Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] by Listening Woman [txt] Read Free Book Online Page B

purchase, he had hung out the THIS ESTABLISHMENT FOR SALE INQUIRE WITHIN sign that decorated his front porch for more than forty years. If anyone else had outsmarted John Mcginnis, the event had not been recorded by reservation folklore.
    Leaphorn climbed from the carryall, sorting out the questions he would ask Mcginnis. The trader would know not only where Margaret Cigaret lived, but where she could be found this week—an important difference among people who follow sheep herds. And Mcginnis would know if anything new had been heard about the mission helicopter, or about the reliability of those who brought in old reports, and everything about the lives and fortunes of the impoverished clans that occupied this empty end of the Rainbow Plateau. He would know why the Adams woman was here. Most important of all, he would know if a strange man wearing gold-rimmed glasses had been seen in the canyon country. At this moment the screen door opened and John Mcginnis emerged. He stood for a moment, blinking at Leaphorn through the fierce outside light, a stumpy, stooped, white-haired man swallowed up in new, and oversized, blue overalls. Then he squatted on the floor between the old woman and the man. Whatever he said produced a cackle of laughter from the woman and a chuckle from the man. Once again, Leaphorn guessed, he had been the subject of humor. He didn’t mind. Mcginnis would save him a lot of effort.
    “I remember you,” Mcginnis said. “You’re that Slow Talking Dinee boy who used to pa-trol out of Tuba City. Six, seven years ago.” He had invited Leaphorn into his room at the rear of the store and gestured him to a chair. Now he poured a Coca-Cola glass half full from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, sloshed it around, and eyed Leaphorn. “The Dinee say you won’t drink whiskey, so I ain’t going to offer you any.
     
    “
     
    “That’s right,” Leaphorn said. “Let me see, now. If I remember correct, your mama was Anna Gorman—ain’t that right?—from way the hell over at Two Gray Hills? And you’re a grandson of Hosteen Klee-Thlumie.” Leaphorn nodded. Mcginnis scowled at him. “I don’t mean a goddam clan grandson,” he said. “I mean a real grandson. He was the father of your mother? That right?” Leaphorn nodded again. “I knowed your granddaddy, then,” Mcginnis said. He toasted this fact with a long sip at the warm bourbon and then thought about it, his pale old man’s eyes staring past Leaphorn at the wall. “Knowed him before he was Hosteen anything. Just a young buck Indian trying to learn how to be a singer. They called him Horse Kicker then.”
    “When I knew him he was called Hosteen Klee,” Leaphorn said. “We helped each other out, a time or two,” Mcginnis said, talking to his memories. “Can’t say that about too many.” He took another sip of bourbon and looked across the glass at Leaphorn—solidly back in the present. “You want to find that old Cigaret woman,” he said. “Now, the only reason you’d want to do that is something must have come up on the Tso killing. That right?”
    “Nothing much new,” Leaphorn said. “But you know how it is. Time passes. Maybe somebody says something. Or sees something that helps us out.” Mcginnis grinned. “And if anybody heard anything, it’d get to old John Mcginnis. That right?” The grin vanished with a new thought. “Say, now, you know anything about a feller named Noni? Claims to be a Seminole Indian?” The tone of the question suggested that he doubted all claims made by Noni. “Don’t think so,” Leaphorn said. “What about him?”
    “He came in here a while back and looked the store over,” Mcginnis said. “Said he and a bunch of other goddam Indians had some sort of government loan and was interested in buying this hell hole. I figured to do that they’d have to deal with the Tribal Council for a license.”
    “They would,” Leaphorn said. “But that wouldn’t have anything to do with the police.