Sawkatewa said something in Hopi. Cowboy responded tersely.
'He got some of it,' Cowboy said. 'Why not? Because, God damn it, just think about it a minute.'
'Who's going to know but us?' Chee asked. 'You like that windmill?'
Cowboy shrugged.
'Then tell him.'
Cowboy translated. Sawkatewa listened intently, his eyes on Chee.
Then he spoke three words.
'He wants to know when.'
'Tell him I want to buy the cement away from the reservation—maybe in Cameron or Flagstaff. Tell him it will be at the windmill two nights from now.'
Cowboy told him. The old man's hands rediscovered the wool and the spindle in the beer carton and resumed their work. Cowboy and Chee waited. The old man didn't speak until he had filled the spindle. Then he spoke for a long time.
'He said it is true he can see pretty good in the dark, but not as good as when he was a boy. He said he heard someone driving up Wepo Wash and he went down there to see what was happening. When he got there a man was putting out a row of lanterns on the sand, with another man holding a gun on him. When this was finished, the man who had put out the lanterns sat beside the car and the other man stood there, still pointing the gun.' Cowboy stopped abruptly, asked a question, and got an answer.
'It was a little gun, he says. A pistol. In a little while an airplane came over very low to the ground and the man on the ground got up and flashed a flashlight off and on. Little later, the plane came back again. Fellow flashes his light again, and then—just after the airplane crashes—the man with the pistol shoots the man with the flashlight. The airplane hit the rock. The man with the gun takes the flashlight and looks around the airplane some. Then he goes and collects all the lanterns and puts them in the car, except for one. That one he leaves on the rock so he can see something. Then he starts taking things out of the airplane. Then he puts the body of the man he shot up against the rock and gets into the car and drives away. Then Sawkatewa says he went to the plane to see, and he hears you running up, so he goes away.'
'What did the man unload out of the airplane?'
Cowboy relayed the question. Sawkatewa made a shape with his hands, perhaps thirty inches long, perhaps eighteen inches high, and provided a description in Hopi with a few English words thrown in. Chee recognized 'aluminum' and 'suitcase.'
'He said there were two things that looked like aluminum suitcases. About so'—Cowboy demonstrated an aluminum suitcase with his hands—'by so.'
'He didn't say what he did with them,' Chee said. 'Put them in the car, I guess.'
Cowboy asked.
Sawkatewa shook his head. Spoke. Cowboy looked surprised.
'He said he didn't think he put them in the car.'
'Didn't put the suitcases in the car? What the hell did he do with them?'
Sawkatewa spoke again without awaiting a translation.
'He said he disappeared in the dark with them. Just gone a little while. Off in the darkness where he couldn't see anything.'
'How long is a little while? Three minutes? Five? It couldn't have been very long. I got there about twenty minutes after the plane hit.'
Cowboy relayed the question. Sawkatewa shrugged. Thought. Said something.
'About as long as it takes to boil an egg hard. That's what he says.'
'What did the man look like?'
Sawkatewa had not been close enough to see him well in the bad light. He saw only shape and movement.
Outside, the rain had gone now. Drifted off to the east. They could hear it muttering its threats and promises back over Black Mesa. But the village stones dripped with water, and muddy rivulets ran here and there over the stone track, and the rocks reflected wet in the headlights of Cowboy's car. Maybe a quarter inch, Chee thought. A heavy shower, but not a real rain. Enough to dampen the dust, and wash things off, and help a little. Most important, there had to be a first rain before the rainy season could get going.
'You think he knows what he's talking about?' Cowboy asked. 'You think that guy didn't load the dope into the car?'
'I think he told us what he saw,' Chee said.
'Doesn't make sense,' Cowboy said. He pulled the patrol car out of a skid on the slick track. 'You really going to haul that cement out there for him to plug up the well?'
'I refuse to answer on grounds that it might tend to incriminate me,' Chee said.
'Hell,' Cowboy said. 'That won't do me any good. You got me in so deep now, I'm just going to pretend I never heard any of that.'
'I'll pretend, too,' Chee said.
'If he didn't haul those suitcases off in that car, how the devil did he haul them out?'
'I don't know,' Chee said. 'Maybe he didn't.'
