Conard County Watch

“So everything has to be labeled as to where it comes from?”

“Totally. The rock layers will help date everything. I’m hoping they’ll also tell me why so many fossils are here in this place. You know Wyoming is full of marvelous fossil beds, but this find...it looks rather sudden. Too many bones too close together.”

“Some kind of catastrophe,” he mused, reaching for another roll.

“I’m wondering.” The coffee was staying warm in the insulated mug he’d poured it into, and she settled more comfortably, savoring it and savoring her view of the cliff. “I think I’m obsessed.”

“Hard not to be obsessed with a mystery like this.” He scooted around a little on his rock to give himself a better view, staring straight at it. “When you described it to me, I had a mental image, of course. It wasn’t anywhere near as grand as this.”

“It keeps taking my breath away, again and again.” She placed her remaining piece of roll on the edge of the container, wiped her fingers on her jeans and raised her camera again. Photographing this throughout the day today was rapidly becoming a compulsion, almost as if she was afraid it would disappear overnight. Well, it probably could, if the mountain moved again.

“How stable is this cleft?” Cope asked, practically reading her mind.

“Gray Cloud brought me to see it last autumn when I was visiting my cousin up here. It’s been stable that long. But one of our team is a geologist. She’ll be better able to tell me the situation with the matrix.”

“Matrix?”

“The rock the fossils are buried in. What kind of rock, how hard it is, whether it’s going to crumble if we use dental tools or defy us so much we need a jackhammer.”

That elicited a laugh from him, a pleasant sound on the warming morning air. “A jackhammer, huh?”

She lowered the camera, smiling. “Wouldn’t be the first time. You just have to take out huge slabs without troubling anything else. But this scene is so different, everything so close together. We’d better be able to use brushes and small tools or we’re just going to have to cover it with a protective sealant and study it from the face only.”

“That would be disappointing.”

“To say the least. Preservation first, however.” She paused, then added, “Speaking of stability, however, everyone needs to wear hard hats up here. While I was taking photos this morning, some small rocks fell from above. I’d hate for anyone to get beaned by something bigger.”

“Of course. It’s a simple precaution.” He leaned back a bit, propping himself on one arm as she helped herself to more coffee. “I’m the historian, right? I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a whole lot about paleontology or archaeology. What I do know is how many travesties occurred in the past thanks to the first explorers around the world who saw these kinds of sites, and tombs and ancient cities, as a treasure trove to be taken and carelessly cataloged.”

She nodded, liking him more by the minute. “Sadly true. Egypt is still trying to recover artifacts from private owners and museums.”

“I know. Trying to reassemble an impressive history.” He smiled, his blue eyes bright. “So I’m glad to work with someone like you who understands how wrong that would be, sacred site or no. I saw enough looting in the Middle East to jam in my craw. I get people are poor, but the history they’re digging up and selling will never be replaced. And finding items in situ is so important to understanding them.”

“Amen to that.” She turned a bit on her rock, looking toward the other side of the cleft. Considering the tall rock face behind it, it seemed odd there was just that thin wall of rock, maybe ten feet high, facing it. Small, but it might hold treasures. Some of the split must have tumbled downward to a stream some thirty feet below, which was lined on the far side with trees. More rock had probably crumbled into the fill layer on which she was sitting. The stream below would be useful in their attempts to screen for tiny artifacts, and of course they’d have to study the tumbled rock for remnants. But still the geography appeared odd. She’d have to ask Claudia about that when she arrived. The geologist could probably explain what had happened here.

Maybe a cleft hadn’t really opened up. Maybe there’d been a rockfall on just this side only. But Gray Cloud had talked about it opening. As she sat there studying the terrain, she wondered briefly if Gray Cloud was right, if this was more than just a happy chance. Again the sense of the mountain looming over her tickled her deep inside, a sort of uneasy fluttery feeling.

But no, she wasn’t about to go down that path. This whole expedition had to be based on science, not strange feelings.

“You look troubled,” Cope remarked.

