Past Promises

by Jill Marie Landis

  “We’re here,” he said, bending near to savor her floral scent. “Southwest of Cortez, just off the Ute reservation.” He held on to a corner of the map while she studied it. “Where did you get this?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not complete.”

  “I realize that, Mr. Burnett. This isn’t a well-documented area. That’s precisely why I hired a guide.”

  He smiled. “Well then, I’d best start guiding.”

  Without another word, Rory started off toward the northeast. The sun was higher in the sky, its warmth quickly heating the crisp dry air. Here below the mesa on the arid floor of the high plateau, the land was carpeted with silver sage and mesquite. Yucca, with its deep green, sword-shaped leaves, was scattered amid the rocks and low-growing dwarf piñon. As he walked along, careful to shorten his stride so that the woman beside him could keep up, Rory wondered what she thought of this land that he loved so much.

  To the untrained eye it was barren and lifeless, but in reality the high desert teemed with life. Mourning doves nested in the low trees or on the ground and filled the air with their mournful coo-ah, coo, coo, coo. A spiny swift lizard, as rough in appearance as the rock-littered ground, scurried across their path.

  Rory glanced over at Jessica. If she noticed the lizard, she didn’t comment. Instead she kept her gaze on the ground. He could tell she was thinking, making note of the path they traveled, often glancing back at the camp. He wondered if she was still afraid of being alone with him. If so, she was doing her damnedest to hide it.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, hoping to reassure her. “That flat sandstone slab in the distance?”

  He nodded. “Right. The prints are on top of it.”

  The stiff material of her skirt brushed the ankles of her boots as she picked up her pace. She was concentrating on the mass of stone that they were fast approaching. He could hear her breathing rapidly now as she trotted along. With one hand she kept her hat on while the other clutched the shoulder strap of her knapsack.

  He was forced to lengthen his stride just to keep up with her. “Don’t turn a heel,” he warned. “That rock isn’t going anyplace.”

  She looked back at him, her cheeks deep pink from exposure to the sun. Excitement shone in the blue eyes trapped behind the thick, clear glasses. Half of the veil wound around her hatband was sagging over the brim and one eye. Excitement radiated from her until it charged the very air around her.

  Rory found himself actually looking forward to her reaction to the tracks imprinted in the rock. He tried to convince himself that showing them to her would make up for leading her away from the cave on the mesa.

  She ran the last few yards. He ran beside her, his heavy boots pounding the dusty soil.

  When they finally reached the slab that lay nearly four feet thick and thirty feet long, she slowed down and approached it as reverently as an acolyte approached an altar.

  “I can’t remember how many there are, but they run from west to east across the top,” he said.

  She shushed him.

  In silence, Jessica stepped forward. One, two, three steps. Then she halted. He heard her sigh. Slowly she reached up and removed her spectacles, carefully folded the stems, opened her knapsack, and dropped them in. Slipping the strap off her shoulder, she handed the heavy bag to him without a word. He took it without comment and watched her step up to the waist-high stone platform.

  Worshipfully she reached out. He could see her fingers trembling as she traced the outline of one of the closest, birdlike marks in the sandstone. Then she laid her open palm in the hollowed-out print on the warm rock. Standing perfectly still, Jessica closed her eyes and sighed.

  A second later she turned to him. With a look that bespoke the depth of her sincerity she said, “Thank you, Mr. Burnett. This is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever given me.”

  Chapter Four

  “I GUESS THEY’LL do, then?” He couldn’t help but feel smug after proving to her that he hadn’t been lying.

  “Do? They’re perfect. And so many! I want to take a few measurements before we go back to camp.” She was looking at the tracks now, not at him.

  He leaned back on his elbows and tipped his hat further down to shield his eyes from the rising sun. “Whatever makes you happy, Miss Stanbridge.”

  “Might I trouble you to give me a boost?”

  Rory nodded, and before she was quite expecting it, he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up onto the sandstone rock. He set her knapsack down beside her and then pulled himself up as well. She was busy searching in the dark bag for her measuring tape; when she finally found it, she produced it with a flourish and a “Voila!” Next she pulled out a bound notebook, a pencil, and a thick sable brush.

  Rory stretched out on the rock’s warm surface and watched her from beneath his hat brim. Her once haughty demeanor was gone as Jessica Stanbridge lost herself in her work. He could only assume it was sheer excitement that caused her to chat on as she made notations.

  She lifted her skirt, careful not to expose her legs to him, but he did catch a glimpse of black cotton stockings beneath her white petticoats. Scrambling forward over the rock, she paused on all fours beside the first print and lifted the brassbound case that contained her measuring tape. She held the end of the tape with one hand, measured from the tip of the middle toe to the heel of the print, and then from one side to the next.

  Rory was hard pressed to hide a smile as he watched her and wondered what the ever-so-solemn Miss Stanbridge would say if she could see herself from behind with her pert, round derriere pointing skyward. He decided to remain silent and simply enjoy the view.

