Spider Woman's Daughter (18 page)

“My grandmother never liked any of us to be out at night,” she said. “
Chindi
roaming around, sniffing out trouble.”

Chee stood next to her, studying the stars. “Mine was the same. It took me years to be comfortable in the dark. I still have my moments.”

“That’s just your good cop sense. And who is to say that those grandmothers were wrong?”

They bounced along for another twenty minutes, grateful for lunar illumination and the lack of cattle, elk, feral horses, or even another vehicle on the road. They could see the iconic bulk of Fajada Butte rising in the distance.

“I’ve never seen this place at night,” Chee said. “It’s even more deserted, lonelier, mysterious.”

“Is the mystery still where the people went?”

“That one has been pretty much solved,” he said. “It used to be said that they disappeared. Better research showed that they moved on when conditions here got too hard. No one yet really knows why they settled here in the first place, built these huge structures and miles of wide roadway to connect them. And of course we don’t know what went on in their kivas.”

“I remember my uncle telling me stories about our people and the old ones who lived here,” she said. “How they were related to us Navajos, especially to the Kiiyaa’áanii.”

“I heard how that clan was named for a stone tower somewhere out here. Or was that in Canyon de Chelly? Did your uncle tell you about Pueblo Pintado?” Chee said.

“Probably. I’m sorry I don’t remember everything he said. But I know he told me that without the Diné, there would have been no civilization here.”

They felt and heard the difference as the truck’s tires rolled from dirt to pavement. Bernie noticed a sign: “Chaco Canyon Visitor Center .5 mile.” It would be good to stretch out and get to sleep.

Then she saw something move. “In the road.”

Chee braked.

Large black shapes loomed ahead. The glare from the truck’s headlights flashed in their eyes. Unlike the sleepy cattle, the elk bounded off the roadway and kept going.

“They’re huge,” she said.

“Yeah,” Chee said. “They get bigger here at lower altitude. The ones you’re used to are up in the Chuskas. Smaller there.”

She laughed. “So that’s why the trout swim in mountain streams and whales live in the ocean?”

“Exactly,” he said. “I always knew you were a quick study.”

They pulled into the campground, and Chee switched to parking lights. They passed domed tents next to picnic tables and grills on stands, camping trailers and the boxy shapes of RVs. It took a few minutes to find the first empty spot. They pulled the tarps and sleeping bags from the trunk, trying to be quiet, and spread them out on sandy earth still warm from the June day.

They moved their sleeping bags close together and started to take off their shoes.

“What’s that noise?” Chee kept his voice low.

“Sounds like a cross between a gurgle and sandpaper. I bet it’s frogs or toads or something.”

“I thought they needed water.”

“There must have been some rain here,” Bernie said. The desert was wonderful, she thought, packed full of life waiting quietly under the earth’s surface. Waiting for a drop of moisture to inspire it to spring forth. “I bet we’ll see wildflowers in bloom tomorrow.”

Chee walked to the truck. He returned with their water bottles and handed her hers. “You made me thirsty.”

They climbed into the sleeping bags, and he pulled her close. They watched the moon move across the endless New Mexico night sky until they fell asleep.

Bernie awoke to pearly predawn light. She looked at Chee, his dark eyes open to the sky. “Come run with me,” she whispered. They pulled on their shoes and went to welcome the day. They ran through the campground, where blue, gray, and green nylon tents sprouted like mushrooms, jogging toward the main road beneath the weathered sandstone cliffs. The cool air reverberated with bird calls.

They ran until the sun rose, then circled back and found the campground coming to life. They heard muffled conversations and smelled bacon and coffee. A slot over from where they camped, a woman in a plaid shirt tended a fire beneath a grill. “Good morning, neighbors,” she said as she saw them approach. She picked up the coffeepot by its handle, using a towel as a hot pad. “I’ve got some extra. Join me?”

“Sounds great,” Bernie said. “How kind of you.”

The woman gave Bernie a cup that matched the blue camping pot and poured Chee’s into a red mug and offered them milk and sugar.

“I don’t care where I am,” she said. “I can’t start the day without a hit of this.”

Bernie tried a sip. It was tea, not the coffee she expected. She should have known from the smell. At least it was hot.

“Enjoying the ruins?” Chee asked.

