Deep Trouble

by Mary Connealy

  “The Grand Canyon,” Hozho spoke quietly, reverently. Her voice was too small to truly invade the silence.

  More time elapsed as they stood, five in a row, their horses behind them. They breathed in the extravagant splendor, the impossible depth and breadth of what lay before them.

  Finally, the vastness of it forced Shannon to speak, though it felt like sacrilege. “How can we ever find anything down there?”

  “There’s nothing to find, Shannon.” Gabe, on her right, reached over and took her hand. “Surely you can see that this is a wild place. Too rugged. Who would go down there? There’s no city to be found. And who would build a city of gold in there? Gold would be a pale insult in the midst of that.”

  She heard pity in his voice. That broke through what was a blissful moment. She had to almost physically tear her eyes away from the depths and rock sculptures, the towers and the layers of color: reds, browns, grays, whites, and blues. Impossibly majestic.

  “Don’t you see, Gabe?” Their eyes met. “Of course it’s down there. This city has to be remote. It has to be hidden or it would have been found by now.”

  “You have to give it up, Shannon.” His words weren’t so much bossy as they were a plea to her.

  She remembered his arms around her. Remembered how close they’d come to being married.

  Remembered Bucky.

  “If you want to walk on streets of gold, you’re going to need to do it in the next life. God has a different kind of treasure for you to seek on earth. Treasures of love and forgiveness and faithfulness. Treasures of marriage and family and home.”

  “If I was one of those bishops looking for a place to hide and protect sacred objects”—she looked back at the terrifying wildness, the staggering beauty—”I would know the moment I saw this canyon that I’d found the perfect place.”

  Gabe shook his head. “I see no trail. This can’t be where your father’s map leads.”

  “Give me a few more minutes to look at that”—her hand swept wide to encompass what lay before them—”then I’ll find the place where we can descend.”

  He nodded but didn’t speak. He clearly doubted her, but she could see that he would stick. He had committed to this search, although with the snippy notion that he was on a fool’s errand and his main job would be to dry her tears. He had no hope of finding what Shannon knew her father had discovered. It hurt that he doubted her. But along with the hurt was pleasure that he was willing to help.

  She thought of her father. Her thoughts were too much with him, she knew. Her mother had so many times begged Shannon to let go of Delmer Dysart’s obsession and get on with a more conventional life. It was right now, as they stood on the edge of eternity, that she finally, truly saw why she was out here.

  She’d been rejected by her father all her life, coming in a poor second to his work.

  At the sight of this Grand Canyon, she felt that maybe her father had picked something worthy over his daughter. If his work had meaning—if it had profound historical value—then maybe it was all right that he’d had no time for her.

  As she looked down into the canyon, she understood how a person could become obsessed with something this magnificent to the detriment of his wife and child. But somehow that didn’t comfort her one bit.

  She had to admit that she’d come in second to a wonderful thing, but nothing should be more wonderful than love, than a child. Just as Gabe said, the treasure is marriage and family and home. However worthy this effort, she was still unimportant in her father’s eyes.

  She finally grasped the truth, and it was a terrible thing. She almost told Gabe they could go. There was nothing for her to prove anymore. But she didn’t say the words that would set her on a path to a calm, peaceful life in St. Louis.

  And not because of her father or treasure or pride. She stayed silent because the canyon called to her.

  “I want to go down there.” She turned to Gabe. “Don’t you? How can you not want to descend into that wild land?” And while she became part of this canyon, she would do her best, whether she found a city of gold or not, to let go of her last questions about her father and his poor love.

  “Get your map out.” Gabe drew in a deep breath as if he could absorb that view into his lungs. “Let’s see if we can find a way down. “

  Shannon looked at him, grateful for his generous willingness to stay with her. She was surprised to see a smile. “You’re looking forward to it. You want to go down there.”

  “I find that I do indeed.” Gabe looked to the others. “I firmly believe that we’ll find no gold, but I would love to climb down there if Shannon can show us the way. Are we ready?”

