“The porcupine stomach would hold a little water, enough for a day. He would use that until he could find something or kill something bigger. But there was nothing he could do about his feet. They hurt now, from all day walking in town shoes, and the shoes wouldn’t last if he had to cover much country.”

Horseman is on the run from the police for stabbing a man in Gallup, so he must live off the land with only the supplies he has on his person. This quotation shows both his resourcefulness and his unpreparedness, exploring the theme The Role of Cultural Knowledge in Survival. At once, he knows how to use a porcupine stomach to carry water as he travels, but he also isn’t equipped for such a long journey with his “town shoes” that can’t withstand the Arizona desert.

“But the ghosts of the Old People were there in the great rock hogans under the cliffs and his people stayed away. That was one of the reasons he had come here. Not too close to the Houses of the Enemy Dead, but close enough so the Blue Policeman wouldn’t think to look.”

Ghosts are a central motif in the text that foreshadows evil actions. Horseman describes how his people avoid the Anasazi cliff dwellings because they are haunted by ghosts and are thus connected to evil. This description hints that there is suspicious activity going on in this area, especially when Horseman later sees trucks driving directly toward these ruins.

“The last good year. The year before coming home to this apartment and finding Sara’s closets empty and Sara’s note. Fourteen words in blue ink on blue paper. The last year of excitement, and enthusiasm, and plans for research which would tie all Navajo superstitions into a tidy, orderly bundle. The last year before reality.”

This quotation highlights how great an impact the end of McKee’s marriage had on his life. He counts all time since then as a harsh reality that precludes happiness. He feels like he’s lost all his enthusiasm for his academic career, but he also recognizes that his goal of tying Navajo beliefs up “into a tidy, orderly bundle” is unrealistic. McKee becomes motivated to recapture his former self rather than wallow in pity, which pushes him to finally accept Leaphorn’s invitation to the Navajo Nation.

“He leaned back in the chair, rereading the letter and recalling their arguments—Leaphorn insisting that there was a basis of truth in the Navajo Origin Myth, that some people did deliberately turn antisocial, away from the golden mean of nature, deliberately chose the unnatural, and therefore, in Navajo belief, the evil way.”

This quotation introduces the motif of the Navajo Way and the evil that results when someone rejects this guiding principle. Leaphorn’s argument at once demonstrates his respect for this belief, but also how he views his culture’s values through a non-supernatural lens. Though he doesn’t believe people can use magic, he does think that rejecting the Navajo Way’s values of harmony makes people act maliciously.

“And so I go to Shoemaker’s today and spread the word to whatever Red Foreheads come in, and one of them will be a cousin, or a nephew, or something, and the news gets to Horseman.”

Leaphorn explains to McKee what he hopes to achieve at Shoemaker’s trading post for his investigation. Connecting to the theme The Complexities of Law Enforcement in Indigenous Societies, Leaphorn knows that the Navajo gossip network is the best way to send information out. He hopes to drop hints to members of the Red Forehead clan about Horseman’s recovering victim, hoping someone will overhear and get word to the man so he will come into the Law and Order office instead of forcing a manhunt.

“The highway skirted the immense, lifeless depression which falls away into the Biz-E-Ahi and Nazlini washes. It was lit now by the sunset, a fantastic jumble of eroded geological formations. The white man sees the desolation and calls it a desert, McKee thought, but the Navajo name for it means ‘Beautiful Valley.’”

As McKee and Leaphorn drive through the Navajo Nation, McKee thinks of the divergent perspectives on the landscapes. The differing understandings of the “desert” from outsiders and insiders expands on the theme The Role of Cultural Knowledge in Survival, as the Navajo are able to see the beauty in the landscape because of their deep connection with the land and how to live in harmony with it.

“Begay had deliberately postponed thinking about this, because the Navajo Way was the Middle Way, which avoided all excesses—even of happiness. The shower at midnight and the smell of the earth and the beauty of the morning had been enough.”

This quotation further expands on how the Navajo Way motif influences the characters’ behaviors. Joseph Begay’s daughter will arrive to spend the summer with her family, but Begay knows he shouldn’t be too expectant of this occasion because it could cause disharmony within him. Instead, this quotation shows how he keeps himself grounded by appreciating the mundane beauties of the day.

“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.”

The Navajo believe that people’s ghosts can appear at night in the form of animals, and here, the owl’s erratic behavior leads Begay to believe that he’s come across an unruly spirit. As an ominous symbol, the owl unsettles Begay and foreshadows his discovery of Horseman’s deceased body.

“Before their meal she had assured him that she didn’t know the identity of anyone who claimed to be troubled by the Wolf. McKee considered this small lie, now gracefully retracted, not as an indication of a Navajo secrecy but as a further demonstration of the mystery of womanhood.”

