Текст книги "Thunderhead"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston,Lincoln Child
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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

It was then that he heard something. Or perhaps he felt it, he wasn’t exactly sure: a strange movement of the air, almost a vibration. His heart began to race, and he looked toward Sloane. She was staring out into the valley. Aware of his gaze, she glanced toward him for a moment, then rose to her feet.

“Did you hear something?” she asked nobody in particular. Handing the canteen back to Bonarotti, she moved toward the edge of the cliff, followed by Swire. A moment later, Black came up behind.

The valley below still looked pastoral: somnolent in the heat, drenched in late morning sunlight. But the vibration, like a deep motor coming to life, seemed to fill the air. The leaves of the cottonwoods began to dance.

Bonarotti came up beside him. “What is it?” he asked, looking around curiously.

Black didn’t answer. Two emotions were warring inside him: terror and a breathless, almost nauseating excitement. There was now a rising wind coming from the mouth of the slot canyon: he could make out the saltbushes at its fringe, gyrating as if possessed. Then the canyon emitted a long, distorted, booming screech that grew louder, then still louder. It must be in the canyon now,thought Black. There was a buzzing sound, but he wasn’t sure if it was coming from the valley or inside his head.

He glanced at the company ranged beside him. They were all staring toward the mouth of the slot canyon. On Swire’s face, puzzlement gave way first to dawning understanding, then horror.

“Flash flood,” said the wrangler. “My God, they’re in the canyon . . .” He broke for the ladder.

Black held his breath. He thought he knew what was coming; he felt that he was prepared for anything. And yet he was totally unprepared for the spectacle that followed.

With a basso profundo groan, the slot canyon belched forth a mass of boulders and splintered tree trunks—hundreds of them—which burst from the narrow crevice and came spinning down to earth. Then, with the swelling roar of a beast opening its maw, the slot vomited forth a liquid mass—chocolate-brown water, mingled with ropes of viscous red. It coalesced into a rippling wall that fell in thunder against the scree slope, sending up secondary spouts and smoking plumes. It tore down the floodplain, smoking along the banks, ripping away chunks of the slope and even peeling off pieces of the canyon wall in the extremity of its violence. For a moment Black thought, with horror, that it would actually surmount the steep banks on either side of the plain and take away their camp. But instead it worried, chewed, and ate away at the stone edges of the benchland, its fury contained but made all the more violent. Near the bank of cottonwoods, he could make out Swire, shielding his face with his arms, beaten back toward camp by the fury of the blast.

Black stood at the edge of the cliff, buffeted by the wind, motionless in shock and horror. Beside him, Bonarotti was yelling something, but Black did not hear it. He was staring at the water. He could never have imagined water capable of such fury. He watched as it swept down the center of the valley, tearing at the banks, engulfing entire trees, instantly turning the lovely, sun-dappled landscape into a watery vision of hell. A thousand rainbows sprung up from the spume, glistening in the appalling sunlight.

Then he saw a flash of yellow amid the churning chocolate: Holroyd’s body bag. And then, moments later, something else, caught in a standing wave: a human torso, one arm still attached, wearing the shredded remnants of a tan shirt. As Black stared in mingled shock and disgust, the gruesome object erupted off the top of the wave and spun around once, the limp arm flapping in a travesty of a gesture of help. Then it bobbed over in a haze of chocolates and grays and was swallowed in the flood.

Almost unconsciously, he took a step backward, then another and another, until he felt his heel bump against the rock of the retaining wall. He half sat, half collapsed onto it, then turned his back to the valley, unwilling to see any more.

He wondered what it was he had done. Was he a murderer, after all? But no: not even a lie had been told. The weather report had been clear and unequivocal. The storm was twenty miles away; the water could have gone anywhere.

The roar of the flood continued behind him, but Black tried not to hear it. Instead, he raised his eyes to the cool depths of the city that lay spread before him: dark even in the bright morning sun, serene, utterly indifferent to the calamity that was taking place in the valley beyond. Looking at the city, he began to feel a little bit better. He breathed slowly, letting the tightness in his chest ease. His thoughts began trending once again toward the Sun Kiva and the treasure it contained—and especially of the immortality that it represented. Schliemann. Carter. Black.

He started guiltily, then glanced over toward Sloane. She was still standing at the edge of the cliff, staring down into the valley. Her look was veiled, but on her face he read a play of emotions that she could not hide completely: amazement, horror, and—in the glint of the eye and the faintest curl of the lip—triumph.

