Bolt

by Siena West

  * * *

  The Mexican restaurant in downtown Globe had served Sonoran-style food for the better part of 75 years. Few field-school groups must have dined there during that time, because the wait staff in their cute off-the-shoulder blouses and flowery skirts seemed dumbfounded by the crowd descending on the little café. Hiking boots tracked dirt on the polished wood floor, packs hung from chairs, and the air rang with noise and laughter. The group filled the room, occupying all the tables. It was early, though. They’d be gone by the time the dinner crowd arrived.

  Elena went from table to table with instructions. “Dinner is on the company. But—if you want beer or a margarita, you’re on your own. The university won’t reimburse me for booze.” Boos, groans, and jeers followed. Tim announced he’d buy the first round.

  “Don’t worry, Boss. I’m sticking to Coke.” He smiled at Elena, reassuring her he wouldn’t get behind the wheel after a few beers. The wait staff soon brought pitchers of beer and baskets of chips and salsa to the tables.

  Elena sighed. She could have used a beer herself after her meeting with Cimelli. Or three—but she was driving, too. She sat down next to Mel. The young archaeologist was already on her second beer by the time the food arrived. Good thing Sue is driving. Mel seemed quieter than usual in recent days and was relentless in pushing her excavation crew, working harder than any of them.

  “I’ve noticed you seem down, my dear,” Elena said. “Is anything wrong?” She lowered her voice for privacy.

  The young woman picked at the food, which Elena found delicious, despite it being Sonoran style. Mel motioned for the beer pitcher. That would make three.

  “I might be a little homesick, I guess.” Mel was an out-of-state staffer, a grad student at Washington State.

  “You wouldn’t be the first. I don’t want to pry, but do you have someone special you’re missing?”

  Mel managed a forkful of enchilada and gulped her beer. “Not really. I’ve deferred a love life until I’ve finished grad school, unlike certain women at this field school.”

  Meow. The beer had brought out Mel’s feline claws. She could only refer to Maggie, who made no secret of her attachment to Cole. Mel’s curious behavior, her angry outbursts, the tears on the day of the forest fire—it all came together to imply a love triangle with Maggie and Cole. Gonna be a heartbreak tonight, Elena thought, remembering an old Eagles tune.

  “Either path can be right, depending on your circumstances,” she said. “I know several women who married and had children in grad school and still managed successful careers.”

  “You didn’t,” Mel said, an accusing tone in her voice.

  “No, but I hadn’t met the person for me. Things might be different if I had. I have other women friends who never married, and they’re just as happy as the others.”

  Silent, Mel swirled a chip into the ferocious salsa.

  “The director’s porch is always open, anytime you’d like to talk.”

  “I know.” The last of the beer disappeared in a single gulp.

  * * *

  Before they started the drive home, Elena used the restroom to inspect in private the buckskin bag Cimelli had forced on her. Was he bribing her with money or a valuable piece of jewelry?

  The bag held neither. The contents proved to be a collection of crude little animals, each carved from a different stone. Feathers were attached to the backs of some, and one wore a strand of tiny shells around its neck. The figures didn’t seem to represent any of the Native American fetishes with which she was familiar. If that was the kind of stuff he sold in his shop in Sedona, Cimelli fooled tourists with more than just phony New Age blather. The bag also contained a few oddly shaped natural stones, feathers, and a faceted quartz crystal. She decided not to throw away the bag and the little creatures as she had first thought. The gift might prove useful later. ¿Quien sabe?

  It was a mistake.

  Chapter 13

  Theft

  The drive from Globe to the Taylor Ranch took a long time, and it was hours after dark when the trucks rolled into camp. Students stumbled out and into bed, exhausted from sun, stuffed with enchiladas and tacos, and tipsy from beer, thinking only of sleep.

  The next morning, feeling no ill effects from the previous night’s beer intake, Mel popped out of bed at sunrise and walked to her beloved dig before breakfast. Even one day was too long to be away. The early morning was cool, and dew had collected on the heavy, black plastic they covered the room with on Friday. But she saw the plastic wasn’t spread neatly over the excavation and weighted down with stones as they left it. Someone had pulled it aside and wadded it up in a corner. Thinking that was weird, Mel climbed into the room.

