We lay against the cold sandstone rock for several minutes, scared and confused, expecting someone to show up at any moment, but no one shot at us again. Just after dark we crawled out of the rock ruin and were surprised to find our pack animals still tied off. We looked around for someone, but couldn’t see anyone. But we did find something else; a rolled up sheet of paper was tied to the side of the saddle on Corey’s horse. I opened it and read the menacing words, “Keep away from our stuff!” It was signed Tu Ladrone.
Obviously the shot was a warning from pottery hunters, those thieves, or ladrones, as the Mexicans called them. They obviously thought Corey and I were competition, stealing the pots that they wanted to steal.
That evening Corey and I traveled as far as we could, far away from the ruins, before setting up camp. A full moon came out, but we remained hidden, camping next to the canyon walls, leaving us in a moon shadow. Watching the glittering reflections in the shallow and mostly muddy steam at the bottom of the canyon, we lay awake with our minds in overdrive, thinking about the mysterious ruins, the shooter, and of course the rattlesnakes.
By now, both Corey and I had a new theory, a theory that involved serpents with bells on their tails, but the shooter complicated things. It was a mystery as to how the thieves were getting into the ruins. Obviously they were coming in through a different canyon but it was many miles away from any jeep roads that Corey knew of.
Corey and I decided that we needed a new plan of action; one that would somehow protect us from the thieves, yet one that would allow us to solve our mysteries. It would be almost a month before we could return to further investigate our discoveries. But this time we would be prepared.
A Return to the Cliff Dwelling
A month later we returned to the canyon where we had found the ruins. This time when Corey and I went exploring we were prepared with winter gear loaded onto pack horses and with Hidalgo accompanying us. He was more knowledgeable, experienced, and he understood the back country better than most people. He was a skilled outdoorsman, an experienced marksman; furthermore, he held a burning curiosity about the ancient Indian ruins. We took rifles and all manner of camping gear thus taking two days longer than it had taken Corey and me to make it to the ruins. We didn’t want to accidently blunder into the thieves. We camped that night at the base of the cliff houses spending several hours re-exploring the ruins. Hidalgo was fascinated by the pictographs.
“They tell you more than meet the eye,” said Hidalgo. “My ancestors were the Navajo who made war on the older Anasazi. But we respected and learned from them. We learned about their world through their pictographs and dealing with them personally. I suspect that some of them were headhunters and cannibals.”
When I asked Hidalgo about pottery hunters, his answer was simple: “How would you feel if your grandparents, along with their burial possessions, were dug up from their graves and put on display?” This question opened the door for a long, involved conversation about science versus private rights. Then there were conversations about the need for better enforcement of The Antiquities Law. New laws were currently in legislation, proposed in order to discourage the pottery hunters.
The miles passed quickly under our horses’ hooves, but soon we found ourselves at the site of the unexplored ruins that I had discovered in the side canyon. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that changes had occurred during our absence. As soon as we climbed up to the floor of the ruins we spotted a pile of trash; potato peelings, egg shells, and empty cans littered the rock floor. The ruins had been systematically ransacked, with everything of value gone. Even the small piles of unprocessed obsidian rocks were missing.
“What possible use could obsidian have been to them?” Corey blurted out in frustration. But the essence of the ruin was still here, particularly the rock drawings showing the rattlesnake encircling the anthropomorphs, those carvings of people that lived here long ago.
Hidalgo studied the rock panel for several minutes before saying anything. “It looks like the humans who lived here were surrounded by the rattlesnakes. Maybe they lived up here,” he said, gesturing to the rooms, “So they would be safe from the snakes. Or maybe the humans had an alliance with the rattlesnakes and the encircling snake is a symbol of their territory. I don’t know, but one thing is for sure; they were terrified of something or someone or they wouldn’t be living up here.”
By our fourth day out, tramping through a thin covering of snow on the ground, we discovered several other ruins that seemed impossible to get into; we didn’t explore them because we hadn’t brought rock-climbing equipment. As we explored, we saw places where the snow had completely melted away, exposing the trail under our feet. The canyon floor was littered by a layer of small bones.
Quite unexpectedly, we came upon what appeared to be a very small volcanic cone sticking out of the middle of a valley, surrounded by sandstone outcrops. The black volcanic cone was almost perfectly formed, with what appeared from ground level to be a perfect small caldera at the top and glassy smooth sides that didn’t look natural at all.
Most volcanic rock is bubbly and angular, but the sides of this cone bore smooth black rock. Very black, the small hill looked almost artificial, looking totally out of place in the yellow and red sandstone country. We walked slowly around the mountain, looking for anything odd and noticing several odd things. The hill really wasn’t a cone; it was more like a rounded-four sided pyramid. Another odd thing about it was that only the outermost few inches of rock was black, the eroded side was still where Uncle Ken had said it was, white with thousands of bubbles. We also noticed something that was not there.
Normally volcanic rock is perfect for pictographs, but on this volcanic rock not a sign of human marks could be found. Standing out in stark contrast to the surrounding countryside, the mountain had always had a dubious distinction, more than just the oddity of being the only black volcanic hill for miles around. We walked around the base of the mountain with our boots crunching on small bones which seemed to litter the ground everywhere. Nothing but bones, bones everywhere.
