Joe McGinniss is the curmudgeonly, crooked owner of the Short Mountain Trading Post, where he trades more in secrets than in dry goods. Joe Leaphorn pays a visit to McGinnis to find out why Ashie Pinto was on the highway on the night of Delbert Nez's murder.

Son of actor John Carradine, brother of actor Robert, half-brother of actor David, and father of Martha Plimpton, Keith Carradine began his career on Broadway in the counter-culture musical Hair. In 1971, he made his first film, the Kirk Douglas-Johnny Cash Western A Gunfight. The same year he was featured in his first Robert Altman film, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Carradine went on to earn a Best Song Oscar for "I'm Easy," which he composed and performed in Robert Altman's Nashville. He rejoined Altman for Thieves Like Us and then worked with Altman protégé Alan Rudolph in Welcome to L.A, Choose Me, Trouble in Mind, and The Moderns. He also appeared as a director in Madonna's Material Girl video.

The Long Riders (1980) gave Carradine the chance to work with brothers David and Robert. He got to work with David again in You and Me (1975), which David also directed. Carradine returned to Broadway in 1991 to appear in the title role of The Will Rogers Follies, for which he received a Tony nomination. The 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, based on the famed literary circle of the Algonquin Hotel, allowed him to reprise the role of Will Rogers.

In Hillerman's words:
The front door opened and McGinnis stood in it, looking out at them.
"After closing time," he said. "What you want?"
He was smaller than Leaphorn remembered -- a white-haired bent old man in faded blue overalls. But he identified Leaphorn as soon as he climbed out of the car.
"Be damned," McGinnis said. "Here comes the Sherlock Holmes of the Navajo Tribal Police..."

Coyote Waits, Chapter 5