Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] by Listening Woman [txt]

would be a complicated mixture. It would include pity, however sadly misplaced, and affection, and loneliness and vanity. Lust would come later, when Theodora Adams wanted it to come—and Tso would learn then how he had overestimated himself. “Certain kind of woman likes what she can’t have,” Mcginnis said. “They hate to see a man keep a promise. Some of ‘ go after married men. But you take a real tiger like that Adams— she goes gets herself a priest.” He sipped the bourbon, glanced sidewise at Leaphorn. “You know how that works with a Catholic priest?” he asked. “Before they’re ordained, they get some time to think about the promises they’re going to make— giving up the world, and women, and all that. And then when the time comes, they go up to the altar, and they stretch out on the floor, flat on their face, and they make the promise in front of the bishop.
    Psychologically it makes it mean as hell to change your mind. Just one step short of getting your balls cut off if you break a promise like that.” Mcginnis sipped again. “Makes it a hell of a challenge for a woman,” he added. Leaphorn was thinking of another challenge.
    It was obsessing him. Somewhere in this jumble of contradictions, oddities, coincidences and unlikely events there must be a pattern, a reason, something that linked a cause and an effect, which the laws of natural harmony and reason would dictate. It had to be there.
    “Mcginnis,” he said. He tried to keep his voice from sounding plaintive. “Is there anything you’re not telling me that would help make sense out of this? This secret the old man was keeping—whichat could it have been? Could it have been worth killing for?” Mcginnis snorted. “There ain’t nothing around here worth killing for,” he said. “Put it all together and this whole Short Mountain country ain’t worth hitting a man with a stick for.”
    “What do you think, then?” Leaphorn asked. “Anything that would help.” The old man communed with the inch of amber left in the Coca-Cola glass. “I can tell you a story,” he said finally. “If you don’t mind having your time wasted.”
    “I’d like to hear it,” Leaphorn said. “Part of it’s true,” Mcginnis said. “And some of it’s probably Navajo bullshit. It starts off about a hundred twenty years ago when Standing Medicine was headman of the Bitter Water Dinee and a man noted for his wisdom.
    ” Mcginnis rocked back in his chair, slowly telling how, in 1863, the territorial governor of New Mexico decided to destroy the Navajos, how Standing Medicine had joined Narbona and fought Kit Carson’s army until, after the bitter starvation winter of 1864, what was left of the group surrendered and was taken to join other Navajos being held at Bosque Redondo. “That much is the true part,” Mcginnis said. “Anyhow, Standing Medicine shows up on the army records as being brought in in 1864, and he died at Bosque Redondo in 1865. And that gets us to the funny story.” Mcginnis tipped his head back and drained the last trickle of bourbon onto his tongue.
    He put the glass down, carefully refilled it to the copyright symbol, capped the bottle, and raised the glass to Leaphorn. “Way they told it when I was a young man, this Standing Medicine was known all around this part of the reservation for his curing. Maybe I told you about that already. But he knew every bit of the Blessing Way, and he could do the Wind Way, and the Mountain Way Chant and parts of some of the others. But they say he also knew a ceremonial that nobody at all knows anymore. I heard it called the Sun Way, and the Calling Back Chant. Anyway, it’s supposed to be the ceremonial that Changing Woman and the Talking God taught the people to use when the Fourth World ends.” Mcginnis paused to tap the Coca-Cola glass—just a few drops on the tongue. “Now, you may have another version in your clan,” he said. “The way we have it around Short Mountain, the