“Yeah,” Delonie said. “When old Cater died, With-erspoon’s the one who bought out the estate. And that 226
TONY HILLERMAN
sounds like his brand. That’s what I heard. Anyway, whoever has it, to hunt up there you still had to either sneak in, or pay the bastards their fee.”
“Okay,” Leaphorn said. “Now let’s figure out the best way to get there.”
Delonie pushed back his chair and rose.
“I’ll leave that to you, Lieutenant Leaphorn,” he said.
“I’m going to fix us some supper. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day and probably pretty interesting. We should eat something and then get some sleep.”
19
For Leaphorn, getting some sleep had been easier said than accomplished. After feeding them overfried pork chops with bread, gravy, and more coffee, Delonie had put him and Tommy Vang in a space once apparently used as a second bedroom but now stacked full of odds and ends of mostly broken furniture. Vang fit himself neatly onto a sagging sofa against the wall, leaving Leaphorn to retire upon a stack of three old mattresses on the floor.
It was comfortable enough, and certainly Leaphorn was tired enough, but his mind was occupied with setting up plans for the various unpleasant situations he kept imagining. Ideally, Delonie would get an early look at Delos, would clearly identify him as the man who called himself Ray Shewnack, the one who had murdered the Handys in cold blood and then gone on to earn high rank-ing on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted felons. In that case, he would manage to persuade Delonie to choke down 228
TONY HILLERMAN
his long-building hatred and come back with Leaphorn to get a warrant for the arrest of Delos. An even happier outcome involved Delonie staring through his telescopic sight a bit and declaring that Delos was not Shewnack, that he didn’t resemble Shewnack in any way at all, and asking what in the world had provoked Leaphorn into taking them on this foolish wild-goose chase. Whereupon Leaphorn would apologize to Delonie, head for home, and try to forget this whole affair.
But what about Tommy Vang then? And what if Delonie simply kept looking through that telescopic sight on his rifle until he was certain it was Shewnack and then shot the man? Even worse, what if Delos, who had clearly demonstrated his tendency to be cautious, saw them first, recognized the danger, and initiated shooting himself ?
Judging from the trophy heads on his wall, he was good at shooting. And Delos certainly knew Delonie was a dangerous enemy, and the fact that he had also poisoned one of those delicious-looking cherries for Leaphorn’s own lunch made it clear that the name of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, retired, was also on his kill list.
Leaphorn had worked his way through a multitude of such thoughts, including whether Tommy Vang was still perhaps just a little bit loyal to Delos, how much he could be trusted, and how to handle the Vang situation in general. He was still thinking that when he finally dozed off. He resumed pondering it when the sound of Delonie clumping around in the next room and the smell of coffee perking jarred him out of an uneasy sleep.
He rubbed his eyes. Moonlight coming through the dusty window revealed Vang curled on the sofa, lost in the sleep of the innocent. Leaphorn stared at him for a THE SHAPE SHIFTER
229
moment, decided he would rule Tommy an ally with some reservations, and pulled on his boots.
By a little after three A.M., the coffee had been con-sumed, they had piled into the King Cab pickup Tommy Vang had been driving, they had slid through the sleeping town of Cuba while the moon was sailing high over the San Pedro Mountains, and now they were making pretty good time on County Road 112. Vang had suggested that he should drive, since he knew the truck, but Leaphorn had again noted that pickups were a lot alike and that he knew the roads. Thus Vang had settled in the jump seat behind them, and was occupying himself for the first thirty minutes or so examining Delonie’s lever-action 30-30 rifle. He had seen lots of firearms, he explained—
the U.S. Army rifles carried by the ARVN, the Russian models the Vietcong used, and the Chinese weapons carried by the Pathet Lao—but never one that loaded itself by pulling down a lever. Before many miles he somehow resumed his sleep on the jump seat behind them.
Delonie was riding up front, wide awake but deep in some sort of silent contemplation. Totally silent for miles, except for muttering a sardonic “heavy traffic this morning” remark when they met the first car they’d seen in about fifty miles. But now he stirred, glanced at Leaphorn.