This quotation demonstrates the lasting impact of Sara’s departure on McKee and his relationship with and understanding of women. McKee’s inability to understand Sara’s action leads him to think women are mysterious people he can never understand, rather than admit that he needs to examine his own actions that led to the divorce. This belief colors all his interactions with female characters in the text. In this moment, McKee sees contradictions in Old Woman Gray Rocks’ words and chalks it up to the “mystery of womanhood,” even though Navajo people are known to be wary of sharing information with outsiders.

“‘Makes a certain amount of sense,’ Leaphorn said. ‘But I don’t know.’ He was staring out the window. ‘Why kill somebody like Horseman? Just another poor soul who didn’t quite know how to be Navajo and couldn’t learn to act like a white. No good for anything.’”

Here Leaphorn describes the position many young Navajo of Horseman’s generation find themselves in as they interact more and more with white American culture. These youths find themselves floating between each culture, not fully able to assimilate into either and thus end up feeling lost. This quotation develops the theme Alienation From Traditional Culture. Leaphorn’s comment indirectly describes himself, as he often feels caught between cultures.

“He had once again, as he had for years, fallen victim to his optimism. Expecting something when there was always nothing. Anticipating some romantic mystery in what Takes and Leaphorn must already see as a sordid, routine little homicide. It was this flaw, he knew, that had cost him these last eight years of anguish, turned to misery, turned to what now was simply numbness.”

One of McKee’s defining character traits is his romanticism and his penchant for fantasizing about a life full of excitement. As this quotation demonstrates, this habit frequently leads to great disappointment in McKee’s life, as reality never lives up to the fantasies he creates in his head. McKee subconsciously does this several times in the text and faces varying degrees of disappointment until he learns to face the real cause of his problems.

“When he found Yazzie he would learn that Yazzie had lost many sheep to this ‘witch’ and that he decided to abandon his traditional grazing grounds and his hogan because a witch is, after all, more than a man can be expected to cope with. Yazzie would not be likely to admit, even to himself, that he could not deal with coyotes, or even with an unusually bold wolf of the natural, four-legged variety.”

The argument of reason versus belief is a central motif in the text that underscores discussions of Navajo culture. To McKee, Navajo beliefs about witchcraft can be explained as a practice of scapegoating. As he demonstrates in this quotation, McKee imagines that Yazzie will blame his animals’ deaths on witches, hiding behind this belief and generating gossip rather than owning up that a wild animal attacked his herds.

“The People are losing too many of the old ways, Sandoval thought, and he thought it again when he had to tell Tsosie how to sit on the feet of Big Fly, and even had to remind him to face the east. When Sandoval was a boy learning from his father, his father had not had to tell people how to sit. They knew.”

Sandoval is a symbolic character in the text who represents both the generation divide between older and younger Navajos and the growing loss of traditional knowledge. Here, Sandoval laments that he must teach Charley Tsosie so much about the Enemy Way ceremony, and he juxtaposes the minutiae of his instructions with how older generations simply “knew” what had to be done.

“‘I am called Joe Leaphorn,’ the young man said, ‘and I work for Law and Order,’ but after that he talked about other things—about the rains starting early this year, which was good, and about drinking and gambling, which was bad. Sandoval approved of this, knowing that the policeman would get around to his business in good time and appreciating that here was a young one who knew the old and patient ways.”

Expanding on the theme The Complexities of Law Enforcement in Indigenous Societies, this quotation illustrates the different approach Leaphorn must take when investigating among Navajo people, as they have different cultural expectations for their interpersonal interactions. Knowing Sandoval is an elder, Leaphorn uses the traditional “patient ways” to develop trust with the old man, which makes his investigation take longer but also ensures he’ll actually get information from an important witness.

“He had jotted some names in his notebook, but even as he did it he wondered why. The laws he enforced had been taken by the Tribal Council from the white man’s laws and the white man did not recognize witchcraft as an offense. It would become an offense only if some specific crime was involved.”

Again connecting with the theme The Complexities of Law Enforcement in Indigenous Societies, Leaphorn here demonstrates how policing sometimes conflicts with the Navajo way of life and its beliefs because it operates on an imposed Western system of laws that discounts the validity of Indigenous beliefs. The community is greatly disturbed by reports of witchcraft, but Leaphorn can’t do anything about it until something the law recognizes as a crime has been committed.

“In the dream he floated in a great airy blackness, wanting to shout, but remembering—dream fashion—that he had shouted before and his voice had been lost in an infinite echoless distance. Remembering this would sadden him because it told him there was no one anywhere but him.”

Here, the setting creates a moment for character development and reflection. In the wide-open darkness of the Arizona valley, McKee recalls a recuring nightmare he had about falling through a void and being unable to call for help. This memory at once describes McKee’s feeling of physical danger in the treacherous landscape while also describing his feelings of emotional isolation. With Canfield missing and the nighttime offering an opportunity for unimpeded thoughts, McKee confronts the fact that he feels truly alone in the world.

“McKee allowed thirty minutes of silence, and then sprinted across the sand to the south wall. Here the moon’s shadow would now fall and here he would be less visible from the rim. He had kept as high on the talus as he could, trading the easier going along the bottom for the invisibility offered by the rocks and the brush.”

