Tricked

eroded anew every time it rained and the water trailed off the bare rock of the mesa—and, shortly after that, Coyote directed us to pull over onto a cleared patch on the left side of the road. There, the mesa rose up steeply in a sort of terraced fashion until it flattened out again, then two magnificent buttes jutted up almost like the dorsal fins of some massive, mad creature, an avatar of erosion swimming in sand. The flash-flood wash we had crossed no doubt began between those buttes. In the other direction, the plateau was flat and covered with various bunch grasses and a few stunted trees, all the way to Kayenta and beyond. We took some canteens with us and began hiking up the mesa toward the buttes.
    » First thing I need you to do, « Coyote said halfway up, » is make a nice smooth graded ramp here to speed up the construction of a road. Down there where the car’s parked, « he pointed to the flat, arid plateau, » we’re going to build the work camp that will eventually become a town. And once we build the factories for our solar and wind companies, it’ll be a proper city. A carbon-neutral one too. « He put a hand next to his mouth and whispered as if he were sharing a secret, » I learned that carbon-neutral shit from a hippie in Canyon de Chelly. «
    We continued to hike until we crested the first terrace. The next layer, sort of like a wedding cake, loomed on either side. We walked west down a valley dotted with scrub cedar for about a quarter mile, until Coyote stopped and spread his arms wide to indicate the northern butte face. » Here is where you make my people rich, « he said. » Move the gold underneath this mesa. We’ll put the entrance to the mine in that little cave right there. « He pointed to a small depression at the base of the butte that qualified more as a niche than a cave.
    I shook my head. » You know, Coyote, this makes no sense geologically. You can’t put gold underneath this kind of rock. Geologists will scoop out their eyes with a melon baller and ruin their shorts when you start hauling precious metals out of here, because it will put the lie to everything they know. Then you’ll have prospectors searching for gold underneath every chunk of sandstone around the world and getting pissed when they don’t find any. «
    » I don’t care, Mr. Druid. This is the place. «
    » It has to be here? We can’t pick a spot elsewhere on this huge reservation that makes more sense in the natural world? «
    » It has to be here. I’ve gotten permission to build here from the Kayenta chapter, I’ve gotten you permission to live here while we do it, and my workforce and business connections are all in Kayenta. This here is where we change the world, Mr. Druid. «
    › But no pressure or anything, Atticus. ‹

Chapter 4
    As we were hiking back down the hill, three white work trucks rolled up behind the car. They were full of people in jeans and orange T-shirts, some wearing cowboy hats and others wearing hard hats. One man in a hard hat started giving directions, and the workers moved to get stakes and sledges out of the truck beds along with surveying equipment and one of those portable toilets. A woman and an older man stood next to the man in the hard hat. They weren’t wearing orange shirts, and thus I concluded they weren’t technically part of the work crew.
    All three of them were very happy to see Coyote. They shook hands and traded smiles full of affection for one another. Their faces turned expressionless, however, when Coyote began to introduce the white people. He remembered our fake names, thankfully.
    » Reilly and Caitlin Collins, « he said, » this here is my construction foreman, Darren Yazzie. « The man with the hard hat nodded at us and mumbled a » Pleased to meet you. « He was a well-muscled fellow in his mid-twenties, his eyes mere slits in a sort of perpetual squint from working outside all the time. He wore his hair long and braided in the back in a single thick queue.
    Coyote pointed next at the woman, who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She wore a thin black Windbreaker over a yellow polo shirt. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a simple ponytail, and she had a pair of eyeglasses with thick black rims resting on her nose. A hundred subtle cues of body language told me that there was a keen intelligence behind those eyes; I knew she was important to this project before Coyote said a word. » This, « he said, » is Sophie