Track of the Scorpion

by R. R. Irvine

  “Coming down!” her father called to her.

  Nick left her patch of shade to hold the aluminum extension ladder, which wobbled badly when extended two full stories, especially under the weight of a man as bulky as Elliot Scott. Watching him climb down, moving casually as if the possibility of falling was no concern of his, she marveled. Nothing seemed to faze him. Heat, cold, it didn’t matter as long as he was on the track of his beloved Anasazi.

  The moment he stepped off the last rung, he towered above her, the size of a linebacker, six two, two hundred and twenty pounds. His hair was combed, his shirt buttoned; he made no concession to the oppressive heat.

  “If you weren’t so damned tall,” she said, “you wouldn’t get half the respect. Grand old man, indeed.”

  “Never argue with a woman, that’s my motto. Which is why I’ve decided to pay for my sins by giving you the rest of the day off.”

  “I take it you need something from town.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You could send one of your students.”

  “They’re paying for the privilege of working with me on an important dig.”

  “You may not have noticed it, Dad, but it’s a hundred and ten degrees in here. If we took a vote, I think every one of them would opt for an air-conditioned movie.”

  “Sometimes, Nicolette, you sound just like your mother.”

  Nick clenched her teeth, which caused Elliot to duck his head, all the apology she was likely to get for such a remark.

  She said, “A woman’s work is never done, is that it?”

  “Come on, Nick, you know someone’s got to handle the logistics. If we run out of water or some damned thing, we’re in big trouble. Besides, I don’t want you climbing up and down that ladder all day doing the grunt work. And I can’t trust the cataloguing to someone less experienced, not if I expect my work to stand scrutiny.”

  “I didn’t see any tasty-looking bones today,” she said, relenting. “Nothing to gnaw on, anyway.”

  “I was hoping to have something more concrete by the time Clark arrived. If not some bones, then maybe an ancient well.”

  “We’ve been over every inch of this place.”

  “The old riverbed is out there, Nick, not fifty yards from where we stand.”

  “And it’s been bone dry since the Middle Ages.”

  “The water’s still down there, running underground, I know it. Look at the map of Anasazi sites in this area. They’re all located along the course of that old river.”

  “And they left when it dried up,” Nick pointed out. “The great Anasazi migration of 1300.”

  “If they sank wells, they could have stayed on. Small groups could have survived. A hard life that might have eventually disintegrated into cannibalism.” He grinned. “Besides, I bet Guthrie ten dollars I’d find a well by the time he got here.”

  “You’ve still got a week.”

  “God, I forgot to tell you. My memory must be going. He called last night and said he’d be flying into Gallup this afternoon. That’s why I climbed down, to see why you hadn’t left to pick him up.”

  Gallup was a hundred miles west, a four-hour drive taking into account that the first twenty miles were dirt road between here and what passed for a state highway.

  “We won’t be back much before midnight,” she said.

  “You don’t have to go all the way to Gallup. Mayor Tuttle is getting a shipment of groceries today and has arranged for Clark to ride along.”

  Nick shook her head slowly, finding it hard to imagine Clark Guthrie, chairman emeritus of the University of New Mexico’s Department of Anthropology, mentor to Nick and to her father before her, riding in a grocery truck.

  “The trouble is,” Elliot continued, “I would have bet big money on that well being here.”

  “Are you that sure of the underground water?”

  “I had the geology department study the survey maps before we left. They say there’s a good chance I’m right, but we’d have to drill down a ways to prove it.”

  “Look at this country. I wouldn’t want to bet my life on finding water out here, no matter how far down we dug.”

  “It can’t be too deep. Otherwise, the Anasazi would never have reached it.” Elliot handed her a ten-dollar bill. “According to the mayor, and taking into account all the stops along the way, Clark ought to arrive in Cibola about three-thirty or four this afternoon. That gives you plenty of time to get there before he does.”

  “Sure, with thirty seconds to spare.”

