by Sandi Ault
“Then let’s go see what we’re talking about.”
“That’s where it gets tricky. There’s three possible ways to get to it, and they all have problems. One way is to go the mine road, and from there, hike deeper into the canyon and climb. I’d need to bring in some equipment and ideally a small team. It wouldn’t be easy getting to it, and I think that it would be likely to attract the attention of the tribe, so that’s not getting it done quietly. Plus, now that Picuris won back some of what was formerly the mine’s land, we could easily be crossing their lands before we got to public wilderness.”
“My boss was just talking with me about some possible vandalism in the mine area—one of the caves that had been boarded up. He told me it was on BLM land.”
“At the moment, it’s a legal quagmire. The BLM manages all the subsurface rights of nearly all the land around here. Doesn’t matter who actually owns it, we still manage what’s under it. Except for reservation lands. With this recent legal decision, the tribe is watching our survey in the mine area carefully right now. There’s no way we can go in from that direction without attracting a lot of attention.”
“Okay, so the mine road is out; what are the other ways to get there? Picuris Canyon is a big drainage. Can you get to it from another direction?”
“Well, the closest other way was down Indian Service Route 210. Public access is allowed on it, even though it crosses the rez, because it’s technically a through-road. It just skirts across the north edge of the pueblo before it drops down into the canyon. It’s a four-wheel track and it’s pretty rough. I’d try it anyway, but it’s currently impassable. After that heavy snow we had last week, and the warm-up right after, the surface turned to pure mud. Some numbskull decided to drive it in a big vehicle and half buried their wheels all the way down it when they did. That trail is no more than one car wide, not an inch to spare on either side, and a lot of it runs right along the rim of the ravine. You can’t go around those ruts, and only a fool would risk trying to drive in them. So now that way is no good.”
“So what’s the third option?”
“There’s a road that comes in from the south and leads to the cliff rim where we could rappel down to the ruin from above. But that way has a problem as well—it crosses right through the most populated area of the pueblo. It’s closed to non-Indians for Quiet Time. I think that’s where they thought you might be able to help.”
“Well, they were wrong. At least for now. Nobody drives a motorized vehicle in the village during Quiet Time, unless there’s a special dispensation. After this dust-up today, I don’t think the tribe will cut you any slack. The Indians get very protective when they observe the old ways. That ruin will have to wait.”
“There’s a problem with waiting,” Prescott said as he started walking toward his truck with the tripod. “Someone or something has uncovered part of the ruin, and now winter snows could damage it. The walls and interiors are fragile, once exposed. The crew that discovered the site says there’s a ceremonial cave in the cliff face above the dwelling area that has some extraordinary pictographs on the walls. Those could be extremely delicate, and as you probably already know, rock art panels are a magnet for vandals. They use them for target practice, carve their initials and graffiti on them, paint over them, scar them with sanders, and even try to chisel whole slabs of them off the cliff walls to take them home. Assuming we were going to conserve the site, we would want to get in and document those—photograph them and measure them, even if we’re going to cover it all up without any further study. So waiting leaves the ruin at risk, but no matter how we try to get there now, it’s going to set off red flags when we do it.”
“Look, I know you’re already up here doing this survey, but it’s the wrong time. You need to wait, no matter whether there’s damage to the ruin from snow or not. The ancestors walk among the people right now, and you don’t want to disturb their dwellings when they are present.”
Prescott screwed up his face at me. “You don’t need to lecture me. I’m not ignorant.” He pulled his keys from his jeans pocket, ready to go. “My supervisor told me not to rely on you because you had another project. But you showed up, and I’m glad, so thank you for helping me out. Now, I have briefed you on the situation, and you’ve told me you can’t help further. Is there anything else you wanted to say?”
I hesitated, watching Mountain as he methodically moved along the fence line examining every post and peeing as high as he could on each one to leave his mark. “If you need me to go with you to talk to the war council about the ruin, I will. But I won’t deceive them about why you are asking to use the road during Quiet Time. You’ll just have to risk telling them about the ruin if you can’t wait. And given that you said you’d need equipment and a team, and you don’t have them here right now, do you think it’s worth disturbing their sacred time today?”
