Hunting Badger

Chee was doing a quick inventory of police women at Shiprock. There weren’t many. “How old?” he asked. “How big?”

Leaphorn knew exactly what he was asking.

“I’ve only seen her a time or two,” he said. “But I think it was Bernadette Manuelito.”

“Son of a bitch,” Chee said, voice vehement. “What are they using for brains?” He was pulling on his socks. “What the devil does she know about staying alive at a roadblock?”

Chapter Sixteen

The roadblock as Leaphorn described it was on Utah 163 about halfway between Recapture Creek and the Montezuma Creek Bridge. A sensible place to put it, Chee thought, since a fugitive who spotted it would have no side trails to detour onto. There was only the brush bosque of the San Juan River to the south and the sheer stone cliffs of McCracken Mesa to the north. What wasn’t sensible was assigning Bernie to such dangerous duty. That was insane. Bernie would be working backup, surely. Even so, this would be a three-unit block at best. Whoever they had would be up against men who had already proved their willingness to kill and their ability to do it. They’d used an automatic rifle at the casino, and a rumor was afloat that they also had night-vision scopes missing from a Utah National Guard armory.

Chee imagined a bloody scene and drove the first eight miles of his trip much faster than the rules allowed. Then, abruptly, he slowed. A belated thought worked its way through his anger. What was he going to say when he got there? What would he say to the officer in charge? It would probably be a Utah state cop, or a San Juan County deputy. He tried to imagine the conversation. He’d introduce himself as NTP out of Shiprock, chat about the weather maybe, discuss the manhunt a minute or two. Then what? They’d want to know what he wanted. He’d tell ‘em he didn’t think Bernie had any roadblock training.

Down the slope, Chee’s headlights illuminated a red REDUCE SPEED sign.

Then what would they say? Chee took his foot off the gas pedal, let the car roll, imagining a tough-looking Utah cop grinning at him, saying, “She’s your lady? Well, then, we’ll take good care of her for you.” And a deputy sheriff standing behind him, chuckling. An even more dreadful thought emerged. The next step. They’d tell Bernie she had to stay in her car, run and hide anytime a stop seemed imminent. Bernie would be outraged, furious, terminally resentful. And justifiably so.

The car was rolling slowly now. Chee pulled it off onto the shoulder, slammed it into reverse, made a pursuit turn, and headed back toward Bluff, giving his idea of saving Officer Bernadette Manuelito more thought.

That thought was quickly interrupted. The sound of a siren in his ear, the blinking warning light atop a Utah State Police car reflecting off his rearview mirror. Chee grunted out the Navajo version of an expletive, slammed himself on the forehead with a free hand, and angled his car off on the shoulder. Of course. He’d done exactly what one does to trigger pursuit from every roadblock from Argentina to Zanzibar. He put on the parking brake, extracted his NTP identification, turned on the overhead light, did everything he could think of to make it easier for whichever cop would show up at his driver-side window.

He’d guessed right for once. It proved to be a Utah State Policeman.

He shined his flash on Chee, looked at the identification Chee was holding out, and said, “Out of the car, please,” and stepped back.

Chee opened the door and got out.

“Face the car please, and put your hands on the roof.”

Chee did so, happy he’d left his belt and holster on the motel bed, and was patted down.

“OK,” the State Policeman said.

And then another voice, Bernie’s voice, saying: "That’s Sergeant Chee. Jim, what are you doing here?”

And Chee stood there, still leaning against the car, grimacing, wondering if there was any way things could possibly get any worse.

Chapter Seventeen

The eastern sky was glowing pink and red over the bluffs that gave Bluff, Utah, its name when Officer Jim Chee climbed into his patrol car. He inserted the key, started the engine, did what all empty-country drivers habitually do: he checked the fuel gauge. The needle hovered between half and quarter full. Plenty to get back to the rendezvous point on Casa Del Eco Mesa, where Nez and he were scheduled to resume the search of their canyon. But not enough to feel comfortable when you’re going a long way from paved road and service stations. He glanced at his watch, pulled out of the Recapture Lodge lot onto U.S. 163. The Chevron station-diner he’d pass should be open about now. He’d stop, fill the tank, buy a few emergency-ration candy bars to share with Nez and continue, not thinking about how foolish he’d looked last night.

Good. The station must be open. He couldn’t see whether the lights were on, but a pickup was driving away. Chee stopped by the pumps, got out. A man was sitting on the gravel beside the station’s door, back against the wall. If Chee had numbered the drunks he’d dealt with since he joined the Navajo Tribal Police, this one would be about 999. He stepped out of the car, wondering what the station operator was doing, and gave the drunk a closer look.

Blood was trickling down the man’s forehead. Chee squatted beside him. The man looked about sixty, hair graying, wearing a khaki shirt with LEROY DELL embroidered on it. The man was breathing heavily. The blood came from an abrasion cut over his right eye. Chee started for the car to radio this in and get an ambulance. Get a pursuit started.

“What? What are you doing? Oh!”

Chee spun around. The man was staring at him, eyes wild, getting up.

“What happened?” the man asked. “Where is he? Did he get away?”

Chee helped him to his feet. “You tell me who hit you,” he said. “I’ll radio it in and get you an ambulance and we’ll see if we can catch him.”

“The son of a bitch,” the man said. He waved his hands. “Look at the mess he made.”

On the other side of the entrance, under a sign reading REST ROOMS CUSTOMERS ONLY, a garbage can lay on its side, surrounded by a scattering of cans, bottles, newspapers, sacks, crumpled napkins - all those things people discard at service stations. Nearby, a newspaper-vending machine was on its back.

“Who was he?” Chee said. “I want to call it in. Give us a better chance to catch him.”

“I don’t know him,” the man said. “He was a big Indian-looking guy. Navajo probably, or maybe a Ute. Tall. Maybe middle-aged, or so.”

“Driving a blue pickup truck?”

“I didn’t see the truck. Didn’t notice it.”

“Did he have a weapon?”

“That’s what he hit me with. A pistol.”

“OK,” Chee said. "Why don’t you go in and sit down. I’ll get the police on it.”

The dispatcher sounded sleepy until the pistol was mentioned.

“Call him armed and dangerous,” Chee suggested. “You might mention this is in the area we’re hunting the Ute Casino perps.”

The dispatcher chuckled. “Those the perps the feds said were long gone. Flown away?”

“Don’t we wish,” Chee replied, and went back into the station to find out just what had happened.

Leroy Dell was sitting behind the cash register, holding his head.

“They’ll be sending an ambulance,” Chee said.

“Down from Blanding. About twenty-five miles from the clinic, and twenty-five back,” Dell said. He groaned and grimaced and described to Chee what had happened. When he was walking from his house up behind the station to open the place he’d heard a sort of a crashing sound. He’d hurried around the corner and seen a man going through the trash. He had shouted at him, and the man had said he just wanted to get some old newspapers.

“Just newspapers?”

“That’s what he said. And I said, “Well you’re going to have to clean up the mess, too.” And then I noticed the vending machine was turned over and went to look at that and I saw he’d broken into that. And I turned around and said he was going to have to pay for that and he had this gun in his hand and he hit me.”

“What kind of gun?”

“Pistol. I don’t know what kind. It wasn’t a revolver.”

“Anything missing?”

“I don’t know,” Dell said, grimacing again. “Tell the truth, I don’t give a damn. I’ve got a hell of a headache. You take a look if you want to.”

Chee looked. He opened the cash-register drawers.

“Empty.”

“I take the money home at night,” Dell said.

“You better call somebody to come down here and look after you,” Chee said. “I’m going to get myself some gas and see if I can find that pickup truck.”

Finding the truck occupied much of the day. A Bureau of Indian Affairs cop sent over from the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in New Mexico spotted it at the Aneth Oil Field about sundown. It was stuck in the sand of an arroyo bottom off an abandoned road. South of Montezuma Creek. West of Highway 35. Back on the emptiness of Casa Del Eco Mesa. Back within easy walking range of Gothic Canyon, or Desert Creek Canyon, or anyplace else for a man burdened only by an old newspaper.

It was farther, however, than Sergeant Jim Chee could have walked that evening. Chee had sprained his left ankle climbing down a rocky slope while on this fruitless hunt. It had been one of those no-brainer accidents. He’d put his weight on a protruding slab of sandstone that looked solid but wasn’t. Then, instead of facing the inevitability of gravity and taking the tumble with a roll in the rocks, he’d tried to save his dignity, made an off-balance jump and landed wrong. That hurt, and it hurt even worse to require help from a deputy sheriff and an FBI agent to haul him back to his car.

Chapter Eighteen

The voice on the telephone was Captain Largo’s, with no words wasted.

Chee said, “No sir, I can’t put any weight on it yet,”; listened a few moments, said, “Yes sir,” listened again, another "Yes sir,” and clicked off. Total result: Largo wanted to know when Chee could resume his canyon-combing duties, preferably immediately; Largo instructed him to fill out an injury report form, and Largo had already sent somebody down to his trailer with it. It should include name, phone number, etc., of the physician who had X-rayed the ankle. Chee should do this immediately and send the report right back. Largo was shorthanded, and Chee should not waste the messenger’s time with a lot of conversation.

Chee adjusted the ice pack. He tried to think of the word, in either Navajo or English, to describe the color the swelling had turned and settled on ‘plum-colored.' He considered whether he should resent the lack of either sympathy or confidence the captain’s call had indicated. About the time he’d decided to pass that off as part of Largo’s natural-born grumpiness, the messenger arrived.

“Come on in,” Chee said, and Officer Bernadette Manuelito stepped in, in full uniform and looking neater than usual.

“Wow,” she said. “Look at that ankle." She made a wry face. “I’ll bet it hurts.”

“Right,” Chee said.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” she said, her tone disapproving. “Barging right in like that.”

“I didn’t “barge right in.” I drove up to get some gasoline. I noticed a pickup driving away. Then I saw the victim sitting by the wall. And weren’t you supposed to bring me a report to fill in and then rush right back to the captain with it, with no time wasted talking?”

“I still think you were lucky,” Manuelito said. “You’re a fine one to be thinking I wasn’t competent to work on a roadblock.”

Chee was conscious of his face flushing. He looked at Bernie, found her expression odd but inscrutable—at least to him.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Professor Bourebonette told me.”

“I don’t believe it,” Chee said. “When did she say that? And why would she say anything like that?”

“At the roadblock. She and Lieutenant Leaphorn came through about an hour or so after you -" Bernie hesitated, seeking a way to describe Chee’s arrival. “After you were there. They stopped and talked a while. That’s when she said it. She asked me if you had come by, and I said yes, and she asked me what you’d said, and I said nothing much. And she acted surprised, and I asked why, and she said you’d gotten all angry and excited when they told you they’d seen me at the roadblock and ran right out and drove away.”

Chee was still trying to read her expression. Was it fond, or amused? Or both.

“I didn’t say you were incompetent.”

Officer Manuelito said, “Well, OK,” and shrugged.

“I just thought it was too dangerous. Those guys had already shot two cops, and shot at another one, and the Ironhand guy, he’d killed a lot more in Vietnam.”

“Well, thanks then." Manuelito’s expression was easy to read now. She was smiling at him.

“The captain said for you to rush that report right back to him,” Chee said, and held out his hand.

She gave it to him, secured to a clipboard with a pen dangling.

“Which one was it? Ironhand or Baker?”

“A tall, middle-aged Indian,” Chee said. “Sounds like Ironhand.”

“And he just took newspapers? Like the radio said this morning?”

Chee was trying to fill in the form with the clipboard balanced on his right knee. “Apparently. The victim didn’t think anything else was missing. But then he was still pretty stunned.”

“I think you should call Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Manuelito said. “It sounds awfully funny.”

Chee looked up at her. “Why?”

“Because, you know, running that risk just to get a newspaper.”

“I meant why call Leaphorn?”

“Well, you know, I think he’d be interested. At the roadblock he told us we should be extra careful because he guessed it would be about now those guys, if they were hiding in the canyons, about now they’d be making their move. And the deputy I was working with said he thought they’d be more likely to lie low until everybody got tired of looking before they made a run, and the lieutenant said, maybe so, but their radio was broken. They’d wouldn’t know what was going on. They’d be getting desperate to know something.”

“He said that?” Chee said, sounding incredulous. “About making their move now. How the devil could Leaphorn have guessed?” Manuelito shrugged.

“And that’s why you think I should call him?”

