Conard County Watch

by Rachel Lee

“Yes,” she agreed. “We’re supposed to gather at the diner in Conard City this evening and plan our next steps.”

  “Then I’ll see you in the morning. Nice to meet you, Cope.”

  Then Gray Cloud strode away, melting into the forest’s shadows quite quickly.

  Cope looked at her from those amazing blue eyes. “Were you two having a disagreement?”

  She shook her head. “He’s a mystic, I’m a scientist. Those disagreements don’t mean much as long as we treat his and his tribe’s beliefs with total respect.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that. When I was overseas in the Corps, I saw plenty of disrespect for people’s monuments and treasures. I hated it. And I might as well disappoint you and tell you that in the mountains of Afghanistan I sometimes felt those towering rocks were aware.”

  He moved, and for the first time she realized he was wearing a backpack. He swung it from his shoulders and set it on the ground. “So we can’t touch yet, only look, right?”

  “Right. All the groundwork has to be laid.”

  “Well, it’s early. In the military I learned to eat whenever I had the opportunity, and I just happened to have a bunch of goodies in my pack. Join me?”

  She’d been in such a hurry to get up here before dawn this morning she hadn’t brought any food or beverages with her. After all, she figured she’d be here for a couple of hours at most, taking photos.

  But Cope opened a tall insulated bottle and the aroma of coffee won the day. “That smells so good.”

  “And I just happen to have two cups. Grab a stone to sit on, Renee.”

  Five minutes later he’d found another flat rock to use as a table. She watched with delight as he laid out two cups of coffee from his bottle and some paper containers from the bakery that held offerings of cinnamon rolls and croissants. Pats of butter lined the containers and plastic knives waited to help.

  “This is so neat,” she said honestly. “You thought of everything.”

  “I try. Anyway, about this site. I gather that it’s sacred and secret?”

  “I’m not sure how secret it is, but I don’t think Gray Cloud wants it headlined. It is sacred ground to his people, and they don’t want it being trampled by lookie-loos.” She waved her arm. “Look how narrow this space is. We’re going to have trouble working in here, never mind having outsiders trampling through. Then, there’s a river below. All this rock couldn’t have moved without throwing detritus to the bottom. That’ll all have to be checked out, too.”

  He swallowed a mouthful of roll. “I can see that. It’s weird how this split, though.” He looked along the length of the cleft in both directions. “I’m guessing years of freezing water in some crack eventually levered it apart. But it feels like something is missing right in the middle.”

  She gave him props for noticing. Narrow as the cleft was, there was still enough flat ledge to stand on and work. Rockfall must have filled in the space between the wall and what she thought of as the “tooth.” Her geologist could figure that out, though.

  “Apart from that, you want to protect the cliff face. Are you going to have any kind of security?”

  Her head jerked up a little. “Security? Why in the world?”

  He looked down a moment, then grabbed a paper napkin and wiped his mouth. After some noticeable seconds, he answered. “You haven’t had a whole lot of time to get to know me, so maybe I’ll sound paranoid. Maybe I am. I saw too much of this kind of thing wantonly destroyed during my time in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m not saying someone is going to have a religious objection to these fossils—although it’s possible—but there could also be looters. You don’t want folks coming up here to scavenge a dinosaur tooth or bone.”

  He had a point. It wasn’t something she’d considered because of the comparative secrecy of this site, but once her team started arriving, word was going to get around this underpopulated area. Most would probably just accept it as interesting, but it was easy enough to imagine those who’d want a piece of it. And all they’d have to do would be to follow one of her team up here.

  Now she felt careless not to think of it. How many sites of this nature often needed some kind of protection? Many, because Cope was correct: an awful lot of people wanted a fossil, especially if it might be unique in some way.

  “My grant doesn’t run to full-time security,” she said reluctantly.

  “I don’t suppose it does.” He sighed, popped the last of his roll into his mouth and wiped his hands on the napkin. “I’m probably needlessly worried. Consider where I came from not so long ago.”

  But he’d caused her to think along a whole new line, and when she looked up at that rock face, she could all too easily imagine how much damage could be done to it by a careless and uncaring person. “I’d better mention this to Gray Cloud. He can probably keep an eye out better than my team could.”

  “He may already be doing it. Sacred ground is an important thing.”

  There was that, she agreed silently. But she’d still mention the concern to Gray Cloud. In one way they were completely united: this site mustn’t be disrespected.

  “I didn’t mean to cast a cloud over the day,” Cope remarked. “Enjoy your roll and enjoy the view. That rock face is breathtaking.”

  “You should have seen it in the minutes after dawn,” she answered, willing to change the subject and let her enthusiasm grow again. “The march of the shadows revealed so much. I have a bunch of photos I can show you later, if you want. And someone is sure going to be out here in the morning to start laying out a grid. Her name’s Denise. She should arrive this afternoon. Anyway, she’s a great artist, and by the time she finishes we’ll have a fantastic drawing as well as a grid to work from.”

  “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.”