3-D FIX UNAVAILABLE
LAT/LONG: N/A
ELEVATION: N/A
EPHEMERIS DATA UNAVAILABLE
RELOCATE UNIT AND REINITIALIZE
“See this?” Holroyd pointed to a small window on the screen in which various red dots orbited in circular tracks. “Those are the available satellites. Green means good reception, yellow means poor reception, and red means no reception. They’re all red.”
“Are we lost already?” called Black from behind, a note somewhere between apprehension and satisfaction in his voice. Nora ignored him.
“If you want a reading,” Holroyd said to Nora, “you’ll have to go up top.”
Nora glanced at the soaring red walls, streaked with desert varnish, and looked back at Holroyd. “You first.”
Holroyd grinned, powered-down the laptop, and returned it to his saddlebag. “This is a great unit when it works. But I guess way out here, even technology has its limits.”
“Want me to climb up and take the reading?” Sloane asked, riding forward with an easy smile.
Nora looked at her curiously.
“I brought some gear,” Sloane said, lifting the top of a saddlebag and displaying a gear sling loaded with carabiners, friends, nuts, and pitons. She gave the rock walls a calculating look. “I could make it in three pitches, maybe two. Doesn’t look too bad, I could probably free climb my way up.”
“Let’s save that for when we really need it,” Nora said. “I’d rather not take the time right now. Let’s do things the old-fashioned way instead. Dead reckoning.”
“It’s your gig,” Sloane said good-humoredly.
“Dead reckoning,” Smithback murmured. “Never did like the sound of that.”
“We may not have satellites,” Nora said. “But we’ve got maps.” Spreading Holroyd’s map across her saddlehorn, she stared at it closely, estimating their approximate speed and travel time. She marked a dot at their probable position, the date and time beside it.
“Done a lot of this before?” Holroyd asked at her side.
Nora nodded. “All archaeologists have to be good at reading maps. It’s hell finding some of the remoter ruins. And what makes it harder is this.” She pointed to a note in the corner of the map that read WARNING: DATA NOT FIELD-CHECKED. “Most of these maps are created from stereogrammatic images taken from the air. Sometimes what you see from a plane is a lot different from what you see on foot. As you can see, your radar image—which is absolutely accurate—doesn’t always correspond to what’s printed on the map.”
“Reassuring,” she heard Black mutter.
Replacing the map, Nora nudged her horse forward and they continued up the canyon. The walls broadened and the stream diminished, in some places even disappearing for a while, leaving only a damp stretch of sand to mark its underground course. Each time they passed a narrow side canyon, Nora would stop and mark it on the map. Sloane rode up beside her, and for a while they rode together.
“Airplane pilot,” Nora said, “expert horsewoman, archaeologist, rock climber—is there anything you don’t do?”
Sloane shifted slightly in her seat. “I don’t do windows,” she said with a laugh. Then her face became more serious. “I guess the credit—or the blame—goes to my father. He’s a man with exacting standards.”
“He’s quite a remarkable man,” Nora replied, hearing a slightly acerbic tone creeping into Sloane’s voice.
Sloane glanced back at her. “Yes.”
They rounded another bend and the canyon suddenly widened. A cluster of cottonwoods grew against the reddish walls, late afternoon sunlight slanting through their leaves. Nora glanced at her watch: just after four. She noted with satisfaction a broad sandy bench where they could camp, high enough to be beyond the reach of any unexpected flash flood. And along the banks of the creek were abundant new grass for the horses. True to its name, Hard Twist canyon veered off to the left, making such a sharp turn that it gave the illusion of dead-ending in a wall of stone. It looked ugly—choked with rocks, dry and hot. So far the trip had been an easy ride, but Nora knew that could not last.
She turned her horse and waited while the others straggled up. “We’ll camp here,” she called out.
The group gave a ragged cheer. Swire helped Black off his horse, and the scientist limped around a bit, shaking out his legs and complaining. Holroyd dismounted by himself, only to fall immediately to the ground. Nora helped him to a tree he could lean against until he got his legs back.
