'Ganado?' Leaphorn looked incredulous. 'What killed him? Suicide?'
'Apparently natural,' the dispatcher said. 'Too much booze. But nobody's looked at him yet.'
'Ganado,' Leaphorn said. 'How the devil did he get down there?'
It was forty-five minutes to Ganado and Leaphorn spent most of them worrying to McKee about being wrong.
'Congratulations,' McKee said. 'You're forty years old and you just made your first mistake.'
'It's not that. It just doesn't make sense.' And then, for the third time, Leaphorn reviewed his reasoning- looking for a flaw. The Gallup police had reported the car Horseman had taken after the knifing was last seen heading north on U.S. 666, the right direction. It had been found later, abandoned near Greasewood. The right place, if he was returning to the west-slope canyon country of his mother's clan. And there was every reason to think he would. Horseman was scared. The territory was empty, and a fugitive's dream for hiding out. His kinsmen would feed him and keep their mouths shut. And at Shoemaker's Leaphorn was certain that at least two of those he had talked to had known about Horseman. There was the old man with the witch story and it was even more obvious with the boy who had come in late. He had clearly been relieved to hear the Mexican hadn't died and clearly was in a hurry to end the conversation and go tell someone about it. And then there was the Big Navajo. 'He was interested,' Leaphorn said. 'Remember he asked me to describe Horseman. And Shoemaker said he was new around there. Why would he be interested if he hadn't seen him?'
'You're hung up on the hat thing,' McKee said.
'All right,' Leaphorn said. 'You explain the hat.'
'Sure. He took the hatband off and while it was off, somebody stole the hat.'
'When's the last time you took off your hatband?'
'I don't wear silver conchos on my hat,' McKee said.
They picked up the coroner-justice of the peace at a Conoco station in Ganado, a man named Rudolph Bitsi. Bitsi told them to drive south.
The late morning sun was hot by the time they arrived at the edge of Teastah Wash and the Navajo policeman who had been left with the body had retreated into the shade of the arroyo wall. He climbed into the sunlight, blinking, as the carryall stopped. He looked very young, and a little nervous. Leaphorn said the policeman was Dick Roanhorse, just out of recruit school.
'Find anything interesting?' Leaphorn asked.
'No, sir. Just this bottle. The only tracks are the ones made by Begay's pickup. Rain washed everything else out.'
'The body was here before the rain, then,' Leaphorn said. It was more a statement than a question, and the policeman only nodded.
Leaphorn pulled the blanket off the body. They looked at what had been Luis Horseman.
'Well,' Bitsi said, 'looks like he might have had some sort of seizure.'
'Looks like it,' Leaphorn said.
Bitsi squatted, examining the face. He was a short, middle-aged man, tending to fat, and he grunted as he lowered himself. He sniffed at Horseman's nose and lips.
'Alcohol. You can just barely get a whiff of it.'
Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's legs. McKee noticed they were rigidly straight-as if he had died erect and tumbled backward, which wasn't likely.
Bitsi was still examining the face. 'I saw one that looked like that two, three years ago. Crazy bastard had made him a brew out of jimson weed to get more potent and it poisoned him.'
Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's left arm. The watch on his wrist was running, which would mean he had wound it the previous day-probably less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was a cheap watch, the kind that cost about $8 or $10, with a stainless-steel expansion band. Leaphorn stared at the left hand. The arm lay across Horseman's chest with the wrist and hand extended, unsupported.
'Pretty fair booze,' Bitsi said, holding up the bottle. The label was red and proclaimed the contents to be sour-mash whiskey. About a half ounce of amber liquid remained in the bottle.
'Looks like he overdid it,' Bitsi said. 'Looks like he strangled. Fell down while he was throwing up, and passed out and strangled.'
'That's what it looks like,' Leaphorn said.
'Might as well haul him in,' Bitsi said. He rose from his squat, grunting again.
'No tracks at all?' Leaphorn asked the policeman.
'Just Begay's. Where he got out of his pickup and came over to look at the body. Nothing but that.',
There were plenty of tracks now. Mostly Roanhorse's, Leaphorn guessed.
'Where was the bottle?'
'Four or five feet from the body,' Roanhorse said. 'Like he dropped it.'
'O.K.,' Leaphorn said. He was looking across the flat through which Teastah Wash had eroded, an expanse of scrubby creosote bush with a scattering of sage. At the lip of the wash bank, a few yards upstream from the road, two small junipers had managed to get roots deep enough to live. Leaphorn walked suddenly to the nearest bush and examined it. He motioned to Roanhorse, and McKee followed.
'You pull a limb off this for anything?'
