river, approximately twenty-three miles east by northeast of Short Mountain, and exactly at north latitude 36, 11, 17, and west longitude 110,29,3.
To those of the Buffalo Society who seized these white hostages, know that we three warriors kept our honor and our promise. To the white man, come to this cave and recover the bodies of three of your adults and eleven of your young. They died to avenge the deaths of three of our adults and eleven children in the Olds Prairie Murders. With them will be bodies of three warriors of the Buffalo Society: Jackie Noni of the Potawatomi Nation, and John Tull, of the Seminole, and myself, whom the white men call Hoski, or James Tso, a warrior of the Navajo Nation. May our memories live in the glory of the Buffalo Society.
The clear, resonant voice of Goldrims stopped and there was only the faint hiss of the blank tape winding into the take-up reel. Leaphorn pushed the off button and rewound the tape. He felt numb. His logic had told him that Goldrims might kill the hostages to eliminate witnesses, but now he realized that he hadn’t really believed it. The impact of hearing Goldrims’s pleasant, unemotional voice declare this mass murder/mass suicide was stunning. And in that split second, he also became aware that the name of Father Benjamin Tso was missing from the catalog of the dead. He confronted the implications of that gap in the roster. It meant that Goldrims had planned even better than Leaphorn had guessed.
You want to hear it again? Leaphorn shouted. From the beginning this time.
Tull said nothing. Leaphorn pushed the on button. You were warned, the tape began. But our people have seen policemen in the territory . . . When the recorder reached the list of bodies, Leaphorn stopped it. I want you to notice, he shouted to Tull, there’s a name missing from this list. Notice its the name of your buddy’s brother. I want you to think about that.
Leaphorn thought of it himself. Bits of the puzzle fell into place. He knew now who had written the letter summoning Father Benjamin Tso to his grandfathers hogan. Goldrims had written it himself. He felt a chill admiration for the mind that had conceived such a plan. Hoski had realized he could not escape from the manhunt. It would be massive and inexorable. So he had devised a way to abort it. What the dynamite left of his brother, as Hoski had arranged it, would be found with the shattered radio and identified as Hoskis body. Everyone would thus be accounted for. There would be no one left to hunt. As he realized this, Leaphorn also realized that his own problem had been multiplied. Goldrims would have to respond to Tull’s radioed call for help. He couldn’t risk having Leaphorn, or anyone who had seen Father Tso, escape from the cave. Hoski would have to come back.
Leaphorn pushed the play button again, ran the tape, pushed stop, pushed rewind. He was awed by it. Perfect. Flawless. Impeccable. It left nothing to chance. The big score for James Tso would not just be the ransom. The big score would be a new life, free from surveillance, free from hiding. There would be no reason to question the identity of the body. Hoski had never been arrested or fingerprinted. And no one knew the priest was here. No one, that is, who would remain alive. And there was a family resemblance.
Hey, Tull, Leaphorn yelled. Have you counted the bodies? There’s Jackie, and all those Boy Scouts, and the woman, and one of the Tso brothers, and you. You’re there on the list of dead, Tull. But your friend Hoski is going to be alive and well. And wealthy, too.
Tull said nothing.
Goddamn it, Tull, Leaphorn shouted. Think! He’s screwing you. He’s screwing the Buffalo Society. Kelongy wont see a dollar of that ransom. Hoskis going to disappear with it.
Leaphorn listened and heard nothing but the echoes of his own voice dying in the cave.
He hoped Tull was thinking. Hoski would disappear. And someday a man with another name and another identity would appear in Washington, and contact a woman named Rosemary Rita Oliveras. And somewhere, wherever he was hiding, a madman named Kelongy would wonder what went wrong with his crazy scheme and perhaps he would mourn his brilliant lieutenant. But there was no time to think of that now. Leaphorn glanced at his wrist watch. It was 2:47 A.M. In an hour and thirteen minutes it would be time to broadcast the answers that would keep the law at bay for another two hours. What had been Hoskis timing? He had called the helicopter to deliver the ransom at 4 A.M. Probably he would have picked up the money about two-thirty. When was the Hallicrafters set timed to broadcast its tape, and to detonate its bomb? Since Hoski would want to make sure that broadcast was recorded, he’d probably time it at one of the regular two-hour broadcasts.
But how soon? Leaphorn tried to concentrate, to shut out the throbbing of his hip, the aching fatigue, the damp, mushroom smell of this watery part of the cave. It would be soon. Hoski would need very little running time. An hour or two of darkness would be enough to get well clear of the cave and its neighborhood. Because there’d be no search once that tape was aired. There would only be a great flocking of everybody to find this point on the map the smoking mouth of a cave. There would be chaos. The hunted would have been found. Hoski/Goldrims, safely outside the circle of confusion, would simply walk away. Leaphorn was suddenly confident he understood the timing of Hoskis plan.
Tull, Leaphorn shouted. Cant you see the son-of-a-bitch set you up? Use your head.
No, Tull said. Not him. You made that tape up.
Its his voice, Leaphorn shouted. Cant you recognize his voice?
Silence.
He didn’t tell you why he moved his brother away from the Boy Scouts, did he? Leaphorn shouted. He didn’t tell you about this tape. He didn’t tell you about the bomb.
Hell, man, Tull said. I helped him put them together. I’ve got one right here with me, by this radio set here. And when the time comes, its going to blow you to hell.
You and me together, Tull, Leaphorn said. And as he said it, he heard the muffled purring of an outboard motor.
You weren’t here when he made one of those bombs, Leaphorn said. And he didn’t tell you about it. Or about that tape. Or about broadcasting it over that spare radio. Come on, Tull. You were the sucker in Santa Fe. You think you’re immortal, but don’t you get tired of being the one who gets screwed?
Tull said nothing. Over the echoes of his own words, Leaphorn could hear the purring motor.
Think, he shouted. Count the dynamite sticks. There were twenty-four in the box. He used some to seal the other end of the cave. And some in a bomb to wipe out the Scouts, and you probably have a couple there. So does it all add up to twenty-four?
Silence. It wasn’t going to work. The tone of the outboard motor had changed now. It was inside the cave.
You said there was dynamite in a sack by that Hallicrafters, Tull said. Is that what you said? His voice sounded
