That’s right, Leaphorn said.
Let me see, now. If I remember correct, your mama was Anna Gorman ain't that right?
From way the hell over at Two Gray Hills? And you’re a grandson of Hosteen KleeThlumie.
Leaphorn nodded. McGinnis scowled at him.
I don’t mean a goddam clan grandson, he said. I mean a real grandson. He was the father of your mother? That right?
Leaphorn nodded again.
I knowed your granddaddy, then, McGinnis said. He toasted this fact with a long sip at the warm bourbon and then thought about it, his pale old mans eyes staring past Leaphorn at the wall. Knowed him before he was Hosteen anything. Just a young buck Indian trying to learn how to be a singer. They called him Horse Kicker then.
When I knew him he was called Hosteen Klee, Leaphorn said.
We helped each other out, a time or two, McGinnis said, talking to his memories. Cant say that about too many. He took an-other sip of bourbon and looked across the glass at Leaphorn solidly back in the present. You want to find that old Cigarette woman, he said.
Now, the only reason you’d want to do that is something must have come up on the Tso killing. That right?
Nothing much new, Leaphorn said. But you know how it is. Time passes. Maybe somebody says something. Or sees something that helps us out.
McGinnis grinned. And if anybody heard anything, it’d get to old John McGinnis. That right? The grin vanished with a new thought. Say, now, you know anything about a feller named Noni? Claims to be a Seminole Indian? The tone of the question suggested that he doubted all claims made by Noni.
Don’t think so, Leaphorn said. What about him?
He came in here a while back and looked the store over, McGinnis said. Said he and a bunch of other goddam Indians had some sort of government loan and was interested in buying this hell hole. I figured to do that they’d have to deal with the Tribal Council for a license.
They would, Leaphorn said. But that wouldn’t have anything to do with the police. They really going to buy it? The idea of McGinnis actually selling the Short Mountain Post wasn’t believable. It would be like the Tribal Council bricking up the hole in Window Rock, or Arizona selling the Grand Canyon.
Probably didn’t really have the money, McGinnis said. Probably just come around looking to see if breaking in and stealing would be easy. I didn’t like his looks. McGinnis scowled at his drink and at the memory. He put his rocking chair in motion, holding his elbow rigid on the chair arm and the glass rigid in his hand. In it, a brown tide of bourbon ebbed and flowed with the motion. This Tso killing, now. You know what I hear about that? He waited for Leaphorn to fill in the blank.
What? Leaphorn asked.
Not a goddam thing, McGinnis said.
Funny, Leaphorn said.
It sure as hell is, McGinnis said. He stared at Leaphorn as if trying to find some sort of answer in his face. You know what I think? I don’t think a Navajo did it.
Don’t you?
Neither do you, McGinnis said. Not if you’ve got as much sense as I hear you do. You Navajos will steal if you think you can get off with something, but I never heard of one going out to kill somebody. He flourished the glass to emphasize the point.
That’s one kind of white mans meanness the Navajos never took to. Any killings you have, there’s either getting drunk and doing it, or getting mad and fighting. You don’t have this planning in advance and going out to kill somebody like white folks. That right?
Leaphorn let his silence speak for him. McGinnis had been around Navajos long enough for that. What the trader had said was true. Among the traditional Dinee, the death of a fellow human being was the ultimate evil. He recognized no life after death. That which was natural in him, and therefore good, simply ceased. That which was unnatural, and therefore evil, wandered through the darkness as a ghost, disturbing nature and causing sickness. The Navajo didn’t share the concept of his Hopi-Zuni-Pueblo Indian neighbors that the human spirit transcended death in the fulfillment of an eternal kachina, nor the Plains Indian belief in joining with a personal God. In the old tradition, death was unrelieved horror. Even the death of an enemy in battle was something the warrior cleansed himself of with an Enemy Way ritual. Unless, of course, a Navajo Wolf was involved. Witchcraft was a reversal of the Navajo Way.
Except maybe if somebody thought he was a Navajo Wolf, McGinnis said. They’d kill him if they thought he was a witch.
You hear of anyone who thought that?
That’s the trouble, McGinnis said cheerfully. Nobody had nothing but good words to say about old Hosteen Tso. The cluttered room was silent again while McGinnis considered this oddity. He stirred his drink with a pencil from his shirt pocket.
What do you know about his family? Leaphorn asked.
He had a boy, Tso did. Just one kid. That boy wasn’t no good. They called him Ford.
Married some girl over at Teec Nos Pos, a Salt Cedar I think she was, and moved over with her people and got to drinking and whoring around at Farmington until her folks run him off. Ford was always fighting and stealing and raising hell. McGinnis sipped at his bourbon, his face disapproving. You could understand it if somebody hit that Navajo on the head, he said.
He ever come back? Leaphorn asked.
Never did, McGinnis said. Died years ago. In Gallup I heard it was. Probably too much booze and his liver got him. He toasted this frailty with a sip of bourbon.
You know anything about a grandson? Leaphorn asked.
