Read Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 01] for Free Online

hatband?"
    "I don't wear silver conchos on my hat," McKee said.
    They picked up the coroner-justice of the peace at a Conoco station in Ganado, a man named Rudolph Bitsi. Bitsi told them to drive south.
    The late morning sun was hot by the time they arrived at the edge of Teastah Wash and the Navajo policeman who had been left with the body had retreated into the shade of the arroyo wall. He climbed into the sunlight, blinking, as the carryall stopped. He looked very young, and a little nervous. Leaphorn said the policeman was Dick Roanhorse, just out of recruit school.
    "Find anything interesting?" Leaphorn asked.
    "No, sir. Just this bottle. The only tracks are the ones made by Begay's pickup. Rain washed everything else out."
    "The body was here before the rain, then," Leaphorn said. It was more a statement than a question, and the policeman only nodded.
    Leaphorn pulled the blanket off the body. They looked at what had been Luis Horseman.
    "Well," Bitsi said, "looks like he might have had some sort of seizure."
    "Looks like it," Leaphorn said.
    Bitsi squatted, examining the face. He was a short, middle-aged man, tending to fat, and he grunted as he lowered himself. He sniffed at Horseman's nose and lips.
    "Alcohol. You can just barely get a whiff of it."
    Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's legs. McKee noticed they were rigidly straight—as if he had died erect and tumbled backward, which wasn't likely.
    Bitsi was still examining the face. "I saw one that looked like that two, three years ago. Crazy bastard had made him a brew out of jimson weed to get more potent and it poisoned him."
    Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's left arm. The watch on his wrist was running, which would mean he had wound it the previous day—probably less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was a cheap watch, the kind that cost about $8 or $10, with a stainless-steel expansion band. Leaphorn stared at the left hand. The arm lay across Horseman's chest with the wrist and hand extended, unsupported.
    "Pretty fair booze," Bitsi said, holding up the bottle. The label was red and proclaimed the contents to be sour-mash whiskey. About a half ounce of amber liquid remained in the bottle.
    "Looks like he overdid it," Bitsi said. "Looks like he strangled. Fell down while he was throwing up, and passed out and strangled."
    "That's what it looks like," Leaphorn said.
    "Might as well haul him in," Bitsi said. He rose from his squat, grunting again.
    "No tracks at all?" Leaphorn asked the policeman.
    "Just Begay's. Where he got out of his pickup and came over to look at the body. Nothing but that.",
    There were plenty of tracks now. Mostly Roanhorse's, Leaphorn guessed.
    "Where was the bottle?"
    "Four or five feet from the body," Roanhorse said. "Like he dropped it."
    "O.K.," Leaphorn said. He was looking across the flat through which Teastah Wash had eroded, an expanse of scrubby creosote bush with a scattering of sage. At the lip of the wash bank, a few yards upstream from the road, two small junipers had managed to get roots deep enough to live. Leaphorn walked suddenly to the nearest bush and examined it. He motioned to Roanhorse, and McKee followed.
    "You pull a limb off this for anything?"
    Roanhorse shook his head.
    There was a raw wound on the lower trunk where a limb had been broken away. Leaphorn put his thumb against the exposed cambium layer and showed it to McKee. It was sticky with fresh sap.
    "What do you think of that?"
    "Nothing," McKee said. "How about you?"
    "I don't know. Probably nothing."
    He started walking back toward the body, through the creosote bush, searching. Bitsi, McKee noticed, had climbed back into the carryall.
    "Look around across the road there," Leaphorn said, "and see if you can find that juniper branch."
    But he found it himself. The frail needles were dirty and broken. McKee guessed it had been used as a broom even before Leaphorn told him.
    "That looked pretty smart, Joe," McKee said. "Where does it take you?"
    "I don't