Now it was Bernie’s turn to look slightly embarrassed. She hesitated. “I like him,” she said. “And he likes you. And I think he’s a very lonely man, and -"

The buzz of the telephone cut her off. Captain Largo again.

“What the hell are you and Manuelito doing?” Largo said. “Get her back up here with that report.”

“She just left a minute ago,” Chee said. He clicked off, filled in the last space, signed the form, handed it to her. Leaphorn liked him? Nobody had ever suggested that before. He’d never even thought of it. Of Leaphorn liking anyone, for that matter. Leaphorn was—Well, he was just Leaphorn.

“You know, Bernie,” he said. “I think I will call the lieutenant. I’d like to know what he’s thinking.”

Chapter Nineteen

Having resigned himself to more long hours spent listening to elderly Utes recounting their tribal mythology, Joe Leaphorn was reaching for his cap when the phone rang.

“Hello,” he said, sounding glum even to himself.

The voice was Jim Chee’s. Leaphorn brightened.

“Lieutenant, if you have a minute or two, I’d like to fill you in on what happened at the Chevron station in Bluff yesterday. Have you heard about that? I’d like to find out what you think about it.”

“I have time,” Leaphorn said. “But all I know is what I got on the television news. A man shows up at the station around opening time. He knocks out the operator and drives off in a previously stolen pickup truck. The FBI presumes the man was one of the casino bandits. The newscaster said a Navajo Tribal Policeman was at the station buying gas when it happened, but the robber escaped. Is that about it?”

A moment of silence. “Well, I was the one buying the gas,” Chee said, sounding somewhat defensive, “but I wasn’t there until it had already happened. The perp was driving off as I drove up. But what’s interesting is that all the man wanted was a newspaper. He took one from the rack, and when the operator got there and found him digging through the trash barrel, he said he was just hunting a newspaper.”

Now it was Leaphorn’s turn for a moment of silence.

“Just a newspaper,” he said. “Just that. And he hadn’t taken anything from inside the station. Food, cigarettes, anything like that?”

“The station was still locked up. I thought maybe the guy had taken the operator’s keys after he hit him. Got in, looted the place, and then relocked it - silly as that sounds - but apparently not.”

“Well now,” Leaphorn said, sounding thoughtful. “He just wanted a newspaper out of the rack.”

“Or maybe another one. From what he’d scattered around out of the trash can, he was hunting something there, and he told the operator he was after a newspaper. I was guessing he wanted an older edition. One reporting earlier stuff about the manhunt.”

“Sounds reasonable. Where are you calling from?”

“My place in Shiprock. I hurt my ankle yesterday hunting the newspaper bandit. I took a fall, and I’m homebound until I get the swelling down. I called your place in Window Rock and got another of those messages you leave on your answering machine. That’s a good idea.”

“Just a minute,” Leaphorn said. He put his hand over the telephone and looked at Louisa, who was standing in the doorway, tape-recorder case over her shoulder, purse in hand, waiting and looking interested.

“It’s Jim Chee at Shiprock,” Leaphorn said. “You know that Chevron station robbery we were talking about. Chee said the only thing the man wanted was newspapers. Remember what I was saying about that broken radio -"

“That sounds strange,” Louisa said. “And look, unless you really want to come along and listen to this mythology cross-examination, why don’t you drive over to Shiprock and talk to Chee? I’ll ride with Mr Becenti.”

That was exactly the way Emma would have reacted, Leaphorn thought. And he noticed with a sort of joy that he could make such a comparison now without feeling guilty about it.

The door of Chee’s little house trailer was standing open as Leaphorn drove up, and he heard his ‘come on in’ shout as he closed the door of his pickup. Chee was sitting beside the table, his left foot propped on a pillow on his bunk. As they exchanged the required greetings, the words of sympathy, the required disclaimer and disclaimer response, Leaphorn noticed the table was bare except for a copy of the Indian Country Map, unfolded to the Four Corners canyon country.

“I see you’re ready for work,” he said, tapping the map.

“My uncle used to tell me to use my head to save my heels,” Chee said. “Since I have to save my ankle today, I’ll have to think instead.”

Leaphorn sat. “What have you come up with?”

“Nothing but confusion,” Chee said. “I was hoping you could explain it all to me.”

“It’s as if we have a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of the central pieces missing,” Leaphorn said. “But driving over from Farmington I began thinking how two of the pieces fit.”

“The broken radio producing the need to get a paper to find out what the devil has been going on,” Chee said. “Right?”

“Right. And that can tell us something.”

Chee frowned. “Like they don’t have another radio? Or any other access to news? Or something more than that?”

Leaphorn smiled. “I have an advantage in this situation, being able to sit by a telephone and tap into the retired-cops circuit while you’re out working.”

Chee leaned forward and readjusted his ice pack, engulfed in deja vu — a sort of numb feeling of intellectual inadequacy. He’d heard this sort of preamble from Leaphorn often enough before to know where it led. It was the Legendary Lieutenant’s way of leading into some disclosure without making Chee, the green kid who’d been assigned to be his gofer, feel more stupid than necessary. “To tell the truth, all this tells me is that these guys, without their radio, got desperate to find out what the devil was going on. They had to find out whether or not it was time to run.”

“Exactly,” Leaphorn said. “That’s my conclusion, too. But let me add a little bit of information that wasn’t available to you. I think I told you I might call Jay Kennedy to see if he could tell us what the FBI lab learned about that radio. Jay called back yesterday. He said his buddy back there told him the radio had been put out of commission deliberately.”

Chee lost interest in realigning the ice pack. He stared at Leaphorn. Leaphorn said he’d asked Kennedy to ‘tell us.'

“On purpose?” Chee said. “Why would they do that? Or, wait a minute. Let me restate that question. Make it which one did it, and why? And how could the Bureau determine it was done deliberately?”

“Never underestimate the Bureau’s laboratory people. They took the radio apart to see if they could pick up any prints. The sort someone might leave changing batteries, or whatever. They noticed that a couple of the wire connections inside had been pried apart with something sharp. Knife point maybe.”

Chee thought for a moment. “Fingerprints,” he said. “Did they find any?” If they had, they would be Jorie’s. Jorie, knowing he was being betrayed, doing a vengeful act of sabotage.

“Some partials,” Leaphorn said. “But they belonged to nobody they had any record of.”

Chee thought about that, noticed that Leaphorn was watching him, waiting his reaction. Whose prints would the FBI have on record? Jorie’s of course, since they had his body. Perhaps Ironhand’s, if they printed servicemen during the Vietnam War. Probably Baker’s. He’d been arrested on minor stuff more than once.

“It could still be Jorie who sabotaged the radio,” Chee said. “He could have had on gloves, used a handkerchief, been very careful with his knife.”

Leaphorn nodded, smiling.

He’s happy I thought it through, Chee thought. Maybe Bernie was right. Maybe Leaphorn does like me.

“I’d guess the prints don’t mean much,” Leaphorn said. “They’ll belong to some clerk at a Radio Shack who put the battery in. I was thinking about Jorie, too. He still looks like the logical bet.”

“He certainly had a motive. We have to presume he had access to the radio after he knew what they were planning.”

Leaphorn nodded. “If he had decided to turn them in, he wouldn’t want them to know the cops had them identified. Wouldn’t want them to hear anything on the radio.”

Chee nodded.

There’s a problem with that, though.”

“Yeah,” Chee said, wondering which problem Leaphorn saw. “Certainly a lot of unanswered questions left.”

“Jorie must have thought he knew what he was talking about when he told the police in that suicide note where to find them. At their homes, he said, or that place up north. FBI went to get them, and they weren’t there. Why not?” He looked at Chee to see if he would volunteer an answer.

“They didn’t trust him,” Chee said.

Leaphorn nodded. “They wouldn’t. Not when they were double-crossing him.” He tapped the map. “And next, why did they come up on this mesa?”

“I have two answers to that. Take your pick. One. I think they may have had a second escape vehicle hidden away someplace not far from where they ditched the pickup. Cowboy said they could find no trace of it, no tracks. Nothing. But in this country they could hide the tracks, knowing they had to, and taking their time to do it right.”

Leaphorn acknowledged this with the barest hint of a nod.

“The second idea goes back to what you learned about Ironhand. He knew where his daddy hid during his career. How he managed his magical, mystical escapes. So I say that hiding place is around there someplace. The perps stocked it with food and water. And that’s where they intend to hide until it’s safe to make a run for it. That’s why they drove the truck over the rock—ripped out the oil pan to make it appear to the FBI that they were forced to abandon it there. Then they hiked away to their hidey-hole.”

Leaphorn’s nod acknowledging this was a bit less languorous.

“But they didn’t tell Jorie anything about this. It was their secret. Which means the double cross was planned far in advance of the crime.”

“Sure,” Chee said.

“I’m thinking of that second choice to look for them Jorie gave the police. That’s way up toward Blanding. A long, long way from where they abandoned the pickup.”

Chee sighed. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Cowboy had found three sets of tracks at that damned truck.”

Leaphorn laughed. “But let’s set that aside for now and get back to your second idea. We’ll say Baker and Ironhand had a place arranged to hide out. Jorie had parted company with them somehow before they got there. So Baker and Ironhand leave the truck and start walking. It wouldn’t be a long walk because, if we can believe what Jorie said in that note, they must have been carrying a heavy load of paper money. Presuming they hadn’t left it somewhere else, and why would they?”

“Heavy? I don’t think of paper money as being heavy.”

“I was guessing the Ute Casino wouldn’t be using many hundred-dollar bills. I guessed a ten-dollar average, and came up with forty-five thousand pieces of paper.”

“Be damned,” Chee said. “That’s a new factor to be thinking about.”

“I’m remembering the old Ute lady said the Utes sometimes called the original Ironhand Badger. She said he’d disappear from the canyon bottom and reappear at the top. Or the other way around. Remember that? She said our people chasing him thought he could fly.”

“Yes,” Chee said. But he was thinking about a huge problem with the second idea. With both of them, in fact. Jorie. Given what he said in the suicide note about where to find his partners, he must have slipped away from them long before they abandoned the truck. The distances were simply too great. Especially if they were humping almost a hundred pounds of money as well as their weapons. But how could he have slipped away? Probably possible. But then, why would he believe his partners would be going home? Wouldn’t he know they’d expect him to betray them?

Leaphorn was pursuing his own line of speculation. “Thinking of badgers got me to thinking of holes in the ground,” he said. “Of old coal mines. This part of the world has far more than its share of those. Coal almost everywhere. And then when the uranium boom started in the forties, the geologists remembered how the coal veins were usually mixed with uranium deposits, and they were digging away again.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “We noticed three or four old digs when we were looking for tracks down in the Gothic Creek Canyon.”

Leaphorn looked very interested in that. “How deep? Real tunnels, or just places where people were taking a few wagonloads?”

“Nothing serious,” Chee said. “Just a place where somebody got a sackful to heat the hogan.”

“When the Mormon settlers moved in the middle of the nineteenth century they found the Navajos were already digging a little coal out of exposed seams. So were the Utes. But the Mormons needed a lot more to fire up smelters, so they developed some tunnel mines. Then the Aneth field development came, and there was natural gas to burn. The mines weren’t economical any longer. Some of them were filled in, and some of them collapsed. But there must be some around there in one form or another.”

“You’re thinking they’re hiding in a mine. I don’t know. Where I grew up near Rough Rock people dug a little coal, but it was all just shallow stuff. We called them dog-hole mines. Nothing anyone could hide in.”

“That’s over in the Chuska Mountains,” Leap-horn said. “Volcanic geology. Over by Gothic Creek Canyon it’s mostly formed by sedimentation. Stratum after stratum.”

"True.”

“An old-timer in Mexican Water — old fella named Mortimer I think it was—told me there used to be a slide cut down the cliff on the south side of the San Juan across from Bluff. From the rimrock all the way down. He said his folks would dig the coal out of seams in the canyon, hoist it to the top, load it into oxcarts and then dump it down the slide into carts down by the river. Then they’d ferry it across on a cable ferry.”

Chee was feeling a little less skeptical. “When was that?”

“It was about forty years ago when he told me, I’d guess, but he was talking about his parents when he was a child. I guess it was operating in the 1880s, or thereabouts. I’d like to take a look at that old mine if it still exists.”

“You think we could still find it? Maybe locate the wagon tracks and trace them back? Trouble is, wagon tracks tend to get wiped out in a hundred years.”

