you would hunt him to kill him and that would be wrong. That man might not be the one who did it. Don't hunt him."
Billy Nez got up and dusted off his jeans.
"I must go now, my uncle, and dance with Chinle High School Girl. Go in beauty."
"Go in beauty," Leaphorn said.
He sat against the truck, thinking about it, sorting out what he knew.
The Dinee, at least the Dinee who lived in the district east of Chinle, thought the Big Navajo was their witch. Billy Nez had found his Land-Rover tracks near Horseman's camp. But they might be old tracks, and they would be gone now. It had rained tonight on the Lukachukai slopes. And the witch, whoever he was, was a violent witch, or a cruel one-a man who would cripple horses with an ax. That was all he knew. That, and the certainty that Billy Nez would be hunting the man who drove the Land-Rover, a danger to the man if he was innocent and a danger to the boy if he was not.
The first sign of paleness was showing at the eastern edge of the night. Soon Charley Tsosie and his wife and sons would come out of the ceremonial hogan. Sandoval would sing the four First Songs and the Coyote Song, and the Tsosies would inhale the required four deep breaths of the air of the Dawn People. Then Charley Tsosie and his people would be cured and the witch who drove the gray Land-Rover and who might, or might not, have maimed two horses with an ax would have his witchcraft turned against him. The Origin Myth gave him one year to live. One year, if the Tsosies or Billy Nez didn't find him first.
Chapter 13
It was a little more than an hour after daylight when McKee heard the car puttering up the canyon, its exhaust leaving a faint wake of echoes from the cliffs. Canfield had said Miss Leon would be driving a Volkswagen and this sounded like one. It certainly didn't have the throaty roar of whatever it was the man who had stalked him had driven away in the night before.
McKee moved out of the thicket of willows where he had been lying, and prepared himself for a moment he had been dreading. If the car which would soon round the corner ahead was a Volkswagen he would wave it to a stop. If the driver was Miss Leon, she would be confronted with the startling spectacle of a large man with a badly torn shirt, a bruised and swollen face, and an injured hand, who would tell her a wild, irrational story of being spooked out of his bed by a werewolf, and who would order her to turn around and flee with him out of the canyon. McKee had thought of this impending confrontation for hours, ever since it had occurred to him that he couldn't simply escape from this canyon-and whatever crazy danger it held-and go for help to find Canfield. To do so would be to leave Miss Leon to face whatever he was running from.
The car which came around the cliff into view was a baby-blue Volkswagen sedan, driven by a young woman with dark hair. McKee trotted down the slope onto the hard-packed sand, signaling it to stop.
The Volkswagen slowed. McKee saw the woman staring at him, her eyes very large. And then, suddenly, she spun the wheel, the rear wheels spurted sand, and the car roared past him.
"Miss Leon," McKee screamed. "Stop."
The Volkswagen stopped.
McKee ran to it and pulled at the door. It was locked. He looked through the window. The girl sat huddled against the door on the driver's side, frightened eyes in a pale face.
McKee cursed inwardly, tried to pull his gaping shirt together, and tapped on the window.
"Miss Leon," he said. "I'm Bergen McKee. I was supposed to meet you here. Dr. Canfield and I."
The girl, obviously, couldn't understand him. McKee repeated it all, shouting this time, conscious that the man with the machine pistol must have heard the Volkswagen and might now be taking aim.
The girl leaned across the front seat and pulled up the lock button; McKee was inside in an instant.
"Start turning the car around," McKee ordered. "Head it out of here."
"What's wrong?" Miss Leon said. "Where's Dr. Canfield?"
"Drive," McKee ordered. 'Turn it around and drive and I'll explain."
Miss Leon backed the car across the sand, cut the wheel sharply, and pulled the Volks back on the track. McKee opened his door and leaned out, staring back up the canyon. Nothing moved. He looked at Miss Leon, trying to decide how to start.
"What's wrong?" she asked again. "What are we doing?"
She looked less frightened, but now as he turned toward her she saw the bruised side of his face, with the dried blood. Her expression became a mixture of shock and pity.
"I'm Bergen McKee," McKee repeated. He felt immensely foolish. "I'm not sure exactly what's wrong, but I want you to get out of this canyon until I can find out."
Miss Leon looked at him wordlessly, and McKee felt himself flushing.
"I'm sorry I had to give you a scare like that," he said.
"But what in the world is happening? Where's Dr. Canfield? And what happened to your face?"
