LC 02 - Questionable Remains (13 page)

"Archaic and historic-nothing in between?"

Jane shook her head. "From the looks of the trench cross
section, the shelter was subject to periodic flooding over the
years."

"That's a neat collection of historic items. Where are you
finding the things. In the cave or around it?"

"I'm excavating a cache of bolt heads in the cave right
now. The musket trigger was found about ten meters away
in the clearing outside the shelter. We found the ax by accident. Mike, one of the student workers, was taking a leak in
the woods. He had his metal detector with him and did a
quick sweep."

Lindsay smiled. "It would be interesting if that was how
it was lost in the first place."

"Wouldn't it? We're finding some bones, too." Jane
looked suddenly grim. "A couple of human teeth, bones of
a left arm, and a right leg."

Lindsay raised her eyebrows. "Amputations?"

"We think so," said Jane. "We thought you could have a
look."

"Sure. Sounds like a group of conquistadores resting up
after a battle. Any indication of how many there were?"

Jane shook her head, but Lindsay saw a faint smile on her
face. "Not yet, but we suspect around twenty." Lindsay was
surprised that she could come up with a number, but before
she could ask a question, Jane pointed to a young darkhaired woman bent over an excavation just outside the shelter. "Over there we've found some bones of a pig in a fire
pit. We don't know if it's a wild pig or domestic."

"I'll have a look. Who found this site?"

"That's fascinating, too. Gil Harris was the one who actu ally discovered that there may be something of interest here.
Come over this way."

Jane had that smile on her face again as she led Lindsay
into the cool, dark rock shelter. She picked up a flashlight
lying beside her excavation and pointed it up at the gray
ceiling of the shelter. Lindsay saw that over the years, people had marked their visitation with graffiti: their names,
the dates they graduated from high school, who they loved,
their philosophy of life in a sentence.

"Look closely up here." Jane pointed to an area with the
flashlight. "It's overwritten with the name Tully Murdock."

Lindsay examined the area, squinting her eyes, then she
saw faded dark letters. "Is that it? Is it written with smoke?"

Jane grinned. "Yes. It says: Diego Vazquez 1567. Neat,
huh? Diego Vazquez was one of the conquistadores who
was with Juan Pardo's expeditions."

Lindsay smiled broadly and examined the roof. The
longer she stared at the gray ceiling, the more letters she
could make out. "This is a nice surprise," she said. "You
never mentioned anything about it in your letter."

"Then it wouldn't have been a surprise," said Jane. "We
photographed it, then Alan digitized the picture and did
some stuff with the computer to bring it out."

"I suppose you're searching the Spanish archives to look
for information on this guy?" Lindsay asked.

Jane turned off the flashlight and they walked out of the
shelter. "We've e-mailed Frank in France. He's going over to
Spain when he can and have a look for us. We already know
a little from Bandera's narrative."

"I can't wait to hear all about it. By the way, I met Gil
Harris on the way up. He thought I was a trespasser and
almost threw me out."

"Yeah, Gil's kind of territorial, but he's okay. Alan met
him when they were both at UNC before Alan transferred to
UGA. Gil's gone to get us some supplies. We use insect
repellent around here like it was water or beer."

"How'd Gil come to find the site?" asked Lindsay.

"He's interested in caves and rock shelters. He's explored
a lot of them."

Lindsay looked around at all the faces. "Where is Alan?"

Jane grimaced. "Jim took him to town to see a doctor.
We're afraid he may have Lyme disease. He got that bull'seye rash. We're infested with deer ticks. Which reminds me,
you had better spray yourself down if you haven't already."

Jane took Lindsay to their camping ground, fifty yards or
so from the rock shelter. "You guys are really roughing it, I
see," Lindsay said, indicating the pup tents erected in a
clearing.

"Sure are," said Jane, smiling. "It's sponge baths most
days, unless you want to bathe in the creek a quarter mile
away. We do that about once a week, the girls one day and
the guys another."

Lindsay laid her sleeping bag in the supply tent. After
making a hasty examination of herself for ticks, she sprayed
her clothing and exposed skin with repellent. She tucked
her hair under her hat and went outside to join the others.

Alan had returned. "Glad you made it to our hideaway,"
he said, greeting her with a peck on the check. Alan's normally tanned skin looked a little pale.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

He pushed a lock of dark hair away from his eyes. "Won't
know until the blood tests are back, but the doc said I'm
probably in for a round of antibiotics. But tell me, what do
you think of our little site?"

"I'm impressed, I really am. You guys are doing a great
job. I like the way they even signed their name to the site.
That was considerate of them."

"Wasn't it, though?" said Alan.

"Jane said you had some bones for me to look at," she said.

Lindsay sat on a wooden crate and used her hand lens to
examine the bones that Alan showed her. "You don't need
me to tell you that this humerus and femur were sawed off;
the cross section is completely straight," said Lindsay.

"Yeah," said Alan. "Poor guys. No anesthesia." He wrinkled his brow in sympathy.

"Bring me one of the bones of the pig you found," Lindsay
said. Alan brought two bones for her to look at. "It's domestic," she said after a close look. "No doubt about it."

"I wonder where they got pigs?" asked Jane. "I didn't
think Pardo took pigs with him. Weren't they hurting for
food at Santa Elena? Wasn't that one of the reasons
Menendez sent Pardo out, to ease the food shortage in Santa
Elena by getting rid of a portion of the soldier population so
they wouldn't have to feed them? Make them live off what
they could extort from the Indians?"

"Yeah, that," said Alan, "and to inform the Indians they
were now the subjects of Spain, and to find a good route
from here to the Spanish silver mines in Mexico. But they
must have had to take some provisions when they left Santa
Elena or they'd have starved before they reached Indians
who would feed them."