“I think we might find it another way,” Leaphorn said. “Did you ever take a look at those notices posted on chapter-house bulletin boards? The Environmental Protection Agency put them up. They have maps on them showing where the EPA is going to be flying its copters back and forth making surveys of old mine sites.”

“I’ve seen them,” Chee said. “But they’re surveying to map old uranium-mine sites. Trying to locate radioactive dumps.”

“Basically, yes. But what the monitors show is spots with high radiation levels. Coal seams out here are often associated with uranium deposits, and the one Mortimer told me about must have been a pretty big operation. I don’t have any business in this, but if I did, I’d call the EPA down in Flagstaff and see if they have a mine-waste map for that part of the Reservation.”

“I guess I could do that,” Chee said, sounding doubtful about it.

“Here’s the reason I’d be hopeful,” Leaphorn said. “Coal seams out here vary a lot in depth. Some right on the surface, some hundreds of feet down, and all depths between. You couldn’t haul it down the canyon bottom to the river. Too rough. Too many barriers. I’m thinking the Mormons must have got tired of hauling it up to the top after digging it, and dug down to the seam from the top of the mesa. They hoisted it to the top with some sort of elevator like they still do in most tunnel mines.”

“Which would explain how our Ironhand could fly from bottom to top,” Chee said. “How our Badger could have two holes.”

He picked up the telephone, dialed information, and asked for the Environment Protection Agency number in Flagstaff.

Chapter Twenty

On the fourth call and after the sixth or seventh explanation of what he wanted to various people in various DOE and EPA offices in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Flagstaff, Arizona, Sergeant Jim Chee found himself referred to a New Mexico telephone number and enlightened.

“Call this number in Farmington,” the helpful person in Albuquerque said. “That’s the project’s fixed base. Ask for either the fixed base operator or the project manager." That number took him right back to the Farmington Airport, no more than thirty miles or so from his aching ankle.

“Bob Smith here,” the answering voice said.

Chee identified himself, rattled off what he was after. “Are you the project manager?”

“I’m a combination technical guy on the helicopter and driver of the refueling truck,” Smith said.

"And I’m the wrong guy to talk to for what you want. I’ll try to get you switched to P.J. Collins.”

“What’s his title?”

“It’s her,” Smith said. “I think you’d call her the chief scientist on this job. Hold on. I’ll get her.”

P.J. answered the phone by saying, “Yes,” in a tone that busy people use. Chee explained again, hurrying it a little.

“Does this involve that casino robbery? Shooting those policemen?”

“Well, yes,” Chee said. “We’re checking on places they might be hiding. We know there’s an old coal mine in Gothic Creek Canyon, abandoned maybe eighty or ninety years ago, and we thought that perhaps -"

“Good thinking,” P.J. said. “Especially the “perhaps” part. That coal up in that part of the world is uraniferous. Well, all coal tends to be a little radioactive, but that area is hotter than most. But that’s a lot of years for the radioactive stuff to get washed away, or lose its punch. However, if you can give me a general idea of where the mine might be, I’ll tell you if we’ve surveyed that area. If we have, I can get Jesse to check our maps in the van and see what hot spots showed up. If any.”

“Great,” Chee said. “We think this mine was dug into the east slope of Gothic Creek Canyon. It would be somewhere in a ten-mile stretch of the canyon from where it runs into the San Juan southward.”

“Well, that’s good,” P.J. said. That’s on the Navajo Reservation, and that’s what our contract covers. The Department of Energy has hired us to help ’em clean up the mess they left hunting uranium. They provide the copters and the pilots, and we provide the technicians.”

“Do you think you’ve surveyed there yet?”

“Possibly today,” she said. “We’ve been up there south of Bluff and Montezuma Creek this week. If they didn’t cover that today, they probably will tomorrow.”

Chee had been feeling foolish during most of his earlier telephone conversations, his skepticism about this idea reviving. Now he found himself getting excited. P.J. seemed to be taking the notion seriously.

“Can I give you my number? Have you call me back? I’ll be reachable tonight and tomorrow and however long it takes.”

“Where you calling from?”

“Shiprock.”

“The copter will be coming in about an hour or so. Calling it quits for the day and downloading all the data they’ve collected. Why don’t you drive on over and see for yourself?”

Why not, indeed. “I’ll be there,” he said.

Chee had given up on putting on his left sock, and was easing a sandal on that foot when he heard a vehicle bumping down his access road. It stopped, the west wind blew a puff of dust past his screen door, and a few moments later Officer Bernadette Manuelito appeared. She was carrying what seemed to be a tray covered with a white cloth, holding the cloth against the breeze with one hand, tapping on the screen with the other.

“Ya’eeh te’h,” she said. “How’s the ankle? Would you like something to eat?”

Chee said he would. But not right now. He had a can’t-wait errand to run.

Bernie had been looking at the sandal on his left foot, frowning at it. It was not a pretty sight. She shook her head.

“You can’t go anywhere,” she said. “You can’t drive. What do you think you’re doing?” She put the tray on the table.

“It’s just over to the Farmington Airport,” Chee said. “Of course I can drive. Why not? You use your right foot for the gas pedal and the brake.”

“Take off the sandal,” Officer Manuelito said. “We’ll wrap it up in the bandage again. If you think it can’t wait, I’ll drive you over there.”

Which was, of course, what happened.

The woman who Chee presumed was P.J. turned out to be the same small, slightly sunburned blonde he’d noticed at the helicopter when he’d come to talk to Jim Edgar. She was standing beside the craft holding a black metal box, the box being linked by an insulated cable to the big white pod mounted on the copter’s landing skid. When she noticed Chee limping up, her expression was skeptical. Not surprising, he thought. He was wearing his worn and wrinkled ‘stay at home’ jeans and a blue T-shirt on which some of the mutton stew Bernie had brought him had splashed when she drove too fast over a bumpy place.

Chee introduced Officer Bernadette Manuelito, who looked uncharacteristically neat and spiffy in her uniform, and himself.

P.J. smiled. “I’m Patti Collins. Just a minute until I get this data unloaded.”

Jim Edgar was leaning on the doorframe of his hangar watching them. He held up his hand in salute, shouted, “Heard you found Old Man Timms’s airplane,” and disappeared back in the direction of his workbench.

P.J. was unjacking the cable. “You got here fast,” she said. “Let’s take this into the lab and see what we have.”

The lab was a standard-looking Winnebago mobile home, its white exterior badly in need of washing but the interior immaculate.

“Have a seat somewhere,” P.J. said. She connected her black metal box to an expensive-looking console built into the back of the vehicle and did those incomprehensible things technicians do.

The console made computer sounds. The attached printer began spewing out a roll of paper. P.J. studied it. “Well, now,” she said. “I don’t know if this is going to help you much, but it’s interesting.” She detached a couple of feet of paper and laid it on a large scale U.S. Geological Survey map spread across the tabletop where Chee and Bernie were sitting.

“See this,” she said, and traced her finger down a tight squiggle of lines on the computer printout. “That coordinates with this." She traced the same fingertip down Gothic Creek on the USGS map.

It was meaningless to Chee. He said, “Oh.”

“It shows there’s been a distribution of radioactive material downstream from here,” P.J. said, tapping her finger on the h in Gothic Creek on the map legend.

“Would that suggest the mine waste dump might have been there?” Chee asked. “That would be interesting.”

“Yeah,” P.J. said, studying the printout again. “Now my problem is whether it’s interesting enough to divert the copter a couple of miles tomorrow to get a closer scan.”

“It would be a big help to us,” Chee said.

“I’ll talk to the pilots,” P.J. said. “It would just take another twenty minutes or so. And if it’s hot enough, we ought to get it on the map anyway.”

“Would there be room for me to go along?”

P.J. looked at him skeptically. “You were limping along on that cane. What’s the deal with your ankle?”

“I sprained it,” Chee said. “It’s just about healed.”

She still looked skeptical. “You ridden in a copter before?”

“Twice,” Chee said. “I didn’t enjoy it either time, but I’ve got a good stomach for motion sickness.”

“I’ll let you know,” she said. “Give me the number where you’ll be tonight. If it’s go, I’ll call you and tell you where to meet the refueling truck.”

Chapter Twenty-one

For once Chee came out lucky with the timing. As promised, P.J. had called him. Yes, they would revise their schedule for the next day a bit and divert a few miles to do a follow-up low-level check of the Gothic Creek drainage. He could go along. Everything had been more or less cleared and approved. However, it was one of those ‘less said the better’ affairs. Why run the risk that some big shot far removed from the scene might suspect this rational interpretation of regulations could cause trouble? The most economical and convenient time to do this diversion would be the final flight of the day. Chee should be at the refueling truck at 2:40 P.M., at which time the truck would be at the same place Chee had seen it previously, parked beside the road leading to the Timms place on Casa Del Eco Mesa.

“Thanks,” Chee said. “I’ll be there waiting.”

And he was. He’d gotten down to the office in the morning, caught up on paperwork, handled some chores for Captain Largo, had lunch, bought himself some snack stuff (including an extra apple to offer to Rosner) and headed west for the mesa. By two-fifteen, he and Rosner were sitting in the shade of the truck snacking and watching the copter land. It was the same big white Bell with radiation-sensor pods on its landing skids, and the pilot put it down far enough away to avoid blasting them with dust.

Rosner drove the truck over. He introduced Chee to pilot, copilot and technician, and started refueling.

“P.J. told me something about what you’re looking for,” the pilot said. “I’m not sure she had it right. Mine opening up on the canyon wall. Is that it?”

The pilot’s name was Tom McKissack. He looked a weather-beaten sixty or so, and Chee remembered P.J. had said McKissack was one of those army pilots who’d survived the risky business of rescuing wounded Air Mobile Division grunts from various Vietnam battles. He introduced Chee to the copilot, a younger fellow named Greg DeMoss, another army copter veteran, and to Jesse, who would be doing the technical work. All three looked tired, dusty and not particularly thrilled by this detour.

“Sounds like P.J. had it right,” Chee said. “We’re trying to locate the mouth of an old Mormon coal mine abandoned back in the eighteen eighties. We think it has a mouth fairly high up the canyon wall. Probably on a shelf of some sort. And then on top, maybe the remains of a tipple structure where they hoisted the coal up and dumped it.”

McKissack nodded and looked at the Polaroid camera Chee was carrying. “They tell me those things are a lot better now,” he said. He handed Chee a barf bag and a flight helmet, and explained how the intercom system worked.

“You’ll be sitting on the right side behind DeMoss, which gives you a great view to the right, but nothing much to the front or the left. So if your mine is on the east side, your best chance to see it will be when we’re going north, down the creek toward the river.”

“OK,” Chee said.

“We normally fly a hundred and fifty feet off the terrain, which means our equipment is scoping a swath three hundred feet wide. Down a canyon it may be lower, but we rarely get closer than fifty feet. Anyway, if you see something interesting, holler. If the situation is right, I can hover a minute so maybe you can get pictures.”

McKissack started the rotors. “One more thing,” he said, his voice coming through the intercom now. “We’ve been shot at a few times out here. Either people think we’re the black helicopters the Conspiracy Commandos are taking over the world with, or maybe we’re scaring their sheep. Who knows? Are we likely to get shot at in this canyon here?”

Chee considered that a moment and gave an honest answer. He said, “Probably not,” and they took off in a chaos of dust, motor noise and rotor thumping.

Later Chee had very few memories of that flight, but the ones he retained were vivid.

The tableland of multicolored stone, carved into a gigantic labyrinth by canyons, all draining eventually into the narrow green belt of the San Juan bottom. Multiple hundreds of miles of sculptured stone, cut off in the north by the blue-green of the mountains. The slanting afternoon sun outlining it into a pattern of gaudy red sandstone and deep shadows. The voice in Chee’s ear saying: ‘You can see why the Mormons called the Bluff area “the Hole in the Rock,” and the tech saying: 'If there was a market for rock, we’d all be rich.'

Then they dropped into the Gothic Creek Canyon, flying slowly north, with the rimrock of Casa Del Eco Mesa above them and the great eroded hump of the Nokaito Bench to their left. The pilot’s voice told Chee they were about two miles up canyon from the point their censor map had shown the streaks of migrated radiation along the canyon bottom.

“Be just a few minutes,” McKissack said. “Let me know if you see anything interesting.”

Chee was leaning his head against the Plexiglas window, seeing the stone cliffs slip slowly past. Here runoff erosion had sliced the sandstone. Here a rockslide had formed a semi-dam below. Here some variation of geology had caused a broad irregular bench to form. In places, the wall was almost sheer pink sandstone. In others, it was layered, marked with dark stripes of coal, the blue of shale, the red where iron ore had colored the rock.

