AT FIRST, Officer Jim Chee had felt foolish sitting on the roof of the house of some total stranger. But that uneasiness had soon faded. Now this vantage point on the roof had come to seem one of Cowboy Dashee's rare good ideas. Chee could see almost everywhere from here. The drummers directly beneath the tips of his freshly shined boots, the column of masked dancers just entering the plaza to his left, the crowd of spectators jammed along the walls of the buildings, the sales booths lining the narrow streets beyond, he looked down on all of it.

And out over the flat crowded roofs of Tano Pueblo, he could rest his eyes on the ragged row of cottonwoods along the river, golden today with autumn, or upon the blue mountains blocking the horizon, or the green-tan-silver patchwork of farm fields the Tanoans irrigated.

It was an excellent perch from which to witness the Tanoan kachina dance -- for duty as well as pleasure. Especially with the warm, jeans-clad thigh of Janet Pete pressed against him. If Delmar Kanitewa was present, Chee would be likely to see him. If the boy didn't show up, then there was no better place from which to watch the ceremonial. Such mystical rituals had always fascinated Chee. Since boyhood Chee had wanted to follow Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai.

In the Navajo family structure Nakai was Chee's "Little Father," his mother's elder brother. Nakai was a shaman of the highest order. He was a hataalii -- what the whites called a singer, or medicine man. He was respected for his knowledge of the traditional religion and of the curing ways the Holy People had taught to keep humankind in harmony with the reality that surrounds us all. Nakai worked along that narrow line that separates flesh and spirit. Since boyhood, that had interested Chee.

"On the roof is where they like visitors to sit when they're having a kachina dance," Dashee had said. "It gets you tourists out from underfoot. Unless you fall off, there's a lot less chance you'll do something stupid and mess up the ceremony. And it leaves room around the dance ground for the Tano people. They need to exchange gifts with the kachinas. Things like that."

Dashee was a sworn deputy sheriff of Apache County, Arizona, a Hopi of his people's ancient Side Corn Clan, and Jim Chee's closest friend. But he could also be a pain in the butt.

"But what if I spot the kid?" Chee had asked. "Is he going to wait while I climb down?"

"Why not? He won't know you're looking for him." Cowboy had then leaned against Janet Pete and confided in a stage whisper, "The boy'll think Detective Chee would be over there in Thoreau working on that big homicide."

"You know," Asher Davis said, "I'll bet I know that guy. There was a teacher at that Saint Bonaventure School -- one of those volunteers -- who called me a time or two to see if I could get a good price for something some old-timer had to sell. One time it was a little silver pollen container -- looked late nineteenth century -- and some jerk in Farmington had offered this old man two dollars for it. I got him two hundred and fifty. I wonder if that was the teacher who got killed."

"His name was Dorsey," Chee said, sounding slightly grouchy. He didn't know Davis and wasn't sure he'd like him. But maybe that was just the mood he was in.

"Dorsey," Davis said. "That's him."

"See?" Cowboy said. "Officer Chee keeps up on those serious crimes. And he also has time to write letters to the editor telling the Tano council what to do with its old uranium mines."

"Hey," Janet said. "Watch it there, Cowboy. That was a darn good letter. It was good advice. The paper thought so, too. They put the big headline on it." She punched Cowboy on the shoulder. "Do you want to see us being used as the world's toxic waste dump?"

Chee had been ignoring Dashee's needling all morning. At first it had been based on the letter, published in that morning's edition of the Navajo Times. In it, Chee had opposed a proposal to use the open pit of the abandoned Jacks Wild Mine as a toxic waste dump. He had called it "symbolic of the contempt felt for tribal lands." But then they had heard of the homicide on the car radio.

A school shop teacher at Thoreau had been hit fatally on the head. Some materials were reported missing and no suspect had been identified. It was a pretty good murder by reservation standards. Certainly it was more dignified than this assignment. It had happened yesterday, on Chee's day off. Still, Lieutenant Leaphorn might have assigned him to work on it. Or at least mentioned it. But he hadn't, and that burned a little.

What burned more was Janet. Janet had encouraged Cowboy's needling with amused grins and occasional chuckles.

But now, warmed by her praise of his letter, Chee was willing to forgive all that -- even to feel better about Cowboy. He had to concede that he had started the exchange by kidding Cowboy about the Hopi tendency to grow wide, instead of high. And he had to concede that what Cowboy had said about the roof was true enough. If Kanitewa was down there in the crowd watching his pueblo celebrate this autumn feast day, the boy would be feeling secure among family and friends. But, on the other hand, kids who run away from boarding school know someone will be coming after them.

Chee had been just such a kid himself, once. That feeling of fear, of being hunted, was one he could never forget. You can't relax even when, as in Chee's case, the hunt was brief and there was little time for the fear to build. The man from the boarding school had been parked out of sight behind the sheep pens, waiting, when Chee had walked up to his mother's hogan. Seeing him had been almost a relief. The memory of that offered another excuse to avoid the roof.

"Kanitewa, he'll be nervous," Chee said. "He won't be easy to catch."

"Tell you what," Dashee said. "We'll sit on the roof. If we see him, you watch him while I climb down. Then you signal me where he is and I grab him."

Chee thought about it.

"If these people were Hopis we wouldn't have to worry about this. They have the men all sitting on the roofs, and the women and children on the chairs down there around the dance ground," Dashee said. "That's the way it's supposed to be."

"Not at all Hopi villages," Chee said.

"At mine, anyway," Dashee said. "We do it the traditional way."

"Which is beside the point. If I'm on the roof, he's going to notice me," Chee had said. "Sitting up there waving my arms and pointing at him. He can't help noticing me." And so would everyone else -- a Navajo making an ass of himself at a Tano ceremonial.

