Yeah, Leaphorn said. You got it figured right.
They thought about it awhile. The old mantel clock on the shelf behind Leaphorns chair became suddenly noisy in the silence. McGinnis smiled faintly over his Coca-Cola glass.
But McGinnis hadn’t seen it happen, hadn’t seen the defeat of Father Benjamin Tso as Leaphorn had. Leaphorn had asked the priest a few more questions about the letter, and had established that Father Tso had seen nothing of Goldrims, and no sign of the dog.
And then Theodora Adams had opened the back door of the carryall, and taken out her small duffel bag, and put it on the ground beside the vehicle. Benjamin Tso had looked at it, and at her, and had taken a long, deep breath and said, Theodora, you cant stay. And Theodora had stood silently, looking first at him and then down at her hands, and her shoulders had slumped just a fraction, and Leaphorn had become aware from the tortured expression on the face of Father Tso that Theodora Adams must be crying, and Leaphorn had said he would look around a little and had walked away from this struggle of two souls, which was, as Miss Adams had told him, not the business of the Navajo Tribal Police. The struggle had been brief. When Leaphorn had completed his idle, fruitless examination of the ground behind the hogan, Father Tso was holding the girl against him, saying something into her hair.
That’s some woman, McGinnis said, mostly to himself. His watery old eyes were almost closed. Leaphorn had nothing to add to that. He was thinking of the expression on Father Tsos face when Tso had told him to leave the girl. The God Tso had worshipped was no more than a distant abstraction then. The girl stood against his side, warm and alive, though at this stage of the Fall of Father Tso lust hadn’t been the enemy. Tsos enemy, Leaphorn thought, would be a complicated mixture. It would include pity, however sadly misplaced, and affection, and loneliness and vanity. Lust would come later, when Theodora Adams wanted it to come and Tso would learn then how he had overestimated himself.
Certain kind of woman likes what she cant have, McGinnis said. They hate to see a man keep a promise. Some of em go after married men. But you take a real tiger like that Adams she goes gets herself a priest. He sipped the bourbon, glanced sidewise at Leaphorn. You know how that works with a Catholic priest? he asked. Before they’re ordained, they get some time to think about the promises they’re going to make giving up the world, and women, and all that. And then when the time comes, they go up to the altar and they stretch out on the floor, flat on their face, and they make the promise in front of the bishop. Psychologically it makes it mean as hell to change your mind. Just one step short of getting your balls cut off if you break a promise like that. McGinnis sipped again.
Makes it a hell of a challenge for a woman, he added.
Leaphorn was thinking of another challenge. It was obsessing him. Somewhere in this jumble of contradictions, oddities, coincidences and unlikely events there must be a pattern, a reason, something that linked a cause and an effect, which the laws of natural harmony and reason would dictate. It had to be there.
McGinnis, he said. He tried to keep his voice from sounding plaintive. Is there anything you’re not telling me that would help make sense out of this? This secret the old man was keeping what could it have been? Could it have been worth killing for?
McGinnis snorted. There ain’t nothing around here worth killing for, he said. Put it all together and this whole Short Mountain country ain’t worth hitting a man with a stick for.
What do you think, then? Leaphorn asked. Anything that would help.
The old man communed with the inch of amber left in the Coca-Cola glass. I can tell you a story, he said finally. If you don’t mind having your time wasted.
Id like to hear it, Leaphorn said.
Part of its true, McGinnis said. And some of its probably Navajo bullshit. It starts off about a hundred twenty years ago when Standing Medicine was headman of the Bitter Water Dinee and a man noted for his wisdom. McGinnis rocked back in his chair, slowly telling how, in 1863, the territorial governor of New Mexico decided to destroy the Navajos, how Standing Medicine had joined Narbona and fought Kit Carson’s army until, after the bitter starvation winter of 1864, what was left of the group surrendered and was taken to join other Navajos being held at Bosque Redondo.
That much is the true part, McGinnis said. Anyhow, Standing Medicine shows up on the army records as being brought in 1864, and he died at Bosque Redondo in 1865. And that gets us to the funny story. McGinnis tipped his head back and drained the last trickle of bourbon onto his tongue. He put the glass down, carefully refilled it to the copyright symbol, capped the bottle, and raised the glass to Leaphorn. Way they told it when I was a young man, this Standing Medicine was known all around this part of the reservation for his curing. Maybe I told you about that already. But he knew every bit of the Blessing Way, and he could do the Wind Way, and the Mountain Way Chant and parts of some of the others. But they say he also knew a ceremonial that nobody at all knows anymore. I heard it called the Sun Way, and the Calling Back Chant. Anyway, its supposed to be the ceremonial that Changing Woman and the Talking God taught the people to use when the Fourth World ends.
McGinnis paused to tap the Coca-Cola glass-just a few drops on the tongue. Now, you may have another version in your clan, he said. The way we have it around Short Mountain, the Fourth World isn’t supposed to end like the Third World did, with Water Monster making a flood. This time the evil is supposed to cause the Sun Father to make it cold, and the Dinee are supposed to hole up somewhere over in the Chuska range. I think Beautiful Mountain opens up for them. Then when the time is just right, they do this Sun Way and call back the light and warmth, and they start the Fifth World.
I never heard a version quite like that, Leaphorn said.
Like I said, maybe its bullshit. But there’s a point. There is a point. The way the old story goes, Standing Medicine figured this Way was the most important ceremonial of all. And he figured Kit Carson and the soldiers were going to catch him, and he was afraid the ritual would be forgotten, so . . . McGinnis sipped again, watching Leaphorn, timing his account. So he found a place and somehow or other in some magic way he preserved it all. And he just told his oldest son, so that Kit Carson and the Belacani soldiers wouldn’t find it and so the Utes wouldn’t find it and spoil it.
Interesting, Leaphorn said.
Hold on. We ain’t got to the interesting part yet, McGinnis said. Whats interesting is that Standing Medicines son came back from the Long Walk, and married a woman in the Mud clan, and this fellers oldest son was a man named Mustache Tsossie, and he married back into the Salt Cedar clan, and his oldest boy turned out to be the one we called Hosteen Tso.
So maybe that’s the secret, Leaphorn said.
Maybe so. Or like I said, maybe its all Navajo bullshit. McGinnis’s expression was carefully neutral.
And part of the secret would be where this place was where Standing Medicine preserved the Sun Way, Leaphorn said. Any guesses?
My God, McGinnis said. Its magic. And magic could be up in the sky, or under the earth.
Out in that canyon country it could be anywhere.
Its been my experience, Leaphorn said, that secrets are hard to keep. If fathers know and sons know, pretty soon other people know.
You’re forgetting something, McGinnis said. Lot of these people around here are Utes, or half Utes. Lot of intermarrying. You got to think about how a die-hard old-timer like Hosteen Tso, and his folks before him, would feel about that. That sort of makes people close-mouthed about secrets.
Leaphorn thought about it. Yeah, he said. I see what you mean. The Utes had always raided this corner of the reservation. And when Kit Carson and the army had come, Ute scouts had led them betraying hiding places, revealing food caches, helping hunt down the starving Dinee. Standing Medicine would have been guarding his secret as much from the Utes as from the whites-and now the Utes had married into the clans.