Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 17] (7 page)

Tuve was talking now of having to go to a meeting in
the kiva of the Hopi religious society to which he belonged. He was being considered for membership in an ancient organization that non-Hopis called the Bow Society, which wasn’t its real name. Anyway, he was going to take part in an initiation. That involved a pilgrimage by potential members from their village on Second Mesa all the way to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. From there they made the perilous climb down the cliffs—a descent of more than four thousand feet—to the bottom near where the Little Colorado pours into the Colorado River. But first Billy Tuve had to deal with the ceremonial eagle, tell Miss Craig how it had been collected from one of the nests guarded by his society, how a shaman brought it in, prayers were said, the proper herbs were smoked. Then the eagle was smothered, plucked, sprinkled with blessed cornmeal, and, as Tuve expressed it, “sent home to join his own spirits with our prayers to help him lead us on a safe journey.”

Chee let his attention drift and his gaze shift from Ms. Craig’s face to the window behind her. The rainstorm had drifted east, and the red cliffs that formed their walls north of Gallup were streaked now with sunlight and shadow, varying from dark crimson where the rain had soaked them to pale pink where it hadn’t, leaving a dozen shades in between. And above them another great tower of white was climbing, with the west wind blowing mist from it, forming an anvil shape at its top and producing a thin screen of ice crystals against the dark blue sky. Some other parts of the Navajo Nation would be getting rain.

Chee was remembering a chant a Zuni girlfriend had taught him from a prayer of her tribe’s A’shiwannis religious order:

This had been before Chee met Bernadette Manuelito, and fallen in love with her, so that now even rain clouds caused him to think of her. Thinking now of embracing Bernie, instead of listening to Tuve, who was still talking, but not talking about diamonds. Who needed diamonds with ice crystals glittering against the blue, blue sky. With Bernie willing to marry him. With the time for that already established.

Behind him Tuve was now droning through the required ceremonialism of the Salt Trail, talking about feathers and prayer sticks being properly painted to be used as required at the springs, shrines, and sacred places they would be passing. And for Billy Tuve, conditioned as he was to getting the details of Hopi ceremonialism precisely correct, this took patient listening. And more time was taken because he often nodded apologetically to Chee and Ms. Craig, and shifted into Hopi to speak directly to Dashee, thus preserving the secrets of the tribe’s religions. When special affairs of his own kiva became involved, Tuve simply showed Dashee the palms of his hands and went silent.

Getting this ceremonial procession from Tuve’s village on Second Mesa to the canyon rim and then to the riverbank involved describing several more stops for prayers and offerings, the placing of painted feathers in the proper places with the proper songs, and putting prayer sticks where the proper spirits traditionally visited. By the time Tuve had brought them to the Hopi
shrines at the tribe’s cliff-bottom salt deposits, Joanna Craig had looked at her watch three times that Chee had noticed. Navajo fashion, he hadn’t glanced at his own. Tuve would finish when he finished.

And, at last, Tuve finished. He spent less than a minute on the ceremony itself, declared that the group had collected the necessary salt at the Salt Shrine and clays of various colors along the cliff walls needed for various undescribed purposes.

“Then I met the man who gave me the diamond,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and looked at each of them. Now it was their turn to talk.

Dashee looked at Chee, waited.

Chee frowned, considering.

Miss Craig said, “You told me you didn’t know this man. Is that right?”

Tuve nodded. “He didn’t say his name.”

“Describe him.”

Tuve made an uncertain face. “Long time ago,” he said. “Grandfather probably. Maybe even a great-grandfather. Old, I mean. Lots of white hair. Skinny. Sort of bent over. About as tall as Sergeant Chee there. Not a Hopi, I think. Some other kind of Indian. He had on worn-out blue jeans and a blue shirt and a raggedy jacket, and a gray felt hat. And he had a big wide leather belt with silver-looking conchas on it.”

“How did you happen to meet him?”

Tuve scratched his ear, looked thoughtful. “I was digging out some of that blue clay. Chopping it out with a little thing I got to chop roots with.” He looked at Craig, wondering if she’d understand. “Like that little shovel they use in the army. Short handle.” He illustrated with
his hands. “And the shovel part then can fold down.” Another illustration, of folding and chopping. “Got it at one of those military surplus stores, and sharpened it up. Works good. Really cuts roots.”

Tuve looked at Craig, awaiting approval. Didn’t get it. Craig was looking at her watch again.

“And he walked up, or what?”