She glanced at him, realizing she had forgotten about him for so long that the hot coffee in her insulated mug had begun to cool noticeably. The air had warmed from the rising sun as well. Not enough to make her shed her jacket yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

“I’m not troubled, exactly,” she answered. “It’s just that this cleft is odd. I’ll need to ask Claudia about it when she gets here. Or maybe it’s nothing unusual at all, just a problem with my understanding of how Gray Cloud described it.”

“That’s possible. Different cultures and all that.”

He sat up and poured himself some more coffee, taking one of the remaining rolls.

Curiosity about something besides old bones awoke in her. “How much did you immerse yourself in the local cultures when you were...over there?”

“As much as I could.” His gaze grew distant. “Know your enemy and all that. Except most of the people weren’t our enemies at all. They were ordinary people who were trying to live an ordinary life in the midst of chaos. I was lucky to have a facility with languages so I could even make some friends.” He seemed to shake himself, then his gaze fixed on her again. “Ever seen a goat climb a vertical rock face?”

The change of subject was startling. She guessed he was trying to shake off memories he’d awakened. “Can’t say I have.”

“They’re amazing. They’d climb up and down those rocks as if they were level. Even the smallest of them are good at it. There was a day when I was an outpost, and I watched them for hours. Walking and jumping like it was nothing at all. A human rock climber wouldn’t be able to do it like that on his or her best day.”

That turned her attention back to the rock face. “I wonder if the mountain goats will try that wall?” The idea worried her. So much possible damage.

“I think they stay at higher elevations. Anyway, there’s nothing they’d want on that rock. Nothing growing, and probably not enough salt to make it appealing. It just reminded me of them.”

She smiled at him, glad she’d allowed herself to invite him to join her team. They might not have a crying need for a historian, but he probably had a lot of good stories to tell, and his perspective on the past could be useful.

Impatience began to tickle her again. God, how she wanted to start excavating those bones. It would be such a painstaking process, to do it correctly, that she couldn’t imagine being very far along by the end of the summer. Almost before she would know it, they’d be covering up all that history to protect it from snow, wind and rain. To keep it pristine. To prevent site contamination.

It had survived the past winter with little protection, if any. No reason to get worked up about next winter. “Dang,” she said suddenly. “I’m such a worrywart. Already planning how we’re going to protect this face from next winter. Heck, it made it through the last winter.”

“Unless the mountain decides to shake, I doubt it’s going anywhere.”

She returned her attention to him. “You’re an odd man, Carter Copeland.”

He flashed a charming grin. “Blame it on my past. I’ll never be ordinary again. So much the better if I deal with life with humor. So.” He paused. “Who all is going to be part of this team?”

“Claudia Alexander I already mentioned. She’s a geology postdoc who’s curious to find out why there are so many fossils here.”

“How come? Apart from a disaster happening all at once.”

“Fossilization is a rare thing, believe it or not. Special conditions are required, and nothing can disturb them for a long, long time. That’s why we actually have so few fossils, although you probably wouldn’t believe it when you go to a museum. In fact, when you go to a museum and look at those big statues of, say, a tyrannosaur, you’re seeing a lot of fake bones. Partly because we don’t have complete skeletons, and partly because the real fossilized bones are usually radioactive from all the centuries buried in the ground. When we display a genuine bone, we give it a coating of lead paint.”

Oh, she had his interest now. His gaze became piercing and she could almost sense the thoughts running around inside his head. “I never guessed that.”

“Most people don’t.” She set down her cup, pulled the band from her ponytail, and scooped her long auburn hair into a fresh one beneath the bottom of her yellow hard hat. “People think of the ground beneath their feet as this totally benign floor. But you dig deeper into it and you start to find all kinds of poisonous heavy metals. Some are very useful to us, but few of them are safe for extended exposure. For an example, I’ve seen tailings piles from mines that were over a century old where not even a blade of grass could grow.”

He nodded. “So we shouldn’t stand too close to that rock face.”

