Cowboy's face was incredulous. "I'm not going to tell him that," he said.
"Why not?" Chee asked.
Sawkatewa said something in Hopi. Cowboy responded tersely.
"He got some of it," Cowboy said. "Why not? Because, God damn it, just think about it a minute."
"Who's going to know but us?" Chee asked. "You like that windmill?"
Cowboy shrugged.
"Then tell him."
Cowboy translated. Sawkatewa listened intently, his eyes on Chee.
Then he spoke three words.
"He wants to know when."
"Tell him I want to buy the cement away from the reservation—maybe in Cameron or Flagstaff. Tell him it will be at the windmill two nights from now."
Cowboy told him. The old man's hands rediscovered the wool and the spindle in the beer carton and resumed their work. Cowboy and Chee waited. The old man didn't speak until he had filled the spindle. Then he spoke for a long time.
"He said it is true he can see pretty good in the dark, but not as good as when he was a boy. He said he heard someone driving up Wepo Wash and he went down there to see what was happening. When he got there a man was putting out a row of lanterns on the sand, with another man holding a gun on him. When this was finished, the man who had put out the lanterns sat beside the car and the other man stood there, still pointing the gun." Cowboy stopped abruptly, asked a question, and got an answer.
"It was a little gun, he says. A pistol. In a little while an airplane came over very low to the ground and the man on the ground got up and flashed a flashlight off and on. Little later, the plane came back again. Fellow flashes his light again, and then—just after the airplane crashes—the man with the pistol shoots the man with the flashlight. The airplane hit the rock. The man with the gun takes the flashlight and looks around the airplane some. Then he goes and collects all the lanterns and puts them in the car, except for one. That one he leaves on the rock so he can see something. Then he starts taking things out of the airplane. Then he puts the body of the man he shot up against the rock and gets into the car and drives away. Then Sawkatewa says he went to the plane to see, and he hears you running up, so he goes away."
"What did the man unload out of the airplane?"
Cowboy relayed the question. Sawkatewa made a shape with his hands, perhaps thirty inches long, perhaps eighteen inches high, and provided a description in Hopi with a few English words thrown in. Chee recognized "aluminum" and "suitcase."
"He said there were two things that looked like aluminum suitcases. About so"—Cowboy demonstrated an aluminum suitcase with his hands—"by so."
"He didn't say what he did with them," Chee said. "Put them in the car, I guess."
Cowboy asked.
Sawkatewa shook his head. Spoke. Cowboy looked surprised.
"He said he didn't think he put them in the car."
"Didn't put the suitcases in the car? What the hell did he do with them?"
Sawkatewa spoke again without awaiting a translation.
"He said he disappeared in the dark with them. Just gone a little while. Off in the darkness where he couldn't see anything."
"How long is a little while? Three minutes? Five? It couldn't have been very long. I got there about twenty minutes after the plane hit."
Cowboy relayed the question. Sawkatewa shrugged. Thought. Said something.
"About as long as it takes to boil an egg hard. That's what he says."
"What did the man look like?"
Sawkatewa had not been close enough to see him well in the bad light. He saw only shape and movement.
Outside, the rain had gone now. Drifted off to the east. They could hear it muttering its threats and promises back over Black Mesa. But the village stones dripped with water, and muddy rivulets ran here and there over the stone track, and the rocks reflected wet in the headlights of Cowboy's car. Maybe a quarter inch, Chee thought. A heavy shower, but not a real rain. Enough to dampen the dust, and wash things off, and help a little. Most important, there had to be a first rain before the rainy season could get going.
"You think he knows what he's talking about?" Cowboy asked. "You think that guy didn't load the dope into the car?"
"I think he told us what he saw," Chee said.
"Doesn't make sense," Cowboy said. He pulled the patrol car out of a skid on the slick track. "You really going to haul that cement out there for him to plug up the well?"
"I refuse to answer on grounds that it might tend to incriminate me," Chee said.
"Hell," Cowboy said. "That won't do me any good. You got me in so deep now, I'm just going to pretend I never heard any of that."
"I'll pretend, too," Chee said.
"If he didn't haul those suitcases off in that car, how the devil did he haul them out?"
"I don't know," Chee said. "Maybe he didn't."
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chee had noticed the tracks when he first turned off the asphalt onto the graded dirt road which passed the Burnt Water Trading Post and wandered northeastward up Wepo Wash. The tracks meant only that someone was up even earlier than he was. They meant a vehicle had come this way since last night's shower. It was only when he noticed the tread marks on the damp sand on the wash bottom that he became interested. He stopped his pickup and got out for a closer look. The tires were almost new, the tread common to heavy passenger cars and pickup trucks. Chee memorized them, more from habit than intention, the reflex of a life way in which memory is important. Deputy Sheriff Dashee might be making this trip this morning, but Dashee's tires were Goodyears and this tread Firestone. Who would be driving up Wepo Wash at dawn? Where would they be going, except to the site of the plane crash? Ironfingers returning to the scene of his crime? Chee drove slowly, keeping his engine noise down and his eyes open. As soon as the early light permitted, he flicked off his headlights. Twice he stopped and listened. He heard nothing except the sound of morning birds, busy with their first post-rain day. He stopped again, at the place where a side arroyo provided the exit route to the track that led to his windmill. The fresh tire tracks continued up-wash. Chee pulled his pickup to the right, up the arroyo. He had a good official reason to visit the windmill. He'd been warned to stay away from the airplane.
A flock of crows had occupied the windmill area and the sentinel, perched atop the stationary directional vane, cawed out a raucous alarm as Chee drove up. He parked, more or less out of sight, behind the water tank, and walked directly to the shrine. The parched earth had soaked in most of the rain, but the fall had been abrupt enough to produce runoff an inch or so deep down the arroyo bottom, sweeping it clean. There were no fresh tracks.
Chee took his time, making frequent stops to listen. He was near the point where the arroyo drained into Wepo Wash when he first saw footprints. He inspected them. Someone had walked about one hundred fifty yards up the arroyo, and then down again. The arroyo mouth was a bit less than a quarter mile upwash from the crash site. Chee stood behind the heavy brush which had flourished there. A white Chevy Blazer was parked by the wreckage. Two men were in view. He recognized Collins, the blond who'd handcuffed him in his trailer, but the other man was only vaguely familiar. He was heavyset, a little short of middle age and beginning to show it, dressed in khaki pants and shirt and wearing a long-billed cap. He and Collins were about fifty yards apart. They were searching along the opposite bank of the wash, poking into the brush and examining crevices. Collins was working down-wash, away from where Chee stood. The other man moved upwash toward Chee. Where had he seen him before? It seemed to have been recently, or fairly so. Probably another federal cop from somewhere. While he thought about it, he heard footsteps on the sand.
Chee ducked back into the brush, squatting to make himself less visible. From that position, he could see only part of the man who walked just past the mouth of the arroyo. But he saw enough to recognize Johnson, walking slowly, carrying a driftwood stick.