Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 01 - The Blessing Way

by The Blessing Way(lit)

  He was lying almost flat, his weight pulling against the tough rubber. Down the shaft of the sapling, he saw the Navajo's hat rise into view as he moved slowly up the slope. Then his shoulders, then his belt. The man stopped. He looked at the fallen tree, at the growth of young ponderosa. He stared intently from the sunlight tnto the deep shadows.

  McKee held his breath, fought against the dizziness. Four or five steps closer, he prayed. Keep coming. Keep coming.

  The Navajo stood, staring directly at him. His face was thoughtful. Suddenly he smiled.

  "Well," he said. There you are."

  It seemed to McKee to take quite a little time. The Big Navajo's right hand brought the rifle butt smoothly up to the right shoulder, the left hand swung the barrel toward him, the Navajo's face moved slightly to the right, behind the telescopic sight. All this while McKee was releasing the lance.

  Most likely the telescope made the difference. Over open sights, the Indian would have seen the lance at the moment of its launch, seen it soon enough to simply step aside. Behind the sight, he saw it too late. There was a sound-which McKee would remember-something like a hammer striking a melon. And the clatter of the rifle falling on the rocks. And the sound of the Big Navajo tumbling backward down the slope.

  McKee crawled out of the thicket and picked up the rifle. It seemed incredibly heavy. The Big Navajo had slid, head downward, between two boulders. McKee looked at the man and hastily looked away. The pine shaft had struck him low on the chest. There was no chance at all that he was alive. The black hat lay by the boulder, the sun reflecting off the rich silver of its concho band. And up the slope was a furry bundle tied with a leather thong. McKee untied the thong. A wolf skin unrolled itself.

  McKee felt a whirling dizziness. Always wanted a witch's skin. Hang it on my office wall. Maybe give it to Canfield.

  He remembered, then, that Canfield was dead, and was conscious that his side was wet and his pant leg was sticking to his thigh. He put the wolf skin over his arm and started down the slope toward the canyon floor. He fell once. But he remembered Ellen Leon and got back to his feet. And finally he was on the sandy canyon floor, where walking was easy.

  "Put down the rifle."

  "What?" McKee said. A boy was standing behind a clump of willows. There was a horse by him, the reins dragging.

  "Put down the rifle." The boy had on a red baseball cap and he had a short-barreled rifle in his hands. An old.30-30. It was pointed at McKee.

  McKee dropped the Big Navajo's rifle. The wolf skin fell with it, dropping in a folded hump on the sand.

  "Where's the other witch?"

  "What?" McKee said. It was important to think about this. "He's dead," he said, after a moment. "He shot me and I killed him. Back up there under the rimrock." McKee pushed the wolf skin with his toes. "This is his witch skin," he said, speaking now in Navajo. "I am not a witch. I am one who teaches in school."

  The boy was looking at him, his face expressionless.

  "There is a truck a little ways up here," McKee said. "You must let me get to that truck and the man there will help me."

  "All right." The boy hesitated, thinking. "You walk. I will walk behind you."

  He was within thirty yards of the truck before he saw it-parked in a thicket of tamarisk and willow just off the canyon floor. Beside it a gasoline generator was running. The back door of the van stood open, a padlock dangling in the hasp. Through the doorway McKee heard the faint sound of someone whistling and then of metal tapping on metal.

  McKee stopped.

  "Hello," he shouted. It didn't sound like his voice.

  McKee took two more steps toward the truck, conscious the whistling had stopped.

  A man appeared in the doorway of the van, blond, in a denim jacket, taller than McKee and younger, with a hearing aid behind his left ear. His blue eyes rested for a second on McKee, registering surprise and shock.

  "What the hell happened?" he said. And then he was out of the truck, coming toward McKee.

  "Got shot," McKee said. "Somebody shot me." His voice sounded thick. "Get the bleeding stopped." He sat down abruptly on the sand.

  The blond man was saying something.

  "Don't talk," McKee said. "Listen. Are you Jim Hall?"

  "How did you know that?"

  "Listen," McKee said. "Tell this boy here that I'm not a witch and he will help you." He paused now and started again, trying to pronounce the words.

  "Ellen Leon was shot, too. Ellen Leon. She's up at that big cliff dwelling in a canyon." McKee tried to think. "In that canyon that runs into Many Ruins south and west of here."

  The man was squatting beside McKee now, his face close. McKee had trouble focusing on the face. The face was surprised, amazed, excited, maybe frightened.

  "You said Ellen?" the man said. "What the devil is she doing out here? What happened to her?"

  "Man shot her. Needs help." McKee said. "Go help her."

  "Who shot her?" the man asked.

  "Man named Eddie." McKee said. He was very tired. Why didn't this fool go? "Don't worry," he said, "Eddie's dead now." He heard the man asking him something but he couldn't think of an answer. And then the man's hands were on his face, the man was talking right into his face.

  "Listen. Tell me. What happened to Eddie? What happened to Eddie? And was there a man with him? Where's the man who was with him?"

