Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (62 page)

“Malpais” means “bad lands” in Spanish.

In most situations, that was a pretty good name for the place. Contrary to popular belief, the rough volcanic terrain that began in the vicinity of Grants and flowed its erratic course over many acres to the south and west was not the result of the explosion of Mount Taylor. El Malpais resulted from the periodic eruption of numerous small vents. The most recent flows, from Bandera and McCarty's Crater, had happened only three thousand years earlier.

This relative youth meant much of the lava was sharp and jagged. The malpais ate boots, ripped into the soft parts of a horse's hooves, and sliced open skin. A horse who decided to panic at a fluttering leaf or bolt when a quail exploded up from underfoot was likely a dead horse. Brett had trained his horses to expect him to be alert and attentive, providing them with the confidence they themselves lacked.

Brett gave Little Warrior another “thank you” pat on the neck, then turned to check on Pintada, his brown-and-white paint pack mare. Both horses were of feral stock, acquired through the BLM's adoption program. If asked, Brett had always agreed that the horses were mustangs, although he knew the question merited a more complicated reply. However, he knew that, whatever their breed, his horses were tough and resilient, possessing strong legs and solid hooves. They were also a lot less picky about their diet than most horses. Sure, they were small and scrubby, classic round-bodied Indian ponies, but they were descended from generations of survivors.

Nathan had taken Brett and Leo hiking in the malpais and surrounding back country. They'd explored the caves, discovering areas where ice could be found in the middle of summer and where bats hung like gently rustling leaves. There had been moss gardens growing beneath tiny skylights and pools fed one drip at a time as rain seeped down from above. Nathan had explained that these caves were actually tubes formed when the lava had begun to cool. The hot lava had flowed through, leaving an open space. Some of the tubes ran for miles—sixteen was the largest measured. Others were huge—over fifty feet in diameter.

El Malpais embraced green islands called “kipukas” within its black flow. The largest of these kipukas was called Hole in the Wall. The boys had been a little disappointed to learn that it wasn't the Hole in the Wall made famous by Butch Cassidy, but this Hole in the Wall was marvelous in its own right. It embraced some six thousand acres. Tales were told of outlaws using it as a staging ground and deserters hiding during various wars. Antelope had somehow found their way in, as had any number of smaller animals and a host of birds. When they were in high school, Brett and Leo had hiked in any number of times to camp, feeling as if they were in a world all their own.

After the boys had graduated from high school, Grandfather Nathan made them a present of a secret that—as Brett learned later—not even the park service knew. Nathan had learned the secret from an old cowboy, long ago when he himself had been just a boy. He told them that, even with the old cowboy's description, it had taken him several weeks to find the place. Working as a team, the boys found it sooner.

They were carefully tracing their way along the fifty-foot-high lava wall as they had so many times before, painstakingly examining every crack and crevice, looking for one that penetrated more deeply than the rest. They stabbed themselves on prickly pear and thorny cholla. They wore thick gloves thin while moving chunks of rough, pockmarked basalt. Then they had realized that one narrow crevice was a whole lot wider than it looked, the result of an optical illusion caused by the junction of two sections of stone. Wild with excitement, they'd probed into the crevice. Their hopes had crashed when they saw what seemed to be a solid wall ahead of them but, when they followed the passage to its end, they realized the crevice actually curved, transforming into what they now recognized as the end of a lava tube.

After going back for their lights and packs, they carefully made their way along the tube's length. Open sky vanished as the crumbling edges of the tube's uppermost reaches became entire. Even with flashlights, they stumbled over chunks of basalt or bits of detritus that had drifted down from the upper world. Several times they splashed into puddles that had formed in a low section of the passage. Slimy drips trickled from above, running down their faces and hair onto the bare skin of their necks like the chill fingers of some ghostly denizen of the darkness.

Their efforts were rewarded first by a distant flicker of light, then when the tube opened out into an oasis of green, an acre-sized meadow surrounded on all sides by walls of cracked, black rock that bent in at the top, as if cradling the meadow. The stream that ran across the meadow was marked by thicker and greener growth. Whooping with enthusiasm, they drank and refilled their canteens. After they had washed off accumulated grime, they set about exploring their new domain.

Across from where they'd entered, an odd jumble of rocks caught their attention. Trotting over to investigate, they discovered that someone had built a wall from irregularly shaped chunks of basalt. Off to one side, hidden by the angle of the wall, was a thick plank door. Opening it, they discovered a tidy cabin, constructed by walling up a section of cave. The rock overhang served as a roof and light came from deep windows with thick glass set into wooden frames. The cabin was quite large. Bunk beds were built into one wall, and the area near the fireplace was furnished with a pair of handmade chairs and a table. A channel carved into the floor carried a trickle from the stream that vanished beneath a farther wall.

A door to one side showed the way into a second cave, reached down a short passage beneath the overhang and walled in after the same fashion as the front of the cabin. This second area's purpose was evident from a manger containing a few pieces of desiccated hay and a scattering of brittle straw on the stone floor. From this side, it was easy to find the hidden door that let out into the meadow.

“That manger's oddly placed,” Brett said, after they'd poked around for a time, discovering an old bucket with the bottom out, a burlap sack that might have once held grain, some chewed bits of leather. “Why build it into the wall that way? Why not just make it freestanding? That took a lot of extra work.”

Bringing his flashlight close to the manger, Brett examined the thick planks carefully. He'd split planks from logs and, even when you knew the trick, it wasn't exactly easy. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set these planks, then anchor the manger to them. Eventually, Brett found the hidden latch. It was quite heavy and took a moment to work loose, but when he did the section of planking holding the manger swung on hidden hinges, revealing a second tunnel.

