Douglas Preston - Thunderhead

Nora looked at him. “What makes it strange is that there’s no overt evidence of warfare or invasion. All we really know is that the Anasazi suddenly retreated to these cliff sites, stayed there for a while, and then abandoned the Four Corners area entirely. Some archaeologists think it was caused by a total social breakdown.”

Sloane had been scanning the cliffs with a shaded hand. Now she took the binoculars from Smithback and examined the rock more carefully. “I think I can see a way up,” she said. “If you climb that talus slope, there’s a hand-and-toe trail pecked up the slickrock which goes all the way to the ledge. From there you can edge over.” She lowered the binoculars and looked at Nora, amber eyes lit up with mild excitement. “Do we have time to try it?”

Nora glanced at her watch. They were already hopelessly behind schedule—one more hour wouldn’t matter, and they did have an obligation to survey as many ruins as they could. Besides, it might revive some flagging spirits. She gazed up at the little ruin, feeling her own curiosity aroused. There was always the chance her father had explored this ruin, maybe even left his scrawled initials on a rockface to record his presence. “All right,” she said, reaching for her camera. “It doesn’t look technical.”

“I’d like to go, too,” said Holroyd excitedly. “I did some rock climbing in college.”

Nora looked at the flushed, eager face. Why not?

“I’m sure Mr. Swire would be happy to give the horses an extra rest.” Nora looked at the group. “Anybody else want to come?”

Black gave a short laugh. “No thanks,” he said. “I value my life.”

Aragon glanced up from his notebook and shook his head. Bonarotti had gone off to gather mushrooms. Smithback pushed away from the rock wall and stretched luxuriously. “Guess I’d better tag along with you, Madame Chairman,” he said. “It wouldn’t do to have you find an Anasazi Rosetta stone while I was loafing around down here.”

They crossed the stream, scrambled over boulders and up the talus slope, loose rocks clattering behind them. The sandstone ahead sloped upward at a forty-five-degree angle, notched with a series of eroded dimples set into the rock.

“That’s the hand-and-toe trail.” Nora pointed. “The Anasazi pounded them out with quartzite hammerstones.”

“I’ll go first,” said Sloane. To Nora’s surprise she shot nimbly upward, limbs tawny in the sunlight, hands and feet finding the holds with the instinctive assurance of a veteran rock climber. “Come on up!” she said a minute later, kneeling on the ledge above their heads. Holroyd followed. Then Nora watched Smithback creep cautiously up the slickrock face, gangly limbs clutching at the narrow holds, his face covered with sweat. Something about him made her smile. She waited until he had safely completed the climb, then brought up the rear herself.

In a few moments they were all sitting on the ledge, catching their breath. Nora looked at the camp spread out below their feet, the horses grazing along an apron of sand, the humans looking like splotches of color resting against the red cliffs.

Sloane rose. “Ready?”

“Go for it,” said Nora.

They crept along the narrow ledge. It was about two feet wide, but the bottom was canted slightly and scattered with fragments of sandstone, which rattled off into space as they inched along. After a short distance the ledge broadened out, curved around a corner, and the ruin came into view.

Nora made a quick visual inspection. The alcove was perhaps fifty feet long, ten feet high at its highest point, and about fifteen feet deep. A low masonry retaining wall had been built at the lip of the alcove and filled with rubble, leveling the surface. Behind were four small roomblocks of flat stones mortared with mud; one with a keyhole door, the rest with tiny windows. The builders had used the natural sandstone roof of the alcove as their ceiling.

Nora turned to Holroyd and Smithback. “I think Sloane and I should make an initial survey. You wouldn’t mind waiting here for a few minutes?”

“Only if you promise not to find anything,” Smithback replied.

Nora unbuckled the hood of her camera and walked gingerly along the facade, photographing the exterior of the dwelling. Although Sloane’s expertise with the large 4x5 Graflex made her the expedition’s official photographer, Nora liked to keep her own record of all the sites she studied.

She stopped to peer more closely at the plastered wall. Here, she could see the actual handprints of the person who had smeared the adobe. Raising her camera again, she took a careful closeup, then another when she noticed a clear set of fingerprints. It was not unusual to find prints preserved in Anasazi plaster and corrugated pottery, but she always liked to document them when she could. They helped serve as a reminder that archaeology was the study, ultimately, of people, not artifacts—something she felt many of her colleagues seemed to forget.

There was the usual littering of potsherds on the ground—mostly Pueblo III Mesa Verde whiteware and some late Tusayan-style corrugated grayware. A.D. 1240, Nora thought without surprise.

Sloane, who had been sketching a quick plan of the ruin, now removed a pair of tweezers and some Ziploc bags from her rucksack. Labeling the bags with a marker, she moved carefully forward, picking up a sampling of potsherds and some scattered corncobs with the tweezers. She placed them in the bags, then marked their positions in her sketchbook. She worked quickly and deftly, and Nora watched with growing surprise. Sloane seemed to know exactly what to do. In fact, she worked as if she had been on many professional surveys before.

Reaching into her bag again, Sloane pulled out a small, battery-powered chrome instrument and moved to a viga that projected from one of the roomblocks. There was a small whining sound, and Nora realized she was taking a core from the roofbeam for tree-ring dating. By studying the growth pattern of the rings, a specialist in dendrochronology such as Black could tell the exact year the tree was cut. As the whining ended abruptly and silence returned, Nora felt a sudden annoyance at this mechanized disturbance of the site—or, perhaps, with the fact that Sloane had done it so blithely, without her permission. She instinctively moved forward.

Looking over, Sloane read her face in an instant. “This all right?” she asked, raising her dark eyebrows inquiringly.

“Next time, let’s discuss something like this first.”

“Sorry,” Sloane said, in a tone even more annoying for its apparent lack of sincerity. “I just thought it might be useful—”

“It will be useful,” Nora said, trying to moderate her voice. “That’s not the point.”

Sloane glanced at her more closely, a cool, appraising glance that bordered on insolence. Then the lazy grin returned. “I promise,” she said.

Nora turned and moved to the doorway. She realized her irritation was partly based on a vague, irrational threat she felt to her leadership. She hadn’t realized Sloane was so experienced in fieldwork, spoiling Nora’s earlier assumption that she would be leading Goddard’s daughter through the basics. She immediately felt sorry for showing her feelings; she had to admit that the pencil-thin core probably contained the most useful piece of information they would take from the ancient ruin.

She shined a penlight inside the first roomblock and found the interior relatively well preserved. The walls were plastered, still showing traces of painted decoration. She angled the beam toward the floor, covered with sand and dust that had blown in over the centuries. In one corner she could see the edge of a metate—a grinding stone—protruding from the dirt, beside a broken mano.