He rubbed his eyes. Moonlight coming through the dusty window revealed Vang curled on the sofa, lost in the sleep of the innocent. Leaphorn stared at him for a THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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moment, decided he would rule Tommy an ally with some reservations, and pulled on his boots.
By a little after three A.M., the coffee had been con-sumed, they had piled into the King Cab pickup Tommy Vang had been driving, they had slid through the sleeping town of Cuba while the moon was sailing high over the San Pedro Mountains, and now they were making pretty good time on County Road 112. Vang had suggested that he should drive, since he knew the truck, but Leaphorn had again noted that pickups were a lot alike and that he knew the roads. Thus Vang had settled in the jump seat behind them, and was occupying himself for the first thirty minutes or so examining Delonie’s lever-action 30-30 rifle. He had seen lots of firearms, he explained—
the U.S. Army rifles carried by the ARVN, the Russian models the Vietcong used, and the Chinese weapons carried by the Pathet Lao—but never one that loaded itself by pulling down a lever. Before many miles he somehow resumed his sleep on the jump seat behind them.
Delonie was riding up front, wide awake but deep in some sort of silent contemplation. Totally silent for miles, except for muttering a sardonic “heavy traffic this morning” remark when they met the first car they’d seen in about fifty miles. But now he stirred, glanced at Leaphorn.
“If we’re where I think we are,” he said, “that mountain is what they call Dead Man’s Peak, and you’ve got a junction just ahead. If I read Vang’s old map right, you’re taking the left turn. That right? That takes you past Stink- ing Lake and then across a lot of Jicarilla Apache Reservation lands and into Dulce. Then what?”
“Then we turn east for about four miles or so on U.S.
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84, back on pavement then for a few minutes, and then north on gravel toward a little old village up there named, ah, Edith, I think it is, and then we jog northwestward a little—in to Colorado and winding under Archuleta Mesa, and going very slow because we will have to be looking for that little turnoff road Delos marked.”
“Yeah,” Delonie said, peering out the window. “That hump over there, it’s part of the San Juans, I guess, but they call that long ridge the Chalk Mountain. I’ve hunted up there a little in my younger days.” He sighed. “Complicated country. You never knew whether you were still on the Jicarilla land, or over in Colorado trespassing on the Southern Ute Reservation, or which state you were in.” The thought of that caused Delonie to chuckle.
Leaphorn glanced at him. “Something funny?”
“Not that it mattered. We wouldn’t have had a hunting license for either state, or from the Apaches, and I don’t think the Southern Utes give them.”
“I think we’d better start looking for a turnoff place,” Leaphorn said.
“And I think maybe it’s time you ought to switch off your headlights. If Delos is out getting ready to hunt, he’s going to notice somebody coming. And who is he going to think would be arriving here this early in the morning. It would be way too early for Tommy.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Leaphorn said. The moon was down now, but the eastern horizon was showing its predawn brightness. He slowed, snapped off the headlights, crept along until his eyes were better adjusted to the gloom. They rolled down the slope of the hill they’d just climbed, crossed a culvert with the sound of a stream gurgling under it, negotiated a sharp curve beyond the THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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culvert, and were in the dark shadows cast by a heavy growth of stream-side willows. Leaphorn switched on the headlights again.
Just ahead the beams lit a sign. POSTED. And below it the graphic design of a W tilted over on its side. Leaphorn eased the pickup to a crawl, turned off the headlights.
Just beyond the Ponderosa pine on which the sign was mounted a dirt lane turned off the gravel road they’d been following.
“Well,” Delonie said. “I guess that would be old With-erspoon’s Lazy W brand on that sign there. So here we are. Now we find out what happens next.” Leaphorn didn’t comment on that. Just beyond the Ponderosa pine on which the sign was mounted, rutted tracks swerved off the gravel. Leaphorn guided the pickup onto them, switched on the headlights. They illuminated a three-strand barbed-wire gate, stretched between two fence posts. From the top wire another sign dangled, a square piece of white tin on which the words ALL TRESPASS-ERS WILL BE PROSECUTED were painted in red.
Leaphorn stopped the truck and turned off its headlights.
“Why don’t you just drive right through it?” Delonie asked.
“That would make it malicious mischief, too,” Leaphorn said. “You take care of it.”
“Got wire cutters?”
Leaphorn laughed. “No. But that gate pole looks like it used to be a little aspen. I doubt if you’d need any.” Delonie got out, grabbed the gate pole, applied com-bined leg and arm leverage, broke it, tossed broken pole and wires aside, stepped back, and waved Leaphorn in.
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Inside the fence the road slanted downward toward a small stream. They bumped across a small culvert and the ranch road, now deeply rutted, took them into heavy stream-side growths of willow and brushy trees and almost total darkness. Leaphorn flicked on the lights again, but just long enough to see what he was driving into, then restored the darkness. Better let the ruts steer them, along with what little he could see in the dimness, than take a chance of their headlights giving Delos an early warning.
They rolled along, very slowly, very silently, letting the front wheels take them wherever the ruts guided the pickup along the meandering stream.
“Getting brighter ahead,” Delonie said.
It was, and the road was suddenly less rutted and slanting upward. Ahead now they could see a bare-looking
