Текст книги "Thunderhead"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston,Lincoln Child
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“Yes,” Nora replied. She still could not believe he had turned down the gift.

“What do you think?”

“Other institutions have killed Mimbres pots in their collections.”

“We are not otherinstitutions,” Goddard replied in his soft whisper. “These pots were buried by people who respected their dead, and we have an obligation to continue that respect. I doubt Mrs. Henigsbaugh would approve of us digging up her dear departed Harry.” He settled into a chair behind the worktable. “I had a visit from Dr. Blakewood the other day, Nora.”

She stiffened. This was it, then.

“He mentioned that you were behind in your projects, and that he felt your tenure review might go poorly. Care to tell me about it?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Nora said. “I’ll submit my resignation whenever.”

To her surprise, Goddard grinned at this. “Resignation?” he asked. “Why on earth would you want to resign?”

She cleared her throat. “There’s no way, in six months, I’m going to be able to write up the Rio Puerco and Gallegos Divide projects, and—” She stopped.

“And what?” Goddard asked.

“Do what I need to do,” she finished. “So I might as well resign now, and save you the trouble.”

“I see.” Goddard’s glittering eyes never left hers. “Do what you need to do, you say. Might that be searching for the lost city of Quivira?”

Nora looked sharply at him, and once again the chairman grinned. “Oh, yes. Blakewood mentioned that, too.”

Nora remained silent.

“He also mentioned your sudden absence from the Institute. Did it have something to do with this idea of yours, this search for Quivira?”

“I was in California.”

“I should have thought Quivira was somewhat east of there.”

Nora sighed. “What I did was on my own time.”

“Dr. Blakewood didn’t think so. Did you find Quivira?”

“In a way, yes.”

There was a silence in the room. Nora looked at Goddard’s face. The grin was suddenly gone.

“Would you care to explain?”

“No,” said Nora.

Goddard’s surprise lasted only for a moment. “Why not?”

“Because this is my project,” Nora said truculently.

“I see.” Goddard eased himself off the table and leaned toward Nora. “The Institute might be able to help you and your project. Now tell me: what did you find in California?”

Nora moved in her chair, considering. “I have some radar images that show an ancient Anasazi road leading to what I believe is Quivira.”

“Do you indeed?” Goddard’s face expressed both astonishment and something else. “And just where did these images come from?”

“I have a contact inside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was able to digitally manipulate radar images of the area, canceling out the modern tracks and leaving the ancient road. It leads straight into the heart of the redrock country mentioned in the early Spanish accounts.”

Goddard nodded, his face curious and expectant. “This is extraordinary,” he said. “Nora, you’re a woman of many surprises.”

Nora said nothing.

“Of course, Dr. Blakewood had reasons to say what he did. But perhaps he spoke a little precipitously.” He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. “What if we make this search for Quivira ourproject?”

Nora paused. “I’m not sure I understand.”

Goddard withdrew his hand, stood up, and walked slowly around the room, looking away from her. “What if the Institute were to fund this expedition of yours, roll back your tenure review? How would that sound?”

Nora gazed at the man’s narrow back, absorbing what he had just said. “That would sound unlikely, if you don’t mind my saying so,” she answered.

Goddard began to laugh, only to be cut short by a series of coughs. He returned to the worktable. “Blakewood told me about your theories, about your father’s letter. Some of the things he said were less than generous. But it happens that I, too, have long wondered about Quivira. No less than three early Spanish explorers in the Southwest heard these stories about a fabulous golden city: Cabeza de Vaca in the 1530s, Fray Marcos in 1538, and Coronado in 1540. Their stories are too similar to be fiction. And then in the 1770s, and again in the 1830s, more people came out of that wilderness, claiming to have heard of a lost city.” He looked up at her. “There’s never been a question in my mind that Quivira existed. The question was always exactly where.”

He circled the table and came to rest on its corner once more. “I knew your father, Nora. If he said he found evidence for this lost city, I’d believe him.”

Nora bit her lip against an unexpected well of emotion.

“I have the means to put the Institute squarely behind your expedition. But I need to see the evidence first. The letter andthe data. If what you say is true, we’ll back you.”

Nora placed a hand on her portfolio. She could hardly believe the turnaround. And yet, she had seen too many young archaeologists lose credit to their older, more powerful colleagues. “You said this would be our project. I’d still like to keep it myproject, if you don’t mind.”

“Well, perhaps I do mind. If I’m going to fund this expedition—through the Institute, of course—I would like control, particularly over the personnel.”

