Coyote Waits (24 page)

Somewhere back in those black rocks was what Professor Tagert was looking for — probably the skeleton of Butch Cassidy. There was also something that had caused Redd to change a translation to foil Tagert, something that eighty years ago had caused a stubborn Navajo to undergo a cure for exposure to witches. Back in there two
biligaana
bandits had probably died a long time ago. And back in there, Taka Ji last month had heard someone shoot a snake, or perhaps another human, or perhaps nothing.

Since leaving Albuquerque in the early afternoon, Chee had been racing against the weather as well as the sun. As far south as the point where Highway 44 entered the Jicarilla Reservation, he’d been conscious of the darkness on the northwestern horizon. “A slow-moving storm, this one, and that means we might get some substantial snow,” Howard Morgan had told them on the Channel 7 news. “But of course, if the jet stream moves north, it could miss most of New Mexico.” The storm had indeed moved slowly, much more slowly than the reckless seventy to eighty Chee had been pushing his pickup in defiance of law and common sense. Even so, by the time he passed the Huerfano Mesa two-thirds of the sky was black with storm and the smell of snow was in the air.

His nostrils were still full of that aroma of cold wetness as he stood beside the truck. The sun was almost on the horizon, shining through a narrow slot not closed in the west between cloud and earth. The slanting light outlined every crevasse in shadowy relief, making apparent the broken ruggedness of the ridge. It rose, ragged and tumbled shapes in black and gray, out of a long sloping hummock — what a million years or so of erosion had left of the mountain of volcanic ash that had once buried the volcano’s core. From where Chee stood there seemed to be dozens of ways up into the ridge. Most of them would dead-end at walls of lava.

He found what traces of Taka Ji’s tracks the rain that night had left and followed them — helped by the angle of the light. Then he found other tracks, easy-to-follow high-heeled cowboy boots among them. They led up into the malpais.

They led, as Chee was thinking, into Tse A’Digash. That was the term Hosteen Pinto had used — the rocks where witches gathered. There was that to think of. That, and the variety of rattlesnakes which would have been accumulating here since the first autumn cold snaps, taking advantage of a final few days of warmth from the rocks before hibernating for the winter. Maybe they would already be in hibernation. Chee doubted it. The old shamans watched such things closely. And they would not have yet started scheduling those curing rituals which could only be held when the snakes were safely asleep. Ah, well. Snakes preyed on animals small enough to be swallowed, not on men. But snakes struck men in self-defense. With that thought in mind, with the reputation this place had earned — even a hundred years ago — for witches, Chee moved cautiously.

The first path he chose led into a pocket of rocks with no exits. The second, after he climbed a difficult tilted slab of stone, led him higher and higher into the ridge. The dying sunlight no longer reached this path but the going was relatively easy. Obviously this walkway had been used for many years by animal and man. Here a cactus had been broken by a careless step, and healed with time. There a clump of buffalo grass had been distorted by the pressure of footsteps. Now and then, where the rocky formation fended off the rain, Chee picked up recent boot prints. The high-heeled boot marks were no longer evident. They must have been Ashie Pinto’s boots. Ashie Pinto had been too wise to enter here. Pinto had sat beside a piñon on the grass, not taking any chances with destiny. But Coyote had been waiting out there, too.

Chee was high in the rocks before he saw his first snake. It was a smallish prairie rattler which had been moving slowly across the pathway just as he turned a corner between shoulder-high boulders. Chee stopped. Snake stopped. It formed itself into a coil, but the motion was lethargic. Chee stepped back to where his human smell would be less likely to reach the reptile. Waited a moment, looked around the rock. The snake was gone.

Chee paused as he stepped over the snake’s track across the sand and took time to erase the zigzag marking with his toe. He couldn’t remember the reason for this action, just that it was one of the litany of taboos and their counters his grandmother had taught him — a small courtesy to Big Snake.

Not fifty feet beyond where the snake had been, he found the place he had come to find.

In some forgotten time, a great upsurge of molten magma had produced a cul-de-sac walled in by slabs of weathered, lichen-covered basalt. At the wide end, a bubble of this molten rock had burst — forming a small cave. Eons of migrating sand, dust, and organic material had been trapped here, borne directly in by the wind or washed down from the rocks above. It had formed a flat floor on which bunch and needle grass grew when enough water seeped in from above. At the near edge of this little floor, Chee saw the weathered ruins of what had been a saddle.

