Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 775 & 776, March/April 2006

The Pueblo Tomb by Edward D. Hoch

Over his 50-year career as a fiction writer, Edward D. Hoch has garnered many fans. Several of them are so devoted they’ve set up Web pages in which he is featured (see Michael Grost’s Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection at http://members.aol.com/MG4273/hoch.htm) or compiled bibliographies of his work (Moffatt House: moffatt@mindspring.com) — and the latter is no small task considering that Mr. Hoch has written 900-plus published stories, many articles, and several novels.

The summer of 1891 was especially hot in the Arizona Territory, with temperatures often topping one hundred degrees in the blistering sun. It was the heat more than anything that caused Ben Snow to abandon his fruitless search for the Lost Dutchman Mine and head into Phoenix.

The capital of the Territory, Phoenix was considered a safe place in the midst of areas still inhabited by Apache, Hopi, and Navajo tribes. Ironically, it had been settled some twenty years earlier on the site of a network of irrigation ditches built by pre-Columbian Indians. That day, as Ben was stabling his horse Oats and asking about a room for the night, he was approached by a short, attractive Englishwoman who gave her name as Fiona Sloane. “Are you for hire?” she asked him.

He smiled down at her. “That’s an odd question.”

“I see the way you wear your gun, and I assume you know how to use it. I need a bodyguard to accompany me up to pueblo country.”

“That’s no place for a refined Englishwoman,” he told her.

“I’m not a refined Englishwoman. I’m an archaeologist doing a private study in this area. I want to visit the old pueblos, the uninhabited ones, for something more exciting than a piece of buried pottery. I believe there are some in Hano that we might reach in two days’ time.”

“It could be a dangerous place for a white woman alone.”

“That’s why I want to hire you, if you’re available.”

Ben Snow was more than available. He’d come there following rumors of fabulous gold in the Lost Dutchman Mine, a treasure no one had yet found, if it existed at all. “A couple of years ago I acted as a bodyguard for a circuit judge making his rounds,” he told her.

“Good! I can pay you ten dollars a day for perhaps five or six days’ work. Is that satisfactory?”

“Certainly. When do we start?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Fiona Sloane answered.

Ben had arranged to meet her at the stable after breakfast, mildly curious as to why she’d hired a man she didn’t know to be her bodyguard on the trek into Indian country. Watching her as she saddled her horse, he was aware of her skill with the bridle and reins. She had four heavy saddlebags of supplies, two of which she handed to him. “Can you take these with your own bags? Otherwise, I’d have to rent a mule and that might slow us down.”

“I can handle them,” Ben told her, fastening them over his own saddlebags and hooking an extra canteen of water over the saddle horn. “What have you got in all these?”

“A sleeping bag, food, a change of clothing, and my working tools, including a small lantern.”

“You’re really an archaeologist?”

She smiled at him. “I really am. Do you think I traveled all the way from England to hunt buffalo?”

“If you did, you’re in the wrong area. They’re up north.”

“I know that.”

And so they set off, riding out of Phoenix at midmorning and heading northeast. Their destination was nearly two hundred miles away, across harsh terrain, in an area Ben had never visited before. At first they talked little on the journey, but toward evening, when they decided to rest and eat, she began telling him about her university days at Cambridge. It was a world completely foreign to Ben, a way of life he could barely imagine. Once she asked his age, after studying his face for several minutes by the firelight.

“Around thirty,” he answered. “My folks always said I was born in ‘sixty-one.”

“I’m almost that age myself. One of my friends has gone off to Egypt to search for tombs, but once I read about the pueblos I knew I had to come here.”

“It was foolish to come alone.”

“I’m a stubborn person. I was hoping my friend would join me, but when he didn’t I came without him.”

They had taken a pass through the mountains and come out of a forest area onto a plateau. The temperature dropped quickly there and it was a good night for sleeping.

He was barely aware of the daylight when Fiona was shaking him awake. “What is it?” he mumbled.

“We have early-morning visitors.”

He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Two Hopi braves on horseback sat watching them from about twenty feet away. Ben pulled himself from his sleeping bag and let his right hand move within reach of his gun. “Good morning!” he said in English, not sure if they’d understand.

The two braves dismounted, and he saw that they were small and stocky, with straight black hair and reddish-brown skin. One seemed a mere boy, and it was the older brave who answered. “What are you doing here?” he asked in English. His tone was not threatening and he made no move toward the rifle in his saddle.

