The Wailing Wind

her duty as a policewoman for the Dineh, a rifle shot was fired and the bullet almost hit her. We have come here to see what you can tell us of that. Did you hear the shot? Did you see the one who fired it?

Peshlakai sipped his coffee, considered the questions.

Chee glanced around. Harjo was leaning against the wall, looking interested. Bernadette was sitting on the bench by the door, her eyes on him. Chee looked away.

'They say,' began Peshlakai, using the traditional Navajo form separating the speaker from any personal claim to knowledge, 'that when people come to another person's property, first they ask that person for his permission. This person '—Peshlakai nodded toward Bernie—'did not ask if she could be on my property.'

'They say,' Chee responded, 'that our Mother Earth is not the property of any person. Do you say you own this canyon?'

'This is my grazing lease,' Peshlakai said, looking slightly abashed. 'You can look at the papers down at the chapter house. I have a right to protect it.'

'Did you think Officer Manuelito was a thief who came to steal from you? Were you the one who fired the shot?'

Peshlakai considered. 'What I have here,' he said, gesturing around the hogan, 'the woman can have all of that. It is nothing of any value. I would not shoot her to protect that.'

Now Chee took charge of the silence. He guessed Peshlakai would want to expand on that, and he did.

'There are holy things that must be protected,' he said.

Chee nodded. 'I once thought I could be a yataali, and my uncle, Hostiin Frank Sam Nakai, taught me for years the way of the Talking God, and the Blessing Way. But before it was finished, Hostiin Nakai died.' Chee shrugged. 'So I am still a policeman, but he taught me something of the wisdom Changing Woman taught us.'

Peshlakai was smiling now. 'A great singer of the healing songs,' he said. 'I knew him. He never joined the Medicine Man Association.'

'No,' Chee said. Peshlakai seemed far too traditional to want to hear that Hostiin Nakai had planned to join the mma. He was always just too busy to get to the meetings.

'Had he been here,' Peshlakai said, creating the canyon outside with a gesture of his hands, 'then he would have done what I try to do.' Then he looked down at his hands, thinking.

Here it comes, Chee thought. He is deciding how to tell me, and it will start from the very beginning. He glanced at Bernie, who had also sensed the long, long story coming and was settling more comfortably on the bench. Harjo, newer to the ways of his people, looked at Chee, raised his eyebrows into a question.

'I understood some of it,' he said. 'But did he ever answer your question? Was he the shooter?'

'Not yet he hasn't,' Chee said.

'My mother told me that if you keep asking a traditional Navajo the same question, the fourth time you ask it, they have to tell you the answer.'

'That's the tradition,' Chee said. 'Sometimes—' But now Hostiin Peshlakai was ready to talk.

'They say that Changing Woman had almost finished her work here. She was all ready to follow the light toward the west and go live with the sun across the ocean. But before she did that, she went all around Dinetah. She started at the east, and on the top of the Turquoise Mountain she left her footprints, and blue flint grew everywhere around where she stepped.' About here Peshlakai's voice slipped into the storyteller's cadence, recounting the travels of the great Lawgiver of the Navajo People from one of the Sacred Mountains to the next.

Officer Bernadette Manuelito had heard it all before, although some of the details varied, and she found herself more interested in the listeners' reaction than in the tale. Ralph Harjo's knowledge of religious/mythological terminology in the Navajo language had obviously fallen far short of requirements, and he had lost the thread of Peshlakai's discourse. Harjo, she noticed, had become more interested in her than in the suspect. He glanced at her, made a wry 'we're in this together' face, smiled, and sent the other signals that Bernie, being a pretty young woman, often received from young men. Sergeant Chee, on the other hand, was totally and absolutely focused on Peshlakai and what he was saying.

At the moment, he was connecting Changing Woman's visits to various places with the minerals and herbs she had endowed them with—getting into territory that touched Bernie's botanical interest. He was also moving into her home territory—specifically Mesa de los Lobos.

Peshlakai was saying that both Changing Woman and Mirage Girl had been here, and he gestured up the canyon, up the slope. And these great yei, these great spirits, they had left behind here, so that the Dineh could be cured, could be returned to the cosmic harmony of the Navajo way, the materials to be used in two curing ceremonies. They were the Wind Way and the Night Chant. Here our uncles (the spirit forms of the plants) had left the seeds for a long list of herbs and grasses (only some of which Bernie recognized under their Navajo name) required for the proper conclusion of one or both of those rituals.

Somewhere in this listing Agent Osborne appeared at the hogan doorway and stood looking in, still holding his cell phone. He motioned to Harjo. They talked; Harjo shrugged. Osborne came in, tapped Chee's shoulder. Peshlakai fell silent, watching him.

'What'd he say about it?' Osborne asked Chee. 'Admit it? Deny it? What'd you learn?'

'Not yet,' Chee said. 'We're getting there. Hostiin Peshlakai is explaining motivations. Why this canyon must be protected.'

Osborne looked at his watch. 'Well, hell,' he said. 'Tell Mr. Peshlakai that I'm in a hurry. Just ask him if he shot at Officer Manuelito here.'

Chee looked thoughtful.

'Harjo,' Osborne said. 'Ask the man if he shot at Officer Manuelito.'

'Mr. Peshlakai,' Harjo said, and pointed at Bernie. 'Did you shoot your rifle at this woman here?'