We were getting ready to leave when I noticed something in the corner of my eye. Caught between two dead branches was a snakeskin unlike any I or the rest of us had ever seen before. In shape, looking like any other snakeskin, except that each scale was like a tiny mirror, reflecting everything around it. Penny put it against different colors, and each time the color was reflected in the glittering scales. Lying on the ground, it was almost invisible, reflecting the colors around it.
Unlike other rattlesnakes that slowly adapt to their surrounding color, this snake must have totally blended into the background color. This snakeskin came from a truly stealthy rattlesnake, a snake no one had ever seen before, an unworldly snake.
I pocketed the snakeskin while Corey and Hidalgo made the short climb to the summit of the mountain. What they found was a typical crater, except for one thing: there were thousands of small holes located around the inner rim. Fortunately for them, rattlesnakes hibernate in the winter. Little did they know that just beneath their feet were thousands of sleeping serpents, all members of the rattlesnake clan; the hill wasn’t a volcano, it was a nest.
The Death of John Luna
The first warm days of summer were approaching. After finding the strange snakeskin, Corey, Hidalgo and I were convinced that somehow these new rattlesnakes were responsible for the disappearances around the local ranches. However, it is one thing to think something and another to prove it. Besides, no one had actually ever seen a mirrored rattlesnake or anything else killing the livestock. But obviously something was causing the deaths, and the mirrored rattlesnakes were our best working theory.
Corey, Hidalgo, Ken, June, and I sat around the kitchen table many evenings during the remaining days of winter trying to come up with plan to deal with the rattlesnakes that were sure to make their appearance as soon as the weather got hot. We examined the snakeskin over and over. No one had ever seen a snakeskin with the qualiti
es of the skin they found. The snakeskin was, for all practical purposes, alien.
Back at the volcanic cone, as the weather improved day by day, new alien creatures began to appear. Around the scattered ranch houses in Serpiente, the smallest of animals began to disappear. These were followed by larger and larger animals, until it was obvious to everyone that all animals were disappearing again. No rabbits sprang out of the brush as a rider passed. Even the birds disappeared when nests with eggs in them became a thing of the past. Our family had begun to seal themselves at night as a precaution against the mysterious antagonist, but we were feeling more and more certain of what we were dealing with; a new kind of rattlesnake. But the business of running a ranch still had to be taken care of, and since the small community of ranches that were located in a twenty mile radius were all losing cattle and money they had decided to pool their resources, when possible, as insurance against defaulting on their ranches.
When it costs more to operate a ranch than it earns, eventually it is abandoned. Even with pooling their resources, the smallest of the ranches were doomed by the disappearance of their livestock. Not long after that the whole area becomes a ghost town. The west is full of ghost towns. When the minerals or resources being mined runs out or the population over reaches the carrying capacity of the land, the community dies. At this point, Serpiente, the ranch, was well on its way to becoming a small ghost town along with all of its neighbors.
After the sun was well up, Uncle Ken called me into the living room to do a chore for him. “We need you and Corey to go over to the Luna Ranch and ask John if he can meet with me and some other landowners.”
“Sure,” I answered, “As soon as I finish cleaning the kitchen I’ll find Corey and head over.” I had run into John Luna several times since I had first met him and come to really like him. Despite a very rough exterior, Luna was the biggest teddy bear I had ever run into. I had never been around someone who could tease like Luna yet I felt perfectly safe around him. I had quickly realized that the sexual innuendoes in his teases were a complement, not an advance.
The only truck that still had a good tank of gas in it was Hidalgo’s old Ford. He had left the keys in it since no one ever stole anything that far out of town; besides the truck had been given to him by Ken several years before and we were only going a few miles.
After an eight mile drive to the other side of the tiny creek that flowed out of Serpiente Canyon we finally arrived at the Luna Ranch, discovering a problem right away. The first cause for apprehension was the front door which was wide open, causing Corey and I to look at each other.
“Maybe he is out in the horse stables,” Corey said. So pulling up in the yard we slid out of the truck seats and headed to the stables. What we found there was appalling. Luna only owned one horse, Midnight, which he took care of even if he had to skip meals himself.
We found the horse lying on its side, nearly dead. Something had gotten to it during the night and its face and neck were swollen to nearly twice its normal size. The commotion of Corey and I walking into the horse stall caused the animal to begin jerking its head and legs trying to get up. But within only a few moments it suddenly stopped moving at all. Midnight, John Luna’s horse, had died. After a cursory search of the horse barn showed that nothing seemed amiss, we headed back to the house.
John Luna was there. Except for a sheet wrapped around his middle, he lay naked in his bed, dead. It was easy for us to trace what had happened. Something had come through the front door that he had left opened. Luna was bitten many times by something, then left to die.
Luna had fired several shots at something in a panic. He must have been terrified at something as he had managed to shoot himself in the foot. There were five bullet holes in the wall where the slugs had blown the plaster away. The sixth slug from Luna’s revolver had passed through Luna’s foot imbedding itself in the metal bed post. He obviously had shot himself while trying to escape the intruders. The empty revolver was still gripped tightly in his hand.