“It ought to be close,” McKissack said. “I think we can presume the radiation from the old tailings was washing down stream.”

Gothic Creek Canyon had widened a little, and the copter was moving down it slowly and almost eye level with the rimrock to Chee’s right. Chee could see another bench sloping up from the canyon floor, supporting a ragtag assortment of chamisa, snakeweed and drought-stunted salt bush. It angled upward toward the broad blackish streak of a coal seam. Then just a few yards ahead and just below Chee saw what he was hoping to see.

“There’s a fair-sized hole in that coal deposit up ahead,” McKissack said. “You think that could be what you’re looking for?”

“Could be,” Chee said. They slid past the hole, with Chee taking pictures.

“Did you notice that structure above? Up on the mesa?” McKissack asked.

“Could you go up a little so I can get a picture of it?”

The copter rose. Almost directly above the mouth of the mine was the mostly roofless remains of a stone structure. Some of its walls had fallen, and a pyramid-shaped skeleton of pine timbers rose from its center.

“Well now,” said McKissack, "does that do it for you?”

“I’m finished, and I thank you,” Chee said.

“Unfortunately you’re not quite finished,” McKissack said. “We have to drag this all the way down to the San Juan, and then back, and then we go back over the mesa and finish our mapping there.”

“About how long?”

“About one hour and thirty-four minutes of flying four miles north, making a sharp climbing turn, and flying four miles south, and making a sharp climbing turn and flying four miles north. Doing that until we have the quadrant covered. Then we land, get the tanks rejuiced and do it all over again. Except this time it will be quitting time and we’ll knock off for the day.”

The next voice was the technician’s. “And then we come back tomorrow and do it all over again with another four-mile-by-four-mile quadrant. Only time the monotony gets broken is when somebody shoots at us.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Joe Leaphorn cleared away his breakfast dishes, poured himself his second cup of coffee and spread his map on the kitchen table. He was studying it when he heard tires rolling onto the gravel in the parking space in front of his house. He pulled back the curtain and looked out at a dark green and dusty Dodge Ram pickup. The truck was strange to him, but the man who climbed out of it and was hurrying up his walk was Roy Gershwin. Gershwin’s expression bespoke trouble.

Leaphorn opened the door, ushered him into the kitchen, and said, “What brings you down to Window Rock so early this morning?”

“I got a telephone call last night,” Gershwin said. “A threatening call. A man. Sounded like a fairly young man. He said they were going to come after me.”

“Who? And come after you for what?”

Gershwin had slumped down in the kitchen chair with his long legs stretched under the table. He looked nervous and angry. “I don’t know who,” he said. “Well, maybe I could guess. His voice sounded familiar, but I think he had something over his mouth. Or he was trying to talk funny. If it was who I think it was, he’s one of those damn militia people. Anyway, it was militia business. The fella said they’d heard I’d been snitching on ‘em, and I was going to have to pay for that.”

“Well, now,” Leaphorn said, "it sounds like you were right to be worrying about those people. Let me get you a cup of coffee.”

“I don’t want any coffee,” Gershwin said. “I want to know what you did to get me screwed like this.”

“What I did?” Leaphorn diverted the coffeepot from the fresh cup and refilled his own. “Well, let’s see. First, I just thought about what you were asking me to do for you. I couldn’t think of any way to do it without getting into a crack—having a choice of either telling a judge you were my source or going to jail for contempt of a court order.”

He sat across the table from Gershwin and sipped his coffee. “You sure you don’t want a cup?”

Gershwin shook his head.

“So then I went up and talked to people around Bluff and around there about those men. I learned a little about all of them, but more about Jorie,” Leaphorn said, watching Gershwin over the rim of his cup. “I decided I’d see if any of them were home. Jorie was.”

“Killed himself. That right? So you’re the one who found his body.”

Leaphorn nodded.

“Paper said he left a suicide note. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “There it was.“ He wondered how he would answer when Gershwin asked him what was in it. But Gershwin didn’t ask.

“I wonder why -" Gershwin began, but he cut off the sentence and started again. “The newspaper story sort of said the note was a confession. That he gave the names of the other two. That right?”

Leaphorn nodded.

“Then I don’t see why those militia bastards are putting the blame on me." The tone of that was angry, and so was his stare.

“That’s a puzzle,” Leaphorn said. “Do you think they suspect you know a lot about the robbery plan and were giving that away? Any chance of that?”

“I don’t see how that could be. When I was going to meetings, there was always somebody talking about doing something wild. Something to call attention to their little revolution. But nobody ever talked about robbery.”

Leaphorn let it drop. He took another sip of coffee, looked at Gershwin, waited.

Gershwin slammed his fist on the table. “Damn it to hell,” he said. “Why can’t the cops catch those bastards? They’re out there somewhere. They got their names. Know what they look like. Know where they live. Know their habits. It’s just like that ‘98 mess. You got FBI agents swarming around everywhere. You Navajo cops, and the Border Patrol, and four kinds of state cops, and county sheriffs, and twenty other kinds of cops standing around and manning roadblocks. Why in hell can’t they get the job done?”

“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “But there’s enough canyons out there to swallow up ten thousand cops.”

“I guess so. I guess I’m being unreasonable." He shook his head. “To be absolutely honest about it, I’m scared. I’ll admit it. That guy that came to the filling station at Bluff the other morning, he could just as easy have come to my house. I could be dead right now. Dead in my bed. Just waiting for somebody to come wandering by and find my body.”

Leaphorn tried to think of something reassuring to say. The best he could come up with was that he guessed the bandits would rather run than fight. It didn’t seem to console Gershwin.

“You got any idea if the cops are closing in on them? Have they figured out where they might be?”

Leaphorn shook his head.

“If I knew that, I could sleep a little better. Now I can’t sleep at all. I just sit in my chair with the lights off and my rifle on my lap." He gave Leaphorn a pleading look. “I’ll bet you know something. Long as you was a cop, knowing all the other cops the way you do, and the FBI, they must tell you something.”

“The last 1 heard is pretty much just common knowledge. That stolen truck was abandoned out there on the mesa south of the San Juan, and that’s where I understand they’re trying to pick up some tracks. South of Bluff and Montezuma Creek and over in the Aneth Oil -"

The buzz of his telephone interrupted him.

He picked it up off the table, said, “Leaphorn.”

“This is Jim Chee. We found that mine." Chee’s voice was loud with exuberance.

“Oh. Where?”

“You got your map there?”

“Just a minute.“ Leaphorn slid the map closer, picked up his pen. “OK.”

“The mouth is not more than thirty feet below the canyon rim. About a hundred, hundred and ten feet up from the canyon bottom on a fairly wide shelf. And above it, there’s the remains of what must have been a fairly large building. Most of the roof gone now, but a lot of the stone walls still standing. And the framework of what might have been some sort of a hoist sticking up.”

“Sounds like what you were hoping to find,” Leaphorn said.

“And the reason it fits the theory is you couldn’t see the mouth of the mine from the bottom. It’s maybe seventy feet up, and hidden by the shelf.”

“How’d you find it?”

Chee laughed. “The easy way. Hitched a ride in the EPA helicopter.”

Leaphorn still had the pen poised. “Where is it from the place they abandoned the truck?”

“About two miles north—maybe a little less than that.”

Leaphorn marked one of his small, precise X’s at the proper spot. He glanced at Gershwin.

“What’s all this about?” Gershwin asked.

Leaphorn made one of those ‘just a second’ gestures. “Have you notified the FBI?”

“I’m going to call Captain Largo right now,” Chee said. “Let him explain it to the federals.”

“That sounded interesting,” Gershwin said. “Did they find something useful?”

Leaphorn hesitated. “Maybe. Maybe not. They’ve been looking for an old, long-abandoned mine out there. One of a thousand places people might hide.”

“An old coal mine,” Gershwin said. “There’s lots of those around. You think it’s something I could count on? Sleep easy again?”

Leaphorn shrugged. “You mean, would I bet my life on it?”

“Yeah,” Gershwin said. “I guess that’s what I mean." He stood, picked up his hat, looked down at the map. “Well, to hell with it. I think I owe you an apology, Joe, storming in here like I did. I’m just going to head on home, pack up my stuff, and move out to a motel until this business is over with.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Sergeant Jim Chee limped into Largo’s cluttered office feeling even more uneasy than he usually did when approaching the captain. And rightfully so. When he’d pulled into the Navajo Tribal Police parking lot he’d noticed two of the shiny black Ford Taurus FBI sedans. Chee’s law-enforcement rela-tionship with the world’s largest police force had often been beset with friction. And Captain Largo’s telephone call summoning him to this meeting had been even more terse than usual.

“Chee,” Largo had said, "get your ass up here. Now!" Chee nodded to Special Agent Cabot and the other well-dressed fellow sitting across the desk from the captain and took the chair to which Largo motioned him. He put his cane across his lap and waited.

“You already know Agent Cabot,” Largo said. “And this gentleman is Special Agent Smythe." Mutual mumbles and nods followed.

“I’ve been trying to explain to them why you think this old mine you’ve found might be the place to look for Ironhand and Baker,” Largo said. “They tell me they’ve already checked every mine deeper than a dog hole up on that mesa. If you’ve found one they missed, they want to know where it is.”

Chee told them, estimating as closely as he could the distance of the mine’s canyon mouth from the San Juan and the distance of the surface structure in from the canyon rim.

“You spotted this from a helicopter?” Cabot asked. “Is that correct?”

“That’s correct,” Chee said.

“Did you know we have prohibited private aircraft flights in that area?” Cabot said.

“I presumed you had,” Chee said. “That was a good idea. Otherwise, you’ll have those bounty hunters your reward offer is bringing in tying up the air-lanes.”

This caused a very brief pause while Cabot decided how to respond to this—a not very oblique reminder of the gales of laughter the Bureau had produced in its 1998 fiasco by offering a $250,000 reward one day, and promptly following that with an exhortation for swarms of bounty hunters the offer had attracted to please go away. They hadn’t.

Cabot decided to ignore the remark.

“I’ll need the name of the company that was operating this aircraft.”

“No company, actually,” Chee said. “This was a federal-government helicopter.”

Cabot looked surprised.

“What agency?”

“It was a Department of Energy copter,” Chee said. “I believe it’s based at the Tonapaw Proving Grounds over in Nevada.”

“Department of Energy? What business do the energy folks have out here?”

Chee had decided he didn’t much like Special Agent Cabot, or his attitude, or his well-shined shoes and necktie, or perhaps the fact that Cabot’s paycheck was at least twice as large as his, plus all those government perks. He said, “I don’t know.”

Captain Largo glowered at him.

“I understand the Department of Energy had leased the copter to the EPA,” Chee said, and waited for the next question.

“Ah, let’s see,” said Cabot. “I will rephrase the question so you can understand it. What are the Environmental Protection people doing up here?”

“They’re hunting old mines that might be a threat to the environment,” Chee said. “Mapping them. Didn’t the Bureau know about that?”

Cabot, used to asking questions and not to answering them, looked surprised again. He hesitated. Glanced at Captain Largo. Chee glanced at

Largo, too. Largo’s almost-suppressed grin showed that he also knew what Chee was doing and wasn’t as upset by it as it had seemed a moment ago.

“I’m sure we did,” Cabot said, slightly flushed. “I’m sure if such mapping was in any way helpful to us in this case, it would be used.”

Chee nodded. The ball was in the FBI court. He outwaited Cabot, who glanced at Largo again. Largo had found something interesting to look at out the window.

“Sergeant Chee,” Cabot said, "Captain Largo told us you had some reason to suspect this particular mine might be used by the perpetrators of the Ute Casino robbery. Would you explain that, please?”

This was the moment Chee had dreaded. He could imagine the amused look on Cabot’s face as he tried to explain that the idea came from a Ute tribal legend, trying to describe a hero figure who could jump from canyon bottoms to mesa rims. He took a deep breath and started.

Chee hurried through the relationship of George Ironhand with the original Ironhand, the account of how the Navajos couldn’t catch the villain, the notion that since the man was called the Ute name for the badger he might have—like that animal—a hole to hide in with an exit as well as an entrance. As Chee had expected, both Cabot and his partner seemed amused by it. Captain Largo did not appear amused. No suppressed grin now. His expression was dour. Chee found himself talking faster and faster.