“Who did you envision leading the expedition?” she asked.

There was the slightest of pauses while Goddard steadily met her gaze. “You would, of course. Aaron Black would go along as the geochronologist, and Enrique Aragon as the medical doctor and paleopathologist.”

Nora sat back, surprised at the rapidity with which his mind worked. Not only was he thinking ahead to the expedition, but he was already peopling it with the best scientists in their fields. “If you can get them,” she said.

“Oh, I’m reasonably sure I can get them. I know them both very well. And the discovery of Quivira would be a watershed in southwestern archaeology. It’s the kind of gamble an archaeologist can’t resist. And since I can’t go along myself”—he waved his handkerchief in explanation—“I’d want to send my daughter in my stead. She got her undergraduate degree from Smith, just took her Ph.D. at Princeton in American archaeology, and she’s anxious to do some fieldwork. She’s young, and perhaps a little impetuous, but she has one of the finest archaeological minds I’ve ever encountered. And she’s highly skilled at field photography.”

Nora frowned. Smith,she thought to herself. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said. “It might muddy the chain of command. And this is going to be a difficult trip, particularly for a . . .” She paused. “A sorority girl.”

“My daughter mustgo along,” said Goddard quietly. “And she is no ‘sorority girl,’ as you shall discover.” An odd, mirthless smile flashed briefly across his lips before disappearing.

Nora looked at the old man, realizing the point was nonnegotiable. Quickly, she considered her options. She could take the information she had, sell the ranch, and head into the desert with people of her own choosing, gambling that she could find Quivira before her money ran out. Or she could take her data to another institution, where it would probably be a year or two before they could organize and fund a trip. Or she could share her discovery with a sympathetic backer uniquely qualified to outfit a professional expedition, leading the top archaeologists in the country. The price of admission was taking the backer’s daughter along for the ride. No contest there,she thought.

“All right.” She smiled. “But I’ve got a condition of my own. I need to take the JPL technician who assisted me along as a remote imaging specialist.”

“I’m sorry, but I’d like to reserve the personnel decisions.”

“It was the price of getting the data.”

There was a silence. “Can you vouch for his credentials?”

“Yes. He’s young, but he’s got a lot of experience.”

“Very well.”

Nora was surprised at Goddard’s ability to take a challenge, parry, and come to a decision. She found herself beginning to like him.

“I also think we have to keep this confidential,” she continued. “The expedition has to be assembled very quickly and very secretly.”

Goddard looked at her speculatively. “May I ask why?”

“Because . . .” Nora stopped. Because I think I’m being shadowed by mysterious figures who will stop at nothing to find the location of Quivira.But she couldn’t say that to Goddard; he’d think her crazy, or worse, and rescind his offer in an instant. Any hint of a problem would complicate, maybe even wreck, the expedition. “Because this information is very sensitive. Think what would happen if pothunters learned about it and tried to loot the site before we could reach it. And on a practical matter, we have to move fast. The flash flood season will be on us soon.”

After a moment, Goddard nodded slowly. “That makes sense,” he said. “I’d like to include a journalist on the expedition, but I’m sure his discretion can be relied on.”

“A journalist?” Nora burst out. “Why?”

“To chronicle what may be the most important find in twentieth-century American archaeology. Imagine the story the world would have lost if Howard Carter had not had the London Timescovering his discovery. I actually have somebody in mind, a New York Timesreporter with several books to his credit, including an excellent profile of the Boston Aquarium. I think he can be relied upon not only to be a good digger but to produce a highly favorable—and highly visible—account of you and your work.” He glanced at Nora. “You have no objection to ex post factopublicity, certainly?”

Nora hesitated. This was all happening so fast: it was almost as if Goddard had worked it all out before even talking to her. As she thought back over their conversation, she realized he must have. It occurred to her that there might be a reason for his excitement that he was not sharing with her.

“No,” she said, “I guess not.”

“I didn’t think so. Now let’s see what you’ve got.”

Goddard pushed away from the desk as Nora reached into her portfolio and removed a 30-by-60-minute U.S.G.S. topo. “The target area is this triangle just to the west of the Kaiparowits Plateau, here. As you can see, it contains dozens of canyon systems that all eventually drain into Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon, to the south and east. The closest human settlement is a small Nankoweap Indian encampment sixty miles to the north.”

Then she handed Goddard a sheet of paper: a U.S.G.S. 7.5-minute topographic map, onto which Holroyd had overprinted in red the final image from his computer, properly scaled. “This is an image taken from last week’s shuttle overflight, digitally enhanced. The faint, broken black line across it is the ancient Anasazi road.”

