Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 17] (13 page)

Ah, well, Bernie thought, he’d be coming back after a while, and when the shadows were longer, the temperature would drop. Her schoolgirl trip into the canyon had been made in the cooler days of late autumn. She’d read that summer heat at the canyon bottom sometimes soared as much as twenty degrees above the temperature on the mesa a mile above. Now she believed it. Even in the
shade, it seemed dangerously torrid. She walked up the slot far enough to find a spot where the interior cliffs hadn’t been cooking all day under the Southwestern sun. She’d rest awhile and cool off.

Typical of Bernadette Manuelito, the rest period was brief. She noticed tracks of Chee’s boots again, scuffing across the thin layer of blow sand near the opposite wall. She’d test the tracking skills she’d been taught in her tour with the Border Patrol.

The tracks disappeared in a tangle of dead, dry tumbleweeds and assorted other sticks and stems, then showed up again where the most recent runoff had left the stone floor bare and subject to scuffing marks. It was, of course, a strictly up-slope walk, and it soon came to a junction where a smaller post-rainstorm stream joined the major flow. She was able to find Chee’s tracks only a few yards up the narrower canyon, and then they resumed their climb up the bigger one and came to another junction, this one through a very narrow cut in the cliffs, at which point there was another very short side trip of boots marks.

From this, a comparatively cool downdraft flowed, bringing with it the aroma of the high-country flora—piñon resin, cliffrose, and the slightly acid smell of claretcup cactus. It was comfortable and pleasant here. The bedrock under her feet was damp with a minuscule trickle of water from a narrow horizonal seepage between layers of stone on the opposite wall. A swarm of midges was dining on a growth of moss there, and below them squatted one of the spotted toads common to the deep canyon. He sat so utterly motionless that Bernie wondered for a moment if he was alive. He answered that
question with a sudden leap, and scuttled across the stony floor.

Why? Bernie quickly saw the answer. The head of a small snake emerged from under a fallen slab, slithered onto the bedrock floor after the toad. It stopped. Coiled. Swiveled its head and its tongue emerged, testing the air for the strange odor of Bernie, a new species of intruder in the snake’s hunting ground.

Bernie had been conditioned from toddling years to look upon everything alive as fellow citizens of a tough and unforgiving natural cosmos. Each and all, be they schoolgirl, scorpion, bobcat, or vulture, had a role to play and was endowed with the good sense to survive—provided good sense was used. Thus Bernie was not afraid of snakes. Even rattlesnakes, which this one obviously was, because after coiling he had raised his terminal tip and sent his species’ nameplate warning signal.

But this one was pink, which brought a huge smile to Bernie’s face and the immediate thought of Dr. William Degenhardt, her favorite professor at the University of New Mexico. Degenhardt, an internationally acclaimed herpetologist, was an authority on snakes, salamanders, and other such cold-blooded beasts, and was known, in fact, as their friend, with a huge portrait of a coiled rattler on his living room wall. Bernie remembered his lectures fondly, and in one the Pink Grand Canyon Rattlesnake was the subject—not just because it was rare but because it was such a wonderful demonstration of how a species could adapt itself in size, color, and hunting techniques to the weird environment the Grand Canyon offered.

Bernie found herself wishing she had a camera. She could hardly wait to tell Degenhardt about this. Maybe
she could catch the thing and take it back to him. But the professor would never approve of such a disruption of nature. Besides, she couldn’t keep it alive in her backpack. So she simply stared at it, shifting her memory into the Save mode, and recorded every variation in color, shade, and tone, size and number of rattles, shape of head, and so forth—all of the features the professor would want to compare with the illustrations in his textbook on such beasts. But the snake tired eventually of this scrutiny, thrust out his tongue to test the air a final time, and slithered away to hide himself again back under a stone slab.

The cry of a peregrine falcon snapped Bernie out of thinking about snakes and professors, and back into the duty to which Sergeant Chee had assigned her. It was time to climb out of this slot and find a place from which she could see if Tuve had climbed down the Salt Trail to join this expedition. Or if Chee, or Dashee, or both were awaiting her down at the Salt Woman Shrine.

Reaching the spot that looked most promising as a lookout post involved scrambling up a broken section of the opposing wall of the canyon she had followed up from the river. It was a tough climb, made even slower because the Pink Rattler had reminded Bernie that snakes like hanging out in hidden little spaces under rocks. She was very, very careful where she put her hands while pulling herself up to the shelf she had chosen.

It was a good choice. From that vantage point, her binoculars could scan down into a substantial stretch of the Colorado River, and two small waterfalls flowing out of cliff-side drainage across the river. Upriver her view took in the stream flowing in from the Little Colorado, forming
the deep, cool pool of bluish water near the Salt Woman Shrine and lightening the muddy tone of the Colorado.

