Chee climbed out of the cab, trotted into the office, and called the Farmington office of Wellserve, Inc. Yes, they could provide the police with a copy of their well-service route map. Yes, the service superintendent could mark the route Nails had served.
When Chee left Wellserve with the map folded on the seat beside him he had three hours left before sundown. Then there would be a half-moon. A good night for a pot hunter to work, and a good night to hunt pot hunters. He stopped at the sheriffs office and found out who was patrolling where tonight. If Nails was off reservation land, he'd need a deputy along to make an arrest. Then he drove up the San Juan River valley through the little oil town of Bloomfield, and out of the valley into the infinity of sagebrush that covers the Blanco Plateau. He was remembering he'd read somewhere of somebody estimating more than a hundred thousand Anasazi sites on the Colorado Plateau--only a few of them excavated, only a few thousand even mapped. But it wouldn't be impossible. He would guess Nails had found sites along the service roads he traveled and would be looting them. Chee knew some of those sites himself. And he knew what attracted the Anasazi. A cliff faced to catch the winter sun and shaded in the summer, enough floodplain to grow something, and a source of water. That, particularly the water, narrowed it a lot.
He scouted Canyon Largo first, and Blanco Canyon, and Jasis Canyon. He found two sites that had been dug into fairly recently. But nothing new and no sign of the tire tread pattern he was looking for. He moved north then and checked Gobernador Canyon and La Jara and the Vaqueros Wash eastward in the Carson National Forest. He found nothing. He skipped westward, driving far faster than the speed limit down New Mexico Highway 44. The light was dying now--a cloudless autumn evening with the western sky a dull copper glow. He checked out a couple of canyons near Ojo Encino, restricting himself always to the access roads gouged out to reach the gas wells and pump stations Nails had been serving.
By midnight he finished checking the roads leading from the Star Lake Pump Station, driving slowly, using his flashlight to check for tracks at every possible turnoff. He circled back past the sleeping trading post the maps called White Horse Lake. He crossed the Continental Divide, and dropped into the network of arroyos that drain Chaco Mesa. Again he found nothing. He circled back across Chaco Wash and picked up the gravel road that leads northwestward toward Nageezi Trading Post.
Beyond Betonnie Tsosie Wash he stopped the pickup in the middle of the road. He climbed out wearily, stretched, and turned on the flash to check the turnoff of an access trail. He stood in the light of the half-moon, yawning, his flash reflecting from the chalky dust. It showed, clear and fresh, the dual tracks of an almost new Dayton tire tread.
Chee's watch showed 2:04 A.M. At 2:56 he found the place where, maybe a thousand years ago, a little band of Anasazi families had lived, and built their cluster of small stone shelters and living spaces, and died. Chee had been walking for more than a mile. He had left his pickup by a pump site and followed the twin tracks on foot. The pump marked the dead end of this branch of the service road -- if two ruts wandering through the sage and juniper could be called that. From here, the dual tires had made their own road. Away from the hard-packed ruts, they were easy to follow now -- crushed tumbleweeds, broken brush, the sharp smell of bruised sage.
They led up a long slope, and Chee guessed they wouldn't lead far. He walked carefully and quietly, moon over his shoulder, flash off. The slow huffing of the pump motor diminished behind him. He stopped, listening for the sound the backhoe motor would be making. He heard a coyote, and then its partner. One behind him, one on the ridge to his left. It was work time for predators, with all the little nocturnal rodents out braving death to find a meal.
He didn't see the truck until he was within fifty feet of it. Nails had nosed it into a cluster of juniper just over the crest of the hill. The doors of its van box stood open, a square black shape with the ramp used to unload the backhoe still in place. Chee stared, listening, feeling a mixture of excitement, exultation, and uneasiness. He put his hand on the pistol in his jacket pocket. Chee did not like pistols in general, and the one he had carried since being sworn into the force was no exception. But now the heavy hard metal was reassuring. He walked to the truck, placing each step carefully, stopping to listen. The cab was empty, the doors unlocked. The wire cable from the winch spool extended down the steep slope, slack. If the backhoe was down there, as it must be, the engine wasn't running. The silence was almost total. From far behind him, he could hear the faint sound of the walking beam pump. No coyote sounds now. The air was moving up the slope past his face, a faint coolness.
Chee held the cable in his left hand and started down the slope, following the path broken by the backhoe, trying to keep his weight on his feet, trying to avoid the noise sliding would make.
The slope was too steep. He slid a few feet, regained control. Slid again as the earth gave way under his feet. Then he lay on his back, motionless, breathing dust, cursing under his breath at the noise he had made. He listened, hand gripping the cable. Down here under the ridge, he could no longer hear the distant pump motor. The coyote yipped somewhere off to his left and provoked an answering yip from its partner. He saw the backhoe, partially visible through the brush, its motor silent. The half-moon lit the roof of its cab, the shovel, and part of the jointed arm that controlled it. Nails apparently had been frightened away. It didn't matter. He had the backhoe. He had the truck that had hauled it here, and the record would show Nails had rented the truck.
Chee gripped the cable and shifted his free hand to push himself erect. He felt cloth under his fingers. And a button. And the hard bone and cold skin of a wrist. He scrambled away from it.
The form lay facedown, head upslope, in the deep darkness cast by a juniper--its left hand stretching out toward the cable. A man, Chee saw. He squatted, controlling the shock. And when it was controlled, he leaned forward and felt the wrist.
Dead. Dead long enough to be stiff. He bent low over the corpse and turned on his flash. It wasn't Nails. It was a Navajo. A young man, hair cut short, wearing a blue checked shirt with two stains on its back. Chee touched one of them with a tentative finger. Stiff. Dried blood. The man had apparently been shot twice. In the middle of the back and just above the hip.
Chee snapped off the light. He thought of the Navajo's ghost, hovering nearby. He turned his mind away from that. The chindi was out there, representing all that was evil in the dead man's being. But one did not think of chindis out in the darkness. Where was Nails? Most likely, hours away from here. But why did he leave the truck? This Navajo must be the one seen with Nails when they'd stolen the backhoe. Maybe the Navajo had driven the truck, Nails had come in his own car. Odd, but possible.
Chee moved cautiously the few remaining yards to the bottom of the hill. It was full dark here, the moonlight blocked by the high ground. Just enough reflected light to guide his feet. A falling out of thieves, Chee thought. A fight. Nails pulls a gun. The Navajo runs. Nails shoots him. He didn't believe Nails would still be here, or anywhere near here. But he walked carefully.
Even so he almost tripped over the bag before he saw it. It was black plastic, the sort sold in little boxes of a dozen to line wastebaskets. Chee untwisted the wire securing its top and felt inside. Fragments of pottery, just as he'd expected. Between him and the backhoe, more such bags were clustered. Chee walked past them to look at the machine.
It had been turned off with the shovel locked high over the trench it had been digging into a low, brush-covered mound. Scattered along the excavation was a clutter of flat stones. Once they must have formed the wall of an Anasazi settlement. He didn't notice the bones until he turned on his flash.