by Siena West
To Maggie’s delight, she came across a camp site. A wooden ammunition box nailed to a gnarled old juniper had served as a cupboard, and stumps marked where an open-sided ramada had once stood. She found a washtub with the bottom rusted out, rusty old cans, and a few bottles. Near the ramada, she saw an ancient metate the residents had collected and reused. She’d have to tell Cole; it could mean a prehistoric ruin was nearby. Nobody in his or her right mind would carry the big grinding stone far.
She was so intent on her work she didn’t notice the passage of time, nor did she pay attention to the smoke at first. Smoke was common in a country where everyone built fires. Woodcutters, fishermen, ranchers—all had reasons to set fires. But soon, the smoke grew thick, and she saw it curling down toward the valley.
Maggie checked her watch and saw it was two o’clock. She calculated how much time remained. If it took half an hour to hike to the truck, then about an hour to drive to camp, she estimated she could work for another hour before she left.
It was a poor decision.
* * *
The beast that was the fire uncoiled like a dragon from its nest. It curled down from the burned-out ponderosa snag that was its original perch, testing the forest floor. Flames licked at clumps of dry grasses and tree litter. The beast fed its way across the burned area, still hungry, seeking food.
The beast found its food in a swath of scorched but unburned, dead trees bordering the burned-out area. Many had died from beetle infestation. The hungry beast ravaged the standing trees, their brown needles not yet fallen, their cones rich with dried sap. Then it spread out in search of more food. Strengthened by the afternoon breeze, the beast grew bolder. Soon, a column of smoke billowed into the sky, shutting out the sun. The beast did not stop. Had it been human, it would have smiled with satisfaction.
* * *
Elena packed the truck with a cooler full of cold drinks and ice, a coil of rope and a tarp from the barn, and shovels. She found an old metal cooler and filled it with water, just in case. While she worked, dread like that rising from the ossuary seeped into her bones and made her stomach roil.
When Mel joined her, they started on the main road, which would branch into the rougher, less-used road that Maggie would have taken to get to her survey area. As the road rose toward the rim, the burning area was in sight.
“The fire’s bigger now. You said it was just a burning snag.” Mel’s accusing tone was new.
“That’s what Norm told me this morning, and he heard it from the Forest Service. But fire is unpredictable—it may have spread. The Forest will keep a close eye on it, you can be sure. They won’t let it get out of control.” It was difficult to sound reassuring when Mel echoed Elena’s own concerns.
Once on the side road, it was clear the fire had moved downhill and was close to the road. Soon, the smoke thickened, and ash drifted down and settled like snow on the hood. At first, Elena could see to drive. But before long, she pulled as far off the road as possible and killed the lights and engine.
“What are you doing? We can’t stop—we have to find Maggie!” Elena heard a rising note of hysteria in the young woman’s voice.
“Listen, Mel—I can’t drive through the smoke. It’s like when you’re in a dust storm.” Elena spoke as if she were gentling a spooky horse. “You’re supposed to drive to the side of the road and turn off the lights so other drivers won’t follow and rear-end you.”
Mel was clenching and unclenching her fists without thinking. The self-possessed young woman seemed to be unraveling.
“It’s not safe to drive, Mel,” Elena said again. “We have to wait until the smoke clears.”
Mel scooted as far as possible from Elena and stared out the window, fists still clenched. Jesus, Elena wondered, remembering that the young woman was a kick boxer. Was she thinking about punching me?
* * *
Maggie continued to work through the thickening smoke. Soon, she found the remnants of a wickiup, a brush dwelling used in historical times. This one burned, and only a circular area of charcoal and ash marked where it once stood. Then she found mutilated artifacts: a long-handled skillet and a pot with gashes in the bottom. She also saw an enamel wash basin so buckled and dented its original shape was almost unrecognizable. Another pan had a neat, round hole in the bottom. Someone had shot it like an animal.
