A Man Without a Haven

by Beverly Bird

  As always, he wondered where they had gone and why. It was a mystery that had haunted him for as long as he could remember.

  The particular pots he sought might tell him, but they would probably be in the last of the four ruins he searched—that was the way his luck usually went, but Mac had no complaints. He wasn’t a man to protest long, tedious weeks in hot, dusty isolation. In fact, it soothed his soul.

  The sun was sinking inexorably to the west, throwing light up from behind those peaks. He wouldn’t be doing any more digging tonight, he realized.

  He pulled a sweat-soaked bandanna from his back pocket to wipe the clinging red dust from the face of his watch. Almost five-thirty. Up on the desert floor the land would still be awash in sunlight, but down here, in the mountain’s bowels, shadows were gathering with steady enthusiasm. Darkness moved in the caves and the crevices like a live, threatening thing. He thought of the legends he didn’t believe in and went back to his campsite for some water.

  Mac had learned a bit from the Anasazi over the years. He had chosen a place that remained in the shade except for the hour or so when the sun was at its highest. He had backed his tent up against the canyon wall so that anything coming at him would have to do it from the front. And less than a hundred feet away was a trickling stream offering fresh mountain runoff.

  He grabbed his canteen and went to fill it. The first time he upended it over the general direction of his mouth, letting it spill over onto his neck and his chest as he swallowed. Then he refilled it and put it aside, wading into the calf-deep water to wash the dust and the grime off his skin.

  That was when he heard a horse whinny.

  At first it seemed almost a ghostly sound and the meager bit of Navajo in him stiffened. He came slowly out of the stream again, looking around, and saw nothing. With slow, silent steps he went back to his campsite, thinking about what he had heard. He finally identified the sound, although he had limited experience with horses. It would have been relatively difficult to drag one around with him considering the life-style he had chosen.

  Still, he knew what one sounded like when it was frightened and angry. He slipped into his tent for his gun, then came out to scan the cliffs again. Still nothing, but someone was definitely out there. He could feel the intrusion into his privacy like some kind of living thing poking a cold, nasty finger into his ribs.

  He remained standing to the side of his tent, using the site as he had intended, keeping his back to the rock. He held the gun with deceptive nonchalance at his side.

  Then he saw her.

  For one wild, mind-boggling moment, he thought it was She Who Waits, the woman of obscure legend, the one he was here seeking proof of. But before his mouth could go dry, his mind cleared. He understood why he might have thought such a thing even as his jaw hardened.

  She stood on the southern rim directly across from him and she was significantly without a horse. The sunlight up there seemed to illuminate her. Very long, very black hair streamed to her waist, looking disheveled. Though the air on the canyon floor was deathly still there was a breeze up on the rim. It was just enough to tease errant strands. It lifted them here and there as though by a phantom hand.

  It fluttered the loose white blouse she wore as well, or at least one sleeve of it. Mac realized that the sleeve was torn and that was why it moved the way it did, like the ghostly raiment of a woman long dead.

  That was where all supernatural illusions ended. She had on tight black jeans. The sun glinted off silver near her neck—some sort of looped earrings, he thought. She was one hell of a good-looking woman, even from this distance, the kind who didn’t need makeup or elaborate hair to make men pause and look twice. That irritated him as much as the fact that she would disrupt his solitude here, would surely chatter her way through the night when he preferred to be alone.

  What the hell was she doing here at this time of day? It was too late to get back down the mountain tonight, at least by way of the eastern slopes, and she had no camping gear that he could see. So whoever she was, he was stuck with her until tomorrow.

  Maybe longer.

  Mac’s jaw dropped as the woman took a single step to move toward him. Then she plummeted, bouncing and rolling, down the canyon wall when her feet found only air.

  Chapter 2

  Shadow shook the dazed feeling out of her head and looked up into the coldest, most prohibitive blue eyes she had ever seen.

  No, not blue, she realized. Gray blue, the dark, threatening color of a storm sky. Even more than the gun in the man’s hand, they made her feel cautious on some primal level. The fall had left her reeling, but she pushed quickly to her feet to face him anyway.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded harshly.

  Shadow pulled her hair back reflexively, knotting it quickly into a loop at her neck so it wouldn’t be in the way if she had to run or—God forbid—fight him. The ponytail she always wore had come loose when her horse had thrown her. When she had tried to refasten it the band had snapped.

  That was just about the time when everything had started going wrong. She’d had to urge the mare up the rest of the trail, a time-consuming and frustrating progress, and now she was hours off schedule.

  “Actually, I came to ask you that,” she answered, planting her hands on her hips, struggling to appear calm.

  His face took on a look of cold surprise. “So you thought you’d just drop in—” he waved the gun up and down to show he meant it literally “—and find out?”

  Shadow looked away, embarrassed. “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why’d you do that? Why’d you step over, knowing there was nothing there but air?” He wondered for the first time if she was crazy, if she had escaped from some kind of protective incarceration. Then he looked at her eyes.