Chee stopped and studied the place.

Even from where he stood, yards away, he could see the floor had been disturbed by foot tracks. He heard a scraping sound. Or thought he did. When he had left his truck there had been a breeze, the edge of what weather people call “proximity wind” stirred up on the edges of a storm. Now that had died away, leaving the dead calm that so often comes just as the first flakes fall.

Had he heard something? Chee couldn’t be sure. Probably just nerves — the proximity of witches. Witches. That caused him to think of Joe Leaphorn, to whom belief in witches was superstitious anathema. Chee had come to terms with them in another way. He saw what the origin mythology said of them as a metaphor. Some choose to violate the Way of the People, choosing incest, murder, and material riches over the order and harmony of the Navajo Way. Call them what you like, Chee knew they existed. He knew they were dangerous.

Now Chee listened and heard almost nothing. A meadowlark somewhere out of sight ran its soprano meadowlark scales. Down near the arroyo where he’d parked, the crows were quarreling. He heard nothing to explain his nervousness.

The sun was down now just below the horizon, and was coloring the bottom of the storm cloud a dazzling yellow in the far west and dull rose over Chee’s head. Reflected light washed the rocky landscape with a dull red tint — making vision deceptive. No time to waste.

He walked past the old saddle into the cul-de-sac. And stopped again.

First he saw the hat. Sand had drifted over most of it, but part of the brim and much of the crown were visible. Apparently a very old hat of once-black felt now faded into mottled gray. Beyond the hat, over a low partition of sloping rock, he saw a pant leg and a boot — also mostly buried under the drifted dust.

Chee drew a deep breath and let it out, steadying himself. Apparently, old Hosteen Pinto’s story was true. At least one man had died here a long time ago. In a moment, he would check for the second one. No terrible hurry. Chee, like most Navajos who hold to the traditions of the People, would avoid a corpse as diligently as an orthodox Jew or Moslem would avoid roast pork. They were taboo. They caused sickness.

But there were cures for such sickness if it couldn’t be avoided. Chee walked over to inspect the corpse.

The man who wore the pant leg lay mostly far under an overhang of stone — seeking shade probably when he was dying. Now, too late, it protected him from wind and weather. But the desiccating heat had converted him into a shriveled mummy swaddled in faded clothing.

There should be another man, Chee thought. He found him in the little cave.

This had been a bigger man, and he, too, had been partly mummified by the dry heat. His hat had been placed on his face but under its brim Chee could see a long mustache, bleached a gray-white. This body had been moved, pulled out flat on the sand. It still wore a gun belt but the holster was empty. Here seemed to be Professor Tagert’s famous Butch Cassidy. Here was Tagert’s revenge upon his detractors.

He stood studying the body. Part of the man’s vest had been torn away and part of the other clothing had pulled apart when it had been dragged from under the sheltering rocks. Or perhaps, totally rotten, had fallen away by its own weight. Or perhaps Tagert had gone through Mr. Cassidy’s pockets in search of identification.

Had Tagert been here? He must have been one of the two people Taka Ji had seen. Chee checked for tracks. They were everywhere. Tracks of two people. Flat-heeled boots with pointed toes, about size ten, and something much smaller made by patterned rubber soles.

Where were their saddlebags? One had been strong enough to carry his saddle up. Surely he would have brought the bags. He looked for a place they might be hidden. The shelf behind him — the most logical place to toss them — was empty. He noticed a deep slot about shoulder high between two layers of rock. He peered into it — cautiously, because it was a perfect place for a snake to rest. Indeed, a snake was coiled back in the crack. It looked like a full-grown diamondback rattler. To the left of the snake, where the slot was a little deeper, Chee could see the tannish-gray color of old canvas. A saddlebag had been pushed back there out of sight. He could reach it, he thought, if he didn’t mind risking irritating the snake.

He looked around for an adequate stick and settled for a limb broken from an overhanging juniper.

“
Hohzho
, Hosteen Snake,” Chee said. “Peace. Live with beauty all around you.” He moved the stick into the slot. “Just take it easy. Don’t mean to trouble you.”

