The Story: Officer Jim Chee’s friend and fellow Navajo Tribal Police Officer Delbert Nez lies dead and Chee blames himself. He apprehends Ashie Pinto, an ancient drunken Navajo, holding the murder weapon. Attorney Janet Pete is assigned to defend Pinto, but the suspect won’t utter a word of confession—or denial. The story grows with the death of a University of New Mexico professor who is searching for the bones of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the homicide of a former South Vietnamese colonel. Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn unravel a multilayered plot that involves a lost fortune, one of history’s famous unsolved mysteries, and the mythical Coyote. Settings include Ship Rock, Window Rock, Arizona, and Albuquerque’s University of New Mexico campus and Frontier Restaurant.
Of Interest: With executive producer Robert Redford, American Mystery! presented Coyote Waits as a two-hour special on PBS premiering in November 2003. The movie, the second Hillerman novel adapted by PBS, featured Wes Studi as Leaphorn and Adam Beach as Chee. Studi, who lives in Santa Fe, discussed the books and movies with Hillerman before an audience of fans and other writers at The Tony Hillerman Writers Conference: Focus on Mystery in 2006.
Tony Hillerman’s Comments: “When my brother Barney and I were prowling the Four Corners with me writing and him photographing stuff for our Hillerman Country he taught me a lesson in optical perspective that solved Leaphorn’s problem in finding the needed witness. Barney anthropomorphized cliffs, canyons, trees, etc., turning their reflected lights and shadows into presidential profiles, bears, and so forth. (Something I do with cloud formations, seeing in them not only God’s glory but dragons, Popeye, and aircraft.)
“‘Stop,’ Barney would say, and point at a rock formation. ‘See the zebra with the pipe in his mouth?’
“I’d say no. He’d say back up a little. We’d stop where all the necessary elements would line up properly and I would either see suggestions of a zebra or, often, simply say I did and drive on with Barney explaining how viewer position and the optics of telescopic lenses affect what you see. It was the sort of data I usually find easy to forget, but I remembered it when stuck for a logical way to have a witness out in empty country witnessing a murder. He became a lonely high school kid whose hobby was landscape photography and who found a way to declare his love for a girl by careful placement of white paint on basalt rocks so the message could be read only from the perspective of her hogan.
“I spent weeks trying to have Leaphorn figure that out, wishing I’d never heard of optical perspective.”
LAVA FLOWS NEAR SHIPROCK
He would be looking across the tops of the cottonwoods lining the San Juan and southwestward toward the sagebrush foothills of the Chuskas. He would be seeing the towering black shape of Ship Rock on the horizon, and perhaps Rol Hai Rock and Mitten Rock. No. Those landmarks would be beyond the horizon from Mr. Ji’s viewpoint at the window. Chee was creating them by looking into his own memory.
[CHAPTER 6]
Ship Rock rose like an oversize, free-form Gothic cathedral just to their right, miles away but looking closer. Ten miles ahead Table Mesa sailed through its sea of buffalo grass, reminding Chee of the ultimate aircraft carrier. Across the highway from it, slanting sunlight illuminated the ragged black form of Barber Peak, a volcanic throat to geologists, a meeting place for witches in local lore.
[CHAPTER 6]
GALLUP TO SHIPROCK, NEW MEXICO
The route between Gallup and Shiprock, New Mexico was known as U.S. 666 or “The Devil’s Highway” when Dad created most of his Chee/Leaphorn novels. (It became U.S. 491 in 2003.) The ninety-four-mile drive offers fine views of Bennett Peak, Ford Butte, Barber Peak, Table Mesa, and Ship Rock. Dad made this trip many times; each time the landscape stirred his creative energy.
Ford Butte
Table Mesa with Ute Mountain in the distance
Barber Peak
Ship Rock
Bennett Peak
Table Mesa is actually three separate mesas lying close together. Since mesa means “table” in Spanish, the name is redundant, and easy to remember. Rol Hai Rock, a huge black basalt formation, rises about 200 feet from the high desert landscape north of the tip of Table Mesa. As Coyote Waits makes clear, some traditional Navajos avoid the lava formations, especially at night. In the book, much of the action happens here—the death of a tribal officer, the arrest of the suspect, and, ultimately, a snakebite that saves Jim Chee’s life.
In addition to using the lava flow area as the site of a policeman’s murder in Coyote Waits, Dad wrote about this eerie landscape in The First Eagle and Fallen Man and mentions it in many other books.
NARBONA PASS
They took the road that wanders over Washington Pass via Red Lake, Crystal, and Sheep Springs. Winding down the east slope of the Chuskas, Leaphorn stopped at the overlook. He pointed east and swept his hand northward, encompassing an immensity of rolling tan and gray grasslands. Zuni Mountains to the south, Jemez Mountains to the east, and far to the north the snowy San Juans in Colorado.
“Dinetah,” he said. She would know the meaning of the word. “Among the People.” The heartland of the Navajos. The place of their mythology, the Holy Land of the Diné.
[CHAPTER 12]
Narbona Pass, high in the Chuska Mountains, was named after the esteemed Navajo leader.
ABOUT WASHINGTON/NARBONA PASS
Highway maps used to call this Washington Pass, the name Leaphorn and Chee use in the novels. In 1993, members of the Navajo Nation successfully petitioned the U.S. Geological Survey to change the name to Narbona Pass to honor the great Navajo hero rather than the U.S. Army colonel who ordered Narbona’s death. The pass received Narbona’s Spanish name, not his Navajo name, as a compromise with those Navajos who believe it is inappropriate to use the names of the dead.
The drive over Narbona Pass through the Chuska Mountains stands out as one of the top five scenic roads in Indian Country. From Narbona’s 9,000-foot summit, the view encompasses much of the Navajo Nation.
Like Leaphorn, Dad loved this spot and never tired of the vista. I remember him talking about how the view had changed over the thirty-plus years of his visits as dust, smoke, and pollution made their mark on the air. Despite that, he considered it one of the world’s special places.
Last time we drove this route, we ran into highway construction, a five-person Navajo crew hard at work on a Friday evening. Just beyond the roadwork, we encountered a huge Christian revival meeting, complete with a Navajo band. We resisted the temptation to stay and headed on toward Gallup through the fragrant mountains.