“Oh no,” Maggie whispered. She realized what these unusual artifacts meant and shuddered. She had discovered a death wickiup where someone died. The family killed the dead person’s belongings, slashing the pots with an axe, beating the buckets out of shape, and shooting holes in the bottoms of pans. Relatives would kill the deceased’s horse and destroy the saddle. Then, they would burn the dwelling. The oily, black smoke from the burning wickiup would roil upward, staining the sky with grief.
Maggie also realized that time had run out. She needed to leave right now if she was to avoid getting caught by the fire. She would finish recording the sites later. Maggie packed her equipment fast and headed for the truck, hurrying uphill into a thickening pall of smoke. She tried to jog the last few hundred yards, but her lungs burned as if they, too, were on fire. Tendrils of fire poked through the smoke on the opposite side of the road.
I’m screwed, she told herself. Why the hell did I wait so long?
But Maggie did not give up easily. She had parked the truck on the left side of the road, facing north, but the smoke hid it, and she wasted time trying to locate it. When she found it at last and tried to turn the truck around, fear, haste, and bad vision caused her to back too far off the road. The truck ran over a clutch of small boulders. No matter how she tried to rock it back and forth over the rocks in four-wheel drive, the truck was high-centered and stuck. The revved engine whined, and the wheels spun without purchase.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Maggie yelled. She had to abandon the truck, because she dared not stay with the fire almost upon her. She grabbed her pack and headed into the curtain of smoke.
* * *
Elena and Mel sat without speaking for the best part of an hour. With the windows rolled up against the smoke, the cab grew hot. Neither the intensity of the smoke nor Mel’s nervousness changed. Elena drifted into a restless sleep and jerked awake when her cell phone rang.
“It’s Maggie! Gracias a Dios, her phone is working!”
Elena put her phone on speaker so Mel could hear. Maggie’s voice sounded scared and far away.
“It’s okay, you’re doing great, nenita. Try to stay calm. Stay on the road and keep walking. If you have a bandanna, wet it down and tie it over your mouth and nose. Call me again if the fire comes closer or forces you off the road. Mel is with me, and we’re coming for you. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Maggie’s okay,” Elena told Mel when she ended the call. “But as you heard, the truck got stuck, and she had to leave it. She’s walking home, and she’s scared.” Elena started the engine, and the air conditioner brought the intense smell of smoke inside the cab.
“But you said the smoke’s too thick to drive in!” Mel’s voice was accusatory again. “That’s why we’ve been parked here, wasting time!”
“Things change, Mel. Before, we didn’t know Maggie was in danger. Now we know the fire is so close to her, we must chance it.” The younger woman sank into the seat, grumbling.
Elena kept the truck creeping along like a snail. Even at that pace, they almost struck a deer fleeing the fire. The doe leaped across the road in front of the truck and down the opposite bank. Several times, Elena made quick corrections when the truck began to veer off the road. As the afternoon light slanted toward evening, visibility fell to near zero. It was like riding in an opaque orange balloon. Even worse, flames appeared along both sides of the road. The fire had jumped across the road.
They jolted to a sudden stop as Elena braked hard, the bumper inches from a flaming tree stretched across the road and blocking their way. She shot the truck into reverse and backed a
way. Mel cried out in dismay and began to weep.
“Hijo de puta!” Elena muttered to herself. “I can’t get around this thing.” The tree was uprooted when it fell, and the huge stump with its spiderlike roots blocked the right side. Branches on the left side were burning. Elena thought hard as she listened to the younger woman’s sobs. They were in a tough predicament. On the one hand were flames and embers, an oil pan slung low, and a half-full gas tank. On the other was Maggie, trapped miles away and no doubt in considerable danger. There was no choice.
“Mel, please sit up and be quiet.” She spoke more harshly than usual, but Mel was getting on her nerves big-time. “I will try to drive over this chingada tree. Be ready to bail.” If they got stuck on the log, a flame or ember could spark an explosion.