Lindsay examined the end of the pig femur while they
talked, then picked up the human bone again. "They were
sawed with a similar tool."

"Great," said Alan. "You mean those poor devils had to
share medical equipment with the butcher?"

"Perhaps," said Lindsay, smiling. "Maybe their surgeon
and their cook just had the same kind of equipment."

"Maybe the surgeon and cook were the same person,"
suggested Jane, smiling wickedly.

As the sun went down and it grew dark, the crew gathered in their primitive camp, built a fire, and ate buckets of
Kentucky Fried Chicken that Gil had brought with him
from his supply run. There was no moonlight. Illumination
came from the campfire and Coleman lanterns. Some of the crew had put on long-sleeved shirts against the cool mountain air. Thousands of stars in the cloudless sky twinkled in
the opening above the clearing. Tree frogs, crickets, and
other night noises were as loud as they had been at Brian's
site, but in the more primitive surroundings of the rock shelter, they seemed closer and louder just outside the circle of
light. Alan unrolled a map and laid it on the ground. They
all leaned forward as he traced his finger along a trail he
had marked with a pen.

"On his second expedition," Alan said, "Pardo went this
route, from Santa Elena, along the coasts of Georgia and
South Carolina, through South Carolina and into North
Carolina and Tennessee. According to Bandera's journal, at
the town of Aboyaca, Pardo sent a guy named Esteban
Calderon out to visit the town of Tipwan on the Zantee
River, a tributary of the Chattahoochee. Calderon is reported to have had a skirmish with hostile Indians somewhere
along his route, with major loss of life on both sides.
Calderon lost seven men, and he is said to have killed perhaps forty Indians."

"That event would be consistent with the amputated
limbs and lost teeth you've found here," Lindsay said.

"The crossbow bolts and musket trigger are from the
kinds of weapons carried by the Spanish expeditionary
forces of the period," Alan added. "Diego Vazquez is mentioned as a member of Calderon's party. This may be one of
Calderon's camps."

"May be?" said Gil. "I'd say probably."

"De Soto also visited Tipwan about twenty years years
earlier," said Jane, taking up Alan's story. "From the
description of his chronicler and from Bandera's report, we
know that Tipwan is probably the Sarah Flint Site."

"If that's the case," said Brian, "it probably wasn'tTipwan
people that Calderon fought. There was no indication of
warfare and no battle wounds on any of the burials at the
Sarah Flint Site, as I recall."

"No, there weren't," agreed Lindsay.

"Then who did they fight with?" asked Jane.

Lindsay peered at the map, which had triangles marking
the probable locations of towns mentioned in various
Spanish chronicles and squares for archaeological sites. She
put a finger on the triangle labeled Calusa, several miles
north of Tipwan. "De Soto also visited here," she said. "As
I recall, the people at Tipwan told him that Calusa was a
chiefdom with five wealthy villages."

"What are you getting at?" asked Alan.

"I don't imagine that the Spanish easily let go of the idea
of finding treasure among the Indians. What if this
Calderon had read de Soto's chronicles and either did not
go to Tipwan, or went to Calusa after Tipwan?" suggested
Lindsay, examining the map.

"But," argued Jane, "if I remember right, de Soto said that
Calusa was the capital of the chiefdom, which meant it
probably had a mound. There aren't any mound sites in that
area that fit the description."

"Anyway," said Alan, "what makes you think that it was
Calusa? It could be any village; it could be one not mentioned in anyone's account. We've got no site to match up
with Calderon's skirmish."

"I think we do," said Lindsay. They all looked at her, surprised.

"Where?" asked Alan.

"Brian's site, the Royce Site."

"It doesn't have a mound," said Jane.

"It did. It was destroyed by landowners during this century, but the remnants are there." Lindsay told them about
the massacred burials. "It's not that far from here," she said.

Alan raised his fists into the air above his head in a gesture
of triumph. "That's great. That's fantastic! I'm going to visit
Brian's site tomorrow. Wouldn't that be great if we can make
a link between the Rock Shelter Site and the Royce Site?"

Lindsay got up and stretched her legs, leaving them mak ing plans to visit the Royce Site and to e-mail Frank to hurry
it up in Spain. She saw Gil Harris get up and stretch, and
she walked over to him.

"This is a good site," she said. "You must be very pleased
to have found it."

"I am. Almost missed it, though. Whoever that Tully
Murdock is, he almost obliterated Diego Vazquez's name. I
don't know why people have to deface every rock they
come to."

"Marking their passage," said Lindsay. "If Vazquez hadn't, we might have never found this site, much less know
any historical information about it."

"That's true enough, I suppose."

"Jane said you have explored some caves," she said.

"A few," he said. But Lindsay took the sound of his voice
and the cock of his head to mean that he was making an
understatement.

"Do you know other cavers?"

"Sure."

"Have you ever heard of a man named Ken Darnell?"

Gil looked down, trying to remember. "Sounds familiaryeah ..." He looked up at Lindsay. "Didn't he die, get killed
in a cave-in? Yeah, I remember now. Met him a couple of
times at the National Spelunkers conventions. Outspoken
fellow. We went out drinking together once or twice. He
was a real hot dog. Knew a lot about caving, but reckless.
Kind of a daredevil, I thought. I wasn't surprised to hear he
died in a cave. He a friend of yours?"

Lindsay shook her head. "His family asked me to look
into his death."

"They suspect something?"

"The authorities didn't give them very much information
about his death. I think they just want closure. Did you ever
visit Hell Slide Cave in Tennessee?"

"Once. It's a dangerous and difficult cave to navigate. Is
that the one he died in?"

"Yes. What's the cave like?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"The environment. Wet, dry ... ?"

"Damp, as I recall. I didn't go too far into it. As I said, it's
a dangerous cave."