But inside Leaphorn found Mrs. Gracie Nakaidineh in charge of things. Mrs. Nakaidineh remembered him from his days patrolling out of Tuba City long, long ago. And he remembered Gracie as one of those women who always do what needs to be done and know what needs to be known.
'Ah,' Gracie said after they had gotten through the greeting ritual common to all old-timers, 'you mean you're looking for the Mouse Man.'
'Right,' Leaphorn said. 'He left a note on his door saying he could be contacted here.'
'He said if anyone needed to find him, he'd be catching mice along Kaibito Creek. He said he'd be about where it runs into Chaol Canyon.'
That meant leaving washboard gravel and taking Navajo Route 6330, which was graded dirt circling up onto the Rainbow Plateau for twenty-six bumpy empty miles. Leaphorn avoided much of that journey. About eight miles out, he spotted an Indian Health Service pickup parked in a growth of willows. He pulled off onto the shoulder, got out his binoculars and tried to make out enough of the symbol painted on its dusty, brush-obscured door to determine 'whether it was the Indian Health Service or something else. Failing that, he scanned the area for Krause.
A figure, clad head to foot in some sort of shiny white coverall, was moving through the brush toward the truck, carrying plastic sacks in both hands. Krause? Leaphorn couldn't even tell whether it was a man or woman. Whoever was wearing the astronaut's suit stopped beside the truck and began removing shiny metal boxes from the sacks, placing them in a row in the shade behind the vehicle. That done, he took one of the boxes to the truck bed, put it into another plastic sack, sprayed something from a can into the bag, and then began arranging a row of flat square pans on the tailgate.
It must be Krause on his mouse-hunting expedition, and now he was performing whatever magic biologists perform with mice. He was working with his back to Leaphorn, revealing a curving black tube that extended from a black box low on his back upward into the back of his hood. Here was what Mrs. Notah had seen behind the screen of junipers at Yells Back Butte. The witch who looked part snowman and part elephant.
As that thought occurred to Leaphorn, Krause turned, and as he took the box from the sack, sunlight reflected off the transparent face shield—completing Mrs. Notah's description of her skinwalker. He turned to watch Leaphorn approaching.
Leaphorn restarted the engine and rolled his truck down the slope. He parked, got out, slammed the door noisily behind him.
Krause spun around, yelling something and pointing to a hand-lettered sign on the pickup: IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU'RE TOO DAMNED CLOSE. Leaphorn stopped. He shouted: 'I need to talk to you.' Krause nodded. He held up a circled thumb and finger, and then a single finger, noted that Leaphorn understood the signals, and turned back to his work—which involved holding a small rodent in one hand over a white enamel tray and running a comb through its fur with the other. That job done, he held up the tiny form of a mouse, dangling it by its long tail, for Leaphorn to see. He dropped the animal into another of the traps, peeled off a pair of latex gloves, disposed of them in a bright red canister beside the truck. He walked toward Leaphorn, pushing back his hood.
'Hantavirus,' he said, grinning at Leaphorn. 'Which we used to call, in our days of cultural insensitivity, the Navajo Flu.'
'A name which we didn't like any better than the American Legion liked your name for Legionnaire's disease.'
'So now we give both of them their dignified Greek titles, and everybody is happy,' Krause said. 'And anyway, what I was doing was separating the fleas from the fur of a
'Are you finished here now?' Leaphorn asked. 'Do YOU have time for some questions?'
'Some,' Krause said. He turned and waved at the row of metal boxes in the shade. 'But before I can peel off this uniform—which is officially called a Positive Air Purifying Respirator suit, or PAPR, in vector controller slang— I've got to finish with the mice in those traps. Separate the fleas and then it's slice and dice for the poor little deer mice.'
'I have plenty of time,' Leaphorn said. 'I'll just watch you work.'
'From a distance, though. It's probably safe. As far as we know, hantavirus spreads aerobically. In other words, it's carried in the mouse urine, and when that dries, it's in the dust people breathe. The trouble is, if it infects you, there's no way to cure it.'
'I'll stay back,' Leaphorn said. 'And I'll hold my questions until you get out of that suit. I'll bet you're cooking.'
'Better cooked than dead,' Krause said. 'And it's not as bad as it looks. The air blowing into the hood keeps your head cool. Stick your hand close here and feel it.'
'I'll take your word for it,' Leaphorn said. He watched while Krause emptied the box traps one at a time, combed the fleas out of the fur into individual bags and then extracted the pertinent internal organs. He put those in bottles and the corpses into the disposal canister. He peeled off the PAPR and dropped it into the same can.
'Runs the budget up,' he said. 'When we're hunting plague, we don't use the PAPRS when we're just trapping. And after we've done the slice-and-dice work, we save 'em for reuse, unless we slosh prairie dog innards on them. But with hantavirus you don't take any chances. But what can I tell you that might be useful?'
'Well, first let me tell you that we found the Jeep Miss Pollard was driving. It had been left in an arroyo down that road that leads past Goldtooth.'
'Well, at least she was going in the direction she told me she was going,' Krause said, grinning. 'No note left for me about taking an early vacation or anything like that?'
'Only a little smear of blood,' Leaphorn said.
Krause's grin vanished.
'Oh, shit,' he said. 'Blood. Her blood?' He shook his head. 'From the very first, I've been taking for granted that one day she'd either call or just walk in, probably without even explaining anything until I asked her. You just don't think something is going to happen to Cathy. Nothing that she doesn't want to happen.'
'We don't know that it has,' Leaphorn said. 'Not for sure.'