She aimed the truck at a part of the tree not in flames and slammed it into four-wheel drive. The truck took the tree as a thoroughbred would a fence. It rolled over the trunk and crashed through the branches like an icebreaker through Arctic waters. The tires rolled over ashes and embers, and charcoal-black branches crunched below the undercarriage. Spiky branches scraped the vehicle’s sides and raked off one of the side mirrors. The crossing seemed to take forever. And then, they were beyond the tree.
Elena got out at a safe distance from the burning tree and inspected the truck. The tires were uncomfortably warm, but she saw no damage except the missing mirror and the scrapes and dents marring the front bumper and the truck’s sides. There could be damage to the undercarriage. The university garage folks would be pissed.
Behind the wheel again, Elena piloted the truck through the thick smoke, still at a slow pace. Mel stopped crying. “Are we okay?” she asked, a tremble in her voice.
Elena nodded. No thanks to you, Mel. Then, she was ashamed of the uncharitable thought. Perhaps Mel was phobic about fire, or something else.
Not long after, Maggie’s blurred figure materialized from the smoke like a ghost becoming substance. Elena stopped the truck, and Mel hurried out to hug Maggie, tears shining in her eyes again.
* * *
The women arrived in camp after dinner to find a frightened and anxious crowd milling around the lab. Norm rushed from the kitchen to meet them. “I was just about ready to radio the Forest. Are you okay?” Cole had berated him for letting the women go alone to find Maggie, and Norm looked chastened. They tried to phone Elena, but this was one of those perverse days when there was no cell-phone service at the ranch.
Cole took Maggie in his arms, and he hugged her as if he would never let her go. He released her long enough for an inspection and laughed. “God, you’re a mess, Mags.”
And she was a mess, coated with dust and ash and stinky from smoke. Outdoors all day, she’d gotten the worst of it and shook with coughs. But she had recovered her composure on the ride back to the ranch, fortified with the cold sodas in the cooler. She was mad and embarrassed at having gotten the truck stuck. Someone would have to drive with her the next day to haul it out—assuming it made it through the fire—and Cole would never let her forget the incident.
Elena explained their adventure to the group that crowded around, downplaying the danger of driving over the burning tree blocking the road. They were lucky on the way back. The tree across the road had burned itself out. It was only when she explained about the tree that Elena remembered the shovels and water she’d put in the truck. They could have smothered the flames before driving over the tree. Pinche idiota, estúpida, she chided herself. But visibility was minimal, and it was slow going as they negotiated their way back.
Norm offered the dinner he’d held back for them, but Elena shook her head. “Not for me. I need a drink. And a shower. And then another drink. Maybe two.”
Maggie and Cole headed for their tent. Excited, she told him about the wonderful sites she’d found that day, the fear and danger long forgotten.
Mel stood on the lawn in silence, watching them go.
There would be trouble in paradise.
* * *
The weekend washed over the camp, rinsing away tension and fear. Not long after it crossed the road where Elena and Mel had picked up Maggie, the fire reached the last of the burned-out, tinder-dry trees. The Forest monitored the fire all day, and when it burned through the dead trees, they called in a fire crew to keep it from spreading into unburned forest. Cole and Maggie rescued her truck, unharmed except for a thick coating of dust and ash, and true to form, Cole teased her about it without mercy all weekend. By Sunday, Maggie stopped coughing.
It was a busy weekend. There were preparations for the work week. They intended to carry out the new whistle safety protocol for survey, along with a plan to document any modern material culture found at vandalized sites. Sander Jorgensen had arranged with Elena to tour a site during the coming week. She intended to take him to Cholla House, a cliff dwelling deep in the canyon country south of camp. Although still unsure of her role as FBI consultant, the site visit was an interesting detour in the daily grind of supervisory and administrative work. And last, there was an incident report to file with the university garage explaining the damage to the truck. Gracias a Dios, Elena didn’t need to explain that it had caught fire and burned. Sometimes, Elena wondered if her fearless approach to danger was stupidity in disguise.
