The Wailing Wind

Hostiin Yellow finished his descriptive inventory without seeming to Bernie to add anything that would help pin down the location of the source.

'You think all of these came from the same place? Why do you think that?'

'Well,' Bernie said. 'Not a very good reason, I guess. Jim Chee said there was a new Zip Lube oil-change sticker on the windshield and the sales slip in the glove-box. It showed he had the oil changed the morning he was killed and he'd driven only ninety-three miles from the station in Gallup. And from the Zip Lube place to the truck it was thirty-five miles. So that leaves fifty-eight miles to get to where his socks collected the stickers and from that place to where we found him.'

'That's the shortest way from Gallup? The thirty-five miles?'

Bernie nodded. 'North out of Gallup on six sixty-six, then northwest to Nakaibito, and then up that gravel road past the Tohatchi lookout, and on toward Cove.'

'So,' said Hostiin Yellow, 'this poor fellow collected his stickers quite a ways from where you found him. Down the mountain. East side or west side. Either New Mexico stickers or Arizona stickers.'

He stared past her, out the window, looking at the mountains, lost in thought.

'Was this all you got? Any other seeds you didn't bring with you?'

Bernie shook her head. 'Well,' she said, 'I noticed a bunch of those goathead stickers in the soles of his sneakers.'

'Goatheads? You mean the puncture vine, I think. Dark green, spreads very close to the ground. Seeds usually have three long sharp thorns?'

She nodded.

Hostiin Yellow frowned. 'That doesn't fit well with the chamisa and the spikeweed and the other plants,' he said. 'Puncturevine likes more water, loose soil. Gets crowded out where there's too much heat.'

He leaned back, stuck the pencil back into his bun. 'You know, I think this man must have been walking up some sort of drainage, an arroyo, or a narrow canyon, where the puncturevine would have some damp sand and some shade. You know anything that might fit that idea?'

That thought interested Bernie. Placer mining required runoff water, didn't it? And sand, of course. There was sand in the Prince Albert tin. The one Chee had ordered her to keep her mouth shut about.

'I found an old tobacco tin not far from the body. The sand in it had a little bit of gold dust mixed in it.'

'Gold dust, was it? I think…' He stopped, studying her. 'How bad do you need to find this place? Can't you just let the other cops do it?'

I need to find it to save my dignity, she thought. To restore my self-respect. To show those jerks I'm not a dummy.

'Pretty bad,' Bernie said. 'I need to save my job.'

Hostiin Yellow was pushing the piles of her seeds into a single heap, returning them to her sack. He said: 'I need to say something to you about this gold. Gold has always brought trouble for the Dineh. It makes the belagaana crazy. General Carlton thought we had a lot of gold in our mountains, so he had the army round up us Navajos and move us away on that long walk to Bosque Redondo. They drove the Utes out of Colorado to get the gold in their mountains. And drove the tribes out of the Black Hills, and pretty much killed the California Indians. Everywhere they find gold, they destroy everything for it. They tear up our Mother the Earth, they break the cycle of life for everything.'

Bernie nodded.

He handed her the sack. 'It makes people crazy,' he said. 'And crazy people are dangerous. They kill each other for gold.'

'My uncle,' Bernie said. 'I think you are telling me Mr. Doherty was murdered because of that gold. And I think you know where he got all those stickers in his pants. Can you just tell me?'

He shook his head. 'I'll think about it,' he said. 'Right now, I think you should let the other policemen find that place.'

Bernie nodded. But she could tell from his expression that he didn't interpret that gesture as consent. She sat and watched him.

And Hostiin Yellow watched her. As hunter for the white men, his Girl Who Laughs had lost her laughter. Why must she care who had done this crime? If a belagaana did it, let the belagaana punish him if they must. If it was a Navajo—one who still lived by Changing Woman's laws—then he would come to be cured of the dark wind that had caused him to kill. But no good to tell this young woman all this. She knew it. And Girl Who Laughs would live her life her own way. That, too, was Navajo. He was proud of that, too. And of her.

She was glancing away from him now, at something outside the window. Her face reminded him of the old photograph in the museum at Window Rock—the women who had endured their captivity at Bosque Redondo. The narrow, straight nose, the high cheekbones, the strong chin. None of the roundness here that the gene pool of the Zunis, Hopis, and Jemez had contributed to the Dineh. Beauty, yes. Dignity, too. But nothing soft about Girl Who Laughs.

Hostiin Yellow sighed.

'Girl Who Laughs, you have always been stubborn. But I want you to listen to me now,' he said. 'The belagaana have always killed for gold. You already know that. You have seen it. But have you thought about how some people kill for religion?'

Bernie considered that, looking for a connection and seeing none. Hostiin Yellow was studying her.

'Are you hearing what I say?'

Bernie nodded again. 'Yes,' she said. But she really wasn't. 'You mean like the Israelis and the Palestinians? And the people in the Balkans, and…'