Conard County Watch

by Rachel Lee

  She quickly glanced down at her plate. He liked looking at her? Maybe it was time for some truth. “I like looking at you, too,” she replied, her voice cracking again as if her vocal cords were covered in rust.

  Even though she didn’t meet his eyes, she could hear the smile in his voice when he answered. “Well, I like the sound of that. Look all you want.”

  He seemed to think that settled everything and went back to eating. She tried, but now the jam-slathered toast wanted to stick in her mouth. Giving up, she put her plate to one side and reached for more coffee.

  “The ants are going to find that toast faster than you’ll believe.”

  She knew he was right and picked up her plate to balance on her lap while she wet her mouth with coffee almost hot enough to burn.

  The sun had climbed fully over the eastern horizon, and the day now blazed with light. Hopefully some of the team would show up soon. Working days here were short because when the sun went behind Thunder Mountain, it was still bright but the light was so flat it could be difficult to make out smaller variations in texture and lines. Risky. That was the time of day she reserved for washing their finds and getting ready to bring them down the mountain.

  But the egg remained. She wanted to clear out enough of the limestone around it to ensure she didn’t destroy something else valuable in the process of freeing the egg.

  Patience was usually her forte. Her job would drive her nuts if she were impatient. But right now... Darn, she wanted to get to work. Instead she busied herself trying to get her breakfast down. “I guess I should go to town to find out how Larry’s doing,” she remarked. “We haven’t heard anything since last night.”

  “At which time they said he had a simple fracture and would be on a walking cast today. I’m sure he’s fine. The team is probably enjoying a six-course breakfast at Maude’s or the truck stop rather than coming back here for dried eggs.”

  She had to laugh at that description. “Well, I would.”

  “There you go.”

  But almost as soon as he spoke, a familiar gray SUV drove toward them.

  “Claudia,” Renee said.

  “Looks like it.”

  Holding her plate in one hand and her cup in the other, she stood, no longer able to tamp down her impatience. Claudia might have some information that could shed light on this whole mess before it got any deeper. If there was reason to believe this wasn’t just some kind of harassment, that this could be dangerous to life she’d have to... Oh man, she didn’t want to think about that. She’d stay here and work the site by herself.

  Claudia pulled up to the mostly grassy spot that had become their parking lot, and climbed out of her vehicle holding a big white paper bag.

  “I hope you two have an appetite for Danish.”

  Cope and Renee looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “What did I do?” Claudia asked as she approached.

  “Echoed what we were thinking earlier,” Cope said. “I think you’ll find plenty of takers for the Danish.”

  “I may give my eggs to the ants,” Renee added.

  “Yeah, camp food can become real boring because of the freshness issue,” Claudia agreed as she pulled out some new paper plates from the plastic-wrapped stack and passed them around. “I hope that coffee’s fresh.”

  “Fresh enough,” Cope answered.

  A short time later, they were enjoying the Danish and drinking coffee. Claudia reported on Larry.

  “He’s doing fine,” she said. “And enjoying all the attention. Well, who wouldn’t? The girls on the team are all over him with TLC. He should be released early this afternoon but they told him not to come back out here for a few weeks. They’re starting with some kind of pressure cast, so his mountain-goat days are over for a little while.”

  “I am so relieved he’s all right,” Renee said emphatically. “That was such an awful thing to happen to him. And I’m thinking about telling the others they can bail if they want. Danger wasn’t part of the job description.”

  “Right now I don’t think they’re even considering the danger aspect,” Claudia said frankly. “In fact, I’d judge that Larry in a hospital bed holds more attraction than the fossils.”

  Despite all her worries, Renee was amused. “You’re probably right.”

  “I know I’m right,” Claudia said as she wiped the frosting from one corner of her mouth. “Boy, that bakery is good. I need to make regular stops there.”

  Cope looked at Renee. “Does she read minds?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder.”

  Claudia winked, then her mouth made an O. “I just remembered, I checked my email last night. Hate to tell you, there’s something in this area that could definitely be valuable if mined.”

  Renee’s stomach flipped. “What?”

  “I told you there were some rare earths, needed for electronics but so easy to find they wouldn’t be worth making trouble over them. However, there is one that’s extremely rare, but let me get on my geology horse and give you some background.”

  Renee wiped her fingers on her napkin and leaned forward, hoping to hear some clues.

  “Rare earths are mostly common. There are seventeen of them, fifteen lanthanides and two others that have similar properties.” She paused. “You probably don’t want to know all that. Anyway, the point is these rare earths are scattered everywhere, but typically not in veins that make them economically feasible for mining, however much we need them. There are a few that are more common than copper, but again, it depends on how tangled they are with each other whether it’s worth the effort.”

  Renee nodded.

  Claudia sipped more coffee. “Okay, there’s one in particular that is truly rare. It’s called promethium and it’s radioactive. It’s also extremely useful in making nuclear batteries, among other things. And apparently when that gorge opened up, it revealed a rich deposit. Now I don’t know how far it goes. You might be able to take it all out of the ground with a shovel. Or...somebody could know something I don’t yet.”