Goddard took the sheet into his thin pale hands. “Extraordinary,” he murmured. “Last week’s flight?” Again he looked at Nora, a curious admiration in his eyes.

“The dotted line shows a reconstruction of my father’s route through this country, following what he thought to be that road. When we extrapolated the road from the shuttle radar image onto this map, it matched my father’s route. The road seems to lead northwestward from Betatakin Ruin, through this maze of canyons, and over this huge ridge, which my father labeled the Devil’s Backbone. It then appears to lead into a narrow slot canyon, ending up in this tiny, hidden canyon, here. It’s somewhere in this canyon that we hope to find the city.”

Goddard shook his head. “Amazing. But Nora, all the ancient Anasazi roads we know about, Chaco and the rest, run in absolutely straight lines. This road winds around like a broken spring.”

“I thought of that, too,” Nora said. “Everyone’s always thought Chaco Canyon was the center of Anasazi culture, the fourteen Great Houses of Chaco with Pueblo Bonito at their hub. But look at this.”

She pulled out another map, showing the entire Colorado Plateau and San Juan Basin. In the lower right-hand corner, an archaeological site diagram of Chaco Canyon had been overlaid, showing the huge ruin at Pueblo Bonito surrounded by a circle of outlying communities. A heavy red line had been drawn from Pueblo Bonito, through the circle, through a half dozen other major ruins, and running arrow-straight to the upper left hand corner of the map, terminating in an X.

“That X marks what I calculate to be the location of Quivira,” Nora said quietly. “All these years we’ve believed that Chaco itself was the destination of the Anasazi roads. But what if Chaco wasn’tthe destination? What if, instead, it was the collecting point for a ritual journey to Quivira, the city of priests?”

Goddard shook his head slowly. “This is fascinating. There’s more than enough evidence here to justify an expedition. Have you given any thought to how you might get in there? Helicopters, for example?”

“That was my first thought. But this isn’t a typical remote site. Those canyons are too narrow and most are a thousand feet deep. There are high winds, beetling rimrock, and no flat areas to land. I’ve studied the maps carefully, and there’s no place within fifty miles to safely land a helicopter. Jeeps are obviously out of the question. So we’ll have to use horses. They’re cheap and can pack a lot of gear.”

Goddard grunted as he stared at the map. “Sounds good. But I’m not sure I see a route in, even on horseback. All these canyons box up at their sources. Even if you used this Indian settlement far to the north as your jumping-off point, it would be one hell of a ride just to get to the village. And then, waterless country for the next sixty miles. Lake Powell blocks access to the south.” He looked up. “Unless you . . .”

“Exactly. We’ll float the expedition up the lake. I’ve already called the Wahweap Marina in Page, and they have a seventy-foot barge that will do the job. If we started at Wahweap, floated the horses up to the head of Serpentine Canyon, and rode in from there, we could be at Quivira in three or four days.”

Goddard broke into a smile. “Nora, this is inspired. Let’s make it happen.”

“There’s one other thing,” Nora said, replacing the maps in her portfolio without looking up. “My brother needs a job. He’ll do anything, really, and I know with the right supervision he’d be great at sorting and cataloging the Rio Puerco and Gallegos Divide material.”

“We have a rule against nepotism—” Goddard began, then stopped as Nora, despite herself, began to smile. The old man looked at her steadily, and for a moment Nora thought he would erupt in anger. But then his face cleared. “Nora, you are your father’s daughter,” he said. “You don’t trust anybody, and you’re a damn good negotiator. Any other demands? You’d better present them now, or forever hold your peace.”

“No, that covers it.”

Silently, Goddard extended his hand.

10

THERE WAS AN ABRUPT HAMMERING SOUND; Nora almost dropped the artifact in her hands and looked up from her desk in a panic, heart galloping. Skip’s scowling face was framed in the glass window of her office door. She slumped back in her chair and breathed out. Skip raised one hand, and, with an exaggerated gesture, pointed downward at the doorknob.

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” she said as she let him in. Her fingers still trembled as she closed and relocked the door. “Not to mention the loss of two years of my salary if I’d dropped that Mogollon pot.”

“Since when did you start locking your office?” Skip said, slouching into the only chair not covered with books and tugging a large satchel onto his knees. “Look, Nora, there’s something—”

“First things first,” Nora interrupted. “You got my message?” Skip nodded and passed over the satchel. Nora unlooped the leather straps and looked inside. Her father’s old Ruger lay at the bottom, shoved into a battered holster.

