'Good,' Chee had said, meaning it.
And while he was out there, Largo had added, he might as well get some useful work done. For instance, the people at the refinery over at Montezuma Creek were sore because somebody was stealing drip gasoline out of the collector pipeline. And somebody seemed to be hanging out around the tourist parking places at the Goosenecks, and other such places, and stealing stuff out of the cars. And so forth. The litany had been fairly long, indicating that the decline of human nature on the Utah part of the reservation was about the same as it was in Chee's usual New Mexico jurisdiction. 'I'll get you the paperwork,' Largo said, shuffling papers out of various files into a single folder. 'Xerox copies. I wish we could put a stop to this getting into people's cars,' he added. 'People raise hell about it, and it gets to the chairman's office and then he raises hell. Be careful. And get some work done.'
And now, parked here out of sight watching his back trail, Chee was being careful, exactly as instructed. If the man (or the woman) with the shotgun was following, it would have to be down this road. The only other way to get to the trading post at Badwater Wash was to float down the San Juan River, and then take one of the tracks that connected it to the hogans scattered where terrain allowed along the river. Badwater wasn't a place one passed through by accident en route to anywhere else.
And now the only dust on the Badwater road was wind dust. The afternoon clouds had formed over Black Mesa, far to the south, producing lightning and air turbulence. As far as Chee could estimate from thirty miles away, no rain was falling. He studied the cloud, enjoying the range of blues and grays, its shapes and its movement. But he was thinking of more somber things. The hours of thinking he had done about who would want to kill him had depressing effects. His imagination had produced an image in his mind—himself standing at the face of a great cliff of smooth stone, as blank as a mirror, feeling hopelessly for fingerholds that didn't exist. There was a second unpleasant effect. This persistent hunt for malice, for ill will, for hatred—examining relationships with friends and associates with cynical skepticism—had left him gloomy. And then there was Lieutenant Leaphorn. He'd gotten what he wanted from the man—more than he'd expected. But the lieutenant hadn't trusted him when they'd met, and he hadn't trusted him when they'd parted. Leaphorn hadn't liked the bone bead. When Chee had handed it to him, the lieutenant's face had changed, expressing distaste and what might have been contempt. In the small universe of the Navajo Police, total membership perhaps less than 120 sworn officers, Lieutenant Leaphorn was a Fairly Important Person, and somewhat of a legend. Everybody knew he hated bootleggers. Chee shared that sentiment. Everybody also knew Leaphorn had no tolerance for witchcraft or anything about it—for those who believed in witches, or for stories about skinwalkers, corpse sickness, the cures for same, and everything connected with the Navajo Wolves. There were two stories about how Leaphorn had acquired this obsession. It was said that when he was new on the force in the older days he had guessed wrong about some skinwalker rumors on the Checkerboard. He hadn't acted on what he'd heard, and a fellow had killed three witches and got a life term for murder and then committed suicide. That was supposed to be why the lieutenant didn't like witchcraft, which was a good enough reason. The other story was that he was a descendant of the great Chee Dodge and had inherited Dodge's determination that belief in skinwalkers had no part in the Navajo culture, that the tribe had been infected with the notion while it was held captive down at Fort Sumner. Chee suspected both stories were true.
Still, Leaphorn had kept the bone bead.
'I'll see about it,' he'd said. 'Send it to the lab. Find out if it is bone, and what kind of bone.' He'd torn a page from his notebook, wrapped the bead in it, and placed it in the coin compartment of his billfold. Then he'd looked at Chee for a moment in silence. 'Any idea how it got in here?'
'Sounds strange,' Chee had said. 'But you know you could pry out the end of a shotgun shell and pull out the wadding and stick a bead like this in with the pellets.'
Leaphorn's expression became almost a smile. Was it contempt? 'Like a witch shooting in the bone?' he asked. 'They're supposed to do that through a little tube.' He made a puffing shape with his lips.
Chee had nodded, flushing just a little.
Now, remembering it, he was angry again. Well, to hell with Leaphorn. Let him believe whatever he wanted to believe. The origin story of the Navajos explained witchcraft clearly enough, and it was a logical part of the philosophy on which the Dinee had founded their culture. If there was good, and harmony, and beauty on the east side of reality, then there must be evil, chaos, and ugliness to the west. Like a nonfundamentalist Christian, Chee believed in the poetic metaphor of the Navajo story of human genesis. Without believing in the specific Adam's rib, or the size of the reed through which the Holy People emerged to the Earth Surface World, he believed in the lessons such imagery was intended to teach. To hell with Leaphorn and what he didn't believe. Chee started the engine and jolted back down the slope to the road. He wanted to get to Badwater Wash before noon.
But he couldn't quite get Leaphorn out of his mind. Leaphorn posed a problem. 'One more thing,' the lieutenant had said. 'We've got a complaint about you.' And he'd told Chee what the doctor at the Badwater Clinic had said about him. 'Yellowhorse claims you've been interfering with his practice of his religion,' Leaphorn said. And while the lieutenant's expression said he didn't take the complaint as anything critically important, the very fact that he'd mentioned it implied that Chee should desist.
'I have been telling people that Yellowhorse is a fake,' Chee said stiffly. 'I have told people every chance I get that the doctor pretends to be a crystal gazer just to get them into his clinic.'
'I hope you're not doing that on company time,' Leaphorn said. 'Not while you're on duty.'
'I probably have,' Chee said. 'Why not?'
'Because it violates regulations,' Leaphorn said, his expression no longer even mildly amused.
'How?'
'I think you can see how,' Leaphorn had said. 'We don't have any way to license our shamans, no more than the federal government can license preachers. If Yellowhorse says he's a medicine man, or a hand trembler, or a road chief of the Native American Church, or the Pope, it is no business of the Navajo Tribal Police. No rule against it. No law.'
'I'm a Navajo,' Chee said. 'I see somebody cynically using our religion… somebody who doesn't believe in our religion using it in that cynical way…'
'What harm is he doing?' Leaphorn asked. 'The way I understand it, he recommends they go to a
Chee had made no response to that. If Leaphorn couldn't see the problem, the sacrilege involved, then Leaphorn was blind. But that wasn't the trouble. Leaphorn was as cynical as Yellowhorse.
'You, yourself, have declared yourself to be a
