Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 01] (11 page)

"Billy tracked him three days," the younger boy said. He grinned at Leaphorn. "I'm Billy's uncle's son."

"We might sit here by this pickup and smoke," Leaphorn said. He took a cigarette and handed the pack to the younger boy. And when the pack came to Billy Nez he took a cigarette, and lit it, and told Joe Leaphorn everything he knew. And he started, as Leaphorn knew he would start, from the beginning.

The witch had first come around the summer hogans of his uncle at mid-spring not long after his uncle's family had driven the sheep up from the winter grazing in the Chinle Valley to the summer range in the Lukachukais.

Two days after they had settled down, he and the two boys were driving the sheep up there on the plateau. His uncle was driving his own sheep and the boys were driving his uncle's wife's sheep. And they saw this truck coming across this arroyo there. It wasn't really a truck. More like a jeep, only bigger and with a cloth top on it.

"Was it a Land-Rover?" Leaphorn said.

"I don't know," Billy Nez said. "I never saw another one like it. It was gray."

The Big Navajo had left Shoemaker's store in a Land-Rover, Leaphorn thought. Gray and hard to see and I wonder if that's a coincidence.

The truck had stopped at first and his uncle had seen the driver looking at them. And then it drove up and the man asked my uncle where he was taking those sheep and how long he was going to keep them in that high country. His uncle had said all summer and the man had asked if he didn't know there was a witch cave up in that country and a bunch of wolves up there that got after people that came into their territory.

Billy Nez took a long drag on his cigarette, inhaled, and then blew out the smoke.

"What'd your uncle say?" Leaphorn asked, and was instantly irked with himself for his impatience.

"He thought it was kind of funny this Nakai knowing so much about Navajo Wolves."

Leaphorn looked at Billy Nez sharply.

"Why Nakai? Did your uncle think this man was a Mexican?"

"Nakai, or Belacana, or something," Billy Nez said. "Anyhow my uncle said he didn't talk much good Navajo. Wanted to talk in English and my uncle don't talk that much, so he tried to talk in Spanish and this man didn't know that good." Billy Nez paused. "So I guess he wasn't a Nakai, come to think of it. Maybe a Ute or something."

So, Leaphorn thought. No doubt now why the Hand Tremble had prescribed the Enemy Way instead of the Prostitution Way. Here's why they thought the witch was a foreigner—an enemy ghost to be exorcised. But the man in the Land-Rover, the man with the black hat, had been a Navajo. Leaphorn was certain of it.

Anyway, Billy Nez was saying, his uncle had said he didn't pay much attention to witches when he needed grass for his sheep and the sheep of his wife, and the man had driven away. But after that his uncle had known something was going to be wrong.

The first week they were back in the high country a young coyote had trailed his uncle, followed his horse all the way across the mesa one morning. That was the Coyote People telling him to watch out. The Coyote People caused a lot of trouble, Billy Nez said, but they were good about warning people.

A little bit after that, at night, his uncle heard the Wolf on top of his hogan. Some dirt had fallen down from the roof on the east side of the hogan (and now, Leaphorn thought, the other three compass points), and then on the south side, and then on the west side and then some dirt fell down on the north side. And then his uncle had known the Wolf would be looking down the smoke hole to see where they were and to blow some corpse powder down on them. But the uncle of Billy Nez was not afraid of a Wolf. He ran outside the hogan to chase him away but he didn't see anything for sure. Maybe he saw a dog running away but he wasn't sure.

"That would have been about the first part of May?" Leaphorn asked.

"A little bit before that," Billy Nez said. The moon was in its last quarter two cycles so it would have been in the last part of April."

Almost two weeks before Luis Horseman came home to die.

But the second time his uncle had seen the Wolf. It was daylight then, sundown but still daylight, and his uncle was bringing some of the sheep in for watering and he had thought something was watching him maybe. He looked up to the rim of the mesa and there was this witch standing there, looking at him. He was up on the mesa rim on the rocks with this wolf skin on him, but his uncle could tell it was a man. His uncle had said this witch had stood there looking at him and then made some medicine with his hands. His uncle had thought he might be calling to the other witches to come out of their cave and help. His uncle drove the sheep down to the hogan then and they sprinkled pollen and sang the songs from the Night Way. The songs against witches.