“What do you want it for, anyway?” Skip asked. “Some academic rivalry that needs settling?”

Nora shook her head. “Skip, I want you to be serious for a minute. The Institute’s agreed to fund an expedition to Quivira. I’ll be leaving in a couple of days.”

Skip’s eyes widened. “Fantastic! You don’t waste any time, do you? When do we go?”

“You know perfectly well you’re not going,” said Nora. “But I’ve arranged a job for you, here at the Institute. You’ll start work next Monday.”

The eyes narrowed again. “A job? I don’t know jack shit about archaeology.”

“All that time you spent, crawling around the ranch on your hands and knees with Dad, looking for potsherds? Come on. Anyway, it’s an easy assignment, first-year stuff. My associate Sonya Rowling will show you around, get you started, answer questions, keep you out of trouble.”

“She cute?”

“She’s married. Look, I’ll be gone about three weeks. If you don’t like it by the time I get back, you can quit. But it’ll keep you occupied for the time being.” And maybe keep you in a safe place during the day,she thought. “You won’t mind looking after my place while I’m gone? And you’ll leave my stuff alone, for a change?” She shook her head. “You use my shower, you steal my hairbrush . . . I ought to start charging rent.”

“I didn’t steal your hairbrush!” Skip protested. “I mean sure, I used it, but I put it back. I know how neurotic you are about that kind of thing.”

“Not neurotic. Just neat.” She glanced over. “Speaking of looking after my place, where’s Thurber? Didn’t you bring him?”

A funny look came over Skip. “That’s what I wanted to tell you,” he said in a low voice. “Thurber’s missing.”

Nora felt the air leave her lungs in a sudden rush. “Missing?” she repeated.

Skip looked down abjectly.

“What happened?”

Skip shook his head. “Don’t know. It was the second night you were gone. He was fine the first night, or as fine as he ever gets. When I came in the second night and called for him, he was gone. It was weird. The door was locked, all the windows were shut. But there was this funny smell in the air, almost like flowers. There was some dog barking like mad outside, but it didn’t sound like Thurber. I went outside anyway and looked around. He must have jumped the fence or something.” He sighed deeply and looked at his sister. “I’m really sorry, Nora. I looked all over for him, I talked to the neighbors, I called the pound . . .”

“You didn’t leave a door open?” Nora asked. The raw anger she’d felt the night before, the feeling of violation, was gone, leaving only a strange and terrible fear behind.

“No, I swear I didn’t. Like I said, everything was locked up.”

“Skip, I want you to listen to me,” she said in a low voice. “When I got home last night, I could tell something wasn’t right. Somebody had been in the apartment. The place was dirty. My hairbrush was missing. There was a strange smell, the same one you noticed. And then I heard some scratching, and went outside—” She stopped. How could she explain it: the humped, fur-covered figure, the strange lack of footprints, the feeling of utter alienness that had come across her as she stood in the dark, flashlight in hand? And now Thurber . . .

Skip’s skeptical look changed suddenly to concern. “Hey, Nora, you’ve had quite a week,” he said. “First that thing out at the ranch, then this expedition coming together out of nowhere, and Thurber disappearing. Why don’t you go home and rest up?”

Nora looked into his eyes.

“What?” he asked. “Are you afraid to go home?”

“It isn’t that,” she replied. “I had the locksmith out this morning to install a second lock. It’s just that . . .” She hesitated. “I just have to keep a low profile for the next day or two. I can take care of myself. Once I’m out of Santa Fe, there won’t be any more problems. But, Skip, promise me you’ll be very careful while I’m gone. I’ll leave Dad’s gun in the bedside table drawer in my apartment. I want you to have it after I leave. And don’t go by the old place, okay?”

“You afraid the Creature from the Black Lagoon will get me?”

Nora rose quickly. “That’s not funny, and you know it.”

“All right, all right. I never visit that broken-down old shack anyway. Besides, after what happened, I’ll bet Teresa’s watching that place like a hawk, finger on the trigger.”

Nora sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I am right. You wait and see. Black Lagoon, zero. Winchester, one.”

11

CALAVERAS MESA LAY SLUMBERING UNDER the midnight sky, a shadowy island rising out of an ocean of broken rock—the vast El Malpaíslava flow of central New Mexico. A screen of clouds had moved over the stars, and the mesa lay still underneath: silent, dark, uninhabited. The nearest settlement was Quemado, fifty miles away.

