of them. He walked out of the wind and into the dimness.
The floor of the third horse stall had been swept clean of the old alfalfa and prairie-hay straw that littered the rest of the place. That debris now formed a pile in one corner, where the Utah crime lab crew had dumped it after sorting through it. Leaphorn stood on the dirt packed by a hundred years of hooves and wondered what he had expected to find. He walked across the barn floor, inspected the piles of alfalfa bales. It did, indeed, seem that Houk might have been rearranging them to form a hiding place. That touched him oddly, but taught him nothing. Nothing except that Houk, the hard man, the scoundrel, had set aside a chance to hide to make time to leave him a message. 'Tell Leaphorn shes still alive up' -- up the canyon? That seemed likely. Up which canyon? But why would Houk have put his own life at greater risk to help a woman who must have been nothing more than one of his many customers? It seemed out of character. Not the Houk he knew about. That Houk's only weakness seemed to have been a schizophrenic son, now long dead.
Outside the barn the wind shifted direction slightly and howled through the cracks, raising a small flurry of straw and dust on the packed floor and bringing autumn smells to compete with the ancient urine. He was wasting his time. He walked back toward where Irene Musket was standing, checking the stalls as he passed. In the last one, a black nylon kayak was leaning against the wall.
Bo Arnold's kayak. Leaphorn stared at it. How could it have gotten here? And why? It was inflated, standing on one pointed end in the stall corner. He walked in for a closer look. Of course it wasn't Arnold's kayak. He had described his as dark brown, with what he called 'white racing stripes.'
Leaphorn knelt beside it, inspecting it. It seemed remarkably clean for this dusty barn. He felt inside, between the rubber-coated nylon of its bottom and the inflated tubes that formed its walls, hoping to find something telltale left behind. His fingers encountered paper. He pulled it out. The crumpled, water-stained wrapper from a Mr. Goodbar. He ran his fingers down toward the bow.
Water.
Leaphorn pulled out his hand and examined his wet fingers. Whatever water had been left in the kayak had drained down into this crevice. How long could it have been there? How long would evaporation take in this no- humidity climate?
He walked to the door.
'The inflated kayak in there. You know when it was used?'
'I think four days ago,' Irene Musket said.
'By Mr. Houk?'
She nodded.
'His arthritis didn't bother him?'
'His arthritis hurt all the time,' she said. 'It
didn't keep him from that boat.' She sounded as if this represented an argument lost, an old hurt.
'Where did he go? Do you know?'
She made a vague gesture. 'Just down the river.'
'Do you know how far?'
'Not very far. He would have me pick him up down there near Mexican Hat.'
'He did this a lot?'
'Every full moon.'
'He went down at night? Late?'
'Sometimes he would watch the ten o'clock news and then we would go down to Sand Island. We'd make sure nobody was there. Then we'd put it in.' The wind whipped dust around Mrs. Musket's ankles and blew up her long skirt. She held it down, pressed back against the barn door. 'We would put it in, and then the next morning, I would drive the pickup down to that landing place upstream from Mexican Hat and I'd wait for him there. And thena?S' She paused, swallowed. Stood a moment, silently. Leaphorn noticed her eyes were wet, and looked away. Hard as he was, Harrison Houk had left someone to grieve for him.
'Then we would drive back to the house together,' she concluded.
Leaphorn waited awhile. When he had given her enough time, he asked: 'Did he tell you what he did when he went down the river?'
The silence lasted so long that Leaphorn wondered if his question had been lost in the wind. He glanced at her.
'He didn't tell me,' she said.
Leaphorn thought about the answer.
'But you know,' he said.
'I think so,' she said. 'One time he told me not to guess. And he said, `If you guess anyway, then don't ever tell anybody!' '
'Do you know who killed him?'
'I don't,' she said. 'I wish they would have killed me, instead.'
'I think we will find the one who did it,' Leaphorn said. 'I really do.'
'He was a good man. People talked about how mean he was. He was good to good people and just mean to the mean ones. I guess they killed him for that.'
Leaphorn touched her arm. 'Would you help me put the kayak in? And then tomorrow, drive my truck down to Mexican Hat and pick me up?'
