The Ghostway

He'd done his talking to Margaret Sosi when Littleben finished the segment that recounted how Monster Slayer and Born for Water had returned to the Earth Surface World with the weapons they had stolen from their father, the Sun. Littleben had come out of the hogan, wiping perspiration from his forehead, under the red headband, and looking curiously around him as people do who've been indoors too long. Then the others who were sharing in the blessing of the ceremony came out, and with them was Margaret Sosi, with her face covered with the blackening that made her invisible to ghosts. Margaret Sosi seemed exhausted and thin, but the eyes that looked out through the layer of soot were alive and excited. Margaret Sosi is being cured, Chee thought. Someday, perhaps, he could be.

Margaret Sosi was delighted to see him. She asked him about his head and told him he shouldn't be out of the hospital.

'I want to thank you for getting me there,' Chee said. 'How in the world did you do it?'

'When you hit him, he dropped his gun. I just picked it up and told him to take us to the hospital.'

'As easy as that?'

Margaret Sosi shivered. 'I was scared,' she said. 'I was scared to death.'

'Before anything like that happens again,' Chee said, 'I need to ask you some questions. Did Hosteen Begay send you a postcard he'd gotten from Albert Gorman? A picture—'

'Yes,' Margaret said.

'I'd like to see it.'

'Sure,' Margaret said. 'But it's in my room. At St. Catherine. We went back there before we came here for the sing.'

Of course, Chee thought. It wouldn't be here. He would never, ever actually see that postcard. Never.

'What did it say on it?'

Margaret Sosi frowned. 'It just said, 'Don't trust nobody.' That's all. There was Mr. Gorman's name, and an address in Los Angeles, and that 'Don't trust nobody.' That's all there was. And at the bottom 'Leroy.''

Chee didn't know what to say, so he said, 'No return address?'

'No,' Margaret said, 'and not even a stamp. The postman had put that 'Postage Due' stamp on it.'

'Well,' Chee said. 'Hell.'

'Have you found my grandfather yet?'

Chee knew the question would be coming. He had prepared himself for it. He had decided that the best thing for all concerned was simply to tell Margaret that her grandfather was dead. Straight out. Get it over with. He drew a deep breath. 'Margaret,' he said. 'Uh, well…'

'He's dead, isn't he,' Margaret Billy Sosi said. 'I guess I knew it all along and just couldn't face it. I knew he would never abandon his hogan like that. Not and just go away with no word to anyone.'

'Yes,' Chee said. 'He's dead.'

Tears were streaking the soot on her face, a line of wetness that reflected the cold moonlight, but her voice didn't change. 'Of course he was,' she said. 'Of course. He was killed, wasn't he? I guess I really knew it.'

'And I don't think it was really a ghost hogan you were in,' Chee added. 'I think Gorman died outside. It was just made to look like Hosteen Begay had buried him, and broke the hogan wall, and abandoned it. So nobody would be looking around for him.'

'But why?'

'I don't know,' Chee said. 'I don't know why.' But he knew there must be a reason. Had to be. If he could just be smart enough to figure it out. And that brought him back to the picture.

'Was the address on that picture…' he began, but Margaret Sosi was talking.

'It doesn't matter now,' she said. 'Whether it was a ghost hogan or not. In just a few hours I'll be cured of that. Mr. Littleben will finish just when the sun comes up. And I feel cured already.'

Chee did not feel cured. The ghost sickness clung to him as heavy as a rain-soaked saddle blanket. He felt dizzy with it. Sick.

'The address on that picture,' he continued. 'Was it the same place you went when you went to Los Angeles?'

'Yes. That's how I knew to go there. I wanted to find the family, and that woman there told me what bus to catch to get to the place of Bentwoman and Bentwoman's Daughter.'

'And all it said on the picture was 'Don't trust anybody'?'

''Don't trust nobody',' Margaret corrected. 'That was all, and 'Leroy' down at the bottom.'

That was exactly all he had learned. He told Margaret Sosi that when this was over he would drive her back to Santa Fe and pick up the picture card. But even as he said it, his instinct told him that even if he held the card in his hand it would tell him nothing he didn't already know. The final piece of the puzzle found; the puzzle unresolved.

They had eaten then, about thirty altogether, from two pots of mutton stew and a basket of fry bread. They ate bakery-made oatmeal cookies for dessert, and drank Pepsi-Cola and coffee. Hosteen Littleben came over and agreed to purify the Begay Four Mountains Bundle, a rite that involved rinsing it with some of the emetic made for the patient to drink when the ceremonial ended.

'Frank Sam, he tells me you're going to be a yataalii. Said you already know most of the Blessing Way and you're learning some of the others. That's a good thing.' Hosteen Littleben was short and fat, and when he walked he tilted a little because of a stiff leg. His two pigtails were black, but his mustache was almost gray and his face was a map of deep-cut lines. If Frank Sam Nakai was right, if Hosteen Littleben was the youngest medicine man left who knew the Ghostway, then the People would be losing another piece of their