Walking up to them, Jack said, in a forceful voice, "This is exactly why I never wanted any digging around here! If it's an Indian, the feds will be here running the place, and if it's not an Indian we need to know how a body turned up on the Dancing Moon Ranch."
Before Marc could respond, Kit said to Jack, "This is very unusual, finding a body in a midden. I feel like it's all my fault."
"No," Jack said. "It's my fault. I never should have agreed to this. My brother just got back from being out of town and he doesn't even know I allowed the digging, and he and his wife are in charge of the guest ranch. Whichever way it goes, the publicity's going to be bad for us." He looked over to where the guests and staff were standing in a circle around the dig area. "There's no way to keep this from the media. We'll be hearing about it on the six o'clock news."
"I'll get rid of the bystanders," Marc said. He walked over to the gathering, and raising his hands to get their attention, said to them, "We need to clear this area and stake it off, so go on back to whatever you were doing. This is simply the ancient remains of one of the Native American villagers. It happens frequently during archaeological digs."
After the crowd left, Jack and Kit joined Marc, who said, "Other than the digging I did when I was a kid, this place has been undisturbed for as far back as the family's owned the ranch, so if the bones are a white person's they'll be those of a trapper, homesteader or logger. I'll take a look at the skull and see if it has Indian characteristics."
"And if it does?" Jack asked, in a dark tone.
Marc shrugged. "We'll follow the procedures established by NAGPRA—the Federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. I'll also contact the commission on Indian services to find out who the appropriate tribes for the area are, as well as the state commission on historic cemeteries. They'll decide on a course of action."
"What about the police?" Jack asked. "We are dealing with human remains here."
"Yeah, I'll be calling them too," Marc said, "but that's just routine. In any event, we have to stop excavation in this test unit, but we'll continue the other, mainly because I want to show that this isn't a burial ground. The bones are either the remains of an early settler or those of a villager who died during the winter and was buried here."
Marc picked up the skull, hoping it would show white characteristics, but after carefully studying it for fifteen minutes he drew in a long breath, let it out slowly, and said in a morose voice to Kit and his father, who were waiting, "It's an Indian, looks to have been a man in his sixties when he died."
Kit stepped to his side, and staring at the skull, said to him, "How did you arrive at that?"
Marc replied, while pointing, "The skull's broad around the face, has square forward-sloping wing-like cheekbones, a low nose bridge, and the upper incisors are shovel-shaped. The skull of a white person would be narrower, the cheekbones flatter, there would be a high-bridged nasal bone, and the upper incisors would have a flat lingual surface. The skull's also flattened in back from a cradle board."
"And the age?" Kit asked.
Marc dragged his finger along the barely visible zigzag seam across the top of the skull, and said, "The cranial sutures are obliterated and the skull's almost smooth. He had to have been at least in his late fifties, but my guess is sixty or older when he died."
Kit glanced at Jack, who was studying Marc, and she could tell from his expression that he was impressed with Marc's knowledge, even if he was troubled by the ramification of what this would mean. Then Jack moved to where he could look at the skull, and said, "Why do you think it's a man?"
Marc lifted the skull in his hand, and explained, while pointing, "The skull of a man generally has a more rounded supraorbital margin, or brow ridge, and the glabella, which is the portion between the eyebrows and nose, is bony. The mastoid back here—" he pointed behind the ear "—is larger in a male, and the mandible more squared." He returned the skull to the hole where a scatter of bones lay, then walked over to his truck and got his camera. After taking pictures, he said to Kit, "Before we turn it over to the Indians and the federal anthropologist, I want to examine the bones some since I won't get another chance after the authorities come in. I'll also record this and document it in your unit log if you want."
"I think you'd better," Kit replied. "You're way ahead of me with this."
While Marc was crouched over the excavation pit, Kit glanced up and saw a man, looking very much like Jack, heading toward them in long determined strides. From the look on his face he was angry. She also realized he was Sam Hansen, the man who gave Marc up at birth.
"What's going on out here?" Sam asked, as he walked up to Jack. "We never gave anyone permission to dig up the mound."
"I gave permission," Jack replied.
"You might have run it past me first," Sam said. "Jayne and I are running the guest ranch end of this operation and one of the guests said something about digging up a body. That should just about shut us down for the rest of the season." He glanced over at Marc, whose back was to him, and who looked as if he were studying a bone, when Kit knew he was looking beyond the bone while silently listening to the exchange.
"No one expected to find a body," Jack said, "but you might want to stop long enough to tell your nephew hello."
Sam looked over at Marc. "What are you talking about? Who's that guy anyway?"
Marc stood and turned, then folded his arms.
Sam's face slowly changed from anger, to apology, as he said, "Marc, I didn't know you were back."
"I won't be here much longer," Marc said. "We're about to wind things up and I'll make sure the mound looks like it did when I left the first time. Meanwhile, I'll notify the authorities so they can get the ball rolling." He turned and went to his truck and drove off.
