The Blessing Way jlajc-1

by Tony Hillerman

  The Land-Rover lurched over something and McKee spread his knees to keep from shifting on the seat. Making the move started the throbbing again in his right hand. The Navajo was saying something but it was lost in dizziness.

  "I don't know," Miss Leon said.

  "How about you? How long were you planning to stay?"

  The question sounded so ordinary and social that McKee had an impulse to laugh. But when Miss Leon had answered two or three days, the Navajo had turned his head toward her. There was a long silence then, and when the Navajo spoke again, McKee realized the question had not been casual at all.

  "Did anyone know where you were going?"

  "Everyone knew."

  "This Dr. Green at Albuquerque knew," the Navajo said. "Who else? What about your husband? Did he know you were coming to this canyon?"

  "I don't have a husband."

  There was another silence then.

  "Who else knew then?" the Navajo asked.

  "Some other friends of mine, of course, and my family. Why? What difference does it make?"

  "Another thing. Why did McKee sit around in the canyon and let me cut him off?"

  "Ask him," Miss Leon said.

  "You tell me," the Navajo said.

  "Because I was a fool," Miss Leon said.

  "You slow him down?" The Navajo chuckled. "Didn't you believe there was a Navajo Wolf?"

  "He had that horrible bruise on his forehead," Miss Leon said, "I thought it was that."

  "Well, I would have got him anyway."

  "No," she said. "If it hadn't been for me, Dr. McKee would have gotten away."

  "Maybe you don't know about us Navajo Wolves. We turn ourselves into coyotes, and dogs, bears, foxes, owls, and crows."

  McKee stared at the back of the Navajo's head. He had ticked off the litany of were-animals in a voice heavy with sarcasm. And he listed bears, and owls, and crows. There had been a scholarly argument about that when Greersen first published his book about witchcraft beliefs in the 1920's. Greer-sen had listed only one account of each. The bear story had come out of the Navajo Mountain district and the owl and crow incidents were both far to the east-over on the Checkerboard Reservation in New Mexico. McKee had never found a source who knew of more than were-dogs, werewolves, and were-coyotes. The big man must have read Greersen, and that had to mean he had researched somewhere with an anthropological library. But why, and where?

  "And we fly through the air when it's dark and we need to," the Navajo was saying. "McKee wouldn't have got away."

  "He'd already gotten away once." Miss Leon's voice was angry and insistent. "He outsmarted you last night. And today he outsmarted you again. He…"

  "Lady. Drop it. You don't know who I am. Nobody gets away."

  That had ended the conversation. The Land-Rover had turned sharply and tilted downward-moving mostly in first gear down the narrow bottom of a dry wash. And after what McKee guessed must have been three or four miles there was the feel of smooth flat sand under the wheels and the Navajo drove much faster. There was no sun on the Land-Rover now and McKee was sure they were back on the floor of Many Ruins but he wasn't sure of directions.

  A dull pain from the bruise on his forehead and the throbbing of his hand made it difficult to concentrate. Who was the Navajo? In this part of the Reservation, The People linked owls with ghosts, but not with witches, and gave crows and ravens no supernatural significance at all. Obviously, the man's tone was heavily ironic when he listed the birds and animals. McKee could think of no source for such a list except Greersen's Case Studies in Navajo Ethnographic Aberrations. It was a notoriously ponderous and difficult volume intended for cultural anthropologists. Why would the Navajo read such a book? When McKee tried to make sense of this, his mind kept turning to the sound of Ellen Leon's voice defending him. "He outsmarted you," she had said.

  The Land-Rover stopped and McKee heard the hand brake go on.

  "You stay here," the Indian said. "Don't try to untie McKee and don't try anything funny."

  And then the door opened, the big man was gone, and Miss Leon was leaning over the back of the seat. She looked dusty, disheveled, very tired, and very sympathetic. "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "Where are we? Where did he go?"

  "At the tree," Miss Leon said. "The one he pulled across the canyon. Are you all right?"

  "What's he doing? Putting on the winch?"

