'Come on,' West said. 'Out with it.'
'Three of diamonds,' Chee said.
West's fierceness modified itself into smiling self-satisfaction. 'Exactly right,' he said. West wore blue-and- white-striped coveralls, large even for his bulk. He fished into one of their pockets. 'And since you Navajos are such skeptical people, I arranged some proof for you.' He handed Chee a small envelope of the sort used to mail notes and invitations.
'The three of diamonds,' West said.
'Wonderful,' Chee said. He noticed the envelope was sealed and put it in his shirt pocket.
'Aren't you going to open it?'
'I trust you,' Chee said, 'and I really came in to see if you can help me.'
West's eyebrows rose. 'You working on that plane crash? The drug business?'
'That's a federal case,' Chee said. 'fbi, Drug Enforcement Agency. We don't handle such things. I'm working on a vandalism case.'
'That windmill,' West said. He looked thoughtful. 'Yes. That's a funny business.'
'You been hearing anything?'
West laughed. 'Naturally. Or I was. Now everybody's talking about the plane crash, and drug smuggling, and killing that guy—a lot more interesting than a vandalized windmill.'
'But maybe not as important,' Chee said.
West looked at him, thinking about that.
'Well, yes,' he said. 'From our point of view, yes. Depends on who gets killed, doesn't it?' He motioned Chee around behind the counter and led him through the doorway from store into living quarters. 'They ought to kill them all,' West said to the hallway in front of him. 'Scum.'
The West living room was long, narrow, cool, dark. Its thick stone walls were cut by four windows, but vines had grown so thickly over them that they let in only a green dimness. 'Sit down,' West said, and he lowered himself into a heavy plastic recliner. 'We'll talk about windmills, and airplanes, and men who get themselves shot in the back.'
Chee sat on the sofa. It was too soft for him and he sank into its lumpy upholstery. Such furniture always made him uneasy. 'First we need to settle something,' Chee said. 'That fellow wrecking that windmill might be a friend of yours; or it could be that you think wrecking that windmill isn't such a bad idea under the circumstances. If that's the way it is, I'll go away and no hard feelings.'
West was grinning. 'Ah,' he said. 'I like the way your mind works. Why waste the talk? But the way it is, I don't know who's doing it, and I don't like vandalism, and worse than that, maybe it's going to lead to worse trouble and God knows we don't need any of that.'
'Good,' Chee said.
'Trouble is, the thing has me puzzled.' West put his elbows on the armrests of the chair, made a tent of his fingers. 'Common sense says one of your Navajo families is doing it. Who'd blame 'em? I guess the Gishi family has been living along that wash for four generations, or five, and the Yazzies something like that, and some others maybe as long. Toughing it out, hauling water in, and as soon as the federal court turns it over to the Hopis, the feds drill 'em a bunch of wells.' West had been studying his fingers. Now he looked at Chee. 'Sort of adds insult to the injury.' Chee said nothing. West was an old hand at communicating with Navajos. He would talk at his own pace until he said what he had to say, without expecting the social feedback of a white conversation.
'You got a few mean sons-a-bitches out there,' West went on. 'That's a fact. Get too much to drink in Eddie Gishi and he's a violent man. Couple of others as bad or worse. So maybe one of them would pull down a windmill.' West examined his tented fingers while he considered the idea. 'But I don't much think they did.'
Chee waited. West would explain himself when he had his thoughts sorted out. On the mantel of the stone fireplace behind West's chair a clutter of photographs stood in an uneven row: a good-natured-looking boy in Marine blues, the same boy in what Chee guessed was a blowup of a high school yearbook photograph, a picture of West himself in a tuxedo and a top hat, looking a great deal younger. All the other photographs included more than one person: West with a pretty young Hopi woman who was probably West's second wife, West and the same woman with the boy, the same trio with assorted persons whom Chee couldn't identify. None of the pictures looked new. They had collected dust—a sort of gallery out of a dead period from the past.
'I don't think they did,' West continued finally, 'because of the way they're acting. Lot of gossip about it, of course. Lots of talk.' He looked up at Chee, wanting to explain. 'You come from Crownpoint. Over in New Mexico. It's more settled around there. More people. More things to do. Out here, the nearest movie show's a hundred miles away in Flagstaff. Television reception's poor and most people don't have electricity anyway. Nothing much happens and nothing much to do. So if somebody pulls down a windmill, it breaks the monotony.'
Chee nodded.
'You hear a lot of speculation. You know—guessing about who's doing it. The Hopis, they're sure they know. It's the Yazzies, or it's the Gishi bunch, or somebody. They're mad about it. And nervous. Wondering what will happen next. And the Navajos, they think it's sort of funny, some of them anyway, and they're guessing about who's doing it. Old Hosteen Nez, he'll say something speculative about a Yazzie boy, or Shirley Yazzie will make a remark about the Nezes being in the windmill-fixing business. So forth.'
West took down his tent of fingers and leaned forward. 'You hear a little of that from
'So who's breaking the windmill?' Chee asked. 'Rule out us Navajos and that doesn't leave anybody but the Hopis, and you.'
'It's not me,' West said, grinning his great, irregular grin. 'I got nothing against windmills. When all the Navajos get moved out of here, most of my customers are going to be Hopis. I'm in favor of them having all their
