Free Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 14] by Hunting Badger (v1) [html]

operation.
Its cause was just—to
finance the continued efforts of those of us who value our political
freedom more than life itself, to forward our campaign to save the
American Republic from the growing abuses of our socialist government,
and to foil its conspiracy to subject American citizens to the yoke of
a world government.
    It would not serve our cause for me to
stand the pseudo trial
which would follow my arrest. The servile media would use it to make
patriots appear to be no more than robbers. I prefer to sentence myself
to death rather than endure either a public execution or life
imprisonment.
    However, arrest of lronhand and Baker
and the recovery of the
casino proceeds they have taken would demonstrate to the world that
their murderous actions were those of two common criminals seeking
their own profits and not the intentions of patriots. If you do not
find them at their homes, I suggest you check Recapture Creek Canyon
below the Bluff Bench escarpment and just south of the White Mesa Ute
Reservation, lronhand has relatives and friends among the Utes there,
and I have heard
him talking to Baker about a free flowing spring and an abandoned
sheepherder’s shack there.
    I must also warn that after the business
was done at the casino,
these two men swore a solemn oath in my presence not to be taken alive.
They accused me of cowardice and boasted that they would kill as many
policemen as they could. They said that if they were ever surrounded
and threatened with capture, they would continue killing police under
the pretext of surrendering.
    Long Live Liberty and all free men. Long
live America.
    I now die for it. Everett Emerson Jorie

    Leaphorn read through the text again. Then he picked up the
telephone, dialed the sheriff’s office number, identified himself,
asked for the officer in charge and described what he had found at the
residence of Everett Jorie.
    “No use for an ambulance,” Leaphorn said. And yes, he would wait
until officers arrived and make sure that the crime scene was not
disturbed.
    That done, Leaphorn walked slowly through the rest of Jorie’s
home—looking but not touching. Back in Jorie’s office, the sandhill
cranes were again soaring across the computer screen saver, projecting
an odd flickering illumination on the walls of the twilight room.
Leaphorn tapped the mouse with his pen again, and reread the text of
Jorie’s note a third time. He checked the printer’s paper supply, click
on the PRINT icon, and folded the printout into his hip pocket. Then he
went out onto the front porch and sat, watching the sunset give the
thunderclouds on the western horizon silver fringes and turn them into
yellow flame and dark red, and fade away into darkness.
    Venus was bright in the western sky when he heard the police cars
coming.

----
 Chapter Ten
    Jim Chee turned down a side road on the high side of Ship Rock and
parked at a place offering a view of both the Navajo Tribal Police
district office beside Highway 666 and his own trailer house under the
cottonwoods beside the San Juan River. He got out, focused his
binoculars and examined both locations. As he feared, the NTP lot was
crowded with vehicles, including New Mexico State Police
black-and-whites, some Apache and Navajo County Sheriffs’ cars, and
three of those shiny black Fords instantly identifiable by all, cops
and criminals alike, as the unmarked cars used by the FBI. It was
exactly what the newscasts had led him to expect. The word was out that
the missing L-17 had been found resting in a hay shed near Red Mesa.
Thus the fervent hope of all Four Corners cops that the Ute Casino
bandits had flown away to make themselves someone else’s problem in
another and far-distant jurisdiction had been dashed. That meant leaves
would be canceled, everybody would be working overtime—including
Sergeant Jim Chee unless he could keep out of sight and out of touch.
    He focused on his own place. No vehicles were parked amid the
cottonwoods that