  "Yes. Dr. McKee, I'm sorry I was such a silly fool. I didn't…"

  "I couldn't hear part of the conversation. Did he tell you anything useful? Who he was, or anything like that?"

  "No. I don't think so. He said nobody ever got away from him."

  "I heard that," McKee said. "Did he say anything else?"

  "I can't think of anything." She paused. "He asked me why we waited in the canyon so he could catch us."

  "I heard that, too. Don't worry about it."

  And then he heard the big man climbing back into the Land-Rover. There was the sound of shifting gears, the whine of the winch, and the cracking noise of limbs breaking. Then the winch stopped and the man climbed out again.

  "I want you to be very, very careful," McKee said. "Do exactly what he tells you to do. And keep your eyes open. Watch for a chance to get away. If you can get out of his sight, hide. Hide and don't move until it's pitch dark and then get out of the canyon. Go to Shoemaker's. That's south by southwest of here. You know how to tell your directions at night?"

  "Yes," Ellen said.

  She probably doesn't, McKee thought, but it seemed entirely academic.

  "Find the Big Dipper," McKee said. "The two stars in the line at the end of the cup point to the Pole Star. That's due north."

  "He's coming back," she said.

  "Remember. Watch for a chance."

  And then the big man was leaning over the seat, looking at him. "I hope you were giving Miss Leon good advice."

  "I told her to follow orders."

  "That's good advice," the Navajo said.

  They drove about ten minutes by McKee's estimate before the Land-Rover stopped again.

  This time you better come along, Miss Leon," the man said. "Slide out on my side."

  "Where are you taking her?" McKee's voice was loud.

  "I won't hurt her," the man said. "We're just going to get some of your papers."

  McKee twisted his shoulders and neck, straining to see out the rear window. Only the top of the cliff was in his line of sight, but it was enough to confirm that they were at their camping place.

  They were gone only a moment. And then the Land-Rover was moving again, smoothly at first up the sandy floor of Many Ruins and then a jolting, twisting ride. Suddenly they weren't moving. McKee heard the hand brake pulled on.

  "I see you got a woman, George. Where's the man you were after?"

  The voice was soft. A Virginia accent, McKee thought, or maybe Carolina or Maryland.

  "In the back seat," the Navajo said. "Get out, Miss Leon."

  The door by McKee's head opened and he saw a man looking down at him. On his stomach, with his head turned to one side, McKee could see only out of the corner of his right eye. He could see a belt buckle, and a navy-blue vest with black buttons, and the bottom of the man's chin and up his nostrils.

  "He's tied up," the voice above him said. It seemed to McKee a remarkably stupid thing to say.

  "Move a little bit out of the way," the Navajo said. Then McKee felt the Indian's hands, deftly untying the knots.

  "Get any calls while you were gone?" the soft voice asked. "Do they know when we can haul out of this hole?"

  "No calls," the Big Navajo said. "You see anything?"

  "No," the soft voice said. "Just that kid on the horse again. Up on the top. Way off across the mesa."

  "You can get up now, Dr. McKee."

  McKee sat up and examined the man with the blue vest. He was a tall young man with a pale face shaded by a light-blue straw hat. He looked back at McKee and nodded politely-blue eyes und
er blond eyebrows-and then turned toward Miss Leon.

  "How do you do," he said. Ellen Leon ignored him.

  The young man wore a harness over his vest supporting a shoulder holster with a semi-automatic pistol in it. McKee didn't recognize the type, but it seemed to be about .38 caliber. Miss Leon stood stiffly in front of the truck. She looked frightened.

  "Come on," the Big Navajo said. "Get out now. I'm in a hurry."

  McKee climbed out of the Land-Rover, his muscles stiff. His head ached, but the ache was lost in the violent throbbing of his injured hand. He held it stiffly at his side and glanced around.

  They were up a narrow side canyon. Below, not more than two hundred yards, McKee could see the broad sandy bed of Many Ruins bright in the afternoon sun. Here there was shadow and it was a moment before he noticed the cliff dwelling high on the sandstone wall behind the blond man. It was large for an Anasazi ruin-built in a long horizontal fault cleft some forty feet above the talus slope and protected from above by the sloping overhang of the cliff. He wondered, fleetingly, if it was one of those excavated by the Harvard-Smithsonian teams. It would be hard to reach, but that made it all the more attractive to the archaeologists. Less chance it had been disturbed.

