Tales of Downfall and Rebirth

by S. M. Stirling

  El Malpais embraced green islands called “kipukas” within its black flow. The largest of these kipukas was called Hole in the Wall. The boys had been a little disappointed to learn that it wasn’t the Hole in the Wall made famous by Butch Cassidy, but this Hole in the Wall was marvelous in its own right. It embraced some six thousand acres. Tales were told of outlaws using it as a staging ground and deserters hiding during various wars. Antelope had somehow found their way in, as had any number of smaller animals and a host of birds. When they were in high school, Brett and Leo had hiked in any number of times to camp, feeling as if they were in a world all their own.

  After the boys had graduated from high school, Grandfather Nathan made them a present of a secret that—as Brett learned later—not even the park service knew. Nathan had learned the secret from an old cowboy, long ago when he himself had been just a boy. He told them that, even with the old cowboy’s description, it had taken him several weeks to find the place. Working as a team, the boys found it sooner.

  They were carefully tracing their way along the fifty-foot-high lava wall as they had so many times before, painstakingly examining every crack and crevice, looking for one that penetrated more deeply than the rest. They stabbed themselves on prickly pear and thorny cholla. They wore thick gloves thin while moving chunks of rough, pockmarked basalt. Then they had realized that one narrow crevice was a whole lot wider than it looked, the result of an optical illusion caused by the junction of two sections of stone. Wild with excitement, they’d probed into the crevice. Their hopes had crashed when they saw what seemed to be a solid wall ahead of them but, when they followed the passage to its end, they realized the crevice actually curved, transforming into what they now recognized as the end of a lava tube.

  After going back for their lights and packs, they carefully made their way along the tube’s length. Open sky vanished as the crumbling edges of the tube’s uppermost reaches became entire. Even with flashlights, they stumbled over chunks of basalt or bits of detritus that had drifted down from the upper world. Several times they splashed into puddles that had formed in a low section of the passage. Slimy drips trickled from above, running down their faces and hair onto the bare skin of their necks like the chill fingers of some ghostly denizen of the darkness.

  Their efforts were rewarded first by a distant flicker of light, then when the tube opened out into an oasis of green, an acre-sized meadow surrounded on all sides by walls of cracked, black rock that bent in at the top, as if cradling the meadow. The stream that ran across the meadow was marked by thicker and greener growth. Whooping with enthusiasm, they drank and refilled their canteens. After they had washed off accumulated grime, they set about exploring their new domain.

  Across from where they’d entered, an odd jumble of rocks caught their attention. Trotting over to investigate, they discovered that someone had built a wall from irregularly shaped chunks of basalt. Off to one side, hidden by the angle of the wall, was a thick plank door. Opening it, they discovered a tidy cabin, constructed by walling up a section of cave. The rock overhang served as a roof and light came from deep windows with thick glass set into wooden frames. The cabin was quite large. Bunk beds were built into one wall, and the area near the fireplace was furnished with a pair of handmade chairs and a table. A channel carved into the floor carried a trickle from the stream that vanished beneath a farther wall.

  A door to one side showed the way into a second cave, reached down a short passage beneath the overhang and walled in after the same fashion as the front of the cabin. This second area’s purpose was evident from a manger containing a few pieces of desiccated hay and a scattering of brittle straw on the stone floor. From this side, it was easy to find the hidden door that let out into the meadow.

  “That manger’s oddly placed,” Brett said, after they’d poked around for a time, discovering an old bucket with the bottom out, a burlap sack that might have once held grain, some chewed bits of leather. “Why build it into the wall that way? Why not just make it freestanding? That took a lot of extra work.”

  Bringing his flashlight close to the manger, Brett examined the thick planks carefully. He’d split planks from logs and, even when you knew the trick, it wasn’t exactly easy. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set these planks, then anchor the manger to them. Eventually, Brett found the hidden latch. It was quite heavy and took a moment to work loose, but when he did the section of planking holding the manger swung on hidden hinges, revealing a second tunnel.

