His real hope was in finding a witness. The FBI seemed to have decided its case was made and hadn’t looked for one. And strange vehicles came so rarely down these tracks?which were really little more than miles and miles of shared driveways?that people remembered them. A visit from a stranger to anyone on your side of the mountain was exciting. But, unfortunately, Ashie Pinto’s place, even though it was four miles from the road, was the first place on this track. Mary Keeyani’s outfit, where he was about to park now, occupied a little cluster of shacks with a shared hogan, out of sight more than a mile down the slope. It was only by chance that one of the children out with the sheep had noticed the dust raised by the vehicle that took Pinto away. There had been no one else to see it.
Leaphorn stifled a yawn. It was almost sundown. A long day. He was tired. He had driven more than two hundred and fifty miles, and two hundred and fifty miles with two strange women is more exhausting than that distance in the relaxing solitude to which he was accustomed. And before he was done with this day, he had to drive another four hours back to Window Rock. A day wasted. Nothing accomplished. Well, almost nothing. He stopped the car beside Mrs. Keeyani’s house, a weathered mobile home set on concrete blocks. At least, he would get rid of this sense of family responsibility?and get rid of these two women?when he wrapped this up.
So wrap it up.
“Mrs. Keeyani,” he said, “who all had Hosteen Pinto worked with? I mean in recent years. Besides Dr. Bourebonette.”
Mrs. Keeyani was sitting beside him, getting her stuff together.
“He used to work with a man from Tucson. Somebody named Dr. Drabner. But not this year, I think. And then there was an old professor from the University of Utah. I don’t remember his name but he spoke pretty good Navajo.”
“I think that was a Dr. Justin Milovich,” Bourebonette said. “He was into linguistics.”
“Milovich,” Mrs. Keeyani said. She climbed out of the car, where three dogs greeted her with much tail wagging, jumping, and rowdy enthusiasm. “That was him.”
“Anyone else? That’s it?”
“Nobody else I knew of.”
“How about that history professor from the University of New Mexico?” Bourebonette said. “Tagert. How about Tagert? Hosteen Pinto used to work with him a lot.”
“Not no more he don’t,” Mary Keeyani said.
Her tone and her face raised a question and Professor Bourebonette asked it. “Something happened?”
“He would give my uncle whiskey.”
“Oh,” Bourebonette said. “The son-of-a-bitch.” She turned to Leaphorn. “When he drinks he just about kills himself.”
Or someone else, Leaphorn thought.
“I told that man not to ever give my uncle any whiskey but he did it anyway,” Mary Keeyani said. “So when the last time he wrote my uncle a letter about working for him, when my uncle brought it to me, I wouldn’t even read it for him. I just tore it up. And I made my uncle promise not to work for him any more.”
“When was that?” Leaphorn asked.
“Last year. Way last spring a year ago.”
“When was the last time he heard from Milovich or Drabner? Can you remember?”
“Longtime for Milovich,” she said. “Drabner, I think it was last winter. Maybe even last fall. It was that letter in the box.”
They were back on U.S. 89, Bourebonette and he, rolling southward toward the Tuba City junction, when the turnoff to Short Mountain reminded Leaphorn of Old Man McGinnis and his Short Mountain Trading Post.
He slowed, looked at Bourebonette. “I’m thinking of that bottle of whiskey Ashie Pinto had. The bottle he had when Chee arrested him. Remember what Mary Keeyani said about that New Mexico historian giving him booze?”
“I thought about that, too,” she said. “Maybe Pinto picked up his mail himself, and there was a letter from Dr. Tagert and Ashie didn’t let Mary see it. Maybe he got somebody else to read it for him and help him answer it.”
“Exactly,” Leaphorn said, pleased with her. “Maybe not, too. But didn’t the Pintos do their trading at Short Mountain?”
“That was his mailing address.”
“Let’s go check.”
The road from Highway 89 to Short Mountain Trading Post was a little better than Leaphorn remembered it from his days as a patrolman working out of Tuba City. It had been improved by gravel and grading from terrible to fairly bad. Leaphorn maneuvered the patrol car back and forth across its washboard surface, avoiding the worst of the bumps such roads develop. It was twilight when they dropped down into Short Mountain Wash and parked on the hard-packed earth that formed the trading post yard.
It was empty. Leaphorn parked near the porch, turned off the ignition and sat. He had brought Emma here once, long ago, to see this place and to meet Old John McGinnis. He’d described McGinnis as he’d known him, honorable in his way but notoriously grouchy, pessimistic, perverse, quick with insults and overflowing with windy stories and gossip. Over the front door nailed to the porch beam a faded sign proclaimed:
THIS ESTABLISHMENT FOR SALE INQUIRE WITHIN
The sign had been there at least fifty years. According to local legend, McGinnis had hung it there within weeks after he’d bought the store from the Mormon who’d established it. The legend had it that young McGinnis had been outsmarted in the deal. Those who knew him found that incredible.
“He’s rude,” he’d told Emma. “No manners at all and he may snap at you. But look him over. I’d like to know what you think of him.”