More important, she could see the spot where Sergeant Chee had commanded her to await his return. Well, the sergeant hadn’t returned from his hunt downriver. Nor did Cowboy Dashee seem to be back from his excursion up the river. No sign of Tuve, either. Unless he had come and gone again. For that matter, maybe Chee and Dashee had been back and were off again hunting for her.

Bernie felt a touch of uneasy guilt. Jim really hadn’t asked much of her. Just to help out a little on their mission of mercy for Billy Tuve. She could have postponed her botanical research project. Jim’s opinion of her would be dented some if he returned and found her missing.

But that twinge of guilt was quickly submerged under another thought. Unlikely as it seemed, maybe they had actually found what they were looking for—the haunt of this fellow who had, so they believed, dished out diamonds to passersby. Perhaps they had reached their goal and just hadn’t bothered to come and invite her to join in the excitement of the discovery. Or maybe Chee had broken a leg climbing the rocks. Or Dashee had been hurt and Chee had gone to help him. Or maybe they were just looking longer, and being slower, than she had expected.

Bernie had found her bird-watching binoculars in a military surplus store in Albuquerque, and they had been designed for a more serious purpose, being much more optically powerful than normal bird-watchers need, and much heavier than anything they would want to lug around on their walks. She lowered them. Wiped the perspiration from her eyebrows, relaxed her wrists for a
moment, and then raised them again for another look.

A man walked right into her circle of view. He took a water bottle out of the pocket on the side of his trouser leg, pushed off his hat, and took a drink. The man was big and blond and looked young. He was also barefoot. Bernie watched him walk gingerly through the hot sand to the boulder where she had rested. He sat on it, reached into the shade behind it, and extracted a pair of hiking boots. He pulled the socks out of the boots, massaged each foot carefully, and then reshod himself.

Who could he be? Probably just another tourist. But maybe not. River runners boating down the Colorado were not allowed to drop people off here, out of deference to the Hopi religious sites. He could have walked down, of course. He was still massaging his feet and that suggested that he might have. But the Salt Trail was the only fairly easy access and it, too, was forbidden to him without Hopi permission and an escort.

Bernie left him caring for his feet and rescanned the scene around her. Still no sign of Jim, Cowboy, Billy Tuve, or anyone else. The only sign of life she detected was a herd of four horses taking their leisure under the shade of what seemed to be Russian olive trees across the river. She switched her binoculars back to the blond man. He had his hat on now and a pair of binoculars—even larger than hers—to his eyes. He seemed to be slowly and methodically scanning the slopes around him. Back and forth, up and down, looking for something. For what?

Bernie had a sudden and alarming thought that he might be looking for her. That he might have already spotted her. That he might be someone who had seen one of those posters Chee and Dashee had talked about, offering
the reward for recovering the bones. That he might be somebody involved in whatever had caused Washington to nudge the FBI into this. That he might be dangerous.

Bernie got up, took another look at the place where Chee had abandoned her near the Salt Woman Shrine. Cautious now, barely peeking over the edge of the stone shelf.

The big blond man had his back turned toward her now, looking the other way, apparently studying the higher reaches of the Salt Trail. Waiting for Tuve, she guessed. And that thought reminded her of
Waiting for Godot
, and the time they had wasted in her Literature 411 class discussing whether Godot would ever arrive, and what difference it would make if he did. And now wasn’t she sort of a perfect match for Beckett’s ridiculous characters?

To hell with it. She would find Chee and tell him she was going home. Or wherever she could get from here. Or maybe just turn this into a sort of botanical field trip and let the sergeant and the deputy sheriff chase their mythological diamond dispenser on their own.

Climbing down the rock slide from her high perch was easier than ascending it, but trickier. And when she reached the bottom, she found a woman standing there, watching her and waiting.

“Girl,” the woman said, “you shouldn’t be here. Here it is dangerous for you.”

Which left Bernie wordless for a moment. She mumbled the Navajo “Ye eeh teh” greeting, produced a sort of hesitant smile, dusted off her jeans, examined the hand she had scraped on the climb down, and glanced up. The woman was small and elderly, with a dark, weatherworn face and long white hair. She wore a long skirt of much-bleached denim, a long blue shirt, and carried a canvas bag on a strap over her shoulder. A Hopi, maybe, or one of the Supai from across the river, or perhaps from another of the Pueblo people.

Bernie held out her hand. “I am Bernadette Manuelito,” she said. “But why is it dangerous?”