Rather than take the easy way out along the valley bottom, McKee sticks to the more dangerous canyon walls because they offer better cover to escape the Big Navajo. Expanding on the theme The Role of Cultural Knowledge in Survival, McKee benefits from his military experience and knowledge of the landscape, allowing him to effectively utilize the natural geology to his advantage.

“All that had happened under the moonlight was utterly absurd, like something out of a bad melodrama, and his own role in it had been thoroughly unheroic. Yet Miss Leon had to be told—to get her out of the canyon. There simply was no way to explain it all without sounding like a complete fool. McKee wished fervently that the visitor were a man.”

This passage returns to McKee’s fantasy of himself as a romantic hero and his life as a melodrama. The evocation of “moonlight” primes the scene for a romantic event, but his decision to withhold the truth from Ellen makes the situation awkward. His “othering” of women as a group he can’t understand leads him to wish to remain in his comfort zone—interacting with other men—rather than face his misconceptions.

“‘This Canfield seemed like a nice fella,’ he said. ‘Full of jokes.’

‘Then why did you kill him?’ McKee asked fiercely. He spoke in Navajo.

The big man looked at him, as if trying to understand the question. He answered in English. ‘Just bad luck. There wasn’t any other way to handle it.’”

This exchange between the Big Navajo and McKee exposes several key elements of the antagonist’s personality. Firstly, the Big Navajo’s nonchalance about Canfield’s death illustrates his amorality. He didn’t kill Canfield out of anger or a personal grudge, but because the situation demanded it. Language plays an important role in this exchange. The Big Navajo understands the Navajo language, but he doesn’t understand the moral essence of McKee’s question. To him, there’s no contradiction between his acknowledgement that Canfield was “a nice fella” and the fact that he murdered him. This amorality goes against both Western and Navajo belief systems, placing the Big Navajo in his own category, not part of either culture. His comment “Just bad luck” foreshadows the motive behind Horseman’s murder, which was simply that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“In this part of the Reservation, The People linked owls with ghosts, but not with witches, and gave crows and ravens no supernatural significance at all. Obviously, the man’s tone was heavily ironic when he listed the birds and animals. McKee could think of no source for such a list except Greersen’s Case Studies in Navajo Ethnographic Aberrations.”

McKee eavesdrops into the Big Navajo’s conversation with Ellen as he’s tied up in the backseat, and the Big Navajo tries to scare Ellen by claiming Navajo Wolves can turn into all kinds of animals to hunt their prey. McKee notices that the Big Navajo’s list of animals aligns with one from an outdated textbook, which characterizes Navajo beliefs as “aberrations.” Developing the theme of Alienation From Traditional Culture, this detail exposes how, as a product of the BIA’s relocation project, the Big Navajo is so removed from his culture that he had to learn about it from a biased Western textbook.

“Leaphorn never counted on luck. Instead, he expected order—the natural sequence of behavior, the cause producing the natural effect, the human behaving in the way it was natural for him to behave. He counted on that and upon his own ability to sort out the observed facts and find in them the natural order.”

This excerpt underscores how Leaphorn understands his mind and how he sees the world through the lens of logical, predictable cause-and-effect. This skill comes in handy for his police work, as he’s able to make sense of a suspect of victim’s behavior to paint a full picture of the crime. However, this characteristic also distances him from traditional Navajo culture, as he struggles to accept the supernatural elements of its spirituality. This conflict highlights The Complexities of Law Enforcement in Indigenous Societies.

“A Navajo had been killed and a Navajo killed him—that was the presumption. Leaphorn studied this presumption, again seeking an answer to the central question. Why? Why did Navajos kill? Not as lightly as white men, because the Navajo Way made life the ultimate value and death unrelieved terror.”

Leaphorn puzzles through the evidence he finds on Ceniza Mesa, which contradicts his theory about Horseman’s murder and what he assumes about the Big Navajo’s character. Leaphorn uses the motif of the Navajo Way as the lens through which he perceives the Big Navajo’s character, but he comes to see that this isn’t correct, since his actions don’t align with what he would’ve been taught had he grown up in the Navajo Nation. Leaphorn instead must see the Big Navajo as an outsider, and this way, he can better predict his behavior.

“‘Crazy to get rich,’ Leaphorn said. ‘You call it ambition. Sometimes we call it witchcraft. You remember the Origin Myth, when First Woman sent the Heron diving back into the Fourth World to get the witchcraft bundle. She told him to swim down and bring back “the way to get money.”’”

Leaphorn alludes to the Navajo Origin Myth, which describes how witchcraft was brought into the world. The myth emphasizes witchcraft’s connection to greed, which in Navajo culture in an unnatural desire. Leaphorn can accept witchcraft as a descriptor for earthly evil rather than for supernatural magic, as he believes that turning away from the Navajo Way does makes a person wicked, as evidenced by the Big Navajo’s corruption. This highlights the theme of Alienation From Traditional Culture.