"What day was that?"

"That was three or four days after the first time on the roof," Billy Nez said. "I think it was three days."

After that, his uncle had taken his .30-30 with him when he herded the sheep and he had left one of the boys at the hogan with his wife, in case the witch would come there while he was gone. And he thought he had better track this Wolf and kill it. He went up on the mesa where he had seen the Wolf, and he found tracks there. Some of them were big boot tracks and some were like a big dog. It was still the Season When the Thunder Sleeps and the ground was damp from the snow thaw and tracking was easy.

"My father is a brave man," said the cousin of Billy Nez, and was instantly embarrassed by his rudeness. They smoked a moment in silence to let the incident pass. Then Billy Nez resumed his story.

Under the other slope of the mesa, his uncle had found tire tracks. The Wolf had driven up there and left his truck and then come back to it and driven away. After that the Wolf had started bothering the livestock. That first night, his uncle had heard the horses whinnying like they were scared and then he heard one of them screaming, and when he ran out there to where he had them penned, two of them had their tendons cut and his uncle had to kill them.

Leaphorn raised a hand in interruption. This surprised him. He had expected nothing so concrete.

"My nephew, did you see these horses?"

"I saw them. The Wolf must have done it with a hand ax. He cut both of the rear tendons on the mare and he hit the colt so hard that it broke his legbone."

Good enough, thought Leaphorn. I've got another reason for finding this son of a bitch. The Tribal Council had a law against cruelty to animals. Besides, Leaphorn didn't like a man who would do that to a horse.

After that, Billy Nez continued, it was the sheep. His uncle lay out all night with his .30-30 but the Wolf didn't come back any more for a while. And then the moon came and one white night he heard some rifle shots and he ran out there and the witch had been shooting into where the flock was sleeping. Three of them were dead and he had to butcher some of the others that were hurt.

"After that my uncle talked about it with my aunt and they decided to bring those sheep out of there. They didn't think they could catch that witch and he might get them. So they came on down here."

Leaphorn passed around his cigarette pack again.

"When was it he shot those sheep?"

"Night just like this," Billy Nez said. He looked at the moon, which was two nights short of full phase.

"Be about twenty-six, twenty-seven days ago. One moon back."

"And when did you go after the witch?" Leaphorn asked.

"Well, my uncle's father came over to our place with some of the other men of the outfit and they talked it over. And then they got that Hand Trembler in and he sang the hand-trembling songs and held his arm out over my uncle and it shook and shook. He said the reason he'd been having these dreams was this foreign witch was bothering him."

Billy Nez took another deep drag on the cigarette.

"Or maybe it was the ghost of the witch. Anyway, after that they tried it out by having a blackening. My uncle slept that night with the ashes on him and he didn't have any dreams, so they decided the Hand Trembler was right. The ghost couldn't find him with those ashes on him. So the next night they got together again there in our hogan and decided they ought to find a Singer who knew the Enemy Way."

Billy Nez paused again.

"And my cousin told them he would find the Wolf and carry the scalp," the younger boy said.

"My grandfather didn't want me to do it. He said it was supposed to be an older man who got the scalp. Somebody who'd had an Enemy Way sung over him. But finally they said I could do it."

"You know the Tracking Bear Song?" Leaphorn asked.

"My grandfather taught me that," Billy Nez said. He laid his cigarette on the ground and chanted softly:

Billy Nez stopped, suddenly embarrassed, and recovered his cigarette.

The three sat in silence a long moment. The chanting had started at the fire again, another sway dance. This time the song was old, a pattern of rhythmic monosyllables which had lost coherent meaning somewhere in time.

"How did you know where to look for the scalp?" Leaphorn asked.

That had taken time, Billy Nez said. His uncle had drawn for him the way the tracks of that truck had looked.

"Like this," Billy Nez said. He smoothed the bare earth with his palm and opened his pocket knife.

