Turquoise Girl safe from whatever bothers Turquoise Girls.”
“Speaking of big snakes,” Mary Landon said. “Am I right in remembering that they hibernate in the winter, and I therefore have absolutely nothing to worry about? Or is that hibernation business just another of your myths?”
She was climbing a great hump of lava. Just beyond it were the tamarisks and the spring. “When are you going to tell me your war name?”
“It’s a good rule to stay off those humps when you’re walking on lava,” Chee said. “They’re the tops of old bubbles, and about one in twenty thousand is thin enough so that you can fall through and…”
Chee’s voice trailed away. Mary had stopped atop the hump and stood frozen, looking down.
“Jim,” she said. “There’s someone”
Chee scrambled up beside her.
Just beyond the hump was a sinkhole, a circle of clean, dank water rimmed by cattails and a species of green reed. This was surrounded, in turn, by a small expanse of buffalo grass. The man wore a red-and-black mackinaw and his black hat lay beside his head. His hands were together behind his back, secured by what seemed to be an electric cord.
“I think he’s dead,” Mary Landon said in a very small voice.
“I’ll see,” Chee said. The left hand looked distorted, and coated with something dark. “I think you should wait in the truck.”
“All right,” Mary said.
The kneeling man was Tomas Charley. The black on his hand was blood, long dried. But when Chee placed his fingers on Charley’s neck to confirm the certainty that he was dead, he found the flesh resilient and warm. He stepped quickly back from the body and studied the area around him. Tomas Charley had been dead only a matter of minutes. Chee became intensely aware that his pistol, inappropriate for a picnic with a girl, was locked in the glove box of the patrol car. Perhaps Tomas Charley had been left here hours ago and had been a long time dying. And perhaps he had been killed only moments ago, which would mean his killer must be nearby. Chee glanced at the body again. There was no sign of what had killed him. The only blood visible was from the hand. Chee grimaced. The hand had been methodically mutilated. He examined the mackinaw, looking in vain for a bullet hole. Then he noticed a place where the black hair on the back of Charley’s head had been scorched. He knelt beside the body and gently panted the hair. Beneath it, the skin over the skull had been punctured, leaving a small round hole. A bullet hole, probably no larger than a.22. Turquoise Girl had not kept this half-Navajo safe from the monsters.
The sound of the car starting was close. It came from beyond the tamarisks. Chee trotted around the pool toward it, conscious that the driver was probably armed. The car, he saw when he reached the screen of brush, was a green-and-white Plymouth – the one that had been parked beside Charley’s car. It was moving away from him down the track. He couldn’t see the driver. Chee turned and scrambled up the lava formation. When the Plymouth reached the place where the tracks forked, it would angle left, back toward the highway and Grants. Then Chee could see the driver. And he would need only a glimpse to confirm what he already knew. It would be the blond man in the yellow jacket.
But the Plymouth didn’t angle left. It turned right and jolted slowly toward Chee’s patrol car.
He could see Mary at the passenger-side window, looking at the approaching car and then at him.
He cupped his hands and shouted: “Run. Mary. Run.”
She emerged from the driver’s-side door, running toward the new lava flow. She was carrying his 30-30 carbine. Chee raced toward the patrol car, doing what he could to keep out of sight behind the humps and hillocks of old lava. The Plymouth stopped and the driver got out. He was a blond man wearing a yellow jacket, and he raised his right arm and aimed the pistol he held at Mary Landon. It seemed to Chee to have a remarkably long and heavy barrel. The barrel smoked, or seemed to, but Chee heard nothing. Mary was in the new lava and out of sight. Chee’s plan took no thought at all. He would circle around the patrol can, find Mary in the new lava, and get the rifle. The blond man would think he was armed and wouldn’t come after him. The risks were relatively light. In the first place, the chances of being hit at one hundred yards by a pistol were small, unless the man was a hell of a lot better shot than most. And in the second place, a.22 bullet at that range wouldn’t be lethal. Chee ran.