He could reach the saddlebag without getting his hand in range of the snake. But he couldn’t move it.

The snake tested the air with its tongue, didn’t like the human aroma it detected, and began readjusting its coil. The tip of its tail emerged. It rattled.

“
Hohzho
,” Chee said. He withdrew hand and stick and looked around, seeking something more suitable for extracting the saddlebags.

Then he noticed drag marks.

They were fresh. Something large and heavy had been pulled across the sandy space to his left and into the rocks.

Chee followed. He turned the corner.

William Odell Redd was standing there. He had an oversized revolver in his hand, pointing more or less at Chee’s knees. And there, at Redd’s feet, was the body of a small man, face up, as if Redd had dragged him by the shoulders.

“I wish you hadn’t come back here,” Redd said.

Chee thought, So do I. But he said: “What are you doing here?”

“I came after some things of mine,” Redd said. “I guessed you’d be coming. I was going to be gone before you got here.”

“I guess Jean Jacobs mentioned it to you,” Chee said.

“A great girl,” Redd said. “Really.”

“I thought so too.”

Redd was looking down at Tagert. “He treated her like dirt,” Redd said. “He treated everybody like dirt. The son-of-a-bitch.”

“Is that why you shot him?”

“No,” Redd said, still looking down at the professor. “Probably should have. Long ago.”

Chee was looking at the pistol. It looked about a hundred years old. It probably was. Probably it had come from the holster of Butch Cassidy, or whoever the bandit turned out to be. What mattered was whether it would still work. It looked ancient and dusty. But not rusty. It was cocked. The hammer had gone backward so it would probably come forward. Fast enough to detonate the cartridge? Maybe. Would the cartridge still be good after all these years? It seemed doubtful, but this arid climate preserved almost everything. Taka had heard a shot up here. This pistol? Shooting Professor Tagert? Chee found it difficult to think of anything but what Redd planned to do with the weapon. But he didn’t want to ask.

It was snowing now. Small dry flakes drifted in, hanging in the air, disappearing. Chee found his mind working in an odd way. It had deduced why Colonel Ji had been killed, which was not at this moment a high-priority question. He and Janet had talked about Ji in Redd’s house, about Ji being the owner of the car seen leaving this area after Nez’s death. Redd must have seen it that night, too. Must have presumed the murder of Tagert had been observed. Must have gone to Ship Rock and killed Ji as soon as he’d learned from them (or thought he had learned) the identity of the witness. And killed the wrong person. But there was no right person. Taka hadn’t seen the killing either.

Now, suddenly, Chee saw how this information might be useful. If he could be subtle enough. He said:

“Did you see the boy in here that night? The boy who was painting the rocks?”

“What boy?” Redd looked surprised.

“The Ship Rock High School boy,” Chee said. “He saw your car in here. Saw you with Hosteen Pinto and,” Chee glanced at the body, “with the professor. Climbing up here. The two of you, he said. Not Pinto. He said Pinto stayed behind and got drunk.”

Redd looked stricken. “It was the math teacher,” he said. “Not a boy.”

“We were wrong about that. It wasn’t the math teacher. It was a high school kid.”

“Ah, shit,” Redd said. “Ah, shit.” He leaned back against the rock. “So they’ll be after me, then. No matter what.”

“Best thing would be to turn yourself in,” Chee said.

Redd wasn’t listening. He was shaking his head. “Weird,” he said. “Weird. The way this all started.”

“How did it?”

“I was just going to squeeze a thousand bucks out of the old bastard. Just what he owed me for the overtime he was always working me and not paying me for.”

“By holding out part of the translation?” Chee asked. “You knew he wanted to find this place. These dead cowboys, or whoever.”

“Butch Cassidy,” Redd said, absently. “Yeah. I left that part of the story out. The part that located this place. Then I told Tagert that since I know Navajo and can talk to people I’d be able to find it. He gave me a five-hundred-dollar advance.” Redd looked up at Chee, and laughed. “I found this ridge all right. That was easy enough with the details Pinto had in his story. But I couldn’t find this spot. The son-of-a-bitch wanted his money back. Then I got the idea of hiring Pinto. As a crystal gazer, you know. Sometimes that works, I heard, especially if the shaman knows something he’s not telling.”