  This tunnel was shorter than the one that they’d followed in from the edge of the malpais and ended in a huge green space, with trees.

  “How big is it?” he asked Leo. Leo had a good head for such things. He always won when Grandfather Nathan asked them to judge area or volume.

  Leo frowned thoughtfully. “Hard to tell with the trees, but I’d say twenty-five or thirty acres. You could keep horses here, a couple cows, even. The grass is good and thick.”

  “The stream probably feeds under the walls to here,” Brett said. “I think that the tube we followed in, the first meadow, and this were all part of one lava tube system. This section was probably never entirely covered.”

  “Suspect you’re right,” Leo agreed. “Shame that Grandpa didn’t show us this a few years ago. We could have had a lot of fun during high school. Now we’re off to college.”

  “But we’ll come back,” Brett said.

  They had, many times. After college, Leo had gotten a job with a big accounting firm in Denver. He’d been flying back to New Mexico for a Saint Patrick’s Day binge at Brett’s parents’ Cloverleaf Tavern when his plane went down. There had been no survivors.

  * * *

  Brett and his horses made their way through the crevice, down the tunnel, and into the first meadow a lot more quickly than Brett and Leo had that first time. Working by lantern light, Brett had carefully cleared away all the loose rock so the horses would have safe footing. The little pools came and went with the seasons, but never became deep enough to provide an obstruction. He’d hammered flat the worst of the protrusions. The one thing he hadn’t made easier to use was the hidden entrance. Indeed, he’d done what he could to make it harder to find without blocking access for the horses.

  It had taken a long time, but Brett hadn’t been in a hurry. Far from it. He had nowhere to go and wanted to go anywhere even less.

  He was tired when he got in—more tired than he remembered being for quite a while. Still, Little Warrior and Pintada had to be unpacked, untacked, rubbed down, then turned out to pasture. The dogs and cats pretty much took care of their own meals this time of year, but they still wanted attention. The chickens needed to be shut away and the goats milked. There had been rain earlier, so he didn’t need to haul water to his garden. He decided he’d pick first thing in the morning.

  One of the things he’d treated himself to in Acoma was a large side of bacon. Brett cut off thick slabs, fried them up, then cooked eggs in some of the grease. The rest he put aside for another time. He’d also bought bread, something he rarely made himself. After the heavy meal and the long day’s ride, he should have slept like a log. Instead, he lay awake, a cat on his pillow, another on his chest, the Pomeranian snoring by his feet.

  He thought about Emilio Gallardo. About how he’d taught Brett about taking care of horse’s hooves. How Brett used that knowledge every day, owed a great deal to what he’d been taught. He dozed and in those dreams Leo was still alive. He was upset at the decision the Acoma elders had made, trying to show them how wrong they were with a cost/benefit analysis painted on a hide, but resembling a power point presentation. He waved a long stick as a pointer and lightning shot out from the tips and became a red-tailed hawk.

  The hawk spiraled up, riding the thermals over the malpais, circling wider and wider to the south. Far below, the hawk spotted a cluster of jackrabbits. No. Jackalopes, for they had little horns. The jackalopes were hu
ddled near an upthrust bit of sandstone. They were wearing horseshoes.

  Brett drifted with the hawk, sleeping in perfect peace until cockcrow. He rose at first crow, made a large mug of hoarded instant coffee, and went out to gather eggs, milk the goats, and make a quick survey of the garden for produce that would spoil if he didn’t pick it. He fried more bacon, ate some with more eggs and soft goat cheese, then wrapped up a couple of thick burritos. These went with some freshly picked cucumbers in a box that, in turn, went into his saddlebags.

  Brett let the chickens out, but only as far as the wire mesh–covered enclosure he’d built to surround their coop. The goats protested being left in their run, but he didn’t know if he’d be back before dark and, while the chickens would retire to their coop, the goats were much more confident of their ability to take care of themselves, something the coyotes sometimes took advantage of.

