Peshlakai erased the beginnings of a smile, looked very somber, and said: "It is true."
"Officer Harjo, Ralph Harjo, he's my interpreter," Osborne said. "With the Bureau of Indian Affairs Law and Order office. He's Navajo."
"Good to meet you," Chee said, and switched into Navajo. "I'm born to the Slow Talking Dineh, born for the Bitter Water. People call me Jim Chee."
"Ralph Harjo," Harjo said, looking slightly abashed as they shook hands. "My father was Potawatomi, and my mother grew up over near Burnt Water. I think she said she was a member of the Standing House clan."
"Hostiin Peshlakai may have been raised way over on the west side of the reservation. The language over there is a little different," Chee said. "Lot of Paiute words mixed in, and some things are pronounced differently."
"That might be part of my problem," Harjo said. "But he's not being responsive to questions. He wants to tell me about something that happened a long time ago. I think it's about religion. We moved to Oregon when I was a kid. I don't have the vocabulary for that stuff.
"If you get down to the bottom line, all we really want here is whether he admits shooting at Officer Manuelito. And why he did it. We're going to hold off on the Doherty homicide for now. Don't want to stir the old man up on that until we get a search warrant and see what we can find in here."
"How about the rifle?" Chee asked, nodding toward the evidence sack.
"I asked him about it," Harjo said. "He said go ahead, take it. Bring it back before hunting season starts."
"Sounds like that makes it legal," Chee said. "Now, with this questioning, you're going to have to have patience."
It began, of course, with Chee telling Mr. Peshlakai who he was—not in belagaana terms of what he did to make money but how he fit in the Dineh social order. He named the maternal clan he was "born to" and paternal clan he was born for. He mentioned various relatives—most notably the late Frank Sam Nakai, who was a shaman of considerable note. That done, he listened to Mr. Peshlakai's listing of his own clans and kinfolks. Only then did Chee explain his position in the belagaana world and that it was his duty to learn who had fired a shot at Bernadette Manuelito. Anything Mr. Peshlakai could tell him about that would be appreciated.
This produced a silence of perhaps two minutes, while Mr. Peshlakai considered his response. Then he motioned at Chee and his other visitors and asked if they would like to be served coffee.
A good sign, Chee thought. Mr. Peshlakai had something to tell them. "Coffee would be good," he said.
Peshlakai arose, collected an assortment of cups from the shelf behind him, lined them up on the edge of the stove, put a jar of Nescafe instant coffee beside them, tested the pot of steaming water on the stovetop with a cautious finger, pushed the pot into a hotter spot, said: "Not quite hot enough," and resumed both his seat and his silence.
Osborne frowned. "What's all this about?"
"It's about tradition," Chee said. "If you're going to do any serious talking in a gentleman's home, he offers you some coffee first."
"Tell him we haven't got time to brew coffee. Tell him we just want him to answer some simple questions."
"I don't think they're going to have simple answers," Chee said.
"Well, hell," Osborne said. He started to add something angry to that, changed his mind. "I have a couple of calls to make. Come get me when he's ready to cooperate," he said, and disappeared through the doorway.
The silence stretched until Peshlakai touched the coffeepot, judged its temperature sufficient, spooned instant coffee into each cup, filled them with steaming water, passed them around, sat, and looked up at Chee.
Chee sipped his coffee, in which the flavor of the Nescafe blended nicely with the alkaline and whatever other minerals enriched Peshlakai's water. It was a taste that pleasantly recalled to Chee his hogan boyhood, and he nodded his approval to Hostiin Peshlakai.
"My grandfather," Chee said, "as you have heard, when this woman with me came to this canyon yesterday in her duty as a policewoman for the Dineh, a rifle shot was fired and the bullet almost hit her. We have come here to see what you can tell us of that. Did you hear the shot? Did you see the one who fired it?
Peshlakai sipped his coffee, considered the questions.
Chee glanced around. Harjo was leaning against the wall, looking interested. Bernadette was sitting on the bench by the door, her eyes on him. Chee looked away.
"They say," began Peshlakai, using the traditional Navajo form separating the speaker from any personal claim to knowledge, "that when people come to another person's property, first they ask that person for his permission. This person "—Peshlakai nodded toward Bernie—"did not ask if she could be on my property."
"They say," Chee responded, "that our Mother Earth is not the property of any person. Do you say you own this canyon?"
"This is my grazing lease," Peshlakai said, looking slightly abashed. "You can look at the papers down at the chapter house. I have a right to protect it."
"Did you think Officer Manuelito was a thief who came to steal from you? Were you the one who fired the shot?"
Peshlakai considered. "What I have here," he said, gesturing around the hogan, "the woman can have all of that. It is nothing of any value. I would not shoot her to protect that."
Now Chee took charge of the silence. He guessed Peshlakai would want to expand on that, and he did.
"There are holy things that must be protected," he said.
Chee nodded. "I once thought I could be a yataali, and my uncle, Hostiin Frank Sam Nakai, taught me for years the way of the Talking God, and the Blessing Way. But before it was finished, Hostiin Nakai died." Chee shrugged. "So I am still a policeman, but he taught me something of the wisdom Changing Woman taught us."
Peshlakai was smiling now. "A great singer of the healing songs," he said. "I knew him. He never joined the Medicine Man Association."
"No," Chee said. Peshlakai seemed far too traditional to want to hear that Hostiin Nakai had planned to join the mma. He was always just too busy to get to the meetings.
"Had he been here," Peshlakai said, creating the canyon outside with a gesture of his hands, "then he would have done what I try to do." Then he looked down at his hands, thinking.
Here it comes, Chee thought. He is deciding how to tell me, and it will start from the very beginning. He glanced at Bernie, who had also sensed the long, long story coming and was settling more comfortably on the bench. Harjo, newer to the ways of his people, looked at Chee, raised his eyebrows into a question.
"I understood some of it," he said. "But did he ever answer your question? Was he the shooter?"
"Not yet he hasn't," Chee said.
"My mother told me that if you keep asking a traditional Navajo the same question, the fourth time you ask it, they have to tell you the answer."
"That's the tradition," Chee said. "Sometimes—" But now Hostiin Peshlakai was ready to talk.
"They say that Changing Woman had almost finished her work here. She was all ready to follow the light toward the west and go live with the sun across the ocean. But before she did that, she went all around Dinetah. She started at the east, and on the top of the Turquoise Mountain she left her footprints, and blue flint grew everywhere around where she stepped." About here Peshlakai's voice slipped into the storyteller's cadence, recounting the travels of the great Lawgiver of the Navajo People from one of the Sacred Mountains to the next.
Officer Bernadette Manuelito had heard it all before, although some of the details varied, and she found herself more interested in the listeners' reaction than in the tale. Ralph Harjo's knowledge of religious/mythological terminology in the Navajo language had obviously fallen far short of requirements, and he had lost the thread of Peshlakai's discourse. Harjo, she noticed, had become more interested in her than in the suspect. He glanced at her, made a wry "we're in this together" face, smiled, and sent the other signals that Bernie, being a pretty young woman, often received from young men. Sergeant Chee, on the other hand, was totally and absolutely focused on Peshlakai and what he was saying.