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Authors: Michael McBride

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BOOK: Ancient Enemy
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It was a map.

I recognized Prater Canyon and Morefield Canyon. White’s Mesa and Big Mesa and the East Rim. And I recognized Moccasin Mesa on what was now the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, just north of the Mancos River, which flowed less than a quarter-mile from where I was sitting now. The level of detail was astounding. It was, as far as I could tell, a perfect topographical map of this area, only created so long ago that the buffalo hide was brittle with age.

The major dwellings were represented, too. I saw Cliff Palace and Balcony House and Spruce Tree House, only they appeared somehow smaller and less significant. The older pit-houses, from the days before the early Pueblo peoples began building their fortresses high up on the canyon walls, were more prominent and centered in the middle of the map. There were dozens of them, forming a half-circle around the Sun Temple, and scattered throughout the lowlands to the south, where the Anasazi had originally farmed the land before abandoning their agricultural lifestyle in favor of the cliff dwellings and a diet that ultimately led to the discovery of remains with all of the earmarks of cannibalism.

One pit house in particular caught my eye. It was farther south than all of the others and outside of the boundaries of Mesa Verde National Monument. Wavy lines emanated from it like the rays of the sun. I knew that area well. There were no ruins anywhere near there, especially not of the pit house variety. That was Juniper Mesa and all that was up there was a vast stretch of piñon pines and junipers interspersed with a whole lot of weeds and white sand.

“I’ve been up on Juniper Mesa and not once did I see anything resembling ruins. I’m telling you, this can’t possibly be—”

My grandfather’s eyes darted to the shelf once more.

Chips of paint fell from my legs when I stood and approached the shelf. I pointed first at the water jug. His eyes told me to keep going to the right. They held steady when I reached for the ration pouch. I brought it down and pulled out the manila ticket, which was essentially what the federal government gave us in exchange for hunting our bison to the brink of extinction. According to the handwritten date, it was from the second quarter of 1885 and issued to family number fourteen of band sixteen, which, at the time, had consisted of one man, one woman, two boys and a girl, for a grand total of thirty-five rations. This was what the head of the family carried to the railroad depot and presented for the government handout he despised in order to feed his family. It was the ultimate humiliation and just another dispiriting reminder of how a proud people had resorted to begging for scraps. In this case, only ten of the fourteen rations had been punched.

I showed the ticket to Grandfather and again saw the frustration in his eyes, the lids of which had grown noticeably heavier. The beaded pouch elicited a more positive response. I shook it and then looked inside. There was something in there, something small. I dumped it out onto my palm and stared at it for a long moment before again seeking my grandfather’s eyes, only to find him fast asleep.

 

 

 

FIFTEEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I gave up on sleep and chased my exhaustion with spoonfuls of instant coffee I washed down with Mountain Dew. My hands shook, my heart jackhammered, and my head ached like something was trying to force its way out through the base of my skull, but I was somewhat alert and functional, which was about as much as I could hope for under the circumstances.

I saddled up Yanaba and struck off under the blazing sun, which turned the snow to slush that would revert to ice when it set again. It was already uncomfortably high in the sky and climbing by the second. I was grateful I didn’t wear a watch or I’d be checking it every few seconds. As it was, I looked at the sun so often my vision was filled with red and pink blobs. By the time we reached Juniper Mesa it had to be close to lunchtime. At least that’s what my stomach told me, but all of that caffeine had hit it like a gallon of acid and it made all sorts of noises that could have been anything from hunger to outright revolt.

The mesa itself was so long and flat that it was nearly impossible to tell it was a mesa until you reached the far end to the south and the hundred-foot deadfall to the valley below it, which, as far as such things went, was rather unspectacular. Sandstone showed through the windswept snow, from the cracks of which grew the twisted and forked trunks of evergreens, many of them brown and skeletal, others well on their way there. The crisp leaves of the scrub oak still clung to the branches like so many dead butterflies.

I didn’t know where to start. I was surrounded by a veritable forest maybe ten to twelve feet in height, just tall enough that I couldn’t see over the trees from Yanaba’s back as we wended our way aimlessly through the thickets and I thought about all of the times I’d been hunting up here with Grandfather. Most of the time, the deciduous trees had been bare and there’d been snow on the ground and we’d been following hoof prints on foot. I’d been so focused on the tracks that I hadn’t paid any attention to my surroundings. With the exception of the sporadic ponderosa pine, every tree looked just like the last and I found myself questioning my sense of direction with the way the forest dictated our course.

I tried to think about this logically. If the map was consistent—which I had no reason to doubt—I was looking for a pit house. By definition, that meant it had once been a wood-framed structure covered with mud-plastered brush, built over an area of excavated earth prior to the end of the first millennium. They’d been erected near fields that the inhabitants farmed using primitive means of watering their crops since rainfall alone in this corner of the state was nowhere near enough. Runoff irrigation—sowing seeds where mesa tops or other natural formations diverted the runoff from the occasional storms—was especially common. They would have needed soil, too. More than sand and gravel that surrounded me now, anyway.

I took the object I’d removed from the ration pouch from my pocket and held it in my palm, hoping to draw inspiration from it. I pocketed it again and kept moving. With as flat as the mesa was, I could only think of one place where I could be certain the water would drain, and that was into the valley below, where a narrow seasonal stream, all that was left of the great river that carved it, still flowed.

“It’ahlo,” I said and Yanaba slowed to a halt.

I clapped her on her flank and stood up in the saddle. Looked over the treetops as far as I could see in all directions. To the south, the break in the trees coinciding with the edge of the mesa was readily apparent. The same to the east. The transition seemed the most gradual to the west, where the forest grew denser and the skeletal branches of the aspens, birches, and poplars peeked through the overlapping branches of the evergreens. That was definitely where I’d find the richest soil, and presumably the mesa’s watershed.

