'No. No. You didn't know I was sick. You are busy. Some reason brought you here. The last time it was about marrying a girl, but if you married her you didn't invite me to do the ceremony. So I think you didn't do it.' Nakai's words came slowly, so softly Chee leaned forward to hear.
'I didn't marry her,' Chee said.
'Another woman problem then?'
'No,' Chee said.
The morphine was having its effect. Nakai was relaxing a little. 'So you came all the way up here to tell me you have no problems to talk to me about. You are the only contented man in all of Dinetah.'
'No,' Chee said. 'Not quite.'
'So tell me then,' Nakai said. 'What brings you?'
So Chee told Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai of the death of Benjamin Kinsman, the arrest of the Hopi eagle poacher, of Jano's unlikely story of the first and second eagles. He told him of the death sentence and even of Janet Pete. And finally Chee said: 'Now I am finished.'
Nakai had listened so silently that at times Chee—had he not known the man so well—might have thought he was asleep. Chee waited. Twilight had faded into total darkness while he talked and now the high, dry night sky was a-dazzle with stars.
Chee looked at them, remembered how the impatient Coyote spirit had scattered them across the darkness. He hunted out the summer constellations Nakai had taught him to find, and as he found them, tried to match them with the stories they carried in their medicine bundles. And as he thought, he prayed to the Creator, to all the spirits who cared about such things, that the medicine had worked, that Nakai was sleeping, that Nakai would never awaken to his pain.
Nakai sighed. He said: 'In a little while I will ask you questions,' and was silent again.
Blue Lady came out with a blanket, spread it carefully over Nakai and adjusted the lantern. 'He likes the starlight,' she said. 'Do you need this?'
Chee shook his head. She turned off the flame and walked back into the hogan.
'Could you catch the eagle without harming it?'
'Probably,' Chee said. 'I tried twice when I was young. I caught the second one.'
'Checking the talons and the feathers for dried blood, would the laboratory kill it then?'
Chee considered, remembering the ferocity of eagles, remembering the priorities of the laboratory. 'Some oft hem would try to save it, but it would die.'
Nakai nodded. 'You think Jano tells the truth?'
'Once I was sure there was only one eagle. Now I
don't know. Probably he is lying.'
'But you don't know?'
'No.'
'And never would know. Even after the federals kill the Hopi you would wonder.'
'Of course I would.'
Nakai was silent again. Chee found another of the constellations. The small one, low on the horizon. He could not remember its Navajo name, nor the story it carried.
'Then you must get the eagle,' Nakai said. 'Do you still keep your medicine
'Yes,' Chee said.
'Then take your sweat bath. Make sure you remember the hunting songs. You must tell the eagle, just as we told the buck deer, of our respect for it. Tell it the reason we must send it with our blessings away to its next life. Tell it that it dies to save a valuable man of the Hopi people.'
'I will,' Chee said. 'And tell Blue Lady I need the medicine that makes me sleep.'
But Blue Lady had already sensed that. She was coming.
This time there were pills as well as a drink from the cup.
'I will try to sleep now,' Nakai said, and smiled at Chee. 'Tell the eagle that he will also be saving you, my grandson.'
Chapter Twenty-two
WHERE WAS ACTING LIEUTENANT Jim Chee? He'd gone to Phoenix yesterday and hadn't checked in this morning. Maybe he was still there. Maybe he was on his way back. Check later. Leaphorn hung up and considered what to do. First he'd take a shower. He flicked on the television, still tuned to the Flagstaff station he'd been watching before sleep overcame him, and turned on the shower.
They had good showerheads in this Tuba City motel, a fine, hard jet of hot water better than the one in his bathroom. He soaped, scrubbed, listened to the voice of the television newscaster reporting what seemed to be a traffic death, then a quarrel at a school board meeting. Then he heard '—murder of Navajo policeman Benjamin Kinsman.' He turned off the shower and walked, dripping soapy water, to stand before the set.
It seemed that Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney J. D. Mickey had held a press conference yesterday evening. He was standing behind a battery of microphones at a podium with a tall, dark-haired man stationed uneasily slightly behind him. The taller man was clad in a white shirt, dark tie and a well-tailored dark business suit, which caused Leaphorn to immediately identify him as an FBI agent—apparently a new one to this part of the world, since
