The Shaman Laughs Read Online Free PDF

chance to drop by Ignacio myself." He patted the cardboard cylinder as if it was a friendly puppy. "Bought me an antique bamboo rod last week in Connecticut—an Edward's Quadrate." He paused to let this sink in.
    "You're kidding." Parris's envy was written all over his face. "One of the numbered series?"
    "Serial number five-zero." Parker grinned, displaying a set of oversized teeth that would have looked just right in the mouth of a Neanderthal. The rod had set him back a week's pay. "Can't wait to flick some dry flies in the Piedra.
    It's about time for the browns to get hungry." Parker paused, choosing his words carefully. "While you're in Ig-nacio, you'll likely end up working with my people. From time to time."
    "Yeah, guess I might at that." Parris waited. The FBI had jurisdiction for major crimes on Indian reservations. But he sensed that Parker had something specific on his mind.
    "You know our guys in Durango?"
    "Sure," Parris said. "Stan Newman. George Whitmer. First class guys." The Durango office had the responsibility for the pair of Ute reservations along the southern Colorado border.
    "Newman had to go in for knee surgery a couple of days ago. He'll be laid up for at least two months. Whitmer's tied up at a federal trial in Salt Lake, then he's off on a job in Arizona. Don't know when he'll get back." Parker avoided eye contact. "I've sent a new man down there. Expect you'll meet him pretty soon after you set up shop in Ignacio."
    "Fine," Parris said. "Look forward to it" He could have cared less, but it seemed an appropriate response.
    "I'd appreciate it if you'd introduce him to Charlie Moon and the rest of the Ute movers and shakers. Kind of grease the skids for him."
    There was something odd about this request. It seemed so reasonable, but there was a worried look in Sam's eyes. Parris nodded. "No problem. Me and Charlie Moon, we'll take care of your new man." And, in a way that neither Parris nor Parker could have foreseen, they would.
    Scott Parris was halfway to Granite Creek when he realized that Sam Parker had not mentioned the new agent's name.
    Near Bondad, on the Banks
    of the Rio de LosAmmas Perditas
    Charlie Moon folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the fender of the big Blazer. And remembered. It was now most of a year, since Nahum Yacüti had vanished.
    The old man had disappeared on the same night his sheep had been slaughtered in the violent storm. There had been nothing but rumors about Nahum's whereabouts, but the Ute policeman stopped every time his duties brought him south of Durango along this stretch of Route 550. He stood in silence and surveyed the small section of earth that had been home to Nahum and provided marginal pasture to his few sheep. It was less than a dozen acres, this sharp wedge of land that pointed to the south. The low bank of the Animas, dotted with tall cotton-woods and bushy willows, was the western boundary. The two-lane blacktop between Durango and Aztec formed the eastern limit. Armilda Esquibel's land abutted the Yacüti property on the north, and the old woman could see everything from her adobe home that hung precariously on a clay bank above Nahum's bottom land. Moon wondered if the troublesome woman was peering at him from her bedroom window. Sure. If Armilda was alive, she was watching.
    The Ute policeman put his hands in his jacket pockets and walked slowly down the lightly graveled driveway toward Nahum's small log house. No smoke came from the stone chimney, and a sheet of steel roofing was loose and rattling in the occasional gust of wind. The shepherd's dilapidated Dodge pickup was parked out back of the house near the small corral, exactly where it had been on that morning after the twister came through. Things were much the same, except now the rusty truck was covered with a thin coat of yellow dust. And it had been much colder on the morning after the storm. It had been October, that time of year the old people called Moon of Dead