It was Fiona who answered. “We wish to visit your ancient pueblos at Hano. I am an archaeologist.” When she realized the word meant nothing to him she amended, “I study the history and culture of your ancestors.”

“Ah!” He seemed to understand that. “The pueblos are far from here, a day’s ride.”

“Could you show us where?” Ben asked. He had a general idea of the location, but decided it might save time to have the Hopi brave guide them.

Fiona immediately agreed, and opened her saddlebag to produce some sparkling trinkets and bracelets. “We will pay you.”

The brave considered for a moment and finally nodded agreement, ignoring the trinkets but choosing a hammered copper bracelet which he slipped over his wrist. He turned to the younger one, possibly a brother, and said something in their language. The younger one nodded and rode off.

Their guide held up his hand in a sign of peace. “My name is Standing Grass. Come with me and we will reach the pueblos by nightfall.”

Crossing the Painted Desert in hundred-degree heat was almost too much for Ben, especially when the Englishwoman paused to study the multicolored rocks that gave the place its name. “We’ve got to keep on if we’re to reach the pueblos by nightfall,” he told her.

“All right.” She remounted her horse with some reluctance and he urged Oats on to catch up with Standing Grass.

The sun was low in the western sky by the time the Hopi brave finally slowed his pace. “Look over there,” he said, directing their gaze toward a distant mountain where the sun’s rays seemed to bathe the place in gold.

Fiona Sloane drew a sharp breath. “The cities of gold that Coronado sought!”

“No,” Ben told her, “only the sun reflecting off the adobe walls of the pueblos. I believe we’ve reached our destination.”

They camped out at the base of the pueblos, preferring to wait until dawn before climbing up to these ancient apartments in the sky. Although Standing Grass seemed friendly enough, Ben was well aware that he’d been hired as a bodyguard. Once, in the nighttime, when he awakened to find the Hopi standing over Fiona’s sleeping bag, he quickly jumped to his feet. “What are you doing?” he asked.

The young brave spoke softly. “She moaned something in her sleep. I thought there might be a snake.”

Ben bent down for a closer look, but she seemed to be sleeping soundly with no discomfort. “She’s all right,” he said. “We won’t disturb her.”

Dawn came quickly in the arid region, and they ate a light breakfast around the campfire. Ben did not mention the nighttime incident, which might have been completely innocent. There was no point in needlessly alarming Fiona Sloane.

While they drank coffee Ben stared up at the apartmentlike village of adobe, with crude movable ladders propped against the walls to provide access from one level to another. He saw at once that the place was not completely abandoned; a few men and women could be seen on the roofs of some dwellings. “Are they Hopi?” he asked Standing Grass.

He shook his head. “This settlement of Hano is only about two hundred years old. Our history tells us it was founded by the Hopi with the help of Tewa refugees fleeing from tribal wars. Some Tewa still live here, but most of the pueblos are deserted and sealed.”

“Why are there no windows?” Ben asked.

It was Fiona who answered. “You’re not familiar with pueblos, are you?”

“I know we have to climb those ladders to reach them.”

“Access to the interior is through a trapdoor in the ceiling of each unit. They were built without doors or windows to protect against attacks, though some of the more recent ones have windows. Rooms were added to the structure as they were needed.” She turned toward Standing Grass. “I need to see the old ones, those that are sealed up.”

The Hopi led them to one of the ladders and they followed him up to the first tier, with Ben carrying Fiona’s saddlebags. “The oldest pueblos are on the bottom,” Standing Grass told them. “Later generations built above.”

Fiona walked across the roof of the first pueblo to the trapdoor that was its only entrance. “Help me open this,” she said to Ben.

The wooden door was heavy and warped by time and the weather. When they finally lifted it, they were peering down into darkness. From one saddlebag Fiona produced a tightly rolled rope ladder. They hooked it to the open trapdoor while Fiona let it fall into the room below. Then she lit the small lantern and started her descent, with Ben keeping a firm grip on the ladder.

“Nothing down here,” she called out. “Not even a shard of pottery. I’m coming up.”

Ben was a bit surprised at her disappointment when this first site yielded nothing. She stood for a time on the pueblo roof, chewing on her lower lip. Then she went to her saddlebag and took out a folded paper that might have been a letter. “What’s the trouble?” he asked finally.

She put away the paper before answering. “Nothing. I just thought we might find something here.”

“Let’s try some of the other pueblos.”

