Leaphorn glanced at McGinnis. The trader sat swirling his drink, his face lined and compressed by age. Leaphorn understood the old mans distaste for Noni. McGinnis didn’t want a buyer. Short Mountain had trapped him in his own stubbornness, and held him here all his life, and the for sale sign had been no more than a gesture a declaration that he was smart enough to know he’d been screwed. And the asking price, Leaphorn had always heard, had been grotesquely high.
No, McGinnis said finally. There just wasn’t any sings close around here at all.
Okay, Leaphorn said. So if there wasn’t any sings, and Hosteen Tso told you he’d seen somebody step on two or three sand paintings last March, where would you figure that could have happened?
McGinnis shifted his gaze from the bourbon to Leaphorn, peering at him quizzically. No place, he said. Shit. What kind of a question is that?
Hosteen Tso was there when it happened.
No damned place, McGinnis said. He looked puzzled. What the hell you going to have two or three sand paintings for at once?
It wouldn’t be that Wind Way Chant, Leaphorn said. Wrong painting.
And the wrong clan. The Nakais are Red Foreheads. Wouldn’t be no reason for Old Man Tso to go down there for the Wind Way. He took another sip of his bourbon.
Where’d you hear that crap?
Margaret Cigarette passed it on to the FBI when they were questioning her. When I leave here I’m going to go out to her place and find out more about it.
She probably ain’t home, McGinnis said. Somebody said she was off somewhere. Visiting kin, I think. Somewhere up east of Mexican Water.
Maybe she’s back by now.
Maybe, McGinnis said. His tone said he doubted it.
I guess Ill go find out, Leaphorn said. He probably wouldn’t find her at home, but up east of Mexican Water meant just about anywhere in a thousand square miles along the Arizona-Utah border. Leaphorn decided it was time to move the conversation toward what had really brought him here the man in the gold-rimmed glasses. He moved obliquely.
Those your lance points? Leaphorn asked, nodding toward the window sill.
McGinnis pushed himself laboriously out of the chair and waddled to the window, brought back three of the flint points. He handed them to Leaphorn and lowered himself into the rocker again.
Came out of that dig up Short Mountain Wash, he said. Anthropologists say they’re early Anasazi but they look kind of big to me for that. They must a found a hundred of em.
The points had been chipped out of a shiny black basaltic schist. They were thick, and crude, with only slight fluting where the butt of the point would be fastened into the lance shaft. Leaphorn wondered how McGinnis had got his hands on them. But he didn’t ask.
Obviously the anthropologists would guard such artifacts zealously, and obviously the way McGinnis had got them wouldn’t stand scrutiny. Leaphorn changed the subject, angling toward his main interest.
Anybody come in and tell you they found an old helicopter?
McGinnis laughed. That son-of-a-bitch is long gone, he said. If it ever flew into this country in the first place. He sipped again. Maybe it did come in here. The feds seemed to have that pinned down pretty good. But if it crashed, Ida had some of those Begay boys, or the Tsossies, or somebody in here long ago nosing around to see if there was a reward, or trying to pawn it to me, or selling spare parts, or something.
Another thing, Leaphorn said. Mrs. Cigarette said Tso was worried about getting a sickness from his great-grandfathers ghost. That mean anything to you?
Well, now, McGinnis said. Now, that’s interesting. You know who his great-grandfather was? He came from quite a line, Tso did.
Who was it?
Course he had four great-grandfathers, McGinnis said. But the one they talk about around here was a big man before the Long Walk. Lots of stories about him. They called him Standing Medicine. He was one of them that wouldn’t surrender when Kit Carson came through. One of that bunch with Chief Narbona and Ganado Mucho who fought it out with the army. Supposed to been a big medicine man. They claim he knew the whole Blessing Way, all seven days of it, and the Mountain Way, and several other sings.
McGinnis poured another dollop of bourbon into his glass-raising the level carefully to the bottom of the Coca-Cola trademark. But I never heard anything about his ghost being any particular place or bothering people. He sampled the freshened drink, grimaced. God knows, though, he might be causing ghost sickness all over that country out there. It was time now, Leaphorn thought, for the crucial question.
Last day or two you hear anything about a stranger with a big dog? A great big dog?
A stranger?
Or a Navajo, either.
McGinnis shook his head. No. He laughed. Heard a Navajo Wolf story this morning, though. Feller from back on the plateau said a skinwalker killed his nephews sheepdogs at the Falling Rock water hole way out there on the plateau. But you’re talking about a real dog, ain’t you?
A real one, Leaphorn said. But did this nephew see the witch?
Not the way I heard it, McGinnis said. The dogs didn’t come back with the sheep. So the next day the boy went to see about it. He found em dead and the werewolf tracks where they’d been killed. McGinnis shrugged. You know how it goes. Pretty much the same old skinwalker story.
Nothing about a stranger, then, Leaphorn said.
McGinnis eyed Leaphorn carefully, watching his reaction. Well, now. We got us a stranger right here at Short Mountain. Got in early this morning. He paused with the storyteller mans talent for increasing the impact. A woman, he said.
Leaphorn said nothing.
Pretty young woman, McGinnis said, still watching Leaphorn. Big sports car. From Washington.
You mean Theodora Adams? Leaphorn asked.
McGinnis didn’t show his disappointment.
You know all about her, then?
A little bit, Leaphorn said. She’s the daughter of a doctor in the Public Health Service. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing here. Or care, for that matter. Whats she after? One of those anthropologists up the wash?
McGinnis examined the level of bourbon in his glass, sloshed it gently, and examined Leaphorn out of the corner of his eye.
She’s trying to find someone who can take her up to Hosteen Tsos hogan, McGinnis said.
He grinned then. He’d finally gotten a reaction out of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn.
» 6 «
Looking for Theodora Adams proved to be unnecessary. Joe Leaphorn emerged from the front door of the Short Mountain Trading Post and found Theodora Adams hurrying up, looking for him.
You’re the policeman who drives that car, she told him. The smile was brilliant, a flashing white arch of perfect teeth in a very tanned perfect face. There’s something you could do for me again the smile if you would.