Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] (16 page)

Killing a frog was a taboo, but a minor one. A personal chant would cure the guilt and restore beauty. Why had the death of this frog been weighted so heavily? Because, Leaphorn guessed, Tso associated it with the other, grimmer sacrilege. Had there been frogs near the place where the sand paintings were desecrated? Leaphorn glanced again at the mesa, where his common sense suggested that Father Tso and Theodora Adams must have gone—and away from the dead-end waste of canyons which led absolutely nowhere except—if you followed them far—under the drowning waters of Lake Powell. Yet, Leaphorn thought, if the man who had killed Hosteen Tso had failed to see Listening Woman, he must have gone into the canyons. And if there was a secret place nearby where the sand paintings and the medicine bundle of the Way to Cure the World’s End had waited out the generations, it might well be in a deep, dry cave and caves again meant the canyons.

Finally, the mesa offered no water, and thus no possibility of frogs.

Leaphorn—walking fast—headed for the canyon rim. The branch canyon that skirted past the Tso hogan was perhaps eighty vertical feet from the cap rock to its sandy bottom. The trail that connected the two had been cut by goats at a steep angle and at the bottom Leaphorn found tracks which proved to him he had guessed right. The rocks were dry now and the humans—humanlike— had avoided the rainwater puddles between them. But the dog had not. At several places Leaphorn found traces left by its wet paws. They led down the narrow slot, and here a narrow strip of sand was wet. Two persons had stepped in it—perhaps three. Large feet and a small foot. Adams and Father Tso? Adams and Goldrims? Had the party included a third member, who had stepped from rock to rock and left no footprints?

Leaphorn turned to the spring. It was little more than a seep, emerging from a moss-covered crack and dripping into a catch basin which Tso had probably dug out. There were no frogs here, and no sign of a rock slide. Leaphorn tasted the water. It was cold, with a slightly mineral taste. He drank deeply, wiped his mouth, and began walking as quietly as he could down the hard-packed sand of the canyon bottom.

Leaphorn had been walking almost three hours, slowly, cautiously, trying to follow tracks in the gathering darkness, when he heard the sound. It stopped him, and he held his breath, listening. It was a soprano sound, made by something living— human or otherwise. It came from a long distance, lasted perhaps three or four seconds, cut off abruptly in midnote, and was followed by a confusion of echoes.

Leaphorn stood on the sand of the canyon bottom, analyzing the diminishing echoes. A human voice? Perhaps the high-pitched scream of a bobcat? It seemed to come from the place where this canyon drained into a larger canyon about 150 yards below him. But whether it originated up or down the larger canyon, or across it, or above it, Leaphorn could only guess. The echoes had been chaotic. He listened a moment longer and heard nothing. The sound seemed to have startled even the insects and the insect-hunting evening birds.

Leaphorn began to run as quietly as he could toward the canyon mouth, the whisper of his bootsoles on the sand the only sound in an eerie silence. At the junction he stopped, looking right and left. He had been in the canyons long enough to develop an unusual and unsettling sense of disorientation—of not knowing exactly where he was in terms of either direction or landmarks. He understood its cause: a horizon which rose vertically overhead and the constant turning of the corridors sliced through the stone. Understanding it made it no more comfortable. Leaphorn, who had never been lost in his life, didn’t know exactly where he was. He could tell he was moving approximately northward. But he wasn’t sure he could retrace his way directly back to the Tso hogan without wasting steps. That uncertainty added to his general uneasiness. Far overhead, the clifftops still glowed with the light of the sunset’s afterglow, but here it was almost dark. Leaphorn sat on a boulder, fished a cigaret out of a package in his shirt pocket, and held it under his nose. He inhaled the aroma of the tobacco, and then slipped it back into the pack. He would not make a light. He simply sat, letting his senses work for him. He was hungry. He put that thought aside. On earth level the breeze had died, as it often did in the desert twilight.

Here, two hundred feet below the earth’s surface, the air moved down-canyon, pressed by the cooling atmosphere from the slopes above.