  No. They were black, clear, sharp, even as she tried to avoid looking at him.

  Shadow felt her heart give a hard, uncharacteristic thump of uncertainty. She didn’t know why she had taken that step. One minute she had been looking down at him, at his stark, utilitarian camp. And in the next heartbeat she had found herself moving toward him as though he had called her name, beckoning her down with soft, unspoken promises that things would be better between these canyon walls, that everything she sought was right here, had always been right here inside.

  Her throat closed in panic and she looked around the canyon a little wildly. Yes, oh, yes, she could understand how it had come by its reputation.

  She forced a shrug. “I didn’t know I was so close to the edge.”

  His eyes hardened dangerously. Somehow he doubted that. Somehow he got the impression that she knew where her feet were at all times—firmly planted.

  “On what authority?” he growled. “What gives you the right to come poking into my business here?”

  Shadow kept her eyes on the canyon. He had her with that question.

  “I’m waiting.”

  She finally looked back at him. His face was just as forbidding as his eyes, she realized, although it possessed a certain rugged attractiveness. He had a strong if not large nose, and a hard, chiseled jaw—clenched at the moment. His hair was dark, but exposure to the sun had elicited hints of gold from it. It was a little long, pulled straight back from his forehead and gathered together by a rubber band at his nape. He clearly spent a great deal of time outdoors and that made her frown. Just as her brother had said, most pot hunters preferred to work under the cover of darkness, sneaking in and out of the ruins fast.

  He was very tanned, Shadow thought. She could tell even in this light because he wore only boots and a pair of khaki shorts, and the shorts were lighter than his skin tone. That was a rich, burnished color. He really was handsome in a very male, very unpretentious sort of way. He was a big man, strongly muscled, and she felt dwarfed beside him.

  Her heart started moving oddly again and suddenly her skin felt warm. Maybe it was just the matter of the gun in his ha
nd.

  “You won’t need that,” she said shortly, motioning at it.

  He looked at the weapon, then back at her. “I’ll be the judge. Keep talking.”

  “About what?”

  “Who you are, what you’re doing here, and when you’ll be going home.” He paused. “Are you hurt?” he finally asked, but she didn’t think it was because he was concerned. More than likely, he knew it would complicate things if she was injured.

  Shadow scowled, rubbing a sore elbow. “Not really.”

  “You should be. You could have killed yourself.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she snapped. “I’ve been riding a horse since I was two and I was born and raised in this country. I know how to fall.”

  He nodded as though this satisfied him. “Okay. So where’s your horse?”

  She was surprised. “How’d you know I had one?”

  “I heard it.”

  So he had good ears. She imagined that all of his senses were probably as sharp as a cat’s. He had that way about him.

  “Not very far,” she answered finally. “I hobbled her in a glade. She balked, refused to come any further.” Actually, the mare had balked so hard and so suddenly, she had pulled Shadow right off her feet. It had spooked her enough that her stomach still felt queasy. Animals knew...things. And that particular animal definitely had not been willing to come any closer to this canyon.

  She shook her head. This was all wrong. She was supposed to be the one asking questions.

  There wasn’t time. He shot more of his own at her, keeping her off balance.

  “Where’s your camp stuff?”

  “I’m not staying.”

  He snorted, giving that pipe dream about as much respect as it deserved. The western mountain slopes would still be bright, but the eastern ones leading back down to her truck would be as dark and treacherous as this canyon was becoming.

  “I don’t want to stay,” she amended.

  “That makes two of us. I don’t want you to, either,” he said shortly. “Okay. One more time. Who sent you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. So they were back to that again. “No one. This is my country. I want to know what you’re doing taking pieces of it.”

  She started off toward the place where he was digging. After a moment, she heard his slow, almost predatory footsteps come after her.

  She wouldn’t admit to fear; it wasn’t in her nature. But she wished he would put that damned gun down. She wondered how quickly she could get her own free if she needed it.

  Mac watched her, one brow lifting. Nice little sway to her hips, he thought. Her hair bounced and shone in the knot at her neck. But he wasn’t interested in any of that under the current circumstances. He had no real aversion to rolling around in the dust with a good-looking woman, but there was no possibility he would peel those jeans off this particular woman tonight. There was no possibility she would be leaving before dawn. And since he sure as hell didn’t plan to do so, that would be breaking one of his carved-in-granite rules—never, under any circumstances, would he spend the night with a woman.

  Still, there was something about this one. It called to him, whispering in a very physical, very elemental sense. It made him follow her when he hadn’t intended to. It made him want to delve into her deeper than this night would permit.

  It was more than just her looks. She really did possess an air of efficiency. He thought she was used to being in charge of her own life and he liked that kind of strength in a woman. Clinging vines made him itch, made him start looking for the nearest door.

  Of course, she was Navajo, and their women were always strong and pushy. Even if she hadn’t more or less told him so, Mac would have recognized her heritage in her high cheekbones, in her wide, generous mouth and the midnight blackness of her eyes. And there was that business about her not wanting to spend the night, too. Only a Navajo would walk a hundred miles barefoot before lingering in a canyon where the ghosts whispered their secrets to each other.