  An elevator seemed to drop from Mel’s throat to the bottom of her stomach as she came closer. It was the worst thing that could happen to an archaeologist. Fresh piles of dirt and new holes at floor level showed where the looter had dug. The floor had been ravaged, and the artifacts were gone.

  * * *

  Mel ran back to camp, stumbling in her hurry, and rousted Elena from her cabin. The two women surveyed the damage together. The vandal had dug around and below the mealing bin, making the upright stone slabs lean at crazy angles, and a depression in the clay marked where the metate had rested. Messy holes showed where the thief pulled out the corrugated jars, and smaller holes showed where he had probed the rest of the quad. The prints of boots with heavy tread crisscrossed what had been the pristine bottom of the level, and those boots had trampled small artifacts and pushed them into the soft dirt. The room was a complete mess.

  “Santa María, it looks like a sasquatch attacked the room,” Elena said.

  “It’s not funny.” Mel snarled. “The bastard! The kids worked too hard to have this happen.” She kicked at the nearest pile of dirt and stubbed her toe on a fallen wall stone. Elena did not comment—she understood that Mel, not the kids, was the heartbroken one—nor did she mention the tears sliding down the younger woman’s cheeks in pain, anger, or embarrassment.

  The crew hadn’t excavated rest of the room down to floor yet, but that hadn’t stopped the vandal. Small holes scattered across the dirt surface like swiss cheese showed where the thief had probed, looking for buried artifacts.

  Because prickly Mel would not endure a hug, Elena led her to a spot in the shade where they sat on a low wall. The damage to the room on top of the love triangle making Mel unhappy would profoundly affect the younger woman.

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks, querida. The probe holes aren’t big or deep, and I’m sure the probe didn’t damage anything. The looter tore up the northwest quad, for sure, but we can fix it.”

  Mel snorted. “Yeah, but he stole the fucking artifacts.” She looked like she was ready to explode; every inch of visible skin showed bright red.

  “But they aren’t valuable scientifically or otherwise. We have millions of metates, manos, and corrugated pots, and we’d have to reconstruct the vessels to get information from them. If the thief tries to sell them, he’ll discover they are worth nothing. That will serve him right, don’t you think?”

  Mel let out a stream of dockworker curses. Jesús, María, where did she learn such language? Elena wondered.

  “Death would serve him right, the son of a bitch. If I catch the fucker, he’ll be sorry he messed with my dig. Kickboxing isn’t just for exercise. I’ll wipe the floor with his ass.”

  “Mel, we better let somebody else take care of this. Someone with a badge.”

  “Shit for brains,” she said, meaning the cops.

  “I intend to tell Agent Jorgensen about this, my dear. Remember, the FBI is investigating incidents like this. They can help us, and we can help them.”

  Mel slid off the wall and shook the dust from her jeans. “You go call your FBI pal,” she said, bitterness seeming to ooze from her pores. “I’ll stay here and fix this mess. I’ve got nothing better to do.” There was nothing more Elen
a could do, and she left Mel to her task. The young woman mumbled to herself. And she wept again.

  * * *

  Elena called a confab with her staff after lunch. They helped themselves from the cooler and tried to reconstruct what happened. So many things about the vandalism made no sense.

  First, no one saw the thief sneak in and out of camp. Perhaps that was because so few people were there. Maggie and Cole took a pass on the field trip and were out on horseback survey. It was late afternoon when they got home, and they saw nothing out of the ordinary—no strange vehicles, nothing suspicious. They stabled the horses and left to shower, unaware the looter had vandalized Mel’s room.

  “I talked to Norm,” Elena reported, “and he didn’t hear or see anything unusual. Nobody drove in as far as he knows. It’s noisy when the generator’s on, though. That might have covered up any unusual sounds.”

  “How about the ranch hands?” Tim asked.

  “Norm said Eli was away. Ned was here, but it would have taken a megaton explosion to wake him.” The ranch hand spent his free time indulging his love of whiskey and seldom left his bunk when he did.

  “Caleb and the Apache laborers always go home on the weekends,” Mel said. She had recovered from the morning’s anger and crying spell.