Leaphorn heard the song of insects, the chirping of rock crickets, and now and then the call of an owl. A bullbat swept past him, hunting mosquitoes, oblivious of the motionless man. Once again Leaphorn became aware of the distant steady murmur of the river. It was nearer now, and the noise of water over rock was funneled and concentrated by the cliffs. No more than a mile and a half away, he guessed. Normally the thin, dry air of desert country carries few smells. But the air at canyon bottom was damp, so Leaphorn could identify the smell of wet sand, the resinous aroma of cedar, the vague perfume of pinon needles, and a dozen scents too faint for identification. The afterglow faded from the clifftops. Time ticked away, bringing to the waiting man sounds and smells, but no repetition of the shout, if shout it had been, and nothing to hint at where Goldrims might have gone. Stars appeared in the slot overhead. First one, glittering alone, and then a dozen, and hundreds, and millions. The stars of the constellation Ursa Minor became visible, and Leaphorn felt the relief of again knowing his direction exactly. Abruptly he pushed himself upright, listening.

From his left, down the dark canyon, came a faint rhythm of sound.

Frogs greeting the summer night. He walked slowly, placing his feet carefully, moving down the canyon toward the almost imperceptible sound of the frogs. The darkness gave him an advantage. While it canceled sight, the night magnified the value of hearing. If it had kept Tso’s secrets for a hundred years, the cave must be hidden from sight. But if there were people in it, they would— unless they slept—produce sound. The darkness would hide him, and he could move almost without noise down the sand of the canyon floor. But there was also a disadvantage. The dog. If the dog was out in the canyon, it would smell him two hundred yards away. Leaphorn assumed that the cave would be somewhere up the cliff wall, as caves tended to be, and in this damp air, his scent would probably not rise. If the dog was in the cave, Leaphorn could go undetected. Nevertheless, he drew his pistol and walked with it in his hand, its hammer held on half cock and the safety catch off. He walked tensely, stopping every few yards both to listen and to make sure that his breathing remained slow and low. He heard very little: the faint sound of his own bootsoles placed carefully on the sand, the distant barking of a coyote hunting somewhere on the surface above, the occasional call of a night bird, and finally, as the evening breeze rose, the breathing of air moving around the rocks, all against the background music of frog song. Once he was startled by a sudden scurrying of a rodent. And then, midstride, he heard a voice. He stood motionless, straining to hear more. It had been a man’s voice—coming from somewhere down the canyon, saying something terse. Three or four quick words. Leaphorn looked around him, identifying his location.

Just down the canyon bottom, he could make out the shape of a granite outcropping. The canyon bent here, turning abruptly to the right around the granite. To his left, at his elbow, the cliff wall split, forming a narrow declivity in which brush grew. Checking his surroundings was an automatic precaution, typical of Leaphorn— making sure that he could find this place again in daylight. That done, he renewed his concentrated listening. He heard in the darkness the sound of running, and of panting breath. It was coming directly toward him. In a split second the adrenal glands flooded his blood. Leaphorn managed to thumb back the pistol hammer to full cock, and half raise the .38. Then looming out of the darkness came the bulk of the dog, eyes and teeth reflecting the starlight in a strange wet whiteness. Leaphorn was able to lunge sideways toward the split cliff, and jerk the trigger. Amid the thunder of the pistol shot, the dog was on him. It struck him shoulder-high.

Because of Leaphorn’s lunge, the impact was glancing. Instead of being knocked on his back, the animal atop him, he was spun sideways against the cliff. The beast’s teeth tore at his jacket instead of his throat, and the momentum of its leap carried it past him.

Leaphorn found himself in the crevasse, scrambling frantically upward over boulders and brush. The dog, snarling now for the first time, had recovered itself and was into the crevasse after him.

