“On the summer solstice,” he said, “from here the sun would rise directly between the two spires. This side of the mesa top would have been a very special place for the Anasazi. There has to be a kiva around here somewhere.”
She was keenly aware of the weight and warmth of his hands on her shoulders. It felt good.
“What’s a kiva?” she asked, her voice almost husky.
“The navel of the world.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. He was so close that she could sense the warmth of his breath on her cheek. He smiled at her.
“A kiva,” he said, “is also a circular room dug into the earth and roofed over with cedar beams and plaster.”
“Into the earth? Why? In this country wouldn’t it be easier to build above the ground?”
“Probably. But the Anasazi believed that all the clans originally emerged from the underworld on their great journey toward the sky. Going to and from the kiva mimics that journey. Some say that it also mimics the womb, and birth.”
She frowned. “So a kiva is a kind of church?”
“A church. A social club. A clan headquarters. A symbol of secrecy. The kiva could have been all those things.”
“Or none of them?”
A smile flashed through Cain’s short black beard.
“Or none of them,” he agreed. “All we know for sure is that the kiva was very important to the Anasazi. They went to a lot of trouble to build kivas next to their apartment buildings. The Pueblo people do the same today.”
Releasing Christy, he turned and examined the mesa behind them, looking for any sign that once, long ago, people had built here, lived here, died here.
Nothing showed but the rough mesa top itself, marked with dark evergreen and red rock, swept by the restless wind. The abrupt, rocky platform where they stood was close to the edge of the mesa. Nearby, a deep slit canyon cut through the sandstone. Beyond the slit, the land fell away into the distance, leaving a sheer stone precipice behind.
“How are you on heights?” he asked.
“I live on the forty-third floor.”
“How are you when there aren’t any elevators to take you up and down?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Good. Come on.”
He leaped down from the small stone platform. When she started to follow, he lifted her down as he’d done once before, when they had been fleeing from Hutton’s guards. And again, she was sharply aware of Cain’s palms gliding lightly over the sides of her breasts.
She saw an answering flare of awareness in his eyes before he released her and turned away.
Moki barked eagerly from atop the rock platform.
“You got up there yourself,” he told the dog. “You can get down the same way.”
Moki barked again, circled the little platform, then dashed to one edge and jumped. He touched a small outcropping of rock on the way down. The rock gave way suddenly, dumping the dog to the ground. He scrambled up, shook off the surprise like rain, and raced off over the mesa once more.
“Is this something useful?” she asked.
Cain turned in time to see her pick a white fragment from the fresh fall of dirt that had come loose when Moki had kicked the rock out of its resting place in a crevice.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something that doesn’t fit,” she said.
When he held out his hand, she dropped the fragment into it. He brushed a thick layer of red silt from the surface and smiled. There was a pattern of black crosshatched over white.
“A potsherd!” Excitement rippled in her voice and gleamed in her eyes.
“Your first?” he asked, trying not to smile.
She nodded so quickly that locks of red hair slipped free of their moorings beneath her watch cap.
“How did it get there?” she asked. “I don’t see any ruins around.”
“Some Anasazi probably did what we did—climbed up there for a look around. He might have broken his canteen or a seed pot he was carrying. He walked on, and the pieces stayed behind.”
She looked back at the windswept little platform with wonder in her eyes.
“It’s quite a feeling, isn’t it?” he asked softly. “Sharing just for a moment the life of someone who died centuries before you were born.”
“Yes,” she said, and the word was close to a sigh.
“Too bad we didn’t find this over on Billy Moore’s land,” Cain said, handing the sherd back to her. “He wouldn’t mind if you kept it.”
“But the owner of this land would?”
“Yeah. You keep that and you’ve committed a felony. The feds will harass your ass into an early grave.”
She looked around the mesa. “This is all federal land?”
He nodded.
“Where’s Xanadu?” she asked.
“It starts somewhere over by the edge of the mesa.”
“Where?”
“You’d have to be a surveyor to know for sure. Hutton’s ranch is a hodgepodge of leased grazing land and deeded land.”
“But he doesn’t run cattle.”
“He’d rather pay the grazing fees and keep other folks’ cattle out,” Cain said. “Come on. Let’s find the rest of the pot.”
She looked at the damp reddish earth where the stone had fallen away. There was some more dirt in the crease, but not enough to hide a pot. With a sigh, she put the sherd back in its place.
“We won’t find the rest of the pot here,” she said.
“The first rule of potsherds is that they go downhill.”
He crossed the strip of wind-smoothed sandstone that separated the low stone platform from the edge of the mesa. A nose of rock extended out into the canyon. The wind was stronger at the edge but felt less chilly. The ground below the lip of the canyon still held summer’s warmth.
When Christy walked out and stood next to Cain, she gasped in surprise.
The canyon floor was a long, long way down.
Below her feet, the black backs of ravens gleamed as the birds floated on the wind, calling sharply to one another. She was swept by a feeling of being weightless, of soaring and falling in the same instant.
Without realizing it, she took a step closer to the edge.