  "Dr. McKee is going to write that letter for us, Eddie," the Navajo said. "It may take some time, and while I'm thinking about the letter, you want to be thinking about McKee. He's tricky."

  "He hasn't written it yet?" the blond man asked. He sounded surprised.

  "I could have had him write it back at his camp," the Indian said. "I think I could handle him. Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred. But why take chances with one this slippery?"

  "Too much money involved," Eddie said. "Way too much money for taking chances."

  He slipped the pistol deftly from the holster, handling it, McKee noticed glumly, as naturally as a pipe smoker handles a pipe.

  "Don't talk so much," the Big Navajo said. "We're going to leave these two behind and the less they hear the better."

  Eddie said, "Oh?" The word came out as another question.

  The Navajo reached into the Land-Rover, pulled out a pile of papers, stacked them on the hood, sorted swiftly through them, extracted a letter, and skimmed it.

  "How about this Dr. Green? Looks like he's your boss. He'd probably be the one to write."

  "Green's chairman of the department," McKee said. "We usually try to keep in touch when we're in the field."

  How long, McKee wondered, had Canfield lived after he wrote his note for this man? Just long enough for the Navajo to kill him without marks of violence. Only one thing was clear in this incredible situation-the Navajo's need for this letter was all that kept Miss Leon and himself alive. He wouldn't write it, but it had to be handled exactly right.

  The Big Navajo handed him Dr. Canfield's ballpoint pen. It was a slim silver pen, and as McKee accepted it with his left hand he felt his resolution harden. He would never, under any circumstances, write this letter.

  "I didn't find any stationery so I guess you use your notebook?"

  "That's right," McKee said.

  "We'll make it to Dr. Green," the Navajo said. "What do you call him? Dr. Green? Or his first name?"

  "Dr. Green," McKee lied. "He's pretty stuffy."

  The Navajo looked at him thoughtfully. "What was Dr. Canfield's first name? Was it John?"

  "John Robert Canfield," McKee said.

  The Big Navajo studied him.

  "Dr. McKee," he said finally, "what happened to Dr. Canfield was too bad. It couldn't be helped because Dr. Canfield tried to get away and he didn't leave me any alternative. But there is no reason at all for you and Miss Leon to die. If this letter is written properly it will give us time to finish what we are doing here. And then we will leave and we can afford to leave you behind." He said all this very slowly, watching McKee intently. McKee kept his expression studiously noncommittal.

  "You may doubt that, but it's true. When we are finished here, there will be no way at all to trace us. If you cooperate, we can leave you up in that cliff dwelling with food and water. In time, perhaps you could find a way to get down. If not, someone will come in here sooner or later and find you."

  "What happens if I don't write the letter?"

  The Navajo's expression remained perfectly pleasant.

  "Then I'll have to kill you both. Without the letter we'd have to hurry. You would slow us down some, because someone will have to watch you. Nothing personal about it, Dr. McKee. It's simply a matter of money." He smiled. "You know our Origin Myth. That's what witchcraft is all about-the way to make money."

  "What do you want me to write?" McKee asked.

  "That's part of the problem. We want a letter to Dr. Green telling him that you're leaving this canyon and going somewhere else-somewhere it would be natural for you to go. You and Dr. Canfield and Miss Leon. And it has to be written so that Dr. Green won't suspect anything."

  The Big Navajo paused, staring at McKee.

  "You can see that, can't you? If someone gets worried and comes in here looking for you, we would simply have to kill you."

  I have to do this exactly right, McKee thought.

  "I don't think I can believe you," he said. "You killed John after he wrote the letter."

  "Your Dr. Canfield was very foolish. He wrote you the note, and then he tried to escape. He jumped me."

  "I see," McKee said.

  "And I think that Dr. Canfield warned you somehow in that note of his. What was it? Why were you expecting me?"