51

RICKY BRIGGS LISTENED TO THE DISTANT sound with irritation. That rhythmic swat meant only one thing: a helicopter, heading this way by the sound of it. He shook his head. Helicopters were supposed to keep out of the marina’s airspace, although they rarely did. There were often choppers doing flybys of the lake, or en route to the Colorado River or the Grand Canyon. They annoyed the boaters. And when the boaters got annoyed, they complained to Ricky Briggs. He heaved a sigh and went back to his paperwork.

After a moment, he looked up again. The helicopter sounded different from usual: lower, throatier somehow. And the sound of the engine seemed strangely staggered, as if there were more than one. Over the drone, he could hear a diesel pulling up beside the building, the chatter of onlookers. Idly, he leaned forward to glance out the window. What he saw caused him to jump from his seat.

Two massive helicopters were beating up from the west, coming in low. They sported amphibious hulls, and Coast Guard logos were emblazoned on their sides. They slowed into a hover just beyond the marina’s no-wake zone, huge airfoils beating the sky. A large pontoon boat dangled from one of them. Below, the water was being whipped into a frenzy of whitecaps. Houseboats were rolling heavily, and pink-skinned bathers were gathering curiously along the concrete apron.

Briggs grabbed his cellular and ran outside onto the shimmering tarmac, punching up the number for the Page air-control tower as he lumbered along.

Out in the baking heat, an additional surprise awaited him: a huge horse trailer parked at the ramp, same as before, SANTA FE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE stenciled on one side. As he watched, two National Guard trucks pulled in behind it. Ranks of guardsmen scrambled out of the rears, traffic barriers in hand. A murmur came up from the crowd as the pontoon boat was dropped from the helicopter with an enormous splash.

His phone chirruped, and a voice sounded through the tiny speaker. “Page,” it said.

“This is Wahweap!” Briggs screamed into the telephone. “What the hell is going on at our marina?”

“Calm yourself, Mr. Briggs,” came the unruffled voice of the air-traffic supervisor. “There’s a big search-and-rescue being organized. Just learned about it a few minutes ago.”

One group of guardsmen was laying down the traffic barriers, while another group had gone down to the ramp to clear a trail, shooing boats away from the marina. “What does that have to do with me?” Briggs shouted.

“It’s in the back country, west of Kaiparowits.”

“Jesus. What a place to be lost. Who is it?”

“Don’t know. Nobody’s saying anything.”

Must be those dumb-ass archaeologists,Briggs thought. Only a crazy person would go into that back country.Another approaching engine added to the din, and he turned to see a semi backing a large, sleek-looking motorboat toward the water. Twin-diesel housings jutted from its stern like machine gun turrets.

“Why the helicopters?” Briggs complained into the phone. “There’s such a maze of canyons back there you’d never find anything. Besides, you couldn’t land anywhere even if you didfind something.”

“I understand they’re just ferrying equipment to the far end of the lake. I told you, this is big.”

The boat had been set in the water with remarkable speed, and with a roar the semi pulled away, leaving the ramp awash. The boat rumbled to life, turned, and nudged the dock, waiting just long enough for two men to board: one, a young man wearing a José Cuervo T-shirt, the other a thin, gray-haired man in khakis. A monstrous-looking brown dog leaped in behind them. Immediately, the boat took off, roaring through the no-wake zone at full speed, leaving a hundred jetskis bobbing madly in its wake. The huge helicopters dug their noses in the air and turned to follow.

Briggs watched with disbelief as the horse trailer came sliding down the ramp toward the waiting pontoon boat.

“This can’t be happening,” he murmured.

“Oh, it’s happening,” came the laconic reply. “I’m sure they’ll be calling you, too. Gotta go.”

Briggs punched at the phone furiously, but even as he did so it began to ring: a shrill, insistent chirp over the grinding of gears and the calls of the onlookers.

52

BLACK SANK DOWN BESIDE THE DEAD FIRE, exhausted and soaked through. The belated rain beat its regular cadence upon his shoulders; not as furiously as it had an hour before, but steadily, with large, fat drops. He paid it no heed.

Although the initial surge of the flood had abated, the water continued to roar down the center of the valley, its brown moiling surface like the muscled back of some monstrous beast. Distantly, he watched its wide course, around and over stranded trees, arrowing for the mouth of the smaller slot canyon at the far end of the valley. There, in the confined space, the violence of the water returned, and huge spumes of froth and spray leaped up toward the cloud-heavy sky.

