Chee nodded and returned the smile, but he was thinking there was one big difference. In the 1890s, or 1910s, or whenever it was, the local posse didn’t have the FBI city boys telling them how to run their hunt.
Chapter Fourteen
From where Joe Leaphorn sat, he could see the odd shape of Sleeping Ute Mountain out one window, and the Ute Casino about a mile down the slope out of another. If he looked straight ahead, he could watch Louisa and Conrad Becenti, her interpreter. They sat at a card table putting a new tape in their recording machine. Beyond them, on a sofa of bright blue plastic against the wall, sat an immensely old and frail-looking Ute woman named Bashe Lady, her plump and middle-aged granddaughter and a girl about twelve who Leaphorn presumed was a great-granddaughter. Leaphorn himself was perched upon a straight-backed kitchen chair, perched far too long with no end in sight.
Only Bashe Lady and Louisa seemed to be enjoying this session—the old woman obviously glorying in the attention, and Louisa in the role of myth hunter happy with what she was collecting. Leaphorn was fighting off sleep, and the occupants of the sofa had the look of those who had heard all this before, and far too often.
They’d been hearing that Bashe Lady had been born into the Mogche band of the Southern Utes but had married into the Kapot band. With that out of the way, she had used the next hour or so enthusiastically giving Louisa the origin story of both bands. Leaphorn had been interested for thirty minutes or so, but mostly in Professor Bourebonette’s technical skills—the questions she chose to direct the interview and the way she made sure she understood what Becenti was telling her. Becenti was part-Ute, part-Navajo and probably part something else. He had studied mythology with Louisa at Northern Arizona and seemed to still maintain that awe-stricken student-to-teacher attitude.
Leaphorn squirmed into a slightly less uncomfortable position. He watched a truck towing a multi-sized horse trailer pulling into the Ute Casino parking lot, watched its human occupants climb out and head for the gaming tables, noticed a long column of vehicles creeping south on U.S. 666, the cork in this traffic bottle being an overloaded flatbed hauling what seemed to be a well-drilling rig. He found himself wondering if the campaign by Biblical fundamentalists to have the highway number changed from ‘the mark of the Beast’ to something less terrible (turning the signs upside down to make it 999 had been suggested) had any effect on patronage of the casino. Probably not. He shifted from that to trying to decide how the casino management dealt with the problem of chips that surely must have been snatched from roulette tables when the lights went off during the robbery. Probably they had borrowed a different set from another casino. But the discomfort inflicted by the wooden chair seat drove that thought away. He shifted into getting-up position and reached for his empty glass—intending to sneak into the kitchen with it without being rude.
No such luck. The great-granddaughter had been watching him, and apparently watching for her own excuse to escape. She leaped to her feet and confronted him.
“I’ll get you some more iced tea,” she said, snatched the glass and was gone.
Leaphorn settled himself again, and as he did, the interview got interesting.
“… and then she said that in those days when the Bloody Knives were coming in all the time and stealing everything and killing people, the Mogches had a young man named Ouraynad, but people called him Ironhand, or sometimes The Badger. And he was very good at killing the Bloody Knives. He would lead our young men down across the San Juan and they would steal back the cattle the Bloody Knives had stolen from us.”
“OK, Conrad,” Louisa said. “Ask her if Ouraynad was related to Ouray?”
Becenti asked. Bashe Lady responded with a discourse incomprehensible to Leaphorn, except for references to Bloody Knives, which was the Ute nickname for the hated Navajos. Leaphorn hadn’t been bothered by that at first. After all, the Navajo curing ceremonial used the Utes to symbolize enemies of the people and the Hopi phrase for Navajos meant ‘head breakers,” with the implication his forefathers killed people with rocks. But now Leaphorn had been hearing the translator rattle off uncomplimentary remarks about the dine’ for about two hours. He was beginning to resent it.
Bashe Lady stopped talking, gave Leaphorn an inscrutable look, and threw out her hands.
“A lot of stuff about the heroism and bravery of the Great Chief Ouray,” Becenti said, ”but nothing that’s not already published. Bottom line was she thought this Ironhand was related to Ouray in some way, but she wasn’t sure.”
Leaphorn leaned forward and interrupted. “Could you ask her if this Ironhand had any descendants with the same name?”
Becenti looked at Louisa. Louisa looked at Leaphorn, frowning. “Later,” she said. “I don’t want to break up her line of thought.” And to Becenti: "Ask her if this hero Ironhand had any magical powers. Was he a witch? Anything mystical?”
Becenti asked, with Bashe Lady grinning at him.
The grin turned into a cackling laugh, which turned into a discourse, punctuated by more laughter and hand gestures.
“She says they heard the Navajos [Becenti had stopped translating that into Bloody Knives in deference to Leaphorn sitting behind him] were fooled so often by Ironhand that they began believing he was like one of their witches — like a Skinwalker who could change himself into an owl and fly, or a dog and run under the bushes. She said they would hear stories the Navajos told about how he could jump from the bottom of the canyon up to the rim, and then jump down again. But she said the Mogche people knew he was just a man. Just a lot smarter than the Navajos who hunted him. About then they started calling him Badger. Because of the way he fooled the Navajos.”
Leaphorn leaned forward, into the silence which followed that, and began: "Ask her if this guy had a son.”
Louisa looked over her shoulder at him, and said, “Patience. We’ll get to that.” But then she shrugged and turned back to Becenti.
“Ask her if Ironhand had any children?”
He had several, both sons and daughters, Bashe Lady said. Two wives, one a Kapot Ute and the other a Paiute woman. While Becenti was translating that, she burst into enthusiastic discourse again, with more laughter and gestures. Becenti listened, and translated.
“She said he took this Paiute woman when he was old, after his first wife died, and she was the daughter of a Paiute they called Dobby. And Dobby was like Ironhand himself. He killed many Navajos, and they couldn’t catch him either. And Ironhand, even when he was an old, old man, had a son by this Paiute woman, and this son became a hero, too.”
Louisa glanced back at Leaphorn, looked at Becenti, said, “Ask her what he did to become a hero.”
Bashe Lady talked. Becenti listened, inserted a brief question, listened again.
“He was in the war. He was one of the soldiers who wore the green hats. She said he shot a lot of men and got shot twice himself, and they gave him medals and ribbons,” Becenti said. “I asked which war. She said she didn’t know, but he came home about when they were drilling the new oil wells in the Aneth field. So it must have been Vietnam.”
During all this, Great-Granddaughter emerged from the kitchen and handed Leaphorn his renewed glass of iced tea — devoid now of ice cubes. What Bashe Lady had been saying had brought Granddaughter out of lethargy. She listened intently to Becenti’s translation, leaned forward. “He was in the army,” she said. “In the Special Services, and they put him on the Cambodian border with the hill tribes. The Montegnards. And then they sent him over into Cambodia.” She laughed. “He said he wasn’t supposed to talk about that.”
She paused, looking embarrassed by her interruption. Leaphorn took advantage of the silence. Granddaughter obviously knew a lot about this younger version of Ironhand. He put aside his manners and interjected himself into the program.