The First Eagle - Leaphorn & Chee 15 by Tony Hillerman

Author:Tony Hillerman [Hillerman, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-02-27T17:14:01+00:00

AS THEY DROVE NORTHWARD out of Cameron, Leap-horn explained to Louisa what was troubling Cowboy Dashee.

"I can see his problem," she said, after spending a while staring out the windshield. "Partly professional ethics, partly male pride, partly family loyalty, partly because he feels Chee is going to think he's trying to use their friendship for a personal reason. Is that about it? Have you decided what you're going to do about it?"

Leaphorn had pretty much decided, but he wanted to give it some more thought. He skipped past the question. "It's all of that, I guess. But it's even more complicated. And why don't you pour us some coffee while we're thinking about it."

"Didn't you just drink about two cups in there?" Louisa asked. But she reached back and extracted her thermos from the lunch sack.

"It was pretty weak," Leaphorn said. "Besides, I believe the caffeine helps my mind work. Didn't I read that somewhere?"

"Maybe in a comic book," she said. But she poured a cup and handed it to him. "What's the more complicated part that I'm missing?"

"Another friend of Cowboy Dashee's is Janet Pete. She's been assigned as Jano's public defender. Janet and Chee were engaged to be married a while back and then they had a falling-out."

"Ouch," Louisa said, and grimaced. "That does complicate matters some."

"There's more," Leaphorn said, and sipped his coffee.

"It's starting to sound like a soap opera," Louisa said. "Don't tell me that the deputy sheriff was the third party in a love triangle."

"No. It wasn't that."

He took another sip, gestured out of the windshield at the cumulus clouds, white and puffy, drifting on the west wind away from the San Francisco Peaks. "That's our sacred mountain of the west, you know, made by First Man himself, but—"

"He built it with earth brought up from the Fourth World in the usual version of the myth," Louisa said. "But if it 'wasn't that,' then what was it?"

"I was going to tell you that in the stories told out here on the west side of the reservation, some of the clans also call it 'Mother of Clouds.'" He pointed through the windshield. "You can see why. When there's any humidity, the west winds hit the slopes, rise, the moisture cools with altitude, the clouds form, and the wind drifts them, one after another, out over the desert. Like a cat having a litter of kittens."

Louisa was smiling at him. "Mr. Leaphorn, am I to conclude that you don't want to tell me what it was with Miss Pete and Jim Chee if it wasn't another man?"

"I'd just be passing along gossip. That's all I have. Just guesswork and gossip."

"You don't start something like that with someone and just leave it hanging. Not if you're going to be trapped in the front seat with them all day. They'll nag you. They'll get mad and surly."

"Well, then," Leaphorn said, "maybe I better make up some sort of a story."

"Do it."

Leaphorn sipped coffee, handed her the empty cup.

"Miss Pete's half Navajo.

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