ridge faintly illuminated by the predawn glow along the eastern horizon.
“There it is,” Delonie said, in a hoarse whisper, pointing ahead and to the right.
Leaphorn could make out the shape of a small house, slanted roof, tall stone chimney, junipers crowding in beside it. He stopped the pickup, turned off the ignition, and listened. A still, windless morning. First there was only the ticking sound of the engine cooling. Then the odd rasping sound of what locals would call a Saw-Whet owl, in recognition of its unpleasant voice. It called and called and called, and finally got a barely audible answer from somewhere far behind them. Then the yipping of coyotes from the ridge behind the cabin, which lapsed quickly into nothing but the vague sound of the breeze and the even vaguer voice of the stream.
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Leaphorn yawned, suddenly feeling some of the tension draining away and the accumulated fatigue taking over. He rubbed his eyes. This was not a time to be getting sleepy.
“What now?” Delonie whispered.
“We wait until it gets a little lighter,” Leaphorn said, talking very low. “Mr. Vang told me Mr. Delos comes up here alone. The way he describes his hunting tactics he gets out to the blind when there’s just enough light to see a little. That would be just about now, I’d think.” Vang was sort of semi-standing in the space behind them, leaning forward for a better view out the windshield. “He says its takes him about twenty minutes to walk from the cabin around to the hillside where the blind is. There’s a regular trail he follows, and he wants to be off it and into the blind before the elk come out of the timber on the slope to start drinking in the stream. He wants to be all ready with everything when that happens. He used to talk to me about that. Back when I was younger. When he was still trying to teach me how to be a hunter.” The tone of that was sad.
“When did he stop doing that?” Leaphorn asked.
“A long, long time ago,” Vang said. “When I was maybe twelve. He said he didn’t see any signs in me that I would get to be one of the predator people. But he was going to try again later.”
“But he didn’t?”
“Not yet,” Vang said.
Delonie wasn’t interested in this.
“Point is you think he’s already gone?” Delonie asked.
“That is, if he was ever here.”
“Oh, I think he was here,” Vang said. “I was to come here to meet him. After I left that box . . .” 234
TONY HILLERMAN
“After you left me that gift box of poisoned cherries,” Delonie said. “I guess you were supposed to come and give him a report on how many of them I’d eaten before they killed me.”
“No. No,” Vang said. “I was just supposed to leave the box.”
Leaphorn made a shushing sound.
“Hand me up the rifle, Mr. Vang,” Delonie said. “I want to do some looking around through the scope. See what I can see.”
Vang dropped back, felt around, handed up the 30-30.
Delonie put it on his lap, muzzle pointed away from Leaphorn, and began loosening the clamps that held the scope in place. He took it off, pulled out his shirt tail, pol-ished the scope with the cloth, then looked through it. First peering at the house, then scanning the area around it.
“No sign of any life,” he said. “Didn’t expect any.” The rifle lay on the seat beside Delonie. Leaphorn reached it, slid it away, leaned it against the driver’s-side door. He glanced at Delonie, who hadn’t seemed to notice.
“Let me have a look through that scope,” Leaphorn said, and Delonie handed it to him.
Leaphorn looked, saw no signs of life, hadn’t expected any. “Nobody home,” he said, also wondering if there ever had been.
“Beginning to wonder some more about all this,” Delonie said. “You pretty sure Mr. Vang has been telling us right?”
“Oh yes,” Vang said. “I told you right. You see that little bit of white on top of that bush. Beside the house?
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See? It sort of moves when the breeze blows? That’s a white towel.”
Delonie said, “Towel?”
Leaphorn said, “Where?”
“Look at the bushes right by the uphill side of the house. Beyond the porch. On the bush.”
“That could be anything. Piece of some sort of trash caught there,” Delonie said.
Leaphorn moved the scope. Found bushes, saw a wee bit of white amid the green, looked again. Yep.
“I see it now,” he said, and handed the scope to Delonie. He said, “Mr. Vang, you got damn good eyesight. But Delonie is right. It could be anything.”
“Yes,” Vang said. “But I remember Mr. Delos told me when he went hunting he would hang out a white towel there, and when he came back from hunting, he would take it in. That was so I would know to wait for him.”
“Well, now,” Delonie said, “if Mr. Vang here is telling us right, I guess we could walk right up there and make