For almost two hours they had hovered at the water’s edge. Sloane had made a valiant rescue effort: roving the banks, spanning the flood with rescue ropes, scanning the water ceaselessly for survivors. Black had never seen such a heroic attempt. Or such a believable piece of acting, for that matter. He passed a hand over his eyes as he sat hunched forward. Perhaps it wasn’tan act; right now, he was too tired to care.

Eventually, all except Sloane had gravitated away from the water’s edge to the camp. The remaining drysacks, scattered by the wind, had been organized; the tents repitched and restaked; the riot of twigs and branches cleared away. Nobody had spoken, but all had lent a hand. It was as if they had to do something, anything,constructive; anything was easier to endure than standing uselessly, staring at the rushing water.

Black sat back, took a deep breath, and looked around. Beside him, in neat rows, lay the gear that had been intended for the trip home: still packed and ready to be hauled out, a silent mockery of the portage out the slot canyon that had never happened. Nothing else remained to be done.

Bonarotti, taking his cue from Black, came over and silently began to unpack his kitchen gear. This, more than anything else, seemed to be a mute statement that hope had been lost. Pulling out a small ring burner and a propane shield, he put on a pot of espresso, protecting it from the rain with his body. Soon Swire came over, looking shocked and subdued. Sloane followed after a few minutes, walking silently up from the rushing waters. Bonarotti pressed a cup of coffee into each of their hands, and Black drank his gratefully, gulping it down, feeling the warmth of the coffee trickle into his aching limbs.

Sloane accepted her cup from Bonarotti, turning her amber eyes toward him. Then she looked at Swire, and then—more significantly—at Black, before returning her gaze to the cook. At last, she broke the silence.

“I think we have to accept the fact that nobody survived the flood.” Her voice was low and a little unsteady. “There just wasn’t time for them to make it through the slot canyon.”

She paused. Black listened to the rush of the water, the patter of rain.

“So what do we do now?” Bonarotti asked.

Sloane sighed. “Our communications gear is destroyed, so we can’t radio for assistance. Even if a rescue mission is mounted, it would take them at least a week to reach the outer valley, maybe more. And our only way out has been blocked by water. We’ll have to wait until it goes down. If the rains continue, that could mean a long time.”

Black glanced around at the others. Bonarotti was looking at Sloane, hands protectively cradling his mug of coffee. Swire was staring blankly, still dazed by what had happened.

“We’ve done everything we can,” Sloane went on. “Fortunately, most of our gear survived the flood. That’s the good news.”

Her voice dropped. “The bad news—the terrible news—is that we’ve lost four teammates, including our expedition leader. And about that, there’s nothing we can do. It’s a tragedy I think none of us yet can fully comprehend.”

She paused. “Our first duty is to mourn their loss. We will have time, in the days and weeks ahead, to remember them in our thoughts. But let’s take a minute now to remember them in our prayers.”

She lowered her head. A silence fell, broken only by the sound of water. Black swallowed. Despite the dampness around him, his throat was painfully dry.

After a few minutes, Sloane looked up again. “Our second duty is to remember who we are, and why we came here. We came here to discover a lost city, to survey it and document it. Luigi, a few minutes ago, you asked what we should do now. There’s only one answer to that. As long as we’re trapped in here, we must carry on.”

She paused to take a sip of coffee. “We cannot allow ourselves to become demoralized, to sit around doing nothing, waiting for a rescue that may or may not come. We need to keep ourselves occupied in productive work.” She spoke slowly and deliberately, taking time to look around at the small group with each new sentence. “And the most productive work of all is still to come: documenting the Sun Kiva.”

At this, the faraway look left Swire’s face. He glanced at Sloane in surprise.

“What happened today was a tragedy,” Sloane continued, more quickly now. “But it’s within our power to keep it from becoming something even worse: a tragic waste. The Sun Kiva is the most miraculous find of a miraculous expedition. It’s the most certain way to ensure that Nora, Peter, Enrique, and Bill are remembered not for their deaths but for their discoveries.” She paused. “It’s what Nora would have wanted done.”

“Is that right?” Swire spoke up suddenly. The surprise and confusion had left his face, replaced with something uglier. “What Nora would have wanted, you say? Tell me, was this before or after she fired you from the expedition?”