“He said something, and I looked over and he was standing there watching me dig clay. So I said something friendly. And he came up and wanted to see my digging tool. And I handed it to him and in a minute he said he would trade something to me for it. I said what, and he got a folding knife out of his pocket and showed me that. I said no. He said for me to wait and then he came back with that diamond in a little pouch. And we traded.”

That said, Tuve nodded, looked down at his folded hands. End of story.

“All this talking with this old man,” Craig said. “That was in English, or Hopi, or what?”

Tuve laughed. “I couldn’t understand his words. So it went like this.” He demonstrated with his hand and facial expressions.

“And where did he go after you swapped your shovel for his diamond?” Chee asked.

Tuve shrugged. “Down the canyon a little way, and then around the corner.” He shrugged again.

Craig sighed, shook her head.

Chee cleared his throat, looked at Craig, saw no sign she had another question to ask.

“Do you remember where this happened?” he asked. “I mean, exactly where you were digging the clay?”

“Sure,” Tuve said. “It’s real close to the place we leave prayer sticks and do our prayers for the Salt Mother. Down the river a little ways. Where we always dig that yellow clay for painting.”

“Can you remember how long he was gone before he came back with the diamond?”

Tuve pondered. “It was just a little while.”

“Can you tell us like how many minutes?”

Tuve looked baffled by that.

“Maybe long enough to smoke a cigarette?” Chee suggested. “Or a lot longer than that?”

“Didn’t have any cigarettes,” Tuve said.

“Okay, then,” Chee said. “What did you get done while you waited? How much clay did you dig, for example.”

“Didn’t dig. I got out my water bottle, and I sat down on a sort of rocky shelf there and took a drink, and got my boot off and shook out the sand that got into it and put the boot back on, and then I sort of asked myself why I was sitting there waiting for this old fella when I didn’t really want to trade my digging tool anyway, and got up to go and then he was back.”

“Less than an hour?”

“Lot less than an hour. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

“From what I know about you Hopis,” Chee said, “you have your own special ceremonial trail down to those salt deposits. Is that the one you climbed down on that day?”

Tuve said something in Hopi to Dashee. Dashee nodded, said, “Yes. That’s the one I was telling you about.”

Craig was listening to all this, looking thoughtful.

“Mr. Tuve,” she said. “I want you to take me down there. We have to find that man.”

“Can’t do that,” Tuve said. He laughed. “Not unless
you can get into the women’s kiva. Have to be initiated, and that’s after you know all the rules.”

“What are they?”

“Women rules. They don’t tell men.”

“Well, can you tell me a way to get down there? It’s the way to keep you out of jail,” she said. “To find the man who gave you the diamond. We need to get him so he can testify he gave you that.”

Tuve was shaking his head. “Can’t do that,” he said, still smiling. “Against the rules of the kiva.”

“Can’t you just explain it to the bishop, or whatever you call him? He’d understand.”

Tuve’s smile had faded away. He looked extremely serious, thinking. “No,” he said. “Not unless it would be for something the spirits would like.”

Craig stared at him. Checked Chee for comment. Got none. Glanced at Dashee. There was the mutter of thunder, very distant now. Their rainstorm was still drifting eastward.

“Something the spirits would like,” Craig said. “Like helping somebody who has been hurt very bad. Somebody who really needs help. Would they like that?”

Tuve stared at her, looked at Dashee, a question on his face.

Dashee said, “We don’t do it. Don’t take white people down that trail. They are not initiated. They don’t know the prayers to say, don’t know what Masaw told us to do. If they go down for the wrong reason, with the wrong spirit, a Two Heart will make them fall.”

Craig looked surprised, then interested. “Masaw? Who’s that?”

Tuve ignored the question.

Dashee looked at Chee.

Chee shrugged. “I’m not a Hopi, you know, but we Navajos understand that Masaw is their Guardian Spirit of the Underworld. Sometimes he’s called Skeleton Man or Death Man because he taught the Hopis not to be afraid to die. Anyway, after the Hopis came up to the Earth Surface World, they say God made him sort of their guardian if I’ve got it right. And the Two Hearts are the sort of people who didn’t quite make the transition from what they were in the underworld into the human form. Didn’t get rid of the evil. Still have an extra animal heart. Sort of like the witches you white people talk about.”

“Or like the witches Navajos call Skinwalkers,” Dashee said, with a sardonic glance at Chee.

“Actually, we call them Long Lookers,” Chee said, looking slightly apologetic. “And we have several versions of them.”

“I think the rain’s finished here for now,” Dashee said, trying to change the subject. “Moving over to the Checkerboard Reservation.”

“One more question,” Chee said. “Mr. Tuve, who was that man who came to see you this morning?”