Calaveras Mesa had not always been uninhabited. In the fourteenth century, Anasazi Indians had moved into its south-facing cliffs and hollowed out caves in the soft volcanic tuff. But the site had proved uncongenial, and the caves had been abandoned for half a millennium. In this distant part of El Malpaís,there were no roads and no trails; the caves remained undisturbed and unexcavated.

Two dark forms moved among the silent broken rafts and blocks of frozen lava that lapped the sides of the mesa. They were covered with thick pelts of fur, and their movements had the combined swiftness and caution of a wolf. Both figures wore heavy silver jewelry: concho belts, squash blossom necklaces, turquoise disks, and old sand-cast bow guards. Beneath the heavy pelts, naked skin was daubed with thick paint.

They reached the talus slope below the caves and began to ascend, picking their way among boulders and rockfalls. At the bottom of the cliff itself they rapidly ascended a hand-and-toe trail and disappeared into the dark mouth of a cave.

Inside the cave, they paused. One figure remained at the mouth while the second moved swiftly to the back of the cave. He pushed aside a rock, revealing a narrow passage, and wriggled through into a smaller room. There was a faint scratching sound and the wavering light of a burning splinter revealed that this room was not empty: it was a small Anasazi burial chamber. In niches carved in the far wall lay three mummified corpses, a few pathetic broken pots left beside them as offerings. The figure placed a ball of wax with a bit of straw stuck into it on a high ledge, lighting it with an uncertain glow.

Then he moved to the central corpse: a gray, delicate form wrapped in a rotting buffalo hide. Its mummified lips had drawn back from its teeth and its mouth was open in a monstrous grimace of hilarity. The legs of the corpse were drawn up to the chest and the knees had been wrapped with woven cords; its eyes were two holes, webbed with shreds of tissue; its hands were balled up into shriveled fists, the fingernails hanging and broken, gnawed by rats.

The figure reached in and cradled the mummy with infinite gentleness, removed it from the niche, and laid it down in the thick layer of dust on the cave floor. Reaching into the pelt, he removed a small woven basket and a medicine bundle. Tugging open the bundle, he extracted something and held it up to the uncertain light: a pair of delicate bronze hairs.

The figure turned back to the mummy. Slowly, he placed the hairs in the mouth of the mummy, pushing them deep into the mummy’s throat. There was a dry crackling noise. Then the figure leaned back; the candle snuffed out; and absolute darkness fell once again. There was a low sound, a mutter, then a name, intoned again and again in a slow, even voice: “ Kelly . . . Kelly . . . Kelly . . .”

A long time passed. There was another scratch of a match, and the wax was relit. The figure reached into the basket, then bent over the corpse. A razor-sharp obsidian knife gleamed in the faint light. There was a faint, rhythmic scraping noise: the sound of stone cutting through crisp, dry flesh. The figure soon straightened up, holding a small round disk of scalp, dotted with the whorl of hair from the back of the mummy’s head. The figure placed it reverently in the basket.

The figure bent once more. There was now a louder, digging noise. After a few minutes, there was a sharp rap. The figure held up a disk of skullbone, examined it, then placed it in the basket beside the scalp. Next, he moved the knife down the mummy until it reached the clenched, withered fists. He gently pulled aside the rotted tatters of buffalo hide from the hands, caressing them in his own. Then he worked the knife between the fingers, methodically prying them loose and breaking them off one at a time. Cupping each finger, he cut off the whorl of fingerprint and placed the desiccated chips of flesh into the basket. Then the figure moved down to the toes, breaking them off the body like breadsticks and quickly carving off the toe prints. Small showers of dust rained onto the cave floor.

The little basket filled with pieces of the corpse as the makeshift candle guttered. The figure quickly rewrapped the mummy and lifted it back into its niche in the wall as the light winked out. Picking up the basket, he left the chamber and rolled the rock back into place. Gingerly, he pulled a buckskin bag from the pelt, unwound the tight knot of leather that sealed it shut, and teased the bag open. Holding it away from himself, he carefully sprinkled a thin trail of some powdery substance along the base of the rock. Then he carefully sealed up the bag and rejoined his companion at the cave entrance. Swiftly and silently, they descended the cliff face and were once again swallowed up in the darkness of the great lava flow of El Malpaís.

12

THE HEADLIGHTS OF NORA’S TRUCK SWUNG across the predawn dark, scissoring through clouds of dust rising from the corrals, highlighting the wooden gates of the dude ranch. She came to a stop in a rutted parking area and killed the motor. Nearby, she could see two dark-colored vehicles, a pickup and a van, each bearing the Institute’s seal. Two slant-load horse trailers had been backed up to nearby horse pens, and ranch hands were loading horses into them under electric lights.