"I don't know," McKee said. "I mean I don't know where Dr. Canfield is. It's going to be hard to explain it."
He had spent much of his time since daylight planning how he would explain it all, and thinking how ridiculous he must inevitably seem while he tried.
During the night he had worked his way steadily down the canyon, keeping to the rocks close to the canyon wall. When the moon rose directly overhead, flooding the north side of the cliffs with light, he had lain under a growth of brush, resting and listening. And in this silence he had heard the sound of something moving on the rimrock, across the canyon and high above him. Whatever it was-and McKee had no doubt at all that it was the man with the wolf skin-its movements were stealthy. There was not the steady sound of unguarded footsteps on the rock. Only an occasional and very slight noise, with long pauses when there was no sound at all. In those pauses, McKee sensed the man was looking down from the rim, searching the canyon floor and listening for the sound of movement. The feeling was familiar, and less frightening because he had felt it before. Years before, when his company of the First Cavalry had been rearguard in the long, leapfrog retreat down the Korean Peninsula from Seoul toward the Pusan beachhead, he had learned how it felt to be hunted. And, he thought grimly, he had learned how to survive.
The sound had finally moved away from the rim. McKee allowed thirty minutes of silence, and then sprinted across the sand to the south wall. Here the moon's shadow would now fall and here he would be less visible from the rim. He had kept as high on the talus as he could, trading the easier going along the bottom for the invisibility offered by the rocks and brush. He moved steadily, but with infinite caution. His plan was simple. He would travel as far as he could until daylight and then he would find a place from which he could watch the bottom. There he would wait to intercept the car of Miss Leon. He would warn her, get her out of the canyon, send her back to Shoemaker's to get help, and then he would come back to look for Canfield. He no longer had even the faintest hope that the morning would bring Canfield driving up the canyon, safely back from a mercy trip with a snake-bitten Navajo. The sounds on the rimrock had killed that hope. If the motives of the man hunting him were less than sinister he would have been calling for him, not stalking him in silence. And that man, the man with the wolf skin and the pistol, must have stood beside Jeremy as he wrote the note and signed it "John."
He knew my name, McKee had thought. He must have read it in my papers in the tent. He could have learned Canfield's name the same way, but only his initials. And Canfield must have told him the J. was for John and tried, thus, to leave a warning. It occurred to McKee that if the Wolf had taken this trouble to learn who was living in the tent, he would also know of Ellen Leon. Her letter announcing her arrival time was on the table. The Wolf would only have to wait for her.
It had all seemed very obvious in darkness. The man who had
stalked him must be insane. There seemed to be no other rational explanation. And this, too, might explain the puzzle of Horseman's murder.
An hour before dawn, when the moon was down and the canyon was almost totally dark, McKee had fallen. A stone shifted under his weight and he had plunged, off balance, eight feet against a slab of rock below. The impact had stunned him for a moment but he was back on his feet before he realized that the little finger on his right hand was pulled from its socket. He noticed its odd immobility before he felt the pain, saw that it was bent grotesquely backward and, when he tried to straighten it, felt the agony of the injured joint. He had sat on the stone then, frightened, trying to listen, to determine if his clumsy fall had alerted the man, but there was a roaring in his ears from the pain. Finally he had gone on, carrying his injured hand inside his shirt. It was then he heard the sound of the motor starting. There was the quick whine of the starter, the sound of a heavy motor, and gears shifting, and then the noise of wheels crunching over a stony surface. The sound came from above, and some distance down canyon. It moved away from him and in a few minutes there was silence again. The man who had stalked him had driven away. He had no way of guessing how far.
McKee had climbed down to the canyon bottom then. Walking was easy on the sand and soon it was dawn. He stopped at a pool where runoff had been trapped in a pocket of rocks. He drank thirstily of the sandy water and then used his left hand to wash as much blood as he could from his face. The skin had been scraped from the right side of his cheek and the bone felt bruised. He rested on a rock and gingerly examined his finger. It seemed to be broken in the knuckle and the tendon pulled loose in his palm. The sky overhead was lightening now and the rocks and trees across the canyon were clearly visible. Night had given way to dawn.
McKee pulled off his left boot and shook out the gravel it had picked up somehow during the night. And then he examined his left hand again. It was a broad hand with strong blunt fingers, two of them crooked. He wiggled the bent knuckle of his first finger and tried to remember how it had felt when he stuck it into that line drive when he was seventeen. He could only remember that it had been swollen for days and that the error had let in two unearned runs.
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