They searched for the rest of the morning, but even when they found an abandoned pueblo with some half-woven baskets the Englishwoman seemed unsatisfied. Finally she turned to Standing Grass. “Do you speak their language?” she asked.

He nodded. “I know Tewa well.”

“Ask them if any white men came here. It would have been two years ago.”

He frowned. “Many moons, but they could remember.” He conversed with a nearby Tewa who’d been watching their progress among the pueblos. At one point he turned back to Fiona. “How many?”

“One man, about fifty, with gray hair. He would have been accompanied by a guide.”

“What’s this all about?” Ben asked, but she ignored the question.

Standing Grass called over a second man who was working nearby. After a few words the man nodded and launched into a narrative with many hand gestures. Presently the Hopi returned to translate. “This is Carawa, of the Tewa tribe. He remembers the man you seek. He spoke like you, and he had a soldier for a guide.”

“A soldier?”

“The man wore a cavalry officer’s jacket.”

Fiona Sloane was visibly excited now. “Where were they digging? Show me the pueblo.”

Standing Grass spoke again to the brave named Carawa and the man responded, pointing toward a stand of pueblos some distance away. He accompanied them as they made their way across the rocks to their goal. “This one,” he said when they reached it. “Carawa says they were here last, but one morning they closed it up and rode away.”

Ben could see that a rough layer of adobe brick had been laid over the trapdoor of the pueblo, effectively sealing it. The shed skin of a snake was the only evidence of a recent visitor. “We must open it,” Fiona said.

Carawa departed and returned presently with a stone hand axe. Ben and Standing Grass took turns chipping away at the bricks until they were loosened enough to be removed. Once the trapdoor was revealed, a few more swipes with the axe freed it for opening. With the first whiff of stale air Ben pushed Fiona aside. “I’d better go down first.”

“No!” she insisted. “I have to see it.”

“What’s this all about? What haven’t you told me?”

She was already handing him one end of the rope ladder and dropping the other into the dark hole. She lit the lantern and started down, but as soon as she saw the rotted remains of the body on the floor below she retched and reached out for Ben’s hand. He hauled her up and took the lantern from her. “Stay here,” he ordered, positioning Standing Grass to anchor the rope ladder.

He took the lantern and lowered himself into the pueblo. The body was in an advanced state of decay, and only tatters of clothing remained, along with boots, a gun belt, and a six-shooter on the right hip. A single hole in the skull indicated the cause of death. If the corpse had been outside, exposed to the heat and wildlife, there’d have been nothing left but a few scraps of bone. Ben saw a gold pocket watch near the bony right hand and lifted it from the floor. There were intertwined initials, STS, on the case. He raised the lantern for a final look around, but saw nothing else of interest.

Fiona was waiting at the top of the ladder. He showed her the watch and she clutched it to her bosom, helpless to hold back the tears. “My father,” she sobbed. “I came here to find him. I haven’t heard from him in two years.”

“He was an archaeologist, too?”

She nodded. “I followed in his footsteps, and came here to find out what happened to him.”

“It appears he was shot in the head.”

“And sealed up in this pueblo tomb. What a horrible way to die!”

Ben saw that the Tewa brave, Carawa, was edging away. He hurried over to grab him by the arm. “Ask him what he knows about the body,” he instructed Standing Grass.

The Tewa listened to Standing Grass’s words and shook his head, speaking rapidly. “He insists he knew nothing of the killing. On the morning they left he saw two figures riding off in the distance. He recognized the cavalry officer’s jacket and there was another man with him. He assumed it was your father. They were headed east. He saw that the pueblo had been sealed with bricks, and thought that meant they’d be coming back.”

“But they didn’t?”

He shook his head. “There’s been no sign of them.”

“And no one tried to enter the pueblo?”

“They fear bad spirits.”

Ben nodded. Even with the tightly sealed entrance, they might have detected the aura of death. He went back to Fiona Sloane. “You’re sure it’s his watch?”

“I gave it to him as a Christmas gift. These are his initials: Stephen Thomas Sloane.” The watch’s spring had wound down at about 6:30 on some long ago morning or evening, when Stephen Sloane’s hand was no longer able to wind it.

“You’d better tell me the whole story,” Ben suggested.

“Can we give him a decent burial first?”

“Of course,” Ben agreed, not relishing the task.