She laughed quietly. “Open air and all that. But yeah, you should shower at night, and when we start working on it, we’ll wear dust masks as a precaution. I doubt any part of that is radioactive enough to make someone sick, but why chance it when we’re going to be exposed all summer?”

“I agree.” He drained his coffee cup, then asked, “Okay, a geologist is joining the team. Any other paleontologists?”

“For right now, interns. Mostly grad students, some of them mine.”

At that moment her attention was drawn by a sound at the east end of the cleft, from within the trees. Gray Cloud? Not likely. That man moved with enviable silence. Who then?

After a half minute or so, a figure emerged from the trees into the clearing not far from the rock face. Renee wasn’t certain anyone else was allowed here, so she stood at once.

Cope apparently picked up on her unease and stood too, calling out, “Could you hold it there, please?”

The rider stopped. “Sorry if I’m disturbing. I’m Loren Butler from the ranch to the south. I heard something was going on up here and wanted to check it out.”

Renee chewed her lip. Was she going to have to defend this site from everybody who decided to take a ride?

“This is tribal land,” she called back. “Sacred. We have permission to work here. Do you?”

The man chuckled. He tipped back his head a little, revealing a pleasant face as the sun slipped beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “Nope,” he said frankly. “I heard there was some kind of rockslide up here last summer. Frankly, it’s a weird-looking one. Not exactly a cleft like Gray Cloud said. Or maybe part of the cleft is broken. Guess I won’t find out today. You can tell the elders I was here. I prefer to stay on good terms with my neighbors. But you can also tell them I was curious about what exactly happened.”

He paused, then added, “Just a couple miles south of me, on Thunder Mountain, they had rockslides a few years back ago that put a halt to building a ski resort. Makes you wonder if Gray Cloud ain’t right about this mountain having a brain. See ya.”

He turned his horse with a few clucks of his tongue and rode slowly back into the woods.

“I guess he has a reason to be curious,” Cope remarked. “If the mountain’s going to get busy making rockfalls, he might have something to worry about.”

But Renee’s thought had turned in a different direction. “It was a cleft.”

Cope turned to face her. “Was?”

“Last fall I was visiting my cousin and Gray Cloud brought me up here to show me.” She turned, taking care with the placement of her feet. “Right now it looks like a slide,” she said, pointing toward the rock face, “but when he showed it to me last fall, there was a narrow cleft in the rock, just enough for one person to walk through. The part to this side, where you can see the creek below, was thin but still tall and upright. It didn’t contain anything interesting I could see, so I wasn’t upset when I came back this year to discover that part of the top of the narrow piece had apparently crumbled. Gives us more room for work.” She shrugged. “But we’re still going to have to check all the stuff that fell below as well as what’s beneath us in the cleft.”

“Obviously,” he agreed. “What about farther up, like that guy just mentioned?”

“He’s right. It’s more of a cleft beyond those trees there, but you can’t tell if it all happened at once. Maybe Claudia will be able to. Regardless, I looked at it last fall and it didn’t appear promising. Which doesn’t mean I won’t check it out anyway.”

Cope fell silent, and Renee continued to stare at the rock face, but her thoughts were moving through time, not space. “You know,” she said after a minute, “it’s really weird that part of that narrow wall of rock collapsed like that.”

She fixed her gaze on Cope. “It’s almost as if someone deliberately knocked it down. As if they wanted samples and disturbed more than they intended.”

She watched Cope’s face darken, but he didn’t respond. Of course not. He was the one who had suggested security that she couldn’t afford. On the other hand, who the hell would want anything from here other than a cool fossil? And freeing something from the rock would take many hours. The most any trophy hunter could have hope of finding was something that was already loose.

That hardly required full-time rent-a-cops.

Another bunch of small rocks tumbled down from above. “Let’s get your hard hat,” she said. “Then I need to think about how we can stabilize the top of that wall.”

“I’ve got some ideas.”

She didn’t doubt it for a moment.

Chapter 2

The plan was to start off small, but the group didn’t feel all that small when they gathered at Maude’s diner that night, some meeting others for the first time.

