for modifications and evolutions in the legends he’d grown up with. That talk with Louisa about how folks in lonely country knew everything about their neighbors had reminded him of Undersheriff Oliver Potts, now retired. If anyone knew the three on Gershwin’s list, it would be Oliver.
Chapter Seven
Oliver Potts’s modest stone residence was shaded by a grove of cottonwoods beside Recapture Creek, maybe five miles northeast of Bluff and a mile down a rocky road even worse than described at the Chevron station where Leaphorn had topped off his gas tank.
“Yes,” said the middle-aged Navajo woman who answered his knock, 'Ollie’s in there resting his eyes.' She laughed. “Or he’s supposed to be, anyway. Actually he’s probably reading, or studying one of his soap operas.' She ushered Leaphorn into the living room, said, 'Ollie, here’s company,” and disappeared.
Potts looked up from the television, examined Leaphorn through thick-lensed glasses. “Be damned. You look like Joe Leaphorn, but if it is, you’re out of uniform.”
“I’ve been out of uniform almost as long as you have,” Leaphorn said, 'but not long enough to watch the soap operas.”
He took the chair Potts offered. They exhausted the social formalities, agreed retirement became tiresome after the first couple of months, and reached the pause that said it was time for business. Leaphorn recited Gershwin’s three names. Could Potts tell him anything about them?
Potts hadn’t seemed to be listening. He had laid himself back in his recliner chair, glasses off now and eyes almost closed, either dozing or thinking about it. After a moment he said, “Odd mix you got there. What kind of mischief have those fellows been up to?”
“Probably nothing,” Leaphorn said. “I’m just checking on some gossip.”
It took Potts a moment to accept that. His eyes remained closed, but a twist of his lips expressed skepticism. He nodded. “Actually, Ironhand and Baker fit well enough. We’ve had both of them in a time or two. Nothing serious that we could make stick. Simple assault, I think it was, on Baker, and a DWI and resisting arrest. George Ironhand, he’s a little meaner. If I remember right, it was assault with a deadly weapon, but he got off. And then we had him as a suspect one autumn butchering time in a little business about whose steers he was cutting up into steaks and stew beef.”
He produced a faint smile, reminiscing. “Turned out to be an honest mistake, if you know what I mean. And then, the feds got interested in him. Somebody prodded them into doing something about that protected antiquities law. They had the idea that his little bitty ranch was producing way too many of those old pots and the other Anasazi stuff he was selling. They couldn’t find no ruins on his place, and the feds figured he was climbing over the fence and digging them out of sites on federal land.”
“I remember that now,” Leaphorn said. “Nothing came of it? Right?”
“Usual outcome. Case got dropped for lack of evidence.”
“You said they fit better than Jorie. Why’s that?”
“Well, they’re both local fellas. Ironhand’s a Ute and Baker’s born in the county. Both rode in the rodeo a little, as I remember. Worked here and there. Probably didn’t finish high school. Sort of young.' He grinned at Leaphorn. “By our standards, anyway. Thirty or forty. I think Baker is married. Or was.”
“They buddies?”
That produced another thoughtful silence. Then: 'I think they both worked for El Paso Natural once, or one of the pipeline outfits. If it’s important, I can tell you who to ask. And then I think both of them were into that militia outfit. Minutemen I think they called it.”
Potts opened his eyes now, squinted, rubbed his hand across them, restored the glasses and looked at Leaphorn. “You heard of our militia?”
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “They had an organizing meeting down at Shiprock last winter.”
“You sign up?”
“Dues were too high,” Leaphorn said. “But they seemed to be getting some recruits.”
“We got a couple of versions up here. Militia to protect us from the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service and the seventy-two other federal agencies. Then the survivalists, getting us ready for when all those black helicopters swarm in to round us up for the United Nations concentration camps. And then for the rich kids, we have our Save Our Mountains outfit trying to fix it so the Ivy Leaguers don’t have to associate with us redneck working folks when they want to get away from their tennis courts.”
Potts had his eyes closed again. Leaphorn waited, Navajo fashion, until he was sure Potts had finished this speech. He hadn’t.
