Dashee paused. He cleared his throat. Leaphorn sighed.
“Ah,” said Dashee, “Sergeant Chee suggested I ask you about this. Get some advice. He told me something about that old trading post operator way up there at Short Mountain, between Tuba City and Page—McGinnis, I think it is. Anyway, Chee said that in one of your old burglary cases, McGinnis reported having a big diamond stolen from his store. Could you let me know if you have any time to fill me in on that?” Another pause. “Well, thank you, sir.”
Did he have any time? Did he have anything else? Leaphorn dialed the number Dashee left, got Dashee’s answering machine, left a message saying he had time. Plenty of time. Nothing but time. Besides, this diamond thing was different enough to be interesting. He looked in the refrigerator, saw nothing appealing, put on his hat, and went out to his pickup. He’d get a sandwich down at the Navajo Inn and then he’d—He’d what? Watch people playing golf on afternoon television? Play the Free Cell solitary game on the computer? Listen to all those lonely little sounds a house makes when it’s empty? To hell with that. He dialed the Dashee number again.
“Turns out I’ll be going over into your territory today,” he told the answering machine. “I’ll stop at the Hopi Cultural Center for some late lunch. You could meet me there if it’s handy. Otherwise, I’m going on to that old Short Mountain Trading Post. Maybe you could catch me there.”
That done, he wrote a note to Louisa telling her he was taking care of business north of Tuba City and would call her. He climbed into his truck, thinking about Sergeant Chee finally getting wise enough to realize that Bernie loved him. That led him to consider whether he should, once again, suggest to Professor Louisa Bourbonette that they get married. He’d proposed that once, when they decided she would use his Window Rock house as the northern base of her endless research on the mythology of Navajo, Ute, Paiute, Zuni, Hopi, and any other tribes she could persuade to talk into her tape recorder. The first time he’d asked her, the answer had been brief and determined.
“Joe,” she had said, “I tried that once and I didn’t like it.”
The next time he brought it up, she reminded him that he was still in love with Emma, which was still true even though ten years had passed since Emma had left him a lonely widower. Louisa said she would give him another ten years to think about it.
Leaphorn sighed, decided to leave well enough alone again, and made the westward turn onto U.S. 264. He paused at Ganado to top off his gas tank, and spent the next hour trying to decide how to tell Dashee he had not the slightest idea what he could do to help his cousin. No profit in that thought. He shifted to trying to restore his usual Navajo harmony with the world around him—a world in which too many of his old friends seemed to be dying. Even Shorty McGinnis, hard as that was for him to realize.
The Bureau of Land Management pickup he’d last seen Dashee driving wasn’t among the four vehicles in the Hopi Cultural Center parking lot, a disappointment. But the pretty Hopi receptionist in the center’s cafe recognized him (the first bright spot in the day) and gave him a huge smile. Of course she knew Dashee. He hadn’t been in, but she’d tell him Lieutenant Leaphorn had been there and was driving on to Short Mountain. Leaphorn drank two cups of coffee, ate the Hopi cook’s version of the taco, and headed for Tuba City and the great emptiness of the multicolored cliffs and canyons that lay beyond it.
He paused in Tuba looking for friends he’d made there a lifetime ago as a green rookie cop. It would be good, he thought, to catch them before they cashed in and went off on that Last Great Adventure with the Holy People. He found three, one too busy to do much visiting, one nursing a bad bout with arthritis, and his former Tuba City district sergeant, who was all too happy to remind him of the mistakes he used to make. That took time.
He headed north out of Tuba City, driving faster than he should, but when he made the left turn onto the wash-board gravel of Navajo Route 6130, the westering sun was low enough to be blinding.
That discomfort was more than offset in the eyes of Leaphorn (with his Navajo conditioning to apply value to beauty, and economic importance to the weather) by the great ranks of towering clouds rising like white castles to the north and west. The usual late-summer “monsoon” was late. Maybe much-needed rain was finally arriving.
He bumped across Big Dry Wash (the sometimes site of roaring runoff floods) and over the ridge into Bikahatsu Wash and onto the Blue Moon Bench.
There the only buildings were the Short Mountain Trading Post, a big slab-sided barn with its pole-fenced pen for sheep connected to a smaller one for other animals, and the store itself, with two gasoline pumps standing beside it. The only vehicle in the packed earth of the parking space was a rusty and windowless old Ford sedan. Its wheels were missing. It rested on blocks with a collection of tumbleweeds trapped beneath it.
Leaphorn parked beside it, turned off his ignition, and sat studying the scene, checking it against his memories, looking with fading hopes for some sign of life. The long wooden bench was still on the porch, but the customers who sat there exchanging gossip and drinking the cold soda pop McGinnis provided them were absent. The livestock pens were empty. If any hay bales were stacked in the barn, he couldn’t see them. And except for a mild breeze, now pushing a tumbleweed along to add to the old car’s collection, the silence was absolute.
Leaphorn glanced at his watch. Plenty of time had passed for McGinnis to have opened the door, peered out, and waved him in. But the door hadn’t opened. Now he was forced to face what Captain Pinto had told him. John McGinnis had died, was dead, gone forever, Pinto had it right. Leaphorn had simply doubted because he hadn’t wanted to believe. He faced it now, admitted to himself that he had made this long drive hoping to find that Pinto was wrong, or someone to tell him how it had happened. Somebody said it was a heart attack. More likely a stroke. McGinnis would never have gone to a hospital willingly to die among strangers. Leaphorn had expected to find someone here to reassure him about that. Someone with whom he could trade memories. But he’d found only empty, dusty silence.
He got out of the truck, trying to decide what to do, thought of nothing useful, and let habit guide him. He mounted the steps to the porch floor and knocked, and knocked again. No answer. None expected. The sign was still beside the door, telling all who came: THIS ESTABLISHMENT FOR SALE INQUIRE WITHIN. Had a new owner bought it? Highly unlikely. Leaphorn knocked again. No response. He walked down the porch to the nearest window, brushed away the dust, put his forehead against the glass, shaded his eyes, and looked in.
Rows of mostly empty shelves, the old man’s desk at the end of a long counter, to Leaphorn’s right, a blinking light. A blinking light? He focused on it through the dirty glass. A television set showing what seemed to be a beer commercial in black and white. In front of the set, the back of what seemed to be a rocking chair, and the back of the head of someone sitting in the chair. White hair.
Leaphorn sucked in a deep breath, went back to the door, knocked again, and tried the door handle. Unlocked. He pulled the door open and stood staring into the room.
“Mr. McGinnis,” he shouted. “Shorty?” And he hurried in.
It was McGinnis and he was alive, but Leaphorn wasn’t sure of that until he was almost close enough to touch
