Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

“I could, but what would be the fun in that?” He waved. “Come on up.”

Liam looked at the steep tumble of rocks, which to his eyes looked freshly spewed from a volcano, and sighed again, but it was nothing compared to the trail and shortly he was standing next to Erik at the door of the tent.

Three sides were rolled up halfway. The fourth side faced the cave and was rolled up all the way to the top and securely fastened with twine. There were fold-out tables, a folding stool, and various bits of paperwork, including a roughly drawn map, pinned to the canvas just beneath the roof. A foam bed was folded in thirds, topped by a rolled sleeping bag and a small duffel.

Erik followed his eyes. “Sometimes I bunk down here.”

Liam, thinking of the access trail, could see why. The tent was big enough for Liam to stand up in, which as a tall man he appreciated.

“Welcome to my lair,” Erik said with another wave of his hand. “Depending on who you talk to around here, I’m bringing truth and justice back to this part of the world, or I’m figuring out how to end resource extraction in the entire state. Which of course means an end to the world as we know it.”

“Wow. You must be powerful.”

Erik laughed. “You and I have no idea.”

“So, not a dig, but a cave.”

Erik nodded. “Yeah, I found the cave and explored. There is a natural shelf inside on the right, high up. It looks and feels planed to me, which could have been either deliberate or caused by usage. Either way it supports my thesis. Another thing?” He turned and pointed. “You see the way the rocks on the top of the spur look a little flatter and smoother than normal?”

Liam followed Erik’s finger. “I guess?”

“Trust me, it’s there.” Berglund dropped his arm. “This is the only significant spur of rock on this side of the Bay north of the Spit. I think the old folks, the Alaska Natives who made a living out of the Bay before we white folks were born or thought of, used this site as a small harbor to access the interior of the Kenai Peninsula.”

Liam digested this in silence for a moment. “Why not just use the Spit?”

“There wasn’t any harbor on it back in the day, and therefore no shelter from the big storms, not if they wanted to leave their boats there while they were trading in the interior. There isn’t much shelter on the Spit now, come to that. Next big quake and whoosh. But here, they would have had the Spit as a barrier between them and the big swells and the high winds.” He turned and faced the cliff and pointed upward, although they couldn’t see anything through the roof of the tent. “I think this trail is a lot older than everyone thinks today. There’s a creek, a small one, that zigs and zags all the way up and over the bluff.”

He nodded to the left and Liam saw water trickling out of a gap in the cliff. “The driveway follows it down.”

Erik nodded. “I haven’t walked all of it but what I’ve seen so far suggests a foot trail that follows the creek and climbs all the way up and over the back bluff. From there they could have traveled to portages across Tustumena and Skilak Lakes and on to trade with the tribes in Kenai and Soldotna.”

Liam scratched his head. “Why not just take their boats around? The Alutiiq were seriously good at long distance rowing. Baranov used them to get around.”

“Ah, but if they went around they’d miss trading with all the people along the way.”

Liam shrugged. “It’s a theory.”

Erik laughed, unoffended. “I’m buying a drone to take pictures from the air. Next summer I’m walking the trail until I lose it or it loses me. There are traditional trails all over Alaska. The Chilkoot and the Iditarod are the most famous but they aren’t the only ones. You know the old Iditarod starts in Seward, right?”

Seward was on the eastern side of the Peninsula and considerably farther north. “Yes.”

“I don’t want to theorize ahead of my data, but I’m hoping this trail connected with that one and I’m hoping to find proof of it.”

“How far back do you think this trail goes?”

“How far back did the first Alaska Natives get here?”

“That’s a long time for a trail to last.”

“Trails don’t just disappear. They get overgrown and flooded out, but they never completely disappear. Look at the Roman roads.”

Liam looked toward the trail. “Not exactly Roman engineering, there.”

“Trails don’t just disappear,” Erik said again. “If it’s there, I’ll find it.”

“What happens if you do?”

“I used to work for UNESCO. If I can find enough to prove my theory, I can start agitating for them to consider making the trail a World Heritage Site.”

Liam was impressed and showed it. “You mean like the Grand Canyon?”

“More like Taos Pueblo or Mesa Verde. Man-made.”

Liam looked out at the drill rig parked in plain view, and wondered what RPetCo thought about Erik Berglund’s ideas.

“You ever seen a dig site before?”

“One.”

“Really?” Erik looked and sounded surprised. There probably weren’t many people who responded to that question in the affirmative. “Where?”

“Outside Newenham.”

“A Yupiq site? I don’t—oh. Des McLynn?”

Liam nodded. The archeological community in Alaska couldn’t be so large they wouldn’t all know or at least know about each other.

“What an asshole.”

“Agreed.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Investigating.” Liam waited. This was always the turning point in meeting new people. A lot of cops called those they were sworn to serve and protect “civilians.” He preferred “neighbors” himself, but he’d found that he’d had to prove himself in every community in which he’d served, and that his job lost him a lot of friends from the moment they became aware of his profession.

“That’s right, Blue Jay called you a trooper.”

Liam nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Erik said. “Newenham. You’re that guy. The Storyknife Killer.”

There were many ways Liam could have answered but he settled on, “Yes.”

Erik shook his head. “Murder by archeological artifact. That’s not a headline you see every day.” He jerked his head. “You want to see what I’ve got going on here?”

Liam relaxed. “Why I defied death getting down here. You said at Jeff’s that you thought human habitation went back farther in the Bay than is generally understood.”

Erik snorted. “Yeah, mostly because archeologists just don’t fucking listen.”

“Listen to whom?”

“The people who lived here first, for starters.”

“Alaska Natives, you mean?”

“The Sugpiaq locally. Aleuts or Alutiiq they’re better known by, but their own name is Sugpiaq. And then the Russians showed up and of course that’s where all the history books start.” He shook his head. “ Littera scripta manet .” He saw Liam’s blank look. “The written word survives. It’s pretty much the only thing that does. Why we get Homer forced down our throats in high school.”

“I remember,” Liam said, with feeling. “So, you’re saying because the Sugpiaq didn’t have a written language—”

“Exactly.”

“So there’s no written record there was a trail but—”

“Exactly,” Erik said again, beaming.

“Have you asked them? The Sugpiaq?”

“Not yet. I’d like to have some concrete evidence before I do.”

The guy was so excited that it was hard not to like him. “Where is your evidence?”

Berglund grinned. “Trooper,” he said without heat.

Liam grinned back. “Guilty as charged.”

“Too much to eat not to have,” Erik said. “There was a monograph written by Hilary Houten—the old fart you saw yelling at me at the brewpub, he’s not a fan—anyway, Houten wrote a paper thirty-odd years ago that claims the lack of artifacts proves that no one settled here, or at least on this side of the Bay. Well, maybe they didn’t settle here, but they sure as hell used it.” He stood in front of one of the tables, where many unidentifiable objects were neatly laid out and labeled. At least half the names on the labels were followed by question marks. “This is for sure a harpoon head—see the barbs? No flies on the old folks when it came to building something that would hang on to what they stuck it into.”