The Ghostway

inheritance from the Holy People.

'Yes,' Chee said. 'Learning the songs is a good thing.' Was a good thing, he thought. The verb is 'was.'

And then it was time for the final segment of the Ghostway chant. The very last glow of twilight was gone, the moon climbing, the mesa dark, and the lights of Albuquerque glowing against Sandia Mountain forty miles (and a world) away. Hosteen Littleben would twice cover the earthen floor of the hogan with the ceremonial's elaborate dry paintings, illustrating episodes in the mythic adventures by which the Holy People resolved the problem caused by death's disruptive residue. Margaret Sosi would sit surrounded by this abstract imagery, and by the love and care of this ragtag remnant of the Turkey Clan, and be returned to beauty and hozro, cleansed of the ghost. Chee didn't follow the participants back into the hogan. To do that properly, one's mind must be right—free of wrong thoughts, anger, and disappointment and all things negative. Chee stayed out in the cold, his mind full of wrong thoughts.

Leroy Gorman arrived a little later, parking a white Chevy among the cluster of vehicles in the yard of the Yellow place. Chee watched him walk up the slope to the hogan, the moonlight reflecting from the crown of his Stetson and the blue and white plaid of his mackinaw.

'Hell of a place to find,' he said. 'The police station was closed, but they had your map pinned there on the door. But even with a map, I've been all over the landscape. Taking the wrong turns. How do they make a living out here?'

'They don't make much of one,' Chee said.

Gorman was staring at the hogan, from which the sound of Littleben's chant was issuing again, and then back down the slope at the shabby cluster of shacks and outbuildings that housed the families of the Yellow outfit. He shook his head. 'My kinfolks,' he said.

'What did you mean when you wrote 'Don't trust nobody' on that picture?'

Gorman was staring at the hogan again. For a moment, the question didn't seem to register. 'What?' he said.

'The picture you mailed to Albert, back in Los Angeles. Why did you write that on it?'

'I didn't,' Leroy Gorman said. 'I don't know what the hell you're talking about.'

'You said you'd written to your brother back in L.A. Just good wishes. That sort of stuff. We find this card. It's addressed to Albert, and it says 'Don't trust nobody.''

'Not me,' Leroy Gorman said.

Chee studied him, trying to see his face in the moon shadow under the broad felt brim. He could see only the glint of reflection from the lens of his glasses.

'I wrote right after I got to Shiprock. I sent Albert a letter and I told him I was all right. And I asked him to call somebody for me and tell 'em I'd be away for a while, and not to worry.'

'Who?'

Leroy Gorman didn't say anything for a while. Then he shrugged. 'Friend of mine. A woman.' He shrugged again. 'Didn't want her worried and all pissed off. Had her phone number but I wasn't sure of her address, so I sent Al the number and asked him to tell her.'

'So how did Albert get this photograph of you standing there by your trailer, with the note on the back?'

'Part of that's easy,' Leroy said. 'I sent him the photograph. Put it in the letter. But I didn't write nothing on it.'

'You mailed him the Polaroid photo then?'

'Yeah. Set the camera over on the hood of my car, and set the timer and stood over by the trailer while it took the picture. But I didn't write on the back of it. I think if you do that it spoils the picture. The ink works through.'

Chee digested that. The final piece dropped into the puzzle and created a new puzzle. Who had written Don't Trust Nobody on the back of that damned photograph? And when? And how had they gotten it. And why? Why? Why?

'Somebody sent it,' Chee said. 'In the mail. It had a 'Postage Due' thing stamped on it. And somebody signed it 'Leroy.''

'Said 'Don't trust anybody'? Nothing else?'

'Right,' Chee said.

'Who could it have been?' Gorman asked. He pushed his hat brim back, and the moonlight lit his lined face and reflected from his glasses. 'And why?'

Those were exactly the questions in Chee's mind.

They hung in his mind, unanswered. He and Gorman had poked at the questions for a while, adding nothing to their understanding. And Chee had explained to Gorman that it wouldn't be proper for Gorman, a stranger, to enter the hogan at this stage of the ceremony. If he'd arrived an hour earlier, he could have met his niece and his other kinsmen at their supper. Now he would have to wait until dawn, when the ritual ended. Gorman wandered over to the fire, where spectators who weren't joining in the hogan ceremonial were visiting. Chee heard him introducing himself and, a little later, the sound of laughter. Leroy Gorman had found at least the fringes of his family.

Chee went back to his pickup and turned on the engine. No place left to look now. He'd drive Margaret Sosi to Santa Fe, get the picture and look at it, and see what had already been described to him. That would be the end of that. There were no loose ends, nothing. Just a sequence of murderous incidents which seemed to violate reason. They certainly violated Frank Sam Nakai's basic rules for the universe—which had become Jim Chee's rules. Everything is connected. Cause and effect is the universal rule. Nothing happens without motive or without effect. The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.

'Don't trust nobody,' Chee said aloud. He turned on the heater, confirmed that the engine was still too cold to help, and switched it off again. People were sleeping in the cars and trucks around Yellow's house, and in bedrolls