The Blessing Way jlajc-1

by Tony Hillerman

  "I'll start it, 'Dear Dr. Green,'" he said. His voice was thick.

  He moved his right hand slowly and took the pen between his thumb and forefinger. In a moment he had one more gamble to make. He would suggest that he try to write the letter with his left hand, explaining to Dr. Green that he had injured his right one. He didn't think the big man would call this bluff. If the man was as smart as he seemed to be, he would see the objections. Green would wonder why Canfield hadn't written instead. And he would wonder why McKee wasn't coming in for medical attention. And the handwriting would be unidentifiable anyway-and that obviously was important. But, if he didn't see the objections, this whole desperate play for time might collapse.

  He shifted the pen into the proper position, lowered the point and started the "D." The Navajo was watching him intently.

  Again, a fresh wave of pain helped his performance. The flinch was completely Involuntary, the spasm of a tortured nerve.

  "Don't write it," Miss Leon said suddenly. T don't trust him."

  The Navajo turned toward her.

  "Ellen," McKee said hurriedly, "if you had shown a little sense earlier we wouldn't be here. If you'd use what little brains you have, you'd see that this letter is our only way out of this mess. Now shut up."

  He hoped, as he said it, that the anger would sound sincere to the Navajo and insincere to Miss Leon and thought bitterly that the reverse would probably be true. The hurt in Miss Leon's face looked genuine and the Navajo's expression was unreadable.

  He tried again with the pen, finishing the "Dear" this time, and inspected the wavering scrawl with satisfaction.

  "That's fairly close," he said. It looked nothing at all like his handwriting and the Navajo had plenty of samples in his field notes to make the comparison.

  "It's not close enough," the Navajo said.

  "How about writing it with my left hand?" McKee said suddenly. "We could say I'd hurt my right one." He tried to make his glance at the Indian seem natural, and held his breath.

  "Dr. McKee. Think about it. That wouldn't look like your handwriting. If it doesn't look like your handwriting, it won't work no matter what you say." The Navajo was looking at McKee curiously. "Why would you write Dr. Green a lefthanded letter with Dr. Canfield around to write letters?"

  "Just a thought," McKee mumbled.

  The Navajo looked at his watch and then, for a long moment, at the man called Eddie. Eddie shrugged. "Whatever you think," he said. "I don't know the odds."

  McKee was suddenly chillingly aware that his life was being decided. The Navajo looked at him, his face bland, with no trace of malice or anger. McKee was conscious of the ragged line rimming the iris of the Indian's eyes, of the blackness of the pupils; conscious that behind that blackness an intelligence was balancing whatever considerations it gave weight and deciding whether he would die.

  "The hell of it is," the Big Navajo said, "we don't know how long we're stuck here."

  "Whatever you think," Eddie said again. "Lot of money involved."

  "Let's see that hand again," the Indian ordered.

  McKee raised it slowly, palm upward, toward the Navajo.

  He leaned slightly forward, scrutinizing the twisted finger. Like, McKee thought, a housewife inspecting a slightly off-color roast.

  "Maybe soaking it will get that swelling down," the Indian said. "Soak it in hot water and get the swelling out. We'll take 'em up to the cliff place, Eddie."

  From behind him, McKee heard a faint click.

  Eddie had slipped the safety catch on his automatic back into place.

  "It's almost four o'clock," the Navajo said. "The hell of it is with this job we never know how much time we have."

  Chapter 15

  At approximately four o'clock Joe Leaphorn, sweating profusely, led his borrowed horse the last steep yards to the top of the ridge behind Ceniza Mesa. Almost immediately he found exactly what he had hoped to find. And when he found it the pieces of the puzzle locked neatly into place-confirming his meticulously logical conclusions. He knew why Luis Horseman had been killed. He knew, with equal certainty, that the Big Navajo had done the killing. The fact that he had no idea how he could prove it was not, for the moment, important.

  At about ten minutes after four o'clock, Lieutenant Leaphorn found something he had not expected to find on the Ceniza ridge. And suddenly he was no longer sure of anything. This unexpected fact visible at his feet fell like a stone in a reflecting pool, turning the mirrored image into shattered confusion. The answer he had found converted itself into another question. Leaphorn no longer had any idea why Horseman had died. He was, in fact, more baffled than ever.

