Chee presents his ethical dilemma with the Hoski case to Janet Pete. She meets young Ernie, and watches Chee give him a new bumper sticker to put on his grandfather’s truck, with a message to take the old one off, or the police might stop him. The Navajo approach to Hoski’s problem is to help him get back in the blessing way. The law will arrest Hoski, taking him away from his grandson. Leaphorn feels the arrest will earn Chee promotion to sergeant, which Chee ignores. Janet Pete is pleased with Chee’s actions, and they become lovers. Delmar recognizes Applebee’s face in the newspaper as being the man he saw. Leaphorn calls Dilly Streib, the FBI agent on the Dorsey case, to arrest Applebee. Within hours, Streib tells Leaphorn that Davis killed Applebee in front of the FBI, and then turned himself in. Davis saw the second replica cane at the Tano ceremonial, and knows he has no future as an honest trader. He has no part in the second one, but its existence makes his role in the first one known. Applebee made this second cane to ruin the Tano governor. Applebee played the tape of the phone call to ruin the Councilman, as he took the other side in the dispute about the toxic waste dump. The call was not about payoffs, but the cattle business that Chester and Zeck have together. Leaphorn learns that Louisa did not go on the trip without him when she appears at Saint Bonaventure Mission School, finally learning where he is. One of the murders takes place at Saint Bonaventure School in Thoreau, New Mexico. This is a real school, part of the Catholic mission for the eastern part of the reservation. It has been in operation over forty years. Hillerman acknowledges the school and specific people in it in the dedication of the book. The name of the town is pronounced like "threw" as the town was named for an engineer, not the American writer Henry David Thoreau. The Lincoln canes figure in the plot. These were ebony canes with a silver head given by President Lincoln to recognize 19 Pueblo tribes for their neutrality in the Civil War and their acknowledgment of US sovereignty following the Mexican War. The canes follow a tradition begun by the Spanish. Some photos are included in the Smithsonian collection of tribal governors posed holding their cane, indicating the significance the canes held for the Pueblo tribes.