Sloane turned to him. “Do you have an objection, Roscoe?” she asked. Her tone was mild, but her eyes glittered.

“I have a question,” Swire replied. “A question about that weather report of yours.”

Black felt his gut seize up in sudden fear. But Sloane simply returned the cowboy’s gaze with a cool one of her own. “What about it?” she asked.

“That flash flood came down twenty minutes after you reported clear weather.”

Sloane waited, staring at Swire, deliberately letting the uncomfortable tension build. “You of all people know how localized, how unpredictable, the weather is out here,” she said at last, more coldly now.

Black could see the faltering certainty in Swire’s face.

“There’s no way of knowing just where the water came from,” Sloane continued. “The storm could have come from anywhere.”

Swire seemed to digest this for a moment. Then he said, in a lower tone: “You can see a whole lot of anywhere from the top of that canyon.”

Sloane leaned toward him. “Are you calling me a liar, Roscoe?”

There was something so subtly menacing in her silky tone that Black saw Swire draw back. “I ain’t calling you nothing. But last I heard, Nora said we wasn’t to open up that kiva.”

“Last Iheard, you were the horse wrangler,” Sloane said icily. “This is a decision that does not concern you.”

Swire looked at her, his jaw working. Then he stood up abruptly, drawing away from the group.

“You say Nora will be remembered if we open this kiva,” he spat out. “But that ain’t true. It’s youthat’ll be remembered. And you damn well know it.”

And with that, he walked out of camp and disappeared among the cottonwoods.

53

BLACK PULLED HIMSELF UP THE LAST RUNG of the rope ladder with a grunt and stepped onto the rocky floor of Quivira, slinging the small bag of equipment beside him. Sloane had gone ahead, and was waiting at the city’s retaining wall, but on impulse Black turned around once again to survey the valley. It was hard to believe that, barely four hours before, he had stood at this same spot and witnessed the flash flood. Now, afternoon light, fresh and innocent, glowed off the walls of the canyon. The air was cool, and perfumed with moisture from the rain. Birds were chirping. The camp had been cleaned up and supplies moved to high ground. The only signs of the catastrophe were the torrent of rushing water that divided the small valley like a brown scar, and the appalling wreckage of trees and earthen bank that lay along and within it.

He turned away and approached Sloane, who had arrayed her gear along the retaining wall and was giving it a final inspection. He noticed that she had snugged the camp’s spare pistol into her belt.

“What’s that for?” he asked, pointing at the weapon.

“Remember what happened to Holroyd?” Sloane replied, eyes on the gear. “Or the gutted horses? I don’t want any nasty surprises while we’re documenting that kiva.”

Black paused a moment, thinking. “What about Swire?” he asked.

“What about him?”

Black looked at her. “He didn’t seem too enthusiastic about all this.”

Sloane shrugged. “He’s a hired hand. He has nothing to say that anybody would want to hear. Once our find becomes known, it’ll be front-page news across the country for a week, and in the Southwest for a month.” She took his hand, gave it a squeeze, smiled. “He’ll fall into line.”

Bonarotti came into view at the top of the ladder, the oversized .44 hanging from his side, digging tools slung over his shoulder. Sloane withdrew her hand and turned to retrieve her gear.

“Let’s go,” she said.

With Bonarotti beside him, Black followed Sloane across the central plaza toward the rear of the dead city. He could feel his heart beating fast in his chest.

“Do you really think there’s gold in that kiva?” Bonarotti asked.

Black turned to see the cook looking over at him. For the first time that he could recall, Black saw animation, even strong emotion, in the man’s face.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I can’t think of any other conclusion. All the evidence points to it.”

“What will we do with it?”

“The gold?” Black asked. “The Institute will decide, of course.”

Bonarotti fell silent, and for a moment, Black scrutinized the man’s face. It occurred to him that he really had no idea what motivated a man like Bonarotti.

It also occurred to him that, in all his constant dreaming about the kiva, he had never once thought about what might happen to the gold after the kiva was opened. Perhaps it would be put on display at the Institute. Perhaps it would tour the museum circuit, as King Tut’s treasure had. In point of fact, it didn’t really matter; it was the find itself—the initial moment of discovery—that would make him a household name.

They made their way through the Crawlspace to the narrow passageway, then ducked into the inner sanctum. Sloane set up two portable lamps beside the kiva, aiming them at the rock-filled entrance. Then she stood back to prepare the camera while Black and Bonarotti laid out the tools. As if from a distance, Black noticed that his movements were slow, careful, almost reverent.