There were Larry, Maddie and Carlos, all undergrad interns. Then there were Bets, Mason and Denise, her three graduate interns. And last but not least, Claudia Alexander, the geology postdoc, a woman with short, no-nonsense dark hair and huge gray eyes that seemed almost too big for her face. She stuck out among a group of young people who seemed almost blended in their similarities. That would change as Renee got to know them all better, but for now she hoped no one expected to be called by name.

“Okay.” She decided some honesty might be helpful up front. “I’m terrible with names. I’ll recognize your faces for the rest of my life, but give me time with your names. I’m better at identifying fossils.”

Laughter rolled around the tables that had been pulled together with the permission of the diner’s owner, Maude. In fact, Maude was already pouring coffee all around with a great deal of clatter and frowning. A couple of Renee’s interns looked intimidated by this, but once Cope ordered a dinner for himself, suggesting they all do the same if they were hungry, they relaxed. Maude, he told them sotto voce, was a local character.

Renee had met the woman last summer and was prepared for the graceless service they were receiving. Still, it was nice to know everyone was a target.

Soon they had ordered a meal from the menus. Young, active, with healthy appetites. Not surprising. Renee ordered a steak sandwich along with the majority, knowing it would probably be too much to eat, but once the dig got under way they’d all be working long hours, most of them physical. In her experience, on a dig like this, most people lost a bit of weight. You ate while you could. Soon enough they’d all be sick of beans heated on the portable stoves.

“I’m going to run over the basics again,” she said when everyone was served and eating. Playful conversation had been rather desultory as the interns tried cautiously to feel one another out. “We’re guests on tribal lands. Invited guests. That invitation will last only as long as we honor our hosts and their customs. Only as long as we treat the land as sacred, because believe me, the tribe believes that mountain is sacred. Tomorrow you’ll probably meet Gray Cloud, who is the Guardian of the Mountain in their culture, and one of the tribal elders.”

She paused, looking around the table, assessing the expressions on the many youthful faces. At this point she saw nothing to trouble her.

“I’m sure you all studied enough anthropology to know that the beliefs of local people are always to be respected, and your personal opinion of them does not matter. The local indigenous believe that Thunder Mountain, the mountain we’ll be working on, is sentient. You don’t have to believe that. You must respect it as if it is true, however. If one of the local tribe members tells you not to do something, stop at once. We can always talk with them if it’s something necessary, but in the meantime just stop. Trust me, when you see the rock face and fossils that are visible right now, you’ll fully understand what a tragedy it would be to find ourselves shut down because we were careless of their beliefs. Got it?”

Heads around the table nodded. All those earnest young faces. She sincerely hoped their youth wouldn’t result in any kind of hijinks. “It’s time to act like the professionals you want to be. I’m counting on you. Questions?”

The youngest guy at the table, Larry, she thought, waggled his hand for her attention as he finished chewing a mouthful of food. She waited patiently.

He took a swallow of cola, then spoke. “How can a mountain be alive?”

“The essence is really quite simple. The indigenous people believe that consciousness exists in everything, from the trees to the stones. It’s not limited to animals that run around. While the consciousness may be different from what we know ourselves, it still exists. Mother Earth, for example, is a living being, too.”

“Okay,” Larry answered slowly.

“Always give thanks for the gifts of nature.”

She smiled. “Think about that before we go out to the site in the morning. The very stones will hear you, according to local tradition. The stones, the trees, the birds, the running water. If you at least make an effort to respect that, we might get through the summer.”

The group fell silent as they pondered what she had said and thought about the summer ahead. Good. This was their last chance to change their minds while she could possibly find replacements. Plus, she wanted them to be very aware of the delicacy of their situation here. It would kill her if this expedition fell apart because they thought she was exaggerating the cultural limitations.

At least no one argued with her, and no one tried to play “rules lawyer” by looking for a loophole in what she had said. That might be very promising.