The pain was sudden and intense. Chee stumbled, lost his footing, and fell to his hands and knees. The pain was in his left chest. A heart attack, he thought for one illogical moment. And then he felt blood running down his side and made a quick inspection. A bullet seemed to have struck a rib. He inspected the place with cautious fingers and grimaced with the pain. The bullet had apparently broken the bone. But he didn’t seem to be hurt in any critical way. No reason to change his plans, except for a more realistic view of the blond man’s marksmanship. He raised himself cautiously. He’d locate his adversary exactly, and then he’d resume his run toward the new lava, on a wider, safer circle.
The blond man was trotting directly toward him across the worn waves of gray stone, the long-barreled pistol held in front of him. Chee ducked. The blond either didn’t care if the Navajo policeman was armed, or knew that he wasn’t. Perhaps he had seen that Chee wasn’t wearing his holster. And now he came to finish the job, as he had finished it with Tomas Charley. Chee felt panic, choked it off, and started a scrambling zigzag run. He’d worry about reaching Mary Landon and his rifle later. Now the problem was to stay alive, to put some distance between himself and the blond, to find a place to hide. He vaulted over a ridge of stone and heard the sharp snap of a bullet whipping past him. He heard no gunshot. Behind the ridge, the lava had hardened into a wide trough perhaps five feet deep. Chee sprinted down it, the rib feeling like a knife in his chest. Then he heard the booming crack of a shot, and the whine of a ricocheting bullet. And then another, and another. Those were not the blond’s silent.22. It was the muzzle blast of his 30-30. The trough ended at a grassy pothole catch basin. He was back at Emerson Charley’s spring. Chee stopped and looked over the rim. The blond man was moving back toward his car, keeping low in a dodging run. From the escarpment of new lava, Chee saw a puff of blue smoke and heard again the cracking boom of the 30-30. Then the blond was behind Chee’s patrol can. For a moment Chee lost sight of him. Then he was visible again, getting into the Plymouth. The Plymouth backed around the patrol car with a squeal of tires on rock and then was jolting down the track, far faster than was safe for tires or springs.
About then Chee realized that his patrol can was burning. The flames came from under the rear of it, apparently fed by fuel leaking out of the gas tank. The fire mushroomed abruptly, engulfing the rear half of the vehicle. Chee watched it grimly. The tank was about half full as he remembered it – perhaps twelve gallons. There was another twenty in the auxiliary tank. When that heated up, it would go off like a bomb.
What had been Tomas Charley still knelt, forehead to grass. Chee walked past the body and picked up the sack containing the thermos of coffee and the picnic lunch. They had a long walk ahead of them. He spent another few minutes making a methodical search of the spring area for the box. Charley had said he’d left it in plain view on the rock just beside the water. There was no box now. Behind him, he heard the muffled boom of the gas tank exploding.
“Boy,” Mary Landon said when he walked up. “You Navajos give exciting picnics.” She laughed, but it was a shaky laugh. The fire flared up again with a
“You all right?” he asked. “Thank God you took the rifle with you.”
“I knew you’d say that.” Suddenly Mary Landon was furious. “Why wouldn’t I take it? Because I was stupid, that would be why. I’d just seen a tied-up dead body, and the man who must have killed him coming night toward me, and you yelling at me to run, and the rifle right there in the scabbard. Why wouldn’t I take it?” Her voice was fierce. “Because I’m a half-wit woman? I wouldn’t have said that if you’d taken the rifle. I’d take it for granted. But no. I’m a woman, so I’m stupid.”
“Sorry,” Chee said.
“What’s wrong with this damned rifle anyway?” Mary said. She handed it to him, which reminded Chee that his spare ammunition was in the glove box and would be exploding any minute.
“Let’s back away a little,” he said. As he said it, the 30-30 rounds began exploding, no louder than firecrackers.
“I’m a pretty good shot, I thought,” Mary said. “I was missing him a mile.”
“Sorry about that, too,” Chee said. “When I’m not using it I let the rear sight down.” He showed her, pushing the leaf sight up with his thumb and sliding the calibrated wedge forward to the 200-yard mark.