And then, in unison, the two men turned toward Sloane. She fixed the oversized camera to a tripod, then returned their glances.

“I don’t need to emphasize the importance of what we’re about to do,” she said. “This kiva is the archaeological find of several lifetimes, and we’re going to treat it as such. We’ll proceed by the book, documenting every step. Luigi, you dig the sand and dust away from the doorway. Do it very carefully. Aaron, you can remove the rubble and stabilize the doorway. But first, let me take a couple of exposures.”

She ducked behind the camera, and the dark cavern was illuminated by a quick series of flashes. Then she stepped away and nodded.

As Bonarotti picked up a shovel, Black turned his attention to the rock pile that covered the kiva’s entrance. The rocks had been jammed into place without mortar, and were clearly without archaeological significance; he could remove them by hand, without having to resort to time-consuming excavation techniques. But they were heavy, and the muscles of his arms soon began to grow tired. Although the rock pile itself was curiously free of the dust that had settled so thickly over the rest of the kiva’s surface, Black still found breathing difficult: Bonarotti’s shoveling quickly raised a choking cloud around the kiva’s entrance.

Sloane maintained a supervisory position well back from the kiva, taking an occasional photograph, jotting notes in a journal, recording measurements. Every now and then she would caution Bonarotti against growing too eager. Once she even barked at Black when a stray rock fell against the kiva wall. Almost imperceptibly, she had taken over the role of leader. As he worked, Black realized that perhaps he should be annoyed by this; he had more experience and seniority by far. But he was now too caught up in the excitement to care. Hehad been the one to first speculate on the kiva’s existence. Hehad been the one to find it. And his many future publications on the gold of the Anasazi would make that abundantly clear. Besides, he and Sloane were a team now, and—

His thoughts were cut short by a racking cough. He stepped back from the doorway for a moment, wiping his face with his sleeve. The dust had risen to a miasmic thickness, and in the center of it all was Bonarotti, toiling with his shovel. Slanted columns of dust hung in the beams of artificial light. It was a scene worthy of Breughel. Black looked over at Sloane, perched some distance away on a rock, scribbling her observations. She looked up at him and flashed a brief, wry smile.

Taking a few more deep breaths, he waded back in. The upper tier of rocks had been removed, and he began to work on the course below them.

Suddenly he stopped. Behind the rocks, he could now make out a patch of reddish brown.

“Sloane!” he called. “Take a look.”

In a moment, she was beside him. She waved away the dust and took several closeups with a handheld camera.

“There’s a mud seal behind these rocks,” she said. Eagerness elevated her contralto voice to an artificially high pitch. “Clear the rocks away, please. Be careful not to damage the seal in the process.”

Now that Black had cleared the top of the doorway, the going was easier. Within minutes, the seal was fully exposed: a large square of clay stamped against what seemed to be a layer of plaster. A reversed spiral had been molded into the seal.

Once again, Sloane came forward to investigate.

“This is odd,” she said. “This seal looks fresh. Take a look.”

Black examined the seal more carefully. It was definitely fresh– too fresh,he thought, to be seven hundred years old. The mortared door, filled with rocks, had worried him from the start: the door just looked too invasive to be part of the original sealed structure. And it was odd that the omnipresent dust had not settled on the rocks massed in front of the door. For a moment, calamitous despair threatened to settle on his shoulders.

“It’s impossible that anyone was here before us,” Sloane murmured.

Then she looked at Black. “This sealed doorway has been extremely well protected. There are several feet of stones sheltering it from the elements. Right?”

“Right.” Black felt the despair vanish instantly, the excitement returning. “That could explain why the seals look so fresh.”

Sloane took some more photographs, then stepped back. “Let’s keep going.”

His breath coming in short, excited gasps, Black redoubled his efforts at clearing the wall of rocks.

54

FAR ABOVE THE FLOOD-RAVAGED CANYON OF Quivira, the domes and hollows of the wide slickrock plateau were warmed by the late afternoon sun. Gnarled juniper trees dotted the strange landscape, and Mormon tea bushes, wild buckwheat, and a sprinkling of purple verbena grew in sandy patches. Small, steep gullies intersected the landscape, winding through the red sandstone, the deeper potholes along their rock beds still shimmering with rainwater. Here and there, hoodoo rocks stood above the land, capped with a darker stratum of stone, like foul dwarfs crouching among the trees. To the east, another, smaller rainstorm was advancing. But here, a thousand feet above the Quiviran plateau, the sky was still pleasantly flecked with shredded bits of cloud, turning from white to yellow in the aging light.