  He might not believe in them, but he knew she would. Yet she was trudging right up to the midden he’d been working on, self-assured, almost defiant. He raised a brow.

  Maybe she didn’t know there were bones in it. Very old, very dead bones.

  She knew. Despite her bravado, she stopped judiciously several feet away.

  “Do you have papers for this?” she called back.

  Mac finished closing the distance between them. “Yes.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “No.”

  Shadow felt as surprised as though he had slapped her. “Why?”

  “Why should I show them to you?” he countered. “They’re none of your business.”

  She bristled. She was getting tired of his cool hostility and the fact that she couldn’t make him cooperate. It was frustrating, something she wasn’t entirely used to.

  “Maybe not,” she snapped. “But if I don’t see them, if you can’t prove to me that you’re on the level here, then I’m just going to notify the tribal police when I get back to Shiprock. Sooner or later you’re going to have to show your papers to someone. I’d think you’d prefer to get it out of the way now.”

  “And why do you think that?”

  “Because you want to be left alone.”

  Her words surprised her as much as him. He wondered if he was that readable—it had never been a shortcoming he’d had cause to apply to himself.

  And that, of course, was why she’d said what she had.

  Shadow realized it as soon as she thought about it. His eyes were like the rock at her feet, like the stone that swept up on all sides of her. Hard, keeping the world out and his feelings in. Assuming he had any feelings. It occurred to her that that might be a long shot.

  “Good argument,” he allowed finally. “Go ahead.”

  “Go ahead with what?”

  “Send in your guns. When I see a badge, they’ll see my papers.”

  Shadow’s eyes sparked. “That’s absolutely ridiculous! What are you hiding?”

  The problem, she thought, was that he didn’t seem to be hiding anything. She looked wildly down at the midden again. His work was meticulous and careful, while pot hunters tended to bring in backhoes with the teeth sawed down. They raped and pillaged Mother Earth, dragging everything to the surface, destroying her secrets. They callously tossed aside anything that wasn’t worth big money. They worked fast, out of greed and fear of discovery. But this dig had been going on for a while.

  The surface sand had been painstakingly brushed away, deeper and deeper, until he had come to the hidden past. The bones appeared untouched as much as possible. He obviously didn’t want them, but neither had he disturbed them. In many places he had actually dug beneath them to extract the shards, and those shards were all placed neatly on a pallet. She could tell by their position that he had put them in order of discovery. There was a notebook nearby as well, undoubtedly detailing the exact positions in which he’d found them.

  So he appeared legitimate. But then why wouldn’t he show her his authorization? And why the gun? There was no doubt in her mind that he was hiding something.

  “How did you know to start digging here,” she demanded, “at this particular place?”

  His eyes narrowed on her as though he was suspicious of the question. As well he should be, Shadow thought. She was trying to find out if he had any real schooling, any knowledge of the Anasazi. A genuine student or archaeologist would. But he appeared too old to be a student.

  Finally he answered by pointing to the cliff above them. There were crumbling, connected squares in the rock there—the Old Ones’ apartments.

  “They rarely went far to dump their refuse,” he explained, “or even their dead. They had enough traveling to do in pursuit of the merest essentials of living.”

  Okay, she thought. He was right about that. But then, suddenly, she forgot that she was grilling him. She studied the cliff houses, feeling the same eerie curiosity she had always felt in their presen
ce.

  “Why, do you suppose? Why did they come to such an inhospitable place as this, when they were obviously migrating and could have settled anywhere?”

  Again he hesitated before answering. His blue gray eyes scanned her face. “Why did the Navajo do it?”

  She looked back at him. “Our origin stories say we came up from another world beneath this one. This was where it happened, so this is where we’ve stayed.”

  “Anthropology says you’re Athabascan, that your ancestors migrated down from the north.”

  Shadow shrugged, clearly unperturbed. “That’s science. We know better. But the Anasazi clearly did come here from the south. Their flight has been tracked, more or less.”

  “They were running from something,” he said.

  “Or to something.”

  “No. They were hiding, afraid.”

  “But they dug in as though they were planning to stay for a long time. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of plowing roads and carving out the cliff walls if they thought they were going to be flushed out soon by an enemy.”

  “Why did they plow roads when they had no wheels or horses?”

  Shadow realized they were both watching each other intently as they debated. It made her feel uncomfortable and she looked away again.

  “I have no idea,” she mused. “I wish I did.”

  Why? He wanted to ask, but old, old instinct had him holding the word back. “You’d better go get your horse,” he said instead, tightly. “I’ve heard bobcats these last few nights.”

  He actually saw her shudder. She closed her eyes as though to gather strength. Somehow he knew she would find it.

  He was right. She squared her shoulders and went back to the place where she had fallen. Coincidentally, the best hand- and toeholds were there. Somewhere along the line, she had obviously noted that.