  “Yes,” Hosteen said in reverent tones. “If we can find a path, we’ll go.”

  Hozho nodded, still silent.

  Shannon was amazed at the Tsosis’s fascination with the canyon and the parson’s rapt wonder. Parson Ford didn’t even comment about how long and hard the ride was bound to be.

  Shannon approached the cairn, praying silently that her translation of her father’s notes had been true. They’d led her here, hadn’t they? She reached the stones, knelt, and began removing the stack.

  Gabe was on his knees beside her helping without her needing to ask.

  It took only minutes to uncover a ragged cloth. Years old.

  Carefully Shannon unfolded the packet to find oilcloth inside. The oilcloth gave way to papers. More of Father’s code, but Shannon knew what she was looking for now, and she smiled. “There is a way down.” She studied the cryptic images and numbers, the mathematical equations and scientific abbreviations. It all made sense. “There.” She pointed to a spot not that far from them, an impossible spot to Shannon’s eyes. But whatever Professor Delmar Dysart’s failings as a father, he’d been a brilliant historian and scientist.

  Gabe walked to the spot and looked over the edge. He turned back, his face pulled into lines of doubt. “Maybe, if we’re very careful. We can tie ropes. We can—”

  “My father said a horse can make it down.” Shannon looked again and couldn’t doubt what she read. “He says there’s a herd of wild mustangs that go over the rim there. That’s how he found the trail. And his own horse went right down after them.”

  She saw Gabe’s throat move as he swallowed hard.

  “Down that… trail?” the parson squeaked. “On horseback?”

  Shannon knew how he felt. And she liked her horse.

  “What do you think, Hosteen?” Gabe asked.

  The elderly Indian shrugged. “These are mountain- and desert-bred animals. They can go where a wild mustang goes.” He turned to Shannon. “We’ll trust our animals. If they’ll step off that ledge, they’ll be following a scent and a trail we can’t see. If they refuse to go down, we’ll accept that and find a place to fence them in with some grass and climb down.”

  There was no point arguing with what was eminently sensible. “Agreed.” She stood, her father’s map in her hands. She’d told no one, but what she’d had in her possession up until she’d moved those stones had only brought her this far. If the map hadn’t been there, they’d have had to turn back. Her father had talked to her, told her things, and she’d written it all down word for word. But all his notes and encoded maps had led her here and no farther.

  Eager to go on, she let the view catch her once again. It was impossibly lovely. Impossible period. Nothing so grand could exist. The canyon seemed to be a place of miracles. The kind of place that was vast enough and miraculous enough to lure a group of priests into its depths then enfold them, surround those noble men and keep their golden secret for seven hundred years.

  Finally shaking off the grip the stunning view had on her, she swung up onto her horse.

  “I’ll go first.” Hozho headed for the rim. “My horse is as surefooted as a mountain goat.”

  The elderly woman walked straight for the invisible trail, riding strictly on the word of a man the world considered delusional. And she went over and sank quic
kly out of sight. A sigh halfway between wonder and panic escaped Shannon’s lips as Hosteen went next and vanished after his wife.

  Parson Ford didn’t move. He looked to the heavens, and his lips moved in obvious prayer. When he finished, he and Gabe both turned to her.

  “You’re next, Shannon. Then the parson.”

  “No, I’ll go.” The parson’s throat worked as he forced himself to swallow. “Putting it off will only make it worse.”

  Gabe smiled. “Fine. Then Shannon. I’ll bring up the rear.”

  With trembling hands, the parson guided his horse after Hosteen, and the horse went willingly.

  Gabe met Shannon’s eyes and gestured to the canyon rim. “Give your pinto her head.”

  Her mare went as calmly as if she walked off the edge of the world every day.

  Majesty.

  It was the only word that came close to doing the canyon justice, but it didn’t begin to go far enough. Gabe wouldn’t have turned back for anything. If Shannon suddenly came to her senses and saw the futility of this treasure hunt, he’d still take the ride.

