“What’s the rest of the story?” Leaphorn asked. “You found it again after you filed the burglary report? Or the burglar really took it but brought it back?”
“Take your pick,” McGinnis said. “The insurance company cut my claim way down, anyway.”
“How about an address for this Reno?”
McGinnis laughed. “I said, ‘Where you from, son?’ and he said, ‘Reno. That’s why they call me that.’”
Leaphorn examined the stone again. “I’ve seen zircon stones. This looks like a diamond.”
“I think it is,” McGinnis said. “This cowboy, or whatever he was, said, ‘How could an old Indian down in the canyon get one of those?’ Laughed at the idea.” He pointed to the pouch in Leaphorn’s hand.
“Take a look at that, Joe,” he said. “I guess that’s some sort of lizard stitched there into the leather. But I never saw one like it. And that fierce-looking insect on the other side—you reckon that’s got something to do with that fella’s religion?”
“I’ll show it to Louisa,” Leaphorn said. “She’s down in the canyon now collecting oral-history stuff from the Havasupai people down there.”
“Keep it, then,” McGinnis said. “You want to hear the story he told me?”
“I think that’s what I came for,” Leaphorn said. “Remember, Cowboy Dashee’s cousin claims he got his diamond from an old man down in the canyon.”
“I already told you some of this,” McGinnis said.
“I’d like to hear it again. See if you tell it the same.”
McGinnis nodded. “Maybe I left something out. Well, anyway, this Reno says it was raining and sleeting and he was leading his horse up one of those narrow slots runoff waters cut in the canyon cliffs, thinking maybe he could follow it all the way out to the surface. Up there a little ways he passed the mouth of one of those washes that drains into the canyon, and this old man was standing in it out of the weather. My cowboy rolls himself a cigarette, and one for the old man. The old man asks if he’s got a knife or a hatchet he’d be willing to swap for something. Reno shows him one of those big folding knives he was carrying in one of those belt holsters. The old man admires it. He goes back into his cave, and when he comes out again, he has a sort of fancy flat box. Looked like one a peddler might carry and it has a whole bunch of little snuff cans in it. He opens one of them and takes out a little gem and holds it out like he’s offering it to swap. Reno says no. The old man gets out a bigger one. Then Reno says he decided it might be worth as much as his old knife, and his girlfriend would go for that. So he makes the trade.”
McGinnis shrugged, took another sip.
“That’s it?”
“End of story,” McGinnis said.
“This Reno saw several diamonds in that box?”
McGinnis pondered. “I guess so. Actually, I think he saw several of those little cans. He said something about a bunch of those little snuff cans. He said he guessed the old man used them to keep the diamonds safe.”
“Where did this fancy box come from?”
“Reno said he asked the old man that. The Indian fellow couldn’t speak English but he made airplane gestures, and sort of simulated a plane crash and everything falling down. And then a big fire.”
Leaphorn considered this, with McGinnis watching.
“Mr. McGinnis,” Leaphorn said. “Were you living here in, let’s see, 1956 I think it was?”
McGinnis laughed. “I was waiting to see if you’re still as smart as you used to be,” he said. “You passed the test. It was summer, June, before the rains start. Up to then, it was the worst airline disaster in history. Couple of those big airlines collided.”
“And it happened just about there,” Leaphorn said, pointing out the window toward the rim of Marble Canyon —not visible from here but no more than twenty miles away.
McGinnis was grinning. “I got a bunch of clippings about that back with my stuff,” he said. “It was old news by the time I got out here, but people still talked about it. Two of the biggest airlines of the time ran together, tore the end off of one of them and the wing off the other one, and everything was all torn up and falling into the canyon. Bodies of a hundred and twenty-eight people showering down the cliffs. Most exciting thing that ever happened around here.”
“And all their luggage, too,” Leaphorn said.
“And you’re thinking that might have included a leather-covered peddler’s case with a lot of jewelry in it.”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Leaphorn said.
“Tell the truth, that same thought did occur to me, too,” McGinnis said. “And I didn’t think a jewelry drummer would be carrying zircons in such a fancy case.”
6
Almost everyone liked Bernadette Manuelito. Always had. Her teammates on the Shiprock High girls’ basketball team liked her. She was popular with her fellow botany students when she worked as an assistant in the university biology lab. Other recruits in the Navajo Police Department training program approved of her—and so did those she worked with during her short stint with the U.S. Border Patrol. Ask any of them why and they’d tell you Bernie was always cheerful, happy, laughing, brimming with good nature.
