The Wailing Wind

'I tried to after he came home from prison,' Leaphorn admitted. 'He called me a son of a bitch and hung up.'

Chapter Four

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Officer bernie manuelito had risen even earlier than usual, driven over to her mother's place at Hogback, had a most unsatisfactory visit, went on to Farmington thinking she would use this unexpected (and undeserved) day off to shop, decided that was a bad idea considering the mood she was in, and headed south on Route 371 to the Tsale Trading Post. She'd have a talk with old man Rodney Yellow. Hostiin Yellow was her mother's senior brother, the elder male in the Yoo'l Dineh—the Bead People clan—and a shaman. He had been very active in the Medicine Man Association and in the movement to train young singers to keep some of the less-used curing rituals alive. More important to Bernie, he had conducted the kinaalda ceremony for her when she reached puberty, had given her her secret ceremonial 'war name,' and was her very favorite uncle.

Hostiin Yellow was also an authority on what the scientists out at the Chaco National Monument called 'ethnobotany.' Maybe he could tell her something about the various stickers and seedpods she'd found on the victim's pant legs and socks. Which was why, she told herself, she was going to visit him. That and family duty. She glanced down at the speedometer. Eleven miles over the limit. Oh, well. Never any traffic on 371. The emptiness was one of the reasons she loved to drive it. That and passing the grotesque monuments of erosion of the Bisti Badlands, and seeing the serene shape of the Turquoise Mountain rising to the east. Pretty soon now it would be wearing its winter snowcap, and monsoon rains of late summer had already started turning the grazing country a pale green. Enjoying that, she forgot for a moment how arrogant Sergeant Chee had acted, but the memory of it came right back again.

'And just keep your mouth shut about it,' Chee had said, giving her his stern 'I'm your boss' look. He had taken the tobacco tin from her hand, put it in a plastic evidence sack, and placed the sack in his shirt jacket pocket, and said: 'I'll see what I can do about this,' and walked into Captain Largo's office. When he came out he gave her another of those looks and told her to go home, take the rest of the week off, and: 'For God's sake, don't talk to anybody about this.'

That was it. He didn't even have the decency, the respect, to tell her she was suspended. Maybe she wasn't. Just take the rest of the week off, he said—looking very dour. Big deal. That was just a day and a half before her shift ended anyway. What had Largo said after Chee told him about the tobacco tin? The captain had already been angry after his meeting with the fbi guys. Not that he chewed her out much. Just asked a bunch of questions. And glared at her. But then he hadn't known about her taking the tin away—a tin that Chee seemed to think would have had prints on it. Hers now, if none other.

Hostiin Yellow wasn't at his place behind the Tsale Trading Post. The lady there said he was supposed to be doing his botanical talk for the kids at the Standing Rock School. Bernie took the dirt road shortcut thirteen miles over the mesa and saved about thirty minutes by driving too fast. She caught him coming out of a classroom, trailed by a swarm of middle-school kids, and steered him into the room reserved as a faculty lounge. There they went through the ritual of family concern and affection. But she could tell Hostiin Yellow had sensed instantly that this was not a casual 'drop in on the way' visit.

He put the big cardboard box holding his collection of botanical and mineral specimens on the table, sat himself in one of the folding chairs, and eyed her curiously while she completed her recitation of family news.

And finally she said: 'And how about you? You look tired.'

And he said: 'Girl Who Laughs, stop chattering now and tell me your trouble.'

Thinking about it later, she decided hearing her war name spoken did it—broke through her dignity and reduced her from woman to niece. Hostiin Yellow had given her that secret name—to be revealed to no one outside the bosom of her family. It was the name of her sacred identity and used only in dealing with the Holy People. If it became known to witches, it could be used against her.

She sat in the chair he pointed her to, dug out a tissue to deal with the unwelcome tears, and told him everything. Of finding Doherty's body curled in the cab of his truck; of possibly losing her job because she hadn't handled it right; of taking away the old tobacco tin, which turned out to have tiny bits of placer gold mixed with the sand in it, and how that was getting her into trouble with everybody; of her mother being unsympathetic and telling her she never should have gone into police work. Her mother saying this trouble was good, maybe it would bring her to her senses. And when she told her mother how curt Sergeant Jim Chee had been, she had taken Chee's side. Called him a good man. Said Bernie should start treating him better.

When the lightning storms ended and the Season When the Thunder Sleeps made it possible, she would ask him to do for her the proper sing to protect her from ghost sickness.

Finally, with that said, Girl Who Laughs became Officer Bernadette Manuelito again, and she got to the reason she thought she had come to look for him, knowing now it was just a cover story—just an excuse.

She took an envelope from a pocket and poured its contents onto the tabletop. Hostiin Yellow looked at the little litter of seedpods and burrs, and up at her.

'When I reached in to see if the victim had a pulse, to see if he was still alive, I noticed his socks and his trouser legs had picked up all sorts of stickers,' Bernie said. 'Chamisa seeds, for example, but no chamisa grows way up there where we found his truck. The same with some of these other seeds, so I thought maybe they had come from where he was when he was shot.'

Hostiin Yellow had reached up and extracted a pencil from his tsiiyeel, using the bun in which traditional Navajos wear their hair as a holder. Now he was using the pencil tip to sort Bernie's botanical material into separate bunches.

'I thought maybe you could help me find where it came from,' Bernie said. But even as she said it, she knew it was an impossible job. The stuff she'd collected could have grown just about anywhere that was hotter and drier than the Chuska Mountain high-country zone. About anywhere in the millions of acres of tundra from which the mountains rose.

'Chamisa seed,' said Hostiin Yellow, inspecting the fragment held between thumb and finger. 'Chamisa needs some salt. In the old days, before people could buy salt blocks for their sheep, they used to have to drive them down out of the mountains to the halbatah—the 'gray lands' where the salt-holding plants grow. No salt in the high country soil. The runoff from the melting snow leaches it out.'

He glanced at Bernie. She nodded. She knew all this. Hostiin Yellow had taught her as a child.

'If there are no salty plants, sheep start eating the stuff that poisons them.' He held up another seed. 'This sacatan grass grows down in the Halgai, in the flatlands. There used to be plenty of it everywhere. Good food for the animals, but they bite it off right down to the roots. So pretty soon it's crowded out by this.' He held up silvery needle-grass seeds. 'Not even goats will eat this unless they're starving.'