"The front tires had a track like this." He drew the tread pattern in the earth. "And the outside of the track, it wasn't as deep. Like he needed a front end job on his truck. Tires wearing on the outside. And the back tires were like this." He drew the pattern of high-traction mud treads. "Cut real deep. I thought I could find them."

"And I guess you did," Leaphorn said.

It had taken Billy Nez almost a week. Three hard days on a horse before he had picked up the first of the tracks—old ones, already almost erased by the wind. On the fourth day, he had caught a glimpse of the Land-Rover. He had been on Talking Rock Mesa and had seen it moving down a wash into the Kam Bimghi Valley. After sunrise the next day he found where the witch was working—clearing a track for his truck up the sloping backside of Ceniza Mesa. And, later that day, he had made his scalp coup.

"I left my horse hobbled up there on top," Billy Nez said, "and I hid out there in the rocks, down near where he was working. He was rolling those rocks out of the way and cutting brush to clear the track. Finally he stopped a while and sat down under a piñon there and ate some stuff and some canned peaches and threw away the can. I thought maybe I'd get that can he'd ate out of for the scalp but that wouldn't be very good and so later on I got the hat."

"Tell how you got it," the younger cousin urged.

"Well, along later in the afternoon the clouds built up the way they do and it got shady and the wind got up. He was wrestling with those rocks and his hat kept blowing off. So the next time he moved that truck farther up the slope, he left that hat there on the seat of the truck. When he was working again, I slipped up there and got it."

"And took off the hatband and left it behind," Leaphorn said.

Billy Nez looked surprised. "Yeh. It was silver conchos."

"There was a rifle there in the truck," younger cousin said.

"Think it was a Remington," Billy Nez said. "Had a long barrel and a telescopic sight. Looked like a .30-06 deer rifle."

"Anything else in there?" Leaphorn asked.

"There was a map folded up there over the dashboard. I think it was a map. And a paper sack on the seat. Maybe part of his lunch. And there was a set of pulleys in the back." The boy paused, thinking.

"A block-and-tackle?" Leaphorn suggested.

"Yes," Nez said.

"Anything else?"

"No. I didn't look much. Just got that hat and then I thought I didn't want to steal that concho band so I took it off. Tied a yucca thong to that hat and tied it on the scalp stick like my grandfather said to do with the scalp—that's so you aren't handling it with your hands so much. And then when I got back up on the mesa away from there, I sang the Tracking Bear Song and used pollen and rode on back to the hogan."

Leaphorn gave the boys each a third cigarette.

"And now," he said, "I want you to tell me about your brother. I want you to tell about Luis Horseman." He tried to read Billy Nez's face. Was it surprise, or fear, or anger? The boy looked at the tip of the cigarette, and then took a long drag and blew out the smoke.

"I heard Law and Order already found him," Billy Nez said. "I heard Luis Horseman is dead."

"We found his body," Leaphorn said. "He was way down by Ganado when we found him, a hundred miles south of here. We don't know how he got there."

"I don't know," Billy Nez said. "He was staying up there on the plateau between Many Ruins and Horse Fell canyons."

"And you went up there to tell him that he didn't kill that Nakai at Gallup—that the man got well and he should come in and talk to us about it," Leaphorn said. "You did that, didn't you?" His voice was gentle.

"I heard you telling that at Shoemaker's," Billy Nez said. "And I thought you were right. It would be better if Luis Horseman went in to Window Rock and didn't try to run and hide any more. But when I went up there to tell him and take him some food he was gone."

"That was four days ago," Leaphorn said. "Tuesday. The day I was at Shoemaker's?"

Nez nodded.

"What time did you go? What time did you get there?"

"I waited until it got dark," Billy Nez said. "Luis Horseman told me to do that so nobody would see. But he wasn't there. I got there maybe two hours after midnight and he was gone."

"Blue Policeman," the smaller boy said, "my cousin found something strange there."

"I looked around where he was camping in some rocks and I thought he had taken everything he had with him," Billy Nez said. "And then I looked around some more and I found that the food he had left was buried there—just covered up with sand."