Coyote Waits by Tony Hillerman Page A

Twins. I think that’s one of the things that got Nez so interested. You know. Who was breaking that taboo?”
    “Maybe Nez caught whoever it was, and the guy killed him,” Janet said.
    “And gave the pistol to Hosteen Pinto,” Chee said. “You’re going to have trouble selling that one.”
    Janet shrugged. “It’s as good as anything else I’ve thought of,” she said. “Let’s take a look at it.” She glanced at Chee, looking suddenly doubtful. “Or would there be a lot of snakes this time of year?”
    “Always some snakes in places like that,” Chee said. “But they’re no problem if you use your head.”
    “Just thinking about snakes is a problem,” Janet said. But she turned the Toyota off the asphalt.
    Getting to part of the formation where the painter worked involved maneuvering the little Toyota across about a mile of trackless stone, cactus, Russian thistle, buffalo grass, sage, and snakeweed. After dropping a wheel with a rattling jolt into a little wash, Janet switched off the ignition.
    “It’s easier to walk,” she said. “Especially easier on my poor car.”
    It wasn’t quite as easy as it looked. As with all large objects seen through the thin, dry, high desert air, the outcrop was bigger and more distant than it seemed. The sun had dipped well below the horizon when they climbed the steep final slope toward its base. Overhead the high clouds had faded from rose to dark red. Far to the west across Arizona, clouds over the Kaibito Plateau were blue-black, outlined by fiery yellow.
    Janet stopped to stare.
    “Did you miss these sunsets in Washington?” Chee asked.
    “I’m looking at that car,” she said, pointing.
    Pulled behind a clump of junipers was a dark green Ford Bronco II, dirty, dented, and several years old. They detoured to walk behind it. It wore a New Mexico vanity license plate.
    “REDDNEK,” Janet read. “You think the irony was intended?”
    Chee shrugged. He didn’t catch the irony. The vehicle was empty. What was it doing here? Where was the driver?
    “A redneck who can’t spell it,” she explained.
    “Oh.”
    On the ridge beyond the vehicle, Janet stopped again. She stood, head tilted back, staring up at the massive, unbroken slab of basalt which confronted them here.
    “I don’t see any sign of paint,” Janet said. The red light changed the color of her shirt, and her faded jeans, and her face. Her hair was disheveled, her expression intent, and, taken all together, she looked absolutely beautiful to Jim Chee. It would be a lot better, he thought, if friends didn’t look like that.
    “Let’s see if we can find where he climbed up,” he said.
    That wasn’t easy. The first upward possibility dead-ended on a shelf that led absolutely nowhere except up a vertical face of stone. The second, a pathway that opened inside a split in a basaltic slab, took them perhaps seventy-five yards upward and in before it finally dwindled away into an impossibly narrow crack. They found the third atop a sloping hump of debris by ducking under a tilted roof of fallen stone.
    “I haven’t brought up the subject of snakes,” Janet said. She was brushing the dirt from her hands on her pant legs. “If I do, I hope you’ll try to say something positive.”
    “Okay,” Chee said. He thought for a minute, catching his breath. “If you like snakes, this is a fine example of the places you come to find them.”
    “I don’t like snakes,” Janet said. “I know all that BS about Navajos and snakes being friends, but I don’t like them. They scare me.”
    “We’re not supposed to be friends,” Chee said. “The way it goes in the legend, First Man and Big Snake learned to respect one another. The way you do that is by not putting your hand, or your foot, or any other part of you where you can’t see. That way you don’t step on your little brother, or sit on him, or poke him in the eye. And in return, he buzzes his rattlers to tell you if you’re getting in