Read Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 02] for Free Online

breaking ten or twelve to make a kill. They couldn't afford that anymore."
    "Couldn't afford the beauty." Leaphorn laughed. "I went to a Bureau of Indian Affairs high school that had a sign in the hall. It said 'Tradition Is the Enemy of Progress.' The word was give up the old ways or die." He didn't mean it to sound bitter, but Isaacs gave him a quizzical look.
    "By the way," Isaacs said. "Have you asked the people over at Jason's Fleece about those boys?"
    "Jason's Fleece? Is that the hippie place?"
    "They hung around there some," Isaacs said. "If they ran away from home, maybe they're over there. There's a girl over there that's a good friend of theirs. Nice girl named Susanne. The boys liked her."
    "I'll go talk to her," Leaphorn said.
    "That Bowlegs boy's a funny kid," Isaacs said. "He's sort of a mystic. Interested in magic and witchcraft and all that sort of thing. One time he was looking bad and I asked him about it and he said he was fasting so that his totem would talk to him. Wanted to see visions, I think. And one time they asked me if I could get them any LSD, and if I'd ever been on an acid trip."
    "Could you?"
    "Hell, no," Isaacs said. "Anyway, I wouldn't. That stuff's risky. Another thing, if it helps any." Isaacs laughed. "George was studying to be a Zuñi." He laughed again and shook his head. "George is sort of crazy."
    "You mean studying their religion?"
    "He said Ernesto was going to get him initiated into the Badger Clan."
    "Could that happen?"
    "I don't know," Isaacs said. "I doubt it. I think it's like a fish saying it's going to become a bird. The only time I ever heard of such a thing was back at the end of the nineteenth century when they adopted an anthropologist named Frank Gushing into the tribe."
    Outside there was a sound of a motor whining in second gear—driving too fast over the bumpy track.
    "Reynolds?"
    Isaacs laughed. "That's the way the silly bastard drives."
    Reynolds was not what Leaphorn had expected. Leaphorn had expected, he realized, sort of a reincarnation of the stooped, white-haired old man who had taught Leaphorn's cultural anthropology section at Arizona State. The typical scholar. Reynolds was medium-sized and medium everything. Perhaps fifty, but hard to date. Brown hair turning gray in spots, a round, cheerful face with the field anthropologist's leathery complexion. Only his eyes set him apart. They were notable eyes. Protected by a heavy brow ridge above and a lump of cheekbone below, they stared from their sockets with sharp, unblinking bright blue alertness. They gave Leaphorn, during the brief handshake of introduction, the feeling that everything about his face was being memorized. And a moment later they were studying with equal intensity the chips Isaacs had found that day. Joe Leaphorn, Navajo policeman, had been sorted and stored out of the way.
    "Which grid?" Reynolds asked.
    Isaacs touched three fingers to the map. "These."
    "Washed down. Old erosion. See any of them in place?"
    "Got 'em off the sifter screen," Isaacs said.
    "You noticed they're silicated. Same stuff as the parallel-flaked?"
    "Right."
    "You're not missing anything?"
    "I never do."
    "I know you don't." Reynolds favored Isaacs with a glance that included fondness, warmth, and approval. It developed in a second into a smile that transformed Reynolds' leathery face into a statement of intense affection, and from that, in the same second, into sheer, undiluted delight.
    "By God," he said. "By God, it really looks good. Right?"
    "Very good, I think," Isaacs said. "I think this is going to be it."
    "Yes," Reynolds said. "I think so." He was staring at Isaacs. "Nothing's going wrong with this dig. You understand that? It is going to be done exactly right." Reynolds spaced the words, spitting each one out.
    A good hater, Leaphorn thought. Maybe a little crazy. Or maybe just a genius.
    Reynolds' gaze now included Leaphorn, the bright blue eyes checking their memory. "Mr. Isaacs is one of the three or four