my mother's sister. I knew she had one out here somewhere. I remember she mentioned that. Wonder if that aunt of mine would still be alive. Wonder where that little girl went.'

Chee didn't comment. He wanted a cup of coffee badly. And food, and sleep. He tried to think of what else he could ask this man, what he could possibly learn that would keep this from being just another in a long line of dead ends. He could think of nothing.

'I'd like to get acquainted with her,' Leroy Gorman said. 'Meet her family. I didn't make much of a white man. Maybe when I get through with all this I could make some sort of Navajo. You know where I could find the Sosi family?'

Chee shook his head. He got up and thanked Leroy Gorman for his time and went through the aluminum door into the driving snow, leaving Gorman sitting there looking at his hands, his face full of thought.

Chapter 24

He called largo from his trailer while the coffee perked and told the captain what he had found at Begay's hogan. It took Largo something like a micromillisecond to get over his sleepiness and then he was full of questions, not all of which Chee could answer. Finally that part of it was over, and it was a little after 2 a.m. and Chee was full of hot coffee, and two sandwiches, and in bed, and asleep almost before he could appreciate the sound of the winter outside.

He awoke with the sun on his face. The storm had moved fast, as early winter storms tend to move in the Mountain West, and had left in its wake a cold, bright stillness. Chee took his time. He warmed himself some leftover mutton stew for his breakfast and ate it with corn tortillas and refried beans. He ate slowly and a lot, because he had a lot to do and a long way to go, and whether or not he had another hot meal this day would depend on road conditions. He put on his thermal underwear, his wool socks, the boots he used for mud. He made sure that his tire chains were in the box behind the seat in his pickup, that his shovel, his hand winch, and his tow chain were in their proper places. He stopped at the gas station beside the San Juan bridge and topped off his gas tank and made sure the auxiliary tank was also full. And then he drove westward out of Shiprock to find Frank Sam Nakai. Nakai was his teacher, his friend since earliest boyhood, and, most important of all in the Navajo scheme of things, the brother of his mother—his key clan uncle.

The first seventy miles, through Teec Nos Pos, Red Mesa, Mexican Water, and Dennehotso, was easy enough going over the snow-packed asphalt of Route 504. Beyond Dennehotso, reaching the winter hogan of Frank Sam Nakai involved turning southward off the highway on a dirt road that wandered across Greasewood Flats, dipped across the usually dry Tyende Creek Canyon, and then climbed Carson Mesa. Five miles down this doubtful route, Chee decided it wasn't going to work. The air was still cold but the hot sun was turning the snow pack into mush. He had put his chains on before he left the highway, but even with them, the truck slipped and slid. As the day wore on it would get steadily worse until sundown froze it all again. He made it back to the highway and made the hundred-mile circle back through Mexican Water and southward to Round Rock and Many Farms and Chinle, and then the long, slippery way to the south side of Black Mesa past the Cottonwood Day School and through Blue Gap, to an old road which led to Tah Chee Wash. It was as bad as the road south from Dennehotso but, from where the passable stretch ended near Blue Gap, much shorter. Chee drove down it in second, at a cautious ten miles an hour. He'd drive as far as the melting snow would allow, walk in the remaining miles, and walk out again when the cold darkness turned the snow into ice and the mud into frozen iron.

The walking part turned out to be a little less than ten miles—a hard four hours in the soft snow. It gave Chee time to think, to sort it all out again. It resolved itself into a single central puzzle. Why had someone gone to so much trouble to conceal the murder of Ashie Begay? Chee could understand why Gorman might have been followed to the Begay hogan. That simply continued the effort to find Leroy Gorman. McNair, somehow, seemed to have learned that Leroy was in Shiprock, learned that Albert was going there, decided that Albert's arrival would scare the fbi into moving Leroy before his exact location could be pinned down, and sent someone to catch Albert and learn from Albert where Leroy could be found. Albert had resisted, been wounded, fled. Albert had been tracked down at Begay's place by someone (probably Vaggan) seeking an answer to the same question. Vaggan had either found Albert dead, or dying, or had killed him, and had killed Ashie Begay to eliminate a witness to the crime. That was all plausible enough. It left questions, true. How had Vaggan found Albert Gorman so quickly at the Begay hogan? Probably because the McNair people knew enough about Albert's connections on the reservation to make an educated guess. After all, one of those involved was a Navajo: Beno. Robert Beno, Upchurch had said. High enough in the organization to warrant grand jury action, and the only one who managed to run. Another relative, perhaps. Another member of the Turkey Clan. Someone who could guess the only place Albert Gorman could find refuge. Or maybe it was simpler than that. Albert surely had intended to visit his uncle when he came to the reservation—to Chee's Navajo mind such a visit by a nephew was certain and inevitable—and he had told Mrs. Day, who had passed the information along. Anyway, that didn't seem to matter. What mattered was why all the trouble to make the crime at Begay's hogan invisible.

Chee plodded along through ankle-deep snow, examining possibilities. Because Vaggan didn't want the law to know he was looking for Leroy and was within a hundred miles of finding him? That looked good for a moment, but the shooting in the parking lot had already alerted the fbi. What other motive could there be? Chee could think of none and skipped over to another question. If the McNair people knew, or even suspected, that Leroy was hidden away in Shiprock, why weren't they looking for him? Largo had said there was no sign at all of that. No strangers asking around. Largo had put the word out, at the gas stations, and trading posts, and convenience stores, the post office, the laundry, everywhere. It was an old and simple and absolutely efficient system, and Chee had no doubt that if anyone—anyone at all—had shown up in Shiprock, or anywhere near Shiprock, asking questions, Largo would have known it within fifteen minutes. And unless McNair knew about the aluminum trailer and had some idea of where it was parked, Leroy Gorman couldn't be found without questions—hundreds of them. Chee had hunted enough people on the reservation to know how many weary hours of questions. And if McNair did know about the aluminum trailer and the cottonwood tree, Leroy would have been found with no questions at all. And Leroy would be just as dead as Albert.

And so the thinking went, leading around in the same circle back to the picture of the aluminum trailer mailed as a postcard with something, apparently, written on its back that had brought Albert running and started all this. Something, even though Leroy didn't remember writing such a stirring message—or claimed he didn't remember it. What would Leroy have written that he'd refuse to admit? Chee would know, he hoped, when he found Margaret Billy Sosi again—for the third time—and pinned her down long enough to extract from her either the card itself or her exact and detailed memory of what was written on it, and what her grandfather had told her about why Gorman (which Gorman?) was dangerous to be around. And just about when Chee was thinking this, he smelled smoke.

It was the smell of burning pinon, the sweet, perfumed smell of hot resin. Then a blue wisp of the smoke against the junipers on the next hillside, and the place of Frank Sam Nakai was in view. It was an octagonal log hogan, a rectangular frame house covered with black tarpaper, a flatbed truck, a green pickup, a corral with a sheep pen built beyond it, the tin building where Nakai kept his cattle feed, and, off against the hillside, the square plank building where the mother of Frank Sam Nakai's late wife lived with Frank Sam Nakai's daughter. The smoke was coming from stovepipes in both houses, making wisps of blue as separate as the suppers the occupants were cooking. Chee's uncle and his uncle's mother-in-law were following the instructions of Changing Woman, who had taught that when men look upon the mothers of the women they marry it may cause blindness and other more serious problems. To Jim Chee it seemed perfectly natural.

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