  Leaphorn had left the Chinle subagency at noon, towing Sam George Takes's horse and trailer, determined to learn what the Big Navajo had been doing at Ceniza Mesa. At first he drove faster than he should because he was worried. Billy Nez had come home from the Enemy Way, picked up his rifle, and left again on his pony. Charley Nez, as usual, didn't know where he had gone. But Leaphorn could guess. And he didn't like the conclusion. He was sure Billy Nez would ride to the place where Luis Horseman had hidden. Nez would pick up the tracks of the Big Navajo's Land-Rover there, and he would follow it. Because Leaphorn couldn't think his way through the puzzle of Luis Horseman's death, he had no idea what Nez would find-if anything. And because Leaphorn didn't know, he worried.

  Leaphorn began driving more slowly and worrying less as the carryall climbed the long slope past Many Farms. He had been working his way methodically around the crucial question, the question which held the key to this entire affair, the question of motive. By the time the carryall reached the summit of the grade and began the gradual drop to Agua Sal Wash the answer was taking shape. He pulled off the asphalt, parked on the shoulder and sat, examining his potential solution for flaws. He could find no serious ones, and that eliminated his worry about young Nez. Nez almost certainly wouldn't find the Big Navajo on the Lukachukai plateau. The man would be long gone. And, if he did find him, it wouldn't matter much unless Nez did something remarkably foolish.

  Leaphorn went through his solution again, looking for a hole. The Big Navajo must have found the Army's missing rocket on Ceniza Mesa.

  Why, Leaphorn asked himself angrily, had he been so quick to reject this idea when he learned the reward was canceled? The Big Navajo had been clearing a track to the top when Billy Nez found him and stole the hat. He would have needed such a road to haul the remains down. And then he had cached the rocket somewhere until he could find out how to collect the reward. Horseman had found the rocket and claimed it. A Navajo would not kill for money, but he would kill in anger. The two had fought-fought in some sandy arroyo bottom. Horseman had been smothered. And the Big Navajo had moved his body down to Teastah Wash. Why? "To avoid having the area where his rocket was hidden searched by Law and Order people looking for Horseman." Now the Big Navajo was waiting, with the inbred patience of the Dinee, for the moment when sun, wind, and birdsong made the time seem right to claim the Army's $10,000. Or perhaps he had learned by now that the reward had been canceled. It seemed to make little difference. Leaphorn could think of no possible way to connect the missile with the murder.

  He looked out across the expanse of the Agua Sal Valley, past Los Gigantes Buttes. There was Ceniza Mesa-twenty miles away, a table-topped mass of stone rising out of an ocean of ragged erosion like an immense aircraft carrier. Eons ago the mesa had been part of the Lukachukai plateau. It was still moored to the mountain ramparts by a sway-backed saddle ridge. It was on that saddle ridge that Billy Nez had seen the Big Navajo working and it was there Leaphorn would prove his theory. Perhaps Billy Nez had lied. Leaphorn thought about it. Billy Nez hadn't lied.

  He pulled the carryall back on the pavement and drove down the slope toward Round Rock, enjoying the beauty of the view. For the first time since the body of Luis Horseman had been found he felt at peace with himself. He switched on the radio. "Ha at isshq nilj?" the broadcast voice demanded. "What clan are
you? Are you in the Jesus clan?" Navajo with a Texas accent. A radio preacher from Gallup. Leaphorn pushed the button. Country music from Cortez. He snapped off the radio.

  "He stirs, he stirs, he stirs, he stirs," Leaphorn sang.

  "Among the lands of dawning, he stirs, he stirs.

  The pollen Of dawning, he stirs, he stirs.

  Now in old age wandering, he stirs, he stirs.