  Jessica opened the crank handle and rewound the oiled-cotton tape, then reached for her notebook. She made a notation, then set book and pencil down and picked up the brush. As she briskly swept the loose sand and dirt out of the footprint, she glanced over at him.

  “I really didn’t expect to find anything at this altitude. I had singled out the grand mesa because the red sandstone bluff is striated with the white sandstone and hard clay deposits.” She threw a fleeting smile his way and shook her head. “That’s a sure sign of Jurassic formations. If any remains of extinct giant reptiles are to be found, that”—she nodded toward the mesa—“would be the most likely place.”

  “Why?” He watched as she picked up the tape again, remeasured the print, and then scooted everything over to the next one.

  On all fours, she bent over the next print and he smiled to himself again. “It’s very hard to explain in a few words,” she began, “but the land is layered according to the body of water that once covered it. The lower marine strata contain the remains of such creatures as the ichthyosaur, which is sort of a fish lizard.” Quickly noting the print’s length in her little book, Jessica then brushed out the second one before she measured the distance between the two depressions.

  He had but a vague notion of what she was talking about. “You sound like a professor.”

  She looked amazed. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

  Rory sat up, crossed his legs, and pulled one foot close beneath him. He ran his finger over the tooled leather design on his boot. “What got you started?”

  “Probably the same way you became a rancher—it was my father’s profession. Some say he was the best paleontologist that ever lived—but he was an unsung hero. Most of his work was done in the laboratory, but he did go to Egypt once. After I was born, he never traveled far to do excavations. My mother died when I was very, very young and my father stayed close to home to be with me. He included me in everything.”

  He tried to imagine her as a little girl with sunshine hair and blue eyes, trying to learn the difference between rock formations and bits of bone, and found himself hard pressed. Jessica Stanbridge was so naturally feminine—despite her efforts to
hide it—that she made him think of dolls and tea parties, not rock sorting and bone hunting.

  “Do you know anything at all about the early saurian finds, Mr. Burnett?”

  “I don’t even know anything about the late saurian finds, ma’am.”

  She bristled. “Am I boring you?”

  “Not a bit.” He smiled into her eyes.

  She colored and quickly turned away, but kept talking. “A rancher like yourself picked up the first giant saurian bones ever found in the West, right here in Colorado, near Canyon City.”

  “No kidding?”

  “How old are you, sir?”

  “Thirty.”

  “It was in the seventies. You might have been too young to remember, even if you had heard about it.”

  “What about you?” He thought it a very sly way to ask her age.

  “I can still remember Father’s closely following the reports. Everyone was talking about it at the time.”

  He was surprised at her wistful tone when she mentioned her father, and could tell immediately that she missed him deeply. She had kept it well hidden until now. She reached the end of the prints and stood up. Brushing off her skirt, Jessica put her hands on her hips and surveyed the discovery. “Five good prints, three feet apart. Much more than I expected.”

  “You thought I was lying.”

  She frowned. When she caught him studying her so intently, Jessica dug through her knapsack, located her glasses, and shoved them on again. “I did. And I apologize.”

  “Accepted.” Rory jumped down off the rock and wondered how he was going to keep her from insisting on a trip back to the mesa now that she’d seen and measured the tracks. “Now what?”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Burnett. I know how anxious you are to return to your ranch. There’s plenty to keep me here for a while. I plan to make a plaster impression of the prints so that I can ship them back to Harvard, and then I’ll explore the area in all directions. I may come up with a fossilized bone fragment or two, hopefully more.”

  When she gained the edge of the rock, she started to crouch down to jump off, but Rory reached up and grabbed her, then lowered her to the ground.

  She was so close he could feel her warm breath near the open collar of his shirt. Trapped between him and the rock, she had nowhere to go. He could smell her lavender scent again and for a moment he didn’t budge. Then Rory took a step back and said, “I’ll be sending one of the hands out to watch over your camp so that if you need anything, you can send him to get me.”

  “I can’t pay two men,” she said softly.

  “I won’t be working for you if I’m not here. And you don’t need to pay Whitey at all. He works for me. Besides, I don’t know how much help he’s likely to be.”

  “Is he old?”

  “Just the opposite. He’s barely out of short pants.”

  “Then I insist on paying him,” she said, somehow maneuvering to step around him and start on the trek back to the campsite.

  “And I insist you don’t.”

  Adjusting the slipping knapsack strap, she pulled up short and stopped. “Are we going to be at loggerheads again, Mr. Burnett?”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “We are if you keep arguing. You know, Miss Stanbridge, I’m usually an easygoing sort. Ask anyone who knows me.”

  Jessica shrugged. “I’m used to arguing with men.”

  He started walking again and noticed there was something oddly enjoyable about having her beside him. “Life’s a lot more pleasant when it isn’t a contest of wills. I’ll stick to ranching and you can stick to bones so we don’t have to tread on hen fruit around each other.”

  “Hen fruit?”

  “Eggs.”

  “You have a peculiar vocabulary, Mr. Burnett. I should begin a glossary.”

  He kicked a small rock out of the way and watched it bounce across the ground. “That’s funny, everyone I know talks like me. But I guess if your bone hunting doesn’t pan out, you can always write a dictionary on southwestern lingo.”

