Chee had a possible answer for that. He trotted down Mr. Yellow's entrance track to the road that had brought him up Mesa Gigante. And then he walked, keeping well away from it. The ruined hogan the girl in the police station had described to him was about a mile away, near the rim of the mesa. Chee approached it cautiously, keeping behind the cover of junipers when he could, keeping low when there was no cover. Where the track forked off from the road toward the ruin, Chee stopped, knelt, and studied the ground. Tire tracks. The moonlight was dim now, slanting from near the western horizon, but the tracks were plain enough. Made today. Made only hours ago, with neither wind nor time to soften them. Still on his knees, Chee started toward the hogan, out of sight just over a fold of land. No Cañoncito Navajo would drive in there at night and brave a ghost. The hogan had been marked on the map he'd left for the man who wasn't Leroy Gorman. The man must have left the map for Vaggan, and Vaggan—obviously, from what had happened at the Begay place—had taken the trouble to educate himself about Navajo attitudes about ghosts and ghost hogans.
Chee moved cautiously down the track, keeping behind the junipers. He didn't have to go far. After less than fifty yards he had enough visibility over the hillock to see the top of what remained of the hogan's wall. And over the wall, the top of a dark van. Chee stared at it, remembering the last time he had seen it—and what he had seen in the frantic moment he had been inside it, remembering the locked gun rack behind the driver's seat and what it had held. He'd seen an automatic shotgun, something that had looked like an M16 automatic rifle, and at least two smaller automatic weapons—an arsenal.
It occurred to Chee, fairly early in his walk back to the Yellow place, that if things went bad here—as they seemed likely to—it was purely because of Jim Chee's stupidity. He had found Margaret Sosi for them, and then he had called them down on her. Two other things also seemed apparent. Vaggan would do nothing overt here, at this sing, because he was smart enough to know how long it would take him to drive from here to anyplace he could lose himself. Empty, roadless country made troubles for law enforcement, but it also had advantages, and one of them was that roadblocks are extremely efficient. If you have a wheeled vehicle, there's no place to go with it. If you don't, hiding is easy enough, but there's no water. So Vaggan would wait. Follow them away from here, probably. Pass them on the highway, perhaps, and finish it all with a burst of fire from that automatic rifle. Or at least follow Margaret Sosi. Chee, until he saw the photograph, would be harmless. And he'd told the substitute Gorman that the picture was in Santa Fe.
Finally it occurred to him that he had one advantage. He knew Grayson was the enemy. He knew Vaggan was out there waiting. What he didn't know, not yet, was how to use that advantage. He moved rapidly through the snakeweed and cactus, back toward Yellow's hogan. On the eastern horizon now he could make out the ragged outline of the Sandias and the Manzano Mountains, back-lighted by the first glimmer of dawn. He had very little time to decide.
The fire had been rebuilt with a fresh supply of logs and was sending sparks high above the hogan when Chee returned. Everybody was up, waiting for the final act of the drama that would free Margaret Sosi from the ghost that rode her and return her to the ways of beauty. Chee searched through the crowd, looking for Grayson. He spotted him at the edge of the cluster just as the sound of Littleben's chanting stopped. It was a moment too early. Chee ducked back into the crowd, away from Grayson's vision.
The door of the hogan opened out, and Littleben emerged, trailed by Margaret Sosi. He held a small clay pot in his right hand and a pair of prayer sticks, elaborately painted and feathered, in the other. He held the feathered pahos high, their shafts crossed in an X. "Now our daughter will drink this brew, " he chanted.
"Now our daughter, she being daughter of Black God,
Now our daughter, she being daughter of Talking God,
Now our daughter, she being Blue Flint Girl,
Now our daughter, she being White Shell Girl,
Now our daughter will drink away the evil,
Now our daughter will return to hozro,
Now our daughter will walk again in the male rain falling,
Now our daughter will walk with the dark mist around her,
Now our daughter will go with beauty above her.
Now our daughter…"
Chee had lost sight of Grayson again. He turned away from the poetry of the chant to look for him. When the time was right, he wanted to know exactly where he could find the man. He wanted Grayson close. And Grayson was close. He had simply moved a little nearer the hogan. But he was still keeping himself where Margaret Sosi couldn't see him—or so it seemed to Chee. It also seemed to Chee that Margaret Sosi would hardly notice him. She had drunk the steaming emetic now and was staring at the east. She was supposed to vomit just as the red first rim of the sun was visible on the horizon. It was apparent from the strained look on her face that her inclination was to vomit instantly. But there, suddenly, was the rim of the sun. It was time to use his one advantage.
Chee hurried through the onlookers to Grayson and grabbed him by the elbow.
"Leroy," he said. "Trouble."
"What?" Grayson looked startled.
"Vaggan is here," Chee said. "Big blond man who's a killer for McNair. He's got his van parked out there."
"Vaggan?" Grayson said. "My God."
"He must be waiting until this is over. Until the crowd breaks up. Or he's waiting for you to leave and he'll follow you."
"Yeah," Grayson said. He looked suitably nervous.
"There's another way out of here," Chee said. "On past this place, the road winds down the other side of the mesa. It's bad but it's passable."
Around them the spectators were laughing and clapping. Margaret Sosi had gotten rid of her evil and was returned to hozro. Her relatives crowded around her.
"Just turn left where Yellow's drive comes off the road and keep driving. I'll get Margaret and follow you."
"Left," Grayson said. "Okay."
He ran for his car. Chee hurried through the crowd to Margaret Sosi. She was talking to an old woman, with Littleben standing beside her.
"Come on," Chee said. "Vaggan is here. We've got to run."
Margaret Sosi looked puzzled. With the ghost blacking washed away, she also looked pale. "Vaggan?"
"The big man back in L.A. Remember? The one who pretended to be a cop. The one who hit me."
"Oh," Margaret Sosi said. She hurried along with him. "Good-by. Good-by. And thank you."
Grayson's Chevy was roaring down the track away from the Yellow place. Chee started his pickup, backed it around in a flurry of dust, and roared down the track. At the bottom of the arroyo, he slid the pickup to a stop, shifted into low gear, and edged it carefully up the wash, banging and slamming over the rocks and scraping through the thickets of mountain mahogany and chamiza that flourished in the stream bottom. When he was far enough from the track to be out of sight he turned off the engine. Margaret Sosi was looking at him, the question on her face.
He had time enough to explain it all to her, because now there was nothing to do but wait…