“I don’t know him. He said his name was Jim Belshaw, and he said he wanted to know about getting me out of jail. And he wanted to talk to me about the diamond. He said he would come back later to get me out.”

Tuve nodded toward Craig, who was watching this exchange. “I thought maybe this lady here sent him. She could tell you about him.”

“I didn’t send him,” Craig said, looking startled and flustered. She glanced at Chee, a questioning look.

“Oh,” Tuve said. “That seems funny.”

She looked at Chee. “One of your people?”

“Not us,” Chee said. “I don’t know who he was. Neither did the court clerk.”

“Well, anyway, then,” Craig said to Tuve. “If you can’t take me down the Salt Trail—and I really don’t want to bother your Two Hearts—then we’ll just get down there another way.”

Chee noticed that she was smiling at Tuve as she said it.

The thunderstorm was gone from Gallup now, drifting away to bestow its blessing wherever the wind or Pueblo rain dances took it. One of Billy Tuve’s numerous uncles had arrived to give him a ride back to Shungopovi on Second Mesa. Chee watched Joanna Craig chatting with Tuve, a conversation he didn’t manage to overhear, and then giving him his instructions on the requirements of those free on bond. Chee gave Craig his police card and a request that she stay in touch. Then Dashee led the way out into the hotel parking lot to Chee’s car.

“Look at it,” Dashee said. “Clean. Didn’t recognize it. I never saw it like that before. You can even make out that Navajo Nation symbol on the door.”

“Get in, Cowboy,” Chee said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“And decide what to do,” Dashee said. “What’d you think of that Craig woman?”

“How about you?” Chee said. “I noticed you were being uncharacteristically polite. I mean, hopping up and rushing over to get her purse and hand it to her.”

“It was heavy,” Dashee said.

“Yeah,” Chee said. “I thought it would be. The way it looked.”

“Maybe she’s carrying a super makeup outfit, or a really old-fashioned cell telephone, or”—Dashee gave Chee a sidewise look—“maybe a pistol?”

“The pistol occurred to me,” Chee said. “She’s from the East, you know. A lot of Easterners worry about you Indians.”

“Hey!” Dashee said. “We Hopis are the peaceful ones. You Navajos were the hostiles. And you were showing it again today.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You wouldn’t let us eat lunch with Ms. Craig there at the hotel. So we just sat there in the chair and watched them eat.”

“Good point,” Chee said. “That wasn’t very smart.” He turned his clean, rain-washed car into the Bob’s Diner parking lot.

While they dined they agreed on several other points.

For one, Tuve would win no prizes for intellectual brilliance. His story about swapping his shovel for the diamond was not going to sound likely to a jury.

They weren’t convinced themselves.

However, the prosecution seemed to have little genuine evidence against Tuve. The fingerprints he’d left in the store proved only that he’d been there on the fatal
day, and the witnesses could prove little more than the same thing.

Their chances of finding Tuve’s diamond donor, if he had ever existed, were minuscule.

“I guess we’re agreed, then,” Dashee said. “We’ll hope Ms. Craig finds herself a good canyon-bottom guide and turns up the diamond donor. And we’ll keep our eyes open for some sensible way to help Cousin Billy. And unless the FBI comes up with some sort of material evidence, we sort of doubt he’ll need help, anyway.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Chee said. “I’ll bet they have something substantial.”

Dashee grinned. “When in doubt, get some Hopis on the jury. We’re a kind-hearted tribe.”

“Generous, too,” Chee said, handing Dashee the lunch check and pushing back from the table. “I’ve got to get back to Shiprock now. Bernie wants me to go look at a couple of places she thinks might be right for us to live in.”

“What’s wrong with your trailer?” Dashee asked, trying to suppress a grin. “It’s really handy for you there. Right next to the Shiprock garbage dump, for example.”

“And right next to the San Juan River flowing by,” Chee said. “I think it’s a pretty place. I’m going to talk her into it. But first I’ve got to look at what’s she’s looking at.”

But when Chee parked under the cottonwood shading his front door from the setting sun, the old trailer looked shabby and disreputable, putting a dent in his cheerful mood.

The mood improved when he saw the light blinking on his answering machine. It would be Bernie. Just hearing her voice brightened the day. Alas, it wasn’t Bernie. It
was the familiar voice of Joe Leaphorn, the legendary lieutenant, formally identifying himself as if he hadn’t known Chee about forever.

“I hear from some sheriff’s office people that you’re trying to help Cowboy Dashee’s cousin. If that’s true, you might want to call me. It turns out that Shorty McGinnis—You remember him. Grouchy old fellow. Ran Short Mountain Trading Post. Well, he has a diamond story a lot like the one your Billy Tuve tells. It might be helpful, if you’re interested.”

