Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

Of alpha hydrogen

Yields satisfactory results.

M82 was once ten billion stars,

Now it has returned to the slow lazy dust of creation.

Is this the mighty work

Of the same God who fires the Sun?

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“Messier 82 is a very strange galaxy in Virgo. The whole galaxy blew up, annihilating ten billion stars.”

“Interesting,” said de Vaca. “But I don’t think it’s what we’re looking for.”

They scrolled on.

Block house in the sheeted sun

The ravens rise as you approach,

They circle and float, crying at the trespass,

Waiting for emptiness to return.

The Great Kiva

Is half-filled with sand,

But the sipapu

Lies open.

It empties its silent cry into the fourth world.

When you leave

The ravens settle back,

Croaking with satisfaction.

“Beautiful,” said de Vaca. “And somehow familiar. I wonder what this black house is?”

Carson suddenly sat up. “Kin Klizhini,” he said. “It’s Apache for ‘Black House.’ He’s writing about the ruin just south of here.”

“You know Apache?” de Vaca asked, looking at him curiously.

“Most of our ranch hands were Apache,” Carson said. “I picked up some stuff from them when I was a kid.”

There was a silence while they read the poem again.

“Hell,” said Carson. “I don’t see anything here.”

“Wait.” De Vaca held up her hand. “The Great Kiva was the underground religious chamber of the Anasazi Indians. The center of the kiva contained a hole, called the sipapu , that connected this world with the spirit world below. They called that world the Fourth World. We live in the Fifth World.”

“I know that,” Carson said. “But I still don’t see any clues here.”

“Read the poem again. If the kiva was filled with sand, how could the sipapu be open?”

Carson looked at her. “You’re right.”

She looked at Carson and grinned. “At last, cabrón , you learn to speak the truth.”

They decided to take the horses, in order to be back in time for the evening emergency drill. The sun had passed the meridian and the day was at its hottest.

Carson watched de Vaca throw a saddle on the rat-tailed Appaloosa. “I guess you’ve ridden before,” he said.

“Damn right,” de Vaca replied, buckling the flank cinch and looping a canteen over the horn. “You think Anglos have a monopoly? When I was a kid, I had a horse named Barbarian. He was a Spanish Barb, the horse of the Conquest.”

“I’ve never seen one,” Carson said.

“They’re the best desert horse you can find. Small, stout, and tough. My father got some from an old Spanish herd on the Romero Ranch, Those horses had never interbred with Anglo horses. Old Romero said he and his ancestors always shot any damn gringo stallions that came sniffing around their mares.” She laughed and swung herself into the saddle. Carson liked the way she sat a horse: balanced and easy.

He mounted Roscoe and they rode to the perimeter gate, punched in the access code, then reined toward Kin Klizhini. The ancient ruin reared up on the horizon about two miles away: two walls poking up from the desert floor, surrounded by mounds of rubble.

De Vaca tilted her head back, gave her hair a shake. “In spite of everything that’s happened, I never get tired of the beauty of this place,” she said as they rode.

Carson nodded. “When I was sixteen,” he said, “I spent a summer on a ranch at the northern end of the Jornada, called the Diamond Bar.”

“Really? Is the desert up there like it is down here?”

“Similar. As you move northward, the Fra Cristóbal Mountains come around in an arc. The rain shadow from the mountains falls across there and it gets a little greener.”

“What were you, a ranch hand?”

“Yeah, after my dad lost the ranch I cowboyed around for the summer before going to college. That Diamond Bar was a big ranch, about four hundred sections between the San Pascual Mountains and the Sierra Oscura. The real desert started at the southern edge of the ranch, at a place called Lava Gate. There’s a huge lava flow that runs almost to the foot of the Fra Cristóbal Mountains. Between the lava flow and the mountains is a narrow gap, maybe a hundred yards across. The old Spanish trail used to go through there.” He laughed. “Lava Gate was like the gates of hell. You didn’t want to go south from there, you might never come back. And now here I am, right in the middle of it.”

“My ancestors came up that trail with Oñate in 1598,” said de Vaca.

“ Up the Spanish trail?” Carson asked. “They crossed the Jornada?”

De Vaca nodded, squinting against the sun.

“How did they find water?”

“There’s that doubting look on your face again, cabrón . My grandfather told me they waited until dusk at the last water, and then drove their stock all night, stopping at about four in the morning to graze. Farther on, their Apache guide brought them to a spring called the Ojo del Águila. Eagle Spring. Its location is now lost. At least, that’s what my grandfather said.”

There was a question Carson had been curious about for some time, but had been afraid to ask. “Where, exactly, did you get the name Cabeza de Vaca?”

De Vaca looked at him truculently. “Where’d you get the name Carson?”

“You have to admit, ‘Head of Cow’ is a little odd for a name.”

“So is ‘Son of Car’ ”

“Forgive me for asking,” Carson said, mentally reprimanding himself for not knowing better.

“If you knew your Spanish history,” de Vaca said, “you’d know about the name. In 1212, a soldier in the Spanish army marked a pass with a cow skull, and led a Spanish army to victory over the Moors. That soldier was given a royal title and the right to use the name ‘Cabeza de Vaca’.”

“Fascinating,” Carson yawned. And probably apocryphal , he thought.

“Alonso Cabeza de Vaca was one of the first European settlers in America in 1598. We come from one of the most ancient and important European families in America. Not that I pay any attention to that kind of thing.”

But Carson could see from the proud look on her face that she paid a great deal of attention to that kind of thing.

They rode for a while, saying nothing, enjoying the heat of the day and the gentle roll of the horses. De Vaca rode slightly ahead, her lower body moving with the horse, her torso relaxed and quiet, left hand on the reins and right hooked in her belt loop. As they approached the ruin, she stopped, waiting for him to catch up.

He drew alongside and she looked at him, an amused gleam in her violet eyes.

“Last one there is a pendejo ,” she said suddenly, leaning forward and spurring her horse.

By the time Carson could recover and urge Roscoe forward, she was three lengths ahead, the horse going at a dead run, its head down, ears flattened, hooves throwing gravel back into Carson’s face. He urged Roscoe on with urgent, light heel jabs.

Carson edged up on her and the two horses raced alongside, leaping the low mesquite bushes, the wind roaring in their ears.- The ruin loomed closer, the great stone walls etched against the blue sky. Carson knew he had the better mount, yet he watched in disbelief as de Vaca leaned close to her horse’s ear, urging him forward in a low but electric voice. Carson jabbed and shouted in vain. They flashed between the two ruined walls, de Vaca now half a length ahead, her hair whipping like a black flame behind her. Ahead of them, Carson saw a low wall rise suddenly out of the brown sands. A group of ravens burst upward with a raucous crying as they both took the wall at a leap and were suddenly past the ruin. They slowed to a lope, then a trot, turning the horses back, cooling them off.