Mountain, noticing the strained tenor in our voices, perked up his ears and came toward me. He sniffed again at Prescott’s boots.
I went on: “And I apologize. I didn’t mean to pontificate about the Picuris and their traditions. Everything I said, you probably already knew.”
“I know that Quiet Time is about the worst time to be doing this work. And it’s funny that they just suddenly decided to have it now, when usually at this time of year, they’re holding dances that are open to the public.”
“I know. It’s the same way at Tanoah. Since they’re sister pueblos, I wonder if something happened that caused both of them to cancel their usual ceremonies.”
“This is when they get the heaviest snows up here. If I can, I’d like to assess that ruin soon. I just don’t know when or how right now. Have you got a number where I can call you when I do figure it out?”
“Can you even get a signal up here? Didn’t use to be able to. You might have to leave a message; cell phones still don’t work a lot of places where I have to go.”
“Tell me about it,” Prescott said. “But Picuris got a grant and put up a cell tower. Works pretty good in the high places. Still nothing in the canyons or the valleys. Just the same, here’s my card. Give me yours and I’ll call once I’ve made up my mind how to proceed.”
10: Standoff
BLM range tech Dominic Gomez had taken his post as Roy had instructed. I found him near a window not far from the front door of the Bear’s Paw, an artisan restaurant on the side of the two-lane state highway that passed through Peñasco. The place had seating for about twenty, and most of the tables and chairs were full, but the main business today—as it was every day—was their carry-out trade in gourmet coffee drinks, wild berry scones baked fresh daily, and homemade green chili and venison burritos.
Gomez nursed a gigantic plastic mug of coffee and made chit-chat with the locals as they came and went. I watched him talking to a pair of tourists.
The woman pointed to a map she held, asking about a location. A knit scarf adorned her neck while a matching cap set off her long brown hair. Mittens dangled from clips attached to the sleeves of her new-looking red down parka. The male of this pair was only slightly taller and wore a spotless red parka as well, topped with a quilted ball cap with ear flaps. The two looked like they had stepped out of a catalogue for winter outdoor wear.
Dominic wore an expression like an animal in a trap.
I stepped in to rescue him. “Hey, Gomez.” I looked from one to another in the group. “Sorry to interrupt,”
Dominic looked at me with surprise. “Hi, Jamaica. No, no, you’re not interrupting.”
“We had to be going anyway,” the two fashion plates said. They muttered farewells to Gomez and went to the cash register to pay for their meal.
“You looked like you were in a bind. Thought I’d help out,” I said.
“Yeah, thanks. I don’t know why Roy made me do this. I’m not that great at small talk.” Gomez set his coffee mug down on the wide adobe window sill. “I’m just wasting my time here. That Ibanez guy hasn’t shown up, and nobody seems inte
rested in whether or not he loses his cows and we make barbecue out of them.”
“The day’s not over yet,” I said. “You’d be surprised how word travels in a place like this.”
“I know. I live in a small village not too far from here. But I feel like I’m fishing and nobody’s biting. I’ve had to listen to an old man go on for a half hour about his gout, and a woman from Texas started telling me her whole life story; I couldn’t get rid of her. Just one person after another, gab-gab-gab. I thought I maybe had a nibble with one guy. When I asked about Ibanez, he just turned around and left, but that was quite a while ago.”
“Still, that’s a good sign. I bet he gets the word to your guy.”
“Could be. But so far, all I’m doing is drinking coffee and standing around shooting the breeze. I have to mend that fence and get those cows out of that horse meadow. What are you doing up here, anyway?”
“I’m working for a few days as a loaner to the Santa Fe office, helping a BLM archaeologist over by Picuris.”
