The Family at Serpiente

by Raymond Tolman

  “Sergeant Blanco says, The State Police have two other hombres in custody, let me and my boys go with you.” With that said, a caravan of police cars with Corey, Hidalgo and myself following them, headed back to the camp at Rinconada at break neck speed.

  The Explosion

  The dust could be seen for miles around as the caravan of cars drove across the flat Rinconada but it was a good feeling. We all knew that once someone made their way out to camp there would be no escape, there was only one way in unless they took off down the canyon trails which would lead to the same situation, no way to escape. Upon arrival, the police cars all pulled into a crescent formation facing the camp with the cedar tree in the middle. Sure enough another car was there besides Armijo’s old blue truck but no one was in camp. They had all gone down the trail.

  Everyone stood around for a few minutes to discuss a strategy as to what to do. Hidalgo said, “You realize, I hope, that if they are inside of the mine there is no way out except climbing up the rock wall. I would be really surprised if Garcia could even make it.

  I countered his thought with, “Yes but he is a very determined and vindictive person. I know he wants to know what is down there. They know they can’t ever make money from this mine, and what they really want is revenge. They don’t want us to prosper from it. They want to hurt us and they don’t care who else gets in the way or who gets hurt.”

  Several policemen along with Sergeant Blanco gathered up some equipment that they carried in the trunks of their cars and they all started single file down the trail with Hidalgo in the lead. Corey and I stayed in camp just glad to be together and alive. I knew that it would have been only a short matter of time until my captives would have tortured me.

  After several minutes of anxious hiking they arrived at the small island and there was Dr. Douglas, Enrique and Armijo leaning against a rock wall in the shade.

  Hidalgo, who was the first one to get to them asked, “What’s the deal? Armijo casually looked up and answered with a single word, “Justice.”

  “Where are Garcia and Fernandez?” asked Hidalgo. Armijo, instead of saying anything, simply pointed into the mine.

  Enrique then joined in the conversation as the last of the policemen dropped down from the rock and crossed over the tiny stream to join them. “We saw them coming so we took off down the trail and hid while they passed us. We then followed them down to the mine. We waited awhile then followed them inside. We waited until curiosity overtook us and we decided Garcia and Fernandez had time to drop down the pit. After they reached the bottom we waited a few more minutes and then cut the rope.”

  Armijo laughed, and added “Just like they did to you guys, justice. What goes around comes around.”

  Dr. Douglas moved within an inch of Hidalgos ear and whispered, “You realize I hope that all they are going to find is an archeological site. They will never be able to figure out that the river beds are full of gold gravel.

  We also moved the pipe so they couldn’t escape,” continued Enrique. “They aren’t going anywhere.”

  Sergeant Blanco, who by this time understood the humor of the situation chuckled, “So what we really have now is a rescue mission rather than a hostage situation. Say, that is poetic justice. They walked into the mine until they reached the chasm. Calling down they received no response from Garcia and Fernandez. Sergeant Blanco then snickered, “It’s getting late, lets come back tomorrow morning with better equipment and we’ll dig some rats out of a hole.”

  Upon arrival back at the camp everyone decided to leave except for Corey, Hidalgo, Dr. Douglas and myself. Corey and I were preparing dinner when I thought out loud. “What about the dynamite? We looked in the car the two had left there but couldn’t find anything.

  At six in the morning the next day the police showed up, this time with a larger caravan than the last time. Yet there was no feeling of panic or even hurry as the men gathered up ropes, and climbing gear that would actually be useless in the cave but like the boy scouts, they felt they needed to be prepared.

  Each policeman slung an assault rifle over his shoulder along with a canteen and portable phone in case they got separated. Hidalgo attempted to explain that they wouldn’t have any need for all the equipment but they wouldn’t heed any of his advice. So over to the edge of the escarpment they walked only stopping at the start of the trail long enough for Hidalgo to point out the route.

  They descended over the escarpment with Hidalgo in the lead descending down the now well-worn and memorized trail until they reached the island. Entering the mine again, they again showed Sergeant Blanco the route past the petroglyph and into the long lava tube until they reached the chasm.

  Sergeant Blanco was in awe of the cave, but was terrified of the chasm, a vertical crack in the rock going straight down and straight up over their heads for eighty or so feet before it ended. Yelling down into the chasm it was only a short matter of time until Sergeant Blanco heard the voices of Garcia and Fernandez as their voices made their way up to the policemen. Profanities peppered most of what they were saying, mostly in Spanish, but obviously they were two very angry men.

  “We are not coming out unless you let us go,” yelled Garcia!

  Sergeant Blanco causally replied, “We can always leave you there until you starve to death.”

  Fernandez retorted, “There is light down here, and there is another way out.”

  Hidalgo countered his argument with, “No, the light is coming from bacteria or something growing on the walls around the warm water river. There is no way out except up this shaft.”

  Garcia yelled back, “We have dynamite; if you come down here we will blow all of you up.”