  McKee grinned. "You're right, of course. It was the name. His name's Jeremy. When I saw that signature I knew something was wrong. I'd been over to the Yazzie hogan and found those rams you killed and I was nervous about that anyway."

  McKee was satisfied that his voice had sounded natural. He hoped desperately that his timing had been right. Maybe he should have waited longer, but he saw a slight relaxation in the Navajo's face. It's like poker, he thought, and this man's weakness, if he has one, is his vanity.

  "You shouldn't try anything like that."

  "I don't have any reason to trust you," McKee said. "Just one thing. You kill one man and they hunt for you awhile but it is not so very unusual. You kill two men and a woman and it's something nobody forgets and they keep looking for you."

  He was watching the Navajo's face. It relaxed a little more. "You've been thinking of that, haven't you?" McKee asked.

  "This is just business with me, Dr. McKee," the Navajo said. "A way to make a lot of money. You're right. The more people who get hurt, the harder they hunt."

  . With an effort, McKee avoided looking at the blond man. From the corner of his eye, he had seen a faint smile on Eddie's face.

  "All right," McKee said. "What do you think we should say?"

  "Well. You'll have to say you're leaving here. All of you." He paused. "Say you are leaving day after tomorrow. A day after we mail this at Shoemaker's."

  McKee tried to seem thoughtful. "Canfield was looking for Folsom Man artifacts in the Anasazi ruins," he said, aware that the Navajo must already know that. "We'll say he wasn't finding any around here and that I haven't had much luck finding anyone willing to talk about witchcraft incidents."

  He glanced up at the Navajo's face.

  "If you don't believe that's true, you can send somebody back to get my notes. That really is what I'm working on."

  "I believe you," the Navajo said. "Write it here on the hood of the truck."

  The son of a bitch read my notes, McKee thought. He felt elated. Then he saw Ellen Leon watching him, her face without expression. The elation died. She thinks I'm a coward or a fool, he thought. Maybe that was best.

  "I'll tell Green that we're moving on up into the Monument Valley country in Utah-where the Navajos are less exposed to outside influences and less accultured. That would make sense for both of us. Canfield is…" He hesitated a second, sickened at this play-acting. "Canfield was trying to establish some pattern of Folsom Man hunting camps in
this area. The early pueblo builders collected Folsom lance points and kept them as totems. That would be a good place for him to be looking."

  He was fairly confident that the big man knew all about what both of them were doing, and he tried to make his voice sound persuasive. He doubted if the man knew about Ellen Leon. There was nothing mentioning her in the tent. Just her brief note.

  "And it would be a natural place for me to work. In the back country is where you find people still believing in the Navajo Wolves."

  "How about Miss Leon?"

  "I told him I was just your graduate assistant," Miss Leon interrupted, "but I don't think he believes me."

  "Green would naturally expect her to go along with us," McKee said. "That's what she gets paid for. To help."

  He paused again, thinking of the sand on Canfield's lips and that something might go wrong with this plan.

  "That sound all right?" he asked.

  The Big Navajo moved his thumb absently back and forth over his finger tips, studying McKee's face.

  "Does Green have any schedule of where you're supposed to go next?"

  "We didn't have any definite plans."

  "Would Green be writing you anywhere? Anywhere set up to pick up letters?"

  "Just Shoemaker's while we were here." He noticed Miss Leon was still looking at him and he felt himself flush. "We tell him where to forward to if we move. He'd get this letter from me saying where we were going and telling him to send our mail to the store at Mexican Water. It seems natural. You think he'd check on it?"

  "Let's see how it looks on paper," the Navajo said.

  McKee had been holding his right hand straight down. It had hurt, but the increased blood pressure should, he thought, build up the swelling. He raised it now, intending to feign pain. No pretense was necessary. The hurt was so far beyond what he had expected that his gasp was involuntary. He felt sweat on his face and nausea in his throat. When he finally rested his right forearm on the hood, he slumped against the truck, breathing hard, too dizzy to notice whether the Navajo had registered all this. I can't spoil this now, he thought. He has to believe I'm really trying.