Leaphorn pulled himself desperately upward, with the dog just below him—far enough below him to make Leaphorn’s dangling legs safe by a matter of perhaps a yard. He gripped a root of some sort with his right hand and felt carefully with his left and found a higher handhold. He squirmed upward, reaching a narrow shelf. There the dog couldn’t possibly reach him. He turned and looked down. In this crevasse, the darkness of the canyon bottom became total. He could see nothing below him. But the animal was there; its snarl had become a frustrated yipping. Leaphorn took a deep breath, held it a moment, released it—recovering from his panic. He felt the nausea of a system overloaded with adrenaline. There was no time for sickness, or for the anger which was now replacing fear. He was safe for the moment from the dog, but he was totally exposed to the dog’s owner. He made a quick inventory of his situation. His pistol was gone. The animal had struck him as he swung it upward and had knocked it from his hand. He hadn’t, apparently, hit the dog, but the blast of the shot must have at least surprised and deafened it— and given Leaphorn time. No worry about concealment now. He unhooked his flashlight from his belt and surveyed his situation. The dog was standing, its forepaws against the rock, just below him. It was as huge as Leaphorn expected. He was neither knowledgeable nor particularly interested in dogs, but this one, he guessed, was a mongrel cross between some of the biggest breeds; Irish wolfhound and Great Dane perhaps. Whatever the mix, it had produced a shaggy coat, a frame taller than a man’s when the dog stood as it now stood, on its hind legs, and a massive, ugly head. Leaphorn inspected the declivity into which he had climbed. It slanted steeply upward, apparently an old crack opened by an earth tremor in the cliff.

Runoff water had drained down it, debris had tumbled into it, and an assortment of cactus, creosote bush, rabbit brush and weeds had taken root amid the boulders. It had two advantages—it offered a hiding place and was too steep for the dog to climb. Its disadvantage overrode both of these. It was a trap. The only way out was past the dog. Leaphorn felt around him for a rock of proper throwing size. The one he managed to pull loose from between the two boulders on which he was perched was smaller than he wanted—about the size of a small, flattened orange. He shifted the flashlight to his left hand and the rock to his right, and examined his target.

The dog was snarling again. Its teeth and its eyes gleamed in the reflected light. He must hit it in the forehead, and hit it hard. He hurled the rock. It seemed to strike the dog between its left eye and ear. The animal yelped and retreated down the slope. At first he thought the dog had disappeared. Then he saw it, eyes reflecting the light, just outside the mouth of the crack. Still within accurate rock range. He fished behind him for another rock, and then quickly flicked off the light. On the canyon floor behind the dog he saw a glimmer of brightness—a flashlight beam bobbing with the walking pace of the person who held it. “There’s the dog,” a voice said.

“Don’t put the light on it, Tull. The son-of-a-bitch has a gun.” The flashlight beam abruptly blinked out. Leaphorn eased himself silently upward. He heard the same voice talking quietly to the dog.

And then a second voice: “He must be up in that crack there,” the man called Tull said. “The dog’s treed him.” The first voice said, “I told you that dog would earn his keep.”

“Up to now he’s been a pain in the butt,” Tull said. “The son-of-a-bitch scares me.”

“No reason for that,” the first voice said. “Lynch trained him himself.

He was the pride of Safety Systems.” The man laughed. “Or he was before I started slipping him food.”

“Hell,” Tull said. “Look what I just stepped on. It’s his gun! The dog took the bastard’s gun away from him.” There was a brief silence. “It’s the right one all right.

It’s been fired,” Tull said. The flashlight went on again.

Leaphorn’s reaching hand was exploring an opening between the boulders. He pulled himself further into the slot, stood cautiously and looked downward. He could see a circle of yellow light on the sandy canyon bottom and the legs of two men. Then the light flashed upward, its beam moving over the rocks and brush below him. He ducked back. The beam flashed past, lighting the space in which he stood with its reflection. To the left of where he was crouching, and above him, an immense slab had split away from the face of the cliff. Behind it there would be better cover and the faint possibility of a route to climb upward. The first voice was shouting up toward him. “You might as well come on down,” the voice said.

“We’ll hold the dog.” Leaphorn stood silent. “Come on,” the voice said. “You can’t get out of there and if you don’t come down we’re going to get sore about it.”

“We just want to talk to you,” the Tull voice said. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” The voices paused, waiting for an answer. The words echoed up and down the canyon, then died away. “It’s a police-issued pistol,” the first voice said. “Thirty-eight revolver. There’s just one shot fired. The one we heard.”

“A cop?”

“Yeah, I’d guess so. Maybe the one that came nosing around the old man’s hogan.”

“He’s not going to come down,” Tull said. “I don’t think he’s coming down.”

“No,” First Voice said.

“You want me to go up and get him?”

“Hell, no. He’d brain you with a rock. He’s above you and you couldn’t see it coming in the dark.”

“Yeah,” Tull said. “So we wait for morning?”