 Recorded Books presents an unabridged recording of Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman, narrated by George Gwadel. This book, copyrighted 1988 by Tony Hillerman, is recorded by permission of Harper and Rowe publishers. This performance is copyrighted 1990 by Recorded Books Incorporated. Jim Chi is a medicine man. He does the blessing way. On the second night of this ceremonial, he sings the song of the son's creation. Son will be created. They say it is planned to happen. Son will be created. They say he has planned it all. Its face will be blue. They say he has planned it all. Its eyes will be yellow. They say he planned it all. Its forehead will be white. They say he planned it all. As he sings, he completes a sand painting depicting pollen boy standing against the son's face. When the new day dawns, one of the people will be returned to harmony. But Jim Chi is a hatali only when off duty. Most of the time, Jim Chi is a cop. As a member of the Navajo Tribal Police, his knowledge of the ways and traditions of his people is of incalculable value. But never more so than when rumors of skin walkers start to circulate. Witchcraft is a reversal of the Navajo way. And those who choose evil and chaos over beauty and harmony usually do so for deadly reasons. And now skin walkers. We Navajo understand Coyote is always waiting out there. Just out of sight. And Coyote is always hungry. Alex Etziti, born to the water, is close people. Chapter one, when the cat came through the little trapdoor at the bottom of the screen, it made a clack-clack sound. Slight, but enough to awaken Jim Chi. Chi had been moving in and out of the very edge of sleep, turning uneasily on the narrow bed, pressing himself uncomfortably against the metal tubes that braced the aluminum skin of his trailer. The sound brought him enough awake to be aware that his sheet was tangled uncomfortably around his chest. He sorted out the bed clothing, still half immersed in an uneasy dream of being tangled in a rope that he needed to keep his mother's sheep from running over the edge of something vague and dangerous. Perhaps the uneasy dream provoked an uneasiness about the cat. What had chased it in? Something scary to a cat or to this particular cat? Was it something threatening to Chi? But in a moment he was fully awake and the uneasiness was replaced by happiness. Mary Landon would be coming. Blue-eyed, slender, fascinating Mary Landon would be coming back from Wisconsin. Just a couple of weeks more to wait. Jim Chi's conditioning, traditional Navajo, caused him to put that thought aside. All things in moderation. He would think more about that later, now he thought about tomorrow. Today, actually, since it must be well after midnight. Today he and Jay Kennedy would go out and arrest Roosevelt Bistie, so that Bistie could be charged with some degree of homicide, probably with murder. Not a complicated job, but unpleasant enough to cause Chi to change the subject of his thinking again. He thought about the cat. What had driven it in? The coyote maybe? Or what? Obviously something the cat considered a threat. The cat had appeared last winter, finding itself a sort of den under a juniper east of Chi's trailer. A place where a lower limb, a boulder and a rusted barrel formed a closed cul-de-sac. It had become a familiar, suspicious neighbor. During the spring, Chi had formed a habit of leaving out table scraps to feed it after heavy snows. Then when the snow melt ended and the spring drought arrived, he began leaving out water in a coffee can. But easy water attracted other animals and birds, and sometimes they'd turned it over. And so one afternoon, when there was absolutely nothing else to do, Chi had removed the door, hacksawed out a cat-sized rectangle through its bottom frame, and then attached a plywood flap using leather hinges and miracle glue. Sample complete. Ready to continue?