Rattled (18 page)

“Let me give you a boost up,” Camie said. She went down on one knee by the gray cliff. “Take off your backpack, and I’ll hand it up to you.”

Erin didn’t ask how Camie would get up after her. Camie had years of rock climbing experience, while Erin had tried it only a couple of times and had the added challenge of a broken finger. She dropped her backpack and pushed her hat back so she could see upward better. She placed her palms on the smooth gray rock for balance and stepped up on Camie’s knee.

“Reach up and feel around,” Camie said. “Take your time and get a good hold.”

Erin stretched her arms above her head and felt over the edge of the cliff, moving slowly so she wouldn’t jam her finger against something she couldn’t see. She felt smooth, rounded lumps of rock. She found a bump the size of her palm and curled her right hand around it, making sure she didn’t put weight on the injured middle finger. Her left fingers found a crack where the cliff went up to the side.

Camie tapped the gray rock where it sloped out above Erin’s left knee. “Foot here. Remember, keep your butt back so your foot is pressing into the rock and your weight won’t pull you downward.”

Erin pressed her booted foot against the smooth rock, wishing she had some thin, sticky climbing shoes. When she took her other foot off Camie’s knee, Camie stood and shifted to place her thigh under the heel of Erin’s boot and her hand just below Erin’s waist. “You got it.”

Erin pulled. She felt her right foot slipping, then Camie’s other hand went under her heel, supporting her just enough to maintain friction. With Camie’s support she pushed herself up until she could straighten her arms under her shoulders and pull her knee up onto the ledge. She winced a little at the pressure on her damaged finger but had too much else to worry about to really notice. She got her other knee up and braced her right elbow against the side wall. Belatedly, she remembered snakes and took a quick look around. The narrow slot opened into a wider section, the cliffs overhanging shallow caves to form a kind of natural room. She saw nothing living, so she stood up and turned to take her backpack from Camie.

Camie hoisted Tiger up and scrambled after him without even bothering to take off her backpack. She stood beside Erin in seconds. They paused and looked around, enjoying the coolness of the shade. “Looks like someone spent time here.” Camie pointed to the deepest part of the cave. “That dark area is staining from wood smoke.”

Erin grinned. Of course, anyone could have built the fires here, from ancient Indians to modern campers. The heavy staining suggested use over a long time, though, and the secluded canyon would make a perfect hideout for heretical priests, renegade Indians, bandits, or anyone else on the run. The various people using that area as a hideout would have had good shelter in the canyon. They might even have had a regular stream at the time, or a spring somewhere. She pulled out the map and pointed to a set of parentheses cupping a symbol that could have been fire. They were two thirds of the way down the map. She and Camie grinned at each other.

By late morning they had gone about two miles and reached the edge of the map. The canyon had grown wider and shallower, with plenty of small gullies running down the sides where water would flow in during a rain. Erin and Camie scrambled up a shallow slope and stood at the edge of the cliff, trying to compare the map to the surrounding landscape.

Erin shook her head. “We’re in the right area, but that’s as much as I can say.” She pointed to a rock outcropping maybe a quarter of a mile away. “I’m thinking that’s this.” She tapped a finger on the map and then turned in a half circle. “That rise over there is probably this mark. We’re between them, with that high peak above Silver Valley in the right direction, west-northwest. The symbol of the turtle is right about here, but I don’t see a cave entrance. It was probably hidden back then and certainly would be after a century of flooding and erosion.”

They went on until they were confident they’d gone beyond the limits of the map. “Nothing,” Erin said. “The cave entrance could be buried under twenty or thirty feet of sand and dirt by now.”

Camie scooped up Tiger and held him in the crook of her arm like a baby. He lifted his head and purred as she scratched under his chin. “So we go get The Finder. That’s what it’s for.”

