13

“MALPAIS, TRANSLATED LITERALLY from the Spanish, means “bad country.” In New Mexico, it signifies specifically those great expanses of lava flow which make black patches on the map of the state. The malpais of the Checkerboard country lies just below Mount Taylor, having been produced by the same volcanic fault that, a millennium earlier, had thrust the mountain fifteen thousand feet into the sky. Now the mountain has worn down to a less spectacular eleven thousand feet and relatively modern eruptions from cracks at its base have sent successive floods of melted basalt flowing southward for forty miles to fill the long valley between Cebolleta Mesa and the Zuni Mountains. Some of this malpais was ancient, long since softened by algae, moss, rain, wind, and durable desert grasses. Elsewhere it was only a few thousand years old, still raw, black, and relatively lifeless. The track Chee was following zigzagged its way across a smoother, more ancient flow. Nonetheless, it was rough going.

“I’ve never been out here before,” Mary Landon said. “Not out in it. It’s like someone was boiling a whole oceanful of black ink, and all of a sudden it froze solid.”

“Even the rodents out here tend to be black,” Chee said. “Protective coloration, I guess.”

“It doesn’t look like there’d be anything alive.”

“Lots of reptiles,” Chee said. “All kinds of snakes and lizards. And quite a few mammals. Rabbits, mice, kangaroo rats, so forth.”

“What do they drink?’ Mary asked.

“Some of them don’t. They get their water from the plants they eat. But rain and snow melt and collect in potholes,” Chee said. “And now and then there’s a spring. That’s where we’re going. Charley has a spring out here. He collects herbs, datura, stuff like that. For his ceremonials. That’s where he left the box.”

“How do you find it?”

“Either by the powers of deduction,” Chee said, “or by asking Charley. I asked Charley and he told me to follow this track until I came to the place where the new lava flow crosses the old.” Chee pointed ahead. “Like right there. And then I’d see a place where the track forks. See? Right there ahead. And the spring was maybe a hundred yards down the right fork of the track. He said there was a bunch of tamarisk sticking up out of the lava flow to mark it. See? Over there.”

“So why aren’t you taking the right turn?” Mary asked.

“I want to show you that new lava up close,” Chee said. “We’ll park there and we can walk over.”

The new lava was at least a thousand years old. It looked as if it had hardened yesterday. It was as black as coal, raw and rough, still marked with the froth of its white-hot bubbling as it boiled across the landscape. They climbed from the ancient lava onto the final wave of the new and stood looking across ten miles of tumbled, ragged blackness at the blue shape of Cebolleta Mesa.

“I’m impressed,” Mary said finally. “It’s like looking backward a hundred million years.”

“Do you know any of our legends?” Chee asked.

“I know a few,” Mary said. “A Laguna girl I know told me one about the Laguna migrations. And the Corn Maidens.”

“Those are Pueblo,” Chee said. “If you were Navajo you’d know that you are looking at the blood of the Horned Monster.”

“Oh. Black blood.” Mary grinned at Chee. “You Navajos have black-hearted monsters.”

“Yes, indeed. A historic spot. Right around here is where the Hero Twins started making Dinetah safe for the Dinee to live in. The Horned Monster was the first one they bagged. Bonn of Water distracted him, and Monster Slayer shot him with an arrow.”

“He certainly bled a lot,” Mary said.

“And then they cleaned the rest of them out,” Chee said. He helped her down from the lava crest. “The Winged Monster, and the Water Monster. We even had one they called One Who Kicks People Over the Cliff.”

“How’d they do him in?”

“His hair grew out of the cliff, keeping him from falling,” Chee said. “Monster Slayer gave him a haircut.”

The ancient lava flow made fairly easy walking. Eons of time had rubbed away its roughness and turned its blackness gray. It was coated with lichens, and grass grew wherever dust had accumulated in its cracks. Chee talked of Navajo mythology. Mary Landon listened. He was carrying a grocery sack which contained a thermos of coffee, two apples, and two king-sized Lottaburgers picked up in Grants. Chee hadn’t been on a picnic since school days. He was happy. To their right, the morning sun reflected off the snow on the high slopes of Mount Taylor, making it glitter against the dark-blue sky.

“We call it Turquoise Mountain,” Chee said. “First Man built it out of earth he brought up from the Third World, and he pinned it to the world with a magic knife to keep it from flying away. He put Turquoise Girl on top of it, to keep the Navajos safe from monsters, and he assigned Big Snake to live on the mountain for eternity, to keep Turquoise Girl safe from whatever bothers Turquoise Girls.”

“Speaking of big snakes,” Mary Landon said. “Am I right in remembering that they hibernate in the winter, and I therefore have absolutely nothing to worry about? Or is that hibernation business just another of your myths?”

She was climbing a great hump of lava. Just beyond it were the tamarisks and the spring. “When are you going to tell me your war name?”

“It’s a good rule to stay off those humps when you’re walking on lava,” Chee said. “They’re the tops of old bubbles, and about one in twenty thousand is thin enough so that you can fall through and…”

Chee’s voice trailed away. Mary had stopped atop the hump and stood frozen, looking down.

“Jim,” she said. “There’s someone”

Chee scrambled up beside her.

Just beyond the hump was a sinkhole, a circle of clean, dank water rimmed by cattails and a species of green reed. This was surrounded, in turn, by a small expanse of buffalo grass. The man wore a red-and-black mackinaw and his black hat lay beside his head. His hands were together behind his back, secured by what seemed to be an electric cord.

“I think he’s dead,” Mary Landon said in a very small voice.

“I’ll see,” Chee said. The left hand looked distorted, and coated with something dark. “I think you should wait in the truck.”

“All right,” Mary said.

The kneeling man was Tomas Charley. The black on his hand was blood, long dried. But when Chee placed his fingers on Charley’s neck to confirm the certainty that he was dead, he found the flesh resilient and warm. He stepped quickly back from the body and studied the area around him. Tomas Charley had been dead only a matter of minutes. Chee became intensely aware that his pistol, inappropriate for a picnic with a girl, was locked in the glove box of the patrol car. Perhaps Tomas Charley had been left here hours ago and had been a long time dying. And perhaps he had been killed only moments ago, which would mean his killer must be nearby. Chee glanced at the body again. There was no sign of what had killed him. The only blood visible was from the hand. Chee grimaced. The hand had been methodically mutilated. He examined the mackinaw, looking in vain for a bullet hole. Then he noticed a place where the black hair on the back of Charley’s head had been scorched. He knelt beside the body and gently panted the hair. Beneath it, the skin over the skull had been punctured, leaving a small round hole. A bullet hole, probably no larger than a.22. Turquoise Girl had not kept this half-Navajo safe from the monsters.

The sound of the car starting was close. It came from beyond the tamarisks. Chee trotted around the pool toward it, conscious that the driver was probably armed. The car, he saw when he reached the screen of brush, was a green-and-white Plymouth – the one that had been parked beside Charley’s car. It was moving away from him down the track. He couldn’t see the driver. Chee turned and scrambled up the lava formation. When the Plymouth reached the place where the tracks forked, it would angle left, back toward the highway and Grants. Then Chee could see the driver. And he would need only a glimpse to confirm what he already knew. It would be the blond man in the yellow jacket.