Conversation shifted to what they hoped they might see tomorrow, and what kind of discoveries might await them. Renee let them ramble and build up their own excitement, but didn’t join in. She hadn’t told very many about the potential size of this find lest she wind up with the paleontological equivalent of “claim jumpers.” Yeah, really, other professionals might try to grab the site for themselves.

So for now she remained mostly mum and not even the members of her team had any real idea of what was out there. Tomorrow, when they saw that rock face for the first time, they’d probably light up like the Fourth of July. Not many got an opportunity like this.

Enjoying her secret for the last few hours, Renee smiled and listened to the conversation. After they’d all finished eating and the bills began to arrive, she reminded them that they’d meet here at seven in the morning.

Watching them scatter in the general direction of the La-Z-Rest Motel, which was clean if outdated, Renee remarked to Cope, “I hope we have enough four-by-fours to get them up there.”

“We can sort it out in the morning,” he said reassuringly. “Make two trips if necessary. How early will you be going?”

“Well before dawn. I’ll take Denise to start drawing. The shadows reveal so many mysteries.”

“I’ll see you then.”

She watched him drive off, wondering vaguely where he lived, then climbed into her own battered vehicle and headed for the motel.

She pondered if she should take her camping gear with her tomorrow and just plan on staying on the mountain. She hadn’t much worried about it before, but that unexpected visit from a neighbor had bothered her a bit.

Word was getting around Conard County, and from what Mercy had told her over the years, news spread like wildfire around here. Maybe they needed to have someone there all the time. Mentally she began to calculate their budget, and whether it would run to enough tents and sleeping bags. They already had folding tables, propane stoves, lanterns... Well, half a camp, anyway.

Yeah, maybe she should leave her camping equipment in the back of her truck and get some help hauling it up the mountain tomorrow. Then she could shepherd them all through filling in their own blanks for camping out there.

Then, making a final decision could wait for tomorrow. She headed toward her room at the motel and tried not to think too much about Cope.

Nice guy, but every time she looked at him her thoughts wanted to wander far away from her purpose. She was here to collect dinosaur bones, not a gorgeous hunk.

But man, he was definitely a hunk.

Laughing at herself, she parked in front of the motel.

* * *

Cope headed back to the apartment he rented in the complex on the edge of town. There’d been a small building boom when the semiconductor plant had arrived years ago. Then the plant had picked up stakes, a lot of people had moved away, and these days you could pretty much have your choice of apartments in these four buildings. Not that there was a whole lot of difference among the units. One-and two-bedrooms were the most common, with a few three-bedrooms being the biggest. He’d chosen a two-bedroom with two baths and was content.

He especially enjoyed standing under the hot spray of the shower. It was his first goal when he came home tonight. The fossil site had been dusty and the grit had clung to his skin in places. He supposed he was going to get used to that. He had in his former life with the Marines.

Which was exactly what made a hot shower one of the greatest luxuries in his life now. To be able to stand under hot water and wash himself clean? Heck, he was probably an addict.

As he stood under the spray letting soap and shampoo rinse off him, his thoughts turned to the fossil site and most especially Renee Dubois. She was a pistol, that one. Not a shy bone in her body, and he suspected she’d protect the dig site like a mother bear with a cub.

Pretty, too. Well, more than pretty. He’d always liked auburn hair, but hers was accompanied by a pair of green eyes that seemed to be lit from within. Totally unusual.

From what he’d seen today, she was strong and determined. She’d even been ready to face down that curious neighbor and had flatly told him he was on tribal land without permission.

Yeah, a lot of people might have been reluctant to do that. However, the guy’s arrival had seemed odd. It was Renee’s first day at the site, and surely the man who owned the neighboring ranch had better things to do with his time, and surely the news of the excavation couldn’t have traveled the grapevine this fast? After a bit more than a year here, Cope had no trouble grasping how fast interesting news could make the rounds in this county, but this beat all. A day? Usually it took a death or a major fire to hit warp speed on the rumor mill. Unless a tribal member had mentioned it a while back. Or maybe the motel owner. They’d surely rented enough rooms for the group.