Officer Dalton Singer followed the directions given to him by Mary Malone to the parking area near the Little Colorado River. There were no street signs on the Navajo Reservation, so directions were pegged to visual cues, like structures, fences, water tanks, and even trees.
At the rim above Moenkopi Wash, Dalton parked his brown Chevy Blazer next to Mary’s truck. Mary was standing in the sun like a statue, and Dalton noticed for the first time, she was a rather attractive lady, even in her USFWS uniform. Dalton wasn’t into belegana women, but he knew strength and beauty when he saw them.
He greeted Mary with a friendly hello and slapped his black cowboy hat against his left thigh to remove the ever-present dust that covered the land and sky on the Rez.
“Did you have any trouble finding the place?” Mary asked.
Dalton shook his head. “Nope. Your directions were spot on. But the FBI guy may find them a bit confusing.”
Mary laughed. “Yeah, if you don’t live out here, it’s pretty easy to get lost.”
Dalton pointed at the canyon below. “Of course, it won’t be long before he rims out, and then he will know he made a wrong turn, and then he can go back the way he came and try again.”
Mary laughed and Dalton liked the sound. “We belegana can’t find our asses without Google maps.”
Dalton put his battered hat back on his head and smiled, his straight white teeth shining brightly in the sun. “Seems like most white folks can’t read a map these days, either.”
The sound of an approaching vehicle made them turn. They watched a dust cloud follow a black Suburban carrying Special Agent Travis Jones of the FBI. Jones pulled up but sat for a full five minutes with the engine and air conditioning running. He was talking animatedly on his phone, and that was obviously his top priority.
Dalton winked at Mary. “Very important man.”
Mary nodded and smiled.
When Agent Jones finished his call and got out of his car, he looked around curiously like he was gazing at another planet. “Sorry I’m late. Had a tough time following your directions—they were way off. Luckily, I have a good sense of direction. Runs in the family. Officer Singer, right?”
Dalton ignored the FBI man’s jab about the directions. He could care less whether the guy got lost or not, and he had already decided he probably wasn’t going to like the man. “And this is Mary Malone. She’s the reason we’re all here today.”
Mary wasn’t interested in wasting time with small talk. She wanted to get on with it and find the people who smashed her equipment. So she pointed to the trail. “Grab some water and sunscreen. It’s going to be a hot one. And there are no stores where we’re going.” She smiled at her own joke.
Officer Singer tipped his hat as he put the strap of his orange gallon canteen over his shoulder. “Lead the way, Mam.”
Mary forged ahead, with Agent Jones bringing up the rear, carrying a plastic bottle of Smart Water in his left hand. In the standard G-man uniform—dark cotton pants and polo shirt, blue FBI baseball cap, and black Florsheims—he was definitely not prepared to hike into a primitive Southwest canyon. But there was no stopping a modern man on a mission.
Technically, this was a Navajo matter. The vandalism had taken place on Navajo land. But because it involved a criminal act aimed at a federal agency, the USFWS, the FBI could claim jurisdiction. The Navajo were happy to accede to federal authority. They avoided pissing contests with the Feds whenever they could.
As they walked down into the sauna-like Moenkopi Wash, Agent Jones complained that he was there only because of his bosses back in Phoenix. They had ordered him to head north from his office in Phoenix with little or no explanation and the whole thing was obviously a big waste of time.
“This seems very straightforward to me,” said the overheated FBI agent as he wiped his brow with the back of his hand and squeezed his eyes shut from the stinging sweat.
“Sorry you had to come all this way,” replied Dalton, trying not to laugh in the belegena’s bright red face.
Before Agent Jones could respond, he stumbled on a piece of Kayenta sandstone and went flying, managing to catch himself at the last second.
“Watch your step, Agent Jones,” said Officer Singer, with a muffled chuckle. “There’s a lot of things out here that will try and hurt you.”
Agent Jones was a field agent, but he had never hiked down a Navajo sheep trail in the middle of summer. After five minutes, his clothes were dripping and he was panting like a runner in distress. This was an alien world and he was feeling a little lightheaded. He kept stopping to catch his breath and looking up at the sun like a man who was lost.
When they got to the bottom of the desolate wash Agent Jones sat down on a large flat boulder. Wrung out as he was, Agent Jones still knew best.
“The equipment was undoubtedly destroyed by either some Navajo kids—probably high or drunk. Or maybe some environmental wackos hiking down to the river—maybe river runners—who didn’t like seeing a bunch of machinery and other equipment spoiling their view down here in their little wilderness wonderland. So they smashed everything that they felt didn’t belong there. It’s that simple.”
“It definitely wasn’t any Navajo who destroyed Ms. Malone’s equipment,” said Dalton.
Mary nodded.
“How can you be so sure?” asked Agent Jones, with an edge to his voice.
Officer Dalton Singer had always wondered where white men he met got their unshakable confidence. They could walk into a place they had never seen, knowing nothing about the people involved, and then lecture those who did about what was true and what was false. Dalton felt it was both their biggest strength and their weakness because unfounded confidence would only take you so far, and it rarely led to the truth. It was like bluffing in poker.
