“No closer,” he said flatly.
“Why?”
“Some fool used toothpicks to hold up the mesa rim.”
He turned up the wick of the lantern until it smoked. Then he made his way carefully over a fallen rubble pile to the far wall of the alcove.
She didn’t follow. She’d seen the frail patchwork and had to remind herself to breathe.
It can’t be as dangerous as it looks.
But it was.
Chapter 29
By the wavering light of the lantern, Cain examined the “support” with a delicate care that said more than any words could about the danger. Christy watched, breathing shallowly, rolling the black bead with her fingertips. She took an odd comfort from its ancient, smooth surface.
A cold nose pressed against her wrist, startling her. Moki had given up on pack rats for now. Ignoring the grit and bits of straw clinging to the dog, she took her hands out of her pockets and thrust her fingers deep into Moki’s fur. She wondered what was the proper prayer for holding up the sky. And then she wondered if the people who built the kiva knew the words.
Thinking about that kept the cold sweat from gliding down her spine.
After a few minutes, the dog pulled away and went to lie down on a slab of cool sandstone. In the gloom, Moki was invisible except for the occasional flash of his eyes as they caught the lantern light.
Cain trimmed the lantern wick and walked back to Christy.
“Well?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“There’s a chunk of sandstone about fifteen feet square that looks like it’s suspended in midair. There’s a crack behind it big enough to crawl into.”
A primitive claustrophobia swept over her. She shoved her hands back in her pockets. This time her fingertips touched the metal of Jo-Jo’s key as well as ancient stone.
Hello, enigma, Christy thought with a humor that wasn’t far from stark fear. Meet the mystery bead. May all your secrets be little and safe.
But she doubted it.
“What about the shoring?” she asked. “Will it hold?”
“Whoever was here before us had some mining experience. He jerry-rigged some braces to stabilize the stone.”
Breath held, she waited.
Cain didn’t say anything more.
“For me,” she said tightly, “ignorance is no particular bliss.”
“The flake of stone must weigh twenty tons. You don’t handle that kind of weight with four-by-four timbers.”
She let out a long breath. “Finish it.”
He threw her a surprised look.
“If the flake was all you were worried about,” she said, “you’d have dragged me to the lip of the alcove before you said a word.”
He smiled. “You know me pretty well, honey.”
“Well enough to know you’re not telling me all you know.” Her hands clenched in her pockets. The bead was smooth. The edges of the key cut into flesh.
She wasn’t telling him all she knew either.
“The flake is supporting a second slab,” he said finally. “The crack separating it from the cliff looks like it goes all the way to daylight. The gap is so big the Anasazi built storage cysts in it.”
He ran his hands through his hair, displacing the watch cap. Absently he stuffed it into his hip pocket.
“The whole ceiling of the alcove is ready to drop away,” he said bluntly. “The second slab is bigger than the one that closed the alcove. When it goes, they’ll hear it all the way to Denver.”
Automatically she looked at the ceiling of the alcove, where the rock spread above them like the canopy of a dome tent. The sandstone was darkened with the soot of thousands of fires and dampened by seepage from millions of winter melts and summer storms.
“It looks so…solid,” she said.
“It was, once. But there are always cracks. Water gets in. It dissolves the glue holding sand grains together. In winter the water freezes, forcing the crack deeper into the stone. When the crack is big enough, gravity wins.”
Silently she tried to imagine the subtle forces at work, water that froze and expanded in winter, prying stone apart. Then the time of melting came and water became a gentle acid dissolving away stone.
Drop by drop, season by season, stress by stress.
Then one day, one hour, one instant, and the massive flake broke away. When the last crushing echo faded and the fine dust settled, a new balance was achieved.
Then the whole cycle was repeated. Drop by drop, season by season, stress by stress.
“Are you saying we should get out?” she asked, her voice not quite steady.
“I’m saying I’d hate to be in here in a thunderstorm. One good roll of thunder could trigger one hell of a crash.”
“That bad, huh?”
“It’s a matter of luck. The ceiling has held this long. It should hold a while longer. Then again, why shouldn’t it fall? No reason I can see.”
Christy shuddered.
“If you want to wait outside the alcove,” he said, “do it. I sure don’t blame you.”
“What about you?”
“I saw something along the edge of the building block. I want to take a closer look at it before I get out of here.”
He picked up the lantern again and headed toward the massive slab of sandstone that had fallen sometime after the Anasazis had nearly filled the alcove with their cliff house.
After a moment’s hesitation, she followed him. Moki watched but showed no desire to follow.
“What are we looking for this time?” she asked.
“I think there’s another kiva over near the other window at this edge of the alcove. It looks like the ceiling caved in when that slab fell. Somebody spent a lot of time digging at one side.”
The second kiva was situated well beyond the block of rooms. Lantern light showed a tangle of splintered cedar-log roof timbers. The ceiling was completely collapsed. The upright pillars that had once supported the roof were broken in half. Dirt and chunks of stone nearly filled the sunken room.
A mound of loose dirt had been piled beside a small tunnel at one edge of the kiva. The tunnel dropped down beneath the collapsed dome, then widened out into a small chamber the size of a telephone booth.
