noticed you first, I’d have asked you the same thing.”
Leaphorn laughed. “I probably would have told you I’m out here hunting quail. But then you’d have noticed this is a rifle and not something you use to shoot birds. And you wouldn’t have believed me.”
“Prob’ly not,” Gershwin said. “I’d guess you were thinking about all that money taken out of that casino and how it had to be hidden someplace and maybe this old mine was it.”
“Well,” Leaphorn said, 'it’s true that the Navajo Nation doesn’t offer high retirement pay. How about you? You looking for some extra unmarked paper money?”
“Are you talking as an officer of the law, or are you still a civilian?”
“I’m the same civilian you brought your list of names to,” Leaphorn said. “Once you’re out they don’t let you back in.”
“Well, then, I hope you have better luck than I did. There’s no money back there. I turned over every piece of junk. Nothing. Just a waste of time.' Gershwin started walking again.
“I heard some shots fired,” Leaphorn said. “What was that about?”
Gershwin turned around and started back toward the mine. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you. And I’ll tell you, too. Remember me telling you I was pulling out. Going to move into a motel somewhere. Not wait around for those militia bastards to come after me. Well, I decided to hell with that. I’m too old a dog to let those punks run me out. I decided I’d have a showdown.”
“Hold it a minute,” Leaphorn said. “I want you to meet a friend of mine.“ He motioned to Chee.
Chee holstered his pistol, came out from behind the brush, raised a hand in greeting. If Gershwin was carrying a weapon it wasn’t visible. If it was any size, he’d probably be carrying it under his belt, hidden by his shirt and not in a pocket. The sound of the gunshots suggested a serious weapon. Certainly not a pocket-sized twenty-two.
“This is Sergeant Jim Chee,” Leaphorn said. “Roy Gershwin.”
Gershwin looked shocked. “Yes,” he said, and nodded to Chee.
“Chee’s short of money, too,” Leaphorn said. “He’s a single man, but he’s trying to live on a police salary.”
Gershwin gave Chee another look, nodded again, and resumed his walk, toward the mine. “Well, as I was telling you, I drove out here thinking I was going to have it out with these bastards. Either take ‘em in for the reward money, or run ’em off, or shoot ‘em if I had to. That reward’s supposed to be for dead or alive. I just decided not to run. I’m way too damned old to be running.”
“You shot ’em?” Leaphorn asked.
“Just one. I shot Baker. George Ironhand, he got away.”
They were in the structure by then, through a double doorway that pierced a partly tumbled wall and into the patterned light and darkness of a huge room. Sunlight streaming through gaps in its roof illuminated the cluttered earthen floor in streaks. It was about as Special Agent Cabot had described it.
Empty except for a jumble of junk and scattered debris. Where the floor wasn’t hidden by fallen roofing material and sheets of warped plywood, it was covered by layers of drifted sand, dust and trash drifted in by years of wind. Tumbleweeds were piled against the back wall, and beside them was the body of a man dressed in gray-green camouflage coveralls.
Gershwin gestured toward the body. “Baker,” he said. “Son of a bitch tried to shoot me.”
“Tell us about how it went,” Leaphorn said.
“Well, I parked back there a ways so they wouldn’t hear me coming. And walked up real quiet and looked in and that one'—Gershwin pointed to the body by the wall—'he seemed to be sleeping. The tall one was sitting over there, and when I came in he made a grab for his gun and I hollered for him to stop, but he got it, and then I shot him and he fell down. That woke up the other guy and he jumped up and pulled out a pistol and I hollered for him to drop it and he took a shot at me so I shot him, too.”
“The first one you shot,” Chee said. “Where did he go?”
“Be damned if I know,” Gershwin said. “I thought he was down for good and I was busy with the other one, and when I was going to check on him, he wasn’t there. I guess he just got out of here somehow. Didn’t you fellas see him running away?”
“We didn’t,” Leaphorn said, 'and we better be getting to our car. We need to call this in, and get the law out here to collect the body and get a search going for the one that got away.”
“Surprised you didn’t see him,” Gershwin said.
