Read Online Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] by Listening Woman [txt] - Free Book Online

artifacts zealously, and obviously the way Mcginnis had got them wouldn’t stand scrutiny. Leaphorn changed the subject, angling toward his main interest. “Anybody come in and tell you they found an old helicopter?” Mcginnis laughed.
    “That son-of-a-bitch is long gone,” he said. “If it ever flew into the country in the first place.” He sipped again. “Maybe it did come in here. The feds seemed to have that pinned down pretty good. But if it crashed, I’da had some of those Begay boys, or the Tsossies, or somebody in here long ago nosing around to see if there was a reward, or trying to pawn it to me, or selling spare parts, or something.”
    “Another thing,” Leaphorn said. “Mrs. Cigaret said Tso was worried about getting a sickness from his great-grandfather’s ghost. That mean anything to you?”
    “Well, now,” Mcginnis said. “Now, that’s interesting. You know who his great-grandfather was? He came from quite a line, Tso did.”
    “Who was it?”
    “Course he had four great-grandfathers,” Mcginnis said. “But the one they talk about around here was a big man before the Long Walk. Lots of stories about him. They called him Standing Medicine. He was one of them that wouldn’t surrender when Kit Carson came through. One of that bunch with Chief Narbona and Ganado Mucho who fought it out with the army. Supposed to been a big medicine man. They claim he knew the whole Blessing Way, all seven days of it, and the Mountain Way, and several other sings.” Mcginnis poured another dollop of bourbon into his glass—raising the level carefully to the bottom of the Coca-Cola trademark. “But I never heard anything about his ghost being any particular place—or bothering people.” He sampled the freshened drink, grimaced. “God knows, though, he might be causing ghost sickness all over that country out there.” It was time now, Leaphorn thought, for the crucial question. “Last day or two you hear anything about a stranger with a big dog? A great big dog?”
    “A stranger?”
    “Or a Navajo, either.” Mcginnis shook his head. “No.” He laughed. “Heard a Navajo Wolf story this morning, though. Feller from back on the plateau said a skinwalker killed his nephew’s sheepdogs at the Falling Rock water hole way out there on the plateau. But you’re talking about a real dog, ain’t you?”
    “A real one,” Leaphorn said. “But did this nephew see the witch?”
    “Not the way I heard it,” Mcginnis said. “The dogs didn’t come back with the sheep. So the next day the boy went to see about it. He found ‘ dead and the werewolf tracks where they’d been killed.” Mcginnis shrugged. “You know how it goes. Pretty much the same old skinwalker story.”
    “Nothing about a stranger, then,” Leaphorn said. Mcginnis eyed Leaphorn carefully, watching his reaction. “Well, now. We got us a stranger right here at Short Mountain. Got in early this morning.” He paused with the storyteller man’s talent for increasing the impact. “A woman,” he said. Leaphorn said nothing. “Pretty young woman,” Mcginnis said, still watching Leaphorn. “Big sports car.
    From Washington.”
    “You mean Theodora Adams?” Leaphorn asked.
    Mcginnis didn’t show his disappointment. “You know all about her, then?”
    “A little bit,” Leaphorn said. “She’s the daughter of a doctor in the Public Health Service. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing here. Or care, for that matter. What’s she after? One of those anthropologists up the wash?” Mcginnis examined the level of bourbon in his glass, sloshed it gently, and examined Leaphorn out of the corner of his eye. “She’s trying to find someone who can take her up to Hosteen Tso’s hogan,” Mcginnis said. He grinned then. He’d finally gotten a reaction out of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn.
    Looking for Theodora Adams proved to be unnec. Joe Leaphorn emerged from the front door of the Short Mountain Trading Post and found Theodora Adams