Order Division files to him and helping him find the sort of people he had to see, the unacculturized Indians who knew about witchcraft. He had always regretted that Leaphorn wouldn't completely buy his thesis-that the Wolf superstition was a simple scapegoat procedure, giving a primitive people a necessary outlet for blame in times of trouble and frustration.
He leaned back in the chair, rereading the letter and recalling their arguments-Leaphorn insisting that there was a basis of truth in the Navajo Origin Myth, that some people did deliberately turn antisocial, away from the golden mean of nature, deliberately choose the unnatural, and therefore, in Navajo belief, the evil way. McKee remembered with pleasure those long evenings in Leaphorn's home, Leaphorn lapsing into Navajo in his vehemence and Emma-a bride then-laughing at both of them and bringing them beer. It would be good to see them both again, but the letter didn't sound promising. He needed a dozen case studies for the new book-enough to demonstrate all facets of his theory.
Jeremy Canfield walked in without knocking. 'I've got a question for you,' he said. 'Where do you look on the Navajo Reservation for an electrical engineer testing his gadgets?'
He extracted a pipe from his coat pocket and began cleaning debris from the bowl into McKee's ashtray. 'Just one more helpful hint. We know he has a light-green van truck. We don't know what kind of equipment it is, but this research needs to be away from such things as electrical transmission lines, telephone wires, and stuff like that.'
'That helps a lot,' McKee said. 'That still leaves about ninety percent of the Reservation-ninety percent of twenty-five thousand square miles. Find one green truck in a landscape bigger than all New England.'
'It's this daughter of a friend of mine. Girl named Ellen Leon,' Canfield said. 'She's trying to find this bird from U.C.L.A.' He was a very small man, bent slightly by a spinal deformity, with a round, cheerful face made rounder by utter baldness.
'Goddamn flatlanders never know geography.' Canfield said. 'Think the Reservation's about the size of Central Park.'
'Why's she looking for him?' McKee asked.
Canfield looked pained.
'You don't ask a woman something like that, Berg. Just imagine it's something romantic. Imagine she's hot for his body.' Canfield lit the pipe. 'Imagine she has spurned him, he has gone away to mend a broken heart, and now she has repented.'
Or, McKee thought, imagine she's a fool like me. Imagine she's been left and is still too young to know it's hopeless.
'Anyway, I told her maybe in the Chuska Range, or the Lukachukais if he liked the mountains, or the Kam Bimghi Valley if he liked the desert, or up there north of the Hopi Villages, or a couple of other places. I marked a map for her and showed her where the trading posts were where he'd be likely to buy his supplies.'
'Maybe they're married,' McKee said. He was interested, which surprised him.
'Her name's Ellen Leon,' Canfield said with emphatic patience. 'His is Jimmie W. Hall, Ph.D. Besides, no wedding ring. From which I deduce they're not married.'
'O.K., Sherlock,' McKee said. 'I deduce from your attitude that this woman was about five feet five, slim, with long blackish hair and wearing…' McKee paused for thought, '… a sort of funny-colored suit.'
'I deduce from that that you saw her in the hall,' Canfield said. 'Anyway, I told her we'd keep our eyes open for this bird and let her know where we'd be camping so she could check.' He looked at McKee. 'Where do you want to start hunting your witches?'
McKee started to mention Leaphorn's letter and say he hadn't decided yet whether to go. Instead he thought of the girl at the front entrance of the Anthropology Building, who had looked tired and disappointed and somehow very sad.
'I don't know,' McKee said. 'Maybe down around No Agua, or way over west of the Colorado gorge, or on the west slope of the Lukies.' He thought a moment. Canfield's current project involved poking into the burial sites of the Anasazis, the pre-Navajo cliff dwellers. There were no known sites around No Agua and only a few in the Colorado River country. 'How about starting over in those west slope canyons in the Lukachukais?'
'That's good for me,' Canfield said. 'If you've got some witches in there to scrutinize, there's plenty of ruins to keep me busy. And I'll take my guitar and try to teach you how to sing harmony.'
At the door, Canfield paused, his face suddenly serious.
'I'm glad you decided to go, Bergen. I think you need…' He stopped, catching himself on the verge of invading a zone of private grief. 'I think maybe I should ask a guarantee that your witches won't get me.' It came out a little lamely, not hiding the embarrassment.
'My Navajo Wolves, being strictly psychotherapeutic, are certified harmless,' McKee said. He pulled open a desk drawer, rummaged through an assortment of paper clips, carved bones, arrow heads and potsherds, and extracted an egg-sized turquoise stone, formed roughly in the shape of a crouching frog. He tossed it to Canfield.
'Reed Clan totem,' McKee said. 'One of the Holy People. Good for fending off corpse powder. No self- respecting Navajo Wolf will bother you. I guarantee it.'
'Ill keep it with me always,' Canfield said.
The words would come back to McKee later, come back to haunt him.
Chapter 4
Bergen McKee had spent most of the afternoon in the canvas chair beside the front door in Shoemaker's. It was a slow day for trading and only a few of The People had come in. But McKee had collected witchcraft rumors from three of them, and had managed to extract the names of two Navajos who might know more about it. It was, he felt, a good beginning.
He glanced at Leaphorn. Joe was leaning against the counter, listening patiently to another of the endless stories of Old Man Shoemaker, and McKee felt guilty. Leaphorn had insisted that he needed to go to the trading post-that he had, in fact, delayed the call to take McKee along-but more likely it was a convenient piece of made- work to do a friend a graceful favor.