“Yes. Do we move our whole camp here, to be closer? It will take a couple of trips.” She wasn’t sure what sounded worse, making the two-mile trip several times with loads of gear or walking back and forth every day, carrying a backpack heavy with water and food. It might take them days to locate the cave, if they found it at all, especially since they would have to head back to camp well before dusk or risk hiking in the dark.

Camie frowned and shook her head. “Moving our gear here would make it easier to identify this location. You and I can hide if we hear a vehicle or plane coming. But where would we hide the gear?” Camie pointed to the west. “That patch of tall trees might work, but it’s at least another half mile away. We’ll waste more time moving gear than going back and forth.”

“Good point.” Erin took off her hat and mopped her forehead. She wished Drew would show up with his helicopter—merely for transportation purposes, of course.

It only took about 45 minutes to reach camp, since the arroyo acted as a trail and they didn’t need to study the map. They decided on an early lunch so they wouldn’t have to carry the food with them. When they headed out again, the sun shone high overhead. Sunglasses cut down the glare, but even the shade of hat brims and long sleeves offered minimal protection from the pounding heat. Too bad she hadn’t found the clue back before spring break, Erin thought.

They headed back along the top rim of the canyon. Since Camie had their destination marked in her GPS, they didn’t have to worry about landmarks. They were hotter up in the sun, but the path was easier. Still, the trip back dragged, since they had to take turns carrying The Finder, a metal box about a foot high and 18 inches on each side, with dials and knobs on the front panel. It only weighed about 20 pounds, but that got heavy quickly. Each turn grew shorter. By the third time she took it, Erin’s shoulders screamed in protest. She set herself the goal of holding on for five minutes, knowing Camie had held it longer, but Camie was in better shape and not recovering from an accident.

Erin felt the sweat beading between her breasts and sticking her shirt to her back. She decided five minutes had to be up, and set The Finder on a waist-high boulder with a grunt. They’d taken to stopping for water every time they traded off. It was hard to stay hydrated in the desert, and besides, the more they drank, the lighter their backpacks got. The smart thing might have been to rest during the heat of the day, but since it wouldn’t really cool down again until dusk, they had little choice. Erin prayed Camie would be willing to leave The Finder at the search site and not want to bring it to and from camp every day.

Camie wiped her face with a flame-patterned bandanna and said, “Kind of muggy today.”

She frowned toward the western horizon. Erin followed her gaze and saw low clouds building up above the distant mountains. Hopefully the clouds would stay above the mountains, like yesterday. But the air did feel humid, for New Mexico. Normally their sweat would evaporate as quickly as it formed.

Camie shoved her water bottle back in the pack and grabbed The Finder. “Let’s go.”

Erin sighed and trudged after her, trying to appreciate that her arms only ached from fatigue and no longer from carrying The Finder’s weight.

Finally they reached the search site. Erin collapsed against a rock outcropping where it angled enough to provide a tiny sliver of shade. Her legs still stuck out in the sun, and the shade didn’t feel much cooler, but at least she wasn’t moving. “I’m melting,” she wailed in her best Wicked Witch of the West voice.

Even Tiger looked limp as he found his own patch of shade and settled down, grumbling. Camie poured water into a dish and set it next to him, then crouched in front of Erin. “You okay?”

She managed to nod. “But what I wouldn’t give for a tall, icy glass of lemonade. Or a swimming pool.”

“Greenhorn. Give it another five or six years and you’ll adjust to the heat. Just be glad we’re not doing this in August.”

“I am. But right now, I wish we were doing it in Alaska.”

Camie grinned. “Have some more water and imagine yourself standing on a glacier.”

Erin had already finished off one water bottle and now understood why Camie had insisted they take three each. Even with all the water she’d been guzzling, Erin had only had to pee once that morning. She started her second water bottle and ate a granola bar. She wasn’t hungry but hoped it would give her an energy boost.

Camie squatted, elbows resting on her knees, looking disgustingly healthy and cheerful. “We’ve got a couple of options. Wander randomly, of course. We could get lucky, but probably not.”

