banned climbing,” she added.
“Are you a climber?”
“When I was younger,” she said. “When Hal used to come out, Eldon started teaching him to climb. Hal and his cousin George.
Sometimes I would go along and they taught me.”
“How about Ship Rock?” Chee asked. “Did you ever climb it?”
She studied him. “The tribe prohibited that a long time ago. Before I was big enough to climb anything.” Chee smiled. “But some people still climbed it. Quite a few, from what I hear. And there’s not actually a tribal ordinance against it.
It’s just that the tribe stopped issuing those ‘back country’ permits. You know, to allow non-Navajos the right to trespass.” Mrs. Breedlove looked thoughtful. Through the window came the sound of a car door slamming.
“To make it perfectly legal, you’d go see one of the local people who had a grazing permit running up to the base and get him to give you permission to be on the land,” Chee added. “But most people even don’t bother to do that.” Mrs. Breedlove considered this. Nodded. “We always got permission. I climbed it once. It was terrifying. With Eldon, Hal, and George. I still have nightmares.”
“About falling?”
She shuddered. “I’m up there looking all around. Looking at Ute Mountain up in Colorado, and seeing the shape of Case del Eco Mesa in Utah, and the Carrizos in Arizona, and Mount Taylor, and I have this dreadful feeling that Ship Rock is getting higher and higher and then I know I can never get down.” She laughed. “Fear of falling, I guess. Or fear of flying away and being lost forever.”
“I guess you’ve heard our name for it,” Chee said. “Tse? Bitai?—the Rock with Wings. According to the legend it flew here from the north bringing the first Navajos on its back. Maybe it was flying again in your dream.” A voice from somewhere back in the house shouted: “Hey, Sis! Where are you? What’s that Navajo police car doing parked out there?”
“We’ve got company,” Mrs. Breedlove said, barely raising her voice. “In here.” Chee stood. A man wearing dusty jeans, a faded jean jacket with a torn sleeve, and well-worn boots walked into the room. He held a battered gray felt hat in his right hand.
“Mr. Chee,” said Mrs. Breedlove, “this is my brother Eldon. Eldon Demott.”
“Oh,” Demott said. “Hello.” He shifted his hat to his left hand and offered Chee the right one. His grip was like his sister’s and his expression was a mixture of curiosity, worry, and fatigue.
“They think they’ve found Hal,” Elisa Breedlove said. “You remember talking about that skeleton on Ship Rock. The Navajo police think it must be him.”
Demott was eyeing the little stack of climbing equipment on the table. He sighed, slapped the hat against his leg. “I was wrong then, if it really is Hal,” he said. “That makes him a better climber than I gave him credit for, climbing that sucker by himself and getting that high.” He snorted. “And a hell of a lot crazier, too.”
“Do you recognize any of this?” Chee asked, indicating the equipment.
Demott picked up the nylon belt and examined it. He was a small man. Wiry. A man built of sun-scorched leather, bone, and gristle, with a strong jaw and a receding hairline that made him look older than he probably was.
“It’s pretty faded out but it used to be red,” he said, and tossed it back to the tabletop. He looked at his sister, his face full of concern 14 of 102
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and sympathy. “Hal’s was red, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” she said.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “And how about this jumar? Didn’t you fix one for Hal once?”
“By God,” Demott said, and picked it up. It reminded Chee of an oversized steel pretzel with a sort of ratchet device connected.
Chee had wondered about it and concluded that the ratchet would allow a rope to slip in one direction and not the other. Thus, it must be used to allow a climber to pull himself up a cliff. Demott obviously knew what it was for. He was examining the place where the ratchet had been welded to the steel.
“I remember I couldn’t fix it. Hal and you took it into Mancos and had Gus weld it,” Demott said to Elisa. “It sure looks like the same one.”
“I guess we can close this up then,” Chee said. “I don’t see any reason for you going down to Shiprock to look at the bones. Unless you want to.”
Demott was inspecting one of the climbing shoes. “The soles must be all the same,” he said. “At least all I ever saw was just soft, smooth rubber like this. And his were white. And he had little feet, too.” He glanced at Elisa. “How about the clothing? That look like Hal’s?”
“The jacket, yes,” she said. “I think that’s Hal’s jacket.”
Something in her tone caused Chee to glance back at her. She held her lips pressed together, face tense, determined somehow not to cry. Her brother didn’t see that. He was studying the artifacts on the table.
“It’s pretty tore up,” Demott said, poking the clothing with a finger. “You think coyotes? But from what the paper said, it would be too high for them.”
“Way too high,” Chee said.
