refilled his own. “Well, let’s see. First, I just thought about what you were asking me to do for you. I couldn’t think of any way to do it without getting into a crack—having a choice of either telling a judge you were my source or going to jail for contempt of a court order.”
He sat across the table from Gershwin and sipped his coffee. “You sure you don’t want a cup?”
Gershwin shook his head.
“So then I went up and talked to people around Bluff and around there about those men. I learned a little about all of them, but more about Jorie,” Leaphorn said, watching Gershwin over the rim of his cup. “I decided I’d see if any of them were home. Jorie was.”
“Killed himself. That right? So you’re the one who found his body.”
Leaphorn nodded.
“Paper said he left a suicide note. Is that right?”
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “There it was.“ He wondered how he would answer when Gershwin asked him what was in it. But Gershwin didn’t ask.
“I wonder why -' Gershwin began, but he cut off the sentence and started again. “The newspaper story sort of said the note was a confession. That he gave the names of the other two. That right?”
Leaphorn nodded.
“Then I don’t see why those militia bastards are putting the blame on me.' The tone of that was angry, and so was his stare.
“That’s a puzzle,” Leaphorn said. “Do you think they suspect you know a lot about the robbery plan and were giving that away? Any chance of that?”
“I don’t see how that could be. When I was going to meetings, there was always somebody talking about doing something wild. Something to call attention to their little revolution. But nobody ever talked about robbery.”
Leaphorn let it drop. He took another sip of coffee, looked at Gershwin, waited.
Gershwin slammed his fist on the table. “Damn it to hell,” he said. “Why can’t the cops catch those bastards? They’re out there somewhere. They got their names. Know what they look like. Know where they live. Know their habits. It’s just like that ‘98 mess. You got FBI agents swarming around everywhere. You Navajo cops, and the Border Patrol, and four kinds of state cops, and county sheriffs, and twenty other kinds of cops standing around and manning roadblocks. Why in hell can’t they get the job done?”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “But there’s enough canyons out there to swallow up ten thousand cops.”
“I guess so. I guess I’m being unreasonable.' He shook his head. “To be absolutely honest about it, I’m scared. I’ll admit it. That guy that came to the filling station at Bluff the other morning, he could just as easy have come to my house. I could be dead right now. Dead in my bed. Just waiting for somebody to come wandering by and find my body.”
Leaphorn tried to think of something reassuring to say. The best he could come up with was that he guessed the bandits would rather run than fight. It didn’t seem to console Gershwin.
“You got any idea if the cops are closing in on them? Have they figured out where they might be?”
Leaphorn shook his head.
“If I knew that, I could sleep a little better. Now I can’t sleep at all. I just sit in my chair with the lights off and my rifle on my lap.' He gave Leaphorn a pleading look. “I’ll bet you know something. Long as you was a cop, knowing all the other cops the way you do, and the FBI, they must tell you something.”
“The last 1 heard is pretty much just common knowledge. That stolen truck was abandoned out there on the mesa south of the San Juan, and that’s where I understand they’re trying to pick up some tracks. South of Bluff and Montezuma Creek and over in the Aneth Oil -'
The buzz of his telephone interrupted him.
He picked it up off the table, said, “Leaphorn.”
“This is Jim Chee. We found that mine.' Chee’s voice was loud with exuberance.
“Oh. Where?”
“You got your map there?”
“Just a minute.“ Leaphorn slid the map closer, picked up his pen. “OK.”
“The mouth is not more than thirty feet below the canyon rim. About a hundred, hundred and ten feet up from the canyon bottom on a fairly