Erin shook her head. “I’m not counting on luck these days.”

Camie raised an eyebrow. “From the sounds of things, you could have gotten lucky the other night.” When Erin just gave her a look, Camie chuckled and went on. “We could make a grid. Start on one side and work our way back and forth. Make passes every twenty feet or so.”

“That sounds very proper and scientific,” Erin said. “And time consuming.” She sighed.

“There is one more option,” Camie said. “We could start at our best guess of a location and work out from there. It’s a little trickier to keep track, but it means we start where we have the best chance of finding something.”

Erin scowled. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place! You know darn well you’d already made up your mind.”

Camie gave her a pat on the shin. “I wanted you to feel included. Anyway, I didn’t think you were in any hurry to get up.”

“There is that.” She pushed herself up with a groan. “Well, we didn’t come all the way out here to nap in the shade, so let’s go.”

Tiger looked at them, muttered something, and closed his eyes again, making it clear that he personally intended to nap in the shade for as long as possible. Erin couldn’t blame him. At least she wasn’t wearing a fur coat.

“All right,” Camie said, “you spent the last year researching this treasure. You probably know more about it than any person alive. So where do we start?”

Erin closed her eyes, letting all the bits and pieces of information slide through her brain. She ignored the ones she thought were misleading, like Doc Noss’s first-person account of his find, which she had decided was either a different cache or an outright lie. But she’d seen the petroglyph map, she’d compared it to a topographic map and the landscape itself. She’d delved into dozens of old books, not just about the Victorio Peak treasure, but about Spanish mining techniques, Chief Victorio, bandit hideouts.

“The Finder works best if it’s looking straight down, right?” she asked.

“Yeah. Theoretically it will work sideways as well, but that would make it harder to manipulate. It’s designed to find changes underground, like the difference between bedrock and empty space. It could be thrown off by hills or other ups and downs in the landscape.”

“I don’t think the cave will be underneath the canyon floor. Most likely, the opening is in one of these cliffs. The cave opening may have collapsed, though, or been intentionally covered up. Let’s start by going along the top of the cliff on the south side. We can make a couple of passes and if we don’t find anything pretty close to the edge of the canyon, try the other side.”

“That sounds downright scientific,” Camie said.

Camie turned on The Finder and showed Erin how to understand the readout. They were looking for empty space under the ground, and The Finder would show differences in the subsurface down to a hundred feet. “If it’s a large cave, we should get a really obvious reading,” Camie said.

“Some of the reports suggested a narrow tunnel leading into the cave,” Erin said. “And of course, there’s the danger that some or all of the tunnel will have collapsed. Will we be able to see anything like that?”

Camie scrunched up her nose. “Hard to say. This is still in the testing phase. I checked it out over some of the old mineshafts near town, and it will definitely show a large tunnel, but anything smaller than about four feet in diameter....” She shrugged.

“So we should work back from the cliff. If we miss the tunnel, we might still find the main cave farther back.” Erin suppressed a moan. It wasn’t like they’d expected it to be easy.

They drank some more water and left their packs in the shade, then got to work. They carried The Finder between them so they could hold it flat to the ground and moved slowly over the cliff top to the south side of the canyon. “I should have built some kind of off-road rolling cart,” Camie grumbled. “What was I thinking?”

Erin ducked her head to wipe her sweaty upper lip on her shoulder, since her hands were full. “It doesn’t get high points for user friendliness.”

“But it’s working. The data is great. I hope we find that tunnel so I can figure out how detailed this gets.”

“Uh huh. That’s the main reason to find the tunnel.”

“Hey, I’m not saying I’d ignore the treasure. But The Finder could be my key to fame and fortune, or at least a good government grant if I can prove it would find smuggler tunnels at the border. Plus, if the images are detailed enough it could help find trapped earthquake victims.”

“You’ll get there.” Erin’s hurt finger started to ache, even more than the rest of her body. “I have to get another painkiller. They’re in my backpack.”