rough surface of the rock cutting into his knees and started to shift his weight, but again there was the primal urging to caution. It was then he caught the motion.
Something in the black shadow behind the outcrop had moved slightly. McKee stared until his eyes burned, rubbed them, and then stared again. And he saw the dog's head. It inched slowly out of the shadow into the moonlight. First a muzzle and then the head, its ears upright and-McKee strained his eyes until he was sure-its mouth hanging unnaturally open. The head remained there, motionless. McKee stared, every muscle rigid. The dog's head seemed unnaturally high-unless, McKee thought, it was standing on some sort of ledge behind the outcropping. And then there was motion again.
The dog became a man. A large man with the skin of a wolf over his shoulders, its empty skull atop his own head. He moved across a patch of moonlight and disappeared behind a growth of bushes at a foot of the west cliff talus. When the shape reappeared a moment later, McKee thought for a split second that his eyes had been deceiving him-that it actually was a wolf. But it was a man, running in a crouch across the damp sand of the canyon bottom, running with silent swiftness directly toward McKee's tent. The man held something in his right hand, something perhaps a foot long, metal which reflected the moonlight. It was a long-barreled pistol, with an ammunition clip jutting down in front of the trigger. A machine pistol.
The shape disappeared again, out of sight behind the talus slope on McKee's side of the canyon. McKee bent and felt around his feet for a rock, selected one about the size of a softball. When he raised his head, the figure was back in view-in the shadow but silhouetted now against the moonlit cliff. McKee gripped the stone and watched. The panic was gone now, replaced by a kind of grim anger. The figure was at the tent, standing motionless. Listening, McKee thought. Listening and not hearing a damned thing and wondering about it. Then the shape was gone, out of sight behind the tent. McKee had almost decided the man had somehow slipped away when he saw him again, by the bedrolls now, but brush and boulders obscured the area and he couldn't see what the man was doing. He studied the cliff wall on both sides of his pocket. He could climb out of this sheltered place by working his way past a huge block of sandstone just beside him. He could probably make his way down canyon without being in view from the camp.
But if he comes this way, McKee thought, this might be the best place to face him. I could probably knock him down with my rock before he saw me. Unless he has a flashlight as well as the gun. Then there wouldn't be much chance.
And, while he thought this, the utter irrationality of it all occurred to him. It was unreal. Like some crazy childhood nightmare.
But the man was there, real enough, back by the tent now and no longer seeming to make any effort at concealment. He raised the hood of McKee's truck and McKee had a sudden wild hope that he would start it, climb in, and race away, nothing more than a thief. Instead, he closed the hood and walked back and into the tent. A moment later a spot of light showed through the canvas. The flashlight beam shifted, held steady, shifted again, and then stopped. He's looking through my papers, McKee thought. He wondered what the man would make of his notes on the witchcraft interviews. And he had a sudden impulse to walk into the tent, confront the man, and demand to know what the devil he was doing. Then the light snapped off and the man appeared again in front of the tent, staring almost directly toward McKee's hiding place. McKee felt the impulse die.
'Doctor McKee?'
The man called in an even, sonorous voice, not much above a conversational tone. But in the stillness the sound seemed obscenely loud. And the canyon walls said 'Kee-Kee-Kee' in a receding echo of his name.
'Bergen McKee,' the voice repeated. 'I need to…' The echoes drowned the rest of it. 'I need to talk to you about Doctor Canfield,' the voice said. And the man stood silent until the echoes died again. Who is he? McKee wondered. The Navajo bitten by the snake? Or was this man a Navajo? He couldn't tell anything from the voice. There was no trace of accent. But then educated Navajos rarely had accents, except for sometimes dropping the 'th' sound.
The man stood silent a long moment, staring up, and then down, the canyon. Listening. And he won't hear a damn thing, McKee thought. Not from me.
'John's hurt,' the voice said. The voice was louder now and the cliffs bounced the 'hurt' between them until it blended into a single note. 'He needs help.'
John. John, not Jeremy. The man standing down there in the darkness, the man with the wolf skin, the man who had stalked like an animal, had some connection with Canfield's note, with Canfield's peculiar signature.
'I should go down there,' McKee thought, but he remembered the thing that had reflected the moonlight in this man's hand as he had crossed the canyon floor. Why the pistol? Why the dog skin? And he leaned motionless against the boulder, feeling the rough coldness of the rock against his legs and the cold sweat on his palms, knowing he would go nowhere near this man. Not alone in this dark canyon. Not without a weapon.
And then the man was gone. Suddenly he was no longer beside the tent. And then McKee saw him, trotting diagonally across the canyon bottom, the wolf skin dangling from one hand.
McKee relaxed against the boulder, suddenly aware that he was cold and that his shirt was wet with sweat. Far down canyon the saw-whet owl made its strange, rasping cry. Signaling a kill, McKee thought.
Chapter 12
It was well after midnight when Leaphorn finally learned who had collected the scalp for the ceremonial. He had talked until he was tired of talking-tired and frustrated and irritated at his close-mouthed people. And then a girl had told him, proudly and without prompting, that Billy Nez-whom he still hadn't located-had stolen the hat. Billy Nez had tracked the truck of the witch and had watched from hiding until he finally had the opportunity. Leaphorn had been captured by the girl, a plump and pretty youngster wearing a T-shirt with 'Chinle High School' printed across it, during the Girl Dance. She had grabbed his arm while he was talking to an old man.
'Come on, Blue Policeman,' she had said. I've got you and you've got to dance.' And Leaphorn had let her tow him to the great fire, because he had already decided the old man would tell him nothing, and because it was the tradition at this ceremonial. He would dance with the girl a little, and after a while he would pay her the proper ransom for his release, and then he would continue wandering through the crowd asking for Billy Nez but no longer really expecting to find him here.
Blue Policeman, he thought. A hell of a lot of good it does to leave your uniform at home. There's not an adult at this Sing by now who doesn't know I'm the law.
The chant rose in the firelight. Ya Ha He Ya Na He. Rising and falling with the rhythm of the pot drums. And then the words. 'Lie closer to me,' the singers chanted. 'Bring your sheepskin and we will go into the darkness. What are you going to do out there?' Leaphorn glanced at his partner, curious whether the ribald suggestion of the song would embarrass a boarding-school girl. She danced gracefully, gripping his left arm with her right.
