the Porsche. Chee yawned. What a day! He turned off the pavement onto the gravel road, which led to the dirt road, which led to the weedy track down to his trailer under the cottonwoods beside the San Juan River. He rubbed his eyes, yawned again. He’d warm up what was left of his breakfast coffee, open a can of chili, and hit the sack early. A bad day, but now it was over.
No, it wasn’t. His headlights reflected off a windshield, off a dusty car parked just past his trailer. Chee recognized it. Former lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, as promised, had caught him later.
3
CHEE’S TRAILER HAD BEEN CHILLY
when he left it at dawn. Now it was frigid, having leaked what little warmth it had retained into the chill that settled along the San Juan River. Chee lit the propane heater and started the coffee.
Joe Leaphorn was sitting stiff and straight on the bench behind the table. He put his hat on the Formica tabletop and rubbed his hand through his old-fashioned crew cut, which had become appropriately gray. Then he replaced the hat, looked uneasy, and took it off again. To Chee the hat looked as weatherworn as its owner.
“I hate to bother you like this,” Leaphorn said, and paused. “By the way, congratulations on the promotion.”
“Thanks,” Chee said. He glanced around from the coffeepot, where the hot water was still dripping through the grounds, and hesitated. But what the hell. It had not seemed plausible when he’d heard it, but why not find out?
“People tell me you recommended me for it.”
If Leaphorn heard that, it didn’t show on his face. He was watching his folded hands, the thumbs of which he had engaged in circling each other.
“It gets you lots of work and worry,” Leaphorn said, “and not much pay goes with the job.” 4 of 102
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Chee extracted two mugs from the cabinet, put the one advertising the
“How you enjoying your retirement?” Chee asked. Which was a sort of oblique way of getting the man to the point of this visit. This wouldn’t be a social call. No way. Leaphorn had always been the boss and Chee had been the gofer. One way or another this visit would involve law enforcement and something Leaphorn wanted Chee to do about it.
“Well, being retired there’s a lot less aggravation,” Leaphorn said. “You don’t have to put up with—” He shrugged and chuckled.
Chee laughed, but it was forced. He wasn’t used to this strange new version of Leaphorn. This Leaphorn, come to ask him for something, hesitant and diffident, wasn’t the Lieutenant Leaphorn he remembered with a mixture of puzzlement, irritation, and admiration. Seeing the man as a supplicant made him uneasy. He’d put a stop to that.
“I remember when you told me you were retiring, you said if I ever needed to pick your brains for anything, to feel free to ask,” Chee said. “So I’m going to ask you what you know about the cattle-rustling business.” Leaphorn considered, thumbs still circling. “Well,” he said, “I know there’s always some of it going on. And I know your boss and his family have been in the cow business for about three generations. So he probably doesn’t care much for cow thieves.” He stopped watching his thumbs and looked up at Chee. “You having a run of it up here? Anything big?”
“Nothing very big. The Conroy ranch lost eight heifers last month. That was the worst. Had six or seven other complaints in the past two months. Mostly one or two missing, and some of them probably just strayed off. But Captain Largo tells me it’s worse than usual.”
“Enough to get Largo stirred up,” Leaphorn said. “His family has grazing leases scattered around over on the Checkerboard.” Chee grinned.
“I’ll bet you already knew that,” Leaphorn said, and chuckled.
“I did,” Chee said, and poured the coffee.
Leaphorn sipped.
“I don’t think I know anything about catching rustlers that Captain Largo hasn’t already told you,” Leaphorn said. “Now we have the Navajo Rangers, and since cattle are a tribal resource and their job is protecting tribal resources, it’s really their worry. But the rangers are a real small group and they tend to be tied up with game poachers and people vandalizing the parks, or stealing timber, or draining off drip gasoline. That sort of thing. Not enough rangers to go around, so you work with whoever the New Mexico Cattle Sanitary Board has covering this district, and the Arizona Brand Inspection Office, and the Colorado people. And you keep an eye out for strange trucks and horse trailers.” Leaphorn looked up and shrugged. “Not much you can do. I never had much luck catching
’em, and the few times I did, we could never get a conviction.”
“I don’t think I’m going to get much return on the time I’ve been investing in it either,” Chee said.
“I bet you’re already doing everything I suggested.” Leaphorn added sugar to his coffee, sipped, looked at Chee over the rim. “And then, of course, you’re getting into the ceremonial season, and you know how that works. Somebody’s having a sing. They need to feed all those kinfolks and friends who come to help with the cure. Lots of hungry people and maybe you have them for a whole week if it’s a full-fledged ceremony. You know what they say in New Mexico: nobody eats his own beef.”
“Yeah,” Chee said. “Looking through the reports for the past years I noticed the little one or two animal thefts go up when the thunderstorms stop and the sings begin.”
“I used to just snoop around a little. Maybe I’d find some fresh hides with the wrong brands on ’em. But you know there’s not much use arresting anybody for that. I’d just say a word or two to let ’em know we’d caught ’em, and then I’d tell the owner. And if he was Navajo, he’d figure that he should have known they needed a little help and butchered something for them and saved ’em the trouble of stealing it.”