“People who don’t know Hopi talk, they call me
Mary,” the woman said. “But you are a Navajo, I think. Not just a tourist. I saw you near the Salt Woman Shrine by the blue pool. That is a place for the Hopi holy people. Not for…Not for people not initiated into a kiva.”

Bernie was embarrassed. “But I came there with a Hopi. A Hopi who belongs to one of the kivas that come down the trail to collect salt and colored clay for its ceremonials. He said it was all right.”

The woman considered that, her expression stern, but her eyes were on Bernie’s injured hand.

“It bleeds,” she said. “Where did you cut it?”

“I slipped climbing down,” Bernie said. “I tried to catch myself. Cut it on a rock.”

“I have a salve for that at home,” the woman said. “I sold it where I worked at Peach Springs and it heals cuts very quickly.” She smiled a wry smile. “Long time ago. I got tired of talking to tourists all the time.”

Bernie opened her backpack and took out her half-empty water bottle. “You think I should wash it off?” she asked. “Get the dirt out of it?”

“Is that all the drinking water you have?”

Bernie nodded. “I’ve been walking a lot. I guess I should have saved more.”

“Up that little canyon there”—the woman pointed—“is a little spring where the water seeps out. It is bitter with what it washes out of the rock. It makes you sick if you drink it. But it would be good for washing that cut.”

“I’ll do that,” Bernie said.

The woman pointed at the bottle. “That’s all you have to drink? For how long is that?”

“I’m not sure. Someone is supposed to come and
meet me up there near the Salt Woman Shrine. I hope pretty soon.”

“Was he a man? He’s already there.”

Jim had come back! Bernie felt a wave of relief. Followed immediately by apprehension. “A handsome young Navajo policeman? But not wearing his uniform?”

The old woman laughed. “Not any Navajo policeman,” she said. “Not unless you have big white-haired Navajo men with blue eyes. But he had a gun like a policeman.”

“You saw a gun?”

“A pistol. He was looking at it. Then putting it back under his belt.”

“Oh,” Bernie said. She looked at the old woman, and the old woman looked at her. Nodded.

“Some sort of trouble?” the woman said. “Maybe man trouble. That’s usually it. So you don’t want to go up there right now, is that right? Until the right man comes to meet you.”

“Something like that,” Bernie said.

The woman smiled. “Then I should give you some more drinking water, daughter. Give you some more time to wait before you dry up. But you should go back down to the big river to wait for your Navajo policeman. Up here it is dangerous.”

Bernie nodded.

The woman swung the bag off her shoulder. It was one of those canvas canteens that dry-country cowboys and sheep herders hang from their saddles. She pointed to Bernie’s bottle, said, “I will share with you.”

“Thank you, Mary,” Bernie said. “Do you have enough?”

The woman laughed. “I’m not waiting for a man,” she said. “I’m going home. You should be doing that. Not staying so close to where the danger is.”

Bernie held out her bottle. Thinking while the woman filled it about the pistol she had seen, and about what she, Bernie, seemed to be getting into here.

“This danger,” Bernie said. “Could you tell me what it is?”

Mary considered this. “Have you heard about the Hopi? How we came to be on this Earth Surface World? About our kachinas? Any of that?”

“Some of it,” Bernie said. “My mother’s father told me something, and my uncle knew something about it. He’s a hatalii. A singer.”

Mary looked skeptical.

“I guess it was just what they had heard from friends,” Bernie said. “Nothing secret.”

“You know about Masaw? The one some people call the Skeleton Man?”

“I heard he was the Guardian Spirit of the Hopis on this Earth Surface World.”

Mary nodded. “This Glittering World,” she said.

“Wasn’t he the spirit who greeted the Hopi people when they emerged out of the dark worlds into this one? The one who told you to make migrations to the four directions and then you would find the Center Place of the World? And you should live there? Up on the Hopi Mesas?”

Mary was smiling. “Well,” she said. “I guess that’s a version of a little bit of it. The way people in the Bear Clan tell it, anyway. What else have you heard?”

“I read in the book Frank Waters wrote that when
Masaw met the people emerging from the underworld, his face was all bloody. That he was a fearsome-looking kachina. And that he taught you not to be afraid to die. I think you called him the Death Kachina.”

Mary nodded. “Or sometimes the Skeleton Man. And some of the old people tell us that in another way,” she said. “In those dark first three worlds we were forced out because of horrible crowding. People kept making babies but nobody ever died. We were jammed in together so tight, they say, that you couldn’t spit without spitting on somebody else. Could hardly move. People just kept creating more people. Twin brothers were leaders of the people then. They found a way to grow a reed through the roof of the first dark world for us to the second one, and then, when it got too crowded, on into the third one, and finally into this one. But still nobody ever died until Masaw taught people not to be afraid of death.”