  McKee couldn't think of how to answer. Something was wrong.

  He tried to say, "Dead," but Jim Hall was talking again.

  "Answer me, damn you," Hall said, his voice fierce. "Do the police know about this? Has anybody told the police?"

  McKee thought he would answer in a moment. Now he was concentrating on not falling over on his side.

  Hall stood up. He was talking to the boy with the red baseball cap, and then the boy was talking. McKee could hear part of it.

  "Did you see the witch he killed?"

  He couldn't hear what the boy answered.

  "You were right when you guessed that," Hall was saying. This man here is a Navajo Wolf. Give me your rifle."

  McKee stopped listening. He was asking himself how Jim Hall knew about the man with Eddie, asking himself why Hall was acting the way he was acting. Almost immediately, with sick, despairing clarity, he saw the answer. Hall was the Big Navajo's other man.

  The boy hadn't given Hall the rifle. He was standing there, looking doubtful.

  "Put the rifle in the truck then," Hall said. "We'll leave the witch here. Tie him up first. And then we'll drive to Chinle and tell the police about him." Hall paused. "Hand me the rifle and I'll put it in the truck."

  "Don't," McKee said. "Don't give him the rifle."

  Hall turned to look at him. McKee focused on the face. It looked angry. And then it didn't look angry any more. Another voice had said something, something in Navajo.

  It said, "That's right, Billy Nez, don't give him your rifle." And the anger left Jim Hall's face as McKee looked at it, and it looked shocked and sick. Then it was gone.

  McKee gave up. He fell over on his side. Much better.

  The metallic sound of the door in the van slamming and then a voice, the voice of Joe Leaphorn, and a little later a single loud pop.

  I can't faint now, McKee told himself, because I have to tell him about Ellen. But he fainted.

  Chapter 18

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  He was aware first of the vague sick smell of ether, of the feel of hospital sheets, of the cast on his chest, and of the splint bandaged tightly on his right hand. The room was dark. There was the shape of a man standing looking out the window into the sunlight. The man was Joe Leaphorn.

  "Did you find her?" McKee asked.

  "Sure," Leaphorn said. He sat beside the bed. "We found her before we found you, as a matter of fact." He interrupted McKee's question. "She's right down the hall. Broken cheekbone and a broken shoulder and some lost blood."

  He looked down at McKee, grinning. "They had to put about ten gallons in
you. You were dry."

  "She's going to be all right?"

  "She's already all right. You've been in here two days."

  McKee thought for a while.

  "Her boyfriend," he said. "How'd it all come out in the canyon?"

  "Son of a bitch shot himself," Leaphorn said. "Walked right away from me into the truck, and slammed the door and locked it and got out a little.22 he had in there and shot himself right through the forehead." Leaphorn's expression was sour. "Walked right in with me just standing there," he added. He didn't sound like he could make himself believe it.

  McKee felt sick. Maybe it was the ether.

  "You've got more Navajo blood in you now than I do," Leaphorn said. "The doc said you had a busted oil pan. Took ten gallons."

  "I guess you had to tell her about Hall."

  "She knows."

  "He must have been crazy," McKee said.

  "Crazy to get rich," Leaphorn said. "You call it ambition. Sometimes we call it witchcraft. You remember the Origin Myth, when First Woman sent the Heron diving back into the Fourth World to get the witchcraft bundle. She told him to swim down and bring back 'the way to make money.'"

  "Knock off the philosophy," McKee said. "What happened? How did you find her?"

  "I've noticed this before," Leaphorn said. "Belacani women are smarter than you Belacani men. Miss Leon got herself over to that camp stove on that cliff. She poured out the kerosene and made herself a smoky little smudge fire. You could see it for miles."

  He grinned at McKee.

  "Something else she figured out that you might like to know about. She was having her doubts about Hall when I got there. All excited. Said you'd gone to find him and she was afraid something might happen to you. Miss Leon wanted me to climb up that split in the cliff and go chasing across that plateau to rescue you."

  McKee felt better. He was, in fact, feeling wonderful.

  "Why didn't you think of something simple, like making a big smoke?" Leaphorn asked. "Climbing up that crack in the rock was showing off."

  "How was I going to know you'd be wandering around out there?" McKee asked. "It's supposed to be the cavalry that arrives in the nick of time, not the blanket-ass Indians."

  McKee had a sobering thought. "I guess you know I killed those two men?"

  "Not officially, you didn't," Leaphorn said. "Officially, we've got just two dead people. Officially, Dr. Canfield and Jim Hall were killed in a truck accident. Miss Leon and you were hurt in the crash. And officially Eddie Poher and George Jackson never existed."

  "Was that their names? And what was going on in there, anyway? What was Hall doing?"

  "It's a secret," Leaphorn said.

  "Like hell it's a secret," McKee said. "If you want me to tell some phony story about Canfield getting killed in a truck wreck, you don't have secrets."

  "I'm not really supposed to know all of it myself."

