know." Leaphorn was looking intently at the body. "Notice how his legs are stretched out straight. He could have pushed 'em out that way after he fell down, but if you do that laying on the ground, looks like it would push your pants cuffs away from your ankles." He stood silently, surveying the body. "Maybe that's all right though. It could happen." He looked at McKee. "That wrist couldn't happen, though."
He squatted beside the body, looking up.
"Ever try to pick up an unconscious man? He's limp. Absolutely limp. After he's dead two-three hours, he starts getting stiff."
That's why I noticed the arm, McKee thought. It doesn't look natural.
"You think he was dead, and somebody put him here?"
"Maybe," Leaphorn said. "And whoever did it didn't know it was going to rain so they brushed out their tracks."
"But why?" McKee asked. He looked around. Here the body was sure to be found and down in the wash it could have been buried, probably forever.
"I've got better questions than that," Leaphorn said. "Like how did he die? We can find that out. And then maybe it will be who did it, and why. Why would anyone want to kill the poor bastard?"
Chapter 7
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Old Woman Gray Rocks leaned back against the cedar pole supporting one corner of the brush hogan and took a long pull on the cigarette McKee had lit for her. She blew the smoke out her nostrils. Behind her, the foothills of the Lukachukais shimmered under the blinding sun—gray mesquite and creosote bush, gray-green scrub cedar, and the paler gray of the eroded gullies, and above the grayness the blue-green of the higher slopes shaded now by an embryo early-afternoon thundercloud. By sundown, McKee thought, the cloud would be producing lightning and those frail curtains of rain which would, in arid-country fashion, evaporate high above the ground. He wondered idly if Leaphorn had been right—if Horseman had been hiding back in that broken canyon country.
He refocused his eyes to the dimmer light under the brush and saw that Old Woman Gray Rocks was smiling at him.
"The way they do it," she said, "is catch the Wolf and tie him down. Not give him anything to eat or any water and not let him take his pants down for anything until he tells that he's the one that's doing the witching. Once they tell it, it's all right after that. Then the witching turns around and the man he did it to gets all right and the witch gets sick and dies."
Old Woman Gray Rocks removed the cigarette and held it between thumb and first finger. It occurred to McKee that every Navajo he had ever seen smoking—including children—used the same unorthodox grip.
"I don't think they're going to catch this one," she said.
"Why do you say that?" McKee was feeling good that his command of Navajo had returned. Two days ago he would only have said "Why?" which required a single monosyllabic guttural. He had only had time for one afternoon in the language lab listening to tapes and his pronunciation had been rough at first. Now he was almost as fluent as he had been at twenty-seven. "Kintahgoo' bil i noolhtah?" he said, repeating the question and relishing the sound.
They don't think he lives around here. He's a stranger."
McKee was suddenly mildly interested. He had been feeling drowsy, the effect of an unusually heavy meal (lamb stew, floating in fat, boiled corn, fried cornbread, and canned peaches) and of a certainty, established not long after Canfield had dropped him off at the hogan, that the woman would tell him nothing useful. He had hoped he would learn something of the motivation behind the witchcraft gossip, detect the sickness, or the intra-family tensions; or the jealousies, or whatever trouble had produced a need for a scapegoat witch. This hope had grown when Old Woman Gray Rocks had proved friendly and welcomed him warmly. All morning long it had faded. But there was nothing to do now but wait for Canfield to stop on his way back from buying supplies to pick him up. If