There was the sound of chanting from the ceremonial hogan now, and the thudding of the pot drum. Sandoval came through the curtain, followed by Tsosie, two cousins, and the uncle who was representing Agnes Tsosie. Even their loin cloths had been blackened with ashes, and each held in his right hand a raven beak, secured to a juniper stick with yucca and buckskin thongs. The Scalp Shooter picked up his basket of ashes and was walking north-northeast. It was the direction, Leaphorn noted, of the higher central peaks of the Lukachukais. Over the peaks, a tremendous thunderhead was rising, its top boiling in relentless slow motion into the stratosphere, its bottom black with shadow and trailing the first thin curtains of rain.
Sandoval will know his medicine is working, Leaphorn thought. He has called for Thunder to kill the Wolf and Thunder has come to the appointed place. It was interesting that the Singer from the Stick Carrier's camp had placed the scalp so carefully north-by-northeast of the hogan. That meant they believed the Wolf was now somewhere in that direction.
Leaphorn trailed along with the crowd. The Scalp Shooter had stopped at a dead creosote bush about two hundred yards from the hogan and was sprinkling something under the bush with ash. He stepped aside and Tsosie and his kinsmen poked at the object with their raven bills, killing it with this symbol of contempt. Leaphorn pushed through the crowd. The spectators were silent now and he could hear the attackers muttering, "It is dead. It is dead," each time they struck the symbolic scalp.
The object the crowbills were striking was a high-crowned black hat.
Instantly, Leaphorn correlated this new fact with other information, with the bulky stranger trying on hats in Shoemaker's, with the question of why a worthless hat would be stolen and a valuable silver concho band left behind.
The hat was thoroughly coated with ashes now, but there was still a dark outline against the faded felt, the outline of linked circles where heavy silver conchos had once protected the dye from the sun.
When I look in the hatband, Leaphorn thought, it will be size seven and three-eighths. The Big Navajo was the Navajo Wolf. But why was he the witch? This was why the Hand Trembler and Sandoval had decided to prescribe an Enemy Way. The Navajo Wolf was a man nobody knew. A stranger to the clan and to the entire linked-clan society of the Lukachukai slopes. But what had he done to be singled out for this terrible proscription of The People? Death within the year by his own witchcraft—turned against him by the medicine of the Enemy Way. Or, Leaphorn thought grimly, death much sooner if the Tsosies or the Nez family happen to catch him.
The high slopes of the Lukachukais were obscured now by the darkness of the cloud. Light from the setting sun glittered from the strata of ice crystals forming in the thin, frigid air at its upper levels. Deep within it, the structure of the cloud was lit by a sudden flare of sheet lightning. And then there was a single lightning bolt, an abrupt vivid streak of white light pulsing an electric moment against the black of the rain, connecting cloud and mountain slope.
If the witch was there, he's dead enough, Leaphorn thought. And he couldn't blame himself for that. Not the way he would blame himself if The People found the Wolf before he did and executed this sentence of death.
Chapter 11
There had been intermittent thunder for several minutes. But, even so prepared, McKee had been startled by the sudden brighter-than-day flash of the lightning bolt. The explosion of thunder had followed it almost instantly, setting off a racketing barrage of echoes cannonading from the canyon cliffs. The light breeze, shifting suddenly down canyon, carried the faintly acrid smell of ozone released by the electrical charge and the perfume of dampened dust and rain-struck grass.
It filled McKee's nostrils with nostalgia. There was none of the odor of steaming asphalt, dissolving dirt, and exhaust fumes trapped in humidity which marked an urban rain. It was the smell of a country childhood, all the more evocative because it had been forgotten. And for the moment McKee dismissed the irritation of J. R. Canfield and reveled mentally in happy recollections of Nebraska, of cornfields, and of days when dreams still seemed real and plausible. Then a splatter of rain hit; big, cold, high-velocity drops sent him running to the tent for his raincoat and back out into the sudden shower to rescue the eggs frying on the butane stove and the bedrolls spread out on the sand beside a jumble of boulders.
When he reached them the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. McKee dropped Canfield's blankets and cautiously inspected the slice of sky visible above the canyon. Up canyon it was blue-black, with a continuing intermittent rumble of thunder. Directly overhead, the clouds were a mixture of gray and white. Down canyon to the south and east there was the dark blue of open sky and, nearer the horizon, the violent reds and yellows of the setting sun. The breeze had shifted back to the southwest now and he saw the rain was drifting across the canyon higher in the mountains. Only the trailing edge of it had touched here.
McKee decided it would be safe to leave the bedrolls out. He walked back to the butane cooker, forked an egg onto a piece of bread and folded it into a sandwich. The sunset now was flooding the canyon with eerie rose light, which made the eroded sandstone and granite of the cliff seem to glow. McKee heard the water then, a small sound, moving down the canyon floor below him. The rain had been little more than a heavy sprinkle here but northwestward on the mesa it had been heavy enough to send runoff down the network of washes which fed Many Ruins Canyon. It would have to rise into a torrent eight or ten feet deep before it topped the high mound of talus where the camp was and McKee estimated the stream, now spreading across the flat sand on the canyon bed below him, was no more than six inches deep. It was muddy, carrying a burden of sticks, pine needles, and assorted debris, but it wouldn't get much deeper unless the rain upstream turned into something like a cloudburst. If that happened, it might be a little tough driving on the canyon bottom tomorrow. That turned McKee's thoughts again to Canfield.
Ever since his return to the camp he had alternated between uneasy worry that some inconceivable something had led Canfield to sign a false name to his note, irritation at himself for such foolishness, and then irritation at Canfield for causing this uneasiness. He was all the more irked by the thought that, when Canfield returned and explained the signature had been inspired by some ridiculous Canfieldian whim, the whole affair would seem too asinine and trivial for complaint.
"Silly bastard," McKee muttered. He folded the third egg into a sandwich, poured himself a mug of coffee, and scrubbed out the frying pan with sand. By now the light in the canyon had faded from rose to dusky red and McKee's mood had shifted with it, back to irritation with himself for being nervous.
It was about ten when he finished going through his accumulation of notes in the tent and planning his activities for the next day. He would have to stay in camp at least until Canfield returned because tomorrow Miss Leon was supposed to arrive. If Canfield was finding anything interesting in his digging, he wouldn't want to stop—and someone should take the girl up into the labyrinth of canyons to try to locate the van truck. It might, or might not, belong to her electrical engineer, but it shouldn't be too hard to find. Not if it was still parked in Hard Goods Canyon, and not if, as Old Woman Gray Rocks had said, the canyon ran into Many Ruins nine miles up from the mouth. That would make it only about four miles up from their camp.