The Blessing Way

McKee crawled out of the thicket and picked up the rifle. It seemed incredibly heavy. The Big Navajo had slid, head downward, between two boulders. McKee looked at the man and hastily looked away. The pine shaft had struck him low on the chest. There was no chance at all that he was alive. The black hat lay by the boulder, the sun reflecting off the rich silver of its concho band. And up the slope was a furry bundle tied with a leather thong. McKee untied the thong. A wolf skin unrolled itself.

McKee felt a whirling dizziness. Always wanted a witch's skin. Hang it on my office wall. Maybe give it to Canfield.

He remembered, then, that Canfield was dead, and was conscious that his side was wet and his pant leg was sticking to his thigh. He put the wolf skin over his arm and started down the slope toward the canyon floor. He fell once. But he remembered Ellen Leon and got back to his feet. And finally he was on the sandy canyon floor, where walking was easy.

"Put down the rifle."

"What?" McKee said. A boy was standing behind a clump of willows. There was a horse by him, the reins dragging.

"Put down the rifle." The boy had on a red baseball cap and he had a short-barreled rifle in his hands. An old.30-30. It was pointed at McKee.

McKee dropped the Big Navajo's rifle. The wolf skin fell with it, dropping in a folded hump on the sand.

"Where's the other witch?"

"What?" McKee said. It was important to think about this. "He's dead," he said, after a moment. "He shot me and I killed him. Back up there under the rimrock." McKee pushed the wolf skin with his toes. "This is his witch skin," he said, speaking now in Navajo. "I am not a witch. I am one who teaches in school."

The boy was looking at him, his face expressionless.

"There is a truck a little ways up here," McKee said. "You must let me get to that truck and the man there will help me."

"All right." The boy hesitated, thinking. "You walk. I will walk behind you."

He was within thirty yards of the truck before he saw it—parked in a thicket of tamarisk and willow just off the canyon floor. Beside it a gasoline generator was ru

McKee stopped.

"Hello," he shouted. It didn't sound like his voice.

McKee took two more steps toward the truck, conscious the whistling had stopped.

A man appeared in the doorway of the van, blond, in a denim jacket, taller than McKee and younger, with a hearing aid behind his left ear. His blue eyes rested for a second on McKee, registering surprise and shock.

"What the hell happened?" he said. And then he was out of the truck, coming toward McKee.

"Got shot," McKee said. "Somebody shot me." His voice sounded thick. "Get the bleeding stopped." He sat down abruptly on the sand.

The blond man was saying something.

"Don't talk," McKee said. "Listen. Are you Jim Hall?"

"How did you know that?"

"Listen," McKee said. "Tell this boy here that I'm not a witch and he will help you." He paused now and started again, trying to pronounce the words.

"Ellen Leon was shot, too. Ellen Leon. She's up at that big cliff dwelling in a canyon…" McKee tried to think. "In that canyon that runs into Many Ruins south and west of here."

The man was squatting beside McKee now, his face close. McKee had trouble focusing on the face. The face was surprised, amazed, excited, maybe frightened.

"You said Ellen?" the man said. "What the devil is she doing out here? What happened to her?"

"Man shot her. Needs help." McKee said. "Go help her."

"Who shot her?" the man asked.

"Man named Eddie." McKee said. He was very tired. Why didn't this fool go? "Don't worry," he said, "Eddie's dead now." He heard the man asking him something but he couldn't think of an answer. And then the man's hands were on his face, the man was talking right into his face.

"Listen. Tell me. What happened to Eddie? What happened to Eddie? And was there a man with him? Where's the man who was with him?"

McKee couldn't think of how to answer. Something was wrong.

He tried to say, "Dead," but Jim Hall was talking again.

"Answer me, damn you," Hall said, his voice fierce. "Do the police know about this? Has anybody told the police?"

McKee thought he would answer in a moment. Now he was concentrating on not falling over on his side.

Hall stood up. He was talking to the boy with the red baseball cap, and then the boy was talking. McKee could hear part of it.

"Did you see the witch he killed?"

He couldn't hear what the boy answered.

"You were right when you guessed that," Hall was saying. This man here is a Navajo Wolf. Give me your rifle."

McKee stopped listening. He was asking himself how Jim Hall knew about the man with Eddie, asking himself why Hall was acting the way he was acting. Almost immediately, with sick, despairing clarity, he saw the answer. Hall was the Big Navajo's other man.

The boy hadn't given Hall the rifle. He was standing there, looking doubtful.

"Put the rifle in the truck then," Hall said. "We'll leave the witch here. Tie him up first. And then we'll drive to Chinle and tell the police about him." Hall paused. "Hand me the rifle and I'll put it in the truck."

"Don't," McKee said. "Don't give him the rifle."

Hall turned to look at him. McKee focused on the face. It looked angry. And then it didn't look angry any more. Another voice had said something, something in Navajo.

It said, "That's right, Billy Nez, don't give him your rifle." And the anger left Jim Hall's face as McKee looked at it, and it looked shocked and sick. Then it was gone.

McKee gave up. He fell over on his side. Much better.

The metallic sound of the door in the van slamming and then a voice, the voice of Joe Leaphorn, and a little later a single loud pop.

I can't faint now, McKee told himself, because I have to tell him about Ellen. But he fainted.

Chapter 18

He was aware first of the vague sick smell of ether, of the feel of hospital sheets, of the cast on his chest, and of the splint bandaged tightly on his right hand. The room was dark. There was the shape of a man standing looking out the window into the sunlight. The man was Joe Leaphorn.

"Did you find her?" McKee asked.

"Sure," Leaphorn said. He sat beside the bed. "We found her before we found you, as a matter of fact." He interrupted McKee's question. "She's right down the hall. Broken cheekbone and a broken shoulder and some lost blood."

He looked down at McKee, gri

"She's going to be all right?"

"She's already all right. You've been in here two days."

McKee thought for a while.

"Her boyfriend," he said. "How'd it all come out in the canyon?"

"Son of a bitch shot himself," Leaphorn said. "Walked right away from me into the truck, and slammed the door and locked it and got out a little.22 he had in there and shot himself right through the forehead." Leaphorn's expression was sour. "Walked right in with me just standing there," he added. He didn't sound like he could make himself believe it.

McKee felt sick. Maybe it was the ether.

"You've got more Navajo blood in you now than I do," Leaphorn said. "The doc said you had a busted oil pan. Took ten gallons."

"I guess you had to tell her about Hall."

"She knows."

"He must have been crazy," McKee said.

"Crazy to get rich," Leaphorn said. "You call it ambition. Sometimes we call it witchcraft. You remember the Origin Myth, when First Woman sent the Heron diving back into the Fourth World to get the witchcraft bundle. She told him to swim down and bring back 'the way to make money.'"