  These chores taken care of, Brett went through the tunnel into the back pasture. Since he almost always brought a treat along, his small horse herd ambled over to greet him. While they were all busy with carrots, he slipped a halter over the head of Timpani, his choice for the day’s work.

  Timpani’s owner had always said the mare was pure Arabian. Certainly, she had the Arab’s high crest and delicate head. Her coloring was what the Old West had called steeldust, grey liberally sprinkled with darker hairs. Her mane and tail were a shadowy grey, darker than her coat, reminding Brett of gathering storm clouds. Although she played at being high-strung, Timpani liked work that demanded her attention and intelligence. Acting up was a sure sign that she was bored.

  While he was tacking up Timpani, Brett had a serious chat with Rover and Fida, two dogs who had come to live with him that first winter. The pair looked as if they might have a lot of blue heeler—an Australian cattle dog—in them. There’d been a fad for the breed about the time everything went to hell, so they could well be purebred. Rover and Fida weren’t pretty in the way border collies were pretty. Their coats were short, colored a bluish grey, and overlaid with black blotches. Their muzzles were somewhere between short and long, and held a good number of very white teeth. Rover’s perked ears were neat upright triangles, but one of Fida’s flopped, giving her a quizzical look. Their tails curved up over their backs.

  Like Timpani, Rover and Fida liked having work to do. They were also completely convinced that they could handle the show without human assistance. When Brett told them to guard the place, they looked at him seriously, their alert ears and gently wagging tails saying:

  “Don’t we always, boss?”

  Next, Brett whistled up Xenophon. The mutt hauled himself from where he was sleeping in the shade of the cottonwood that grew near the cabin door. Xenophon was a long-legged, long-nosed, floppy-eared hound of no particular breed. His tail was long and straight; his coat an unremarkable shade of tan. What was remarkable about him was his sense of smell. Brett had picked him as a puppy from a litter sired by a male who—so his owner claimed—could track a rolling rock through a gully washer in the middle of the night. The bitch who mothered him could perform the same miracles—but with a head cold. Xenophon’s biggest problem was that most of the time he was about as lazy as a dog could be. Even when he’d been a puppy, he’d preferred sleeping with his belly to the sun rather than romping about. Put him on a scent, though, and he’d follow until forced to take a break.

  After securing the Pom and several of the older cats inside the cabin, Brett swung into the saddle. As Timpani walked purposefully in the direction of the exit tunnel, he checked his supplies: food, water, first aid kit, bow and arrows, knives at his waist and in his boot tops. He didn’t figure he’d be fighting, but it was best to be prepared. He had a good lasso in easy reach, as well as odds and ends of wire, string, and suchlike tucked into his saddlebags. His best binoculars were in a case where he could easily reach them. Given that he had no idea what he’d find, if anything, he was as prepared as he could be.

  Once out in the open, Brett directed Timpani to a sheltered rise where he could scan the area without being seen himself. Grandfather Nathan hadn’t said how long the Gallardos and their friends had been missing from the Double A, but if riders had come to Acoma to ask questions, it probably had been a few days. Riders wouldn’t have come asking unless the area had already been searched and nothing conclusive found.

  And they wouldn’t make that choice lightly, Brett thought as he methodically scanned the terrain, because they’d be giving away that La Padrona was starting to think of some people as her property.

  Brett’s inspection of the area didn’t show him anything as obvious as a posse neatly displayed out in the middle of the tall grass or threading their way through the scatterings of piñon, juniper, and other scrubby trees that were interspersed in copses through the plains. Last winter’s rains had been good—by area standards—and the monsoons had established right on schedule, so there was as much green as brown in the undulating land.

  Lowering his binoculars, Brett considered. The people I’m looking for probably chose to leave the Double A at this time precisely because they could count on water and a certain amount of cover. The ranch is south of here; access used to be off 117. Acoma’s certainly the closest community, but the runaways might have figured that’s where La Padrona would look first. In that case . . .

