The Sinister Pig - 15 by Tony Hillerman Page A

about the trouble we were having keeping our stock watered, and how I was looking for some used tanks we could buy. Anyway, he said the Tuttle Ranch was putting in some new tanks for those African animals you’re raising and was selling off their old metal tanks.”
    The boy shrugged. “News to me.”
    “This fella said it involved some sort of new construction a few miles inside the Southeast Gate. Would this be the Southeast Gate?”
    “Hey,” the boy said. “I bet I know what he was talking about.” He pointed. “They’re putting in some sort of a structure over the hill there.” He pointed. “Just three or four miles beyond that hill. There was a crew in there doing some digging and pouring concrete. They put up a house of some sort and mounted a little windmill on it, but I think it was just to run an electric generator, and the building was to store stuff in. I don’t think it had anything to do with water. And then just yesterday I was by there and the sparks were flying. They were doing some metal cutting and welding. Working on pipes, it looked like. Nothing like a water tank.”
    Chee considered that. “Well, the man at the Chevron said they were installing a windmill to pump water for the animals.”
    The boy was grinning. “I heard that too. But it’s to run a little electric generator. To get to the water table here, you’d have to drill down damn near like an oil well. Hundreds of feet. Probably thousands. Take’s a big rig to do that. Nothing like that’s been in here.”
    [102] “I’d sure like to see what they’ve done,” Chee said. “How about it? No harm done.”
    “They don’t give me the key.”
    “Why don’t I just climb over the fence and walk over there. Not more than three or four miles you said?”
    The boy took off his hat, studied Chee thoughtfully, rubbed his tangled blond hair, and restored the hat.
    “No, sir. I’d just have to get out my cell phone here and report it. And somebody would come out and run you off. And maybe I’d get fired.”
    So Chee said thanks, anyway. He drove back up the hill he’d come in on and found what he was looking for—fading tracks leading off from the road in the proper direction. They would have been made hauling in post hole diggers, posts, spools of wire, and all else needed when that formidable fence was built. Chee jolted down the tracks to the fence, and along it, around the slope of the hill, and up the next one. Near the top of it he stopped. The gate where he met the boy was out of sight now, but in the valley below he could see down where a little building stood with a small windmill mounted on its roof.
    He got out his binoculars again and studied it. The boy was right. The blades were connected on the platform to a drive shaft that terminated in what was probably a gearbox. That was mounted atop what looked like the housing for a generator. Chee could also make out insulated cables running down one of the walls of the shack and disappearing into it. It was not an unusual sight for Chee. Many family outfits around the reservations established such electrical sources for their hogans to run refrigerators and their television sets. But what would it be used for here? Hard to tell from what was visible to [103] him. But he could make out the edge of what appeared to be a fairly large excavation. There were pipes in that.
    Back on the access road, he headed for Interstate 10 and then turned north toward Shiprock. It had been a long, long day of driving and a total, absolute waste of time. Almost anyway. He had learned that Bernie was getting along a lot better without him than he was without her. And he had added another vague little bit of information to be considered in a vague murder case, which was none of his business anyway. Officially not his affair.
    But Bernie was his affair. At least he wanted her to be. And Bernie’s boss seemed to have a peculiar interest in this welding truck and in what Bernie saw beyond the