Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] Read Online Free PDF Page B

had suggested, he was merely going home. He hadn’t stopped for a drink at one of the nearer water holes because he had a bottle of water in the car, or because he had been willing to spend a hideously thirsty twenty-four hours rather than risk being tracked. Leaphorn considered alternative theories, found none that made sense, and returned to Goldrims-is-navajo. But what, then, about the dog? Why would a Navajo car thief take the victim’s dog with him? Why would the dog— mean enough to require a muzzle—allow a stranger to steal his master’s car? Why would the Navajo take the dog along with him at the risk of being bitten? Odder still, why had the dog followed this stranger? Leaphorn sighed. None of the questions could be answered.
    Everything about this affair offended his innate sense of order. He began considering a Goldrims-is-Lynch theory and got nowhere with it.
    A pair of horned lark flicked past him and glided over a great hump of sandstone near the mesa wall. They did not reappear. A half hour earlier a small flight of doves had disappeared for at least five minutes in the same area. Leaphorn had been conscious of that point- - among others—since seeing a young Cooper’s hawk pause in its patrol of the mesa rim to circle over it. He climbed carefully from his perch. The birds had found the water for him. The spring was at the bottom of a narrow declivity at a place where the sandstone met a harder formation of limestone. Thousands of years of wind had given this slot a floor of dust and sand, which supported a stunted juniper, a hummock of grama grass and a few tumbleweeds. Leaphorn had circled within a hundred yards of this hole without guessing its presence, and had missed a sheep trail leading into it through the tough luck of encountering the path at the place where it crossed track-resistant limestone. Now he squatted on the sand and considered what it had to tell him. There were tracks everywhere.
    Old and new. Among the new ones, the cloven hoofs of a small flock of sheep and goats, the pawprints of dogs, at least three, and the prints of the same boots in which Goldrims had walked away from his abandoned Mercedes. Leaphorn examined a rim of sand in a bootprint near the water, fingered it, tested its moisture content, considered the state of the weather, and weighed in cool humidity in this shadowed place. Goldrims had been here not many hours ago—probably not long before noon. The dog was still with him. Those tracks, almost grotesquely large for a dog, were everywhere. The other dogs had been here about the same time. Leaphorn studied the sandy floor.
    He examined an indentation, made by an oblong rectangle eighteen inches long and eight inches wide. It was either fairly heavy, or had been dropped on the damp sand. He examined another place, much more vague, where some sort of pressure had smoothed the sand. He studied this from several angles, with his face close to the earth.
    He concluded, finally, that Goldrims might have rested a canvas backpack here. Not far from where the backpack had been, Leaphorn picked up a bead-sized ball of sand. It flattened between thumb and forefinger into a sticky, gritty red. A droplet of drying blood.
    Leaphorn sniffed it, touched it with his tongue, cleaned his fingers with sand, and trotted partway up the sloping wall of the pocket. He stood looking down on the basin. Across the shallow pool a section of sand was smooth—itso collection of tracks erased. Leaphorn did not think about what he might find. He simply dug, scooping the damp sand out with his hands and piling it to the side. Less than a foot below the surface, his fingers encountered hair. The hair was white.
    Leaphorn rocked back on his heels, giving himself a moment to absorb his surprise. Then he poked with an exploring finger. The hair was attached to a dog’s ear, which, when pulled, produced from the engulfing sand the head of a large dog. Leaphorn pulled this body from its shallow grave.