Leaphorn was thinking that he might go to this spot himself, that he could find tracks where a Zu¤i couldn't. Pasquaanti was looking at him, suspecting such thoughts. "You didn't find anything that told you much, then?" Leaphorn asked.
"Just that our boy Ernesto Cata had a lot of blood in him," Pasquaanti said. He smiled at Leaphorn, but the smile was grim.
Chapter Three
Monday, December 1, 3:50 P.M.
THE TIRE BLEW about halfway back from Shorty Bowlegs's place, reconfirming Leaphorn's belief that days that begin badly tend to end badly. The road wound through the rough country behind Corn Mountain-nothing more than a seldom-used wagon track. One could follow it through the summer's growth of weeds and grama grass if one paid proper attention. Leaphorn hadn't. He had concentrated on making some sense of what little he had learned from Bowlegs instead of on his driving. And the left front wheel had slammed into a weed-covered pothole and ruptured its sidewall.
He set the jack under the front bumper. Bowlegs had been too drunk for coherent conversation. But apparently he had seen George this morning when the boy and his younger brother left on the long walk to catch the school bus. The elder Bowlegs didn't seem to have the faintest idea when George had returned to the hogan Sunday night. That could mean either that it was after Shorty had gone to sleep or that Shorty had been too drunk to notice.
Leaphorn pumped the jack handle, feeling irritated and slightly sorry for himself. By now Highsmith would be cruising comfortably down Interstate 40, having filed his descriptions of George Bowlegs and Ernesto Cata in the channels which would assure that highway patrolmen would eye young Indian hitchhikers with suspicion. And Orange Naranjo would be back in Gallup and equally done with it once his report was circulated in the proper places. Pasquaanti would have given up on finding any tracks by now and would simply be waiting. There would be nothing much else to do in Zu¤i. The word would have spread within an hour through every red stone home in the beehive village and across the reservation that one of the sons of Zu¤i was missing and probably dead and that the Navajo boy who was always hanging around was wanted by the police. If any Zu¤i saw George Bowlegs anywhere, Pasquaanti would know it fast.
The jack slipped on the slope of the pothole. Leaphorn cursed with feeling and eloquence, removed the jack, and began laboriously chipping out a firmer base in the rocky soil with the jack handle. The outburst of profanity had made him feel a little better. After all, what the sergeant and the deputy and the Zu¤i cop were doing was all that it made any sense for them to do. If Bowlegs headed for Albuquerque or Phoenix or Gallup, or hung around Zu¤i territory, he would almost certainly be picked up quickly and efficiently. If he holed up somewhere in Navajo country, that would be Leaphorn's problem-and it was nobody's fault that it was a much tougher one, solvable only by persistent hard work. Leaphorn reset the jack, reinserted the handle, stretched his cramped muscles, and looked down the wagon track at the expanse of wooded mesas and broken canyon country stretching toward the southern horizon. He saw the beauty, the patterned cloud shadows, the red of the cliffs, and everywhere the blue, gold, and gray of dry country autumn. But soon the north wind would take the last few leaves and one cold night this landscape would change to solid white. And then George Bowlegs, if he was hiding somewhere in it, would be in trouble. He would survive easily enough until the snow came. There were dried berries and edible roots and rabbits, and a Navajo boy would know where to find them. But one day an end would come to the endless sunshine of the mountain autumn. An arctic storm front would bulge down out of western Canada, down the west slope of the Rockies. Here the altitude was almost a mile and a half above sea level and there was already hard frost in the mornings. With the first storm, the mornings would be subzero. There would be no way to find food with the snow blowing. On the first day, George Bowlegs would be hungry. Then he would be weak. And then he would freeze.
Leaphorn grimaced and turned back to the jack. It was then he saw the boy standing there shyly, not fifty feet away, waiting to be noticed. He recognized him instantly from the yearbook photograph. The same rounded forehead, the same wide-set, alert eyes, the same wide mouth. Leaphorn pumped the jack handle. "Ya-ta-hey," he said.
"Ya-ta-hey, uncle," the boy said. He had a book covered with butcher paper in his hand.