Together they knelt at the mouth of the tunnel and peered into the chamber.
“It’s a pile of jackstraws,” he said, surveying the tangle of broken timbers and tumbled rock. “Whoever did the digging must have had cast-iron balls.”
“What were they after?”
Careful not to brush against the sides, he crept a few feet into the tunnel, just far enough to shine the lantern into the darkest corners of the chamber.
“It looks like a cyst of some sort. They got down below the floor level of the kiva, almost like they were—”
Abruptly he reached into the chamber and scratched in the dirt.
At first Christy thought he’d unearthed another potsherd, but when he handed the fragment back to her, she knew instantly it wasn’t pottery. Something about its shape made her uneasy. Or perhaps it was the texture.
When he backed out of the opening, she handed the fragment to him as though it was burning her fingers.
“Here. Take it,” she said.
“You don’t like it?”
“No.”
He brought the lantern to bear on the fragment and grunted. “Just as I thought. Bone.”
“Human?”
“The head of a femur.”
She swallowed hard. “Do you run into bones often?”
He shook his head. Then he put the scrap of bone aside and scratched through the loose dirt.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“The rest of the skeleton. This is the biggest Anasazi grave I’ve ever seen.”
He scooped out several handfuls of soil and set it aside. Then he scratched some more. Nothing came to light. Gently, carefully, he kept going until the hole widened enough to trigger a miniature cave-in along the back
edge.
A flicker of color caught Christy’s eye. She snatched up the lantern and held it closer. “Look!”
“I see it.”
Very carefully he leaned into the chamber, stretched, and gently retrieved a flat green pebble that was smaller than a postage stamp.
“My God,” he said softly. “Turquoise. Some pothunter really struck it rich in this grave.”
The size and shape reminded her of Hutton’s extraordinary inlaid tortoise. “If that wasn’t turquoise, I’d swear it came from Hutton’s collection.”
“What do you mean?”
“He has an abalone, turquoise, and argillite tortoise that came from somewhere on his ranch,” she said. “But the turquoise inlay was intact.”
Cain’s narrowed eyes gleamed in the lantern light as he looked from the turquoise fragment in his hand to her.
“Then why does this remind you of his artifact?” Cain asked.
“The shape and size is the same as the inlay on the tortoise’s head. An odd kind of partly curved polygon.”
Thoughtfully he turned the piece of turquoise over in his hand. The shape of the piece was indeed odd. Despite his previous orders to her about not picking up so much as a pebble, he put the turquoise into his pocket. Screw regulations. He’d risk jail again before he left the ancient turquoise to be crushed during the next thunderstorm, or the one after that.
“Can you describe the tortoise?” he asked.
“My business is describing things. Four legs retracted so that only the clawed feet were visible. Tail barely a nub. Extremities of abalone inlay. Head and neck not retracted, frankly phallic in shape. Eyes made of two tiny turquoise spheres. Turquoise collar. Argillite shell.”
“Any more?”
She frowned. “As big as my palm, two-dimensional rather than sculptural, sophisticated rather than crude, curvilinear more than angular, meant to be viewed from one side only, like a pendant. The workmanship was very fine. And there was something…”
Her voice faded.
“What?” he asked.
“It was more than the sum of its parts,” she said simply. “Whoever created it was an artist. The tortoise was invested with a sense of wisdom and longevity and fertility that was breathtaking.”
He let out a long sigh. “I’d like to see that. It sounds like a fetish from a very wealthy, very powerful clan.”
“That’s pretty good guessing, for a white man.”
The gravelly voice came from the darkness behind them.
Cain spun and held the lantern above his head, sending a wash of light into the shadows.
Johnny Ten Hats stepped into the light. In one big hand was a shotgun with a sawed-off stock and barrel. His finger was over the trigger.
The barrel was pointing right at them.
Chapter 30
“Hello, Johnny,” Cain said. He gave a low, curt whistle. “Somebody worked you over pretty good.”
“Don’t come any closer,” Johnny snarled.
“I’m not moving,” Cain said easily. “How’s it going?”
Christy stared, unable to believe how casual he was. He flicked a sideways glance at her.
The look in his eyes made her cold.
When Johnny turned and glanced quickly over his shoulder, Cain made a brief motion with his hand, as though warning her not to move.
“Somebody on your trail?” Cain asked.
“Back away from that hole,” Johnny said. “Put the lantern down on that rock and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Carefully Cain set the lantern down and moved away from it. He watched the big man with cold, predatory intent, waiting for an opening.
“Not that I need to worry much about you,” Johnny said with faint contempt. “You won’t fight me. You proved that before you were shot.”
She stared, unable to believe that Johnny didn’t see the battle-readiness in Cain. It fairly shouted to her, scraping her nerves until she felt like she was bleeding under her skin.
“Some things just aren’t worth fighting about,” Cain said. “A professional piece of ass is one of them.”
“Shut up.” Johnny lifted the shotgun to chest height and pointed it at Cain’s head.
Fear froze Christy. The bore of the shotgun looked as big as a railroad tunnel and as black as death itself.
Cain simply watched, expressionless. Johnny was staring at Christy. Not good. Cain moved to one side slowly, trying to draw attention back to himself.