  Her father shrugged his well-muscled shoulders. “Give him the money and tell him it will be double or nothing the next time. Then settle him into the motel and we’ll go out to dinner when I get to town.”

  “I thought you’d want me to do the cooking,” she said sarcastically.

  “Your cooking’s as bad as your mother’s.”

  “I know,” she taunted, “you would have been happier with a son to follow in your footsteps.”

  “I named you Nick because your mother said I married her in the nick of time, not because I wanted a boy.”

  “So you like to say.” She turned on her heel and headed for the pair of four- wheel-drive Isuzu Troopers they’d rented for the summer.

  “Sorry, Nick,” he called after her. “You’re nothing like your mother.”

  It was an old argument, more ritual than anything else, with the emotional heat long since dissipated, on the surface anyway.

  She raised a hand, acknowledging his apology, but kept on walking. When she reached the Troopers, she selected the one with its rear seats removed to provide space for supplies. From under the driver’s seat, she removed the towel she kept there and spread it over the sun-blistered Naugahyde. Only then did she ease onto the seat and start the engine, immediately switching the air conditioner to maximum.

  Stinging sweat, abetted by sunblock, flooded her eyes. She backed out of the Trooper and waited for the air conditioner to make driving bearable. Her bandanna, already sodden, did little more than rearrange the moisture on her face. Clenching her fists to keep from rubbing her eyes, she moved around to the shady side of the Isuzu and crouched down, exhaust fumes being preferable to the fierce sunlight.

  A catcher’s crouch, she thought, very unladylike. Her mother had liked to crouch too, usually behind the sofa, hiding from demons that only she could see. Never in Elliot’s presence, though. For all he knew, Elaine had been the perfect wife, elegantly dressed with dinner waiting whenever he came home.

  “It’s our secret,” Elaine would say while Nick helped her pick out a dress and shoes to match.

  Nick rubbed her eyes but the memory of her mother wouldn’t go away. “You do the cooking for me, Nick. We don’t want to disappoint your father.”

  To hell with the heat, Nick thought, rising to her feet and climbing into the Isuzu. With fingertips only, she tested the steering wheel. The breeze from the air-conditioning vents had made gripping it tolerable. She checked the temperature gauge, which was already climbing out of the normal range. Three or four miles was as far as she’d get before she’d have to switch off the air-conditioning altogether. Once she reached blacktop, twenty miles away, the Trooper usually tolerated a low fan setting, but she’d have to keep a close eye on the temperature just the same. A boil-over was the last thing she needed in this kind of country.

  By rote, she inspected the bottled-water supply, five gallons as always, and her rifle, stowed behind the seat along with two days’ worth of high-energy food rations. Emergency precautions she’d been taking since her first dig, when she was a precocious nine-year-old, driving her father’s students crazy with questions. A crack shot even then with a .30-30, the terror of tin cans and road signs alike.

  “It’s not right, the two of you leaving me home alone,” Elaine said from the past. “Rough living may be all right for a man, but not a lady. A lady doesn’t grub in the dirt. Think of your nails.”

  Nick switched on the radio, which she kept tu
ned to KQNM, the fifty-thousand-watt Gallup station, cranked up the volume until Elaine’s voice disappeared, and then headed for town, for Cibola.

  CHAPTER 2

  Cibola’s city-limit sign claimed a population of one thousand and six. Since there was only one street, Main Street, and that ran for only a quarter of a mile along State Highway 371, Nick figured the town fathers had to be counting everything and everyone for miles around.

  She crossed the bridge spanning Conejos Wash and headed for Cibola’s one and only motel, the Seven Cities, a row of squat stucco cabins vaguely disguised as a pueblo. On the outside, unmilled pine logs protruded from the stucco a foot below the roof line; inside the logs provided a rough-hewn ceiling, which was a haven to some of the largest spiders Nick had seen since her own archaeological dig in New Guinea.

