The Dark Wind

rodents would have returned to the arroyo with its seeping spring, with its pahos and its guardian spirit, Chee guessed, but the spring, too, was virtually dry. The victim of drought. Or was it?

Chee jumped to his feet, snubbed out his cigaret, and hurried down the slope toward the arroyo. He trotted along the sandy bottom, following the path the moccasins of the shrine's guardian had made. The shrine looked just as he had left it. He crouched under the shale overhang, careful not to disturb the pahos. When he had been here before, there had been a film of water on the granite under the shale, so shallow that it was not much more than a pattern of wetness. Chee studied the rock surface. The dampness had spread. Not much, but it had spread. The spring had been barely alive when he had seen it before. It was still barely alive. But the spring was no longer dying.

Chee walked back to his pickup truck, climbed in, and drove away without a backward glance. He was finished with the windmill. It offered no more mysteries. He'd stop at the Burnt Water store and call Cowboy Dashee. He'd tell Cowboy he had to talk to the keeper of the shrine. Cowboy wouldn't like it. But Cowboy would find him.

Chapter Twenty-One

Cowboy had arranged to meet him at the junction of Arizona Highway 87 and Navajo Route 3. 'We're going to have to go to Piutki,' Cowboy had told him. 'That's where he lives. But I don't want to have you floundering around up there by yourself, getting lost. So meet me, and I'll take you up.'

'About when?'

'About seven,' Cowboy said.

So Chee had arrived about seven. Five minutes before, to be exact. He stood beside his pickup truck, stretching his muscles. The early evening sun lit the slopes of Second Mesa behind him, making a glittering reflection off the hot asphalt of Navajo 3 where it zigzagged upward. Just to the north, the cliff of First Mesa was dappled with shadow. Chee himself stood in the shadow. A cloud which had been building slowly all afternoon over the San Francisco Peaks had broken free of the mountain's updrafts and was drifting eastward. It was still at least twenty miles to the west, but its crest had built high enough now to block out the slanting light of the sun. The heat of the day had produced other such thunderheads. Three, in an irregular row, were sailing across the Painted Desert between Chee and Winslow. One, Chee noticed with pleasure, was actually dragging a small tail of rain across Tovar Mesa. But none of the smaller clouds promised much. With sundown they would quickly evaporate in the arid sky. The cloud spawned by the San Francisco Peaks was another matter. It was huge, its top pushed up into the stratospheric cold by its internal winds, and its lower levels blue-black with the promise of rain. As Chee appraised it, he heard the mutter of thunder. The clouds would be visible for a hundred miles in every direction, from Navajo Mountain across the Utah border, as far east as the Chuska Range in New Mexico. One cloud wouldn't break a drought, but it takes one cloud to start the process. For a thousand Navajo sheepmen across this immense dry tableland the cloud meant hope that rain, running arroyos, and new grass would again be part of the hozro of their lives. To the Hopis, rain would mean more than that. It would mean the endorsement of the supernatural. The Hopis had called for the clouds, and the clouds had come. It would mean that after a year of blighted dust, things were right again between the Peaceful People of the Hopi Mesas and their kachina spirits.

Chee leaned against the truck, enjoying the cool, damp breeze which the cloud was now producing, enjoying the contrast between the dappled browns and tans of the First Mesa cliffs and the dark-blue sky over them. Above him the rim of the cliff was not cliff at all, but the stone walls of the houses of Walpi. From here it was hard to believe that. The tiny windows seemed to be holes in the living rock of the mesa.

Chee glanced at his watch. Cowboy was late. He retrieved his notebook from the front seat, and turned to a clean page. Across the top he wrote: 'Questions and Answers.' Then he wrote: 'Where is J. Musket? Did Musket kill John Doe? Witch? Crazy? Tied up with the narcotics heist?' He drew a line down the center of the page, separating the Answers section. Here he wrote: 'Evidence he was away from work day Doe killed. Musket connected with narcotics. Likely came to Burnt Water to set up delivery. How else? Would have known the country well enough to hide the gmc.' Chee studied the entries. He tapped a front tooth with the butt of the ballpoint pen. He wrote under Questions: 'Why the burglary? To provide a logical reason for disappearing from the trading post?' Chee frowned at that, and wrote: 'What happened to the stolen jewelry?'

He drew a line under that all the way across the page. Under it he wrote:

'Who is John Doe? Somebody from the narcotics business? Working with Musket? Did Musket kill him because Doe smelled the double cross? Did Musket make it look like a witch killing to confuse things?' No answers here. Just questions. He drew another horizontal line and wrote under it:

'Where's Palanzer's body? Why hide it in the gmc? To confuse those looking for dope? Why take it out of the gmc? Because someone knew I'd found it? Who knew? The man who walked up the arroyo in the dark? Musket? Dashee?' He stared at the name, feeling disloyal. But Dashee knew. He'd told Dashee where to find the truck. And Dashee could have been at the windmill site when the crash happened. He wondered if he could learn where Dashee had been the night John Doe's body had been hidden. And then he shook his head and drew a line through 'Dashee,' and then another line. Under that he wrote a single word: 'Witch.'

Under that he wrote: 'Any reason to connect witch killing with dope?' He stared at the question, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. Then he wrote: 'Coincidence of time and place.' He paused a moment, then jotted beside it: 'Doe died July 10, West died July 6.' He was still thinking about that when Dashee drove up.

'Right on the money,' Cowboy said.

'You're late,' Chee said.

'Operating on Navajo time,' Cowboy said. 'Seven means sometime tonight. Let's take my car.'

Chee got in.

'You ever been to Piutki?'

'I don't think so,' Chee said. 'Where is it?'

'Up on First Mesa,' Cowboy said. 'Back behind Hano on the ridge.' Cowboy was driving more sedately than usual. He rolled the patrol car down Navajo Route 3 and did a left turn onto the narrower asphalt which made the steep, winding climb up the face of the mesa. His face was still, thoughtful.

Worried, Chee thought. We're getting involved in something religious.

'There's not much left of Piutki,' Cowboy said. 'It's pretty well abandoned. Used to be the village of the Fog Clan with some Bow Clan, and the Fog Clan is just about extinct. Not many Bow left either.'

Fog Clan touched a memory. Chee tried to recall what he'd learned about Hopi ethnology in his anthro classes at the University of New Mexico, and what he'd read since, and what he'd picked up from gossip. The Fog Clan had