Through all this Asher Davis had been looking up at the roof ledge, uneasily. Asher's sunburned neck bulged from the eighteen-inch neck of his sport shirt and his back strained its triple-X width. "Reckon it'll hold me?" Asher asked, his voice filled with doubt.

"Sure," Dashee said. He motioned around the plaza. "Look at all the people up there. Those roofs are built to hold full-sized people. Like us. Or," he paused and inspected Chee and Janet Pete, "twice as many skinny ones."

"Not me, they're not," Asher said. "But I need to be seeing some folks anyway. I've got to be going about my business. Helping the Tano economy. Buying up some goodies."

Janet Pete had settled it. "Let's sit on the roof," she said. "Come on, Asher. Don't be lazy. You can do your business later."

"Hey," Davis said. "I see another excuse. There's ol' Roger." He looked at Janet. "I'll bet you know him. He's a fellow lawyer. Works the Indian territory out of Santa Fe, and for years he's been big in saving the planet."

"Roger who?" Janet asked, scanning the crowd.

"Applebee," Davis said. "The big gun in Nature First."

"Oh, yeah," Janet said. "I see him now. He talked to me about that Continental toxic-waste dump proposal last year."

Davis laughed. "And he probably got you into some sort of trouble. He's been doing that to me for years. Rog and I go all the way back to Santa Fe High School. Santa Fe Demons. He was quarterback, I was fullback. He got me suspended when we were sophomores. He's the kind of friend everybody needs to keep life from being boring."

Chee had been just standing there, looking at the housetop, trying to think of an argument against climbing up there. But this aroused his interest.

"How'd that happen? The suspension?"

"Well, we were having an algebra test, as I remember it, and Roger had custody of his uncle's car. I think he was supposed to get it greased or something. We'd been driving around instead of studying. So Rog says not to worry. We'll postpone the test. We call the principal, tell him we're the gas company and there's a leak in the line to the temporary building where the math class met." Davis was grinning at the memory. "It worked."

"It worked, but you got suspended?" Chee asked.

"Well, that's the way it is with the Davis-Applebee projects. Roger dreams 'em up and they sound fine and then it turns out there's something he didn't think of. This one just worked for a day or so. I made the call, because I had the deep voice. And when it turned out no gas leak, the secretary had had enough dealings with me to remember what I sounded like."

"I'd like to meet Applebee," Chee said. "I wonder if I could help him stop that waste dump project."

But then Davis had shouted, "Hey, Rog," and waved and was plowing through the crowd.

So, reduced to a party of three, they climbed the ladder behind the house of a plump middle-aged woman whom Cowboy Dashee seemed to know. They sat on the packed earth of the roof with their feet dangling over the parapet -- looking directly down on the pueblo's central plaza with Chee feeling disgruntled.

In typical Chee fashion, he analyzed why. It was partly because Lieutenant Leaphorn had sent him here on this trivial assignment. True, he had only been second man in the two-man Special Investigations Office for three days, but there were already signs it wasn't going to work out. The lieutenant wasn't taking him seriously. It wasn't just not being shifted over to the homicide, it was Leaphorn's attitude.

They should be investigating Continental Collectors, and Tribal Councilman Jimmy Chester, and those people in the Bureau of Land Management, and the whole conspiracy to make the Checkerboard Reservation a national garbage pit. That's what he should be doing -- not chasing after a runaway schoolboy who wasn't even a Navajo. Or was just barely a Navajo. And hunting him just because his grandmother was a big shot on the Navajo Tribal Council.

So he was in a down mood today partly because of the sense of having his time wasted. But, to be honest with himself, it was mostly because of the way this expedition had all worked out.

When Leaphorn had given him his orders, Chee had decided to make the best of it. Janet Pete's legal aid office was closed. He'd called her at home and invited her to come and watch the ceremonial. She'd said fine. She'd meet him in front of the Navajo Nation Inn. And she was standing there when he drove up. But, alas, she was talking to Cowboy and Asher Davis, and a lot of the glitter quickly vanished from what had been a very good idea.

"Do you know this fellow, here?" Cowboy had asked Chee. "He's Asher Davis and he is what you college-educated people would call an oxymoron. He's an Honest Indian Trader." While they shook hands, Dashee was looking at Davis, reconsidering the compliment.

"Well, let's make that read 'Fairly Honest Indian Trader.' We've been out to Hopi Mesas and I've got to admit that Asher did try to cheat some of my kinfolks."

Davis was obviously used to this. "As a matter of fact," he told Chee, his expression somber, "cheating Cowboy's kinfolks is something I haven't been able to pull off. His uncle there at Mishongnovi sold me a nineteenth-century Owl Kachina, and when I got it home and looked under the feathers I found one of those 'Made in Taiwan' labels."

Dashee was grinning. "Actually, it said 'Made in Taiwan in 1889 by Hopis.' So at least it was ancient."

"Good to meet you, Mr. Davis," Chee said. "We've got to be shoving off."

And Cowboy had said where you going and, alas, Chee had admitted they were going to Tano to see the ceremonial, and Cowboy had said he hadn't seen that one and had heard it was interesting and Davis had said it was, indeed, and Tano had an unusually good market and he sometimes picked up some old pots there, and the Jicarillas brought in their baskets for sale, and alas again, Janet had then said, "We have plenty of room. Why don't you come along?"

Thus, what Chee had planned as a quiet duet, with plenty of time to talk and explore their relationship, had deteriorated into a noisy quartet. And then there was Janet's grinning when Cowboy needled him, and siding with Cowboy on whether they should sit on the roof. Worse, now that they were up here on the roof, it was obvious that Cowboy was right. To hell with it.

Copyright © 1993 by Tony Hillerman