They purchased a blanket from Carawa and wrapped the remains in it. Ben was about to dig a grave when Standing Grass informed him that natives in the area often buried their dead in natural or artificial caves which were then sealed with rocks as protection against wild animals. Fiona reluctantly agreed that the remains could be left in the pueblo, with a new layer of adobe bricks to seal the entrance. “Can we make a grave marker of some sort?” she asked Ben.

They found a flat stone and chiseled the name Stephen Thomas Sloane on it, above the years of his birth and death. “Born eighteen thirty-eight and died probably eighteen eighty-nine. At least, that was the date on the last letter I received.”

“I’d like to see that letter.”

That evening at the campfire she took it from her saddlebag and showed it to him. Ben studied the two pages of handwriting slanting to the left and said, “This is backhand. Was your father left-handed?”

She nodded. “I remember my mother forcing me to do everything with my right hand when I was little.”

The letter was dated two years earlier, in May of 1889. It read: My dearest Fiona, We are at a pueblo named Hano in the northeastern part of the Arizona Territory. I have hired a guide named George Roster, a former Captain in the United States Cavalry, who knows the ways of the red man. He is here with me now and the natives seem quite friendly. On the next page is a rough drawing of the pueblos, with an arrow pointing toward the ancient dwellings where we’ll be working. Perhaps someday you can explore it with me. All my love, Your Father.

Ben returned the letter to her. “Did he come here in the pay of your government or the British Museum?”

“Neither one. Serious archaeology in this area is just now beginning. My father and I both came here as private individuals. Until quite recently, any old pots or ruins were just plowed under. He was trying to stop that, to trace the civilization of the Pueblo Indians back as far as he could. When his occasional letters stopped coming, I grew concerned. After two years I was more than concerned. I came over here to find him.”

“What about your mother?”

“She died in childbirth when I was six. My father did a wonderful job of raising me and seeing to it that I had a fine education at Cambridge. He put his own life on hold until I earned my degree and became an archaeologist like him. He’d spent my school years at home, writing and lecturing, when I knew he wanted to be out at a dig somewhere.”

Ben stared into the firelight. “Did you ever go off together?”

“Just once. We went to Egypt five years ago, along with everyone else. It was exciting, but he wanted to dig in an area that hadn’t been combed over by others. He found it here.” She stood up, brushing off the back of her pants. “I have to find his killer. Will you help me?”

“It was two years ago,” Ben reminded her. “That’s a cold trail at best.”

“We have a name — George Roster, a former captain in the U. S. Cavalry. I think he must have killed my father.”

“That’s if you believe Carawa’s story, or Standing Grass’s translation of it.”

“What choice do we have? It’s our only lead. You know this country better than I do, Ben. What’s to the east of here?”

He thought about it. “Fort Defiance. If he’s really a cavalry officer, he might have headed there.”

“Then we’re going there, too.”

Ben turned to Standing Grass. “Can you guide us to Fort Defiance?”

“Yes,” he answered, a bit uneasily. “It is a government agency for all Navajo and Hopi tribes. They have an Indian boarding school where I learned English.”

“Then you have friends there,” Fiona said. “You may be able to find Captain Roster.”

“Fort Defiance is not always a safe place for a Hopi. If something has gone wrong, all of us are blamed for the actions of a few.”

“We’ll protect you,” Ben promised, “so long as you work as our guide.”

“All right,” Standing Grass agreed, and Ben suddenly realized he was now acting as a bodyguard for two people instead of one.

It was another overnight journey to Fort Defiance, and by the time the stockade walls came into view the sun was again low at their backs. Ben was surprised to see that the gate was guarded by a soldier and a Navajo brave. The soldier asked their business and Ben told him they sought a retired army captain named George Roster.

“Don’t know him,” the guard said, “but we have some retired officers living here. You need to check in with the duty officer.”

“I know the way,” Standing Grass told him. “I went to school here.”

The soldier nodded, looking them over. “All right,” he said finally. “If you’re staying overnight, there are campgrounds out behind the barracks.”

The duty officer at the fort was a young lieutenant named Driscall who searched the files but could find no retired Captain Roster listed. “There are a lot of forts in Indian territory,” he told them. “He could have been at any one of them.”

Ben was beginning to realize how hopeless their search was, but Fiona Sloane wanted to press on. “Give me two more days,” she pleaded with him. “We can continue east into the New Mexico Territory.”

Ben turned to their Hopi guide. “How far to Gallup?”

Standing Grass shrugged. “Not far. Twenty-five miles.”

“All right. We’ll go there tomorrow, but if we can’t pick up a trail there, I’m afraid it’s hopeless. You have to remember it happened two years ago, Fiona.”