“Because of the Hopi Sipapu,” answered Dalton as he watched a gray and blue pinyon jay glide silently from a juniper tree to a bushy pinyon. “The Navajos respect and fear the Hopi gods. They wouldn’t go near the Little Colorado. Because if they did, they’d need an expensive Blessing Way.”
“A what?” asked Agent Jones, swigging from his water bottle.
“A healing ceremony. Because they had been contaminated by their unwanted presence in a place sacred to the Hopi. They had gone where they didn’t belong, and they would need to have their balance and harmony restored. A Blessing Way costs over a thousand dollars—a lot of money for the average Navajo.”
Mary nodded her head vigorously. “I agree with Officer Singer. The only Navajos that come into this part of the canyon are the two ranchers who run their sheep. And they only venture down here when one of their sheep gets away. They are scared of the Little Colorado.”
Dalton piggybacked on the scientist’s words. “I had a long talk with both ranchers before I came out here today. They didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary—no strangers. It would be impossible for an outsider to get into such an isolated part of the Rez without being seen by the Navajos who live here.”
“Maybe,” replied Agent Jones, refusing to concede.
Dalton pressed on. “The local Navajo know Ms. Malone and they like her. The ranchers said that she has helped them out many times, hauled water in her truck, brought them fresh vegetables, and even dined at their hogans. They respect the work she is doing, and they said they would be the first to report anyone they saw messing with her equipment.”
“How could they know what happened down here if they are too scared to enter the canyon? And maybe the vandals came up from the river and didn’t come across their land.”
Dalton didn’t feel like arguing and said nothing.
As they headed down the trail toward the confluence with the Little Colorado, Officer Singer shared a curious thing he had uncovered in his discussions with the surrounding Navajo. “One of the rancher’s youngest boys, a twelve-year-old named Harley, remembered seeing a small black helicopter land in the canyon a few days ago. His family had gone to Page for supplies. He was the only one home and was feeding the chickens. He didn’t pay it any mind because he thought it must have something to do with Ms. Malone and her fish studies. He’d seen helicopters bring in her equipment before.”
“Did he remember what day exactly?” asked Mary excitedly.
“Yes,” answered Dalton. “It was Sunday. That’s the day his family always goes to Page for supplies at Walmart.”
“So we know everything was fine on Friday, but by Monday the place had been trashed,” said Agent Jones, clarifying the timeline.
When they got to Mary’s destroyed work site, even Jones was shocked at the extent of the destruction. The river bottom was littered with debris, extending several hundred feet downstream.
“They ruined years of my research,” Mary said. “Gone. I don’t know how I will be able to continue.”
Scanning the scene, Dalton noticed a peculiarity. “They smashed every item individually. Vandals would normally trash stuff haphazardly. A little here, and a little there. But these guys picked up every single piece of equipment and destroyed it. Must have taken them many hours. This wasn’t just random. This was done with a purpose. And malice. And it was meant to send a message. And send Ms. Malone away.”
Agent Jones nodded. The scope of the destruction was indeed troubling. But not as concerning as his wet feet. There was no way to walk around the muddy river bottom without walking in the water, and he had probably ruined his nice shoes. Which made him boiling mad. And his clothes were dripping wet with perspiration.
“We should fan out and see if we can find any tracks,” said Officer Singer. “It would be nice if we could figure out how these boys got in and out. The tracks around this area would indicate there were probably only two of them. Might give us some idea who we are dealing with if we knew where they came in from.”
“Well, mine were the only tracks in Moenkopi Wash,” said Mary. “So they didn’t come in that way.”
“And the tracks lead downriver,” Dalton added, pointing to two sets of footprints made by large men wearing big boots.
Mary and Dalton took the right side of the river, which was wetter than the left. They had noticed the FBI agent’s discomfort at getting his expensive street shoes wet. Agent Jones walked the river left, scanning the sandy banks and grumbling under his breath.
The vandals had tried to cover their tracks by walking in the river as much as they could. But it hadn’t rained in days, and the tracks remained. And for an experienced tracker like Dalton, they were easy to follow.
About a hundred yards downstream they came to a wide sandstone ledge. Dalton scrambled up the sandy bank, following the tracks. When he got to the top, he stopped short.
“Got something here!” he yelled. “Check it out.”
Mary and Agent Jones hurried to see what the Navajo police officer had found.
“Whatcha got?” asked Agent Jones as he fought to maintain his upward movement against the loose sand, grabbing a red tamarisk root to pull himself up.
There, in the soft sand covering the underlying rock ledge, were the unmistakable indentations where a helicopter had recently landed.
“Who would fly into an isolated canyon on the Navajo Reservation in an expensive and noisy helicopter to trash a bunch of scientific equipment?” Agent Jones wondered aloud.
“It had to be someone with vast resources who didn’t like the fish research that Ms. Malone was doing in the Little Colorado,” answered Dalton.
And just that quickly, FBI Agent Travis Jones and Navajo Tribal Officer Dalton Singer were a whole lot more interested in this case.