  Second, it was clear the thief had deliberately picked a day when few people were in camp. Had he—or she?—known they planned a field trip to Globe on Saturday? No random thief would have known that.

  Third, the vandal knew where to find the excavated room with its features and artifacts.

  “It may have been someone who visited us, and Elena gave them a site tour,” Tim said.

  “But we haven’t had many visitors this summer, except the guest lecturers,” Elena said. “I can’t see any of them dropping by to vandalize our excavation.”

  “People talk,” Maggie said. “Between grocery runs, field trips, my search for horses—I bet everybody in this corner of the state knows the field school is here and what we’ve discovered. Shit, I’ve probably even blabbed myself.” Cole grinned and started to speak, but Maggie’s cold stare shut him up before he could get a word out.

  “Only problem is, somebody in the local community wouldn’t have known where to look,” Tim said. “I doubt anybody would have said, oh yeah, we dug a room, and big pots and a mealing bin are in the northwest quad. Ya’ll come and get ‘em. Even Maggie, God love her.” He smiled at the redhead.

  “And why not choose the spaceship?” Tim said as Elena cringed at his choice of words. “It’s obvious we’re digging there. Bunch of 1 × 2s covered with plastic—it’s a dead giveaway.” He grunted as he realized his terrible pun.

  “The bone bed,” Elena said pointedly, “is in full view of camp. The trees hide Mel’s dig, and it’s downhill from camp. No one would see the looter there.”

  “Or possibly the thief knew nothing in the bone bed was worth taking,” Maggie said.

  “Square one,” Mel said. “I’m going down to the dig. Anybody care to lend a hand?” She shrugged when, looking sheepish, they all declined. “Guess I’m on my own. See you later, then.”

  The rest left to take care of Sunday-afternoon chores. Elena was alone with her thoughts.

  * * *

  The usual crew, absent Mel, who was still working at the site, collected on Elena’s porch before dinner. She’d replenished the tequila supply in Globe, and Maggie put together a batch of her special margaritas.

  They returned to discussing the vandalism to the pueblo excavation. Maggie snapped her fingers. “Know who we’ve forgotten? That guy who came into camp—what was his name, Cimelli?” Her rich laugh, fueled by tequila, boomed into the afternoon breeze. “I bet the kids called him Smelly Cimelli when he was in school. Seriously, why couldn’t it be him? People said he was eccentric and smarmy.” She and Cole were tucked in their tent on the solstice night and were out on survey when everyone else was in Globe. They hadn’t met Cimelli.

  Elena kicked herself mentally for forgetting about Cimelli. She told the crew about his unhealthy interest in archaeological ruins, of which Mel and Tim were aware, and about her conversation with Tinker Reidhead. “Tinker told me that Cimelli had stolen artifacts from the O Bar Ranch field school.” She mentioned her encounter with Cimelli at Besh-ba-gowah. She wondered now if that meeting was more than chance.

  “And on top of it all, he seems too interested in pottery.”

  Tim had finished two of Maggie’s margaritas and was feeling quite relaxed. The tequila loosened his tongue. “That guy is also too interested in you, Tía. I remember how he talked to you the Saturday night he came here. Kept taking your hands. And I heard how close he sat next to you at Besh-ba-gowah.”

  “Is the slime bag stalking you?” Maggie chortled.

  “Really, niños.” Elena blushed a fresh peach color all the way to her hairline.

  “I hate to be a wet blanket,” Cole said, “but it couldn’t have been Cimelli.” His somber tone contrasted with the others’ hilarity. “It isn’t possible he was at Besh-ba-gowah, then drove here, looted the room, and drove back to Sedona again. Isn’t that where he lives? Unless he can fly.”

  “No doubt he believes he can,” Elena said. “He’s a New Ager who’s into spiritualism and such. But also, Cimelli was unaware of the dig,” she pointed out. “Remember, I was too worried about him to give him a site tour.”

  “Maybe he’s a witch,” Maggie said. “Don’t witches fly on brooms?”

  “Don’t be a goof,” Cole said. “Wrong gender. Males are warlocks, and they don’t fly on brooms.”