Chapter 25
Cain’s hand shot out and gripped Christy’s arm, but he didn’t pull her back. Instead, he moved to stand just behind her, letting her enjoy the view. If the dropoff made her dizzy, he’d make sure she didn’t fall.
“Heady feeling, isn’t it?” he said.
His voice was calm and low, very close to her.
“It’s incredible,” she said.
“The Anasazi loved the mesa tops too,” he said after a moment. “They must have been sorry to leave. There’s no place in the world like this.”
The soft morning air rushed up from the canyon below like a great, fragrant sigh.
Slowly Christy’s perceptions adjusted to the vast distances revealed by the shearing away of the land. What looked like small shrubs at the base of the sandstone wall were really full-sized trees. A narrow path was really a dirt road. The featureless canyon bottom was really rugged and tumbled, filled with boulders the size of Cain’s cabin.
Small side canyons occurred wherever runoff channels had carved through the rock. Like everything else in nature, the edge of the mesa was asymmetrical and unexpected, a work in progress designed not by graph paper and blueprints but by wind and time and storms.
The small nose of rock they were standing on was little more than an irregularity on the edge of a vast, ragged shawl of stone whose fringe was cliffs, and the spaces between the fringe were deep canyons filled with sun and silence.
“That’s a big place to find something as small as a pot,” she said finally.
“We’re not going way down there. I’ll look just underneath the rim.”
Gently she eased forward and craned her neck, trying to see straight down. “Looks like more of the same to me.”
“If there ar
e rooms or storage cysts or anything like that, they’ll be tucked just under the overhang of the rim, away from the weather.”
She turned and searched Cain’s face for signs that he was teasing her. What she saw was the intensity he showed when he was in pursuit of something he loved.
“Are you telling me that the Anasazi chipped out places to live on the face of this cliff?” she asked.
“No. Nature took care of the chipping out. The Anasazi just filled it back in with buildings.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Imagine two slabs of stone,” he said, holding one hand over the other parallel to the ground.
She nodded.
“The top slab depends on the bottom to hold it up,” he said. “If the bottom slab is softer than the top, it wears away more quickly and an alcove or shallow cave is created.”
As he spoke, he bent the fingers of his lower hand, making them shorter.
“The roof is solid stone,” he said, moving his top hand. “The second layer holds the alcove. All the other layers underneath are still solid.”
“Home sites by Mother Nature,” she said. “Nifty.”
“Yeah, until the weight of the ceiling overhang becomes too great and it falls.”
“Does that happen often?”
“In a human lifetime? No. Over the span of a thousand years? Often enough, I suppose.”
She shuddered. “Not a happy thought.”
“Life’s a gamble, honey. The only guarantee is that nobody gets out alive.”
“Wow, does that ever make me feel better. What will those buildings look like if we find them?”
“Lines of rubble, most likely, but oddly shaped rubble, like someone piled flagstones around and then gave up and walked away before finishing the patio.”
Cain saw the disappointment on her face. Smiling, he tugged lightly at a flyaway lock of red hair.
“That’s good news, not bad,” he said. “If there were well-preserved ruins up here, somebody would have spotted and mapped them already—right after they looted them down to bedrock and masonry walls.”
Slowly, he let the lock of red hair slip free of his fingers. When he had only the memory of silk on his skin, he turned back to face the mesa edge. Nothing moved but wind and ravens.
“It’s too close to noon for the shadows to be any help,” he said. “So search just beneath the rim of the canyon, where pale rock meets rock the color of your hair.”
Christy took in a long breath and forced herself to turn away from the man who became more compelling to her each time she looked at him. It took her a moment to focus on the land rather than on the memory of the gentle tug of his fingers sliding over her hair.
“Look for debris slopes that show gray or black areas,” he said. “The Anasazi burned wood and threw their ash and garbage over the front porch into the canyon below.”
“A long, thin layer of black?” she asked.
He followed her glance. “That’s a seam of coal. Anasazi middens—garbage heaps—occur in patches rather than in long lines.” Suddenly he leaned forward. “Like that.”
She followed the line of his finger. Two hundred feet away, and a dizzying drop below the rim, there was a dark stain in the debris slope that fringed a small alcove.
“See it?” he asked.
“Yes. There’s another one to the left.”
“About a hundred feet, yes. See that dark green weed?”
“The stuff all over that second little slope?” she asked, wondering what he was so excited about.
“Yeah. That’s Moki weed.”
“Why do they call it that? Did the Anasazi eat it?”
“No,” he said. “It only grows in Moki middens.”
“Then there are ruins there?”
“Near there. Somewhere. There must be. The Anasazi didn’t take a long walk to dump garbage.”
Frowning, he studied the canyon walls for a time. Nothing more caught his eye. He shrugged off the small backpack he wore, pulled out a pair of binoculars, and studied the wall above the streak of green Moki weed.
“If there are any ruins, they’re damned well hidden,” he muttered. “Must have eroded away to nothing at all.”
Silently he continued studying the walls.
“What are you looking for now?” she asked.
“A way down.”