"You want to help change this wheel? I could use some help."
"O.K.," the boy said. "Give me the trunk key and I'll get the spare."
Leaphorn fished the keys out of his pocket, realizing now that this boy was too young to be George Bowlegs. He would be Cecil, the younger brother.
Cecil brought the spare while Leaphorn removed the last lug nuts. Leaphorn was thinking hard. He would be very careful.
"You're a Navajo policeman," the boy said. "I thought at first it was the Zu¤i patrol car."
"The car belongs to the Dinee," Leaphorn said. "Just like you and I." Leaphorn paused, looking at Cecil. "And just like George, your brother." A flicker of surprise crossed the boy's face, and then it was blank.
"We are all of The People," Leaphorn said.
The boy glanced at him, silent.
"It would be a good thing if George talked to a Dinee policeman," Leaphorn said. He stressed the word "Dinee," which meant "The People."
"You're hunting him." The boy's voice was accusing. "You think like the Zu¤is said at school-that he ran away because he killed that Ernesto."
"I don't even know the Zu¤i boy is dead. All I know now is what the Zu¤i policeman told me," Leaphorn said. "I wonder what your brother would tell me."
Cecil said nothing. He studied Leaphorn's face.
"I don't think George ran away because he killed the Cata boy," Leaphorn said. "If he ran away maybe it was because he was afraid the Zu¤i policeman would lock him in jail." Leaphorn removed the left front wheel and carefully fit the spare on the lug nuts, not looking at Cecil. "Maybe that was a smart thing to do. Maybe not. If he didn't kill the Cata boy, then running away wasn't smart. It made the Zu¤is think maybe he was the one. But if he did kill the Cata boy, maybe it was smart and maybe it wasn't. Because probably they will catch him and then it will be worse for him. And if they don't catch him, he will have to run all the rest of his life." Leaphorn reached for the lug wrench, looking at Cecil now. "That is a bad way to live. It would be better to spend a few years in jail and get it over with. Or maybe spend some time in a hospital. If that boy is dead, and if George was the one who killed him, it was because there is something wrong inside his head. He needs to have it cured. The authorities would put him in a hospital instead of the jail."
The silence ticked away. A gust of breeze moved down the hillside, ruffling the grama grass. It was cold.
Cecil licked his lips. "George didn't run because he was afraid of the Zu¤i police," he said. "That wasn't why."
"Why then, nephew?" Leaphorn asked.
"It was the kachina." The boy's voice was so faint that Leaphorn wasn't sure he had heard it. "He ran away from the kachina."
"Kachina? What kachina?" It was a strange sensation, more than an abrupt change of subject; more like an unexpected shift from real to unreal. Leaphorn stared at Cecil. The word "kachina" had three meanings. They were the ancestor spirits of the Zu¤i. Or the masks worn to impersonate these spirits. Or the small wooden dolls the Zu¤is made to represent them. The boy wasn't going to say anything more. This kachina business was just something that had come off his tongue-something to avoid telling what he knew.
"I don't know its name," Cecil said finally. "It's a Zu¤i word. But I guess it would be the same kachina that got Ernesto."
"Oh," Leaphorn said. He tested the tightness of the lug nuts, lowered the jack, giving himself time to think. He rested his hip on the fender and looked at Cecil Bowlegs. The crumpled sack that jutted from the boy's jacket pocket would be his lunch sack-empty now. What would Cecil find in that hogan to take to school for lunch?
"Did a kachina get Ernesto Cata? How did you find out?"
&nbs
p; Cecil looked embarrassed.
The boy was lying. That was obvious. And no boy that age was good at it. Leaphorn had found that listening carefully to lies is sometimes very revealing of the truth. "Why would the kachina get after Ernesto? Do you know the reason?"
Cecil caught his lower lip between his teeth. He looked past Leaphorn, thinking.
"Do you know why George is running away from this kachina?"
"I think it's the same reason," Cecil said.
"You don't know the reason, but whatever it is, it would make the kachina go after both of them?"
"Yeah," Cecil said. "I think that's the way it is."
Leaphorn no longer thought Cecil was lying. George must have told him all this.