“I don’t like the look of that canyon,” Sloane said, coming over to Nora. “What if I scout up a ways?”
Nora looked at the younger Goddard. Her dark pageboy had been tousled by the wind, but the disarray only enhanced her beauty, and the golden desert light made her amber eyes as pale as a cat’s. During the day Nora had noticed several of the company, particularly Black, clandestinely admiring Sloane, whose tight cotton shirt, unbuttoned at the top and slightly damp with perspiration, left little to the imagination.
Nora nodded. “Good idea. I’ll take care of things here in the meantime.”
After assigning the camp chores, Nora helped Swire unpack and unsaddle the horses. They lined up the panniers, saddles, and gear on the sand, taking care to keep the high-tech equipment, in its waterproof drysacks, separate from the rest. Out of the corner of her eye, Nora noticed Bonarotti, armed with brush hook, digging trowel, buck knife, and his oversized pistol, marching off upcanyon on some mysterious errand, khakis still miraculously pressed and clean.
As soon as the horses were unpacked, Swire remounted Mestizo. During the ride, he had talked and sung to the horses constantly, making up verses to fit the small events of the day, and he sang another as Nora watched him drive the sweaty remuda toward the creek:
O my poor young gelding
Do you see yonder mare?
Such a lovely young filly
One cannot compare.
Too bad your equipment
Is in disrepair.
Once in the grass, he hobbled several of the lead horses and tied cowbells around their necks, then unsaddled Mestizo and staked him on a thirty-foot rope. At last, he placed himself on top of a rock, rolled a smoke, pulled out a greasy little notebook, and watched the horses settle down to their evening graze.
Nora turned back, surveying the camp with satisfaction. The heat of the day had abated, and a cool breeze rose up from the purling stream. Doves called back and forth across the canyon, and the faint smell of juniper smoke drifted past. Crickets trilled in the gathering twilight. Nora sat down on a tumbled rock, knowing that she should be using the last of the light to write in her journal, but savoring the moment instead. Black sat by the juniperwood fire, massaging his knees, while the others, the work of setting up camp done, were gathering around, waiting for a pot of coffee to boil.
There was the sound of footsteps crunching on sand and Bonarotti came swinging back down the canyon, a sack thrown over his back. He dropped the sack on the cook tarp spread out by the fire. He slapped a grill on the fire, oiled a large skillet, tossed in some minced garlic from his cabinet, and followed this with rice in a separate pot of water. Out of the sack tumbled some hideous, unidentifiable roots and bulbs, bundles of herbs, and several ears of prickly pear cactus. As he worked, Sloane came back into camp from her reconnaissance, clearly tired but still smiling, and sidled over to watch the final preparations. Working the knives with terrifying swiftness, Bonarotti diced up the roots and threw them into the pot, along with the bulb and a bundle of plants. Then he singed the cactus ears on the grill, skinned and julienned them, and threw them into the sizzling garlic. He gave the concoction a final stir, combined it with the rice, and removed it from the fire.
“Risotto with prickly pear, sego lily, wild potato, bolitas, and romano cheese,” he announced impassively.
There was a silence.
“What are you waiting for?” Sloane cried. “Line up and mangia bene!”
They jumped up, grabbing plates from
the kitchen tarp. The cook loaded down each plate, sprinkling chopped herbs on top. They settled back on logs by the fire.
“Is this safe to eat?” Black asked, only half jokingly.
Sloane laughed. “It may be more dangerous for you, Doctor, if you do not eat it.” And she rolled her eyes melodramatically toward Bonarotti’s revolver.
Black gave a nervous laugh and tasted it. Then he took a second bite. “Why, this is quite good,” he said, filling his mouth.
“Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” intoned Smithback.
“Damn tasty chuck,” mumbled Swire.
Nora took a bite, and found her mouth filled with the creamy taste of arborio rice mingled with the delicate flavors of mushroom, cheese, savory herbs, and some indefinable tangy flavor that could only be the prickly pear.
Bonarotti accepted the praise with his usual lack of emotion. The canyon fell into silence while the serious business of eating began.
