'I don't know,' Billy Nez said. 'He was staying up there on the plateau between Many Ruins and Horse Fell canyons.'
'And you went up there to tell him that he didn't kill that Nakai at Gallup-that the man got well and he should come in and talk to us about it,' Leaphorn said. 'You did that, didn't you?' His voice was gentle.
'I heard you telling that at Shoemaker's,' Billy Nez said. 'And I thought you were right. It would be better if Luis Horseman went in to Window Rock and didn't try to run and hide any more. But when I went up there to tell him and take him some food he was gone.'
'That was four days ago,' Leaphorn said. 'Tuesday. The day I was at Shoemaker's?'
Nez nodded.
'What time did you go? What time did you get there?'
'I waited until it got dark,' Billy Nez said. 'Luis Horseman told me to do that so nobody would see. But he wasn't there. I got there maybe two hours after midnight and he was gone.'
'Blue Policeman,' the smaller boy said, 'my cousin found something strange there.'
'I looked around where he was camping in some rocks and I thought he had taken everything he had with him,' Billy Nez said. 'And then I looked around some more and I found that the food he had left was buried there-just covered up with sand.'
'Were the ashes covered up, too?' Leaphorn asked.
'Covered up with sand and smoothed over.'
'Did you see anything else?'
'It was dark. I rode on down into the Chinle Valley and slept until it was light and then I went back up again. Then I found those tracks again.'
'The tracks like the Land-Rover left?'
'Same tracks,' Billy Nez said. 'Up there on the mesa, maybe a half mile from where Luis Horseman was.' He paused. 'My brother would have taken that food with him. He wouldn't have spoiled it like that.'
They sat, smoking in silence.
'I told Luis Horseman that wasn't a good place to stay. Too many houses of the Old People down in those canyons,' Billy Nez said. 'Too many ghosts. Nobody likes that country but witches.'
The boy was silent again, staring at the fire where the sway dancers were again being moved by the drums in two rhythmic lines.
'I think that Wolf killed my brother,' Billy Nez said. His tone was flat, emotionless.
'Listen, my nephew,' Leaphorn said. 'Listen to me. I think you might be right. But you might be wrong.' Leaphorn paused. It would do no good at all to warn this boy against any danger. 'This is our business now-Law and Order business. If you hunt this man you would hunt him to kill him and that would be wrong. That man might not be the one who did it. Don't hunt him.'
Billy Nez got up and dusted off his jeans.
'I must go now, my uncle, and dance with Chinle High School Girl. Go in beauty.'
'Go in beauty,' Leaphorn said.
He sat against the truck, thinking about it, sorting out what he knew.
The Dinee, at least the Dinee who lived in the district east of Chinle, thought the Big Navajo was their witch. Billy Nez had found his Land-Rover tracks near Horseman's camp. But they might be old tracks, and they would be gone now. It had rained tonight on the Lukachukai slopes. And the witch, whoever he was, was a violent witch, or a cruel one-a man who would cripple horses with an ax. That was all he knew. That, and the certainty that Billy Nez would be hunting the man who drove the Land-Rover, a danger to the man if he was innocent and a danger to the boy if he was not.
The first sign of paleness was showing at the eastern edge of the night. Soon Charley Tsosie and his wife and sons would come out of the ceremonial hogan. Sandoval would sing the four First Songs and the Coyote Song, and the Tsosies would inhale the required four deep breaths of the air of the Dawn People. Then Charley Tsosie and his people would be cured and the witch who drove the gray Land-Rover and who might, or might not, have maimed two horses with an ax would have his witchcraft turned against him. The Origin Myth gave him one year to live. One year, if the Tsosies or Billy Nez didn't find him first.
Chapter 13
It was a little more than an hour after daylight when McKee heard the car puttering up the canyon, its exhaust leaving a faint wake of echoes from the cliffs. Canfield had said Miss Leon would be driving a Volkswagen and this sounded like one. It certainly didn't have the throaty roar of whatever it was the man who had stalked him had driven away in the night before.
McKee moved out of the thicket of willows where he had been lying, and prepared himself for a moment he had been dreading. If the car which would soon round the corner ahead was a Volkswagen he would wave it to a stop. If the driver was Miss Leon, she would be confronted with the startling spectacle of a large man with a badly torn shirt, a bruised and swollen face, and an injured hand, who would tell her a wild, irrational story of being spooked out of his bed by a werewolf, and who would order her to turn around and flee with him out of the canyon. McKee had thought of this impending confrontation for hours, ever since it had occurred to him that he couldn't simply escape from this canyon-and whatever crazy danger it held-and go for help to find Canfield. To do so would be to leave Miss Leon to face whatever he was running from.
The car which came around the cliff into view was a baby-blue Volkswagen sedan, driven by a young woman with dark hair. McKee trotted down the slope onto the hard-packed sand, signaling it to stop.
The Volkswagen slowed. McKee saw the woman staring at him, her eyes very large. And then, suddenly, she spun the wheel, the rear wheels spurted sand, and the car roared past him.
