He tried again with the pen, finishing the 'Dear' this time, and inspected the wavering scrawl with satisfaction.
'That's fairly close,' he said. It looked nothing at all like his handwriting and the Navajo had plenty of samples in his field notes to make the comparison.
'It's not close enough,' the Navajo said.
'How about writing it with my left hand?' McKee said suddenly. 'We could say I'd hurt my right one.' He tried to make his glance at the Indian seem natural, and held his breath.
'Dr. McKee. Think about it. That wouldn't look like your handwriting. If it doesn't look like your handwriting, it won't work no matter what you say.' The Navajo was looking at McKee curiously. 'Why would you write Dr. Green a lefthanded letter with Dr. Canfield around to write letters?'
'Just a thought,' McKee mumbled.
The Navajo looked at his watch and then, for a long moment, at the man called Eddie. Eddie shrugged. 'Whatever you think,' he said. 'I don't know the odds.'
McKee was suddenly chillingly aware that his life was being decided. The Navajo looked at him, his face bland, with no trace of malice or anger. McKee was conscious of the ragged line rimming the iris of the Indian's eyes, of the blackness of the pupils; conscious that behind that blackness an intelligence was balancing whatever considerations it gave weight and deciding whether he would die.
'The hell of it is,' the Big Navajo said, 'we don't know how long we're stuck here.'
'Whatever you think,' Eddie said again. 'Lot of money involved.'
'Let's see that hand again,' the Indian ordered.
McKee raised it slowly, palm upward, toward the Navajo.
He leaned slightly forward, scrutinizing the twisted finger. Like, McKee thought, a housewife inspecting a slightly off-color roast.
'Maybe soaking it will get that swelling down,' the Indian said. 'Soak it in hot water and get the swelling out. We'll take 'em up to the cliff place, Eddie.'
From behind him, McKee heard a faint click.
Eddie had slipped the safety catch on his automatic back into place.
'It's almost four o'clock,' the Navajo said. 'The hell of it is with this job we never know how much time we have.'
Chapter 15
At approximately four o'clock Joe Leaphorn, sweating profusely, led his borrowed horse the last steep yards to the top of the ridge behind Ceniza Mesa. Almost immediately he found exactly what he had hoped to find. And when he found it the pieces of the puzzle locked neatly into place-confirming his meticulously logical conclusions. He knew why Luis Horseman had been killed. He knew, with equal certainty, that the Big Navajo had done the killing. The fact that he had no idea how he could prove it was not, for the moment, important.
At about ten minutes after four o'clock, Lieutenant Leaphorn found something he had not expected to find on the Ceniza ridge. And suddenly he was no longer sure of anything. This unexpected fact visible at his feet fell like a stone in a reflecting pool, turning the mirrored image into shattered confusion. The answer he had found converted itself into another question. Leaphorn no longer had any idea why Horseman had died. He was, in fact, more baffled than ever.
Leaphorn had left the Chinle subagency at noon, towing Sam George Takes's horse and trailer, determined to learn what the Big Navajo had been doing at Ceniza Mesa. At first he drove faster than he should because he was worried. Billy Nez had come home from the Enemy Way, picked up his rifle, and left again on his pony. Charley Nez, as usual, didn't know where he had gone. But Leaphorn could guess. And he didn't like the conclusion. He was sure Billy Nez would ride to the place where Luis Horseman had hidden. Nez would pick up the tracks of the Big Navajo's Land-Rover there, and he would follow it. Because Leaphorn couldn't think his way through the puzzle of Luis Horseman's death, he had no idea what Nez would find-if anything. And because Leaphorn didn't know, he worried.
Leaphorn began driving more slowly and worrying less as the carryall climbed the long slope past Many Farms. He had been working his way methodically around the crucial question, the question which held the key to this entire affair, the question of motive. By the time the carryall reached the summit of the grade and began the gradual drop to Agua Sal Wash the answer was taking shape. He pulled off the asphalt, parked on the shoulder and sat, examining his potential solution for flaws. He could find no serious ones, and that eliminated his worry about young Nez. Nez almost certainly wouldn't find the Big Navajo on the Lukachukai plateau. The man would be long gone. And, if he did find him, it wouldn't matter much unless Nez did something remarkably foolish.
Leaphorn went through his solution again, looking for a hole. The Big Navajo must have found the Army's missing rocket on Ceniza Mesa.
Why, Leaphorn asked himself angrily, had he been so quick to reject this idea when he learned the reward was canceled? The Big Navajo had been clearing a track to the top when Billy Nez found him and stole the hat. He would have needed such a road to haul the remains down. And then he had cached the rocket somewhere until he could find out how to collect the reward. Horseman had found the rocket and claimed it. A Navajo would not kill for money, but he would kill in anger. The two had fought-fought in some sandy arroyo bottom. Horseman had been smothered. And the Big Navajo had moved his body down to Teastah Wash. Why? 'To avoid having the area where his rocket was hidden searched by Law and Order people looking for Horseman.' Now the Big Navajo was waiting, with the inbred patience of the Dinee, for the moment when sun, wind, and birdsong made the time seem right to claim the Army's $10,000. Or perhaps he had learned by now that the reward had been canceled. It seemed to make little difference. Leaphorn could think of no possible way to connect the missile with the murder.
He looked out across the expanse of the Agua Sal Valley, past Los Gigantes Buttes. There was Ceniza Mesa- twenty miles away, a table-topped mass of stone rising out of an ocean of ragged erosion like an immense aircraft carrier. Eons ago the mesa had been part of the Lukachukai plateau. It was still moored to the mountain ramparts by a sway-backed saddle ridge. It was on that saddle ridge that Billy Nez had seen the Big Navajo working and it was there Leaphorn would prove his theory. Perhaps Billy Nez had lied. Leaphorn thought about it. Billy Nez hadn't lied.