* * *
Later, as the expedition made ready for bed, Nora walked off to check on the horses. She found Swire in his usual position, notebook open.
“How is everything?” she asked.
“Mighty fine” came the answer, and then she heard a rustle as Swire removed a gingersnap from his breast pocket and inserted it into his face. There was a crunching sound. “Want one?”
Nora shook her head and sat down beside him. “What kind of a notebook are you keeping?” she asked.
Swire flicked some crumbs off his mustache. “Just some poems, is all. Cowboy doggerel. It’s a sideline of mine.”
“Really? May I see?”
Swire hesitated. “Well,” he said, “they’re supposed to be spoken, not read. But here, help yourself.”
Nora thumbed through the battered journal, peering closely in the mixture of firelight and starlight. There were bits and snatches of poems, usually no more than ten or twelve lines, with titles like “Workin up a Quit,” “Ford F-350,” “Durango Saturday Night.” Then, toward the back of the journal, she found poems of a completely different nature: longer, more serious. There was even a poem that appeared to be in Latin. She turned back to one called “Hurricane Deck.”
“Is this about Smithback’s horse?”
Swire nodded. “We go way back, that horse and me.”
He came tearing down the draw one stormy winter’s night,
A brush-tailed mustang, full of piss and fight.
I saddled up a chaser and laid a rope around his neck,
Corralled him and christened him Hurricane Deck.
Hurricane Deck, Hurricane Deck, hard on the eye and the saddle,
You whomper-jawed, hay-bellied, cold-backed old spraddle,
Only a blind mare could love your snip-nosed face,
Oh, but I tell you, Hurricane Deck could race.
I trained him for heeling, took him on the road,
At Amarillo and Santa Fe we won a load,
He served me well, from Salinas to Solitude,
But Hurricane’s been retired to loading up dudes.
“I need to work on the last stanza,” said Swire. “It don’t sound right. Ends kind of sudden.”
“Did you really catch him wild?” Nora asked.
“Sure did. One summer when I was running a pack string at the T-Cross up in Dubois, Wyoming, I heard talk about this buckskin mustang that nobody could catch. He was an outlaw, never branded, always broke for the mountains when he saw riders. Then that night I saw him. Lightning spooked him, sent him right past the bunkhouse. I chased that son of a bitch for three days.”
“Three days?”
“I kept cutting him off from the mountains, circling him back around past the ranch. Each time I picked up a fresh mount. I wore out six horses afore I got a rope on him. He’s some horse. The son of a bitch can jump a barbwire fence and I’ve seen him walk, just as nice as you please, across a cattle guard.”
Nora handed back the journal. “I think these are excellent.”
“Aw, horsehocky,” Swire said, but he looked pleased.
“Where’d you learn the Latin?”
“From my father,” came the answer. “He was a minister, always after me to read this and study that. Got it into his head that if I knew Latin, I wouldn’t raise so much hell. It was the Third Satire of Horace that finally made me light out of there.”
He fell silent, stroking his mustache, looking down toward the cook. “He’s a damn fine beanmaster, but he’s an odd son of a bitch, ain’t he?”
Nora followed his gaze to the tall, heavyset figure of Bonarotti. Postprandial ablutions completed, the cook was now preparing himself for bed. Nora watched as, with finicky care, Bonarotti inflated an air mattress, applied nocturnal facial creams, and readied what appeared to be a hairnet and a facial mask.
“What’s he doing now?” Swire muttered, as Bonarotti began working his fingers into his ears.
“The croaking of the frogs disturbs his rest,” Sloane Goddard said, emerging from the darkness and taking a seat beside them. She laughed her low, husky laugh, eyes reflecting the distant firelight. “So he brought along earplugs. And he’s got a little silk pillow that would turn my great aunt green with envy.”
“Odd son of a bitch,” Swire repeated.
“Maybe,” Sloane said, turning toward the wrangler and eyeing him up and down, one eyebrow raised. “But he’s no wimp. I’ve seen him on Denali in a blizzard with the temperature at sixty below. Nothing fazes him. It’s as if he has no feelings at all.”
