'Except how did she get the Jeep out of here? The TV commercials make them look like they can drive up cliffs, but they can't.'
'There's a way, though,' Chee said. 'There's another way in here if you don't mind doing a little scrambling. An old trail comes up the other side of Yells Back toward Black Mesa. I think the lady with the goats might use it. You could drive the Jeep up there, park it, climb over the saddle, do your deed, and then climb back over the saddle and drive out on the goat path.'
Chee stopped. 'There's trouble with that, though.'
'You mean she wouldn't do that unless she knew in advance that she was going to need an escape route?'
'Exactly,' Chee said. 'How could she have known that?'
Louisa had been listening, looking thoughtful. Now she said: 'Do you professionals object if an amateur butts in?'
'Be our guest,' Leaphorn said.
'I find myself wondering just why Pollard was coming up here anyway,' Louisa said. She looked at Leaphorn. 'Didn't you tell me she was looking for the place where Nez was infected? Where the flea bit him?'
'Right,' Leaphorn said, looking puzzled.
'And isn't the period between infection and death—I mean in cases where treatment doesn't effect a cure— doesn't that range just a couple of weeks?' Louisa made one of those modifying gestures with her hands. 'I mean, usually. Statistically. Often enough so that when vector control people are looking for the source, they're looking for places the victim had been during that period. And what Miss Pollard was writing in her notes suggested that she was always trying to find out where the victim was in that period before their death.'
'Ah,' Leaphorn said. 'I see.'
Chee, whose interest in plague and vector control people who hunted it extended back only a few minutes, had little idea what any of this was about.
He said: 'You mean she knew Nez couldn't have been around Yells Back in that time frame? How would —?'
'Pollard's notes show where he was. They show—' She stopped in midsentence. 'Just a minute. I don't want to be wrong about this. The book's in the car.'
She found it on the dashboard, extracted it, leaned against the fender, and flipped through the pages.
'Here,' she said. 'Under her Anderson Nez heading. It shows that he was visiting his brother in Encino, California. He came home to his mother's hogan four miles southwest of Copper Mine Trading Post on June twenty- third. The next afternoon, he left to go to his job with Woody near Goldtooth.'
'June twenty-fourth?' Leaphorn said thoughtfully. 'Right?'
'And six days later he dies in the hospital at Flag.' She checked back in the notes. 'Actually more like five days. Pollard says in here somewhere he died just after midnight.'
'Wow,' Leaphorn said. 'Are we sure he died of plague?'
'Slow down,' Jim Chee said. 'Explain this date business to me.'
Louisa shook her head, looking doubtful. 'I guess the point is that Pollard knows a lot more about plague than we do. So she would have known that Nez didn't get his infected flea up here. Plague doesn't kill that fast. So she didn't have any reason to come up here flea hunting when she did.'
'That's the question,' Leaphorn said. 'If that wasn't her reason, what was? Or did she tell Krause she was coming, and not come? Or did Krause lie about it?'
Louisa was reading from another section of the notebook. She held up her hand.
'Pollard must have been thinking something was funny. She went back out to the Nez place near Copper Mine Mesa. Rechecking.
''Mom says Nez dug pestholes, stretched sheep fencing to expand pens. Family dogs wearing flea collars and sans fleas. No cats. No prairie dog towns in vicinity. No history of rats or rat sign found. Nez drove to Page with mother, buying groceries. No headache. No fever.'' She closed the notebook, shrugged.
'That's it?' Chee asked.
'There's a marginal note for her to check sources at Encino,' Louisa said. 'I guess to see if he was sick when he was there.' Chee said, 'But she told her boss she was coming up to Yells Back to check for fleas here. Or at least he says she did. I think I've met that guy.' He looked at Leaphorn. 'Big, raw-boned guy named Krause?'
'That's him.'
'What else did she tell him?'
'Krause said she came by early that day before he got to work. He didn't see her. She just left him a note,' Leaphorn said. 'I didn't see it, but Krause said that she just reported she was going up to Yells Back to collect fleas.'
'By the way,' Chee asked, 'with Pollard missing, as well as the Jeep she was driving, how did you get her notebook?'
'I guess we should call it a journal,' Leaphorn said. 'It was with a folder full of stuff her aunt's lawyer collected from her motel room in Tuba. It looks like she took the notes she jotted down in the field and converted them into sort of a report when she got home with her comments.'
'Like a diary?' Chee asked.
'Not really,' Leaphorn said. 'There's nothing very personal or private in it.'
