It was when he was turning to climb back into the pickup that he saw the owl. It flew almost directly at the truck, startling him, flitted through the headlight beams, and disappeared abruptly in the dawn half-light up the wash. He sat behind the wheel a moment, feeling shaken. The owl had acted strangely, he thought, and it was known that ghosts sometimes took on that form when they moved in the darkness. It looked like a burrowing owl, Begay thought, but maybe it was a ghost returning with the dawn to a grave or a death hogan.

He was still thinking of the owl as he let the pickup ease slowly down the steep bank and then raced it across the soft bottom. And he was thinking of it as the truck climbed out of the arroyo, its motor laboring in low gear. But by now the mood of the morning had recaptured him and he thought that it was just a burrowing owl, going home from the night's hunting and confused by his headlights. It was just beyond the rim of the shallow canyon, just after the pickup had regained level ground and he had shifted into second gear, that he saw that he was wrong.

The body lay just beside the track and his headlights first reflected from the soles of its shoes. Before he could stop, the pickup was almost beside it. Joseph Begay shifted into neutral and left the motor running. He unbuttoned his shirt and extracted a small leather pouch hung from his neck by a thong. The pouch contained a small bit of jet flint in the crude shape of a bear, and about an ounce of yellow pollen. Begay put his thumb in the pollen and rubbed it against his chest. He chanted:

The ghost was gone—at least for the moment. He had seen it flying up Teastah Wash. He got out of the truck and stood beside the body. It was a young man dressed in jeans and a red shirt and with town shoes on. The body lay on its back, the legs slightly parted, right arm outflung and left arm across the chest with the wrist and hand extending, oddly rigid. There was no visible blood but the clothing was damp from the rain.

As Begay drove the last mile down the bumpy track toward the highway, driving faster than he should have, he thought that he would have to report this body to Law and Order before he went to the bus station. He tried not to think of the expression frozen on the face of the young man, the dead eyes bulging and the lips drawn back in naked terror.

It was midmorning when the news of Horseman reached Leaphorn's office. In the two hours since breakfast, McKee had sorted through two filing cabinets, extracted Manila folders marked "Witchcraft" and segregated those identified as "Wolf" from those labeled "Frenzy" and "Datura." The datura cases involved narcotics users, and most frenzy incidents, McKee knew, centered on mental illness. If he had time, he'd look through those later. He was marking Wolf incident locations on a Bureau of Indian Affairs reservation map, coding them with numbers, and then making notes of names of witnesses, when the radio dispatcher stopped at the door and told Leaphorn that Luis Horseman had been found.

"When did he come in?"

"Found his body," the dispatcher said.

Leaphorn stared at the dispatcher, waiting for more.

"The captain wants to know if you can pick up the coroner and clear the body?"

"Why don't they handle it out of the Chinle subagency?" Leaphorn asked. "They're a hundred miles closer."

"They found him down near Ganado. You're supposed to pick up the coroner there."

"Ganado?" Leaphorn looked incredulous. "What killed him? Suicide?"

"Apparently natural," the dispatcher said. "Too much booze. But nobody's looked at him yet."

"Ganado," Leaphorn said. "How the devil did he get down there?"

It was forty-five minutes to Ganado and Leaphorn spent most of them worrying to McKee about being wrong.

"Congratulations," McKee said. "You're forty years old and you just made your first mistake."

"It's not that. It just doesn't make sense." And then, for the third time, Leaphorn reviewed his reasoning—looking for a flaw. The Gallup police had reported the car Horseman had taken after the knifing was last seen heading north on U.S. 666, the right direction. It had been found later, abandoned near Greasewood. The right place, if he was returning to the west-slope canyon country of his mother's clan. And there was every reason to think he would. Horseman was scared. The territory was empty, and a fugitive's dream for hiding out. His kinsmen would feed him and keep their mouths shut. And at Shoemaker's Leaphorn was certain that at least two of those he had talked to had known about Horseman. There was the old man with the witch story and it was even more obvious with the boy who had come in late. He had clearly been relieved to hear the Mexican hadn't died and clearly was in a hurry to end the conversation and go tell someone about it. And then there was the Big Navajo. "He was interested," Leaphorn said. "Remember he asked me to describe Horseman. And Shoemaker said he was new around there. Why would he be interested if he hadn't seen him?"

"You're hung up on the hat thing," McKee said.

"All right," Leaphorn said. "You explain the hat."

"Sure. He took the hatband off and while it was off, somebody stole the hat."

"When's the last time you took off your hatband?"

"I don't wear silver conchos on my hat," McKee said.

They picked up the coroner-justice of the peace at a Conoco station in Ganado, a man named Rudolph Bitsi. Bitsi told them to drive south.

The late morning sun was hot by the time they arrived at the edge of Teastah Wash and the Navajo policeman who had been left with the body had retreated into the shade of the arroyo wall. He climbed into the sunlight, blinking, as the carryall stopped. He looked very young, and a little nervous. Leaphorn said the policeman was Dick Roanhorse, just out of recruit school.

"Find anything interesting?" Leaphorn asked.

"No, sir. Just this bottle. The only tracks are the ones made by Begay's pickup. Rain washed everything else out."

"The body was here before the rain, then," Leaphorn said. It was more a statement than a question, and the policeman only nodded.

Leaphorn pulled the blanket off the body. They looked at what had been Luis Horseman.

"Well," Bitsi said, "looks like he might have had some sort of seizure."

"Looks like it," Leaphorn said.

Bitsi squatted, examining the face. He was a short, middle-aged man, tending to fat, and he grunted as he lowered himself. He sniffed at Horseman's nose and lips.

"Alcohol. You can just barely get a whiff of it."

Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's legs. McKee noticed they were rigidly straight—as if he had died erect and tumbled backward, which wasn't likely.

Bitsi was still examining the face. "I saw one that looked like that two, three years ago. Crazy bastard had made him a brew out of jimson weed to get more potent and it poisoned him."

Leaphorn was looking at Horseman's left arm. The watch on his wrist was running, which would mean he had wound it the previous day—probably less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was a cheap watch, the kind that cost about $8 or $10, with a stainless-steel expansion band. Leaphorn stared at the left hand. The arm lay across Horseman's chest with the wrist and hand extended, unsupported.

"Pretty fair booze," Bitsi said, holding up the bottle. The label was red and proclaimed the contents to be sour-mash whiskey. About a half ounce of amber liquid remained in the bottle.

"Looks like he overdid it," Bitsi said. "Looks like he strangled. Fell down while he was throwing up, and passed out and strangled."