  Renee’s first thought was safety. “Is it radioactive enough to be dangerous?”

  “In the open air? I seriously doubt it. I don’t think it would threaten anyone. I have a Geiger counter I’ll use to check it out for you so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Keep in mind there’s radioactivity all over these mountains. You get down five or six feet and you’re digging into uranium and radon. The thing is, it isn’t concentrated unless we concentrate it. Or unless we’re in a closed mine shaft. But out in the air, no problem. As for mining this promethium...” She shook her head. “I’m sure the tribe won’t allow it. So let’s get going with the dig.”

  Renee looked at Cope and saw him frowning. Apparently he had some qualms, too. He spoke. “If you found a rich deposit, how likely is it that it isn’t everywhere around here?”

  She looked up just as she had bitten into her second Danish. “It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “You can’t mine a mountainside without buying the property, getting the environmental clearances and otherwise crossing enough t’s that’ll take more time than you’re going to need to excavate.”

  “You sound awfully confident.”

  “No,” she admitted. “Hopeful.” She took another bite of Danish. “I’m just a geologist, like you’re a paleontologist. What do we know about most of this crap? But I’ve studied enough to know you can’t rip the side off a mountain unless you own the mineral rights or the property.” She sighed. “Tell that to the Havasupai in Arizona.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Uranium mining poisoned their water and then started giving them cancer. Navajos wanted the uranium trucks to stop coming through their reservation because they noted an increase in cancer along those routes. Yeah, nobody’s safe.”

  On that unpl
easant thought, they finished eating without another word.

  * * *

  The team still hadn’t shown up by the time Renee wanted to get going. After burning paper plates, Cope banked the fire safely and they headed toward the mountain path.

  He insisted on climbing first with the two women behind him. While he didn’t say so out loud, he was concerned that someone could have set up booby traps on the path. It wouldn’t have made much noise during the night to string some trip wires that could bring rock crashing down on them, or to move rocks into unstable positions.

  He’d spent years learning to look out for such things and he planned to put every one of his skills to work before letting Renee start digging again. Her idea of digging was so gentle that her patience left him in awe, but she might have been working to unearth delicate gems.

  She certainly wasn’t prepared to play the kinds of games she was encountering here.

  He was also more concerned than he wanted to admit aloud. The rockslide was weird, all right, but basically pointless. Any way he looked at it, he couldn’t imagine that it had been intended to cause serious harm. Maybe it had been a warning. Maybe it had been meant to slow Renee down.

  But he was worried as he led the way up the path that it was the opening salvo in something that could get much worse. Since the rockslide had been no accident, that left only the conclusion that there would be more threatening activity, since he could imagine no other reason for it than to clear this area of the paleontology dig.

  No one had booby-trapped the path, however. At the top, he and the women stood a few minutes, catching their breath and shaking out limbs that had worked awfully hard during the last stage.

  He was getting out of shape, he realized with a bit of self-disgust. All those years of staying at the peak of physical fitness, and give him a year behind a desk and he was turning to rubber? Apparently running around the campus track wasn’t going to be enough. Weight room, here I come.

  Renee turned slowly, scanning the area, especially toward the important rock face. “Everything looks the same. I’m just wondering how we’ll get rid of that rockfall.”

  “Leave it,” Cope said. “Claudia can tell you that if we start moving any of those rocks we could set off another slide. Unless it buried something essential to what you’re trying to do, I’d leave it until the summer’s work is over. Then maybe we can get some people up to remove it carefully.”

  Claudia nodded. “I know you, Renee. You might have the patience of a saint, but those rocks are going to annoy you. Don’t let them without good reason.”

  Renee nodded as if she weren’t very happy. “Needs must,” she said finally. She started to walk toward the work area when Cope held out an arm.

  “Be very quiet,” he said, “and let me go first. If I hear anything start to shift, I’m outta there, but we don’t all want to be in the line of fire.”

  “Good point,” Claudia agreed.

  Renee nodded. Cope realized that this whole mess was starting to hit her in a dozen ways. It was easing past yesterday’s shock and upsetting her, making her angry, making her wonder if she’d be able to continue her voyage of discovery, if someone else might get hurt...

  At that moment, not one of those questions could be answered. He wished he had something to offer that would lift up her spirits, but the simple problem was, nobody knew any answers about why this had happened. Until they did, there were no cheery words other than that nobody was supposed to get killed. And that was a reasoned guess.

  Cope walked very slowly along the ledge, his ears straining for warning sounds, his eyes checking the space right ahead of him for trip wires, triggers or rocks that looked too carefully balanced. How many times had he done exactly this in Afghanistan?

  Shaking away the memories, he focused on the present. It was slow going, and he could only imagine how the women behind him must be feeling, but he wasn’t about to take any unnecessary risks with them. Except for the crunch of his booted feet on smaller rocks, he didn’t hear any sound to alarm him. No shifting rocks above; in fact, no sounds but the early morning forest and the gentle rippling of running water. A world at peace.