As usual, Leaphorn was right. Chee was interested. He glowered at the telephone, dealing with memories of other interesting calls from the legendary lieutenant. Most of them had come while he was working as Leaphorn’s gofer in his Criminal Investigation Office. They had tended to lead to trouble and always meant a lot of hard work. Some of it, admittedly, proved interesting and fruitful, but this was not the time for that. This was time to be with Bernie.

Chee walked away from the telephone, out into the shady side of the trailer to a favorite place of his—the remains of a fallen cottonwood tree the trunk of which had long since lost its bark and had been worn smooth by years of being sat upon. Chee sat upon it again and looked down at the San Juan flowing below. A coyote was out early, stalking something on the river’s opposite bank. He thought about Bernie and his future with her. A pair of mallards feeding in the shallows spotted the coyote and squawked into flight. But the coyote wasn’t hunting them. It continued its furtive way into a brushy growth of Russian olive. Stalking a rabbit, Chee guessed, or perhaps someone’s pet dog or a feral cat. That thought reminded
him of the cat that had moved in with him once, in another time, when he’d sat on this old log and considered whether he should accept what amounted to a counteroffer from Mary Landon. Yes, she had said, she would marry him. She had already planned on that. She’d already rejected the contract renewal she’d been offered at the Crownpoint Elementary School and was preparing to move back to Wisconsin. He could accept that job offer he’d had from the FBI and they would raise their children wherever they put him until they could arrange a transfer to the Milwaukee office. About his dream of becoming a shaman, a medicine person among the Navajos? Surely he’d already outgrown that idea, hadn’t he?

The coyote was no longer visible to Chee. But there was a sudden flurry of activity in the brush and a dirty tabby cat scurried out of it and up an adjoining tree to safety. The coyote gave up the pursuit. Coyotes were too wise to engage in hopeless competitions.

And so are Navajos, Chee thought. Instead we endure, and we survive. But now Chee was thinking of another cat.

This one, skinny and ragged, had shown up around his trailer one autumn, attracted by food scraps he’d left out for squirrels. It wore a pretty collar—an animal raised as a pet, then abandoned with no survival skills and handicapped by pregnancy. He had put out food for the terrified beast and it quickly became a regular visitor. Then one of the neighborhood coyotes scented cat and began hunting it. Chee cut a cat-sized entry in his door and lured the animal through it with sardines. Soon the door flap became its emergency route to safety when a coyote prowled. Only when winter froze the San Juan and the
snow began did it move in to spend the nights, still keeping a cautious distance from Chee. Thus they lived together, Chee serving as food provider, Cat operating as feline watchdog, bolting in with a clatter when a coyote (or any visitor) approached the trailer. Otherwise they ignored each other.

The relationship perfectly fit Chee Navajo traditionalism. Natural harmony required all species, be they human, hamster, hummingbird, snake, or scorpion, to respect each other’s roles in the natural world. He saw no more justification in pretending to own a “pet” than he did in human slavery. Both violated the harmony of the system and thus were immoral. However, this cat presented a problem. It had been spoiled for a career as a naturally feral cat, not having been taught to hunt its food by its mother or how to evade other predators. Worse, it had been declawed—a cruel and barbarious custom. It could no longer adjust to the world into which it had been left. Chee understood that. That, too, was natural. He could not adjust to the world of Wisconsin dairy farming which Mary Landon planned for him. And Mary could not imagine raising her blond, blue-eyed children in his world. And so when her letters began arriving from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, beginning “Dear Jim” instead of “Darling,” Chee put Cat in an airline-approved pet cage and sent it to her—out of the landscape of claw and fang, into a world in which animals were transformed from independent fellows into pets of their masters. With her Christmas card, Mary had sent him a picture of Cat on a sofa with her and her Wisconsin husband. Cat was now named Alice, and Mary was still so beautiful that he knew he would never quite forget her.

Chee rose from the log, went into his trailer, and retrieved the photograph from his desk drawer. He studied it, confirming his memory. Another moment of sorting produced a photograph of Janet Pete. Another sort of beauty. Not the soft, warm, sensual, farm-girl karma of Mary here. Janet was high-fashion, Ivy League law school chic. The word now was
cool
, in the sophisticated sense. She had been the court-appointed public defender of a murder suspect when he met her, an honor grad of a noted law school who had a yen for a seat someday on the Supreme Court. Her Navajo father had provided her the Pete name, her perfect complexion and classic bone structure. But her New England socialite mother had formed the Janet he knew, formed her in a world of high fashion, very important people, and a layered, sophisticated ruling class.

