Leaphorn parked beside an entry post equipped with a sign which read:
PLEASE PUSH BUTTON
IDENTIFY YOURSELF
He checked his watch. Six minutes early. He wasted a few of those enjoying this close view of the San Francisco Peaks. If Jason Delos collected Indian antiquities, he probably knew their role in mythology. Not terribly crucial for his Dineh people as he remembered the winter hogan stories from his boyhood. He had heard them mentioned mostly because of Great Bear spirit and his misadventures. But they were sacred indeed for the Hopis. They recognized Humphreys Peak (at 12,600
feet, the tallest of the San Francisco chain) as the gate-way to the other world, the route their spirits used to visit during ceremonials when Hopi priests called them.
For the Zunis, as Leaphorn understood what he’d been told by Zuni friends, it was one of the roads taken by spirits of Hopi dead to reach the wonderful dance grounds where the good among them would celebrate their eternal rewards. He interrupted that thought to glance at his watch again. It was time. He reached out and punched the button.
The response was immediate.
“Mr. Leaphorn,” it said. “Come in, sir. And please park at the paved place to the south of the entrance porch.”
“Right,” Leaphorn said, uneasily aware as he said it THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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that whoever owned the voice had been looking out at him, probably wondering why he was waiting. It was the same voice he had heard on the Delos telephone.
The gate swung open. Leaphorn drove through it, admiring the house. A handsome place with its landscaping left to nature. No flat country lawn grass. Just the vegetation that flourished in the high-dry mountain country. As he pulled into the parking area, a man stepped from a side door and stood, waiting for him. A small man, straight and slender, in his early forties, with short black hair and a very smooth, flawless complexion. Possibly a Hopi or Zuni, Leaphorn thought. But at second glance, Leaphorn switched that to probably Vietnamese or Lao-tian. As he turned off the ignition, the man was opening the door for him.
“I am Tommy Vang,” he said, smiling. “Mr. Delos say thank you for being so prompt. He say to give you some time to visit the restroom if you wish to do so, and then bring you to the office.”
Tommy Vang was waiting again when Leaphorn emerged from the restroom. The man escorted Leaphorn down a hallway and through the same large and lavish living room he remembered from the Luxury Living photograph. No framed rug was hanging by the fireplace now.
The massive elk antlers trophy was still mounted on one side of the glass door, along with several deer antlers. A pronghorn antelope head stared at him from the oppos-ing wall, with a huge bear head, teeth bared, beside it. A big-game hunter, perhaps, or perhaps they had come with the house when Delos bought it. Leaphorn took a second look at the bear.
“That’s the only bear I ever shot.”
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The man who spoke was emerging from a hallway, walking toward them. A tall man, handsome, well over six feet, tanned, trim, white-haired, wearing gray slacks and a red shirt, looking like a healthy, active seventy-year-old.
He was smiling and holding out his hand.
“Come on in the office,” he said, taking Leaphorn’s hand. “I’m Jason Delos, and I’m glad to meet you. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to tell me about this old rug of mine.”
“Judging from all those trophy heads, I’d guess you are quite a hunter,” Leaphorn said. “Really good at it.” Delos produced a deprecatory smile.
“That, and collecting cultural antiques, are about my only hobbies,” he said. “I’m told practice makes perfect.”
“I’d say you picked a good place to live then. Good hunting for big game all through this Four Corners country,” Leaphorn said. “When I was a youngster there was even a season on bighorn sheep in the San Juan Mountains.”
“I never had a chance at one of those,” Delos said.
“They’re pretty much all gone now. But old people say they used to hunt them in the foothills and even in the high end of the Rio Grande Gorge, about where the river comes out of Colorado into New Mexico, where it cut that deep canyon through the old lava flow.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Leaphorn said. “An old fellow who runs the J. D. Ranch up there told me he used to see them on the cliffs when he was a boy.”
“That’s a ranch I’ve hunted on,” Delos said. “I get elk permits from the foreman. A fellow named Arlen Roper.
In fact, I’m going up there this week.” He laughed, made an expansive gesture. “Going to try to get me an absolute THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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record-breaking set of antlers before I get too old for it.”
“I think I already am,” Leaphorn said.
“Well, I can’t climb up the cliffs, and down into the canyons like I used to, but Roper has some blinds set up in the trees on a hillside up there. One of them lets you look right down on the Brazos. Elk come in, morning and evening, to get themselves a drink out of the stream. I’ve got that one reserved for next week.”
Leaphorn nodded, without comment. Ranchers who allowed deer, elk, and antelope herds to share grazing with their cattle were granted hunting permits as a rec-ompense. They could either harvest their winter meat supply themselves or sell the permits to others. It was not a practice Leaphorn endorsed. Not much sportsman-ship in it, he thought, but perfectly pragmatic and legal.
Traditional Navajos hunted only for food, not for sport. He remembered his maternal uncle explaining to him that to make hunting deer a sport, you would have to give the deer rifles and teach them how to shoot back. His first deer hunt, and all that followed, had been preceded by the prescribed ceremony with his uncles and nephews, with the prayer calling to the deer to join in the venture, to assure the animal that cosmic eternal law would return him to his next existence in the infinite circle of life. A lot of time and work was involved in the Navajo way—the treatment of the deer hide, the pains taken to waste nothing, and, finally, the prayers that led to that first delicious meal of venison. Leaphorn had known many belagaana hunters who shared the “waste no venison” attitude, but none who bought into the ceremonial partnership between man and animal. And this was not the place nor the time to discuss it. Instead, he said he’d heard hunting 96
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was expected to be unusually good in the Brazos country this season.
Delos smiled. “I’ve always liked to claim that the skill of the hunter determined how good the season turns out.”
“Probably true,” Leaphorn said. “But if one comes home empty, he likes something else to blame.” The only trophy head on the wall of the Delos office was that of a large male bobcat snarling above an antique-looking rolltop desk. But a rifle rack against a wall revealed the nature of the Delos hobby. Behind its glass door four rifles and two shotguns were lined up in their racks. Delos motioned Leaphorn into a chair and seated himself beside his desk.
“Is the time right for a drink? A Scotch or something?
But I bet you’d prefer coffee?”
“Coffee, if it’s no trouble,” Leaphorn said, seating himself and processing his impressions. The trophy heads, the gun collection, how Delos had presumed Leaphorn would want coffee, the sense of serene and confident dignity the man presented.
“Coffee,” Delos told Tommy Vang, “for both of us.” Then he leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his belly, and smiled at Leaphorn.
“Down to business,” he said. “I asked around, and I understand from my friends that you are a Navajo Tribal Policeman. I gather you have no jurisdiction here. Therefore, I am curious about why you came. I would like to think that you had learned that I obtained the tale-teller’s rug shown in that magazine and you simply, and very generously, wanted to reward me with some of the colorful tales of its past.” Delos smiled, raised his eyebrows, gave Leaphorn a few seconds to respond.