was typical of what he knew others had felt. How did they know that Leaphorn himself was not a witch? And perhaps seeking those who knew of him to make them his future victims? And yet among the garrulous ones, the gossips, there had been some specific details. Several had said the witch was a man, had indicated he was a tall man; all references to him were on foot, none had him riding a horse. The accounts Leaphorn had collected of the witching incidents were conflicting and overlapping and some were obviously wildly imaginative. But he concluded there probably had been at least two or three persons bothered in addition to Tsosie. He had jotted some names in his notebook, but even as he did it he wondered why. The laws he enforced had been taken by the Tribal Council from the white man's laws and the white man did not recognize witchcraft as an offense.
It would become an offense only if some specified crime was involved. There had been a case of extortion once, nothing they had ever proved, but enough circumstantial evidence to indicate a conspiracy between a Star Gazer and a Singer to diagnose witchings and split fees for the curing ceremonial.
Agnes Tsosie came out of the ceremonial hogan now and went to the brush shelter with a crowd of women relatives and the Singer from the Stick Carrier's camp. Leaphorn saw that one of the women was rubbing tallow on her chin and juniper sap on her forehead. Inside the hogan the same thing would be happening to Tsosie and the other male kinfolks who would be taking part in the attack on the scalp. They would be blackened more thoroughly with the ceremonial ashes, as Monster Slayer had been to make himself invisible before his attack on the Ye-i. If Leaphorn's memory of the ceremonial was correct, Agnes Tsosie would only watch the attack, with a male relative serving as her stand-in during the ritual. The Singer wasn't needed during the blackening and Leaphorn saw Old Man Sandoval talking to the Scalp Shooter, who had been sitting all afternoon beside the hogan entrance, guarding a pile of ashes.
Scalp shooting required a professional, although his role in the ceremonial was simply to shoot the scalp with an arrow and sprinkle it with symbolic ashes to signify its death. Leaphorn thought he had seen this man before, helping Singers at other ceremonials. He wondered idly what Sandoval was using for the symbolic scalp. Ideally, it would be something from the witch's person, a clipping of hair if that could be had, something with his blood on it, or some article of clothing which had absorbed his sweat. Since this witch was unidentified, the symbolic scalp would have to be something else. Leaphorn guessed they might use a pouch of sand from a footprint or something else they thought the witch had touched.
If it's hair, Leaphorn thought, it's going to mean that Sandoval and some others have been lying. If it was hair or something bloody he would have to confiscate it after the ceremonial ended. He would have the lab check it with Horseman's and, if it matched, have a messy murder investigation on his hands. But he was fairly sure Sandoval hadn't been lying. Linking Horseman to the witching case had never really made sense, never really been more than a faint possibility where no other possibilities were offered. As far as Leaphorn could pin down the witching gossip, Horseman had hardly returned to the Lukachukais when the incidents started, and at least one had happened before the knifing in Gallup. Besides, the types suspected of witchcraft were always older, usually with a lot of material possessions and a lot of enemies.
There was the sound of chanting from the ceremonial hogan now, and the thudding of the pot drum. Sandoval came through the curtain, followed by Tsosie, two cousins, and the uncle who was representing Agnes Tsosie. Even their loin cloths had been blackened with ashes, and each held in his right hand a raven beak, secured to a juniper stick with yucca and buckskin thongs. The Scalp Shooter picked up his basket of ashes and was walking north- northeast. It was the direction, Leaphorn noted, of the higher central peaks of the Lukachukais. Over the peaks, a tremendous thunderhead was rising, its top boiling in relentless slow motion into the stratosphere, its bottom black with shadow and trailing the first thin curtains of rain.
Sandoval will know his medicine is working, Leaphorn thought. He has called for Thunder to kill the Wolf and Thunder has come to the appointed place. It was interesting that the Singer from the Stick Carrier's camp had placed the scalp so carefully north-by-northeast of the hogan. That meant they believed the Wolf was now somewhere in that direction.
Leaphorn trailed along with the crowd. The Scalp Shooter had stopped at a dead creosote bush about two hundred yards from the hogan and was sprinkling something under the bush with ash. He stepped aside and Tsosie and his kinsmen poked at the object with their raven bills, killing it with this symbol of contempt. Leaphorn pushed through the crowd. The spectators were silent now and he could hear the attackers muttering, 'It is dead. It is dead,' each time they struck the symbolic scalp.
The object the crowbills were striking was a high-crowned black hat.
Instantly, Leaphorn correlated this new fact with other information, with the bulky stranger trying on hats in Shoemaker's, with the question of why a worthless hat would be stolen and a valuable silver concho band left behind.
The hat was thoroughly coated with ashes now, but there was still a dark outline against the faded felt, the outline of linked circles where heavy silver conchos had once protected the dye from the sun.
When I look in the hatband, Leaphorn thought, it will be size seven and three-eighths. The Big Navajo was the Navajo Wolf. But why was he the witch? This was why the Hand Trembler and Sandoval had decided to prescribe an Enemy Way. The Navajo Wolf was a man nobody knew. A stranger to the clan and to the entire linked-clan society of the Lukachukai slopes. But what had he done to be singled out for this terrible proscription of The People? Death within the year by his own witchcraft-turned against him by the medicine of the Enemy Way. Or, Leaphorn thought grimly, death much sooner if the Tsosies or the Nez family happen to catch him.
The high slopes of the Lukachukais were obscured now by the darkness of the cloud. Light from the setting sun glittered from the strata of ice crystals forming in the thin, frigid air at its upper levels. Deep within it, the structure of the cloud was lit by a sudden flare of sheet lightning. And then there was a single lightning bolt, an abrupt vivid streak of white light pulsing an electric moment against the black of the rain, connecting cloud and mountain slope.
If the witch was there, he's dead enough, Leaphorn thought. And he couldn't blame himself for that. Not the way he would blame himself if The People found the Wolf before he did and executed this sentence of death.
Chapter 11
There had been intermittent thunder for several minutes. But, even so prepared, McKee had been startled by the sudden brighter-than-day flash of the lightning bolt. The explosion of thunder had followed it almost instantly, setting off a racketing barrage of echoes cannonading from the canyon cliffs. The light breeze, shifting suddenly down canyon, carried the faintly acrid smell of ozone released by the electrical charge and the perfume of dampened dust and rain-struck grass.
It filled McKee's nostrils with nostalgia. There was none of the odor of steaming asphalt, dissolving dirt, and exhaust fumes trapped in humidity which marked an urban rain. It was the smell of a country childhood, all the more evocative because it had been forgotten. And for the moment McKee dismissed the irritation of J. R. Canfield and reveled mentally in happy recollections of Nebraska, of cornfields, and of days when dreams still seemed real and plausible. Then a splatter of rain hit; big, cold, high-velocity drops sent him running to the tent for his raincoat and back out into the sudden shower to rescue the eggs frying on the butane stove and the bedrolls spread out on the sand beside a jumble of boulders.