  With a start, Elena remembered the leather pouch Cimelli had given her. She retrieved it from the pocket of the jeans she’d been wearing and showed it to the group. “Look at this thing Cimelli gave me in Globe.”

  The pouch made its way around the porch to quiet Sue, who watched the porch antics with amusement and seldom joined the raucous fun. Now she spoke with authority.

  “What did Cimelli tell you when he gave this to you?”

  “Nothing—he said it was a gift, hoping to persuade me to take him to local sites. I meant to throw it away, but I changed my mind.”

  “It’s more than a gift,” Sue said. “This is a Pueblo sorcerer’s bundle.” She was writing her dissertation on sorcery as a means of social control in the Southwest, and she was an expert.

  “He’s trying to put a curse on you.”

  “Oh shit, oh dear,” Maggie said.

  But Elena laughed. “That’s terrific,” she quipped. “Can the curse get me out of faculty meetings?”

  No one laughed at her little joke. The group fell silent, their faces grim.

  “It’s serious, Elena,” Sue said. “Curses may not work, but the fact he gave it to you shows bad intentions. I wonder how he got it.”

  “Stole it, no doubt,” Tim said.

  Why would Cimelli do this? Elena wondered. Putting a curse on her seemed a far too serious response to her refusal to tour him around the local sites or her steadfast lack of interest in his flirting. It must be something deeper and darker. But there was more to worry about than Cimelli’s pathetic attempt at witchcraft.

  “Okay, guys—I hate to say this,” Elena said, “but the evidence seems clear, and it’s not pleasant. Who would be familiar with our schedule and that we would be in Globe Saturday? Who would know where to find the artifacts? A person who didn’t have to worry about driving into our camp in broad daylight?”

  “You don’t have to say it, Elena,” Cole said. “The only person it could be is one of us, somebody who lives here and works with us.”

  “Oh, crap,” Maggie said. “Well, it wasn’t me.” Cole poked her, and she grew quiet.

  “I think I’ll have another drink,” Elena said.

  Only much later did she realize one other person had been in their camp and knew where they were excavating.

  August, a.d. 1376, East-Central Arizona

  Whirl
wind

  Since sunrise, Gray Dawn had been working alongside his wife’s father and uncle in the field. Her clan owned the land, and as her husband, he helped them plant, weed, and harvest. That would change if he married again. If he married again. Planted in the floodplain of a broad, shallow wash and on the adjacent slopes, the corn, cotton, and squash waited for the blessing of the next summer rain. Gray Dawn weeded around the fresh corn plants that would soon tassel. Yellow squash blossoms bloomed bright against the rich green of their broad leaves. The village children would eat well after the harvest. His stomach growled, and he imagined he could taste the roasted sweet corn.

  At midday, the men stopped to eat, setting aside their tools. The meal was sparse, only the thin, wafer-like corn bread called piki moistened with water. They would eat richer food for the evening meal. The older men’s talk was desultory, concerning household and religious affairs. On his back, Gray Dawn lay on the sun-warm soil, inhaling the scents of the soil and the blossoming cotton. He was thinking of poetry he might compose about the summer fields and the katsinam who sent the bountiful rain.

  The corn stood high, the leaves motionless in the windless midday. Sleepy in the heat, Gray Dawn watched the sky. In the distance, a column of dust rose into the brilliant, breathless blue. He supposed it was a whirlwind borne of the hot-air currents swirling in the sky. Gray Dawn closed his eyes, the weight of the sun on his lids.

  He must have dozed off, for he woke in alarm to find Sun on Water, his father-in-law, shaking him. “You must take cover NOW, my son,” he shouted. A wall of sand and debris twice as high as the trees rose before them, spinning and whirling, catching up dead branches and ripping live branches from the trees. The huge whirlwind made a sucking, roaring sound as it came. The wall of sand, growing higher with each passing minute, soon blotted out the sky and sun.

  Where to find shelter? Gray Dawn wasted time looking around the shallow wash where they had worked. The older men ran, trying to reach the trees. Frightened of the noonday suddenly become night, Gray Dawn flattened himself on the ground and covered his head with his arms. Then the storm was upon him.