Nora watched the cook slip gingerly into his tent and snug down the zipper. Then she turned back to Sloane. “So tell me about your recon. How is it upcanyon?”
“Not so good. A lot of dense willow and salt cedar brush, with plenty of loose rock.”
“How far did you go?”
“A mile and a half, maybe.”
“Can the horses make it?” Swire asked.
“Yes. But we’re going to need brush hooks and axes. And there isn’t much water.” Sloane glanced down at the remnants of the group, lounging around the fire drinking coffee. “Some of them are going to be unpleasantly surprised.”
“How much water?”
“A pothole here and there. Less as you go up. And that’s not all.” Sloane reached into a pocket and pulled out a map and a penlight. “I’ve been studying the topo. Your father found Quivira somewhere upcanyon, right?”
Nora frowned, unaware that Sloane had brought along maps of her own. “That’s about right.”
“And we’re here.” Sloane moved the penlight. “Look what’s between us and Quivira.”
She moved the penlight to a spot on the map where the elevation lines came together in an angry black mass: a ridge, high, difficult, and dangerous.
“I know all about that ridge,” Nora said, aware of how defensive she must sound. “My father called it the Devil’s Backbone. But I don’t see any reason to get everyone worried prematurely.”
Sloane snapped off the light and refolded the map. “What makes you think our horses can make it?”
“My father found a way to get his horses over that ridge. If he could do it, we can.”
Sloane looked back at her in the starlight; a long, penetrating look, the amused expression never leaving her face. Then she simply nodded.
18
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER A BREAKFAST ONLY a little less miraculous than its predecessor, Nora assembled the group beside the packed horses.
“It’s going to be a tough day,” she said. “We’re probably going to be doing a lot of walking.”
“Walking sounds good to me,” Holroyd said. “I’m sore in places I didn’t know I had.” There was an assenting murmur.
“Can I have a different pack horse?” Smithback asked, leaning against a rock.
Swire ejected a stream of tobacco juice. “Got a problem?”
“Yeah. A horse-sized problem. Beetlebum over there keeps trying to bite me.”
The horse tossed its he
ad in a mighty nod, then nickered evilly.
“Likes the taste of ham, I guess,” said Swire.
“That’s Mr. Prosciutto to you, pal.”
“He’s just kidding around. If he really wanted to bite, you’d know it. Like I said, he’s got a sense of humor, just like you.” Swire glanced at Nora.
Despite herself, Nora found the writer’s discomfiture covertly satisfying. “Roscoe’s right, I’d rather not make any changes unless we have to. Let’s give it another day.” She climbed into the saddle, then gave the signal to mount up. “Sloane and I will go first and pick out a trail. Roscoe will bring up the rear.”
They moved forward into the dry streambed, the horses pushing through the dense brush. Hard Twist Canyon was hot and close, with none of the charm of the previous day’s ride. One side of the canyon lay in deep purple shadow, while the other was etched in sunlight, a contrast almost painful to the eyes. Salt cedars and willows arched over their heads, creating a hot tunnel in which ugly, oversized horseflies droned.
The brush grew thicker, and Nora and Sloane dismounted to hack a path. It was hot, miserable work. Making things worse, they found only a few stagnant potholes of water that did not keep up with the horses’ thirst. The riders seemed to bear up well enough, except for Black’s sarcastic protest when told they would have to ration water for a while. Nora wondered how Black would react when they reached the Devil’s Backbone, somewhere in the wasteland ahead of them. His personality was beginning to seem a high price to pay for his expertise.
At last they came across a large muddy pool, hidden on the far side of a rockslide. The horses crowded forward. In the excitement, Holroyd dropped the lead rope of Charlie Taylor, his pack horse, who eagerly bounded forward into the muddy pool.
Swire turned at the sound. “Wait!” he called, but it was too late.
There was a sudden, terrifying pause as the horse realized it was bogging down in quicksand. Then, in an explosion of flexing muscle, the animal tried to back out, legs churning, spraying thick mud, whinnying in shrill fear. After a few moments it flopped back into the muck, sides shuddering in panic.
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