“I want the man who killed my father,” she said simply. There was no other thought in her mind at that moment.

By noon the following day they were in Gallup, a thriving settlement that had just been incorporated into a city. Buggies and wagons were plentiful in the streets, and about half the people they saw appeared to be Indians. They tied their horses in front of a saloon that promised food as well as drink and went inside for a bit of both. Ben and Fiona ordered beer with their food but Standing Grass drank only a glass of ginger tonic, aware that many places refused to sell “firewater” to Indians.

“We’re here,” the Englishwoman observed. “What now?”

“Our only hope is that Roster might have decided to settle here.”

“Why would he have done that?” she asked.

“There are several well-known pueblos in this area, including the Zuni Pueblo to the south. If Roster was making a living as a pueblo guide, he may have found it convenient to live here.”

“How can we find out?”

“If he’s gone, we’re out of luck. But the city is newly incorporated. That means they probably had a recent election for mayor. We can check the voter rolls to see if his name is on them.”

Standing Grass remained in front of the saloon, talking to some Navajo braves, while Ben and Fiona visited the small building that served as Gallup’s city hall. It took them an hour to find someone willing to open the voting records for them. “The entire population here is only a few thousand,” a gray-haired woman told them. “You can go over the voting list in five minutes.”

“Here it is!” Fiona announced with a small smile of triumph. “Captain George Roster. It gives an address on Canyon Road. There must be a sheriff here that we can get to arrest him.”

“On what grounds? Your father’s body is back in that pueblo, remember? And the letter you have is the only link to Captain Roster.”

“That’s enough for me,” she told Ben. “Who else could have killed him?”

“One of the natives,” he suggested.

But Fiona shook her head. “He said they were friendly in his letter.”

Ben could see there was no arguing with her. “All right, but let me ride out there first. There’s no sense both of us getting shot.”

She shook her head. “I’ve come this far. I’m not leaving you now.”

“All right. Let’s go find Standing Grass.”

Their guide was still with the Navajos outside the saloon, hunched down and playing some sort of gambling game with stones and sticks. Ben told him they’d located an address for Roster and were heading out there. Standing Grass pocketed his winnings and followed along. “You came at a good time,” he told them. “I was starting to lose.”

Before they rode out, Fiona opened one of her saddlebags and produced a small Derringer pistol. “You won’t need that,” Ben told her.

“If he’s the man who killed my father, I’ll need it.”

Ben said nothing more and they rode out toward their destination. Canyon Road was on the north side of the new city and Ben saw no canyon that would have accounted for its name. There were only a few houses along the route, most of them with small gardens trying to survive in the arid soil. They tied their horses to a hitching post in front of the house they sought and walked toward the front door. “This place has a woman’s touch,” Ben remarked, gesturing toward the flowers and a little white picket fence that surrounded the garden.

And it was a woman who stood in the doorway to greet them, pushing a strand of black hair back from her eyes. In her other hand she held a broom. She was tall for a Navajo, but even in her Mexican skirt and blouse there was no disguising her tribal parenthood.

“May I help you?” she asked in near-perfect formal English.

“We’re looking for Captain George Roster. I believe he’s retired from the cavalry.”

“I am Mrs. Roster. My husband is out hunting at the moment. He should return by sundown.”

Ben glanced out at the open fields beyond the house. “Is there a special area where he hunts?”

“He has a shack the other side of that stand of trees. I could take you there if it’s important.”

“We’ve ridden a long way to find him,” Ben told her. “What does he hunt around here?”

“Antelope, mostly. Sometimes coyote.”

Fiona Sloane’s features were tense as she asked, “Can you take us there now?”

The Navajo woman smiled. “Certainly. Are you friends of my husband’s?”

“I believe we had a mutual acquaintance.”

She paused only long enough to slip a revolver from a gun belt hanging inside the door. “This is rattler country,” she explained.

“What is your tribal name?” Standing Grass asked her.

She hesitated, then answered, “Naschitti. I don’t use it anymore.”

The grass behind the house was tall in the patches where it existed at all. The stand of trees marked the route of a narrow riverbed that was completely dry at the moment. Beyond the trees Ben could make out a crude shelter where a hunter might lurk. As they grew nearer, he saw the barrel of a carbine appear for a moment, aiming at some distant unseen target. Then it withdrew.