  He’d never had anything touch his soul like this except for God. Gabe went over the edge and knew God was part of this, which made the canyon a holy place. A place of majesty.

  There were sounds. His horse’s bridle jingled. Soft thuds of slow-moving hooves. The wind brushed across the vastness, humming, singing. But all of it was too small. The tiny sounds somehow just drew attention to the hush. Nothing was big enough to overcome the extravagant majesty and immense silence of the canyon.

  Hozho fearlessly descended. Hosteen stayed right on her tail.

  The path wrenched Gabe’s stomach, but he never for a moment considered not following it. His chestnut picked toeholds Gabe never would have called a trail.

  Shannon just ahead of him never moved, sitting rigidly on her mare’s back. She looked as if she was terrified to make a wrong move and upset her horse’s balance. Not an irrational fear at all.

  They were a row of ants crawling down, down, down. Their presence was a violation of this place, as if they were ripping aside the veil of the holy of holies. This descent into the canyon called for humility and prayer.

  Gabe felt small, insignificant, and closer to God than he ever had. He had a strong sense that God approved of a man realizing there was a lot that was greater than he was. He hoped God was with them on this journey, because they had never needed holy protection more.

  The worst of the descent ended, though the trail was a terror. Vivid red rock was laid out like stair steps—only much less regular and far narrower. No one ever would have thought of this as a way into the canyon, and he suspected that included Professor Dysart if he hadn’t seen a band of mustangs go down here.

  The drop was fast, hundreds of feet every few minutes. And so much farther to go. Gabe said a quiet prayer of thanks for his horse. He hated the thought of climbing down this rock wall on foot.

  The view drew him from his fretting. The countless towers of red stone erupting out of the ground. The rising sun casting shadows into the deep that made parts of the canyon seem bottomless. Maybe they were. Everything striped as if layer after layer of rock, each a different kind and color, had piled up or worn away or both.

  Minutes stretched to hours, and still they went down and down and down. All of them remained silent, the soft clop of hooves and the gusting of the wind seemed more a part of the quiet than an intrusion into it. They all trusted their horses to pick out a trail.

  Gabe noticed that Shannon never consulted her new map. Maybe she was afraid unfolding paper would knock her horse off a cliff. There was nowhere to leave this trail anyway. It would serve no purpose to look at the map.

  When Gabe thought of ascending this on their way out, his stomach quailed so violently he turned to let the view draw him in again. A golden eagle soared past, screaming in the wind, playing on the currents. Gabe felt as if he were part of the flight, part of the sky.

  He saw God in these terrifying, staggering cliffs in a way he never had before. And he felt closer to his heavenly Father in a new and blessed way until every step his horse took was a kind of worship.

  The canyon wall curved out and then back, in constant tortuous switchbacks. As Gabe rounded the rock wall, it was so steep he could have reached straight out with his right hand and brushed the rock. That kept his attention until he was all the way around the latest buttress of stone, and then he was stunned into a deeper kind of silence as the river appeared far, far below.

  The bright blue of the Colorado River twisted like the grand-daddy of all rattlesnakes in the far depths of the canyon. The sun had risen now, and it cast the river in a vivid blue that made the red rock even brighter. The vibrant colors, the impossible rock formations—all of it kept Gabe’s mind firmly off this mad slide into the belly of the earth.

  A slightly less treacherous stretch of the trail opened up before them. A grassy slope crept around boulders.

  “Hoof prints.” The parson looked over his shoulder at Gabe and pointed to the ground.

  Gabe had noticed, too. The trail was clearly worn and obviously well used by what must be a herd of wild horses. Amazing.

  “That’s a deer track,” Hosteen said, pointing to the side of the trail. “I wondered if we’d find food. If there are deer, there will be smaller game, too. We’ll be fine.”

