They eased their way down off the platform into the water flow. Not much more than ankle-deep now, but cold. No matter how hot the summer day, these male rains in the high country were always icy. If Jim was here to hear her, she’d be tempted to say “cold as a police sergeant’s heart.”
Even as she thought that, she heard his voice, and her name. The echoes off the slot’s cliffs were repeating it: “Bernie, Bernie, Bern, Ber…” But even in the echoes she recognized Jim’s voice.
“Jim!” she shouted. “We’re up here. We’re coming down the wash.”
That, too, immediately translated itself into a clamor of echoes. But he would have understood enough of it.
“Come on,” Bernie said, leading Joanna on a splashing run down the stream. With Bernie thinking she didn’t really know whether the blond man with the gun was actually gone forever. Thinking she should have warned Jim. Thinking it was too late for that now. Stopping to get Joanna’s pistol out of her pocket, just in case.
And when they started running again there was Jim Chee, splashing toward them.
“Bernie!” he shouted, still running. “Thank God.”
“Jim,” she said, gesturing toward Joanna, “this is Joanna Craig and—”
Their reunion was too violent for that sentence to be completed. He splashed into Bernie, partly due to enthusiasm, partly because he had lost his balance. The impact of a soggy man with a fairly dry woman was forceful enough to send out a spray. Then they were hugging each other with force and enthusiasm.
“Jim,” Bernie said, when she had recovered enough breath to say it. “Where have you been? I was afraid you—”
“I thought I had lost you, Bernie,” Chee blurted out. And, alas, added: “Why didn’t you wait for me? I thought I told you—” He was smart enough to end it there.
Bernie backed away a little. “Ms. Craig,” she said, “this is Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. He used to be my boss. Sometimes he thinks he still is.”
“How do you do,” Chee said to Joanna. “And we’re going to be married right away,” and he hugged Bernie again.
Bernie found herself talking directly into his left ear. “Jim, there’s a man in here. With a pistol. Claims to be a deputy from California. Big blond man.”
“He’s gone,” Chee said, still hugging Bernie. “Washed down the canyon out there, and on down into the Colorado.”
“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Chee,” Joanna said. “But if it’s safe now, we should get out of this water. Get someplace out in the open air.”
They started down the runoff flow, which was diminishing quickly, with Bernie talking fast about how she had gotten here, about the diamonds, about the arrival of Joanna and Chandler, about the dried, emaciated corpse, about Chandler taking the diamonds.
“That body washed by me,” Chee said. “And so did the blond man, carrying some sort of rope knotted on the ends. In fact, I think I might have been able to save him, but the rope got caught in that cat’s claw brush at the mouth of this slot. Instead of trying to get to where I could pull him to the bank, he was trying to jerk it loose.”
“That rope had all those diamonds in it,” Bernie said, and explained how Chandler had rigged two long wool hiker’s socks together to carry them.
“Well, they’re gone now,” Chee said. “Maybe they’ll sink to the bottom of the Colorado River, or wash all the way down to Lake Mead.”
“They were Ms. Craig’s diamonds,” Bernie said. “Or would have been. I saved one of them for Billy Tuve to use as evidence—if he needs it.”
She took the snuff can from her pocket, handed it to Chee. “Be careful, Jim. Don’t you drop it.”
Chee grinned at her. “Now, Bernie, you’re not supposed to talk to me like that until after I’m your husband.”
But he was careful with it, taking out the folder pouch, putting diamond in pouch, pouch in can, and can in his pocket.
The early twilight of the world outside the slot greeted them now. They ducked under the cat’s claw brush and walked out of the now-shallow flow to the cliff-side bank where Chee had waited.
“Free at last,” Bernie said, and they began their trek down the canyon to its confluence with the Colorado. The big canyon flow was also sharply diminished now. Chee finished his account of Dashee’s misfortune just as they reached the big river. There they heard a helicopter over the rim.
“That will be the one coming for Dashee,” Chee said. “I hope he’s smart enough to get them to wait a little while in case we show up.”
He was. On the flight back to the Park Service landing pad, Chee presented Dashee with the snuff can, pouch, and diamond, Billy Tuve’s evidence to get the charges against him dismissed.
“And don’t forget to tell Tuve to get the diamond he actually owns out of the court’s evidence room,” Chee said. “And after he uses the one Bernie salvaged from the Skeleton Man shrine as evidence to get his charge dropped, tell the sheriff to start looking for another suspect in that Zuni homicide, and then I guess he should give that diamond to Miss Craig, here.”
“Or maybe the insurance company will claim it,” Joanna said. “I’ll get my attorney, to decide how to handle that.”
“One more thing,” Chee said. “Tell Tuve not to try to pawn that twenty-thousand-buck diamond of his for twenty dollars again. It makes pawnshops suspicious.”
“And causes way too much trouble,” Bernie said.
“Well, I can think of one good thing that came out of all this,” Chee said. “Old Joe Leaphorn’s been retired long enough so those tales he likes to tell at those little Navajo Inn coffee meetings are getting awful stale. When he hears all the details, this one’s going to give him ammunition for another couple of years.”
At Park Service headquarters the party broke up. After much handshaking and good-byes, Joanna went off to the Grand Hotel for a hot bath and a long sleep. Cowboy was hauled away to the hospital for an ankle x-ray and a cast. And Chee arranged for a ride for Bernie and himself back to where his car was parked near the Salt Trail terminus on the Grand Canyon rim.
Total exhaustion won its battle over Bernie’s postadventure excitement very early on her drive homeward with Chee, but not before some loose ends had been dealt with. Chee had told her that if she was willing, he would pick her up tomorrow and they could scout for a house to buy, or a building lot if that seemed a better idea.
“You know, Jim,” said Bernie, “I went back to your mobile-home place yesterday—or was it the day before yesterday, I’m too tired to remember—and I think you’re right. I think we should live there at first. Then if we don’t like it, we can do something else.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Chee said.
“Well, I went by there and you weren’t home, so I walked around it. Sort of inspected. And it could be fixed up some.”
“You’re just saying this because you’re tired, and damp, and so sleepy you can hardly keep your eyes open. You just don’t feel up to renewing our old argument.”
Bernie laughed, sort of feebly. “No. It’s because I sat there on that log you like to sit on, and I watched the river go by, and the breeze blowing in the cottonwoods, and listened to all the birds that hang around there. And I just felt comfortable with it.”
“Well, how about that,” Chee said. And that was followed by a period of meditation.
“Bernie, I was just going to tell you that I’ve had a big ‘For Sale’ sign painted. Already have it put up on the highway, with an arrow pointing toward my place. And I called in a want ad to the advertising people at the Gallup Independent and the Farmington Times, giving my telephone number and—”
Bernie broke the Navajo “don’t interrupt” code.
“How did you describe it?”