“I come every few years,” the woman said. “My husband used to come with me, always complaining about how far it was from Denver. Now he’s with his new wife, complaining about something else, no doubt.” She chuckled, refilled her own cup. “I’m Karen.”

“I’m Jim. This is Bernie.”

Bernie noticed a pad of paper open to sketches.

“You an artist?”

“Sort of. I make drawings of places I like, a visual journal. Chaco is still my favorite. I did the major ruins a few years ago with Mr. Complainer. Now I’m exploring sites farther out.”

“Are you hiking by yourself?” Chee asked.

Karen nodded.

“Be careful,” he said.

“I was.” She sipped her tea. “I’d offer you breakfast, but I’m not cooking this morning. Packing up and heading for home.”

Bernie said, “We’re off to see the ruins, then we have to get this guy to work.”

“So you live around here? I’m jealous. What do you do?” Karen asked.

“I’m a cop,” Chee said. He turned his head toward Bernie. “She is, too. We’re based in Shiprock.”

“Well, you might find this interesting,” Karen said. “Earlier this week, I was sketching on the trail out at Pueblo Alto. When I parked, there was one other car there. I hiked up, went off to find a place with a view of Pueblo del Arroyo—that’s the ruin closest to the parking lot. I walked up a dry wash and set up in the shade at a great vista point. I lose track of time when I work, so I’m not sure how long I’d been there, but I heard a commotion. It sounded like people arguing. I noticed a couple of hikers on the rim trail. A woman in a long-sleeved shirt, you know, one of those expensive ones to keep out the UV rays? The other one had one of those khaki hats that tie on with a string. The dorky-looking ones that old people wear?”

Chee nodded. Karen continued. “The dorky-hat person was twisting the other person’s arm, kind of pulling her. The woman was resisting, but Dorky Hat seemed to overpower her. Or she just gave in. They moved out of sight, but I could hear them arguing for a while longer. I didn’t think much more about it. I went back to sketching. The light was just right, you know? Well, I stopped to get out my water bottle, and I noticed Dorky Hat down below, running. I thought at the time it was too hot to be running. I finished, packed up, ambled down to my car. The other car—I assume it was theirs—was gone.”

Karen put her mug down. “I figured the woman must have hiked out earlier or later or something, and I’d missed seeing her. But it stuck with me.”

“Did you mention it at the park headquarters?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t want the rangers to think I was a deranged artist. I decided I’d go in this morning and report it, but the office isn’t open yet and I have to get on the road.”

“We’ll tell them about it,” Bernie said. “We’re heading down there in a few minutes anyway. Anything else about that incident you think we ought to mention?”

Karen said, “I heard a loud noise while I was working. I thought it was a car backfiring, or someone setting off a firecracker out here. But now that I’m thinking about it and talking to you guys, it could have been a gunshot.”

Bernie and Chee drove to the visitor center and went to the information desk. They identified themselves to the gray-haired ranger, Andrew Stephen, as police officers with the Navajo Nation. “Is Joe Wakara here today?”

“No. I’m in charge today. Can I help you with something?”

“So even that old geezer gets a day off,” Chee said.

Stephen laughed. “You know him, huh?”

Wakara, a friend of Leaphorn’s, had been head of security at the park for as long as Chee could remember.

Chee mentioned the conversation about the quarreling hikers.

“We haven’t had any reports of anyone missing,” Stephen said. “I’ll ask our guy who makes the rounds to hike up that trail a ways this afternoon. Just in case.”

“Where is Pueblo Alto, anyway?” Bernie asked.

Stephen showed her on the map.

“I haven’t been to Chaco for a while,” Chee said. “Isn’t this a new visitor center?”

“It opened a few years ago. The old building you remember had to be razed.”

“Old? Wasn’t it built in the late nineteen-fifties?”

“Ironic, isn’t it. Modern America couldn’t build a visitor center to last seventy years,” Stephen said. “These Pueblo buildings still stand after more than a thousand. But this time we did it right. We brought in an Indian to bless the site.”

He smiled at Chee. “Policeman, huh? You’re the one I call if someone gets nervous about livestock on the Navajo Nation part of the road?”

“Depends on if the cows want to file a complaint about the traffic harassing them. You worked here long?”

“Fifteen years,” Stephen said. “I love it. Except for the road.”