***
It was after seven that evening by the time the authorities finished staking off the area with yellow tape. It wasn't a crime scene—the authorities cleared it as a pre-contact burial site with skeletal remains dating to a time before white settlement—but it was designated a restricted area. It was also up to the tribal council to decide whether to disinter and re-inter the remains in the tribal cemetery, or require the burial site to be restored to the condition in which it was found and remain undisturbed. Kit and Marc had also been cleared to excavate the other test area, but with the understanding that the tribal council might send a representative to monitor the progress.
Although Jack had stood on the sidelines watching, Sam wasn't there because he had to meet with inspectors at the winery, which was fine with Kit. Marc had serious issues to resolve with Sam and they weren't off to a very good start.
But after Marc finished completing his lengthy entry in the unit log he told Kit he was going to his tent, and left. So Kit returned to her encampment, where she grabbed a towel and went to the hot spring for a bath, then returned to fix dinner. She saw no activity at Marc's campsite but knew, from the light of the low lying sun sifting through the thin walls of the tent, and the vague shadow of a form inside, that Marc was still there. She wondered if he'd eaten and suspected he hadn't. She also wanted an excuse to talk to him. So she fixed a couple of ham sandwiches for him, and one for herself, wrapped them in plastic, and headed for his campsite. Although it was almost nine o'clock, summer days in Oregon were long, and it would be almost ten before it would be dark.
At Marc's tent, she said, to the closed front flap, "Can I come in?"
"Do I have a choice?" Marc asked, in an aggravated voice.
"No," Kit replied. She ducked through the flap, and seeing Marc stretched out on his back on a sleeping bag, with his arms bent backwards, and his head resting against his clasped hands, she said, "What are you doing?"
"Staring at the top of the tent," Marc replied, without looking at her.
"Why?" Kit asked.
"Because I'm wondering why I'm here. My father's pissed because his worst fears have become a reality, and my uncle's wishing to hell I'd stayed wherever i
t was I'd gone instead of coming back to be a big inconvenience again. With my luck, the bones will turn out to be another Kennewick Man, there'll be a battle over ownership, with the Indians wanting a speedy burial, and a bunch of anthropologists and archaeologists will demand the right to study the bones first, and it'll take the Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and the Department of the Interior to resolve it. And meanwhile, I'll be about as welcome as a wart again."
"Your father's not that mad," Kit said. "I watched him. He's impressed with you."
"He won't be when it's on the news and all over the newspapers in the next day or so, which means he'll be even more pissed when the ranch is invaded by swarms of artifact hunters and amateur archaeologists."
"It might be good advertisement for the ranch," Kit said. "Parents will flock here so their kids can see the site of an ancient Indian village where a real Indian was dug up. We could even save a few buckets of chipped stone tools and lithic flakes to scatter around for the kids to find."
"Or we could cover the pits, pull up stakes, and leave," Marc replied.
Ignoring his comment, Kit said, "When did you eat last? I brought sandwiches."
"I don't know and I'm not hungry," Marc clipped.
"Fine, I'll eat three ham sandwiches then." Kit sat cross-legged on the floor of the tent, and removing the plastic wrap from one of the sandwiches, started eating. After she chewed and swallowed the first bite, she said, "I didn't know if you liked pickles and relish and tomatoes and lettuce and cheese and mustard with the pile of ham, so I put it all on." She took another bite, and after swallowing, added, "It's cracked mustard. I like it better than yellow."
Marc removed his hands from behind his head, rolled toward Kit and propped himself on his elbow, and said, "Korban, you're messing with my head again." He reached for a sandwich then hoisted himself to sit cross-legged on his air mattress.
"I intend to mess with it even more when you're done eating," Kit said. "Incidentally, I was also impressed with you today. I don't know how you remember everything you do. I took a course in forensic anthropology and couldn't begin to remember all the names of bones."
Marc eyed her with curiosity, "What did you mean by messing with my head more?"
"We're not talking about your head right now," Kit said, "we're talking about what an impressive man you are, even if you are kind of an android."
"Which is a robot with a human form," Marc replied. "You want to explain that?"
"It's the human form part that gets my attention," Kit said. "My android's wearing a leopard skin loincloth, but he's still got all that important data stored in his head."
"Which one?"
Kit looked at him, puzzled. "You have two heads?"
Marc smiled.
"Okay, I get it," Kit said. "I don't know if there's data stored there, but there is the tattoo of a pterodactyl somewhere in the vicinity, which represents a certain amount of data and documentation."
"You're still messing with my head," Marc said.
"Not really," Kit replied. "I won't be messing with that one until you get your other head on straight. You still need to talk to Sam."
Marc's face sobered. "He pretty much said his welcomes. We don't have anything more to talk about."
"Yes you do," Kit replied. "He was shocked to come home and find someone digging up the mound, since the mound's been off limits since the beginning of time. Cut him a little slack. He found a guy with a ponytail, four years older than he was before, and looking very much like a man who knew what he was doing. It took him by surprise."
"Then I'll be sure to stop in and tell him goodbye when I leave this time," Marc said.
"When will that be?" Kit asked.
"The sooner the better."
"You're backtracking," Kit said. "Besides, I want to continue the exploratory excavation."
"Which we can wind up in a few days," Marc pointed out. "There's a project waiting for me in Belize. I want to go back to Texas and find out if I'm in."
