The Blessing Way

his hat pushed forward on his forehead. That would be because they were driving west and the sun was low through the windshield. By looking down his cheek, he could see Miss Leon, sitting stiffly against the right door of the Land-Rover, as far as she could get from the Indian.

The Land-Rover lurched over something and McKee spread his knees to keep from shifting on the seat. Making the move started the throbbing again in his right hand. The Navajo was saying something but it was lost in dizziness.

'I don't know,' Miss Leon said.

'How about you? How long were you planning to stay?'

The question sounded so ordinary and social that McKee had an impulse to laugh. But when Miss Leon had answered two or three days, the Navajo had turned his head toward her. There was a long silence then, and when the Navajo spoke again, McKee realized the question had not been casual at all.

'Did anyone know where you were going?'

'Everyone knew.'

'This Dr. Green at Albuquerque knew,' the Navajo said. 'Who else? What about your husband? Did he know you were coming to this canyon?'

'I don't have a husband.'

There was another silence then.

'Who else knew then?' the Navajo asked.

'Some other friends of mine, of course, and my family. Why? What difference does it make?'

'Another thing. Why did McKee sit around in the canyon and let me cut him off?'

'Ask him,' Miss Leon said.

'You tell me,' the Navajo said.

'Because I was a fool,' Miss Leon said.

'You slow him down?' The Navajo chuckled. 'Didn't you believe there was a Navajo Wolf?'

'He had that horrible bruise on his forehead,' Miss Leon said, 'I thought it was that.'

'Well, I would have got him anyway.'

'No,' she said. 'If it hadn't been for me, Dr. McKee would have gotten away.'

'Maybe you don't know about us Navajo Wolves. We turn ourselves into coyotes, and dogs, bears, foxes, owls, and crows.'

McKee stared at the back of the Navajo's head. He had ticked off the litany of were-animals in a voice heavy with sarcasm. And he listed bears, and owls, and crows. There had been a scholarly argument about that when Greersen first published his book about witchcraft beliefs in the 1920's. Greer-sen had listed only one account of each. The bear story had come out of the Navajo Mountain district and the owl and crow incidents were both far to the east-over on the Checkerboard Reservation in New Mexico. McKee had never found a source who knew of more than were-dogs, werewolves, and were-coyotes. The big man must have read Greersen, and that had to mean he had researched somewhere with an anthropological library. But why, and where?

'And we fly through the air when it's dark and we need to,' the Navajo was saying. 'McKee wouldn't have got away.'

'He'd already gotten away once.' Miss Leon's voice was angry and insistent. 'He outsmarted you last night. And today he outsmarted you again. He…'

'Lady. Drop it. You don't know who I am. Nobody gets away.'

That had ended the conversation. The Land-Rover had turned sharply and tilted downward-moving mostly in first gear down the narrow bottom of a dry wash. And after what McKee guessed must have been three or four miles there was the feel of smooth flat sand under the wheels and the Navajo drove much faster. There was no sun on the Land-Rover now and McKee was sure they were back on the floor of Many Ruins but he wasn't sure of directions.

A dull pain from the bruise on his forehead and the throbbing of his hand made it difficult to concentrate. Who was the Navajo? In this part of the Reservation, The People linked owls with ghosts, but not with witches, and gave crows and ravens no supernatural significance at all. Obviously, the man's tone was heavily ironic when he listed the birds and animals. McKee could think of no source for such a list except Greersen's Case Studies in Navajo Ethnographic Aberrations. It was a notoriously ponderous and difficult volume intended for cultural anthropologists. Why would the Navajo read such a book? When McKee tried to make sense of this, his mind kept turning to the sound of Ellen Leon's voice defending him. 'He outsmarted you,' she had said.

The Land-Rover stopped and McKee heard the hand brake go on.

'You stay here,' the Indian said. 'Don't try to untie McKee and don't try anything funny.'

And then the door opened, the big man was gone, and Miss Leon was leaning over the back of the seat. She looked dusty, disheveled, very tired, and very sympathetic. 'Are you all right?' she asked.

'Where are we? Where did he go?'

'At the tree,' Miss Leon said. 'The one he pulled across the canyon. Are you all right?'

'What's he doing? Putting on the winch?'

'Yes. Dr. McKee, I'm sorry I was such a silly fool. I didn't…'

'I couldn't hear part of the conversation. Did he tell you anything useful? Who he was, or anything like that?'

'No. I don't think so. He said nobody ever got away from him.'