As we stood by the window, we saw two pickups converge on the parking lot, each of them carrying a crew of Hispanos in their cargo beds. These ready riders jumped out like a platoon on the move, the trucks’ doors flew open in unison, and the occupants of the cabs spilled forth and joined the march to the door of the Bear’s Paw.
“I think your new pal Ibanez has come to talk grazing rights with you,” I said, “and he brought his negotiating team.”
The door of the restaurant swung open and slammed into a wooden rack filled with tourist pamphlets on the wall behind it. A short, broad-shouldered, angry-looking man led the pack. He made straight for Gomez, his chest thrust out. “You the pendejo who’s saying you are going to make barbacoa out of my steers?”
Gomez seemed to puff up in his uniform jacket and jeans. “You the guy whose steers are grazing in the meadow where the Forest Service keeps their horses over winter?”
A line of Ibanez’ backups moved in on both sides of their buddy, creating a wall of northern New Mexico back-country vigilantes, effectively blocking us in with the window at our backs. The vigilantes seemed to pay little notice to me. All eyes were on Dominic.
“I didn’t put my cows in that meadow,” Ibanez said. “The fence maybe came down if they got in.”
Gomez countered: “Probably so. Do you have a grazing permit for the land behind that meadow?”
“Yeah, I got one.”
“We don’t have a record of it at the BLM, and neither does the Forest Service.”
“Well, I got it. I talked to somebody at the ranger station and they told me I could graze my cows back there.”
“May I see your permit?” Dominic spoke in a civil tone, but I noticed that the fingers of his left hand were trembling beneath the cuff of his coat sleeve.
“I don’t got it with me.”
“I’ll wait here if you want to go get it.”
“I ain’t going to go get it, I told you I have it, and that oughta’ be enough.” Ibanez pushed his chin forward and his upper lip curled into a sneer.
“You can either produce that permit,” Gomez said, “or you can remove your cows from that meadow before 5 p.m. today. Otherwise, the BLM will confiscate the animals. Those are your options.”
At this, his posse began to grumble loudly and wave their hands, urging Ibanez to stand up to this ultimatum.
The customers in the restaurant, who had been creating a low din of noise before, had all gone quiet, every eye on this new development.
Ibanez gave me a lewd grin. “Esta chica flaca, this skinny girl here, she your posse? That all you got?” He wrinkled his nose and flicked his fingers in front of it, as if to get rid of a bad smell.
I eyed him back, my face deliberately blank.
“Look, we don’t want any trouble,” Gomez offered. “We’re just looking to get your cows someplace where they’re properly permitted to graze. But we can call the sheriff’s office for backup if you think I might need some.”
Through the window, I saw a white BLM truck pull up in front of the café. I made eye contact with Prescott as he was getting out of the cab and raised my eyebrows. I turned to face Gomez as if I were speaking confidentially to him, but so that Prescott could see me through the window. “I’m sure someone already dialed 911,” I said, pronouncing the number slowly and distinctly, and making a gesture with my thumb and pinky as if to put a telephone to my ear. “That couple you were just talking to? They were watching when these guys came in the door. I saw the guy through the window and he held up his cell phone to let me know he was calling 911.” Again, I made the hand gesture and said the number slowly and deliberately.
Eddiejoe Ibanez furrowed his brows, then looked to either side at his buddies, grinning, and making the thumb-pinky-phone gesture himself. “Is she for real?” His crew laughed heartily.
I tried to stall a few seconds longer: “And the cashier took a phone into the back room when you fellas came in, so I think she had the same idea. I would imagine the nearest deputy is on the way right now.”
Ibanez and company turned to look at the cash register. There was no one behind the counter.
As if on cue, Prescott walked through the open front door and announced, “There’s a sheriff’s deputy on the way from the ranger station. Be here in less than a minute.”
Eddiejoe looked from me to Dominic, and chewed on his lip. Then he looked at one of his buddies and said, “Sabes, yo tenía un lugar para pastar las vacas antes de que la wetback puta se puso en el centro de las cosas.”