"There's also a mother here who misses her son, and a father who spent four years reading your notebooks, and a little sister who needs to get to know her brother, and two little boys who now have an uncle to read to them, and a half-brother and a twin brother who want to be brothers to you. Is that reason enough to stay, even if you still need your dinosaur-sized nit comb to sort through things with Sam?"
Marc said nothing, just ate his sandwich in silence.
When he'd finished, Kit put her hand on his arm, and said, "Do you have any idea how much you're loved? You really didn't come back home to help me dig up the mound. You came home because you love and miss your family, just as they love and miss you. Don't throw it all away by burying yourself in the jungle of Belize under the pretext of dropping muon detectors down holes. You can do that later, but first you need to square things away here. And I need a kiss."
Marc looked at her with a start, like that was the last thing he expected from her. "Oh hell," he said. Curving his hand around her neck, he pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his.
Kit wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back, long and hard, but after they broke for air, she said, "Was the 'oh hell' because I'm bothering you?"
"That too," Marc said, "but mainly because I've wanted to kiss you all day, and all last night, and... I guess since I first saw you in the shower."
"That wasn't a shower, it was a cavern," Kit said.
"Not where I first saw you."
Kit looked at him, puzzled. "Then... at Kulkulkan?"
Marc nodded. "There are some advantages to jungle showers."
"When did you see me? Early on, or just before we left?" Kit asked.
"About our third day there," Marc replied.
"You never acted like you'd noticed me," Kit said, trying to remember back if he had given any indication at all that he'd noticed her, beyond the notes he'd written in his log.
"That's because I'm an android," Marc replied. "But the part under the loin cloth that I played with in my tent at night noticed you... still does."
"I suppose I'll never live that down," Kit said. "I really didn't think that."
"What did you think?" Marc asked.
Kit visualized Marc dabbing on the deet. "I actually got the hots for you the first day. It was all that deet dabbing, and the way you were looking at me when you did it, and the bulge in your khakis. You might not have been aware of it at the time."
"Are you kidding?" Marc said. "That's something a man can't very well ignore, especially when he's thinking the things I was thinking at the time."
"Okay, then we've established that you have the hots for me, and I have the hots for you, but that's just a lot of rambling right now, and there are more important things to consider at the moment." Kit moved to sit on Marc's lap, put her arms around his neck, and said, "Honey, will you do something for me?"
Marc looked at her, dubiously. "Why did you call me honey?"
Kit kissed him lightly on the lips. "Because the gap just closed and I want you to do something you won't want to do."
"I'm already prepared to keep it under the loincloth," Marc said.
"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Sam," Kit replied. "I want you to go talk to him tomorrow, man to man, not little-confused-boy to man. I want you to ask him all the questions you've avoided asking, questions like exactly why did your mother give you up, and why he didn't keep you even if your mother didn't want you. Whatever Sam tells you, even if it's what you don't want to hear, at least you'll have closure."
Marc lifted Kit off his lap, then stretched out on his side and pulled her down and into his arms, and said, "Can you stay here for a while?"
Kit wrapped her arms around him, cuddled up against him, and replied, "Will it get me what I want?"
"Maybe," Marc said. He tightened his arms around her and said nothing more.
***
Marc was surprised to wake up around dawn with Kit still in the tent with him, he
r arm draped over his chest, and one leg thrown over his legs. He'd expected her to long since have returned to her tent. But she'd felt good in his arms, and he hadn't wanted to be alone, and she made no move to leave, so they'd drifted off. And during the night, when he awakened and felt her stirring against him, he tightened his arms around her, and she responded by giving a little moan of pleasure and staying where she was.
Seeing her looking at him, he kissed her, and said, "If my father finds us I'll never convince him I stuck to ranch rules. I can't believe it myself. Maybe I really am an android."
Kit snuggled up against him, and replied, "I can tell you for fact, you're not an android, but if I don't leave I'll turn into a long-fingered goddess with an insatiable curiosity to remove the loincloth and record as much data as possible."
"That didn't help things," Marc groused.
"Sorry." Kit moved away from him and sat up, then unwound her shirt from around her and started to comb her fingers through her hair.
Marc rolled onto his side, propped himself up on an elbow and said, while looking up at her, "Say what you did last night."
"Are we talking about sandwiches, androids, deet or loincloths?" Kit asked.
"We're talking about what you said after all those." Marc replied. "You said the gap closed."
"It did," Kit said. "I love you."
"It doesn't bother you that I'm not telling you that too?" Marc asked.
"Love is unconditional," Kit said. "It doesn't have to be two ways."
"What if I go to Belize?"
"Then I'll love you from a distance," Kit replied. She looked at him soberly. "What is this really about? Are you thinking about going back to Belize soon?"
"That's the problem," Marc said. "There's a good chance I'll get the position, and it's what I've been wanting, but now I'm not so sure."
"It's that scary thing called commitment, isn't it?" Kit said. "It's okay to be confused. You said you'd never been in love before so it could take time to adjust. Maybe being in the jungle would help you sort through things. Either way, honey, I'll still be around."
Bittersweet Return (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 6) Page 17