At his side, Fiona’s hand came out of her shirt holding the pistol she’d kept in her saddlebag. “Give me that!” Ben ordered. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know. I’m going to kill the man who shot my father.”

“Fiona, the man in that shelter is your father.”

It was Naschitti who shouted a warning to him, in her native tongue. He came out of the shelter with his carbine raised, but lowered it at once when he recognized Fiona. “Dear girl, what are you doing here?”

Ben took the pistol from her hand as she ran to hug him. “I came looking for you and we found a body with your watch. I thought it was you.”

“Roster must have stolen it. I wondered what happened to it.”

Fiona took it from her pocket. “Here it is. I don’t know if it still runs.”

“You’d better tell me how you found me here,” her father said.

She turned to Ben. “And you’d better tell me how you knew my father wasn’t dead.”

They went back to the house then, with Naschitti leading the way. Around a table in the modest dining room, the Navajo woman made some tea and Ben began to speak. “There were three things that hinted at your father being alive,” he told Fiona. “Taken together, they made it pretty much of a certainty. First, the dead man wore a pistol on his right hip, yet you told me your father was left-handed. Second, there was the matter of the letter you received. If your father died in that pueblo, who brought the letter out and mailed it to you? Are we supposed to believe the killer would have bothered to do that? And third,” he said, pausing to look at the native woman, “Naschitti here speaks near-perfect formal English, the sort one could only learn from being the constant companion of an educated man like your father for these past two years.”

“She is more than a companion,” Stephen Sloane corrected. “She is my wife.”

Ben nodded. “Suppose you tell us what happened at that pueblo back in the Arizona Territory.”

“I came here more than two years ago on a private archaeological dig to explore the pueblo,” Fiona’s father began. “I hired George Roster, a former cavalry captain, as my guide. We reached the pueblo at Hano before the full heat of summer had taken hold, but it was still boiling inside those adobe walls. Perhaps it was the heat more than anything that set us off.

“Naschitti and the other natives were friendly from the beginning—”

“You mentioned they were friendly in your letter to Fiona,” Ben said.

“Yes. Naschitti here was especially helpful in my dig. For some reason, Captain Roster resented that. He told me he’d seen too many of his men killed by the Navajo and Hopi. Once we almost came to blows over it, and I told him to stay away from Naschitti. Later, the day that it happened, the sun was baking the place up near a hundred degrees. I’d just finished fitting some uncovered pieces of pottery together when Roster came down the ladder. He said if I didn’t stay away from Naschitti he’d kill her. We had words, and the next thing I knew he’d drawn his six-shooter. I had to fire in self-defense.”

“And you sealed the pueblo?”

“It seemed the best thing to do,” Stephen Sloane said. “Naschitti and I traveled east, where I knew there’d be more pueblos to explore. I took his name, in the event anyone came looking for me.”

“You mailed a letter to me,” Fiona said.

Her father nodded. “I’d written it the day before all this happened. I wanted you to know I was all right, but I didn’t add anything about the killing.”

“Why didn’t you write again in over two years?”

“I didn’t—” He paused and started over. “I was afraid you wouldn’t approve of my marrying again.”

Fiona reached out to touch Naschitti’s hand. “As long as you’re happy, I am too.”

They stayed overnight in the little house, and in the morning, while Standing Grass was saddling up the horses, Ben found an opportunity to speak with the Navajo woman alone. “You seem to be good for him,” he remarked. “He obviously loves you.”

“We are good for each other,” she replied.

“He was even willing to take the blame for killing George Roster, when you were the one who pulled the trigger.”

She stared at him with expressionless eyes. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it couldn’t have happened the way he said. Roster didn’t draw his gun first because it was still in his holster. And your husband’s missing pocket watch was on the floor near his right hand. Surely Stephen would have seen and reclaimed it if he’d been present. When you told him of the shooting, the two of you departed quickly, with you wearing Roster’s cavalry jacket even though the temperature was a hundred degrees. You wanted it to appear that they’d left together.”

She was silent for a moment, then said, “There was no gun in his hand, only that gold watch. But it might as well have been a gun. He’d stolen it from Stephen and in that pueblo he held it out, offering it to me for my body. For a man like Roster there were only two ways of dealing with the Navajo. You either killed them or you bought them with jewelry. That was when I shot him.”

Ben Snow nodded. “We’ll be leaving soon,” he said, glancing out at the horses where Stephen Sloane stood with his arm around his daughter. “I wish you both a long and happy life. And a peaceful one.”