“Did you know a woman named Eleanor Friedman-Bernal who used to do research here?” Bernie asked.

“Ellie? A bit. I got hired on a few months before she nearly got killed. She called here last month, all excited. Said she’d left her college job and was moving back to New Mexico. Said she’d come see the ruins and that she’d stop in and say hi.”

Bernie said, “I’m doing some work for the AIRC. I’d love to talk to her about some Chaco pots.”

“She knows a lot about them,” Stephen said. “That’s her specialty. Absolutely passionate about it. Do you know her?”

“I met her,” Chee said. “I worked on that case where she nearly died. So she has been back here?”

“Not yet. Not that I know of. I guess her plans changed. They say she always was a little flaky. I heard she planned to start up that appraisal business again, now that she’s not teaching anymore. That must be keeping her busy.”

Stephen smiled at Bernie. “If you’re interested in pottery, we’ve got some books on it over there. Some hard-to-find reference stuff that focuses mostly on pots from here.”

They wandered over to a section of the room that served as the bookstore, then spent a few minutes with the exhibits. Since most of the material found at Chaco Canyon had been shipped elsewhere a long time ago, the exhibit items were on loan. The Maxwell Museum at the University of New Mexico had provided the artifacts, examples of jewelry, animal carvings, bits of worked turquoise, stone tools, black-and-white potshards, part of a long and close association between the two institutions.

A group of Navajo kids, six- and seven-year-olds, swarmed into the visitor center. In addition to two women, obviously teachers, Bernie noticed a tall young man with the little people. Stoop Boy. She watched him intervene with two boys who had been pushing each other, put a hand on each one’s arm and squat down to talk to them at eye level. Interesting, she thought. She’d assumed he didn’t have a job.

Stoop Boy noticed Bernie and smiled. She never saw him smile when he was with Darleen. He walked over to her, bringing the kids along.

“Yá’át’ééh,” he said.

She couldn’t remember his name, and he seemed to sense that and let her off the hook. He looked at Chee, said, “I’m Charley Zah,” and introduced himself Navajo style. “I’m a friend of Officer Manuelito’s sister.”

Chee reciprocated with his own introduction. The urchins in Zah’s grasp squirmed. “You’ve got your hands full.”

“Literally.” Zah laughed. “We bring the kids here a couple times with the summer program. We tell Chaco stories on the bus, talk about the ones who lived here. Then we let them see the ruins, get some sunlight, watch the ravens soar.

“Are you here on business?” Zah asked. “I understand they found a few bodies out there. And then there’s the question of what happened to all the other bodies they didn’t find here. Alien abductions?”

Chee laughed. “We don’t get to handle those cold cases. We leave that to the archaeologists. They are puzzling over how a place so big would have so few burials.”

The restless youngsters pulled on Stoop Boy’s hands. “We’re starting our tour at Pueblo Bonito, in case you want to tag along, or avoid us. But the first stop is out there.” He pointed toward the restroom with his chin and let the boys lead him away. “Nice to meet you,” he said to Chee, and, “Nice to see you again,” to Bernie.

“So that’s the guy leading Darleen into trouble?”

“I may have pegged him wrong,” Bernie said. “He sure seems different here.”

“It must be what they call the Chaco Phenomenon.”

“You know everything?”

Chee grinned. “And what I don’t know, I make up.”

They left the visitor center for the trail to Una Vida, a structure archaeologists call a great house, a towering ruin of hand-carved stone partly buried beneath eons of blowing sand and a thin layer of tough vegetation. The trail through what was left of the rooms took them to petroglyphs, ancient artists’ depictions of animals, spirals, lightning, and perhaps divine beings.

Bernie paused near a section of wall that differed from the rest of the stone masonry. “This could have been an old sheep camp.”

Chee trotted up with the tour pamphlet. “That’s right. Evidently Navajo sheep corrals were here around eighteen hundred.”

“With a touch of water this would be good sheep country,” Bernie said.

They walked back toward the visitor center and the truck, aware of the growing heat.

“In a couple of weeks, this place will be full of people who come for the solstice,” Chee said.

“All those spiritual seekers and wannabe Indians make my head spin,” she said.

“I can’t blame them for wanting to be here. There’s no place in the world quite like this. And to think that the ones who lived here were so wise that we can still use their solar markers ten centuries later. That’s impressive.”