People Of Darkness

31

THEY BUILT THE FIRE in the crevasse between two of the great fallen slabs in a sheltered cul-de-sac protected from the wind. Chee had picked the spot carefully and then had made a walking circuit, assuring himself that no light, even dimly reflected, was visible. The blond man had driven away toward the Bisti road. Chee had watched the truck lights moving eastward until finally they no longer reappeared through the falling snow. The blond man probably wouldn’t return. There was no reason for him to do so. But he might.

Now, finally, they were out of the wind. Mary Landon sat across from him, back against the vertical stone, her denimed legs stretched straight in front of her. Above them the wind gusted past the butte top with a hooting noise. Between these walls of fallen stone, it only caused the fire to flicker. But Mary shivered and hugged herself.

“I think it was a mistake,” she said, “leaving that note about Mr. Vines.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Mary said. “Because maybe he’ll go and shoot Vines – and you don’t know for sure Vines killed anyone. You don’t have any proof.”

“I know for sure,” Chee said.

“You don’t have anything to prove it with. You’re not a judge.”

Chee thought about that. The firelight was red, burning the rosin of dead piñon. It reflected on Mary Landon’s face, casting deep shadows where her hair fell across her forehead.

“Yes,” Chee said, “I am a judge. If the blond man kills Vines, then that’s justice. But he’s not going to kill Vines. He won’t have time. He can’t get there tonight because of the weather. If we get three inches of snow down here, there’ll be two feet of it up on Mount Taylor. The road won’t be open until they get a snowplow on it – and that won’t be until tomorrow morning. They’ll be using the snowplows where there’s more traffic.”

“Still, you don’t have any right to…”

“We don’t have much violence, we Navajos. What there is is mostly associated with witchcraft. Changing Woman taught us how to cope with the Navajo Wolves. We turn the evil around so it works against the witch.”

“But first you have to know for sure he’s the witch,” Mary said.

The snow started again, larger flakes now. The wind moaned around the butte top and the snowflakes eddied and swirled above them, lit by the redness of the fire. Some settled into the cul-de-sac. They landed on Chee’s knee, on Mary’s hair, on stone surfaces. Some drifted into the fire and vanished – cold touched by the magic of heat.

It was going to be a long, frigid night, and there was nothing that could be done until there was a little light. When it was light, the pipeline companies would be scouting their collection systems to make sure the abrupt drop in temperature had cracked no exposed metal, separated no joints, jammed no valves. The little slow-flying planes would be up looking for signs of gas leaks. Whatever those signs were. Spurts of blowing dust, Chee guessed. He remembered they had crossed the El Paso Natural Gas trunkline between Bisti and the butte. When dawn came, they would walk to it and build a smoky fire and wait to be spotted. Until then there was nothing to be done, except help time pass, avoid freezing, and think.

“I am born a Slow Talking People,” Chee said. “I’m also a member of the Red Forehead Clan because my father was one. And I’m co

“I never heard about that,” Mary said. “I thought for a minute you were changing the subject. But you’re not, are you?”

“I’m not,” Chee said. “Lebeck decided to be a witch. He destroyed himself. And he came back.”

Mary was frowning at him. “Lebeck? The geologist at the oil well?”

“Yes; the geologist,” Chee said. “Think about what we know. We know the oil well was drilled through uranium, because the Red Deuce is now mining that deposit where the oil well stood. Lebeck was what they call the ‘well logger’ – the one who inspects samples of the rock they’re drilling through and maps the deposits. Very shallow, maybe down just fifty feet or so, the bit goes through pitchblende, a thick layer of the very richest uranium ore. So Lebeck suddenly knows something that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. How can he cash it in? He can cash it in only if, this oil lease is allowed to expire. Then he can file his own mineral lease claim. So he falsifies the log.”

Mary was leaning forward, intent. “Hey,” she said. “You looked at the log. Did he? Why didn’t you tell me? How could you tell?”

Chee made a wry face. “I couldn’t tell,” he said. “I checked out that log and a couple of other ones from other wells drilled in Valencia County, and they all looked about alike. The oil companies were all looking for a shallow oil sand, just down about two thousand feet. I was looking for God knows what down at the bottom of the well, down at the end where they were deciding to shoot the tubing with the nitro. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I didn’t see anything.”

“But you should have seen something,” Mary said slowly. “You should have seen they’d drilled through the uranium ore.”

“Exactly!” Chee said. “I’ve heard that Red Deuce deposit is a couple of hundred feet deep. It should have been noted on the log.” Chee felt an overpowering urge to smoke. He hadn’t had a possibility of lighting a cigaret since the blond man’s arrival at the butte. He fished out a Pall Mall, offered it to Mary. She shook her head. He lit it.

“Those things will kill you,” Mary said.

“Actually, I think now he must have falsified the log twice. Once when they drilled through the ore and again at the end. I think they found the oil sand they were looking for, and Lebeck put it down as something else and had them drill right through it. Or maybe he had the log show they were drilling into a geological formation which should be below the oil sand – which would mean the sand didn’t exist at this particular place. Anyway, he wanted them to shut down the well and let the lease lapse, so he could get a lease on it himself. If they struck oil, the lease would be renewed by the oil company and he would never get the uranium. So when the company decided to shoot the well, Lebeck must have known there was a good chance that would start the oil flowing. He couldn’t risk that.” Chee inhaled a lungful of smoke and let it trickle from between his lips. It made blue swirls in the slowly moving air, drifting upward while the white flakes drifted down. Far above at the butte top, the north wind, the evil wind, began hooting again. Chee puffed out the last of the smoke, destroying the pattern with his breath. “And so Lebeck decided to blow everything, and everyone, sky high. Lebeck decided to become a witch.”

He glanced at Mary.

“To die, or seem to die, and to come back as B. J. Vines,” she said.

“Yes,” Chee said.

“But when the nitro truck arrived, something went wrong. Dillon Charley’s crew didn’t show up for work.”

“How did Dillon Charley know?”

“The Lord Peyote told him in a vision,” Chee said. “Or perhaps Lebeck warned him – which I doubt. Or perhaps Dillon Charley saw things that made him nervous. I think Charley was a very perceptive man. Mrs. Vines told me that her husband and Dillon Charley were friends – had a sort of rapport. Perhaps that was already true when Vines was Lebeck.” Chee shrugged. “Who knows? Lord Peyote, or nervousness about nitroglycerin, or what? Anyway, he didn’t show up that day, and he warned his crew away. I think Lebeck wanted them all there. No one else around here knew him. No one else would recognize him as Vines. But he didn’t have any choice. The nitro truck came. He had to act then or never.”