Elizabeth Lowell - Outlaw

Now she had an absurd impulse to reach out and touch Ten, to protest the appearance of the handsome, self-contained stranger who waited for her answer with cool attention, his whole attitude telling her that whether she chose to go forward or back, it made no personal difference to him.

"September Canyon," Diana said after a minute. Although she tried, her voice wasn't as controlled as his had been.

Ten took off the brake and resumed driving.

Eventually the silence, which Diana had welcomed before, began to eat at her nerves. She looked out the window but found herself glancing again and again toward Ten. She told herself that it was only his casual skill with the truck that fascinated her. She had done enough rough-country travel in the past to admire his expertise. And it was his expertise she was admiring, not the subtle flex and play of his muscles beneath the faded black work shirt he wore.

"You're a very good driver," she said. Ten nodded indifferently.

Silence returned, lengthened, filling the cab until Diana rolled down the window just to hear the whistle of wind. She told herself the lack of conversation didn't bother her. After all, she had been the one to resist talk during the long hours since dawn. When Ten had pointed out something along the road or asked about her work, she had nodded or answered briefly and had no questions of her own to offer.

But now that she thought about it, she had a perfect right to ask a few businesslike questions of Ten and get a few businesslike answers.

"Will it distract you to talk?" she asked finally.

"No."

Brief and to the point. Very businesslike. Irritating, too. Silently Diana asked herself if her earlier, brief, impersonal answers had seemed cool and clipped to Ten.

"I didn't mean to be rude earlier," she said.

"You weren't."

Diana waited. Ten said nothing more.

"How much farther is it to September Canyon?" she asked after a few minutes.

"An hour."

Diana looked up toward the mesa top where pinon and juniper and cedar grew, punctuated by pointed sprays of yucca plants. The clouds had become a solid mass whose bottom was a blue color so deep it was nearly black.

"Looks like rain," she said.

Ten nodded. More silence, more bumps, more growling sounds from the laboring four-wheel-drive truck.

"Why is it called Picture Wash?" Diana asked in combination of irritation and determination.

"There are pictographs on the cliffs." Six whole words. Incredible.

"Anasazi?" she asked. Ten shrugged.

"Did other Indians live here when the white man came?" Diana asked, knowing very well that they had.

Ten nodded.

"Mountain Utes?" she asked, again knowing the answer.

"Yes," he said as he swerved around a mass of shale that had extended a slippery tongue onto the roadway.

Diana hardly noticed the evasive maneuver. She was intent on drawing out the suddenly laconic Ten. Obviously that would require a question that couldn't be answered by yes, no or a shrug. Inspiration came.

"Why are you called Tennessee?"

"I was the oldest."

"I don't understand."

"Neither did Dad."

Diana gave up the word game and concentrated on the land.

The truck kicked and twitched and skidded around a series of steep, uphill curves, climbing up a mesa spur and onto the top. There was a long, reasonably straight run across the spur. Pinon and juniper whipped by, interspersed with a handful of big sage and other drought-adapted shrubs.

Abruptly there was an opening in the pinon and juniper. Though the ground looked no different, big sagebrush grew head-high and higher. Their silver-gray, twisting branches were thicker than a strong man's arm.

"Stop!" Diana said urgently.

The truck shuddered to a halt. Before the pebbles scattered by the tires finished rolling, Diana had her seat belt off and was jumping down the cab.

"What's wrong?" Ten asked, climbing out of the track.

Diana didn't answer. Watching the ground with intent, narrowed eyes, she quartered the stand of big sage, twisting and turning, zigzagging across the open areas in the manner of someone searching for something. She was so involved in her quest that she didn't seem to notice the scrapes and scratches the rough brush delivered to her unprotected arms.

Ten hesitated at the edge of the road, wondering if Diana was looking for a little privacy. It had been a long drive from the ranch, and there were no amenities such as gas stations or public rest rooms along the way. Yet Diana seemed more interested in the open areas between clumps of big sage than in the thicker growths that would have offered more privacy.

Without warning Diana went down on her knees had began digging hurriedly in the rocky ground. Ten started toward her, ignoring the slap and drag of brush over his clothes. When he was within ten feet of her, she gave a cry of triumph and lifted a squarish rock in both hands. Dirt clung to the edges and dappled light fell across the stone's surface, camouflaging its oddly regular shape.

"Look!" she cried, holding up her prize to Ten.

He eased forward until her was close to her, ducked a branch that had been going after his eyes, straightened and looked.

"A stone," Ten said neutrally.

Diana didn't notice his lack of enthusiasm. She had enough for both of them and the truck, as well. Nor did she notice the dirty streaks left on her jeans when she rubbed the rock back and forth, cleaning the part of the stone that had been buried beneath the dirt. After a few moments she held the rock in a patch of sunlight coming through the open branches of the sage.

"Beautiful," she crooned, running her fingertips delicately along the stone, absorbing the subtle variations in the surface, marks that were the result of applied intelligence rather than random weathering. "Just…beautiful."

The throaty timbre of Diana's voice lured Ten as no stone could have. He sat on his heels next to her and looked closely at the rock that she was continuing to stroke as though it were alive.

The contours of the stone were too even, its edges too angular to be the result of chance. When the light touched the rock just right, tiny dimples could be seen, marks left by countless patient blows from a stone ax held in the hands of an Anasazi stone mason. Seeing those tangible marks of a long-dead man made the skin on Ten's skull tighten in a primal reflex that was as far older than the civilized artifact Diana was cherishing in her hands.

Without realizing it, Ten stretched out his own hand, feeling a need to confirm the stone's reality through touch. The rock had the texture of medium sandpaper. The dimples were shallow, more a vague pattern than true pockmarks. Cold from the ground an one end, sun warmed on the other, bearing the marks of man all over its surface, the stone was enduring testimony to a culture that was known only by its fragmentary ruins.

"How did you know this was here?" Ten asked.

"No juniper or pinon," Diana said absently as she turned the relic of the past over and over in her hands.

Ten glanced around. She was right. Despite the luxuriant growth of big sage on the ground, there were no junipers or pinons for fifty yards in any direction.

"They don't grow on ground that has been disturbed," Diana continued, measuring the area of the big sage with her eyes. "When you see a place like this, there's a very good chance that Anasazi ruins lie beneath the surface, covered by the debris of time and rain and wind."

Gray eyes narrowed while Ten silently reviewed his knowledge of the surrounding countryside.

"There are a lot of patches of big sage on Wind Mesa," he said after a minute. "My God, there must be hundreds of places like this on both sides of Picture Wash. That and the presence of year-round water is why the MacKenzies bought rights to this land more than a century ago."