a turn somewhere. Seems we might be going in the wrong direction.”
“Looks like it.”
“Then let’s stop the next place we get to and ask directions,” Dashee suggested.
“The next place we get to is Antelope Wells. That’s the port of entry on the Mexican border, and it’s about fifty miles south of here, and the last twenty or so, according to this map, are marked unimproved.”
Dashee pulled his BLM truck off the road, parked it among the scattered creosote bushes, and got out.
“Here’s my plan,” he said. “We turn around and head back toward where we came from. You do the driving and I’ll do the navigating. Give me your map. It is well known among us Hopis, and all other tribes, that Navajos aren’t to be relied upon when it comes to understanding maps.”
And so it happened, that it was late morning when Chee finally yelled, “Yes, this is it. I remember driving right past that bunch of mesquite over there. And that soaptree yucca. Take that little right turn there, and up that set of tracks, and up that hill, and from there we can see the Tuttle Ranch south gate.”
“Well, good,” Dashee said. “Getting there on Navajo Time, we other Indians say, means late. But better late than never.”
At the top of the hill they could indeed see the gate, and it was open.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have needed you,” Chee said. “I could have driven right in.”
“No, you’d still be lost. And you’d be asked for your jurisdiction credentials right away, and tossed right out again.”
“Anyway, through the gate and over two hills and then we’re there,” Chee said. “I measured it on my odometer. A fraction less than four miles to go.”
It proved to be 3.7 miles from the gate to the hilltop from which they could see the construction site. And the new building. A dark green Border Patrol pickup was parked behind it.
“Chee said: “Son of a bitch!”
Dashee gave Chee a wry look.
“Is that what she drives?” he asked. “You think Bernie’s there?”
“I hope not,” Chee said. She must be crazy. Why in God’s name would she come out here again. She knows the dopers have her picture. She knows they think she’s dangerous.”
“Let’s talk about that later,” Dashee said. “Now let’s get right on down there. Let’s hope this case of being late is going to be one of those better-than-never times.”
Dashee pulled the car back onto the track in a flurry of dirt-throwing wheel spinning and headed it down the hill.
24
That morning, Customs Patrol Officer Bernadette Manuelito had pulled her Border Patrol vehicle onto the dusty shoulder of Playas Road, stepped out, taken her jish out of her purse, extracted a little prescription bottle from it, and shook a pinch of corn pollen onto her left palm. She stood a moment, staring eastward toward the Big Hatchet Mountains. A streak of cloud hanging atop the mountain ridge was turned a brilliant yellow by the rising sun, then orange that faded into red. CPO Manuelito sang the chant greeting the sun. She blessed the dawning new day with a sprinkle of pollen and climbed back into the car.
Her prayer this morning, she was thinking, was a bit more fervent than usual. She had set her alarm for five a.m. and left her home in Rodeo very quietly, not wanting to awaken Eleanda, whose regular breathing she could hear in the adjoining bedroom. Ed Henry’s call had come last night just after she’d watched the weather report on the evening news and hit the sack.
The TV weatherman had sent along some hope that maybe tomorrow would be a rainout, and if the Border Patrol actually had such holidays she would certainly enjoy one. Yesterday had been long, tiring, and unproductive, spent with two other CPOs, both male and both experienced, following the tracks of ten or eleven people, presumed to be illegals, northward through the San Bernadino Valley in extreme southeastern Arizona into the edge of the Chiricahuc Mountains.
The afternoon had been hot, with a gusty wind blowing dust up her pant legs and stinging her face. The other officers, a Tohono O’odham local and a White Mountain Apache, had assumed the role of her teachers. They had laughed off her experience as a Navajo police officer and cast her as a green recruit who was probably teachable, but incurably a “girl.” They had explained why the group they were tracking were not merely illegals slipping into the U.S. in search of minimum-wage jobs but were mules carrying illegal products. They drew her attention to the short steps being taken—evidence of carrying heavy loads—and places where these loads were put down presumably when the mules needed rest, and how some of the loads had been the sort of sacks in which marijuana is often carried. Early on Bernie had pointed to the dents in the dirt that might have been caused by luggage, or a frying pan, or some equally logical cooking utensil, but after this had produced only amused looks, she had kept her opinions to herself.
It had been almost sundown before the tracks disappeared beyond hope of retrieval, erased by the increasing wind. The two males, in charge due to seniority—and their own ideas about gender—had decided that they could think of no reason dope importers would be climbing into these empty and roadless mountains. They decided everyone should go home for the evening and tomorrow they would all continue her education by tracking down four pack horses reported to have been seen in Guadalupe Canyon in the Guadalupe Mountains.
Thus Bernie had reached Rodeo exhausted, dusty, dehydrated, and disgruntled. Eleanda had saved some yogurt and a fruit salad for her, and they’d watched the evening news for a while. Bernie had taken her shower, climbed into pajamas and into bed. There she tried not to think of tomorrow’s chore, tried to remember why she had thought joining the Border Control Shadow Wolves unit was such a good idea, and finally comforted herself with a couple of her happier memories of Sergeant Jim Chee. She was just getting sleepy, and was hoping that the weatherman knew what he was talking about, that the already late monsoons might be starting tomorrow, and if it did rain, she wouldn’t be hunting pack horses in a mountain canyon.
That’s when the telephone rang.
“It’s for you,” Eleanda shouted. “The boss.”
Ed Henry, as always, was short and to the point. “Got a schedule change for you tomorrow,” he said. “Cancel that tracking job over in the Guadalupes. They’re predicting rain anyway. I want you to go out to that construction site on the Tuttle Ranch. Get there bright and early. Look around. See what’s happening and let me know.”
“You mean back to that gate? Do you think they’ll let me in this time?”
“They know now it was just a mistake when you followed that truck in there. You didn’t do no harm.”
Bernie spent a moment dealing with her surprise. Then she said a doubtful sounding “OK,” and asked Henry what he was expecting to find. “Am I supposed to be looking for something specific?”
“Bernie,” he said, “I sort of owe you an apology. I’ve been thinking about everything you told me, and it seemed to me that maybe something not quite right might be going on out there. So just go out and take another look around, and give me a call and let me know what you think.”
“Fine.”
“And use that cell phone number I gave you. I got some running around to do tomorrow so I won’t be in the office. In fact, I’ll be coming out to the Tuttle place myself later in the day. I’ll sort of serve as your backup.” With that, Henry chuckled.
Now, back on the road again with the morning sunlight flooding the valley and clouds beginning to build up over mountains in every direction, Bernie was remembering that chuckle instead of enjoying the vast expanse of beauty. Would it finally rain? That was no longer among the questions on her mind. What kind of thinking had Ed Henry been doing to cause him to reconsider the Tuttle Ranch? What did he think she might find? Why did Henry think the gate would be unlocked this time? That must be because he’d arranged for someone to let her in. Or to let him in. He’d said he was coining out himself a little later. That thought reminded her of the picture Henry had taken of her, and what Delos Vasquez had told her about seeing a copy of it held by one of the drug gangs in Mexico.
By the time she reached the hilltop from which she had first looked down upon the gate, she was feeling thoroughly uneasy about this assignment. She unsnapped the strap on her holster, took out her Border Patrol pistol, and confirmed that the magazine was filled with the official number of nine-millimeter rounds of ammunition. She had scored expert at the firing range test she’d taken after applying for this job, just as she’d scored expert on the
