Well, said Begay. That’s what were paying you for.
Far to the left, perhaps ten miles up the dark Klethla Valley, a pinpoint of light was sliding along Route 1 toward them. Begay stopped admiring the sunset and watched the light. He whistled between his teeth. Here comes a fast Indian.
Yeah, Leaphorn said. He started the carryall rolling down the slope toward the highway and snapped off the headlights.
That’s sneaky, Begay said.
Saves the battery, Leaphorn said.
Pretty sneaky the way you got me, too, Begay said. There was no rancor in his words.
Parkin over the hill and walkin up to the hogan like that, so nobody figured you was a cop.
Yeah, Leaphorn said.
How’d you know Id be there? You find out the Endischees was my people?
That’s right, Leaphorn said.
And you found out there was a Kinaalda for the Endischee girl?
Yeah, Leaphorn said. So maybe you’d come to that.
Begay laughed. And even if I didn’t, it beat hell out of running all over looking for me. He glanced at Leaphorn. You learn that in college?
Yeah, Leaphorn said. We had a course on how to catch Begays.
The carryall jolted over a cattle guard and down the steep incline of the borrow ditch bank. Leaphorn parked on the shoulder and cut the ignition. It was almost night now the afterglow dying on the western horizon and Venus hanging bright halfway up the sky. The heat had left with the light and now the thin high-altitude air was touched with coolness. A breeze stirred through the windows, carrying the faint sound of insects and the call of a hunting nighthawk. It died away, and when it came again it carried the high whine of engine and tires still distant.
Son-of-a-bitch is moving, Begay said. Listen to that.
Leaphorn listened.
Hundred miles an hour, Begay said. He chuckled. He’s going to tell you his speedometer needs fixing.
The headlights topped the hill, dipped downward and then raced up the slope behind them. Leaphorn started his engine and flicked on his headlights, and then the red warning blinker atop the car. For a moment there was no change in the accelerating whine. Then abruptly the pitch changed, a brief squealing sound of rubber on pavement, and the roar of a car gearing down. It pulled off on the shoulder and stopped some fifty feet behind the carryall. Leaphorn picked his clipboard off the dash and stepped out.
At first he could see nothing through the blinding glare of the headlights. Then he made out the circled Mercedes trademark on the hood, and behind the ornament, the windshield. Every two seconds, the beam of his revolving warning blinker flashed across it. Leaphorn walked down the gravel toward the car, irritated by the rudeness of the high beam lights. In the flashing red illumination he saw the face of the driver, staring at him through round gold-rimmed glasses. And behind the man, in the back seat, another face, unusually large and oddly shaped.
The driver leaned out the window. Officer, he shouted. Your cars rolling backward.
The driver was grinning a broad, delighted, anticipatory grin outlined in red by the blinker light. And behind the grinning man, the eyes in the narrow face still stared dim but somehow avid from the back seat.
Leaphorn spun and, blinded by glare, peered toward his carryall. His mind told him that he had set the handbrake and his eyes registered that the parked car was not rolling toward him. And then there was the voice of Begay screaming a warning. Leaphorn made a desperate, instinctive lunge for the ditch, hearing the squalling roar of the Mercedes accelerating, and then the thumping, oddly painless sound of the front fender striking his leg and spinning his already flying body into the roadside weeds.
A moment later he was trying to get up. The Mercedes had disappeared down the highway, trailing the diminishing scream of rapid acceleration, and Begay was beside him, helping him up.
Watch the leg, Leaphorn said. Let me see how it is.
It was numb, but it bore his weight. What pain he had was mostly in his hands, which had broken his fall on the weeds and dirt of the ditch bank, and his cheek which somehow had picked up a long, but shallow, cut. It burned.
Son-of-a-bitch tried to run you over, Begay said. How about that?
Leaphorn limped to the carryall, slid under the wheel, and flicked on the radio with one bleeding hand and the ignition with the other. By the time he had arranged for a roadblock at Red Lake, the speedometer needle had passed 90.
Always wanted a ride like this, Begay was shouting over the sound of the siren. The tribe got a liability policy in case I get hurt?
Just burial insurance, Leaphorn said.
You’re never going to catch him, Begay said. You get a look at that car? That was a rich mans car.
You get a look at the license? Or at that guy in the back seat?
It was a dog, Begay said. Great big rough-looking dog. I didn’t think about the license.
The radio cleared its throat. It was Tomas Charley reporting he was set up in a half block at the Red Lake intersection. Charley asked, in precise Navajo, whether to figure the man in the gray car had a gun and how to handle it.
Play it like he’s dangerous, Leaphorn said. The bastard tried to run over me. Use the shotgun and if he’s not slowing for you, shoot for the tires. Don’t get hurt.
Charley said he didn’t intend to and signed off.
He might have a gun, come to think of it, Begay said. He held his cuffed wrists in front of him. You oughta take this off in case you need help.
Leaphorn glanced at him, fished in his pocket for a key ring and tossed it on the seat. Its the little shiny one.
Begay unlocked the cuffs and put them in the glove compartment.
Why the hell don’t you stop stealing sheep? Leaphorn asked. He didn’t want to remember the Mercedes roaring toward him.
Begay rubbed his wrists. They’re just white mans sheep. They don’t hardly miss em.
And slipping off from jail. Do that again and its your ass!
Begay shrugged. Stop to think about it, though, he said. And about the worst they can do to you for getting out of jail is get you back in again.
This is three times, Leaphorn said. The patrol car skidded around a flat turn, swayed, and straightened. Leaphorn jammed down on the accelerator.
That bird sure didn’t want a ticket, Begay said. He glanced at Leaphorn, grinning. Either that, or he just likes running over cops. I believe a man could learn to enjoy that.
They covered the last twenty miles to the Red Lake intersection in just under thirteen minutes and slid to a gravel-spraying stop on the shoulder beside Charley's patrol car.
What happened? Leaphorn shouted. Did he get past you?
Never got here, Charley said. He was a stocky man wearing a corporals stripes on the sleeves of his uniform shirt. He raised his eyebrows. Ain’t no place to turn off, he said. Its fifty-something miles back up there to the Kayenta turnoff He was past that when I started chasing him, Leaphorn interrupted. He must have pulled it off somewhere.
Begay laughed. That dog in the back. Maybe that was a Navajo Wolf.
Leaphorn didn’t say anything. He was spinning the car across the highway in a pursuit turn.
Them witches, they can fly, you know, Begay said. Reckon they could carry along a big car like that?
It took more than half an hour to find where the Mercedes had left the highway. It had pulled off the north shoulder on the up-slope of a hill leaving the roadbed and plowing through a thin growth of creosote bush. Leaphorn followed the track with his flashlight in one hand and his .38 in the other. Begay and Charley trotted along behind him Begay carrying Leaphorns 30-30. About fifty yards off the highway, the car had bottomed on an outcrop of sandstone. After that, its path was blotched with oil spurting from a broken pan.