In a hidden gully along the plateau, two pelted, masked figures moved in stealthy silence. Their progress was halting, furtive, as if they were unused or unwilling to move about in daylight. One stopped briefly, crouched, drank from a pothole. Then they moved on again, angling toward a patch of deep shade beside a fin of rock. Here, they stopped squatting on their haunches.

Reaching into the folds of his fur pelt, one of the skinwalkers removed a buckskin bag. Silver conchas clinked with the movement. The figure produced a human calvarium, filled with dry, shriveled pellets, like gray buttons. The second skinwalker produced another skull bowl and a long, shriveled root in roughly the shape of a twisted human being, laying it on the sand beside the first skull. Both began to chant in low, quavering tones. An obsidian knife flashed as the tips were cut off the dry root.

They worked swiftly and silently. A hand, decorated with white clay strips, caressed the wrinkled pellets. Then the skinwalker cupped one, two, and finally three of the pellets in his palm, pushing them through the mouthhole of his mask in rapid succession. There was a loud swallowing sound. The second figure repeated the action. The chanting grew faster.

A tiny twig fire was built, and wisps of smoke curled around the sheltering rock. The root was cut lengthwise into thin strips, smoked briefly in the fire, and set aside. Feathers were placed in the fire, slowly curling, crackling, and melting. Next, several live iridescent beetles were placed atop the embers, to jitter, die, and parch. They were removed, placed in the second skull bowl, crushed into flakes, and mixed with water from a leather bag.

The bowl was raised toward the north, the chanting even faster now, and the figures drank in turn. The strips of root were placed back on the fire, where they curled and turned black, sending up an ugly stream of yellow smoke. The figures bowed their heads over the fire, breathing heavily, rasping in the smoke. The chanting had now become a frenzied ditty, a low, fast quavering sound like the buzzing of cicadas.

The new storm advanced from the east, drawing a shadow across the landscape. Reaching once again into his matted pelt, the first skinwalker threw handfuls of creamy datura flowers into the fire. They quickly shriveled, releasing billows of smoke into the darkening air. The figures bent over the smoke, inhaling greedily. The air of the plateau was suddenly perfumed with the intensely beautiful scent of morning glories. The pelted backs began to quiver, and the silver conchas clinked violently.

A hand rose once again, sprinkling black pollen in the four cardinal directions: north, south, east, and finally west. The skull bowl was now empty, all its shriveled contents ingested. One of the figures raised its head to the sky, a heavy stream of mucus running from beneath the buckskin mask, two palsied hands raised. The chanting, angry now, rose in volume and urgency.

And then, quite suddenly, silence fell. The last wisps of smoke drifted across the face of stone. And with terrible swiftness the figures were gone, racing like black shadows across the landscape, disappearing down the end of the Priest’s Trail into the gloom of the valley of Quivira.

55

ROSCOE SWIRE SAT ATOP A BROKEN BOULDER, turning a worn headstall around in his hands, poetry notebook lying forgotten on the rock beside him. He was profoundly agitated. Not far away, near the edge of the rushing water, stood a large cottonwood, listing and swaying as the pressure of the passing water tore at its roots. Long, thin loops of flotsam dangled from several of the lower branches.

Swire knew those loops for what they were: the gray, ropy guts of a horse. One of his horses. And because of their well-developed herd attachment, he knew that if one were killed, all must have been killed.

The valley had grown dark, but the sky above was still painfully bright. The place seemed suspended between night and day, caught in that mysterious stasis that occurred only in the deepest canyons of Utah.

Swire glanced toward his notebook, toward the eulogy to Hurricane Deck he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to write. He thought of Hurricane Deck: his three-day chase, the spirit of that magnificent horse. Arbuckles: dim, friendly, capable. He thought of all the horses he had lost on this trip, each one with its own personality, and of all the little things that had made up his life with them. The quirks, the peculiar habits, the trails they had ridden . . . it was almost more than he could bear.

And then his thoughts turned to Nora. More than once, she had made him very angry. But he had been forced to admire her bravery, the occasional recklessness of her determination. It was a terrible way to die. She would have heard her own death coming, would have known exactly what it meant.