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to come this way myself, that’s all.”
    â€œSure,” Watchman said. “They told me I’d find Joe’s sister up here.”
    â€œAngelina. She ain’t seen him or heard from him.” Muted sensations of dislike floated off Porvo like heat waves. He added, “I believe she drove up to Showlow this morning. Be back tonight around eight, eight-thirty—she works over to the roadhouse nights.”
    â€œThanks.”
    Porvo laid one arm along the roof of his car and pointed toward the council house. “You might want to talk to Mr. Kendrick, he’s the one handled Joe’s case at the trial.”
    â€œHe’s here now?”
    â€œGot an office over there. That’s his Corvette parked around back.” Porvo slid down into the seat and spoke through the V-notch between the windshield and the open door: “I come up with anything, where’ll I find you?”
    â€œI’ll be poking around here a while.”
    â€œWe ain’t got anything in town you could call tourist accommodations,” Porvo said overcasually, and pulled the door shut.
    Watchman stood there, the sun warm on his face, watching the prowl car shimmy away faster than it needed to.
    The men on the porch watched him with undisguised suspicion. They also knew. The moccasin telegraph had done its work.
    He went inside the trading post because it was always the center of communication and gossip.
    It was cool inside and a lot bigger than the branch trading post at Chinle where he’d grown up. Cowboy hats hung from the beam above the cash-register counter. On a pillar above a calendar which notified debtors that it was July 8 there was a carefully printed misspelled sign, BUILDING SUPPLES. Three females in bright patterned dresses stood browsing the notions shelves like the Three Bears: a fat woman about Watchman’s age and a girl about thirteen with an infant girl in her arms.
    It was one of the last old-style general stores, part supermarket, part feed-and-grain, part clothing emporium, part hardware, part Woolworth’s. Some wit had hung a little wood box on the wall with a three-inch slot in its lid: DO NOT PUT MONEY IN THIS BOX.
    There was a smell of leather harness. Watchman bought a pack of spearmint gum.
    â€œYou know Joe? Joe Threepersons?”
    The girl behind the cash register was in her shy teens and she only shook her head, not meeting his glance. But there was a man at the bulletin board whose face swiveled when Watchman spoke. Watchman took his change and broke open a stick of gum. “You know Joe?”
    â€œMaybe I heard of him,” the man said, and went outside on bowlegged boots with the heels run down on the outsides.
    The four men on the porch were watching the door without blinking. Watchman let them have their look at him. “I guess you heard I’m looking for Joe Three-persons.”
    Nobody made any answer of any kind. Watchman said, “There might be a reward,” and stepped out into the sunlight and walked toward the council house.
    A breeze moved dust across his path and a boy on a horse choused a seventy-dollar cow down the street. Watchman felt the prod of the flat S&W .38 automatic against his spine where it rested under his shirt in the thin Myers holster; it was inconvenient there but it was out of sight and he didn’t want to alarm people. He had to remember not to sit back too fast in wooden chairs or the thing would thud like a bomb.
    It was half-past four and the shadow of a cloud moved across the town. Over the hills north of the trees he could see the shadow-streaks of a rain squall. But heat misted up from the earth and before he entered the council house he stopped and armed sweat from his forehead. Back on the trading post verandah the four Apaches were still watching him. It wouldn’t have surprised him if one of them had turned to spit at the ground.

4.
    The girl at the reception counter looked comfortable in her