on men. But snakes struck men in self-defense. With that thought in mind, with the reputation this place had earned?even a hundred years ago?for witches, Chee moved cautiously.
The first path he chose led into a pocket of rocks with no exits. The second, after he climbed a difficult tilted slab of stone, led him higher and higher into the ridge. The dying sunlight no longer reached this path but the going was relatively easy. Obviously this walkway had been used for many years by animal and man. Here a cactus had been broken by a careless step, and healed with time. There a clump of buffalo grass had been distorted by the pressure of footsteps. Now and then, where the rocky formation fended off the rain, Chee picked up recent boot prints. The high-heeled boot marks were no longer evident. They must have been Ashie Pinto’s boots. Ashie Pinto had been too wise to enter here. Pinto had sat beside a pinon on the grass, not taking any chances with destiny. But Coyote had been waiting out there, too.
Chee was high in the rocks before he saw his first snake. It was a smallish prairie rattler which had been moving slowly across the pathway just as he turned a corner between shoulder-high boulders. Chee stopped. Snake stopped. It formed itself into a coil, but the motion was lethargic. Chee stepped back to where his human smell would be less likely to reach the reptile. Waited a moment, looked around the rock. The snake was gone.
Chee paused as he stepped over the snake’s track across the sand and took time to erase the zigzag marking with his toe. He couldn’t remember the reason for this action, just that it was one of the litany of taboos and their counters his grandmother had taught him?a small courtesy to Big Snake.
Not fifty feet beyond where the snake had been, he found the place he had come to find.
In some forgotten time, a great upsurge of molten magma had produced a cul-de-sac walled in by slabs of weathered, lichen-covered basalt. At the wide end, a bubble of this molten rock had burst?forming a small cave. Eons of migrating sand, dust, and organic material had been trapped here, borne directly in by the wind or washed down from the rocks above. It had formed a flat floor on which bunch and needle grass grew when enough water seeped in from above. At the near edge of this little floor, Chee saw the weathered ruins of what had been a saddle.
Chee stopped and studied the place.
Even from where he stood, yards away, he could see the floor had been disturbed by foot tracks. He heard a scraping sound. Or thought he did. When he had left his truck there had been a breeze, the edge of what weather people call “proximity wind” stirred up on the edges of a storm. Now that had died away, leaving the dead calm that so often comes just as the first flakes fall.
Had he heard something? Chee couldn’t be sure. Probably just nerves?the proximity of witches. Witches. That caused him to think of Joe Leaphorn, to whom belief in witches was superstitious anathema. Chee had come to terms with them in another way. He saw what the origin mythology said of them as a metaphor. Some choose to violate the Way of the People, choosing incest, murder, and material riches over the order and harmony of the Navajo Way. Call them what you like, Chee knew they existed. He knew they were dangerous.
Now Chee listened and heard almost nothing. A meadowlark somewhere out of sight ran its soprano meadowlark scales. Down near the arroyo where he’d parked, the crows were quarreling. He heard nothing to explain his nervousness.
The sun was down now just below the horizon, and was coloring the bottom of the storm cloud a dazzling yellow in the far west and dull rose over Chee’s head. Reflected light washed the rocky landscape with a dull red tint?making vision deceptive. No time to waste.
He walked past the old saddle into the cul-de-sac. And stopped again.
First he saw the hat. Sand had drifted over most of it, but part of the brim and much of the crown were visible. Apparently a very old hat of once-black felt now faded into mottled gray. Beyond the hat, over a low partition of sloping rock, he saw a pant leg and a boot?also mostly buried under the drifted dust.
Chee drew a deep breath and let it out, steadying himself. Apparently, old Hosteen Pinto’s story was true. At least one man had died here a long time ago. In a moment, he would check for the second one. No terrible hurry. Chee, like most Navajos who hold to the traditions of the People, would avoid a corpse as diligently as an orthodox Jew or Moslem would avoid roast pork. They were taboo. They caused sickness.
But there were cures for such sickness if it couldn’t be avoided. Chee walked over to inspect the corpse.
The man who wore the pant leg lay mostly far under an overhang of stone?seeking shade probably when he was dying. Now, too late, it protected him from wind and weather. But the desiccating heat had converted him into a shriveled mummy swaddled in faded clothing.
There should be another man, Chee thought. He found him in the little cave.
This had been a bigger man, and he, too, had been partly mummified by the dry heat. His hat had been placed on his face but under its brim Chee could see a long mustache, bleached a gray-white. This body had been moved, pulled out flat on the sand. It still wore a gun belt but the holster was empty. Here seemed to be Professor Tagert’s famous Butch Cassidy. Here was Tagert’s revenge upon his detractors.
He stood studying the body. Part of the man’s vest had been torn away and part of the other clothing had pulled apart when it had been dragged from under the sheltering rocks. Or perhaps, totally rotten, had fallen away by its own weight. Or perhaps Tagert had gone through Mr. Cassidy’s pockets in search of identification.
Had Tagert been here? He must have been one of the two people Taka Ji had seen. Chee checked for tracks. They were everywhere. Tracks of two people. Flat-heeled boots with pointed toes, about size ten, and something much smaller made by patterned rubber soles.
Where were their saddlebags? One had been strong enough to carry his saddle up. Surely he would have brought the bags. He looked for a place they might be hidden. The shelf behind him?the most logical place to toss them?was empty. He noticed a deep slot about shoulder high between two layers of rock. He peered into it?cautiously, because it was a perfect place for a snake to rest. Indeed, a snake was coiled back in the crack. It looked like a full-grown diamondback rattler. To the left of the snake, where the slot was a little deeper, Chee could see the tannish-gray color of old canvas. A saddlebag had been pushed back there out of sight. He could reach it, he thought, if he didn’t mind risking irritating the snake.
He looked around for an adequate stick
Coyote Waits and settled for a limb broken from an overhanging juniper.
“Hohzho, Hosteen Snake,” Chee said. “Peace. Live with beauty all around you.” He moved the stick into the slot. “Just take it easy. Don’t mean to trouble you.”
He could reach the saddlebag without getting his hand in range of the snake. But he couldn’t move it.