  Brett reviewed a mental map. Options for people who didn’t want to be returned to La Padrona weren’t good. There were other ranching operations south of El Malpais, but the ranchers were loosely allied, respecting one another’s brands and sharing resources. All Annabella Andersen would need to do was tell some tale about the Gallardos owing her and they’d be turned back. So not the ranches . . .

  It would be a long trip, Brett thought, but if I were them, I just might consider going west, then north, up toward some of the settlements in the Zuni Mountains or even to San Rafael. The Double A riders have got to have figured that, too. So why haven’t Emilio and his band been found? Even with a head start, if they have children with them, a bunch of determined cowhands should be able to catch up.

  He felt a tingle run up his spine, just like it had when Grandfather Nathan had posed one of those questions that had been meant to teach him and Leo to track with their minds, not just with their eyes and ears.

  What if they’re still close by? What if something happened to slow them up? A lamed horse, an injured person, a kid with a bellyache . . . I can think of a dozen possibilities. At this point, the riders would be looking farther afield, not behind. I wonder . . .

  He tapped Timpani on one shoulder. In response to the command, the mare began to pick her surefooted way down the slope. Xenophon rose, shook himself, and followed.

  Suddenly, Brett felt as eager as initially he had been reluctant.

  Grandfather Nathan . . . Did he know? When he said he’d “dreamed” I’d be the one to stop the Double A, I just translated his words into Anglo—as “imagined” or “hoped”—but what if he meant it literally? What if he prayed for a solution and this was the answer?

  In a twisted way, it made sense. Why else would Grandfather Nathan believe Brett had a chance to intercept people who should have been long gone from the area? Back when everything stopped working and the clear Western skies had shown all too clearly planes plummeting toward the earth as their engines failed, the elders had prayed—as tradition said Acoma had always prayed—for the well-being of the world. They had been certain that the catastrophic events were not caused by a short-term flicker in the electromagnetic field or any of the other bullshit explanations Brett had heard bandied around in Grants.

  Brett guided Timpani south, skirting trees and larger rocks, rather than riding in the open: not hiding, but not making it easy for him to be seen either. After the third time he’d scanned the horizon, Brett realized that he wasn’t looking for people so much as a landmark—a large rock, surrounded by trees. He could see the shape in his mind, clea
r as if he’d been there before, but he was certain that he hadn’t. Problem was, he knew how the rock looked from a hawk’s eye view, but not from the side.

  As they had ridden their aimless course, Xenophon had decided that they must be searching for something. In his methodical hound’s way, he had concluded that the something wasn’t a deer or a cow or badger’s den, since they’d passed up several interesting options in those categories already.

  For the last few miles, the dog had been playing a sort of canine twenty questions with his human. He’d cast widely back and forth along either side of where Brett rode, snuffling enthusiastically. When he found something that he thought was interesting, he would woof softly to draw Brett’s attention. Brett would dismount and inspect the find, rejecting a dead squirrel, an old quail’s nest, a tree that a bear had recently clawed, and a neatly buried bit of porcupine scat. When Xenophon woofed and gently scraped his paw where something else had been covered with dirt and pine needles, Brett expected more of the same.

  What confronted him was a neat deposit of human waste, almost certainly from several people.

  “Good boy!” Brett said, rubbing Xenophon’s ears and rewarding him with a piece of bacon. “I don’t think the Double A riders would all share a hole, but if I were traveling with kids and didn’t want to leave sign, this is just what I’d do. Can you find the people who left this?”

  Xenophon wagged his tail and began casting around, making the whining, snuffling noises that Brett translated as “I’m working on it.” Brett had barely settled back in the saddle before Xenophon gave a short bark and lined himself up along what, to Brett, was a still invisible trail.

  “Go slowly,” Brett commanded and Xenophon, his tail wagging like a metronome, put his nose to the ground and led.