“If we’re where I think we are,” he said, “that mountain is what they call Dead Man’s Peak, and you’ve got a junction just ahead. If I read Vang’s old map right, you’re taking the left turn. That right? That takes you past Stink-ing Lake and then across a lot of Jicarilla Apache Reservation lands and into Dulce. Then what?”
“Then we turn east for about four miles or so on U.S.
230
TONY HILLERMAN
84, back on pavement then for a few minutes, and then north on gravel toward a little old village up there named, ah, Edith, I think it is, and then we jog northwestward a little—in to Colorado and winding under Archuleta Mesa, and going very slow because we will have to be looking for that little turnoff road Delos marked.”
“Yeah,” Delonie said, peering out the window. “That hump over there, it’s part of the San Juans, I guess, but they call that long ridge the Chalk Mountain. I’ve hunted up there a little in my younger days.” He sighed. “Complicated country. You never knew whether you were still on the Jicarilla land, or over in Colorado trespassing on the Southern Ute Reservation, or which state you were in.” The thought of that caused Delonie to chuckle.
Leaphorn glanced at him. “Something funny?”
“Not that it mattered. We wouldn’t have had a hunting license for either state, or from the Apaches, and I don’t think the Southern Utes give them.”
“I think we’d better start looking for a turnoff place,” Leaphorn said.
“And I think maybe it’s time you ought to switch off your headlights. If Delos is out getting ready to hunt, he’s going to notice somebody coming. And who is he going to think would be arriving here this early in the morning. It would be way too early for Tommy.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Leaphorn said. The moon was down now, but the eastern horizon was showing its predawn brightness. He slowed, snapped off the headlights, crept along until his eyes were better adjusted to the gloom. They rolled down the slope of the hill they’d just climbed, crossed a culvert with the sound of a stream gurgling under it, negotiated a sharp curve beyond the THE SHAPE SHIFTER
231
culvert, and were in the dark shadows cast by a heavy growth of stream-side willows. Leaphorn switched on the headlights again.
Just ahead the beams lit a sign. POSTED. And below it the graphic design of a W tilted over on its side. Leaphorn eased the pickup to a crawl, turned off the headlights.
Just beyond the Ponderosa pine on which the sign was mounted a dirt lane turned off the gravel road they’d been following.
“Well,” Delonie said. “I guess that would be old With-erspoon’s Lazy W brand on that sign there. So here we are. Now we find out what happens next.” Leaphorn didn’t comment on that. Just beyond the Ponderosa pine on which the sign was mounted, rutted tracks swerved off the gravel. Leaphorn guided the pickup onto them, switched on the headlights. They illuminated a three-strand barbed-wire gate, stretched between two fence posts. From the top wire another sign dangled, a square piece of white tin on which the words ALL TRESPASS-ERS WILL BE PROSECUTED were painted in red.
Leaphorn stopped the truck and turned off its headlights.
“Why don’t you just drive right through it?” Delonie asked.
“That would make it malicious mischief, too,” Leaphorn said. “You take care of it.”
“Got wire cutters?”
Leaphorn laughed. “No. But that gate pole looks like it used to be a little aspen. I doubt if you’d need any.” Delonie got out, grabbed the gate pole,
applied com-bined leg and arm leverage, broke it, tossed broken pole and wires aside, stepped back, and waved Leaphorn in.
232
TONY HILLERMAN
Inside the fence the road slanted downward toward a small stream. They bumped across a small culvert and the ranch road, now deeply rutted, took them into heavy stream-side growths of willow and brushy trees and almost total darkness. Leaphorn flicked on the lights again, but just long enough to see what he was driving into, then restored the darkness. Better let the ruts steer them, along with what little he could see in the dimness, than take a chance of their headlights giving Delos an early warning.
They rolled along, very slowly, very silently, letting the front wheels take them wherever the ruts guided the pickup along the meandering stream.
“Getting brighter ahead,” Delonie said.
It was, and the road was suddenly less rutted and slanting upward. Ahead now they could see a bare-looking ridge faintly illuminated by the predawn glow along the eastern horizon.
“There it is,” Delonie said, in a hoarse whisper, pointing ahead and to the right.