  She parked the lsuzu under the log lean-to that served as her cabin’s carport, rolled the windows down to take advantage of the shade, then went inside to relieve herself. The sight of the shower was tempting, but it was now three-thirty, time for Clark Guthrie to be delivered to Tuttle’s General Store along with the groceries. Sighing, Nick settled for a quick wash and a change of bra and shirt.

  She drove the block and a half to Tuttle’s, where Mayor Ralph, as he insisted upon being called, was behind the counter, wearing a white apron over a short-sleeve checkered shirt. His councilmen, Jay Ferrin and Bill Latimer, were with him. Their presence meant that the desk at the Seven Cities Motel was unmanned and that the town’s only service station wasn’t pumping gas. Tuttle’s store had the advantage of true air-conditioning, not just the noisy window models the councilmen had to live with.

  “Your truck got held up in Thoreau,” the mayor told her, “though why they even stop there I don’t know. They claim a population of over a thousand, but they can’t hold a candle to Cibola. Mark my words, young lady, one day this town is going to be on the map.”

  Both councilmen nodded agreement, though Nick found it hard to believe that Cibola had survived as long as it had. The town’s only attraction was its proximity to the Anasazi ruins, where some of the cliff dwellings ran to hundreds of rooms. The land around Cibola, with vegetation as sparse as the yearly rainfall, wasn’t fit for anything but minimal ranching. What livestock she’d seen wandering around looked scrawny and bedraggled.

  “When do you expect the truck?” she asked.

  “The driver called not fifteen minutes ago. He blew a radiator hose climbing the pass near Powell Mountain. If he hadn’t been able to coast down the other side, he and your friend would still be out there stranded. They do have a gas station in Thoreau, don’t they, Bill?”

  Latimer made a face. “The last time I heard, they did, but I wouldn’t count on them being as well stocked as I am. Could be they may have to send all the way to Gallup for that hose. In that case”—the service station owner spread his hands—“they could be hung up overnight.”

  “I hope not, for your friend’s sake,” Ferrin added. “You won’t find a motel as nice as my Seven Cities between here and Gallup. The fact is, I’ve been thinking about expanding the place. What do you think, Mayor Ralph?”

  Nick sighed. As it was, she, Elliot, and his students were occupying seven of the motel’s nine cabins. Number eight was reserved for Clark Guthrie. Usually, the Seven Cities closed down altogether in the hot summer months, or so the Navajo woman who cleaned the rooms had told her. Which was why Nick and her father had been able to negotiate cheap off-season rates allowing them to stay within the university’s meager budget.

  “When will we know about the radiator hose?” Nick said.

  The three of them looked at one another and burst out laughing.

  “All right,” she said, “just tell me when the truck’s due?”

  “If you turn around you can see it yourself, coming up Main Street,” Mayor Ralph said.

  Clark Guthrie stepped down from the refrigerated truck, shook the driver’s hand, then clasped Nick in the remnants of a cool, air-conditioned hug.

  “I see your father’s using you as his gofer again,” he said into her ear before stepping back from the embrace to look her over.

  As far as she could see, he hadn’t changed since her student days, a square blunt man, heavy-set and powerful looking despite his seventy years, with an ageless face and unruly snow white hair.

  “The Anasazi have him in their clutches,” Nick said. “Once that happens, the rest of us are only ghosts, invisible unless he needs our help.”

  Guthrie smiled. “You’re the same way with your airplanes.”

  “The trouble is, they’re few and far between.”

  “Your fame is spreading. Have you seen the latest National Geographic?”

  “You mean, I made it?”

  “I’ve got a copy in my briefcase.”

  The comment sent the truck driver back into his cab to retrieve Guthrie’s luggage, a canvas bag the color of army surplus, and a dented aluminum briefcase. He handed both to Nick, who stowed the bag in the back of the Trooper while Guthrie carried his case into Tuttle’s store to get out of the sun.