  Now on the trail of beauty, he stirs, Talking God, he stirs…"

  The mood lasted past Round Rock, past the turnoff at Seklagaidesi, down eleven jolting miles of ungraded wagon track. Leaphorn still sang the endless ritual verses from the Night Way as he unloaded the horse where the track dead-ended at an abandoned death hogan. He trotted the animal across the broken, empty landscape, skirting Toh-Chin-Lini Butte, moving southeastward toward the Ceniza saddle. He saw the bones of a sheep, the empty burrows of a prairie-dog town, and the moving shadow of a Cooper's hawk swinging in the sky above him. He saw no tire tracks and he expected to see none. That would have been luck. Leaphorn never counted on luck. Instead he expected order-the natural sequence of behavior, the cause producing the natural effect, the human behaving in the way it was natural for him to behave. He counted on that and upon his own ability to sort out the chaos of observed facts and find in them this natural order. Leaphorn knew from experience that he was unusually adept at this. As a policeman, he found it to be talent which saved him a great deal of labor. It was a talent which, when it worked unusually well, caused him a faint subconscious uneasiness, grating on his ingrained Navajo conviction that any divergence from the human norm was unnatural and-therefore-unhealthy. And it was a talent which caused him, when the facts refused to fall into the pattern demanded by nature and the Navajo Way, acute mental discomfort.

  He had felt that discomfort ever since Horseman had turned up dead-contrary to nature and Leaphorn's logic-far from the place where nature and logic insisted he should be. But as he led his borrowed horse the last steep yards to the crest of the Ceniza saddle the discomfort was gone. The top of the ridge was narrow. In a very few moments he would find tire tracks and the tracks would match the tread pattern drawn for him by Billy Nez. Of that Leaphorn was certain. When he examined these tracks he would find the Land-Rover had driven up the saddle to the mesa top empty and had come down with a heavy weight on its rear tires. And then the irritatingly chaotic affair of Luis Horseman would be basically orderly, with only a few minor puzzles to solve.

  The narrow ridge offered few choices of paths, even for a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and Leaphorn found the tire tracks quickly. There were four sets instead of the two he had expected to find, indicating two trips up and two trips down. He made no attempt to find meaning in that. He concentrated on the fresher tracks, establishing by the traction direction which of them had been made going up the slope. In an area where the soil was soft he checked the depth of the tire marks. Exactly as he had expected. On the trip down, the rear tires had cut almost a half-inch deeper.

  Behind him the horse snorted and stamped, fighting off the flies.

  "Horse," Leaphorn said, "it comes out just the way we figured it would."

  Leaphorn rose from his squat and brushed a fly from the horse's back. There was no trace left of the nagging sense of wrongness and urgency that had dogged him for days, none of that vague, undefined feeling that something unnatural and evil was afoot in his territory. He understood now. It was a good feeling.

  And then Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn took two short steps across the small place of soft, loamy earth and looked down at the older tracks. He recorded the fact that they had been dimmed by at least one rain shower. He noticed that this set, too, varied in the depth the rear tires had cut. It had taken, Leaphorn thought at first, two trips to haul down the remains of the shattered rocket. A split second later his mind processed what his eyes were seeing. On this round trip, the Land-Rover had carried its heavy load on the way up-not on the way down.

  The Navajo language is too specific and precise to lend itself to effective profanity. Leaphorn cursed in Spanish and then-at length-in English.

  It took Leaphorn almost three hours to piece together as much as he could of what had happened on this ridge and on the mesa to which it led. He worked methodically and carefully, resisting an urge to hurry. And when he put it all together, he had nothing but another enigma which offered no possibility of solution.

  To Leaphorn's surprise the Land-Rover had approached the saddle from the southeast, emerging from the Chinle Desert from the direction of the Lukachukai ramparts. On the first trip up-perhaps as long as a month earlier-it had carried a heavy load over its rear axle. At several places the driver had stopped to cut brush out of the way, sometimes using an ax and sometimes a power chain saw. To traverse the steepest slope, where the saddle rose sharply to the lip of the mesa rim-rock, he had used a winch line in several places to help pull the vehicle up. Once on top, the vehicle had driven fairly directly about a mile across the mesa. There something heavy and metallic had been unloaded on a flat outcropping of sandstone, scoring the soft rock. From this point, the Land-Rover had made a backing turn and driven directly back over the original track.