  Sergeant Blanco yelled back, “Well that wouldn’t make any sense. You would just manage to blow yourselves up and maybe trap yourselves in there forever. The only way out is for you to let us drop you some safety ropes and then turn yourselves in to us.”

  Garcia screamed back, “And spend the rest of our lives in jail, no thanks, I would rather die first.”

  Sergeant Blanco took a long breath of air and replied, “That is just what you will do, die down there.” With that a bullet ricocheted up the chasm spending itself harmlessly on the ceiling of the cave far above their heads.

  Hidalgo looked at the others in the group and said, “It would be safer just to wait them out. They think there is another way out but that is highly unlikely. We never found another way out and if there was another way out why would the Indians have used this entrance.” With that said they carefully placed the pipe back into place and lowered the safety rope. They then went back to the entrance of the mine and positioned themselves for a long wait.

  It took three days before a starving Garcia and Fernandez agreed to be helped out of the chasm. It had taken them that long to explore the caverns that were easily accessible and come to the obvious conclusion that the only way out was through the original entrance. They were hungry but could not calm the thoughts of revenge they had.

  Sergeant Blanco immediately took them into custody and the entire party started back up the long trail. Everyone was in a hurry to leave but Garcia and Fernandez were in a particular hurry to leave. Everyone simply thought it was just because they hadn’t eaten for some time and were desperate for food.

  Returning to the main trail and having climbed about a hundred yards up it they felt the explosion before they heard it. Kaboom. Looking back down at the small island they could see rocks flying out and down into the river below. Then, the entire side of the hill began to move in a tumultuous cascade down into the river actually damming it up.

  After a few panic filled moments wondering if the trail they were climbing would begin to fall away they stood up and surveyed the situation. As the dust started to settle they could see the river back up and then finally after a few minutes begin to flow over the new rock pile forming a classic rapid that would have to be run by a river runner in order to be downgraded to a class five rapid. The island, along w
ith the tiny creek and most of the trail had vanished along with all hope of ever finding a way back into the lost caverns, gold, archeology sites, and biological creatures from a different world.

  Garcia and Fernandez had their final revenge but they would have to enjoy it inside the New Mexico State Penitentiary spending the rest of their natural lives there for kidnapping as well as several other major offences. They would never be heard from again but unfortunately, no one would ever be able to gain entry into the mine again as it was buried under thousands of tons of black volcanic rock.

  A Return to Normal

  Dr. Douglas was facing another problem; time. Another round of new classes would be starting back at the university and he would have to return to Boulder. He didn’t want to go but he valued his position as professor of geology. They exchanged emergency phone numbers, made some fast plans for future expeditions, mostly in the form of river trips throughout the southwest and he was driven into Santa Fe where he boarded another airplane and returned him to his home. He was more than disappointed, not because of the loss of the gold but rather because of the loss of knowledge that could have been acquired by scientist who would have welcomed the opportunity to explore and learn from such an unusual environment. He knew that another route into the mysteries under the Rinconada would probably never be found. Dr. Douglas didn’t want to give up hope anyway. Maybe someday they would find another way into the magnificent caverns. Maybe there would be other Indian roads that would be discovered, leading to even more wonderful places. They all agreed that anything was possible but unlikely.

  Hidalgo, Corey and I thanked Armijo and Enrique once more for their help, offering them some of the gold that we had succeeded in retrieving from the mine. Armijo turned it down, but Enrique accepted a moderate amount graciously, saying that he had plans to return to school and making something of himself. Like Penny and Corey, he said, “I have the bug. I want to learn more about my ancestors and the treasures that were lost here in New Mexico.”

  Hidalgo returned to the Navajo Indian Reservation to spend some time with his mother and father who were now celebrities on the reservation because of Hidalgos adventures. Hidalgo invested much of his newfound riches into a Native American Polytechnic School in Farmington.

  Corey and I returned to Serpiente to rest. We wanted to spend some time alone in the backcountry without fear of pottery thieves, rattlesnakes and responsibilities. We knew however, that we had the ‘bug,’ that virtual infection that enters all who search for unknown treasures, adventures, and mystery. It would only be a matter of time until we would find ourselves out on a lonesome trail following another great adventure and solving another historical mystery.

  Part 4

  Evil Intent

  Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.

  —Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

  We always vilify what we don’t understand.

  —Nenia Campbell, Horrorscape

  An Introduction

  The entire world watched during August of 1994, as the planet Jupiter was battered by a swarm of comet fragments. Many people were startled by the realization, that the universe can be a very dangerous place. The comet that hit Jupiter with twenty-one fragments delivered to that planet an explosive force equal to about 40 million megatons of TNT. Any one of those fragments would have been enough to destroy the earth, with far more power than the energy of all the nuclear bombs ever built. At this time, scientists have computed probabilities of an asteroid impact on Earth within an average person’s lifetime. They concluded the odds to be about one chance in several thousand. It is the size of the asteroid that matters. Too small and an asteroid burns up in the atmosphere or explodes in the air like the one that hit Siberia in 1908. If an asteroid is too large, the earth vaporizes. We humans have always considered the universe to be a very dangerous place, which is one of the reasons why we are what we are.