  By the time Nick joined him inside, Guthrie was spreading the magazine on the counter next to the cash register. The mayor and his councilmen were peering over Guthrie’s shoulder with the ardor of Penthouse fans.

  Mayor Ralph shook his head. “I thought you people only dug up Indians.”

  “There’s more Indian relics and burial grounds than lost airplanes, that’s for sure,” Guthrie replied. “But sometimes fifty years ago is just as mysterious as a millennium. Take this find, for instance.” He tapped the National Geographic with his forefinger. “A B-24 bomber was lost in the Pacific during World War Two, and its crew was listed as missing for all those years. Nick found it in the jungle of southeastern New Guinea and made sure those men finally got a proper burial.”

  “How come they get buried and Indians get dug up?”

  “That’s right,” Councilman Latimer put in. “I have a lot of Indian customers who don’t like what you people are doing out there.”

  Nick came to the rescue. “Give the man a break, will you please? He’s had a long trip. I’ll walk him across the street to the Zuni for a cold drink, if you don’t mind, Mayor Ralph, and then come back for my supplies.”

  The Zuni Cafe was a narrow, single-story building with two plate-glass windows flanking the central doorway. The structure looked vaguely Victorian, with a bracketed cornice beneath the flat roof and frosted glass transoms above the larger windows. One of the transoms had been replaced with an air conditioner. Each time Nick saw the place, she was reminded of those Western movies the Italians used to make that featured grimy, grittier-than-life sets.

  Guthrie led the way inside. They were the only customers, and there was no sign of Mom Bennett, who ran the place. The infusion of outside air caused the transom air conditioner to shift gears, generating vibrations that rattled the front windows without producing any breeze that Nick could feel.

  “Sit down,” Guthrie said, “and tell me about your father’s progress.”

  “You know Elliot. He’ll raise hell if I spoil his surprise.” Nick slid into a booth anyway.

  “I understand this site’s well off the beaten track.”

  “The middle of nowhere is more like it. No trees, no water, a few stunted tumbleweeds that aren’t well enough fed to leave home. I took one look at the place and said, „Elliot, your beloved Anasazi had to be retarded to settle here.’ ”

  “They could have been outcasts, I suppose. More importantly, has he found any good bones?”

  “I just bag them. Interpreting them I leave to my father.”

  “Come on, Nick. I trained you better than that. You know what you’re looking at.”

  “You also trained me not to step on my colleagues’ toes, whether I’m related to them or not.”

  Guthrie grunted approvingly. “I see you’re learning the politics of the business. No wonder they hired you at Berkeley. When do you get
tenure?”

  Nick shrugged. “Dad did give me this, though.” She pulled the limp ten-dollar bill from her jeans and gave it to him. “He’s talking about digging his own well now.”

  “He’s probably right about the subterranean water being there.”

  “When it comes to the Anasazi, I know better than to question anything my father says.”

  “You’re damn right. I never figured to win this bet.”

  “It’s all right for you two,” Nick said, “but I’d like to spend one of my summers someplace cool. Maybe writing a book so I could get tenure at least.”

  “It won’t hurt your reputation any if your father makes a real find here.”

  They both knew that Site ES No. 1, though a major enough discovery to have earned Elliot the honor of having it named after him, was miles from the main Anasazi ruins at Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl and quite small by comparison. Over the years, thousands of sites had been excavated in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, but only a few had contained broken and charred human bones, leaving archaeologists with a number of theories. Were the bones evidence of ritual slaughter taking place only at the important population centers, were they the spoils of war, or had there been widespread cannibalism? If similar bones were found at a relatively obscure site, like ES No. 1, Elliot would have backing for his theory that the Anasazi destroyed their civilization, or what remained of it after the great drought that began in 1276 and lasted for twenty-three years. That long without rain, without crops, would leave them only one sure source of protein—one another.

  “Now’s the time to leave Berkeley, Nick, and join your father in Albuquerque. Between the two of us, I think we can guarantee you immediate tenure. Besides, he’s not getting any younger. He needs you.”