  The look she gave him vehemently denied the suggestion.

  As they approached the campsite Rory acknowledged it was a far different time that they had shared today. There was a likable side to Jessica Stanbridge after all, one that matched her beauty and her brains. It had been just as easy to converse with her as it had been to argue, so much so that a mounting sense of guilt nagged him when he thought of how easily he had led her away from the mesa.

  He’d only been in the burial cave once in his life. His father had taken him up to red mesa to hunt down stray cattle. They found a lost calf bawling nearby and Wilner had showed him the outside of the cave. He was warned never to go inside. The place was a gravesite filled with ghosts, Wilner said, Indian ghosts, and there was no telling what might happen if anyone made them mad.

  To a boy of eleven, the cave had yawned wide and foreboding. Just beyond the entry he could see the smoke-stained ceiling and strange rock paintings that bordered on the edge of darkness. Then Wilner led him to the left side of the entrance and made him look hard at the mesa wall.

  “What do you see?” Wilner had asked.

  “Rocks, I guess.”

  “Look harder.”

  Rory had shrugged. “I don’t know, Pa.”

  Ever patient, Wilner had stepped closer to the wall of sandstone and pointed. “Look here, and here. Follow this row of dark stones back to here.”

  His father had pointed without touching and Rory watched in awe as the imprint of a curious creature became visible. In his young life he’d seen enough skeletons of dead cattle to recognize bone structure when he saw it. A skull bone, neck vertebrae, rib bones, pubis, femur, feet, and even toes. The outline of a gigantic beast the likes of which he’d never seen was suddenly all too clear.

  “What is it, Pa?” he had whispered as he stared in awe. “All that’s left of a giant lizard. The Utes claimed these were huge serpents that crawled into the earth to hide from the Great Spirit. But he found them all and killed them with bolts of lightning that fried ’em but left their bones in the ground.”

  Rory remembered falling back a few more steps so that he didn’t have to stand too close to the remains of a terrible lizard who had crawled into the earth to escape the Indian god.

  “I don’t ever want you coming up here alone, son.”

  Rory shook his head. “No, sir. I wouldn’t even want to.”

  “Never forget this place belongs to the Utes. It ain’t ours even though part of it runs over onto our land. This is spirit stuff, boy. Ghostly things that I promised the Utes we’d stay clear of. You’ll mind me now, hear?”

  “I hear ya, Pa.” Rory could still hear his own promise ringing in his ears.

  Even now, years later, he still hadn’t returned to the cave on the far mesa. Not because he believed in the evil spirits or ghosts, but because he knew enough about the Utes to know their gravesites were sacred to them. Respecting their beliefs, he just never went back.

  But now the woman walking beside him was searching for the very thing he had helped to keep secret from other white men all his life. What would she think if she saw the reptile skeleton, which probably was quite massive, if memory served him? The unadulterated joy that lit her face at the sight of the footprints would be nothing compared with what she would experience if he led her to the cave. She could claim the find for her museum and make a name for herself back east.

  There was far more to steer clear of on the mesa than the saurian skeleton. Far more. If he led her to the cave, he would not only jeopardize the trust the Utes had in the Burnetts, but he might even be putting Jessica Stanbridge at peril. Piah’s warning had made it all too clear that no good would come to an outsider who discovered the cave. He couldn’t believe the man would actually harm anyone who trespassed, but he did
n’t want to test Piah at all.

  His thoughts led him to ask, “What will you do if you find what you’re looking for?”

  “There’s no doubt about it. When I find what I’m looking for, I’ll telegram the museum. They’ll send out a team to excavate, which could take weeks, months, or even years.”

  Which is exactly why I can’t let you find the cave.

  The whiteness of the tent in the center of the campground stood out like a beacon against the colorful land and the clear sky. They could see Myra, dressed in her customary brown skirt, high-collared shirtwaist, and sturdy, lace-up boots, coming toward them carrying an umbrella for shade. Every few feet she would stop and bend down, peer at the ground, and then continue on. Finally she was within shouting distance.

  “Hello!” Myra called out gaily. “Did you find them?”

  “We did,” Jessica shouted.

  Rory looked down and found her smiling up at him. He shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling much like a boy who had just given his first girl a bouquet of wild zinnias. He glanced away and cleared his throat.

  As Myra drew near she handed Jessica what appeared to be a stone. “I knew this was a wonderful place. I feel you are on the verge of a great discovery, Jessica. Just look at that.”

  Jessica rolled the piece over in her hands, slid her glasses down her nose, and peered over them at the rock. To Rory it looked like sandstone with tiny fluted shapes carved into it. He’d seen many of them before.

  “Lithostrotion,” Jessica said matter-of-factly.

  “Can I have a look?” Rory held out his hand.

  She dropped the piece into his palm.

  “There’s bushels of this around.” He rolled the rock over and over.

  “I’m sure of it,” Jessica said.

  “It’s fantastic,” Myra added.

  “What exactly is it? I always thought it was just rock.” Rory handed it back to her.