On medical leave to help his wife Emma through treatment for cancer, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is called to investigate a case of pot poaching when the archeologist he is seeking turns up missing.

Born in northeastern Oklahoma to a Cherokee family, Wes Studi grew up speaking Cherokee as his first language. He served in the Army in Vietnam and worked as a teacher, reporter, and translator before breaking into films. In Dances with Wolves he played the Toughest Pawnee, earning Entertainment Weekly's accolade as scene-stealer of the year. In The Last of the Mohicans, he was the rapacious Magua. In Geronimo: An American Legend, he was the title character. In addition to being an actor, he is a musician, sculptor, director, community activist, and author of two books for children for the Cherokee Bilingual/Cross-Cultural Education Center.

In Hillerman's words:
"From a lifetime of habit, Leaphorn had parked his pickup a little way from the cluster of vehicles at the tent and with its nose pointing outward, ready for whatever circumstances and duty might require of it. But Leaphorn was not on duty. He would never be on duty again. He was in the last two weeks of a thirty-day "terminal leave." When it ended, his application to retire from the Navajo Tribal Police" would be automatically accepted. In fact he was already retired. He felt retired. He felt as if it were all far, far behind him. Faded into the distance. Another life in another world, nothing to do with the man now standing under this read October sunset, waiting for the sounds coming from the True Gospel revival tent to signal a break in preaching.

A Thief of Time, Chapter 4