“You’re one of Tagert’s students?” Janet asked.
Chee felt his jaw tighten. This interruption broke the flow of whatever Redd was trying to tell them. And, by Navajo standards, such an interruption was rude. One let a speaker finish, and then waited to make sure he was indeed finished, before one spoke. But then Janet Pete was really Navajo only by blood and birth. She hadn’t been raised on the Reservation in the Navajo Way. Had never had a kinaalda to celebrate her puberty, had never been taught
“No way,” Redd said. “I studied it down at UTEP. But you can’t make a living at it. Now I’m working on a doctorate in linguistics. There’s a better chance of a teaching job and if you can’t get that, you can be a translator. Lot of people need them. Oil companies. Export-import. Law firms. Lots of jobs.”
“But you know a lot about history, and Tagert,” Janet said.
“I know a lot about Tagert,” Redd replied. “A lady who works for him is a good friend of mine.”
“Jean Jacobs?” Janet said. “Jim told me he met her today at Tagert’s office. She was very helpful.”
“Nice gal,” Redd said, with an expression that said he meant it. “We go way back.”
Chee found himself feeling impatience?a rare emotion with him. Wishing he had left Janet Pete behind. Wanting to get on with it.
“Do you know enough about Tagert to have any idea where he might be?” He noticed his tone wasn’t right. So did Redd. So did Pete.
“No,” Redd said. “No idea, really.” He got up, turned his chair around, and sat again.
The conversation had become formal. Ah, well, Chee thought, I’ve screwed up. He sensed Janet Pete’s eyes on him. Time to pull the rabbit from the hat. But he had no rabbit. He felt disgusted with himself. “You said you’d seen us out near the place where Pinto killed Delbert Nez. You said you were checking on a theory.”
“I was just curious,” Redd said. “I know Mr. Pinto some. I wondered what he could be doing out there.”
“You started to tell us that Pinto was working for Dr. Tagert. To tell us what he was doing. Something about Western history and a professor named Henderson, and?”
“Oh, yeah. I drifted away from the point I was trying to make. Well, this Henderson is out with a new book, about banditry, organized gangs, so forth, but mostly it’s about the Pinkerton organization.” Redd paused, glanced at them. “You know about the Pinkertons?”
Chee nodded.
“Well, they’re supposed to have hounded Butch Cassidy out of the country. About 1901. Down to Argentina and then to Bolivia. Well, Henderson had gone down there and dug into the records at La Paz, old military records, and established from the official report all the details of how this Bolivian mounted infantry patrol caught the two of ‘em in a little village and shot ‘em. Nothing much new in it, except the details. Thing is, Tagert doesn’t think it happened that way.”
Redd paused, awaiting some reaction. In a second or two he got one.
“That’s the way it was in the movie,” Janet said.
Redd looked surprised. “Movie?”
“Butch Cassidy and the Sunshine Kid, I think it was. Robert Redford and somebody-or-other. And the Bolivian army kills them.” Janet shuddered. “Blows them all to pieces. Gruesome.”
It wasn’t the reaction Redd had expected, but he went on. Enjoying the attention, Chee thought sourly, and then was disgusted with himself for his bad temper. Redd could hardly be more cooperative. He seemed to be one of those perpetual graduate students who inhabit the fringes of every university?but a decent sort of fellow.
Redd was telling them that Tagert didn’t believe Cassidy had been killed in Bolivia. Tagert believed part of the tale told by Cassidy’s kinfolks. The family claimed that Cassidy had slipped back into the United States in 1909, had bought a farm under an assumed name, had lived out his life as a law-abiding citizen, and had finally died as an old, old man about 1932. Tagert believed some of that. But not the law-abiding part.
“He published a paper in Western Archives about ten years ago, connecting Cassidy with a 1909 bank robbery in Utah,” Redd said. “In stuffy old history faculties that stirred up a controversy, and Henderson blew him out of the water. He found out that Tagert had relied on some old trial testimony that had since been discredited. That infuriated Tagert. And this new book
“ Redd grinned broadly. “Jean said Tagert was absolutely livid. In a downright rage. Stomping around the office, having a regular tantrum.” He laughed, shook his head, savoring the memory.
“I take it that Jean Jacobs doesn’t care much for the professor,” Janet said.
Redd’s delight vanished. “Does the slave love her master?” Redd asked. “That’s what we are. Lincoln didn’t mention graduate students when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. We’re the Grand Republic’s last vestige of indentured labor. We do the master’s research for him, or we don’t get our dissertation approved. Then you don’t get the union card.”
Chee swallowed. How did all this Cassidy stuff relate to Ashie Pinto? How could it? But he wasn’t going to show impatience again. He would behave like a Navajo. He would endure.
“I remember how it was in law school,” Janet said. “If you were working your way through.”
“Anyway,” Redd said, “old Tagert had dug out an old newspaper account of a train robbery up in Utah. I think it was the newspaper at Blanding. Three men, one of them killed, and the other two getting away and some people on the train claiming one of the robbers was Cassidy. He found a later account reporting that the two bandidos had turned up in Cortez, and got away again, and the posse had chased them south and lost track of ‘em south and west of Sleeping Ute Mountain. Again, one of the cops said the blond bandit was Butch Cassidy. He claimed he’d known him way back when Cassidy was connected with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.”
Redd paused. Shook his head. “Pretty slim evidence, but it was all Tagert had, and he used it in that paper, along with what Cassidy’s kinfolks had said, and?like I said?he got blown out of the water by Henderson’s Bolivian stuff.” Redd shook his head again, expression wry.