"I guess, then, from what you tell me, that Ernesto and George must have done something that made the kachina mad."
"Ernesto did it. George just listened to him. Telling is what breaks the taboo and Ernesto told. George just listened." Cecil's voice was earnest, as if it was very important to him that no one think his brother had broken a Zu¤i taboo.
"Told what?"
"I don't know. George said he didn't think he should tell me. But it was something about the kachinas."
Leaphorn pushed himself away from the fender and sat down on the dead grass, folding his legs in front of him. What he had to find out was fairly simple. Did George know the Cata boy was dead when George and Cecil left for school this morning? If he knew that, it would almost certainly mean that George had either killed Ernesto, or had seen him killed, or had seen the killer disposing of the body. But if he asked Cecil straight out, and the answer was negative, Leaphorn knew he would have to discount the answer. Cecil would lie to protect his brother. Leaphorn fished out his cigarettes. He didn't like what he was about to do. My job is to find George Bowlegs, he told himself. It's important to find him. "Do you sometimes smoke a cigarette?" he asked Cecil. He extended the pack.
Cecil took one. "Sometimes it is good," he said.
"It's never good. It hurts the lungs. But sometimes it is necessary, and therefore one does it."
Cecil sat on a rock, inhaled deeply, and let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils. Obviously it wasn't his first experience with tobacco.
"You think Cata broke a taboo, and the kachina got Cata for doing it, and is after George." Leaphorn spoke thoughtfully. He exhaled a cloud of smoke. It hung blue in the still sunlight. "Do you know when George got home last night?"
"After I was asleep," Cecil said. "He was there when I woke up this morning, getting ready to catch the school bus."
"You boys like school better than I did," Leaphorn said. "When I was a boy, I would have told my daddy probably no school today because one of the students got killed yesterday. Maybe he'd let me stay home. Worth trying, anyway." The tone was casual, bantering, exactly right, he felt. Maybe it would elicit an unguarded admission, and maybe it wouldn't. If not, he'd simply try again. Leaphorn was a man of immense patience.
"I didn't know about it yet," Cecil said. "Not till we got to school." He was staring at Leaphorn. "They didn't find the blood until this morning." Cecil's expression said he was wondering how this policeman could have forgotten that, and then he knew Leaphorn hadn't forgotten. The boy's face was briefly angry, then simply forlorn. He looked away.
"To hell with it," Leaphorn said. "Look, Cecil. I was trying to screw you around. Trying to trick you into telling me more than you want to tell me. Well, to hell with that. He's your brother. You think about it and then you tell me just what you'd want a policeman to know. And remember, it won't be just me you're telling. I've got to pass it on-most of it, anyway-to the Zu¤i police. So be careful not to tell me anything you think would hurt your brother."
"What do you want to know? Where George is? I don't know that."
"A lot of things. Mostly, a way to find George, because when I can talk to him he can give us all the answers. Like did he see what happened to Cata? Was he there? Did he do it? Did somebody else do it? But I can't talk to George until I figure out where he went. You say he didn't tell you this morning that something had happened to Cata.
But he gave you the idea that a kachina was after both of them. What did he say?"
"It was kind of confused," Cecil said. "He was excited. I guess he borrowed Ernesto's bike after school and he took it back to where Ernesto was running and he was waiting there for Ernesto." Cecil stopped, trying to remember. "It was getting dark, and I guess it was then he saw the kachina coming. And he ran away from there and walked home. He didn't say it that way exactly, but that's what I think happened. When we got to school today, he was going to find out about the kachina."
"You didn't see George after he got off the bus?"
"No. He went looking for Ernesto."
"If you were me, where would you look for him?"
Cecil said nothing. He looked down at his shoes. Leaphorn noticed that the sole on the left one had split from the upper and they had been stuck together with some sort of grayish glue. But the glue hadn't held.
"O.K.," Leaphorn said. "Then has he got any other friends there at school? Anybody else who I should talk to?"
"No friends there at school," Cecil said. "They're Zu¤is." He glanced at Leaphorn, to see if he understood. "They don't like Navajos," he said. "Just make jokes about us. Like Polack jokes."