His gang laughed at this, and I made a mental note to ask Gomez for a translation when this was over.
Ibanez moved close to Dominic, only an inch from his face. “I’ll make you a deal. I can maybe get my cows out tomorrow, but there’s no way I can do it by tonight.”
“Tomorrow by noon then,” Gomez said.
Ibanez shook his head ever so slightly up and down, his mouth in a half sneer. And slowly, the knot of angry men began to untangle and to shuffle back out of the café. On the way out the door, Ibanez grabbed a scone from the tiered plate on the front of the counter by the register. He held it up defiantly as if counting coups. And he walked out the door.
“What was that he said in Spanish?” I asked.
“Something about how he had a place to put his cows until some wetback bitch got in the way of it.”
“Yeah, right. Blame it on a woman. Hey, you did great,” I said to Dominic. “And you did great, too,” I said to Prescott.
“I’m glad I showed up when I did. I figure this makes you and me even for the thing earlier today. I’ll call and cancel the deputy. She wasn’t coming from the ranger station, but I thought it would help if they thought so, since that’s just right down the road.” Prescott dialed his phone and put it to his ear, going back out the door as he did so.
“I don’t mean to be rude, Jamaica,” Dominic said, his shoulders slumping now, his hands still trembling. “I really appreciate what you did. But I have to use the restroom right now. And I may need to go over to the ranger station to get a change of pants.”
11: The Shadow
When I got back to my car, Mountain was standing up in the back, moving to look out first one window and then another. I opened my Jeep’s hatch and poured some of the water from the bottle I’d just purchased into Mountain’s dish. But he wouldn’t drink. He emitted a series of sharp pinging whines, like a radar SOS.
“What’s the matter, Buddy?” I glanced around. “We got rid of those bad guys, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I trusted Mountain. Like Tecolote, I didn’t always understand what he was saying, but he, too, had saved my life, and I knew his behavior intimately. The way he was acting now told me that whether or not I could see it, he sensed danger of some kind. After the standoff with Eddiejoe Ibanez and his gang, my adrenalin was pumping, too, and I had no doubt that the wolf was reading his cues from me.
“Come on,” I said, as I poured the untouched water from h
is dish out onto the asphalt and reached up for the lid to the hatch. “We’ll go the scenic route. That will help us unwind.”
I turned north onto Highway 75 and doubled back to State Road 518 and headed for Taos. Although the distance I would be driving was less than 20 miles, I would pass through the wild and rugged Sangre de Cristos and Carson National Forest by going this way. It would take some time to make the journey, especially if there was snow on the road. But I wanted to think, and I knew that I would be less distracted taking this route than going the more-traveled road down into Dixon and then up the busy main highway into Taos.
Mountain eventually tired of the effort of balancing on all fours in the back and reluctantly sank into a sitting position. But he did not lie down. Instead, straining his neck down and forward, he watched avidly out the windshield, his head just a few inches over my right shoulder.
“It’s okay, Buddy,” I said in a soothing tone. “Let’s enjoy this pretty drive.” I focused on the road for a while and then I began to let my mind wander over the events of this already-long day. The Secret Service had returned me to my cabin at dawn and I’d been going ever since. I reviewed the key people I had encountered since I’d received this strange assignment. All of them showed signs of suspicion, some even acted threatened. Roy, for example, didn’t seem to buy the cover the Secret Service had created for me to be off book with the Taos BLM, though it could have been because he felt insulted that the Deputy Director had made his first visit to our offices to see me instead of him. And the moment I had mentioned Adoria’s name to Momma Anna, she had reacted as if I were about to offend the ancestors. This might have been one of her usual attempts to reign in my curiosity for fear I would transgress polite custom, as I unknowingly had many times. But after she suggested I talk to Tecolote, when I pressed further, Momma Anna had told me to consult the peyote plant and make an offering of money. What did she think I would learn from doing that? Tecolote had talked about dreams and witches and ravens before she finally told me to look for the money. What did all that mean?