Bernie had heard something like this in one of her anthropology classes, but not this version.

“How did he do that?” she asked.

“One of the clan leaders had a beautiful daughter who was killed by another little girl. Out of jealousy. And that caused trouble between families. So Masaw opened the earth so the clan leader could see his daughter in the world beyond this one. She was laughing, happy, playing, singing her prayers.”

“That sounds like the Christian heaven,” Bernie said. “Our Navajo beliefs—most of them, anyway—aren’t so specific. But you were going to tell me why it’s dangerous for me here.”

“Because up there…” She paused, shook her head, pointed up the canyon. “Up there, they say, is where the
Skeleton Man lives. Up there in the biggest canyon that runs into this one. Comes in from the left. They say he painted a symbol on the cliff where it enters. The symbol for the Skeleton Man.” Mary knelt, drew in the sand with her finger. The shape she formed meant nothing to Bernie.

“Is the danger because that place is where Masaw, or the Skeleton Man, is living?” Bernie asked, feeling uneasy. “Is that spirit dangerous to people like me?”

Mary shook her head, looking troubled. “Everything gets so mixed up,” she said. “The Supai people have their ideas, and the Paiutes come in here with different ideas, and the priests and the preachers and even the Peyote People tell us things. But I’ve been hearing that it might be some man, even older than me now. Nobody knew who his parents were. He used to come to Peach Springs and kept telling stories about how Masaw was the one who caused all those bodies to come falling down here into the canyon. Said Masaw made those planes run together. And this man was trying to get people to change their religions around and believe like him. I think he’s the one who started calling Masaw the Skeleton Man.”

Mary stopped, shook her head, laughed. “When I was just a young woman, he came around to the village and showed us tricks. He had this little deer-skin pollen bag he’d hold up in the sunlight. Like this.” She held her right hand high above her head and pinched her thumb and fingers together. “He told us to notice how ugly and brown the pollen pouch looked. That’s how this life is, he’d say, but look what you get if you’re willing to get rid of this life. To get out of it. And then the pollen sack would turn into this glittering thing sitting on the end of his fingers.”

She stared at Bernie, her expression questioning, looking for Bernie’s reaction.

“Amazing,” Bernie said. She was thinking how the trick might have been done—the thumb and forefinger squeezing the diamond out of the pouch, the pouch disappearing into the palm.

“I saw it myself,” Mary said. “That sack just glittered and glittered as he turned it in the sunlight.”

“Then what happened?”

“I don’t remember exactly. But in a little while, he was holding the pollen pouch again, and it didn’t glitter anymore.”

“Fascinating,” Bernie said.

“My uncle told me he thought it was some sort of trick, but this man said the Skeleton Man gave it to him to prove to people they should be willing to die. The ugly brown pollen pouch was like the life they were living now. After they died, it would be bright and shiny.”

“Where did this man come from? Does what he was telling you fit in with what they teach in your kiva?”

“I don’t remember as much about the old times as I should,” Mary said, looking sad. “I know I was taught them when I was little, but all those years up at Peach Springs talking with all kinds of other people, I forget them. And they got mixed in with other stuff. But I know that even though Masaw looked horrible—they say his face was all covered with blood—he was a friend of the people in some ways.”

“Like teaching them not to be afraid to die?”

“Like that,” Mary said, smiling. “I remember my mother used to tell that to me. That just two things we know for certain. That we’re born and in a little while we
die. It’s what we do in the time between that matters. That’s what the One Who Made Us thinks about when he decides what happens to us next.”

Bernie considered that. Nodded. “I think all of us are pretty much alike, whatever our tribe and whatever color we are,” she said.

“Everybody also has sense enough to stay away from places that are dangerous,” Mary said, staring at Bernie. “Like not poking at a coiled snake with your hand.”

Bernie nodded.

“Like not trying to go up where the Skeleton Man lives,” Mary added.

“Unless you really need to go. To see if you can save a man who will get locked up in prison if you don’t find something there,” Bernie said.

Mary took a very deep breath, exhaled it. “So you’ll go up that canyon anyway?”

“I have to.”

Mary pointed up the canyon. “There’s a narrow slot in the cliff wall to your left around that corner. Then on the right, farther up, you’ll find another slot, a little wider, and a trickle of water sometimes is flowing out of it. But it’s blocked with rocks where part of the cliff fell down, and around those rocks there’s the thick brush of the cat’s claw bushes. You can’t get through that without getting all bloody.”

Bernie nodded.

“Girl,” Mary said. “You should not go. But be very careful. If you need help, no one would ever find you.”