“Okay,” Leaphorn said. “I guess if I take this job, then I’m safe in figuring the ranch is worth a lot more than the grass growing on it.”
“What do you say?” Shaw said, his voice impatient. “Can we count on you to do some digging for us?”
“I’ll think about it,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll call your office.”
“We’ll be here a day or two,” Shaw said. “And we’re in a hurry. Why not a decision right now?” A hurry, Leaphorn thought. After all these years. “I’ll let you know tomorrow,” he said. “But you haven’t answered my question about the value of the ranch.”
McDermott looked grim. “You’d be safe to assume it was worth killing for.” 11
“TWISTING THE TAIL OF A COW
will encourage her to move forward,” the text declared. “If the tail is held up over the back, it serves as a mild restraint. In both cases, the handler should hold the tail close to the base to avoid breaking it, and stand to the side to avoid being kicked.” The paragraph was at the top of the fourth-from-final page of a training manual supplied by the Navajo Nation for training brand inspectors of its Resource Enforcement Agency. Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee read it, put down the manual, and rubbed his eyes. He was not on the payroll of the tribe’s REA. But since Captain Largo was forcing him to do its job he’d borrowed an REA brand inspector manual and was plowing his way through it. He’d covered the legal sections relating to grazing rights, trespass, brand registration, bills of sale, when and how livestock could be moved over the reservation boundary, and disease quarantine rules, and was now into advice about handling livestock without getting hurt. To Chee, who had been kicked by several horses but never by a cow, the advice seemed sound. Besides, it diverted him from the paperwork—vacation schedules, justifications for overtime pay, patrol car mileage reports, and so forth—that was awaiting action on his cluttered desk. He picked up the manual.
“The ear twitch can be used to divert attention from other parts of the body,” the next paragraph began. “It should be used with care to avoid damage to the ear cartilage. To make the twitch, fasten a loop of cord or rope around the base of the horns. The rope is then carried around the ear and a half-hitch formed. The end of the rope is pulled to apply restraint.” Chee studied the adjoining illustration of a sleepy-looking cow wearing an ear twitch. Chee’s childhood experience had been with sheep, on which an ear twitch wouldn’t be needed. Still, he figured he could make one easily enough.
The next paragraph concerned a “rope casting harness” with which a person working alone could tie up a mature cow or bull without the risk of strangulation that was involved with usual bulldogging techniques. It looked easy, too, but required a lot of rope.
Two pages to go and he’d be finished with this.
Then the telephone rang.
The voice on the telephone belonged to Officer Manuelito.
“Lieutenant,” she said, “I’ve found something I think you should know about.”
“Tell me,” Chee said.
“Out near Ship Rock, that place where the fence posts had been dug out. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“Well, the snow is gone now and you can see where before it snowed somebody had thrown out a bunch of hay.”
“Ah,” Chee said.
“Like they wanted to attract the cattle. Make them easy to get a rope on. To get ’em into a chute. Into your trailer.” 31 of 102
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“Manuelito,” Chee said. “Have you finished interviewing that list of possible witnesses in that shooting business?” Silence. Finally, “Most of them. Some of them I’m still looking for.”
“Do they live out near Ship Rock?”
“Well, no. But—”
“Don’t say but,” Chee said. He shifted his weight in his chair, aware that his back hurt from too much sitting, aware that out in the natural world the sun was bright, the sky a dark blue, the chamisa had turned gold and the snakeweed a brilliant yellow. He sighed.
“Manuelito,” he said. “Have you gone out to talk to the Sam woman about whether she’s seen anything suspicious?”
“No, sir,” Officer Manuelito said, sounding surprised. “You told me to—”
“Where are you calling from?”
“The Burnham trading post,” she said. “The people there said they hadn’t seen anything at the girl dance. But I think they did.”
“Probably,” Chee said. “They just didn’t want to get the shooter into trouble. So come on in now, and buzz me when you get here, and we’ll go out and see if Lucy Sam has seen anything interesting.”
“Yes, sir,” Officer Manuelito said, and she sounded like she thought that was a good idea. It seemed like a good idea to Chee, too.
The tossing hay over the fence business sounded like Zorro’s trademark as described by Finch, and that sounded like an opportunity to beat that arrogant bastard at his own game.
Officer Manuelito looked better today. Her uniform was tidy, hair black as a raven’s wing and neatly combed, and no mud on her face. But she still displayed a slight tendency toward bossiness.