Yanaba gave a huff of impatience and I dropped back into the saddle with at least some idea of where to begin my search.

The snow grew deeper and the gray wood of the dead trees faded behind me. I welcomed the gentle breeze that ruffled the pine needles and caused them to fall to the ground around me. The shade was dramatically cooler and only served to remind me that time continued to pass as the shadows shortened. Yanaba’s hoof beats became softer as the soil grew deeper and grasses peeked out from the accumulation. The hard layer of stone remained beneath, though. I know little about farming crops, but I was confident that if some of these trees were knocked down to clear space, the soil here would probably be deep enough for something like maize to take root.

There wasn’t much of a slope to the ground, at least not where I was now. I could see where it dipped down into the valley ahead, though. I checked the rawhide map. I couldn’t pinpoint where the pit house should have been, but it appeared to be somewhere in this general vicinity.

Yanaba slowed to a trot and I let her choose our path as I looked around, through the gaps between trees and beneath their branches. Generations of trees had undoubtedly lived and died since this area was last inhabited and could easily have grown from the dirt the wind blew over the ruins themselves, which wouldn’t have been much of a stretch considering the nature of the buildings.

We wended northwestward through the forest for what felt like an eternity, until I finally saw the first indication that anyone had ever been here before me. What I initially mistook for a random pile of rocks was actually the remains of a fallen wall that had once been maybe two feet tall. I climbed down and inspected it. The majority had been reclaimed by the earth, although if I used my imagination, I could see where two parallel rows mortared with mud had once been used to funnel the runoff down into the lowlands to my left.

I led Yanaba by her rope as we walked in a wide circle around the ancient canal. It was nearly impossible to focus on anything beyond the time slipping rapidly away.

There was a depression in the ground, maybe a hundred feet to the northeast, from which a clump of scrub oak grew. Had Yanaba not stopped to nibble at the grasses growing nearby, I might not have recognized its distinctly circular shape.

It was maybe ten feet in diameter, not nearly large enough to accommodate a family, but definitely large enough to serve as one of the storage rooms traditionally built behind the main dwelling. I kicked at the snow and dirt near the edge until I exposed the petrified nub of one of the posts that had once supported the roof.

I was getting close. The problem was I had no idea where I was in relation to the main living quarters.

I left Yanaba to graze and pushed my way through the shrubs and the branches of the trees, watching the ground for any sign of the other storage rooms or pits or the circumference of the pit house itself.

I found another circular depression fifteen feet to the west and a third maybe that far again past it. A typical farmstead from what was known as the Basketmaker III Era featured a trio of storage buildings set behind a pit house, which utilized an antechamber for its entrance on the opposite side. The main dwelling had to be either to the north or the south of the middle storage room, so that’s where I started. I stood in the center and tried to think about it logically, rather than blindly crashing through the underbrush. Again. My forearms were scratched to hell and my socks were sopping wet and riddled with briars. I even had a stinging laceration at the corner of my eye from an infernal pine branch.

From experience, I knew that the snow took longer to melt to the south of any structure as a consequence of the shadow it cast, so it stood to reason that anyone living out here for any length of time would know well enough to take advantage of the additional sunlight to the north in the winter, especially when it came to maintaining the heat in an underground dwelling. With that in mind, I walked pretty much due north toward a thicket of birches that grew so close to one another that the ground beneath them must have remained in perpetual shadow from spring through the first snowfall. Their thin trunks grew at every conceivable angle, from tangles of grass frosted with ice and the moldering leaves of seasons past. The thicket itself was an anomaly. Water birches tended to grow in the nutrient-rich soil closer to the bottoms of the canyons. This thicket was not only out of place, but oddly circular in shape, thanks to the extra soil that had accumulated in the bottom of the pit house, the shape of which was still somewhat apparent if you knew what you were looking for.

I crouched and peered into the maze of thin trunks. Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary, with the exception that here were ruins of potential archaeological significance that no one had excavated. I crawled into the thicket, sweeping my hands through the frozen detritus as I went. I still didn’t have the slightest clue what I was supposed to find or how I was supposed to use the object from the ration pouch, but the pit house had been where the map said it would be, so I had no doubt that its purpose would be revealed to me soon enough. I passed what I guessed was the middle of the main dwelling, where somewhere beneath the roots and dirt was the firepit that would have vented through a hole in the roof, wherever it was now. Large stones protruded from the snow, presumably the remainder of the deflector wall that helped funnel the smoke up through the gap in the roof and away from the inhabitants.

It was almost impossible to believe that anyone had ever lived here. My historical frame of reference was limited to schoolbooks, in which the recorded history of America started with the European Conquest. Everything before that—even the stories of my own heritage—had an unreal quality to them, like fairy tales. These ruins predated the cliff dwellings by hundred of years. How many other civilizations were buried beneath our feet where—?

Thump
.

I stopped crawling.

I’d felt something give underneath my right hand. I raised it to appraise the ground, then pressed down again.

Thump
.

I brushed aside the accumulated snow, dead leaves, and pine needles with both hands until I revealed a square piece of wood, eroded and warped by so many years in the elements. I continued sweeping until I exposed all four sides. It was almost perfectly square and fitted into a wooden frame made of even older timber. The side closest to me had hinges rusted with age, while the opposite side had a dirty and discolored padlock looped through the latch.

I sat up and removed the object from the ration pouch. It was an old, burnished brass key. I turned it over and over in my hand before sliding it into the lock. It took a little more force than I expected to make it turn, but it disengaged easily enough.

BOOK: Ancient Enemy
9.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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