“So here was the EPA doing its survey, I hitchhiked a ride, and there it was. The old entrance on a shelf high up on the canyon wall and above it the ruins of the old surface mine. It made sense,” Chee said. “I recommended to Captain Largo that it be checked out.”

Cabot was studying him. “Let’s see now,” he said. “You think that the people digging coal out of the cliff down in the canyon decided to dig right on up to the top? If I know my geology at all, that would have them digging through several thick levels of sandstone and all sorts of other strata. Isn’t that right?”

“Actually, I was thinking more of digging down from the top,” Chee said.

“Can you describe the old mine structure?” Cabot asked. “The building?”

“I have pictures of it,” Chee said. “I took my Polaroid camera along." He handed Cabot two photos of the old structures, one shot from rim level and one from a higher angle.

Cabot looked at them, then handed them to his partner.

“Is that the one you thought it might be?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Smythe said. “We spotted that the day we found their truck. We put a crew in there that afternoon and searched it, along with all the other buildings on that mesa.”

“What did you find?” asked Cabot, who obviously already knew the answer. “Did you see any sign that people might be hiding in the mine shaft?”

Smythe looked amused. “We didn’t even see a shaft,” he said. “Much less people. Just lots of rodent dropping, old, old trash, odds and end of broken equipment, animal tracks, three empty Thunderbird wine bottles with well-aged labels. There was no sign at all of human occupancy. Not in recent years.”

Cabot handed Chee the photographs, smiling. “You might want these for your scrapbook,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-four

As was his lifelong habit, Joe Leaphorn had gone to bed early.

Professor Louisa Bourebonette had returned from her Ute-myth-collecting expedition late. The sound of the car door shutting outside his open window had awakened him. He lay listening to her talking to Conrad Becenti about some esoteric translation problem. He heard her coming in, doing something in the kitchen, opening and closing the door to what had been Emma’s private working space and their guest bedroom, then silence. He analyzed his feelings about all this: having another person in the house, having another woman using Emma’s space and assorted related issues. He reached no conclusions. The next thing he knew the sunlight was on his face, he heard his Mister Coffee making those strangling sounds signaling its work was done, and it was morning.

Louisa was scrambling eggs at the stove.

“I know you like ’em scrambled,” she said, "because that’s the way you always order them.”

"True,” Leaphorn said, thinking that sometimes he liked them scrambled, and sometimes fried, and rarely poached. He poured both of them a cup of coffee, and sat.

“I had a fairly productive day,” she said, serving the eggs. “The old fellow in the nursing home at Cortez told us a version of the Ute migration story I’ve heard before. How about you?”

“Gershwin came to see me.”

“Really? What did he want?”

“To tell the truth, I’ve been wondering about that. I don’t really know.”

“So what did he say he wanted? I’ll bet he didn’t come just to thank you.”

Leaphorn chuckled. “He said he’d had a threatening telephone call. Someone accusing him of tipping off the police. He said he was scared, and he seemed to be. He wanted to know what was being done to catch them. If the police had any idea where they were. He said he was going to move into a motel somewhere until this was over.”

“Might be a big motel bill,” Louisa said. “Those two guys from the 1998 jobs are still out there, I guess. I hear the FBI has quit suggesting they’re dead.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. He drank coffee, buttered his toast, ate eggs that were scrambled just a bit too dry for his taste and tried to decide what it was about Gershwin’s visit that was bothering him.

“Something’s on your mind,” Louisa said. “Is it the crime?”

“I guess. It’s none of my business anymore, but some things puzzle me.”

Louisa had consumed only toast and was cleaning up around the stove.

“I’m heading south to Flagstaff,” she said. “I’ll go through all these notes. I’ll take this wonderful old myth that has been floating around free as the air all these generations and punch it into my computer. Then one of these days I will call it up out of the hard disk and petrify it in a paper for whichever scholarly publication will want it.”

“You don’t sound very eager,” Leaphorn said. “Why not let that wait another day and come along with me?”

Louisa had made her speech facing the sink, where she was rinsing his frying pan. Pan in hand, she turned.

“Where? Doing what?”

Leaphorn thought about that. A good question. How to explain?

“Actually doing what I do sometimes when I can’t figure something out. I drive off somewhere, and walk around for a while, or just sit on a rock and hope for inspiration. Sometimes I get it, sometimes not.”

Professor Bourebonette’s expression said she liked the sound of that.

“Being a social scientist, I think I’d like to observe that operation,” she said.

And so they left the professor’s car behind and headed south in Leaphorn’s pickup, taking Navajo Route 12 south, with the sandstone cliffs of the Manuelito Plateau off to their right, the great emptiness of Black Creek Valley on the left, and clouds lit by the morning sun building over the Painted Cliffs ahead of them.

“You said some things were bothering you,” Louisa said. “Like what?”

“I called an old friend of mine up at Cortez. Marci Trujillo. She used to be with a bank up there that did business with the Ute Casino. I told her I thought that our-hundred-and-something-thousand-dollar estimate of the loot sounded a little high to me. She said it sounded just about right for an end-of-the-month payday Friday night.”

“Wow,” Louisa said. “And that mostly comes from people who can’t afford to lose it. I think you Navajos were smart to say no to gambling.”

“I guess so,” Leaphorn said.

“On the other hand, in the old days when the Utes were stealing your horses they had to come down and get ’em. Now you drive up there and hand over the cash.”

Leaphorn nodded. “So I told her I was guessing that the loot would be mostly in smaller bills. A

very few hundreds or fifties, and mostly twenties, tens, fives, and ones. She said that was a good guess. So I asked her how much that would weigh.”

“Weigh?”

“She said if we decide the median of bills in the loot was about ten dollars, which she thought would be close, that would be forty-five thousand bills. The weight of that would be just about one hundred and seven pounds and eleven ounces.”

“I can’t believe this,” Louisa said. “Right off the top of her head?”

“No. She had to do some arithmetic. She said banks get their money supply in counted bundles. They put the bundles on special scales to make sure someone with sticky fingers isn’t slipping a bill out here and there.”

Louisa shook her head. “There’s so much going on out in the real world we academics don’t know about.” She paused, thinking. “For example, now I’m wondering how any of this is causing you to get suspicious about Gershwin’s visit.”

“Ms Trujillo once ran the bank Everett Jorie used. I asked her if she could tell me anything about Jorie’s financial situation. She said probably not, but since Jorie was dead and his account frozen until an estate executor showed up, she could maybe give me some general hints. She said Jorie had both a checking and a savings account. He had “some” balance in the first one and “several thousand dollars” in the other. Plus a fine credit rating.”

“Then why in the world—But he said it was to help finance their little revolution, didn’t he? I guess that explains it. But it doesn’t explain how you knew where Jorie did his banking.”

“The checkbook was on Jorie’s desk,” Leaphorn said.

Louisa was grinning at him. “Oh, really,” she said. “Right out there in plain sight just where people keep their checkbooks. Wasn’t that convenient for you?”

Leaphorn chuckled. “Well, maybe I had to inch open a desk drawer a little. But anyway, then I asked if Ray Gershwin banked with her, and she said not now, but he used to. They’d turned him down for a loan last spring, and Gershwin had gotten sore about it and moved his business elsewhere. And did she know anything about Gershwin’s current solvency. She laughed and said it was bad last spring, and she doubted if it was going to get any better. I asked why not, and she said Gershwin may lose his biggest grazing lease. Some sort of litigation is pending in federal court. So I called the district court clerk up in Denver to ask about that. He called me back and said the case was moot. The plaintiff had died.”

Silence. Leaphorn angled to the left off of Navajo Route 12 onto New Mexico Highway 134.

“Now we cross Washington Pass,” he said. “Named after the governor of New Mexico Territory who thought this part of the world was full of gold, silver and so forth and was an early believer in ethnic cleansing. He’s the one who sent Kit Carson and the New Mexico Hispanos and the Utes to round us up and get rid of us—once and for all. The Tribal Council got the government to agree to change the name a few years ago, but everybody still calls it Washington Pass. I guess that proves we Navajos don’t hold grudges. We’re tolerant.”

“I’m not,” Louisa said. “I’m tired of waiting for you to tell me the name of the deceased plaintiff.”

“I’ll bet you’ve already guessed.”

“Everett Jorie?”

“Right. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Let me think about it.”

She did. “That could be a motive for murder, couldn’t it?”

“Good enough I’d think.”

“And lots of irony there,” Louisa said, ”if irony is the word for it. It reminds you of one of those awful wildlife films you’re always seeing on television. The lions pull down the zebra, and then the jackals and the buzzards move in to take advantage. Only this time it’s old Mr Timms, trying to defraud his insurance company, and Mr Gershwin, trying to get rid of a lawsuit.”

“Doesn’t do a lot for one’s opinion of humanity,” Leaphorn said.

Louisa was still looking thoughtful. “I’ll bet you know this district court clerk personally, don’t you? If I’d call the federal district court and asked for the court clerk, I’d get shifted around four or five times, put on hold, and finally get somebody who’d tell me he couldn’t release that information, or I had to drive up to Denver and get it from the judge or something like that." Louisa was sounding slightly resentful. “This all-encompassing, eternal, universal, everlasting good-old-boy network. You do know him, don’t you?”

“I confess,” Leaphorn said. “But you know, it’s a small world up here in this empty country. Work as a cop as long as I did, you know about everybody who has anything to do with the law.”

“I guess so,” Louisa said. “So he said he’d trot down and look it up for you?”

“I think it’s just punch the proper keys on his computer and up comes Jorie, Everett, Plaintiff, and a list of petitions filed under that name. Something like that. He said this Jorie did a lot of business with the federal court. And he was also suing our Mr Timms. Some sort of a claim he was violating rights of neighboring leaseholders by unauthorized use of BLM land for an airport.”

“Well, now. That’s nice. A Department of Defense spokesman would call that peripheral damage.”

“Peripheral benefit in this case,” Leaphorn said.

“It’s collateral damage. But how about the suicide note?”

“Remember it wasn’t handwritten on paper,” Leaphorn said. “It was typed into a computer. Anyone could have done it. And remember that last manhunt. One of the perps turned up dead and the FBI declared him a suicide. That might have given somebody the idea that the feds would go for that notion again.”

Louisa laughed. “You know what I’m wondering? Did the neat little trick Mr Timms tried to pull off suggest to retired lieutenant Joe Leaphorn that Gershwin might have seen the same opportunity to deal with a lawsuit?”

Leaphorn grinned. “As a matter of fact, I think it did."

Near the crest of Washington Pass he pulled off the pavement onto a dirt track that led through a grove of Ponderosa pines. He pulled to a stop at the edge of a cliff and gestured eastward. Below them lay a vast landscape dappled with cloud shadows and late-morning sunlight and rimmed north and east by the shapes of mesas and mountains. They stood on the rimrock, just looking.

“Wow,” Louisa said. “I never get enough of this.”

“It’s home country for me,” Leaphorn said. “Emma used to get me to drive up here and look at it those times I was thinking of taking a job in Washington." He pointed northeast. “We lived right down there when I was a boy, about ten miles down between the Two Grey Hills Trading Post and Toadlena. My mother planted my umbilical cord under a pinon on the hill behind our hogan." He chuckled. “Emma knew the legend. That’s the binding the wandering child can never break.”

“You still miss her, don’t you?”

“I will always miss her,” Leaphorn said.

Louisa put her arm around him and hugged.

“Due east,” she said. “That hump of clouds. Could that be Mount Taylor?”

“It is, and that’s why its other name—I should say one of its other names—is Mother of Rains. The westerlies are pushed up there, and the mist becomes rain in the colder air and then the clouds drift on, dumping the moisture before they get to Albuquerque.”

“Tsoodzil in Navajo,” Louisa said, ”and the Turquoise Mountain when you translate it into English, and Dark Mountain for the Rio Grande Pueblos, and your Sacred Mountain of the East.”

“And due north, - maybe forty miles, there’s Ship Rock sticking up like a finger pointing at the sky, and, beyond, that blue bump on the horizon is the nose of Sleeping Ute Mountain.”

“Scene of the crime,” Louisa said.

Leaphorn said nothing. He was frowning, looking north. He drew in a deep breath, let it out.

“What?” Louisa said. “Why this sudden look of worry?”

He shook his head.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Let’s drive on down to Two Grey Hills. I want to call Chee. I want to make sure the Bureau sent some people in to check out that old mine.”