  "But you do," McKee said.

  Leaphorn looked at him a long moment.

  "Well," he said. "You cut one of his cables so I guess you know Hall had portable radar sets staked out on that plateau. And you know that plateau is under the route from the Tonepah Range up in Utah down to White Sands Proving Grounds."

  "Yeah," McKee said. "I knew that much." He wondered why he hadn't thought of radar.

  "Hall was sitting with his radar right under what the military calls its 'Bird Path,' and when the birds flew from Tonepah the radar was feeding information into a computer in the van. Hall was putting it into tapes."

  "What were they testing?"

  "The military intelligence people don't tell a Navajo cop things like that."

  "I'll bet you can guess."

  Leaphorn looked at him again. "Maybe the MIRV. The Multiple Intercontinental Re-entry Vehicle. Read about it in Newsweek. One missile, but it drops off five or six warheads and some decoys. I'd guess that if I was guessing."

  "It still doesn't make sense. What was he doing with the information and how'd a guy like Hall get tied up with that bunch?"

  "If you'll shut up and listen, I'll tell you."

  From what they now knew, Leaphorn explained, Hall, Poher, and Jackson had arrived on the Reservation separately almost two months ago. A fingerprint check had been enlightening. Poher was relatively unknown. One arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to rob a bank, some East Coast Mafia associations, but no convictions. Jackson was another story. He was also known as Amos Raven, and Big Raven and George Thomas, with a long and violent juvenile record dating back into the late thirties in Los Angeles, and one adult conviction for armed robbery, and a half-dozen arrests for questioning in an assortment of crimes of violence-all Mafia-connected.

  "A Relocation Indian. Jackson seems to have been born in Los Angeles." Leaphorn laughed. "California Navajo. That's what had me hung up. I was expecting him to act like The People and all he knew about The People he must have got out of a book."

  "Case Studies in Navajo Ethnic Aberrations, for one," McKee said, "by John Greersen."

  "Anyway," Leaphorn continued, "Jackson had apparently been picked for this assignment simply because he was a Navajo and looked like one. His job must have been to help Hall set up his equipment and make sure that nobody knew what was going on. It wouldn't have seemed difficult, for the very reason the military chose this route for its overland missile. The country was almost completely deserted. Hall set up in Many Ruins Canyon complex, which The People avoid because of the Anasazi ghosts, and Jackson scared the few stragglers out by pretending to be a witch."

  "Except Horseman," McKee said.

  "Yeah. Except Horseman." Leaphorn's voice was flat.

  "It wasn't your fault," McKee said.

  "Remember what I said to Jackson at the trading post? I said if Horseman don't come out we'll come in looking for him. So Jackson brought him out for us and laid him out where we couldn't miss him."

  "Use your head, Joe. There was no way you could have stopped it from happening."

  "I was slow figuring it out," Leaphorn said. "I smelled something about Jackson. But I figured him to act like a Navajo and he was acting like a white man."

  "Thanks a lot," McKee said.

  "If he was a Navajo, no matter what he was doing in there, killing Horseman would have screwed it up for him. He would have gone off somewhere and had a sweat bath, and then he would have found himself a Singer and got himself cured and forgot about it."

  Leaphorn told McKee about the Enemy Way and about finding the place where Jackson had built the road up Ceniza Mesa.

  "He had put one of the radar sets up there and then he was improving his road so he could get it down fast, without using the winch. When he missed his hat, he knew someone had seen him, so he moved the radar back over to the plateau. I didn't know about the radar but it was beginning to be clear by then that there had to be a lot of money involved somewhere. You put it together-a lot. of money and a killing. It's not natural, and it's not Navajo."

  "All right," McKee said. "I'll buy that. But how did Hall get into it?"

  "I don't know," Leaphorn said. "I hear the federals are looking into a little West Coast electronics company with Mafia ownership. I think Hall did some work for them before-something legitimate." He looked at McKee pensively. "Didn't that business about Jackson wanting you to write the letter tell you something?"

  "It told me he didn't want anybody coming in there looking for us," McKee said. "What else?"

  "Think about it," Leaphorn said. "If you have a bunch of computer tapes giving you the exact performance of the other guy's ballistic missile system, it's worth a bunch of money. But it's worth a lot more if the other side doesn't suspect you've got it. Right?"

  "Because if he suspects he changes the system," McKee said. "Eddie said something about that. About the letter being worth a lot of money."

  A nurse came in then, a Navajo girl, in the uniform of the Indian Service Hospital. She scolded Leaphorn for staying too long, took McKee's temperature and gave him a capsule and a
drink of water.

  When McKee awoke again, there was a tray beside his bed with a covered dish of food on it, and beside the dish was an envelope.

  He turned the envelope in his good hand, aware before he opened it of the familiar feeling of his common sense struggling with his perennial incurable optimism. The note inside was from Ellen Leon. Tomorrow, it began, the doctor would let her come to visit him. It was not just fourteen blunt words in blue ink on blue paper. It was a long letter.