“Hold still!” Johnny said roughly.
“Take it easy, man. You on speed or something?” Cain asked.
The Indian shook his head, in denial or in response to some private pain. “I gave that shit up.”
“Good thing,” Cain said easily. “Makes you paranoid.”
Johnny blinked and wiped sweat and blood off his forehead with the back of his left hand. The muzzle of the shotgun in his right hand didn’t waver.
“You the one that looted this place?” Cain asked.
Johnny grunted.
“You sell it all for dope?” Cain asked.
The big man glared blackly.
“Yeah, well,” Cain said, shrugging, “I warned you how much Hutton’s whore would cost.”
Johnny’s response was a stifled sound that might have been a laugh. He took a ragged step closer, trying to intimidate Cain by pure bulk.
When Johnny moved, the side of his face that was toward Christy came out of shadow. She made an involuntary sound. He looked like a dead man walking. His face was bruised and covered with crusted blood from several cuts. Other cuts were still bleeding. He held his left hand stiffly, as if it was injured.
“You don’t look real good,” Cain said.
“I look better than you will if you don’t shut up and stand still.” Johnny gestured curtly with the shotgun.
Cain showed his empty hands. “I’m not dumb enough to go bare-handed against a shotgun.”
“Hell, you won’t go bare-handed against nothin’.”
“Coming from you, that’s funny.”
“What’s that mean?”
“How does it feel to shoot someone in the back?” Cain asked. “Did it make you forget what a fool you are for paying for a piece of ass every cowboy in Remington County had for free?”
Johnny took a step, stumbled, and caught himself on a waist-high chunk of sandstone. He sagged against it like an old man sinking into a rocking chair. Then he grinned in the lantern light, revealing a mouth full of broken teeth.
“So you think it was me,” Johnny said. He laughed thickly, then spat off to the side, blood and saliva darkly mixed.
Cain waited, measuring his chances.
Christy bit back a scream. Johnny was too far away, the shotgun too dangerous. Cain would be killed before he took one step.
Then she noticed it was Johnny that Cain watched, not the gun. His actions told her that the man was the more dangerous weapon.
“How much did you take out of here, Johnny?” Cain’s voice was matter-of-fact, a man making casual conversation with an acquaintance.
But his eyes weren’t casual. He watched Johnny with reptilian intensity.
“Who says I took anything out of this place?” Johnny asked.
Cain laughed softly. The sound was like a rasp on stone. “This ruin was a cultural gold mine. Now it’s trash. That’s your style. You destroy a whole site for a few good pots. I know you, Johnny. I’ve seen your sign all over the San Juan Basin.”
Johnny wiped the back of his hand across the corner of his mouth. His hand came away dark with blood and dirt. “You got any water?”
“In my backpack.”
“Where is it?” Johnny said, glancing around.
Cain eased forward in the instant before the Indian looked back at him.
“I’m wearing it,” Cain said. “I’ll just take it off and—”
“No! Don’t move. I don’t trust you,” he said in a rising tone. “I don’t trust no one no more!”
?
??Easy, Johnny,” Cain said. “You’re fine. You have control of everything and you’re just fine.”
The man’s black glance darted erratically around the alcove. He looked at Christy like he’d never seen her before. Then he looked again, surprised.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t I know you? Come here.”
“Stay put,” Cain said softly. “Not one inch, Red.”
She didn’t move.
Johnny shook his head like a drunk trying to clear the cobwebs. Slowly he focused on Cain.
“Who’s the bitch?” Johnny asked.
“Nobody you need to worry about.” Cain’s voice was gentle. “She’s going to take a walk while we talk about old times.”
Johnny thought it over, then spat again. “No. Bitch stays. Don’t trust no one.”
“You have to trust someone,” Cain said. “You need help.” He took a step forward, then another one, before Johnny reacted.
“Back off or I’ll blow a hole through you!”
Cain stopped.
Christy saw that he was poised to move again, in any direction, at any moment.
“You still need help,” Cain said.
“Bastards.”
The comment seemed aimed at people in general rather than Cain in particular. The shotgun was much more focused. Its unblinking eye never shifted from Cain’s chest.
Johnny coughed.
Cain inched forward.
The Indian spat blood into the darkness.
Cain moved again.
“I never shoulda got involved with those eastern assholes and their pretty-boy manners and their fancy dope,” Johnny mumbled. “My head ain’t been right since.” He coughed.
Cain eased closer.
Christy held herself so tightly she ached in every muscle, screaming silently at him. It’s too far, Cain. Don’t try it! He’ll kill you!
She wanted to scream it aloud, even though it wouldn’t do any good. Cain knew the odds as well as she did. Better.
The gun was pointed at him.
“Did you do the dig for Hutton?” Cain asked.
“Hell, yes,” Johnny said. He made a sweeping gesture with the muzzle of the shotgun. “I found the place. I dug the pots. I did it all. Pretty good for a no-good blanket-head Moki poacher, huh?” He grinned bloodily. “That’ll teach you and all your fancy university friends. I found this ruin, me and Jo, and I dug it. Hell of a lot more than you can say.”