Janet smiled at him now out of the photograph, dark eyes, dark hair beautifully framing a perfect face, slender, an image of grace. Chee dropped both photographs back into the drawer and closed it, remembering how long it had taken him to understand Janet, to realize how smart she was, to realize how he fitted into her plans. Like Mary, she had (more or less) said yes. He had obtained a videotape of a traditional Navajo wedding and took it to her apartment to explain it to her. Instead he learned the nuptials would be in a Washington cathedral with full pomp and ceremony. She had arranged to have the proper strings pulled to have herself transferred to a Justice Department job in Maryland. She had learned the U.S. Marshals Service had an opening there that exactly fit him. She was surprised that he was surprised.

The telephone rang.

Bernie, Chee thought. He picked it up. “Bernie,” he said, “I’ve been—”

“It’s Joe Leaphorn,” the voice said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

Chee exhaled. Said, “Oh, okay. I got your message. I was just going to call you. Tell me what McGinnis told you about the diamond.”

“I will,” Leaphorn said. “If you’re still interested in that charge against Billy Tuve, I guess it’s sort of good news. But now I’ve also got some bad news. I’ll give you that first.”

“Sure,” Chee said.

“Sheriff Tomas Perez—you remember him, retired now. Anyway, I saw him down at the Navajo Inn at lunch. He told me he heard from his old undersheriff that they’ve got some more evidence against Tuve. Seems a former employee at that Zuni store reported that the manager there actually did have a big, valuable diamond in his stock. He said the boss had shown it to him several times. Was very proud of it.”

“Oh,” Chee said, thinking, Good-bye, Tuve.

Leaphorn awaited further comment. Got none.

“So it won’t surprise you to hear that the victim’s widow is claiming the diamond. The D.A. said she’d have to wait until after the trial and he’d need her to testify about it.”

“Did she say she’d seen it, too?”

“Perez seemed to have that impression. But you know how it is. He’s been out of the sheriff’s job for three years now. Passing along third-hand stuff.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “Do you know if Dashee knows about this?”

“Probably,” Leaphorn said. “You know how that is, too. Bad news travels fast.”

“Yep. It does.”

“However, what Shorty told me makes it sound like Billy Tuve might actually have gotten that diamond down in the canyon. Shorty told me he got his own diamond—”

“Wait,” Chee said. “Pardon the interruption. His own diamond? What does that mean?”

“Remember that Short Mountain burglary? Years ago? Shorty listed the diamond as part of the loss. He says he got it from a cowboy, a guy named Reno, who drifted through, gave it to him in exchange for some groceries and a ride into Page. This Reno told Shorty he’d traded one of those scabbard knives for it to an old man down in the Grand Canyon.”

“About where in the canyon?”

“He said just down from the Little Colorado confluence.”

“Well, now,” Chee said. “That’s interesting. That’s the right general area.”

“Must be very close to the place Tuve claims to have swapped off his folding shovel, right?”

“Right,” Chee said. “I’ll tell Dashee about this. Thanks.”

“The even better news is you finally got wise enough to ask Bernadette to marry you. That correct?”

“It is.”

Leaphorn chuckled. “They say third time’s the charm. It is the third time, isn’t it? First we heard you and that pretty blond girl teaching over at Crownpoint were getting married. And then we heard it was going to be the U.S. lawyer, Janet Pete. Both of those deals fell
through. I hope you’re not going to let Bernadette back out.”

“Not if I can prevent it,” Chee said.

“Well, I’m glad for you. Glad for both of you. She’s a prize. It took you way too long to realize it.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t realize it. It was just—Just—Well, I don’t know how to explain it.”

“How about telling me it’s none of my business. Or saying twice burned makes you triple careful. Anyway, congratulations. And tell Bernie everybody is happy for both of you.”

“Well, thanks, Lieutenant. She’s a great lady.”

“You’re going hunting, then? You think there’s any hope of finding the diamond man? After all these years?”

“Not much, I guess. But what else can you do? Dashee and I talked about it, agreed it seemed hopeless, but if he’s heard what you’ve just told me, I’m dead certain he’s going to go hunting, and just as certain he’ll want me to help—even though he probably won’t ask me.”

“I see your point,” Leaphorn said. “Shorty told me a couple of other things that might be helpful.” He told Chee what Reno had said about meeting his diamond man at the mouth of a cave up one of those narrow little slots that drain runoff water down the cliffs into the Colorado River, about the diamond being in a snuff can, and the case from which the old man took it, containing several such cans.