Leaphorn could make out the shape of a small house, slanted roof, tall stone chimney, junipers crowding in beside it. He stopped the pickup, turned off the ignition, and listened. A still, windless morning. First there was only the ticking sound of the engine cooling. Then the odd rasping sound of what locals would call a Saw-Whet owl, in recognition of its unpleasant voice. It called and called and called, and finally got a barely audible answer from somewhere far behind them. Then the yipping of coyotes from the ridge behind the cabin, which lapsed quickly into nothing but the vague sound of the breeze and the even vaguer voice of the stream.
THE SHAPE SHIFTER
233
Leaphorn yawned, suddenly feeling some of the tension draining away and the accumulated fatigue taking over. He rubbed his eyes. This was not a time to be getting sleepy.
“What now?” Delonie whispered.
“We wait until it gets a little lighter,” Leaphorn said, talking very low. “Mr. Vang told me Mr. Delos comes up here alone. The way he describes his hunting tactics he gets out to the blind when there’s just enough light to see a little. That would be just about now, I’d think.” Vang was sort of semi-standing in the space behind them, leaning forward for a better view out the windshield. “He says its takes him about twenty minutes to walk from the cabin around to the hillside where the blind is. There’s a regular trail he follows, and he wants to be off it and into the blind before the elk come out of the timber on the slope to start drinking in the stream. He wants to be all ready with everything when that happens. He used to talk to me about that. Back when I was younger. When he was still trying to teach me how to be a hunter.” The tone of that was sad.
“When did he stop doing that?” Leaphorn asked.
“A long, long time ago,” Vang said. “When I was maybe twelve. He said he didn’t see any signs in me that I would get to be one of the predator people. But he was going to try again later.”
“But he didn’t?”
“Not yet,” Vang said.
Delonie wasn’t interested in this.
“Point is you think he’s already gone?” Delonie asked.
“That is, if he was ever here.”
“Oh, I think he was here,” Vang said. “I was to come here to meet him. After I left that box . . .” 234
TONY HILLERMAN
“After you left me that gift box of poisoned cherries,” Delonie said. “I guess you were supposed to come and give him a report on how many of them I’d eaten before they killed me.”
“No. No,” Vang said. “I was just supposed to leave the box.”
Leaphorn made a shushing sound.
“Hand me up the rifle, Mr. Vang,” Delonie said. “I want to do some looking around through the scope. See what I can see.”
Vang dropped back, felt around, handed up the 30-30.
Delonie put it on his lap, muzzle pointed away from Leaphorn, and began loosening the clamps that held the scope in place. He took it off, pulled out his shirt tail, pol-ished the scope with the cloth, then looked through it. First peering at the house, then scanning the area around it.
“No sign of any life,” he said. “Didn’t expect any.” The rifle lay on the seat beside Delonie. Leaphorn reached it, slid it away, leaned it against the driver’s-side door. He glanced at Delonie, who hadn’t seemed to notice.
“Let me have a look through that scope,” Leaphorn said, and Delonie handed it to him.
Leaphorn looked, saw no signs of life, hadn’t expected any. “Nobody home,” he said, also wondering if there ever had been.
“Beginning to wonder some more about all this,” Delonie said. “You pretty sure Mr. Vang has been telling us right?”
“Oh yes,” Vang said. “I told you right. You see that little bit of white on top of that bush. Beside the house?
THE SHAPE SHIFTER
235
See? It sort of moves when the breeze blows? That’s a white towel.”
Delonie said, “Towel?”
Leaphorn said, “Where?”
“Look at the bushes right by the uphill side of the house. Beyond the porch. On the bush.”
“That could be anything. Piece of some sort of trash caught there,” Delonie said.
Leaphorn moved the scope. Found bushes, saw a wee bit of white amid the green, looked again. Yep.
“I see it now,” he said, and handed the scope to Delonie. He said, “Mr. Vang, you got damn good eyesight. But Delonie is right. It could be anything.”
“Yes,” Vang said. “But I remember Mr. Delos told me when he went hunting he would hang out a white towel there, and when he came back from hunting, he would take it in. That was so I would know to wait for him.”
