despite its stone walls, seemed to sag.
Thatcher let the sedan roll to a stop in the shade of the cottonwood. The screen door opened and Houk appeared. He was leaning on a cane. He squinted from the shadows into blinding sunlight, trying to identify who had rung the yard bell. At first look, Leaphorn thought that Houk, like the pink sandstone of his house, had been proof against time. Despite the cane, his figure in the shadow of the porch had the blocky sturdiness Leaphorn remembered. There was still the round bulldog face, the walrus mustache, the small eyes peering through wire- rimmed glasses. But now Leaphorn saw the paunch, the slight slump, the deepened lines, the grayness, the raggedness of the mustache which hid his mouth. And as Houk shifted his weight against the cane, Leaphorn saw the grimace of pain cross his face.
'Well, now, Mr. Thatcher,' Houk said, recognizing him. 'What brings the Bureau of Land Management all the way out here so soon? Wasn't it only last spring you was out here to see me?' And then he saw Leaphorn. 'And whoa?S' he began, and stopped. His expression shifted from neutral, to surprise, to delight.
'By God,' he said. 'I don't remember your name, but you're the Navajo policeman who found my boy's hat.' Houk stopped. 'Yes I do. It was Leaphorn.'
It was Leaphorn's turn for surprise. Almost twenty years since he'd been involved in the hunt for Houk's boy. He had talked to Houk only two or three times, and only briefly. Giving him the wet blue felt hat, soggy with muddy San Juan River water. Standing beside him under the alcove in the cliff that tense moment when the state police captain decided they had Brigham Houk cornered. And finally, on this very porch when it was all over and no hope remained, listening to the man examine his conscience, finding in his own flaws the blame for his boy's murderous rage. Three meetings, and a long, long time ago.
Houk ushered them into what he called the parlor, a neat room that smelled of furniture polish. 'Don't use this room much,' Houk said loudly, and he pulled back the curtains, raised the blinds, and pushed up the sash windows to admit the autumn. But the room was still dim-- its walls a gallery of framed photographs of people, of bookshelves lined mostly with pots. 'Don't get much company,' Houk concluded. He sat himself in the overstuffed armchair that matched the sofa, creating another faint puff of dust. 'In just a minute the girl will be in here with something cold to drink.' He waited then, his fingers tapping at the chair arm. It was their turn to speak.
'We're looking for a woman,' Thatcher began. 'Anthropologist named Eleanor Friedman-Bernal.'
Houk nodded. 'I know her.' He looked surprised. 'What she do?'
'She's been missing,' Thatcher said. 'For a couple of weeks.' He thought about what he wanted to say next. 'Apparently she came out here just a little while before she disappeared. To Bluff. Did you see her?'
'Let's see now. I'd say it was three, four weeks when she was out here last,' Houk said. 'Something like that. Maybe I could figure it out exactly.'
'What did she want?'
It seemed to Leaphorn that Houk's face turned slightly pinker than its usual hue. He stared at Thatcher, his lip moving under the mustache, his fingers still drumming.
'You fellas didn't take long to get out here,' he said. 'I'll say that for you.' He pushed himself up in the chair, then sat back down again. 'But how the hell you connect it with me?'
'You mean her being missing?' Thatcher said, puzzled. 'She had your name down in her notes.'
'I meant the killings,' Houk said.
'Killings?' Leaphorn asked.
'Over in New Mexico,' Houk said. 'The pot hunters. It was on the radio this morning.'
'You think we're connecting those with you?' Leaphorn asked. 'Why do you think that?'
'Because it seems to me that every time the feds start thinking about pot stealing, they come nosing around here,' Houk said. 'Those folks get shot stealing pots, stands to reason it's going to get the BLM cops, and the FBI, and all off their butts and working. Since they don't know what the hell they're doing, they bother me.' Houk surveyed them, his small blue eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses.
'You fellas telling me this visit hasn't nothing to do with that?'
'That's what we're telling you,' Leaphorn said. 'We're trying to find an anthropologist. A woman named Eleanor Friedman-Bernal. She disappeared the thirteenth of October. Some references in her notes about coming out here to Bluff to see Mr. Harrison Houk. We thought if we knew what she came out here to see you about, it might tell us something about where to look next.'
Houk thought about it, assessing them. 'She came to see me about a pot,' he said.
Leaphorn sat, waiting for his silence to encourage Houk to add to that. But Thatcher was not a Navajo.
'A pot?'
'To do with her research,' Houk said. 'She'd seen a picture of it in a Nelson auction catalog. You know about that outfit? And it was the kind she's interested in. So she called `em, and talked to somebody or other, and they told her they'd got it from me.' Houk paused, waiting for Thatcher's question.
'What did she want to know?'
'Exactly where I found it. I didn't find it. I bought it off a Navajo. I give her his name.'
A middle-aged Navajo woman came into the room, carrying a tray with three water glasses, a pitcher of what appeared to be ice water, and three cans of Hires root beer.
'Drinking water or root beer,' Houk said. 'I guess you knew I'm Latter-day Saints.'
Everybody took water.
'Irene,' Houk said. 'You want to meet these fellas. This is Mr. Thatcher here. The one from the BLM who comes out here now and then worrying us about our grazing rights. And this fella here is the one I've told you about. The one that found Brigham's hat. The one that kept those goddam state policemen from shooting up into that alcove. This is Irene Musket.'
Irene put down the tray and held her hand out to Thatcher. 'How do you do,' she said. She spoke in Navajo to
