Leaphorn nodded.
'Take great pride in cleaning up after themselves. The drill now is urinate right beside the river, so it dilutes it fast. Everything else they carry out. Portable toilets. Build their camp fires in fireboxes so you don't get all that carbon in the sand. Even carry out the ashes.'
They turned upriver toward Bluff. Off the reservation now. Out of Leaphorn's jurisdiction and into Thatcher's. Much of the land above the bluffs lining the river would be federal land -- public domain grazing leases. The land along the river had been homesteaded by the Mormon families who'd settled this narrow valley on orders from Brigham Young to form an outpost against the hostile Gentile world. This stony landscape south of the river had been Leaphorn's country once, when he was young and worked out of Kayenta, but it was too waterless and barren to support the people who would require police attention.
History said 250 Mormons had settled the place in the 1860s, and the last census figures Leaphorn had seen showed its current population was 240--three service stations strung along the highway, three roadside cafes, two groceries, two motels, the office and boathouse of Wild Rivers Expeditions, a school, a ward meetinghouse, and a scattering of houses, some of them empty. The years hadn't changed much at Bluff.
Houk's ranch house was the exception. Leaphorn remembered it as a big, solid block of a building, formed of cut pink sandstone, square as a die and totally neat. It had been connected to the gravel road from Bluff by a graded dirt driveway, which led through an iron gate, curved over a sagebrush-covered rise, and ended under the cottonwoods that shaded the house. Leaphorn noticed the difference at the gate, painted then, rusted now. He unlatched it, refastened it after Thatcher drove through. Then he pulled the chain, which slammed the clapper against the big iron church bell suspended on the pole that took the electric line to the house. That told Houk he had visitors.
The driveway now was rutted, with a growth of tumbleweeds, wild asters, and cheat grass along the tracks. The rabbit fence, which Leaphorn remembered surrounding a neat and lush front yard garden, was sagging now and the garden a tangle of dry country weeds. The pillars that supported the front porch needed paint. So did the pickup truck parked beside the porch. Only the solid square shape of the house, built to defy time, hadn't been changed by the years. But now, surrounded by decay, it stood like a stranger. Even the huge barn on the slope behind it, despite its stone walls, seemed to sag.
Thatcher let the sedan roll to a stop in the shade of the cottonwood. The screen door opened and Houk appeared. He was leaning on a cane. He squinted from the shadows into blinding sunlight, trying to identify who had rung the yard bell. At first look, Leaphorn thought that Houk, like the pink sandstone of his house, had been proof against time. Despite the cane, his figure in the shadow of the porch had the blocky sturdiness Leaphorn remembered. There was still the round bulldog face, the walrus mustache, the small eyes peering through wire-rimmed glasses. But now Leaphorn saw the paunch, the slight slump, the deepened lines, the grayness, the raggedness of the mustache which hid his mouth. And as Houk shifted his weight against the cane, Leaphorn saw the grimace of pain cross his face.
'Well, now, Mr. Thatcher,' Houk said, recognizing him. 'What brings the Bureau of Land Management all the way out here so soon? Wasn't it only last spring you was out here to see me?' And then he saw Leaphorn. 'And whoâŚ' he began, and stopped. His expression shifted from neutral, to surprise, to delight.
'By God,' he said. 'I don't remember your name, but you're the Navajo policeman who found my boy's hat.' Houk stopped. 'Yes I do. It was Leaphorn.'
It was Leaphorn's turn for surprise. Almost twenty years since he'd been involved in the hunt for Houk's boy. He had talked to Houk only two or three times, and only briefly. Giving him the wet blue felt hat, soggy with muddy San Juan River water. Standing beside him under the alcove in the cliff that tense moment when the state police captain decided they had Brigham Houk cornered. And finally, on this very porch when it was all over and no hope remained, listening to the man examine his conscience, finding in his own flaws the blame for his boy's murderous rage. Three meetings, and a long, long time ago.
Houk ushered them into what he called the parlor, a neat room that smelled of furniture polish. 'Don't use this room much,' Houk said loudly, and he pulled back the curtains, raised the blinds, and pushed up the sash windows to admit the autumn. But the room was still dim-- its walls a gallery of framed photographs of people, of bookshelves lined mostly with pots. 'Don't get much company,' Houk concluded. He sat himself in the overstuffed armchair that matched the sofa, creating another faint puff of dust. 'In just a minute the girl will be in here with something cold to drink.' He waited then, his fingers tapping at the chair arm. It was their turn to speak.
'We're looking for a woman,' Thatcher began. 'Anthropologist named Eleanor Friedman-Bernal.'
Houk nodded. 'I know her.' He looked surprised. 'What she do?'
'She's been missing,' Thatcher said. 'For a couple of weeks.' He thought about what he wanted to say next. 'Apparently she came out here just a little while before she disappeared. To Bluff. Did you see her?'
'Let's see now. I'd say it was three, four weeks when she was out here last,' Houk said. 'Something like that. Maybe I could figure it out exactly.'
'What did she want?'
It seemed to Leaphorn that Houk's face turned slightly pinker than its usual hue. He stared at Thatcher, his lip moving under the mustache, his fingers still drumming.
'You fellas didn't take long to get out here,' he said. 'I'll say that for you.' He pushed himself up in the chair, then sat back down again. 'But how the hell you connect it with me?'
'You mean her being missing?' Thatcher said, puzzled. 'She had your name down in her notes.'
'I meant the killings,' Houk said.
'Killings?' Leaphorn asked.
'Over in New Mexico,' Houk said. 'The pot hunters. It was on the radio this morning.'
'You think we're connecting those with you?' Leaphorn asked. 'Why do you think that?'
'Because it seems to me that every time the feds start thinking about pot stealing, they come nosing around here,' Houk said. 'Those folks get shot stealing pots, stands to reason it's going to get the BLM cops, and the FBI, and all off their butts and working. Since they don't know what the hell they're doing, they bother me.' Houk surveyed them, his small blue eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses.
'You fellas telling me this visit hasn't nothing to do with that?'
'That's what we're telling you,' Leaphorn said. 'We're trying to find an anthropologist. A woman named Eleanor Friedman-Bernal. She disappeared the thirteenth of October. Some references in her notes about coming out here to Bluff to see Mr. Harrison Houk. We thought if we knew what she came out here to see you about, it might tell us something about where to look next.'
Houk thought about it, assessing them. 'She came to see me about a pot,' he said.
Leaphorn sat, waiting for his silence to encourage Houk to add to that. But Thatcher was not a Navajo.
'A pot?'
'To do with her research,' Houk said. 'She'd seen a picture of it in a Nelson auction catalog. You know about that outfit? And it was the kind she's interested in. So she called `em, and talked to somebody or other, and they told her they'd got it from me.' Houk paused, waiting for Thatcher's question.
'What did she want to know?'
'Exactly where I found it. I didn't find it. I bought it off a Navajo. I give her his name.'
A middle-aged Navajo woman came into the room, carrying a tray with three water glasses, a pitcher of what appeared to be ice water, and three cans of Hires root beer.