Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 01] by jpg] The Blessing Way (v1) [html Page A

no longer really expecting to find him here.
    Blue Policeman, he thought. A hell of a lot of good it does to leave your uniform at home. There's not an adult at this Sing by now who doesn't know I'm the law.
    The chant rose in the firelight. Ya Ha He Ya Na He. Rising and falling with the rhythm of the pot drums. And then the words. "Lie closer to me," the singers chanted. "Bring your sheepskin and we will go into the darkness. What are you going to do out there?" Leaphorn glanced at his partner, curious whether the ribald suggestion of the song would embarrass a boarding-school girl. She danced gracefully, gripping his left arm with her right.
    "I wonder why Hosteen Policeman looks at me," she said. "Are you going to arrest me?"
    Leaphorn returned the smile. "I would if I thought you could tell me anything."
    "Who are you after? What do you want to know?"
    "I'd like to know all about a witch," Leaphorn said.
    "I'll bet you don't even believe in witches."
    "I believe in a witch who used to wear a big black Stetson hat until somebody got it away from him."
    "That was Billy Nez," the girl had said. There it was, as simple as that. Billy Nez was around here somewhere (the girl glanced over her shoulder into the darkness, frowning).
    "I'd like to talk to Hosteen Nez," Leaphorn said.
    "So would I. I caught him and made him dance and he just paid me twenty-five cents. And he said he'd let me catch him again." The girl frowned into the darkness again and then looked up at Leaphorn. "But he's no Hosteen yet. He's just a boy."
    "How old is just a boy?"
    "He's just sixteen."
    And you're about fifteen, Leaphorn thought, and if Billy Nez isn't careful his clan is going to lose itself a boy, and a bride's price to boot.
    "Just a boy," Leaphorn said.
    "But he's the one who got the hat. Billy was the Scalp Carrier. He followed that man's pickup, and he watched from where the witch couldn't see him, and when he went away Billy was the one who got the scalp."
    And that seemed to be exactly all the girl knew about it. She knew Nez was Red Forehead, and that he raised sheep with his uncle over on Cotton-wood Flats near Chinle, and that he was wearing a red-checked shirt and a red baseball cap, and some of the other things that fifteen-year-old girls learn about sixteen-year-old boys. And then suddenly the pot drums and the chanting stopped, and there were much haggling and laughing and banter as the women collected their ransom fees. Leaphorn gave the girl a dollar.
    "That's the most I got all night," she said. But she wouldn't come with him to point out Nez.
    Leaphorn spotted the Carrier of the Scalp a half hour later. The Sway Dancing had started then and he saw Nez in his ball cap among the line of dancers from the Stick Receiver's camp. The rhythm was faster now and the rising, falling in sound of the voices was as old as the earth. But the words were about a rocket.
    "Belacani's rocket fell on the mesa," the singers chanted.
    And then the line of men from the patient's camp began the rhythmic swaying and the words changed.
    "Belacani's rocket start the brush burning."
    Track down the man who started that one, Leaphorn thought, and you'd find the missile the Army spent half the winter looking for four years ago. Trouble was it would be easier to find the missile than the song writer.
    But he had, at least, found Billy Nez, and now the dancing was over for a time and Nez was walking toward him, talking to a younger boy who, Leaphorn guessed, would be his cousin.
    "My nephew," Leaphorn said, "I would like to talk for a moment with the man who carried the scalp."
    Billy Nez looked surprised and pleased. But, Leaphorn noticed, he also moved his hand toward his shirt front to touch his medicine pouch with its gallstone proof against witches. One was careful of strangers at an Enemy Way.
    "I myself am a policeman," Leaphorn said. "It is sometimes my business to track people and it would be good for me to hear how you tracked this Wolf."
    The boy