Hunting Badger

their young lambs.

Nakai was awake now, listening to all this. When Blue Woman was finished, he motioned to Chee.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “A story.”

“We will make some coffee,” Blue Woman said. She led Bernie away to the hogan, and as they left Nakai began his tale.

It would be long, Chee thought, involving the intricacies of Navajo theology, the relationship of the universal creator who set all nature in its harmonious motion to the spirit world of the Holy People, and to humanity, and when it was finished he would know the final secret that would qualify him as a shaman.

“I think you will be going into the canyon soon to hunt the men who killed the policemen,” Nakai said. “I must tell you a story about Ironhand. I think you must be very, very careful.”

Chee exhaled a long breath. Wrong again, he thought.

“A long time ago when I was a boy, and the winter stories were being told in the hogan, and people were talking about the great dam that was going to make Lake Powell, and how the water of the Colorado and the San Juan were backing up and drowning the canyons, the old men would talk about how the Utes and the Paiutes would come through the canyons in their secret ways, and steal the sheep and horses of our people, and kill them, too. And the worst of these was a Paiute they called Dobby, and the band that followed him. And the worst of the Utes was a man they called Ironhand.”

Nakai replaced his oxygen mask and spent a few moments inhaling.

“Ironhand,” Chee said, probably too softly for Nakai to hear him.

Nakai removed the mask again.

“They say Dobby and his people came out of the canyons at night and stole the sheep and horses at the place of woman of the tl’igu dinee, and they killed her and her daughter and two children. And the son-in-law of this old woman was a man they called Littleman, who married into the Salt Clan but was born to the Near the Water Dine’. And they say he forgot the Navajo Way and went crazy with his grief.”

Nakai’s voice grew weaker, and slower, as he related how Littleman, after years spent hunting and watching, had finally found the narrow trail the raiders had used and finally killed Dobby and his men.

“It took summer after summer for many years for the Salt Clan to catch Dobby,” Nakai said. “But no one ever caught the Ute they called Ironhand.”

The moon was down, the dark sky overhead adazzle with stars, and Chee was feeling the high-altitude chill. He leaned forward in his chair and tucked the blankets around Nakai’s shoulders.

“Little Father,” he said, 'I think you should sleep now. Do you need more of the medicine for that?”

“I need you to listen,” Nakai said. “Because while our people never caught Ironhand, we know now why we didn’t. And we know he had a son and a daughter, and I think he must have a son or a grandson. And I think that is who you will be hunting, and what I will tell you will help.”

Chee had to lean forward now, his ear close to Nakai’s lips, to hear the rest of it. After two of his raids, the Navajos had managed to trace Ironhand and his men into the Gothic Creek Canyon, and then down Gothic toward the San Juan under the rim of Casa Del Eco Mesa. There tracks turned into a steep, narrow side canyon where the Utes and Mormon settlers from Bluff dug coal. They found a corpse in one of the coal mines. But the canyon was a dead end with no way out. It was as if Ironhand and his men were witches who could fly over the cliffs.

Nakai’s voice died away. He replaced the mask, inhaled, and removed it again.

“I think if there is a young man named Ironhand, he robs and kills people, he would know where his grandfather hid in that canyon, and how he escaped from it.

“And now,” Hosteen Nakai said, 'before I sleep, I must teach you the last lesson so you can be a hataalii.' He took a labored breath. “Or not be one.”

To Chee, the old man seemed utterly exhausted. “First, Father, I think you should rest and restore yourself. You should -'

“I must do it now,” Nakai said. “And you must listen. The last lesson is the one that matters. Will you hear me?”

Chee took the old man’s hand.

“Know that it is hard for the people to trust outside their own family. Even harder when they are sick. They have pain. They are out of harmony. They see no beauty anywhere. All their connections are broken.