Here he must stay despite the Navajo Wolf. Here the Blue Policeman could never find him. Soon Billy Nez would know he was on this plateau and would bring him food, and then it would be better. The man in the dog skin didn’t know him, had no reason to destroy him. He had thought and he had made his decision. On the west slope of the Lukachukai Mountains, the Wind People whined past the boulder where Luis Horseman was huddled, his body darkened by ashes to blind the ghosts. Below, at Flagstaff airport, it registered gusts up to thirty-two knots-the dry, chilled wind of high-country spring. The wind pushed out of a high-pressure system centered over the Nevada plateau and carved shapes in the winter snowpack on San Francisco peaks, the Sacred Mountain of Blue Flint Woman. On the Navajo calendar it was eight days from the end of the Season When the Thunder Sleeps, the 25th of May, a night of a late sliver of moon. THAT NIGHT THE Wind People moved across the Reservation. Thankfully, the series would only get better from here. But the mystery is fairly thin and the motive seems pretty far-fetched. The tribal lore is excellent, as are the descriptions of the vast Southwestern expanses, the buttes, washes and arroyos. Interestingly, Leaphorn is not the main character here - that would be Professor Bergen McPhee who is studying Navajo supernatural folklore and stumbles into the criminal plot. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police to investigate in his own way - relying more on getting to know potential witnesses as friends and fellow Navajo, rather than using typical police investigative techniques. A wanted man wandering in a deserted area of the reservation crosses paths with a legendary Navajo witch and meets his demise. The narrative is clunky and the mystery weak, resulting in a short novel that plods along. The first of Hillerman's Leaphorn/Chee mysteries, set in and around the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico, The Blessing Way reads exactly like a first novel.

The blessing way book