  At last he felt secure in motioning the women to join him at the rock face. “We’re okay for now anyway. Insanity.”

  Renee nodded. “It just makes no sense. Driving us away isn’t going to make this mountain any easier to mine for anything.”

  She sat down in front of her egg and began to gently apply a dental pick to its perimeter. Easy does it. Claudia sat beside her, looking at her tablet.

  Having done all he could do up here for the moment, Cope went down below to examine the mess there. Considering how much rock they’d moved to free Larry, he bet he could move some more safely. Carefully, but safely. Renee would probably like the space down here open again.

  He set to, using muscles that enjoyed a good workout.

  * * *

  An hour later the rest of the team showed up, ready to get to going. They chattered nonstop about what had happened yesterday and how Larry was doing.

  “He’s going to have to go home,” Maddie told Renee. “He’s fine but the doc said there’s no way he should be walking on rough ground for at least a few weeks. He wants to know if he can come back when they release him.”

  Renee sat back, egg momentarily forgotten. “He wants to come back? After yesterday?”

  “Yup,” Maddie said, flashing her patented pixie grin. “You didn’t think any of us were going to bail, did you?”

  “Maybe the guy with the broken leg,” Renee answered.

  Maddie shook her head. “It was scary, but this is an important job. Besides, we think someone just wanted to give us a fright. We don’t scare easily.”

  Renee guessed not. Torn between a sense of responsibility that made her feel she ought to be sending these young folks home, and an overwhelming desire to expose the mystery of these fossils for the world to study, Renee gave up the argument. If she tried to send any of them away, she was certain she’d hear that they were adults capable of making their own decisions.

  Why add insult to injury?

  * * *

  As the day wound down and the light flattened, Renee took photos of the partially revealed egg, while the others took photos of their discoveries at the river’s edge, and Denise took a picture of the rock face with its new geometry. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits as if the rockslide had never happened and Larry’s injury was merely an accident that could have happened a million ways. Renee wondered if they were all in denial or just trying to maintain a facade for the others.

  Eventually cases were filled with fossil pieces, none exceptionally big. The big ones would come later, after they’d been completely freed.

  But then there was the egg. Renee sat cross-legged in front of it and didn’t want to move. It was more exposed now, easy to damage if someone wanted to. A shudder passed through her as she considered that possibility.

  “Coming?” Cope asked.

  She slowly shook her head. “I think I’ll sleep up here tonight.”

  The others were already heading down the trail and didn’t hear her.

  Cope immediately squatted beside her. “Talk to me.”

  She pointed to the egg. “See how much has been revealed? I don’t want to leave it. It would be so easy for someone to come by and simply snap it off with a crowbar or something.”

  “Like was used in the rockslide.”

  “Exactly.” Here was a nearly intact dinosaur egg containing a perfectly formed fetus. A very rare find. Irreplaceable. That egg was important enough to have gotten her the grant for this expedition. If she had to sleep right in front of it, she couldn’t risk anything happening to it.

  After a minute, Cope spoke. “It’s not going to be a very comfortable bed.”

  She shrugged. “Some things matter more th
an comfort.”

  His blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “I agree. Okay, I’ll run down and get your sleeping bag and maybe some foam to ease the roughness of the rocks. And something for you to eat. We kind of skipped lunch today.”

  “Only because Claudia brought all those pastries!”

  His laugh followed him down the trail and left her smiling in his wake.

  The egg drew her attention again. Reaching out with her gloved hand, she ran her fingertips over it, feeling its every contour along with an amazing awareness of how far back in time it carried her. Her hand was making a connection with a lost world from approximately sixty-five million years ago. Whether an ancient building or a fossil, she always felt that connection to the past, that awareness of how much had lived on this planet before she came along.

  Fanciful, maybe, but it moved her and kept her going. Mysteries faced her, and sometimes they had answers. And sometimes they would remain forever mysteries.

  Leaning back on her hands, ignoring the sharp pressure of some of the rocks, she studied the entire wall. Here and there more secrets poked out like a promise of treasure to come. The excitement washed over her again, the same excitement she had felt the first time Gray Cloud had shown her this cleft.

  A wonderful gift, maybe accidental, maybe from the mountain as Gray Cloud believed. But whatever its source, it burgeoned with stories of life long lost, and a cataclysm that had ended it. What’s more, it might even help prove her pet theory that the saurians had lived in family groups.

  She had trouble understanding why that would trouble anyone. Why wouldn’t they care for their young?

  Years ago she’d been walking across the floor of her garage when she spied what looked like a small, slender piece of string. Before she could take another step, a slightly larger anole lizard had darted out of a bush, grabbed the little string in its mouth and carried it off to the bush. Curious, she’d begun researching and had discovered the anole hadn’t been snatching up lunch but had been protecting its baby from the big human feet. Why wouldn’t dinosaurs, some of the earliest reptiles, have the same instincts?