Nora stepped out into the coolness of the early morning air and looked around. The sky would not begin to lighten for another half hour or so, but already Venus was rising, a sharp fleck of light against the velvet sky. The Institute vehicles were empty, and Nora knew everyone must already be at the fire circle, where Goddard planned to introduce the expedition to one another and say a brief farewell. In an hour, they would begin the long drive to Page, Arizona, at the end of Lake Powell. It was time she met the others.

But she lingered a moment. The air was filled with the sounds of her childhood: the slap of latigo, the whistles and shouts of the cowboys, the boom of prancing hooves in the trailers, the clang of stock gates. As the aroma of piñon smoke, horses, and dust drifted near, a tight knot that had been growing within her began to relax. Over the last three days she had been supremely cautious, supremely vigilant, and yet she had seen nothing more to alarm her. The expedition had come together with remarkable speed and smoothness. Not a word had leaked out. And here, away from Santa Fe, Nora found some of the tension that had kept her so painfully on edge begin to ebb. The mystery of who had mailed her father’s letter was never far from her thoughts. But at least, once they were on the trail, she would leave her strange pursuers far behind.

A cowboy in a battered hat strode out of the corral, leading a horse in each hand. Nora turned to look at him. The man was barely five feet tall, skinny, barrel-chested and bandy-legged. He turned and shouted to some hands deeper in the dusty darkness, bracketing the orders with four letter words. That must be Roscoe Swire,she thought: the wrangler Goddard had hired. He seemed a sure enough hand, but as her father had always said, he ain’t a cowboy til you see him ride.She again felt a momentary annoyance at how the Institute’s chairman had taken over the hiring of all personnel, even the wrangler. But Goddard was paying the bills.

She pulled her saddle out of the back of her truck and stepped around. “Roscoe Swire?” she asked.

He turned and removed his hat in a gesture that managed to be both courtly and ironic. “At your service,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. He had a great overhanging mustache, droopy lips, and large, cow-sad eyes. But there was a certain scrappiness, even truculence, about his manner.

“I’m Nora Kelly,” she said, shaking the small hand. It was so rough and scabby, it was like grasping a burr.

“So you’re the boss,” said Swire with a grin. “Pleased.” He glanced at the saddle. “What you got there?”

“It’s my own. I figured you’d want to load it with the rest in the front of the trailer.”

He slowly placed his hat back on his head. “Looks like it’s been drug around a bit.”

“I’ve had it since I was sixteen.”

Swire broke into another smile. “An archaeologist who can ride.”

“I can pack a set of panniers and throw a pretty good diamond hitch, too,” said Nora.

At this, Swire took a small box of gingersnaps out of his pocket, placed one underneath his mustache, and began to chew. “Well, now,” he said, when his mouth was full, “you ain’t shy about your accomplishments.” He took a closer look at her gear. “Valle Grande Saddlery, three-quarter-rigged with the Cheyenne roll. You ever want to sell this, you let me know.”

Nora laughed.

“Look, the others just went up to the circle. What can you tell me about them? Buncha New Yorkers on vacation, or what?”

Nora found herself liking Swire and his sardonic tone. “Most of them I haven’t met. It’s a mixed group. People seem to think all archaeologists are like Indiana Jones, but I’ve met plenty who couldn’t ride to save their lives, or who’d never ventured beyond the classroom and lab. It all depends on what kind of work they’ve done. I bet there’ll be a couple of sore butts by the end of the first day.” She thought about Sloane Goddard, the sorority girl, and wondered how she, Holroyd, and the rest were going to fare on horseback.

“Good,” said Swire. “If they ain’t sore, they ain’t having fun.” He pushed another gingersnap into his mouth, then pointed. “It’s up that way.”

The fire circle lay north of the corrals, hidden in a stand of scrub juniper and piñon. Nora followed the trail, quickly spotting the flickering fire through the trees. Huge ponderosa logs were arranged in broad rings, three deep. The circle lay at the base of a tall bluff, which was pockmarked here and there by caves, a pendulous overhang across its top. Light from the fire leaped and flickered, painting the sandstone bluff lurid colors against the dark. A fire circle before a long journey was an old Pueblo custom, Nora knew, and after witnessing the incident with the Mimbres pots, she wasn’t particularly surprised Goddard had suggested it. It was another indication of his respect for Indian culture.