  Unfortunately most modern people have forgotten about the skies. As a species we are oblivious to what goes on up there. Our ancestors who were always out in the open saw much more than we modern people do. In many ancient cultures, such as in Egypt people would keep their animals inside their homes and they would sleep in the cool air on the roofs of their homes, quite literally under the stars. Without air conditioning it was the natural way.

  Most high school students in today’s world would never be able to spot a planet among the multitudes of stars on a given night. They wouldn’t know how nor would they have the patience. Many people have been disassociated with the night time sky as a result of religious beliefs or televisions. There are some, who do not even believe in planets. Planets are of course, the first stars that appear in the night sky and they move from night to night. Considering the scientific advances that have occurred in the last few years it is amazing how pockets of our society have actually chosen to be so dramatically unaware, a preferred ignorance.

  Constellations

  Corey, Hidalgo and I heard the first sound as a tiny “clink” of rock, although it is highly unlikely that a living creature had moved it. Anyone who spends time at the bottom of a deep canyon hears the miniature rockslides that occur, usually as a result of miniature geological events that occur during wind, ice, water erosion, uneven heating, even plant growth. Then again, a few seconds later, we heard a lesser “clink.”

  Under the starry sky Corey and I lay together on our tent mats with heads propped up so we would be looking straight up into the clear nighttime sky. Hidalgo was fifteen feet away in the same position, absorbed by the nighttime canvas that nature had painted for us. We were looking at one of the greatest natural spectacles in the world each seeing a different view, even though we were seeing the same thing.

  To me, the night time sky was bringing up visions of young lovers, stars embracing stars. Fanciful thoughts toyed with my mind as I gazed into the night sky and I let my imagination run wild. Just married, fanciful thoughts of love were natural for me as it is for all young ladies. The love of my life, my soul mate, was resting beside me.

  Corey was connecting dots. The stars made patterns to him like they had done to millions of his forefathers who had undoubtedly done the same thing. Making sense out of random patterns is a human condition we are all hardwired for; Sagittarius, Orion, and Ursa Major which naturally looked like a big dipper to Corey. He couldn’t conceive a pattern of a bear in those stars. His mind connected the lower part of the dipper until he spotted the North Star. He knew that as the earth rotated under it all the other stars appeared to travel in concentric rings around this one lonely star, a star that people of the earth had used for navigation for thousands of years.

  Hidalgo’s mind was taking him back to stories and impressions of events he had experienced as a little boy growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Filled with the memories of ceremonies that only Navajo youths experience, the dots were there but they made entirely different patterns and meant entirely different things to him.

  Some of those stars ever so slowly moved, not really stars at all but rather planets that are easily observable as the first dots of light that appear after sunset. Venus, the most easily observed planet, sometimes even changes route, going back to where it came from, a process that scientist call retrograde. This motion mystified all earlier people. Some of the lights in the sky were falling, leaving streaks in the sky as they burned up in the atmosphere. A meteor shower was creating a light show for our evening’s entertainment.

  Hidalgo’s mind wandered to places where early people dwelt. Laying at the bottom of White Rock Canyon, he was surrounded by the magic of Bandelier National Monument. He was thinking of the Anasazi, those ancient people, on whom his people, the Navajo, had made war. He also thought of secrets that he preferred to share with only his closest and personal friends. The ceremonies of his people were in many ways still a mystery to him, particularly those that dwelt in the mist of times forgotten.

  He had learned that Anthropologists are confounded as
to why the early Anasazi Indians called Chacoans built an utterly fantastic civilization that was abandoned and is now only ruins. What drove them to build these structures in one of the most uninviting and inhospitable places in North America? Why build there?

  He thought of the spiral petroglyphs on the Pajata Butte that allowed daggers of light to line up on them. He had read that those early people believed if the daggers did not line up when they were supposed to, then the earth was out of balance and a new time or age would occur. For a second he thought of the Mayan calendar that some interpret as a giant time machine, a time machine that will run out on December 21st of 2012. He chuckled to himself, thinking that they would need to build a new calendar; if their civilization had survived to the present day.

  His thoughts drifted to the last time the entire planet underwent dramatic change in the home of the Mayans, the mountains that had once grown lush grass became covered by vast sheets of ice. Later, as the world warmed up, the ice exposed that previous world for all to see. It happened all over the world; Savannas with great lakes and rivers dried up to become the Sahara Desert. Grasslands became bleak deserts; jungles appeared where grass only grew before. Chaco Canyon changed from a vast forested plain with water running down the tiny streambed at the bottom of the canyon, to the bleak desert it is today.

  This self-educated Indian was fascinated about those things. He had made it a point since he was young to study the history of the region in which he was living. Even as a little boy on the reservation, when other children had shown little interest in the stories of the elders and the traditions of his people, Hidalgo hung on every story and ceremony that was told to him. The elders knew that children such as Hidalgo would keep the traditions of the Navajo alive after the elders had passed to the next world.