  Even though the other tracks were weeks fresher, he had spent most of the time sorting out the second trip. He finally concluded that on this trip the Land-Rover had driven directly to the sandstone outcropping. Then it had returned to the rim where the saddle joined the mesa. There several small trees had been cut and a score of boulders moved, apparently to clear a better roadway. At the site of this heavy work, Leaphorn found the tracks of Billy Nez's rubber-soled sneakers, marks of the Big Navajo's flat-heeled boots, a bread wrapper, and an empty Vienna sausage can. After Billy Nez had been here-and presumably after he had left with the Big Navajo's stolen hat-the Land-Rover had driven back over the rim and back to the sandstone. There the heavy object had been reloaded and the Land-Rover had driven down off the mesa. This much was clear. Leaphorn had found three ponderosa poles used as a tripod, which must have supported the pulley used to lift whatever it was the Big Navajo had unloaded and then reloaded.

  Leaphorn rubbed his fingertips over his forehead, trying to recreate exactly what the Big Navajo had done on that second visit to the Ceniza Mesa.

  He had first driven to the heavy object. And what then? Looked at it? Assured himself it was still there? Adjusted it? Fed it? Put fuel in it? Turned it off? Or on? No hope of guessing. And then the Big Navajo had driven back to the rim to improve the steep approach. Why? If he could winch the loaded Land-Rover up the slope he could winch it down, given enough time. Was that it? Time? Did he expect to be in a hurry coming down? Maybe, Leaphorn thought. Maybe that was it. Time. But Navajos didn't hurry. In fact, there was no word in the Navajo language for time.

  And then the Big Navajo had discovered his hat had been stolen, had found the tracks of Billy Nez, and knew someone had watched him. Knowing this, he had driven back over the top, reloaded the heavy object, and hauled it down off the mesa. Why? Maybe because Billy Nez might find it. But where had the big man taken it? And what was it?

  Leaphorn stood on the mesa rimrock and stared out across the Chinle at the Lukachukai slopes. The sun was down now. The tops of the evening thunderheads over the mountains were still a dazzling sunlit white, but below the fifteen thousand-foot level they turned abruptly dark blue with shadow of oncoming night. The desert was streaked with pink, red, and purple now, the reflected afterglow from cloud formations to the west. Normally Leaphorn would have been struck by the immensity of this beauty. Now he hardly noticed it. He stared at the darkening line of the Lukachukai ramparts, searching out the points of blackness, the open mouths of the canyons which drained it. Since the Land-Rover had come from the southeast, across the Chinle, it must have come from one of these. He could backtrack it. Twenty miles, he guessed. Maybe twenty-five, and a lot of it would be over bare slick rock. Even in daylight he wouldn't average a mile an hour. At night it would be impossible.

&nb
sp; A burrowing owl, its wings stiff, planed up from the desert below him, banked into the invisible elevator of air rising up the mesa wall. It hung on the current a few feet below him-its yellow eyes examining the rimrock for incautious rodents feeding early. Leaphorn envied its mobility. Since the moment he had seen his orderly, logical explanation of Luis Horseman's death demolished by the hard facts of the Land-Rover's tire tracks, the old sense of urgency had returned. He had resisted it by sheer strength of will, forcing himself to concentrate on deciphering what had happened at this mesa. Now he resisted no longer. Instead, he thought about it-turning this itching impulse to hurry in his mind. What was it that bothered him?

  He laughed, and the owl, making a second and slightly higher sweep over the mesa wall, panicked at the sound. It flapped past him, trailing its chittering quick-quick-quick-quick call, and vanished in the shadows.

  Everything was bothering him, Leaphorn thought. Nothing fit. Everything was irrational. But why this sense of time running out, of something dangerous?

  Leaphorn lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, thinking hard. Luis Horseman had been killed. Billy Nez had found the tracks of the Big Navajo's Land-Rover near where Horseman had hidden. A Navajo had been killed and a Navajo had killed him-that was the presumption. Leaphorn studied this presumption, again seeking an answer to the central question. Why? Why did Navajos kill? Not as lightly as white men, because the Navajo Way made life the ultimate value and death unrelieved terror. Usually the motive for homicide on the Reservation was simple. Anger, or fear, or a mixture of both. Or a mixture of one with alcohol. Navajos did not kill with cold-blooded premeditation. Nor did they kill for profit. To do so violated the scale of values of The People. Beyond meeting simple immediate needs, the Navajo Way placed little worth on property. In fact, being richer than one's clansmen carried with it a social stigma. It was unnatural, and therefore suspicious. From far behind him on the mesa came the voice of the owl. Ta-whoo, it said. Whoo.