“I always wonder why you don’t have a cell phone. Don’t they work well out here?”

“Until I quit being a cop I had a radio in my vehicle,” Leaphorn said. “When I quit being a cop, I didn’t have anybody to call."

Which sounded sort of sad to Louisa. “What’s this about a mine?” she asked, as they got back into the vehicle.

“Maybe I didn’t mention that,” Leaphorn said. “Chee was looking for an old Mormon coal mine, abandoned in the nineteenth century that maybe had a canyon entrance and another one from the top of the mesa. Where they could lift the coal out without climbing out of the canyon carrying it. I thought that might have been the hideout of Ironhand’s dad. It would explain that business Old Lady Bashe was telling you about him disappearing in the canyon and reappearing on top.”

“Yes,” Louisa said. “You’re thinking that’s where those two are hiding now?”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “Just a possibility." He turned the truck left, down the bumpy dirt road and away from the highway. “This is rough going,” he said. “But if you don’t break something, its only about nine miles this way. If you go around by the highway, it’s almost thirty.”

“Which tells me you’re in a hurry to make this telephone call. You want to tell me why?”

“I want to make sure he told the FBI,” Leaphorn said, and laughed. “He’s awful touchy about the Bureau. Gets his feelings hurt. And if he did tell them, I want to find out if they followed up on it.”

Louisa waited, glanced at him, braced herself as the truck crossed a rocky washout and tilted down the slope.

“That doesn’t tell me why you’re worried. All of a sudden.”

“Because I’m remembering how interested Gershwin was in the location of that mine.”

She thought about that. “It seems reasonable. If somebody threatens you, you’re going to wonder where they’re hanging out.”

“Right,” Leaphorn said. “Probably nothing to worry about.”

But he didn’t slow down.

Chapter Twenty-five

Sergeant Jim Chee was in his house-trailer home, sprawled in his chair with his foot perched on a pillow on his bunk and a Ziploc bag full of crushed ice draped over his ankle. Bernadette Manuelito was at the stove preparing a pot of coffee and being very quiet about it because Chee wasn’t in the mood for conversation or anything else.

He had gone over everything that had happened in Largo’s office, suffered again the humiliation of Cabot handing him his photos of the mine, Cabot’s snide smile, being more or less dismissed by Captain Largo, slinking out of the room without a shred of dignity left. And then, his head full of outrage, indignation and self-disgust, not paying attention to where the hell he was walking, losing his balance tripping over something in the parking lot, and coming down full weight on his sprained ankle and dumping himself full length on the gravel.

And of course a swarm of the various sorts of cops working on the casino hunt had been there to see this—two of his NTP officers reporting in, the division radio gal coming out, three or four Border Patrol trackers up from El Paso, a BIA cop he’d once worked with, and a couple of the immense over-supply of FBI agents standing around picking their noses and waiting for Cabot to emerge. And of course, when he was pushing himself up—awkwardly trying to keep any pressure off the ankle—there was Bernie taking his arm.

And now here was Bernie in his trailer, puttering with his coffeepot. Largo had emerged and, despite Chee’s objections, had dispatched Bernie to take him to the clinic to have the ankle looked after. She had done that, and brought him home, and now it was past quitting time for her shift but here she was anyway, measuring the coffee on her own time.

And looking pretty as she did it. He resisted thinking about that, unwilling to diminish the self-pity he was enjoying. But looking at her, as neat from the rear elevation as from the front, reminded him that he was comparing her with Janet Pete. She lacked Janet’s high-gloss glamour, her physical perfection (depending, however, on how one rated that) and her sophistication. Again, how did one rate sophistication? Did you rate it by the standards of the Ivy League, Stanford and the rest of the politically correct privileged class, or by the Chuska Mountain sheep-camp society, where sophistication required the deeper and more difficult knowledge of how one walked in beauty, content in a difficult world? Such thoughts were causing Chee to feel better, and he turned his mind hurriedly back to the memory of Cabot returning his photographs, thereby restoking his anger.

Just then the telephone rang. It was the Legendary Lieutenant himself—the very one whose notions about Ute tribal legends was at the root of this humiliation.

“Did you report finding that mine to the Bureau?”

“Yes,” Chee said.

Silence. Leaphorn had expected more than that.

“What’s being done about it? Do you know?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Leaphorn’s tone said he couldn’t believe that.

“That’s right,” Chee said. He realized he was playing the same childish game with Leaphorn that he had played with Cabot. He didn’t like the feel of that. He admired Leaphorn. Leaphorn, he had to admit it, was his friend. So he interrupted the silence.

“The Special Agent involved said they’d already searched that mine. Nothing in it but animal tracks and mice droppings. He handed me back the photos I’d taken, and they sent me on my way.”

“Be damned,” Leaphorn said. Chee could hear him breathing for a while. “Did he say when they did their search?”

“He said right after the truck was found. He said they searched the whole area. Everything.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “How much structure was left on top of the mesa?”

“Some stone walls, partly fallen down, roof gone from part of it. Then there was a framework of timbers, sort of a triangle structure, sticking out of it.”

“Sounds like the support for the tipple to lift the coal out and dump it.”

“I guess so,” Chee said, wondering about the point of all this. The feds had looked, and nobody was home.

“Searched the whole area, you said? That day?”

“Yeah,” Chee said, sensing Leaphorn’s point and feeling a faint stir of illogical optimism.

“Didn’t Deputy Dashee say they found the truck about middle of the day?”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “And they’d be searching the Timms place, house, barns, outbuildings, and all those roads wandering around to those Mobil Oil pump stations, and -" Chee ran out of other examples. Casa Del Eco Mesa was huge, but it was almost mostly empty hugeness.

“The best they would have had time to do would be to give it a quick glance,” Leaphorn said.

“Well, yes. Wouldn’t that be enough to show it was empty?”

“I think I’ll take a drive up there and look around for myself. Is that area still roadblocked?”

“It was yesterday,” Chee said. Then he added exactly what he knew the Legendary Lieutenant hoped he would add. “I’ll go with you and show ’em my badge.”

“Fine,” Leaphorn said. “I’m calling from Two Grey Hills. Professor Bourebonette is with me, but she’s run into a couple of her fellow professors dickering over a rug. Hold on. Let me find out if they can give her a ride back to Flagstaff.”

Chee waited.

“Yep,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll pick you up soon as I can get there.”

“Right. I’ll be ready.”

Bernadette Manuelito was staring at him. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Go where with whom? You can’t go anywhere with that ankle. You’re supposed to keep it elevated. And iced.”

Chee relaxed, closed his eyes, recognized that he was feeling much, much better. Why did talking to Joe Leaphorn do that for him? And now this business with Bernie. Worrying about his ankle. Bossing him around. Why did that make him feel so much better? He opened his eyes and looked up at her. A very pretty young lady even when she was frowning at him.

Chapter Twenty-six

Sergeant Jim Chee kept his ankle elevated by resting it on pillows on the rear seat of Officer Bernie Manuelito’s battered old Unit 11. He kept it iced with a plastic sack loaded with ice cubes. The ankle was feeling better, and so was Chee. Going to the clinic and having it expertly wrapped and taped had done wonders for the injury. Having his old boss showing him some respect had been good for bruised morale.

Bernie was tooling westward on U.S. 160, past the Red Mesa School, heading toward the Navajo 35 intersection at Mexican Water, Chee was behind her, slumped against the driver’s side of the car, watching the side of Leaphorn’s graying burr haircut. The lieutenant was not nearly as taciturn as Chee remembered him. He was telling her of the names Gershwin had left on the note at the Navajo Inn coffee shop, and how that had led to Jorie’s place and about learning Jorie was suing Gershwin and the rest of it. Bernie was hanging on every word, and Leaphorn was obviously enjoying the attention. He’d been explaining to her why he had always been skeptical of coincidence, and Chee had heard that so often when he was the man’s assistant in the Window Rock office that he had it memorized. It was bedrock Navajo philosophy. All things interconnected. No effect without cause. The beetle’s wing affects the breeze, the larks’ song bends the warrior’s mood, a cloud back on the western horizon parts, lets light of the setting sun through, turns the mountains to gold, affects the mood and decision of the Navajo Tribal Council. Or, as the Anglo poet had put it, “No man is an island.”

And Bernie, in her kindly fashion, was recognizing a lonely man’s need and asking all the right questions. What a girl. “Is that sort of how you use that map Sergeant Chee tells me about?” And of course it was.

“I think Jim’s mind works about the way mine does,” Leaphorn said. “And I hope he’ll correct me if I’m wrong. This casino business, for example. The casino’s by Sleeping Ute Mountain. The escape vehicle is abandoned a hundred miles west on Casa Del Eco Mesa. Nearby a barn with an aircraft in it. The same day the aircraft is stolen. Closeness in both time and place. Nearby is an old mine. The Ute legends suggest the father of one of the bandits used it as his escape route. A little cluster of coincidences.”

Bernie said, “Yes,” but she sounded doubtful.

There are more,” Leaphorn said. “Remember the Great 1998 Manhunt. Three men involved. Police shot, stolen vehicle abandoned. Huge hunt begins. The fellow believed to be the ringleader is found dead. The FBI rules it suicide. The other two men vanish in the canyons.”

Now that his ankle was no longer painful, Chee was feeling drowsy. He let his head slide over against the upholstery. Yawned. How long had it been since he’d had a good sleep?

“Another coincidence,” Bernie agreed. “You have your doubts about that one, too?”

“Jim suggested the first crime might have been the cause of the second one,” Leaphorn said.

Chee was no longer sleepy. What did that mean? He couldn’t remember saying that.

“Ah,” Bernie said. “That’s going to take some complicated thinking. And that could go for the other ones, too. For example, seeing the abandoned truck and hearing about the robbery on the radio, Mr Timms saw a way to get rid of his airplane. He claimed it was stolen and filed an insurance claim.”

“It would be cause and effect that way, too, of course,” Leaphorn said. “Or perhaps the airplane was the reason the car was abandoned where it was, as the FBI originally concluded.”

Chee sat up. What the devil is Leaphom driving at?

“I’m afraid I’m lost,” Bernie said.

“Let me give you a whole new theory of the crime,” Leaphom said. “Let’s say it went like this. Someone up in this border country paid close attention to the 1998 crime, and it suggested to him the way to solve a problem. Actually two problems. It would supply him with some needed cash, and it would eliminate an enemy. Let’s say this person has connections with the militia, or the survivalists, or EarthFirsters, or any of the radical groups. Let’s say he recruits two or three men to help him, pretending they’re going after the money to finance their political cause. He gets Mr Timms involved. Either he leases the airplane in advance for a flight or he lets Timms in on the crime. Offers him a slice of the loot.”

“You’re talking about Everett Jorie,” Bernie said.

“I could be, yes,” Leaphorn said. “But in my proposal, Jorie has the role of the enemy to be eliminated.”

Chee cleared his throat. “Wait a minute, Lieutenant,” he said. “How about the suicide note? All that?”

Leaphorn looked around at Chee, gave him a wry look. “I had the advantage of being there. Seeing the man where he lived. Seeing what he read. His library. The sort of stuff he treasured, that made up his life. When I look back at it, it makes me think I’m showing my age. If you or Officer Manuelito had been the ones to find the body, to see it all, you would have gotten suspicious a long time before I did.”

Chee was thinking he still didn’t feel suspicious. But he said, “OK. How did it work?”

Bernie had slowed. “Is that where you want me to turn? That dirt road?”

“It’s rough, but it’s a lot shorter than driving down to 191 and then having to cut back.”

“I’m in favor of short,” Bernie said, and they were bumping off the pavement and onto the dirt.

“I’d guess this is the route the casino perps took,” Leaphorn said. “They must have known this mesa, living out here, and they must have known it led them into a dead-end situation." He laughed. “Another argument for my unorthodox theory of the crime. Having them turn off 191 and get lost would be too much of a coincidence for my taste.”

“Lieutenant,” Chee said, "why don’t you go ahead and tell us what happened at Jorie’s place.”

“What I think may have happened,” Leaphorn said. “Well, let’s say that our villain knocks on Jorie’s door, points the fatal pistol at Jorie, marches him into Jorie’s office, has Jorie sit in his computer chair, then shoots him point-blank so it will pass as a suicide. Then he turns on the computer, leans over the body, types out the suicide note, leaves the computer on, and departs the scene.”

“Why?” Chee asked. “Actually about four or five whys. I think I can see some of the motives, but some of it’s hazy.”