  The cliff overhead jutted out so far it turned nearly to a cave. Suddenly Hozho stopped and stared at the rock wall beside her. The trail wasn’t wide enough for even two of them to stand abreast, but they closed the gap between them, Hozho, Hosteen, Parson Ford, Shannon, and Gabe, as Hozho pointed at the wall.

  “There have been people here before us.” Hozho looked over her shoulder at Shannon. “Maybe your priests did come this way.”

  Gabe was close enough now to see pictures on the wall. Definitely man-made. One image might have been a lizard of some kind. It was such a primitive picture he couldn’t tell. He could identify a stick figure of a man. They sat on horseback and stared, and Gabe had the wild notion to stay down here forever, exploring these depths, maybe finding people here living in a city of gold. Just because they’d been lost for seven hundred years didn’t mean they were dead. “Can whoever drew this still be down here?” Gabe asked.

  “Very old,” Hozho said. “But maybe there are people down here.” She pointed at an odd broken line. “This is a symbol favored by my people.”

  They stared again. Gabe was barely aware of the passing of time. His senses needed to absorb it all.

  “Look at this, Gabe, everyone.” Shannon’s excited voice pulled him out of almost dreamlike pleasure at the canyon and the way it stretched miles and miles, until it seemed endless.

  He turned to see Shannon with her papers out. The ones she’d pulled out of that pile of stones stacked at the rim of the canyon.

  “My father says we’re to turn off rather than go all the way to the river.” Shannon pointed at a pure white outcropping of rock ahead, jarring in the midst of red and gray. “He said we’ll see a white rock formation that looks like a twenty-foot-tall seashell.”

  Gabe hadn’t seen a lot of seashells in his life, but Shannon held out her papers and there, sketched in a fine hand, was a picture that could only be the fan-shaped rock they now approached.

  “The river isn’t that much farther,” Hozho said. “The wild horses went on down, but there is a second trail in the direction your father’s map points. We need to go water the horses before we begin walking along the side of the canyon wall. The trail to the river is clear at this point, and the edges of the riverbank are low. We might not find water so easily later.”

  “There must be a spring feeding this grass.” Gabe looked at the little oasis of life in this stony place.

  “We can search here if you want,” Hozho said. “But it will take time. Faster to go to the river for water, then come back and follow the new trail.

  They headed on down, but when they got low enough, the
y found a drop-off to the river that was insurmountable. But their own horses, given their heads, walked around boulders taller than a man on horseback and found a spring filling a little pond no bigger than a water trough that spilled into the river in a beautiful fall. The horses drank their fill as did the people. They ate a quick lunch. The parson grumbled when Shannon eagerly urged everyone to move, but he followed everyone else and mounted up. They headed back to the shell stone.

  “How far are we going?” Gabe asked.

  “I can’t tell from what notes Father has left.” Shannon looked at the white stone. “He only gives landmarks, places to turn, not distances.”

  “And he says in that note, clearly, that he found a city of gold down here?” Gabe began to think he might well be on the trail of treasure. The professor’s notes so far had proven true.

  “He says the treasure is here. It’s all very terse and in code. He wrote the word ‘Cibola’ clearly, though. He’s seen it with his own eyes.”

  “Cibola?” Hozho had turned her horse to follow Shannon’s trail but paused at Shannon’s words. “What is Cibola?”

  “Coronado was an explorer who followed a man, a Pueblo Indian some say, who swore he lived in a city of gold. He called that city Quivera. Coronado never found that city, but others said the Indian purposefully led Coronado astray. His people feared the Spanish and wanted Coronado far away. More exploration took place in this area, but nothing was ever found. There was a legend about seven cities of gold. Some called them the Seven Cities of Cibola. The story came to my father of a second city, Cibola, that was near the Pueblo’s land, where people drank from golden cups,

  wore emeralds and diamonds, and walked on streets paved with gold.”

  Gabe’s pulse picked up. Common sense told him it was all a fable. But he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t enticing to think he might well be on his way to an ancient city of gold. Standing in this canyon made a man start to think outlandish things were possible.