“That? It’s a cliff!”
“You sure?” he asked dryly.
Uneasily she waited while he finished studying the rock face. When he was done, he handed the binoculars and backpack to her.
“There’s a network of ledges and creases that go down to the midden from the top of the mesa,” he said. “Stay here while I check it out.”
“But can’t I—”
“No way,” he interrupted flatly. “You’re staying.”
The mutinous look on her face made him sigh.
“It’s going to be a bastard of a climb,” he said. “I’m not sure I can do it myself.”
“I wasn’t shot last spring. Let me at least try.”
“No. You don’t recognize the limits of your own strength.”
“And you do?” she asked sarcastically.
“Yes.”
She glared at him. He simply shook his head.
“Look,” he said finally, “if you go, I’ll have to watch you like a mother hen because you won’t ask for help even if you need it. The trail is too rough for that kind of game. We both could get hurt.”
She closed her eyes and thought fast. She couldn’t push him into doing something he clearly believed would be unsafe for him. Nor could she demand that he let her get herself out of any trouble she got into. He would help her out, even if it meant risking his own neck. That was just the kind of old-fashioned man he was.
“Damn,” she muttered, accepting defeat.
“Sorry.”
“If I get bored, I suppose I can throw rocks.”
“Don’t get bored, honey.”
With that, he bent over, kissed her hard and fast, and walked off. Before she caught her breath, he vanished over the rim.
Cautiously she went to the edge of the mesa and watched him pick his way along the small ledge he had found. It led to a tongue of steep rock-studded dirt where scrubby cedar and stubborn piñon had taken root. He moved over the rough, uncertain ground with surprising speed, completely at home.
“What are you,” she said under her breath, “part mountain goat?”
Then she stopped breathing when he dropped from a rock platform onto the first dark patch, the one where no weeds grew. Immediately he began to slide downhill toward another, much longer drop.
“Cain!”
Even as she screamed his name, he caught his balance, threw himself to the side, and found solid ground.
With fingers that trembled, she picked up his binoculars. The slippery slope leaped into focus. It was spread out in front of a small overhang, but the alcove sheltered beneath the rim was empty. She watched while he searched for building blocks or potsherds, remnants of walls, any sign that man had once lived there.
“Anything?” Christy called when she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer.
“Not yet,” he yelled back.
He went farther into the alcove. The angle of the rock hid him from her. He emerged a few minutes later.
“This dark patch isn’t a midden,” he called to her. “There’s a spring at the back and a crack leading up to the mesa top. Runoff water has washed the alcove clean.”
Disappointed, she watched while he scrambled around an outcrop of sandstone and into the next alcove. When he was out of sight, she hurried overland to the rim just above him, hoping to see more from there.
All she saw was air, distant ravens, and fully grown trees that looked the size of thumbtacks.
“Lord,” she said, stepping backward quickly. “That first step is forever.”
She found a spot to sit down at the base of an elegantly twisted cedar. From time to time she could
hear Cain moving below the rim, even though she couldn’t see him.
Moki appeared from nowhere, panting with pleasure from a recent run. He flopped down on the slick rock beside her.
She looked south across the ragged country. The lid of clouds was scored and thinned by the great burning torch of the sun. As she watched, mountains condensed in the distance. A network of incandescent blue appeared across the sky. Golden heat spilled through the gaps in the clouds.
With a sigh of pleasure, she opened her jacket, leaned back against the wind-smoothed tree, and enjoyed the feel of the sun on her face. Cloud shadows dappled the red sandstone, making the mesa country ripple like a great animal breathing, alive.
Eyes half closed, she let the kaleidoscope of cloud and landscape play across her awareness, sinking past her rational self to the most primitive levels of her mind. Slowly the world of second hands and concrete sidewalks slid away, freeing the underlying, elemental rhythms of sun and earth, wind and time.
A shadow eclipsed part of the design. At first she thought it was just another passing cloud. When it lingered, she sat up and looked around.
The sun had gone behind the white sandstone Sister. The spire was throwing a long, wide shadow that wouldn’t lift for some time.
“And I was just getting comfortable,” she said.
She stood up and looked for a new spot in the sun. Moki scrambled to his feet and waited expectantly while she surveyed the mesa top.
A dozen yards to the left, a slice of white-hot sunlight lay across the sandstone like a giant knife. It took her a moment to realize that the bright blade came from a shaft of sunlight passing between the two Sisters. The white slide of light was no more than ten feet wide.
It pointed directly across the mesa to the rim above Cain.
The effect was striking. Eerie. It reminded her of what Cain had said about the sun being important to the Anasazi.
“What would the Anasazi have made of a slice of sunlight like this?” she asked Moki. “Would they have worshipped or feared or celebrated it? Sure as sunlight they couldn’t ignore it.”
The dog panted happily.
She walked into the blade of light. With Moki at her heels, she followed the shimmering path to the very edge of the mesa. A vague pattern appeared at her feet. The hair on the back of her neck rose as the pattern condensed into an ancient drawing.
The Secret Sister Page 16