I was too shaken to examine the body but Corey took his time and gave Luna an examination that would make a medical examiner proud. Luna’s head had swollen to twice its normal size and on his face and neck were several puncture wounds; two small holes side by side, just like the fang marks a large rattlesnake would leave. Corey hugged me while I tried to recompose myself, but I was having trouble fighting off the tears that flooded my eyes, “Luna was killed due to over a dozen rattlesnake bites.”
“Any other evidence of snakes,” asked Penny?
“Well, let’s look,” answered Corey.
They could find nothing in the house but out in the yard they did find a short trail of impressions in the soft sand exactly like crawling snakes would leave, all headed in the direction of Serpiente Canyon. Then the trail just stopped as if the snakes had disappeared.
A drive into Belen in order to notify the police, followed by a funeral would occupy all of us for the next week. When the real medical examiner finally made his way to the ranch house he simply declared the death was due to rattlesnake bites but he was amazed at how the bites were inflicted. Rattlesnakes are solitary creatures who work entirely alone. In his view, Luna had been murdered by someone who had obviously brought the snakes in and dumped them in Luna’s bed. But of course, that really didn’t make any sense either. In the end the death certificate listed his death as cause unknown.
Dr. Rebecca Hartsell
Early on a summer morning, Ken and June loaded us all up into the family car, the only vehicle they owned that would seat everyone. All the other vehicles were work trucks used to haul everything from hay bales to cattle. We traveled to Los Cruses to visit New Mexico State University by way of the small town of Magnalena and then Socorro. After dropping Corey and I off at the university, June and Ken spent some time shopping for some clothes that they desperately needed, including some shirts for Hidalgo and some gifts they needed to purchase to pay off gift debts from wonderful friends. We started asking questions as soon as we ran into someone to talk to. In particular we hoped that someone at the University could provide insight about the snake skin, or have an idea of how to get rid of the rattlesnakes, but we also knew that we had to be careful what we said and to whom we talked.
After we arrived we discovered that we should have planned to be more specific about who we were going to talk to We had no idea who could help us. However we were smart enough to go directly to the office of information in the administration building.
After determining that Corey and I were not new students at the university, the flustered receptionist, who was manning the information desk, had no idea where to send us, but a young lady who was seated at a small desk working her way through several piles of mailers offered a suggestion. “Dr. Wyerhouse sometimes talks about snakes in his classroom. I don’t know what he actually does with them but he might be able to direct you to someone who can answer your questions. You also need to visit the biology and agricultural schools.
Dr. Wyerhouse, turned out to be an English professor who apparently liked to scare his students by talking about rattlesnakes. After I explained the situation to him, he suggested using a new invention, an atomic bomb. This seemed like a great idea until a student awaiting an appointment to discuss a low grade on a paper overheard the conversation and politely but firmly explained how radioactive isotopes travel through food chains. Besides, since the rattlesnakes lived deep underground, the explosion couldn’t possibly hurt all of them. In the end, the rattlesnakes might even be genetically altered and somehow become even worse. Dr. Wyerhouse, who was a little embarrassed, countered the conversation by suggesting using poisons but his suggestion was, again, immediately ruled out by the student, “Poisons invariably enter the food chain and kill many other creatures. Besides, how do you poison a rattlesnake? Rattlesnakes prefer to eat live creatures, and would more than likely ignore a dead carcass stuffed with poison.”
Some of the solutions were even more bizarre; Dr. Franke
l who overheard and walked in on the conversations offered an opinion. “Drive them out with a high pitched noise,” he defiantly announced.
Dr. Wyerhouse lifted his head up from the table and said, “Even I know that rattlesnakes are deaf, besides even if we could drive them out of the caves, what’s to keep them from regrouping somewhere else?”
“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” replied Dr. Frankel. He followed his last questions with, “Well, then, what about an electric fence?” And so the meeting went on, with no consensus as to what to do. The student who had offered his earlier opinions interjected himself into the conversation again with “You need to see Dr. Hartsell in the biology department.” Corey and I left the office wondering about the fate of the young student.
Dr. Rebecca Hartsell turned out to be a new research professor. She was on the cutting edge of many university projects and was intrigued by the snake skin. Dr. Hartsell spent some thirty to forty minutes examining it. “I have never seen anything like it,” she finally said. “It really looks like some of the stuff they are working on in Albuquerque at Sandia Labs. They are working on stealth technology, trying to make everything from soldiers to airplanes invisible.”
She did, however, make one important discovery about the snake skin. Under ultra violet light the skin glows, almost like bioluminescence. “The same thing happens to scorpions. In darkness they are invisible but they glow under a UV light. She also proposed that the reason the snakes only came out at night was because of the protective skin. When light was shined on it during the day, the scales would act like mirrors; in the dark it would be totally invisible. In the end, no real solutions were found but now we had a tool to make the snakes visible. The local ranchers would have to find their own solutions. But more than anyone, solving the problem was left up to the family that I had been adopted into.
The Family at Serpiente Page 9
