“Well,” Leaphorn said, 'they probably didn’t pick up the sniper bit. Army records would just show he received the decoration for something general. Risking his life beyond the call of duty. Something like that.”
“OK,” Chee said. “I guess I wasn’t being fair.”
“At least, though,” said the professor, 'I’d think they should have told you he was a combat veteran.”
“Me, too,” Chee said. “But I guess nobody’s perfect. I know we weren’t today. All we got was a lot of exercise.”
“No tracks?”
Chee waved his hands.
“Lots of tracks. Coyotes, goats, rabbits, lizards, snakes, variety of birds every place there was a seep,” Chee said. “But no sign of humans. We even picked up what might have been puma tracks. Either that or an oversize big-footed bobcat. One sign of porcupine, rodents galore, from kangaroo rats, to deer mice, to prairie dogs.”
“Could you rule out humans?”
“Not really,” Chee said. “Too much slick rock. We didn’t find a single place in maybe five miles we covered where anybody careful couldn’t find rocks to walk on.”
“So the hunt goes nowhere,” Leaphorn said. “I guess until someone comes up with a better reason for leaving that escape vehicle where it was left.”
“You mean better than running down into Gothic Creek to hide?” Chee laughed. “Well, I guess that was better than the first idea. Thinking they trotted over to the Timms place to fly away in that old airplane of his.' Chee paused. “Wait a minute. You said you had two things to tell me, Lieutenant. What’s the second one. Do you have a better idea?”
Leaphorn looked a bit embarrassed, shook his head.
“Not really,” he said. “Just more stuff about George Ironhand. Maybe it might mean something.' He glanced at Louisa. “Where do I start?”
“At the beginning,” Louisa said. “First tell him about the original Ironhand.”
So he recounted the deeds of the legendary Ute hero/bandit, the futile efforts of the Navajos to hunt him down, describing Bashe Lady’s account of how those hunting him thought he might be a witch because he seemed able to disappear from a canyon bottom and reappear magically on its rim.
“She said the Navajos thought he escaped like a bird, but actually he escaped like a badger.' Leaphorn paused with that, watching for Chee’s reaction.
Chee was rubbing his chin, thinking.
“Like a badger,” Chee said. “Or a prairie dog. In one hole and out another. Did she give you any hint of where this was happening? Name a canyon, anything like that?”
“None,” Leaphorn said.
“Do you think she knows?”
“Probably. At very least, I think she has a pretty good general idea. She knew a lot more than she was willing to tell us about that.”
Professor Bourebonette was smiling. “She didn’t show any signs of affection for you Navajos. You 'Bloody Knives.' I think that after about four hours of that, she was getting under Joe’s skin a little. Right, Joe? Arousing your competitive, nationalistic macho instincts, maybe?”
Leaphorn produced a reluctant chuckle. “OK,” he said. “I plead guilty. I was imagining Bashe Lady in one of those John-Wayne-type movies. Tepees everywhere, paint ponies standing around, dogs, cooking fires, young guys with Italian faces and Cheyenne war paint running around yipping and thumping drums, and there’s Bashe Lady with a bloody knife in her hand torturing some tied-up prisoners. And I’m thinking of how it actually was in 1863, when these Utes teamed up with the U.S. Army, and the Hispanos and the Pueblo tribes and came howling down on us and -'
Professor Bourebonette held up her hand.
Leaphorn cut that off, made a wry face and a dismissing gesture. “Sorry,” he said. “The old lady got on my nerves. And I’ll have to admit I’d love to see the Navajo Tribal Police catch this new version of Ironhand and lock him up.”
“The point of all this is that the George Ironhand you’re looking for is probably the son of the original version,” Professor Bourebonette said. “The first one took a new wife when he was old. The right time span for this guy. Right age to be in the Vietnam War.”
Chee nodded. “So the man we’re looking for would likely know how his
