The Dark Wind (1982)

A layer of the earth’s atmosphere above the troposphere and just below the mesosphere. This layer is stratified, with the upper layers being much warmer than the lower levels. At the earth's surface, on the other hand, temperature decreases with altitude. One of the reasons that the upper reaches of the stratosphere are warmer than the lower reaches is because the stratosphere also includes the ozone layer, which is composed of a type of oxygen molecule by the same name. The ozone layer traps ultraviolet rays from the sun, causing a chemical reaction that releases small, yet incrementally cumulative, amounts of heat, thereby providing a protective thermal layer for the earth.

A large pueblo complex situated at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico that has been continually inhabited for approximately 1,000 years. The inhabitants of Taos Pueblo are believed to be descended from the Ancestral Puebloans, and it is estimated that the construction of Taos Pueblo began sometime between 1000 and 1450 CE. Taos was first contacted by Europeans when Spanish explorers encountered the pueblo and its people in 1540. Taos Pueblo would become one of the strongholds of Pueblo resistance in the struggle against Spanish colonization along the Rio Grande and was home to leaders of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, which saw Spanish settlers flee as far south as the settlement of El Paso. By the turn of the twentieth century, Taos Pueblo, its people, and its environs had become the subject of Western literary and artistic works, as the nearby town of Don Fernando de Taos became the destination for a group of American, European, and eventually Native American artists who coalesced into what became known as the Taos Soceity of Artists (1915-1927).

The Taos Pueblo was designated as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992, a designation which acknowledges the physical and cultural significance of the site and its people.

Sometimes known as a .38 special, this caliber of gun can be found with either a revolving or a semi-automatic firing mechanism. In addition, the bullets fired from this gun can be either center-fired or rimmed. Center-fire cartridges are primed and struck in the center of the cartridge base, whereas rim-fire cartridges are primed and struck on the protruding rim on the base of the cartridge. Due to its minimal recoil, which is the reactive movement of a gun after firing, and its accuracy, the .38 caliber is a popular gun.

An individual who commits anonymous property violence.

Located in the southern portion of the Navajo Nation Reservation, Window Rock Police Department serves as the headquarters for the Department of Public Safety of the Navajo Nation. Window Rock is located in the Navajo Nation's District 1 and is commanded either by a Police Captain or Lieutenant, who ensures that the district is run properly, including criminal investigations, area patrol, and public services support. Additionally, in Tony Hillerman's Navajo detective series, Window Rock is the station to which Joe Leaphorn is assigned.

Throughout Hillerman's novels, "Window Rock" is used metonymically to refer to the Navajo Nation Police headquarters.

The Atlantic Northeast region along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. It includes the states of Maine, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. The region was named by English explorer, Captain John Smith, in 1614 and was originally colonized by English Puritans. To this day, New England is known for its colonial revival and Georgian architectural styles, which closely evoke the designs that were popular in England during the time period in which British colonizers were developing infrastructure in North America.

The Colorado Gorge probably refers to the Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona. Geologically created by the Little Colorado River, a tributary of the Colorado River, which forms the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River Gorge is a much narrower and smaller canyon than the Grand Canyon, and it is located southeast from the Grand Canyon National Park.

In the context in which Tony Hillerman tends to use the word "beauty," it refers to the Navajo concept of hózhǫ́, the state in which all living things are ordered, in balance, and walking in beauty. The opposite of hózhǫ́ is hóchxǫ́ǫ́, which refers to disorder and chaos in one’s life. In Hillerman's work, chaos and imbalance manifest as as physical or mental illness, infections of the body and soul contracted from contact with mainstream U.S. culture.

In the early days of the telephone, calls had to be connected manually by inserting two phone plugs into specific ports, one from the caller and one for the called, in a panel called the switchboard. The switchboard operator was the individual who connected these calls. Until the advent of direct dialing, all calls went through operators. The first telephone operator was named George William Croy, who found his "calling" in 1878. It later it became a trend in the United States for this position to be held by women, with the reasoning behind this being that women were expected to be more courteous to customers than men. Moreover, women would work for much lower wages than men, making the exploitation of their gender an integral part of the developing telecommunications industry. Because switchboard operators were often the public face of an organization, the convention of hiring beautiful women became part of the culture associated with switchboard operators, who became in some senses associated with the pretty, independent, and wholesome “All American Girl.”

Also known as an arroyo seco, gulch, or gully, a wash is a dry stream or river bed that does not hold water most of the time, but that is subject to seasonal flooding. Washes vary greatly in depth, width and length, and can be found all over the world in semiarid and desert areas. They are common throughout New Mexico and Southwestern parts of the U.S., where prolonged droughts keep them dry and heavy rains make them prone to flash flooding.