Then they dropped into the Gothic Creek Canyon, flying slowly north, with the rimrock of Casa Del Eco Mesa above them and the great eroded hump of the Nokaito Bench to their left. The pilot’s voice told Chee they were about two miles up canyon from the point their censor map had shown the streaks of migrated radiation along the canyon bottom.
“Be just a few minutes,” McKissack said. “Let me know if you see anything interesting.”
Chee was leaning his head against the Plexiglas window, seeing the stone cliffs slip slowly past. Here runoff erosion had sliced the sandstone. Here a rockslide had formed a semi-dam below. Here some variation of geology had caused a broad irregular bench to form. In places, the wall was almost sheer pink sandstone. In others, it was layered, marked with dark stripes of coal, the blue of shale, the red where iron ore had colored the rock.
“It ought to be close,” McKissack said. “I think we can presume the radiation from the old tailings was washing down stream.”
Gothic Creek Canyon had widened a little, and the copter was moving down it slowly and almost eye level with the rimrock to Chee’s right. Chee could see another bench sloping up from the canyon floor, supporting a ragtag assortment of chamisa, snakeweed and drought-stunted salt bush. It angled upward toward the broad blackish streak of a coal seam. Then just a few yards ahead and just below Chee saw what he was hoping to see.
“There’s a fair-sized hole in that coal deposit up ahead,” McKissack said. “You think that could be what you’re looking for?”
“Could be,” Chee said. They slid past the hole, with Chee taking pictures.
“Did you notice that structure above? Up on the mesa?” McKissack asked.
“Could you go up a little so I can get a picture of it?”
The copter rose. Almost directly above the mouth of the mine was the mostly roofless remains of a stone structure. Some of its walls had fallen, and a pyramid-shaped skeleton of pine timbers rose from its center.
“Well now,” said McKissack, 'does that do it for you?”
“I’m finished, and I thank you,” Chee said.
“Unfortunately you’re not quite finished,” McKissack said. “We have to drag this all the way down to the San Juan, and then back, and then we go back over the mesa and finish our mapping there.”
“About how long?”
“About one hour and thirty-four minutes of flying four miles north, making a sharp climbing turn, and flying four miles south, and making a sharp climbing turn and flying four miles north. Doing that until we have the quadrant covered. Then we land, get the tanks rejuiced and do it all over again. Except this time it will be quitting time and we’ll knock off for the day.”
The next voice was the technician’s. “And then we come back tomorrow and do it all over again with another four-mile-by-four-mile quadrant. Only time the monotony gets broken is when somebody shoots at us.”
Chapter Twenty- two
Joe Leaphorn cleared away his breakfast dishes, poured himself his second cup of coffee and spread his map on the kitchen table. He was studying it when he heard tires rolling onto the gravel in the parking space in front of his house. He pulled back the curtain and looked out at a dark green and dusty Dodge Ram pickup. The truck was strange to him, but the man who climbed out of it and was hurrying up his walk was Roy Gershwin. Gershwin’s expression bespoke trouble.
Leaphorn opened the door, ushered him into the kitchen, and said, “What brings you down to Window Rock so early this morning?”
“I got a telephone call last night,” Gershwin said. “A threatening call. A man. Sounded like a fairly young man. He said they were going to come after me.”
“Who? And come after you for what?”
Gershwin had slumped down in the kitchen chair with his long legs stretched under the table. He looked nervous and angry. “I don’t know who,” he said. “Well, maybe I could guess. His voice sounded familiar, but I think he had something over his mouth. Or he was trying to talk funny. If it was who I think it was, he’s one of those damn militia people. Anyway, it was militia business. The fella said they’d heard I’d been snitching on ‘em, and I was going to have to pay for that.”
“Well, now,” Leaphorn said, 'it sounds like you were right to be worrying about those people. Let me get you a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t want any coffee,” Gershwin said. “I want to know what you did to get me screwed like this.”
“What I did?” Leaphorn diverted the coffeepot from the fresh cup and