“Well, now,” Delonie said, “if Mr. Vang here is telling us right, I guess we could walk right up there and make ourselves at home.”
Leaphorn had no comment on that. He held his wrist-watch close enough to read its hands, looked out at the brightening sky, and found himself confronting the same need for self-analysis he’d felt a few days ago when he was home alone, analyzing what he had run into since he’d begun this chase of Mel Bork and the tale-teller rug.
Wondering if he had slipped prematurely into senile de-mentia. Why was he here and what did he expect to accomplish? He couldn’t quite imagine that. But on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine turning back either. So they may as well get on with it.
“Here’s what I think we should do,” Leaphorn said.
236
TONY HILLERMAN
“Mr. Vang will stay in the truck here. Sitting behind the steering wheel. Like the driver doing just what Mr. Delos probably was expecting to find. Is that right, Tommy?”
“I think so. This is what he told me to do.”
“Then Mr. Delonie and I will get out and find us a place where we can sit and watch for Mr. Delos to come back.
Either we’ll sit together, or close enough so that when Mr.
Delonie gets a good enough look to make sure he knows who it is, he can signal me, one way or another.”
“Um,” Delonie said, “then what?”
Leaphorn had been hoping he wouldn’t ask that. “I guess it will depend on a lot of things.”
“Tell me,” Delonie said. “Like what?”
“Like whether when you see him you tell us he is this Shewnack. Or whether you tell us he isn’t, and you don’t know who he is.”
“If he ain’t Shewnack, I’d vote for just driving right on out of here. Heading right on home.”
“I guess we might do that,” Leaphorn agreed. “But I’d think if it’s Delos, then I think you have some questions you’d like to ask him about that bottle of poisoned cherries he sent you. I know I’m curious about the one on top of that slice of fruitcake he sent me off with.” Delonie snorted. “He’ll point at Tommy Vang here and tell us Vang must have done that. Tell us that Tommy has been sort of c
razy ever since he was a kid. All mixed up by all that violence back in Laos, or wherever it was.”
While he was listening to that, Leaphorn was thinking that Delonie was probably right. That was just about what Delos would say. And it might even be true. But if he was going to play out this game, he had better get moving. He THE SHAPE SHIFTER
237
opened the truck door, which turned on the interior light, and quickly shut it.
“Let’s minimize the light,” he said to Delonie. “When I say ready, we both hop out and shut the doors behind us. Then Vang can climb over into where he’s supposed to be sitting.”
“First off,” Delonie said, “you hand me back my rifle.”
“I’ll carry it,” Leaphorn said.
“I’ll put the scope back on it,” Delonie said. “Can’t use the scope here in this closed space with it tied to a rifle barrel. But get it outside and it’s better.” Leaphorn considered this.
“I’ll tell you this, too. I ain’t getting out of this truck without that rifle,” Delonie said. “If it’s Shewnack, he’d kill me on sight. I want to have something to protect myself with.”
“So do I,” Leaphorn said. “I want to protect myself from going to jail with you if you shoot him.”
“Don’t trust me?”
“You think I should?”
Delonie laughed. Punched Leaphorn on the shoulder.
“Okay,” he said. “You keep that pistol I’ve noticed has been bulging out of your jacket pocket. I’ll take my rifle.
And I promise you I won’t kill the son of a bitch unless it comes to downright self-defense. No other choice.” He held out his hand. Leaphorn shook it.
“Now,” he said. “We get out.”
They did, quickly, and Leaphorn handed Delonie the rifle over the hood of the truck.
“Noticed you handed it butt first,” Delonie said. “I appreciated that.”
“Just good manners,” Leaphorn said.
20
The place they found as their lookout point was in an outcropping of granite slabs where a healthy growth of Forestieria and willow had developed. Besides the camouflage, it also had a deep layer of decayed pine needles and aspen leaves, providing something to sit upon. They had concluded that the hunting blind this cabin served would be off to their right, probably up the ridge line less than a mile distant. There the slope was higher and more heavily forested with Ponderosa and fir, and it would look almost directly down on the stream they had been following.
The Shape Shifter jlajc-18 Page 19