“Jorie was one of these fellows who thrive on litigation. And being a lawyer and admitted to the Utah bar, he could file all the suits he liked without it costing him much. He had two suits pending against our man. He was even suing Timms. Claimed his little airplane panicked his cattle, causing weight loss, loss of calves, so forth. Another suit claimed Timms violated his grazing lease with that unauthorized landing strip. But Timms isn’t my choice of villains. Another one of Jorie’s suits was aimed at canceling our villain’s Bureau of Land Management lease.”

“We’re talking about Mr Gershwin, of course,” Chee said. “Aren’t we?”

“In theory, yes,” Leaphorn said.

“All right,” Chee said. “What’s next?”

“Now he has eliminated one of his two problems - the enemy and his troublesome lawsuits. But not the other one.”

“The money,” Bernie said. “You mean he’d only get a third of that?”

“In my theory, I think it’s a little more complicated,” Leaphorn replied. He looked back at Chee. “You remember in that suicide note, how he told the FBI where to find his two partners, how he stressed that they had sworn never to be taken alive. If they were caught, they wanted to go into history for the number of cops they had killed.”

“His plan to eliminate them,” Chee said, and produced a wry laugh. “It probably would have worked. If those guys were militia members, they’d have their heads full of how the FBI behaved at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Frankly, if I was going in with the SWAT team, I think I’d be blazing away.”

“There must have seemed to be a flaw in that plan, though. Our villain had to wonder how the suicide note would be found. No one had any reason to suspect Jorie. Not a clue to any of the identities. So our villain solved that by finding himself a not-very-bright retired cop who he could trust to tip off the FBI without getting him involved in it.”

“I’ll be damned,” Chee said. “I wondered how you happened to be the one who found Jorie’s body.”

“What was the rush?” Bernie asked. “Sooner or later Jorie would have been missed. Somebody would have gone out to see about him. You know how people out here are.”

“My theoretical villain didn’t think he could wait for that. He didn’t want to risk the cops catching his partners before the cops knew about their plan to go down killing cops. Captured alive, they’d know just exactly who’d turned them in. They’d even the score and get off easier by testifying against him.”

“Yeah,” Bernie said. “That makes sense.”

Chee was leaning forward now. He tapped Leaphorn’s shoulder. “Look. Lieutenant, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Like I thought you weren’t very bright.”

“Matter of fact I wasn’t. He got almost exactly what he wanted out of me.”

Which was true, but Chee let that hang.

“The only thing that went wrong was his partners must have smelled something in the wind. They didn’t go home like they were supposed to—safe in the notion that the police hadn’t a clue to who they were. They didn’t wait for the SWAT teams to arrive and mow them down. They slipped away and hid somewhere.”

“The old Mormon mine,” Chee said. “So why didn’t the FBI find them there?”

“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe they were somewhere else when the federal agent took a look. Maybe they went home, as our villain probably told them to do, and then got uneasy and came back to Ironhand’s dad’s hideaway, to wait and see what happened. Or maybe the federals didn’t look hard enough. They’d have had no way of knowing about the entrance down in the canyon.”

“That’s true,” Chee said. “You couldn’t see it from the bottom. And, of course, we don’t know if the bottom mine connects to the top.”

Bernie laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I like to believe in legends. Even if they’re Ute legends.”

“I’ve just been along for the ride,” Chee said. “Just giving my ankle an airing. Now I’m wondering what the plan is. I hope it’s not that we walk up to that mine and order Baker and Ironhand to come out with their hands up.”

“No,” Leaphorn said, and laughed.

“Bernie would have to handle that all by herself.”

Chee said. “You’re a civilian. I’m on sick leave or something. Let’s say I’m back on vacation.”

“But you did bring your pistol, I’ll bet,” Bernie said. “You did, didn’t you.?”

“I think I’ve got it here somewhere. You know the rules. Don’t leave home without it.”

“What I’d like to do is drop in on Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said. “I think we can get him to cooperate. And if he does, and if I’m guessing right, then Officer Manuelito gets on her radio and summons reinforcements.”

“Why couldn’t we call in for a backup and then -" Chee cut off the rest of that. He imagined Leaphorn explaining his theory to Special Agent Cabot - asking backup to check a mine the FBI had already certified free of fugitives. He imagined Cabot’s smirk. He switched to another question.

“Do you know Mr Timms?” he asked. Another stupid question. Of course he did. Leaphorn knew everyone in the Four Corners. At least everyone over sixty.

“Not well,” Leaphorn said. “Haven’t seen him for years. But I think we can get him to cooperate.”

Chee leaned back against the door and watched the desert landscape slide past. He imagined Timms telling them to go to hell. He imagined Timms ordering them off his property.

But then he relaxed. Retired or not, Leaphorn was still the Legendary Lieutenant.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Bernie let Unit 11 roll to a stop just in front of the Timms front porch, and they sat for the few moments required by empty-country courtesy to give the occupant time to get himself decent and prepare to acknowledge visitors. The door opened. A tall, skinny, slightly stooped man stood in the doorway looking out at them.

Leaphorn got out, Bernie followed, and Chee moved his ankle off the pillow and onto the floor. It hurt, but not much.

“Hello, Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said. “I wonder if you remember me.”

Timms stepped out onto the porch, the sunlight reflecting from his spectacles. “Maybe I do,” he said. “Didn’t you used to be Corporal Joe Leaphorn with the Navajo Police? Wasn’t you the one who helped out when that fellow was shooting at my airplane?”

“Yes sir,” Leaphorn said. “That was me. And this young lady is Officer Bernadette Manuelito.”

“Well, come on in out of the sun,” Timms said.

Chee couldn’t stand the thought of missing this. He pushed the car door open with his good foot, got his cane and limped across the yard, eyes on the ground to avoid an accident, noticing that the bedroom slipper he was wearing on his left foot was collecting sandburrs. “And this,” Leaphorn was saying, “is Sergeant Jim Chee. He and I worked together.”

“Yes sir,” Timms said, and held out his hand. The shake was Navajo fashion, less grip and more the gentle touch. An old-timer who knew the culture. And so nervous that the muscles in his cheek were twitching.

“Wasn’t expecting company, so I don’t have anything fixed, but I could offer you something cold to drink,” Timms said, ushering them into a small, dark room cluttered with the sort of old mismatched furniture one collects from Goodwill Industries shops.

“I don’t think we should accept your hospitality, Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said. “We came here on some serious business.”

“On that insurance claim,” Timms said. “I already sent off a letter canceling that. Already did that.”

“I’m afraid it’s a lot more serious than that,” Leaphorn said.

“That’s the trouble with getting old. You get so damned forgetful,” Timms said, talking fast. “I get up to get me a drink of water and by the time I get to the icebox I forget what I’m in the kitchen for. I flew that old L-19 down there to do some work, and then a fella offered me a ride home and I went off and left it and then we were hearing about the robbery on the radio and when I got home and saw the barn open and my airplane gone I just thought -"

Timms stopped. He stared at Leaphorn. So did Bernie. So did Chee.

“More than that?” Timms asked.

Leaphorn stood silent, eyes on Timms.

“What more?” Timms asked. He slumped down into an overstuffed armchair, looking up at Leaphorn.

“You remember that fellow who was doing the shooting when you flew over his place? Everett Jorie.”

“He quit doing that after you talked to him." Timms tried a smile, which didn’t come off. “I appreciated that. Now he’s turned into a bandit. Robbed that casino. Killed himself.”

“It looked like that for a while,” Leaphorn said.

Timms shrank into the chair. Raised his right hand to his forehead. He said, “You saying somebody killed him?”

Leaphorn let the question hang for a moment. Said: "How well do you know Roy Gershwin?”

Timms opened his mouth, closed it, and looked up at Leaphorn. Chee found himself feeling sorry for the man. He looked terrified.

“Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said, "you are in a position right now to help yourself a lot. The FBI isn’t happy with you. Hiding that airplane, reporting it stolen, that slowed down the hunt for those killers a lot. It’s not the sort of thing law enforcement forgets. Unless it has a reason to want to overlook it. If you’re helpful, then the police tend to say 'Well, Mr Timms was just forgetful.' If you’re not helpful, then things like that tend to go to the grand jury to let the jury decide whether you were what they call an accessory after the fact. And that’s not insurance fraud. That’s in a murder case.”

“Murder case. You mean Jorie?”

“Mr Timms,” Leaphorn said, "tell me about Roy Gershwin.”

“He was by here today,” Timms said. “You just missed him.”

Now it was Leaphorn’s turn to look startled. And Chee’s.

“What did he want? What did he say?”

“Not much. He wanted directions to that old Latter-Day-Saints mine. The place those Mormons used to dig their coal. And I told him, and he run right out of here. In a big hurry.”

“I think we’d better go,” Leaphorn said, and started for the door.

Timms looked sick. He made a move to rise, sank back.

“You telling me Gershwin killed that Everett Jorie? Don’t tell me that.”

Leaphorn and Bernie were already out the door, and as Chee limped after them he heard Timms saying, “Oh, God. I was afraid of that.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

It was easy enough to notice where Gershwin’s pickup had turned off the track, easy to see the path it had left through the crusted blowsand and broken clusters of snakeweed. Following the tracks was a different matter. Gershwin’s truck had better traction and much higher clearance than Bernie’s Unit 11 patrol car, which, under its official paint, was still a worn-out Chevy sedan.

It lost traction on the side of one of those great humps that wind erosion drifts around Mormon tea in desert climates. It slid sideways, rear wheels down the slope. Leaphorn checked Bernie’s instinct to gun the engine by a sharply whispered "No!”

“I think we’re about as close as we want to drive,” he said. “I’ll take a look.”

He took the unit’s binoculars out of the glove box, opened the door, slid out, walked up the hummock, stood for a minute looking and then walked back.

“The mine structure is maybe a quarter mile,” he said, pointing. “Over by the rimrock. Gershwin’s truck is about two hundred yards ahead of us. It looks empty. It also looks like he left it where it couldn’t be seen from the mine.”

“So now what?” Chee said. “Do we radio in and ask for some backup?” Even as he asked, he was wondering how that call would sound. Imagining the exchange. An area rancher had driven his pickup over to an old mine site. Why do you need backup? Because we think the casino perps are hiding there. Which mine? One the FBI has already checked out and certified as empty.

Leaphorn was looking at him, quizzically.

“Or what?” Chee concluded, thinking that surely Leaphorn wouldn’t propose they simply walk up, ask if anybody was inside and tell them to come out and surrender.

“We’re on their blind side,” Leaphorn said. “Why don’t we get closer? See if we can learn what’s going on.”

“You brought your piece,” Leaphorn said. “I’m going to borrow Officer Manuelito’s pistol. Officer Manuelito, I want you to stay here close to the radio but get up on the hump there where you can see what’s going on. We may need you to make some fast contacts. I’ll borrow your sidearm.”

“Give you my gun?” Bernie said, sounding doubtful.

Chee was easing himself out of the car, thinking that the Legendary Lieutenant had forgotten he was a civilian. He had unilaterally rescinded his retirement and resumed his rank.

“Your pistol,” he said, holding out his hand. Bernie’s expression switched from doubtful to determined.

“No, sir. That’s one of the first things we learn. We keep our pistols.”

Leaphorn stared at her. Nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Hand me the rifle.”

She pulled it out of the rack and handed it to him, butt first. He checked the chamber.

“In fact, Manuelito, I want you to get into radio contact now. Tell ’em where we are, precisely as you can, tell them that Sergeant Chee is checking an old mine building and we may need some support. Tell them you’re going to be out of the car a few minutes to back him up and ask them to stand by. Then I want you on top of that hummock up there watching what’s going on. Doing what needs to be done.”

“Sergeant Chee should stay here,” Bernie said. “He can’t walk that far. I’ll go with you. He can handle the radio.”

Chee used his sergeant voice. “Manuelito, you’ll do the radio. That’s an order.”

Whatever the reason, the excitement, the adrenaline pumping, perhaps the distracting notion that in a few minutes an award-winning Green Beret sniper might be shooting him, Chee limped up the hummock slope hardly aware of his bandaged ankle or the sand in his bedroom slipper. The ruined mine structure came into view, the back side of what he had photographed from the helicopter. As Leap-horn had said, this side presented only a windowless stone wall.

Leaphorn pointed, noted the entrance door was probably to their left, pointed out the route down the gentle slope that Chee should take, noting the cover available in the event anyone came out of the structure. Any pretense of being a civilian, of being anything except the Navajo Tribal Police officer in charge, had ceased to exist.