Giddy with relief after the brush with fire and the danger to Elena, Mel, and Maggie, almost everyone in camp was light-hearted. They made deep inroads in the fresh supply of tequila, and despite her trepidation about being a consultant, Elena looked forward to Jorgensen’s visit. Mel was hurt that no one realized she was absent at the merry afternoon porch gatherings. Hoping against hope that a certain someone would notice and seek her out, she closeted herself in her room on Sunday and waited. But the hoped-for visitor never appeared, and Mel cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 7
Cholla House
Sander Jorgensen arrived for the tour in well-worn hiking boots. He didn’t see the director, so he made himself at home in the kitchen. Norm poured him a cup of coffee, and they chatted as the kitchen crew washed the breakfast dishes. Jorgensen had heard about the Taylor family’s pot-hunting history and was curious about the crusty old rancher. Far from sharing any family stories, Norm was interested only in regaling the agent with the story of the wildfire and how Elena survived it with such aplomb.
“I cain’t understand how she got the truck over that burning log without a scratch,” he said. Norm was wrapping up leftover bacon and pancakes for the lab crew’s coffee break. He lowered his voice a notch. “That Doc Vargas, she has balls bigger ‘n any woman has a right to.”
“Dr. Vargas is talented, isn’t she?” Jorgensen said. Norm harrumphed in answer.
Soon, Elena arrived to fetch their lunches and nodded with approval at Jorgensen’s boots. “No Italian tassel loafers today, I see. Ready to go? We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
Jorgensen thanked Norm for the coffee. “Wish me luck,” he said. “After what you told me, I’m not sure I should be alone with Dr. Vargas.” Elena looked from one man to the other, mystified, then marched Jorgensen to the waiting truck.
* * *
“Hold up, Elena. I’ve got to get a photo.”
Just ahead of him on the trail, she led the way, the sunlight turning her hair to deep auburn. He had stopped, mesmerized by the striking view. Across the canyon, Cholla House lay in a deep pool of purple shade under overhanging red rocks. Erosion had chiseled out a shelter in which the cliff dwelling nestled. The brilliant magenta blooms of the cactus that gave the ruin its name framed the scene. The open doorways resembled dark eyes staring back at them. It looked as if the inhabitants had deserted the place only moments before—as if, hearing the visitors’ footsteps, they had taken fright and vanished. One could imagine the embers in the fires would still be warm and almost smell wood smoke in the air.
They had parked the truck on the mesa and hiked down into the canyon in a dry creek bed filled with jumbled blocks
of stone. A short, steep scramble up the talus slope that spread below the mouth of the overhang brought them to the ruin.
When they reached the sheltering overhang, they shed their packs and found a place to rest in the shade, inhaling the curious odor of a cliff ruin. It was a mixture of dust, the cold and stony scent of smoke-blackened rock, and a hint of things old and rotten.
Jorgensen removed the blue FBI cap, revealing sweat-damp hair. Heat had dogged them since they left camp that morning, and he struggled to catch his breath. The elevation was daunting to a flatlander from the valley of way too much sun.
“That was quite a hike. You’ve blown away the notion of stuffy professors locked in ivory towers—you’re fearless.”
Elena smiled in a self-deprecating way as she parceled out the lunches. “Archaeology isn’t like in the movies, with Nazis, head hunters, and assorted bad guys chasing after gold, but the field can be harsh, even dangerous.” She grinned. “I’ve ever seen an ivory tower in my life, much less worked in one.”
Jorgensen gulped water. Lunch could wait until his heartbeat returned to normal and he could breathe again. “Speaking of being fearless, Norm told me about the wildfire. Wasn’t that rescue expedition a bit foolhardy?”
“Not at all. Norm thought I was being an excitable female over a little smoke—but it was a good thing we organized a rescue party. Maggie’s vehicle was stuck, and the fire was close. She was in danger.”
“I’m impressed, Elena. No one else was concerned with the fire, but you knew it was dangerous. How?”
“Just a good guess.” She was reluctant, so early in their relationship, to tell him about her special senses. She stretched, working out the kinks from the long drive and the hike. It was impossible for Jorgensen to ignore her long legs and the way her shirt tightened over her chest when she stretched her arms. He averted his eyes before she could catch him.