The Blessing Way

by Tony Hillerman

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.

  “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 w
ave of pain helped his performance. The flinch was completely involuntary, the spasm of a tortured nerve.

  “Don’t write it,” Miss Leon said suddenly. “I 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.”

  > 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 Tsosie, 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 a 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 emergence 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.