“I’ll move down to the right,” Leaphorn concluded. “Watch for a signal. If anyone comes out, we’ll let them get far enough from the structure. They, or he, will probably be walking toward Gershwin’s truck. We’ll see what opportunity presents itself.”

“Yes sir,” Chee said. He rechecked his pistol and did exactly as told.

About five minutes, and fifty cautious yards later, Chee first heard a voice.

He stood, waved at Leaphorn, pointed to the wall and made talking motions with his hand. Leaphorn nodded.

A moment later, the sound of laughter.

Then the sharp door-slam sound of a pistol shot. Then another, and another.

Chee looked at Leaphorn, who was looking at him. Leaphorn signaled him to stay down. They waited. Time ticked past. Leaphorn signaled him to close in and moved slowly toward the wall. Chee did the same.

A tall, elderly man emerged from behind the wall. What seemed to be a student’s backpack dangled from one hand. He was wearing a white shirt with the tail out, jeans and a tan straw hat. As Leaphorn had predicted, he walked toward Gershwin’s truck.

Chee ducked back out of sight behind a growth of salt bush, following the man with his pistol. No more than twenty yards. An easy shot if a shooting was called for.

Leaphorn was standing in the open, the rifle cradled across his arm.

“Mr Gershwin,” he shouted. “Roy. What are you doing way out here?”

Gershwin stopped, stood frozen for a moment, then turned and looked at Leaphorn.

“Well now, I don’t hardly know what to tell you about that. If I had noticed you first, I’d have asked you the same thing.”

Leaphorn laughed. “I probably would have told you I’m out here hunting quail. But then you’d have noticed this is a rifle and not something you use to shoot birds. And you wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Prob’ly not,” Gershwin said. “I’d guess you were thinking about all that money taken out of that casino and how it had to be hidden someplace and maybe this old mine was it.”

“Well,” Leaphorn said, "it’s true that the Navajo Nation doesn’t offer high retirement pay. How about you? You looking for some extra unmarked paper money?”

“Are you talking as an officer of the law, or are you still a civilian?”

“I’m the same civilian you brought your list of names to,” Leaphorn said. “Once you’re out they don’t let you back in.”

“Well, then, I hope you have better luck than I did. There’s no money back there. I turned over every piece of junk. Nothing. Just a waste of time." Gershwin started walking again.

“I heard some shots fired,” Leaphorn said. “What was that about?”

Gershwin turned around and started back toward the mine. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you. And I’ll tell you, too. Remember me telling you I was pulling out. Going to move into a motel somewhere. Not wait around for those militia bastards to come after me. Well, I decided to hell with that. I’m too old a dog to let those punks run me out. I decided I’d have a showdown.”

“Hold it a minute,” Leaphorn said. “I want you to meet a friend of mine.“ He motioned to Chee.

Chee holstered his pistol, came out from behind the brush, raised a hand in greeting. If Gershwin was carrying a weapon it wasn’t visible. If it was any size, he’d probably be carrying it under his belt, hidden by his shirt and not in a pocket. The sound of the gunshots suggested a serious weapon. Certainly not a pocket-sized twenty-two.

“This is Sergeant Jim Chee,” Leaphorn said. “Roy Gershwin.”

Gershwin looked shocked. “Yes,” he said, and nodded to Chee.

“Chee’s short of money, too,” Leaphorn said. “He’s a single man, but he’s trying to live on a police salary.”

Gershwin gave Chee another look, nodded again, and resumed his walk, toward the mine. “Well, as I was telling you, I drove out here thinking I was going to have it out with these bastards. Either take ‘em in for the reward money, or run ’em off, or shoot ‘em if I had to. That reward’s supposed to be for dead or alive. I just decided not to run. I’m way too damned old to be running.”

“You shot ’em?” Leaphorn asked.

“Just one. I shot Baker. George Ironhand, he got away.”

They were in the structure by then, through a double doorway that pierced a partly tumbled wall and into the patterned light and darkness of a huge room. Sunlight streaming through gaps in its roof illuminated the cluttered earthen floor in streaks. It was about as Special Agent Cabot had described it.

Empty except for a jumble of junk and scattered debris. Where the floor wasn’t hidden by fallen roofing material and sheets of warped plywood, it was covered by layers of drifted sand, dust and trash drifted in by years of wind. Tumbleweeds were piled against the back wall, and beside them was the body of a man dressed in gray-green camouflage coveralls.

Gershwin gestured toward the body. “Baker,” he said. “Son of a bitch tried to shoot me.”

“Tell us about how it went,” Leaphorn said.

“Well, I parked back there a ways so they wouldn’t hear me coming. And walked up real quiet and looked in and that one"—Gershwin pointed to the body by the wall—"he seemed to be sleeping. The tall one was sitting over there, and when I came in he made a grab for his gun and I hollered for him to stop, but he got it, and then I shot him and he fell down. That woke up the other guy and he jumped up and pulled out a pistol and I hollered for him to drop it and he took a shot at me so I shot him, too.”

“The first one you shot,” Chee said. “Where did he go?”

“Be damned if I know,” Gershwin said. “I thought he was down for good and I was busy with the other one, and when I was going to check on him, he wasn’t there. I guess he just got out of here somehow. Didn’t you fellas see him running away?”

“We didn’t,” Leaphorn said, "and we better be getting to our car. We need to call this in, and get the law out here to collect the body and get a search going for the one that got away.”

“Surprised you didn’t see him,” Gershwin said.

“Where’s your weapon?” Leaphorn asked. “You need to hand that over to Sergeant Chee here.”

“I threw it away,” Gershwin said. “I never had shot a man before, and when I realized what I’d done I just felt sick. Went to that side door over there and threw up and then I threw my pistol down in the canyon.”

They had moved out through the broken doorway into the sunlight. Chee kept his hand near the butt of his pistol, thinking Leaphorn couldn’t possibly believe that, thinking the weapon was probably a hand gun and it was probably in the backpack Gershwin was carrying. Or perhaps stuck in Gershwin’s belt, hidden by the shirt.

“It’s a terrible feeling,” Gershwin was saying, "shooting a man." And as he was saying that his hand flashed under the shirt and came out fumbling with a pistol.

Chee’s pistol was pointed at Gershwin’s chest. “Drop it,” Chee said. “Drop it or I kill you.”

Gershwin made an angry sound, dropped his pistol.

Leaphorn shouted, “Look out.” There was a blast of sound from the darkness. Gershwin was knocked sprawling into the dirt.

“He’s under that big sheet of plywood,” Leaphorn shouted. “I saw a side of it rise. Then the muzzle flash.”

The plywood was directly under the A-frame of timbers that rose through what was left of the building’s roof. Chee and Leaphorn approached it as one approaches a prairie rattler, with caution. Chee did his stalking via the side door, a route with better cover. He got there first, motioned Leaphorn in. They stood on opposite sides of it, looking down at it.

“Gershwin is dead,” Leaphorn said.

“I thought it looked like that,” Chee said.

“If you pulled that plywood back, you’d expect to look right down into a vertical shaft,” Leaphorn said. “But whoever pushed it up and stuck out that rifle barrel had to be standing on something.”

“Probably some sort of rope ladder at least,” Chee said. “Or maybe they dug out some sort of niche." He tried to visualize what would be under the plywood without much luck.

Leaphorn was studying him. “You want to pull it away and take a look?”

Chee laughed. “I think I’d rather just wait until Special Agent Cabot gets here with his people and let him do it. I wouldn’t want to mess up the Bureau’s crime scene.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

Jim Chee sprawled across the rear seat of Unit 11, his throbbing ankle high on a pillow reminding him of what the doctor had said about putting weight on a sprain before it’s healed. Otherwise, Chee was feeling no pain. He was at ease. He was content. True, George Ironhand was still at large in the canyons, either wounded or well, but he wasn’t Chee’s problem.

Chee relaxed, listened to the windshield wipers working against the off-and-on rain shower, eaves-dropped now and then on the conversation the Legendary Lieutenant was having with Officer Manuelito (Leaphorn was calling her Bernie) and rehashing the events of a tense and tiring day.

The reinforcements had arrived a little before sundown. First came two big Federal Bureau of

Investigation copters, hovering a while to find a place to put down among the hummocks of Mormon tea, the Special Agents swarming out, looking warlike in their official bulletproof costumes, pointing their automatic weapons at Leaphorn and looking miffed when Leaphorn ignored them. Then the business of trying to explain what had happened there. Explaining Gershwin to the Special Agent in Charge, who wanted to question everything, who wanted answers which would prove the Bureau was right in its Everett Jorie suicide/gang-leader conclusion, and who looked downright thunderstruck when he learned that the fellow instructing otherwise was just a civilian.

Chee grinned, remembering that. Leaphorn had cut off the SAC’s arguments by suggesting he could end his doubts by sending a few of his troops over to Gershwin’s truck and having them unpack some of the bundles, in which Leaphorn was confident they would find about one hundred seven pounds and eleven ounces of the paper money taken from the casino. The SAC did, and they did; some of the money was neatly double-sacked in eight of those Earth-Smart white-plastic kitchen trash bags stacked under Gershwin’s luggage, and a bunch of the bigger bills was layered into the suitcases with his clothing. While that was happening the ground troops arrived—two sheriff’s cars, a Utah State Police car and a BIA law-enforcement unit bringing an assortment of cops—including Border Patrol trackers with their dogs. The trackers nervously eyed the cumulus clouds, their tops backlit by the setting sun and their black bottoms producing lightning and promising the long-overdue rain. Trackers prefer daylight and dry ground and were making their preference obvious. Finally, the explaining stopped, an ambulance arrived to take away the much-photographed bodies, and now here Chee was, dry and comfortable, on his way home and an interested listener to the Legendary Lieutenant revealing a human side.

“I’ve only met her recently,” Bernie was saying. “But she seemed very nice.”

“An interesting person,” Leaphorn said. “A real friend, I think." He chuckled. “At least she’s willing to listen to me when I talk. When you’re an old widower, and you haven’t gotten used to living alone yet, that’s something you need.”

Which is why, Chee was thinking, Leaphorn has been chattering like this. He’d always thought of him as taciturn, hard to talk to. A silent man. But then Bernie was Bernie. He liked to talk to her, too. Or, come to think of it, he liked to talk while Bernie listened. He skipped backward into memories of conversations with Janet Pete. No problem there. Then came another memory, another comparison. Bernie putting ice on his swollen ankle, leaning over him, her soft hair brushing past his face. Janet kissing him. Janet’s hair carried the perfume of flowers, Bernie’s the scent of juniper and the wind.

“You don’t seem old to me,” Bernie was saying. “No older than my father, and he’s still young.”

“It’s more than age,” Leaphorn said. “Emma and I were married longer than you’ve been alive. One of those love-at-first-sight things when we were students at Arizona State. And when she died -" He didn’t finish that.

The rain stopped. Bernie switched off the wipers. “I’ll bet you she wouldn’t have approved of you living alone, like a hermit. I’ll bet she would want you to get married again.”

Wow, Chee thought. That took nerve. How will Lieutenant Leaphorn react to that?

Leaphorn laughed. “Exactly. She did. But not Professor Bourebonette. At the hospital before her surgery she told me if anything went wrong, I should remember Navajo tradition.”

“Marry her sister?” Bernie said. “You have a single sister-in-law.?”

“Yep,” Leaphorn said. “Emma almost always gave good advice, but her sister didn’t like that idea any better than I did.”

“I’ll bet your wife would have approved of Professor Bourebonette,” Bernie said. “I mean as your wife.”

If Chee hadn’t been watching while Bernie refused to surrender her sidearm to Leaphorn a few hours ago, he wouldn’t have believed he was hearing this. He waited. Silence. Then Leaphorn said, “You know, Bernie, now you mention it, I’m sure she would.”

What a woman, this Officer Bemadette Manuelito. Chee remembered the sort of subconscious uneasiness he’d felt when Bernie showed up at his trailer and asked him to help her wounded boyfriend. It was jealousy, of course, though he didn’t want to admit it then. And he was feeling it again now.

“Bernie,” Chee said, "what’s the condition report on Teddy Bai?”

“Much better,” Bernie said.

“Did you talk to him?”

“Rosemary did,” she said. “She said he’s going to be well enough so they won’t have to postpone their wedding.”

“Well, now,” Chee said. “Wow. That’s really good news." And he meant it.

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[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

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