"Just Ernesto? Everybody says Ernesto and George were friends."
"Everybody says George is kind of crazy," Cecil said. "It's because he wants to." The boy stopped, hunting words. "He wants to do things, you know. He wants to try everything. One time he wanted to be a witch, and then he studied about Zu¤i sorcery. And one time he was eating cactus buttons so he would have dreams. And Ernesto thought all that was fun, and he made George worse than he was about it. I don't think Ernesto was a friend. Not really a friend." Cecil's face was angry. "He was a goddam Zu¤i," he said.
"How about anybody else? Anybody that might know anything."
"There's those white men who are doing all that digging for the arrowheads. George used to go there a lot and watch that one man dig. Used to hang around there most of the summer and then after school started, too. Him and that Zu¤i. But Ernesto stole something, I think, and they ran 'em off."
Leaphorn had noticed the anthropology site and had asked Pasquaanti about it. It was less than a mile from where the blood had been found.
"Like stole what? When did that happen?"
"Just the other day," Cecil said. "I think Ernesto stole some of that flint they dug up. I think it was arrowheads and stuff like that."
Leaphorn started to ask why they would want to steal flint artifacts but bit off the question. Why did boys steal anything? Mostly to see if they could get away with it.
"And then there's those Belacani living over in the old hogans behind Hoski Butte," Cecil said. "George liked that blond girl over there and she was trying to teach him to play the guitar, I think."
"White people? Who are these Belacani?"
"Hippies," Cecil said. "Bunch of them been living over there. They're raising some sheep."
"I'll talk to them," Leaphorn said. "Anyone else?"
"No," Cecil said. He hesitated. "You been to our place, just now. My father. Was he." Embarrassment overcame the need to know.
"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "He'd been drinking some. But I think it'll be all right. I think he'll be asleep by the time you get home." And then he looked away from the pain and the shame in Cecil's face.
Chapter Four
Monday, December 1, 4:18 P.M.
TED ISAACS ran the shovel blade carefully into the dusty earth. The pressure on the heel of his hand told him that the resistance to the blade was a little light, that he was digging slightly above the high-calcium layer which Isaacs now knew-with absolute certainty-was the Folsom floor. He withdrew the blade and made a second stroke-a half -inch deeper-his hand now registering the feel of the metal sliding along the proper strata.
"Twenty," he said, dumping the earth on t
he pile on the sifter screen. He leaned the shovel against the wheelbarrow and began sorting the soft earth through the wire with a worn trowel. He worked steadily, and fast, pausing only to toss away clumps of grama grass roots and the tangles of tumbleweeds. Within three minutes nothing was left on the screen except an assortment of pebbles, small twigs, old rabbit droppings, and a large scorpion-its barbed tail waving in confused anger. Isaacs fished the scorpion off the wire with a stick and flicked it in the direction of his horned lark. The lark, a female, had been his only companion for the past two days, flirting around the dig site feasting on such tidbits. Isaacs wiped the sweat with his sleeve and then sorted carefully through the pebbles. He was a tall, bony young man. Now the sun was low behind Corn Mountain and he worked hatless-the white skin high on his forehead contrasting sharply with the burned brown leather of his face. His hands worked with delicate speed, blunt, callused fingers eliminating most of the stones automatically, rejecting others after a quick exploratory touch, finally pausing with a chip no larger than a toenail clipping. This chip Isaacs examined, squinting in concentration. He put it into his mouth, cleaned it quickly with his tongue, spit, and reexamined it. It was a chip of agate flint-the third he had found this morning. He fished a jeweler's glass from the pocket of his denim shirt. Through the double lens, the chip loomed huge against the now massive ridges of his thumbprint. On one edge there was the scar he knew he would find-the point of percussion, the mark left a hundred centuries ago when a Folsom hunter had flaked it off whatever tool he had been making. The thought aroused in Isaacs a sense of excitement. It always had, since his very first dig as part of an undergraduate team-an exhilarating sense of making a quantum leap backward through time.
Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 02 - Dance Hall of the Dead Page 2