This tunnel was shorter than the one that they'd followed in from the edge of the malpais and ended in a huge green space, with trees.

“How big is it?” he asked Leo. Leo had a good head for such things. He always won when Grandfather Nathan asked them to judge area or volume.

Leo frowned thoughtfully. “Hard to tell with the trees, but I'd say twenty-five or thirty acres. You could keep horses here, a couple cows, even. The grass is good and thick.”

“The stream probably feeds under the walls to here,” Brett said. “I think that the tube we followed in, the first meadow, and this were all part of one lava tube system. This section was probably never entirely covered.”

“Suspect you're right,” Leo agreed. “Shame that Grandpa didn't show us this a few years ago. We could have had a lot of fun during high school. Now we're off to college.”

“But we'll come back,” Brett said.

They had, many times. After college, Leo had gotten a job with a big accounting firm in Denver. He'd been flying back to New Mexico for a Saint Patrick's Day binge at Brett's parents' Cloverleaf Tavern when his plane went down. There had been no survivors.

*   *   *

Brett and his horses made their way through the crevice, down the tunnel, and into the first meadow a lot more quickly than Brett and Leo had that first time. Working by lantern light, Brett had carefully cleared away all the loose rock so the horses would have safe footing. The little pools came and went with the seasons, but never became deep enough to provide an obstruction. He'd hammered flat the worst of the protrusions. The one thing he hadn't made easier to use was the hidden entrance. Indeed, he'd done what he could to make it harder to find without blocking access for the horses.

It had taken a long time, but Brett hadn't been in a hurry. Far from it. He had nowhere to go and wanted to go anywhere even less.

He was tired when he got in—more tired than he remembered being for quite a while. Still, Little Warrior and Pintada had to be unpacked, untacked, rubbed down, then turned out to pasture. The dogs and cats pretty much took care of their own meals this time of year, but they still wanted attention. The chickens needed to be shut away and the goats milked. There had been rain earlier, so he didn't need to haul water to his garden. He decided he'd pick first thing in the morning.

One of the things he'd treated himself to in Acoma was a large side of bacon. Brett cut off thick slabs, fried them up, then cooked eggs in some of the grease. The rest he put aside for another time. He'd also bought bread, something he rarely made himself. After the heavy meal and the long day's ride, he should have slept like a log. Instead, he lay awake, a cat on his pillow, another on his chest, the Pomeranian snoring by his feet.

He thought about Emilio Gallardo. About how he'd taught Brett about taking care of horse's hooves. How Brett used that knowledge every day, owed a great deal to what he'd been taught. He dozed and in those dreams Leo was still alive. He was upset at the decision the Acoma elders had made, trying to show them how wrong they were with a cost/benefit analysis painted on a hide, but resembling a power point presentation. He waved a long stick as a pointer and lightning shot out from the tips and became a red-tailed hawk.

The hawk spiraled up, riding the thermals over the malpais, circling wider and wider to the south. Far below, the hawk spotted a cluster of jackrabbits. No. Jackalopes, for they had little horns. The jackalopes were huddled near an upthrust bit of sandstone. They were wearing horseshoes.

Brett drifted with the hawk, sleeping in perfect peace until cockcrow. He rose at first crow, made a large mug of hoarded instant coffee, and went out to gather eggs, milk the goats, and make a quick survey of the garden for produce that would spoil if he didn't pick it. He fried more bacon, ate some with more eggs and soft goat cheese, then wrapped up a couple of thick burritos. These went with some freshly picked cucumbers in a box that, in turn, went into his saddlebags.

Brett let the chickens out, but only as far as the wire mesh–covered enclosure he'd built to surround their coop. The goats protested being left in their run, but he didn't know if he'd be back before dark and, while the chickens would retire to their coop, the goats were much more confident of their ability to take care of themselves, something the coyotes sometimes took advantage of.

These chores taken care of, Brett went through the tunnel into the back pasture. Since he almost always brought a treat along, his small horse herd ambled over to greet him. While they were all busy with carrots, he slipped a halter over the head of Timpani, his choice for the day's work.

Timpani's owner had always said the mare was pure Arabian. Certainly, she had the Arab's high crest and delicate head. Her coloring was what the Old West had called steeldust, grey liberally sprinkled with darker hairs. Her mane and tail were a shadowy grey, darker than her coat, reminding Brett of gathering storm clouds. Although she played at being high-strung, Timpani liked work that demanded her attention and intelligence. Acting up was a sure sign that she was bored.

While he was tacking up Timpani, Brett had a serious chat with Rover and Fida, two dogs who had come to live with him that first winter. The pair looked as if they might have a lot of blue heeler—an Australian cattle dog—in them. There'd been a fad for the breed about the time everything went to hell, so they could well be purebred. Rover and Fida weren't pretty in the way border collies were pretty. Their coats were short, colored a bluish grey, and overlaid with black blotches. Their muzzles were somewhere between short and long, and held a good number of very white teeth. Rover's perked ears were neat upright triangles, but one of Fida's flopped, giving her a quizzical look. Their tails curved up over their backs.

Like Timpani, Rover and Fida liked having work to do. They were also completely convinced that they could handle the show without human assistance. When Brett told them to guard the place, they looked at him seriously, their alert ears and gently wagging tails saying:

“Don't we always, boss?”

Next, Brett whistled up Xenophon. The mutt hauled himself from where he was sleeping in the shade of the cottonwood that grew near the cabin door. Xenophon was a long-legged, long-nosed, floppy-eared hound of no particular breed. His tail was long and straight; his coat an unremarkable shade of tan. What was remarkable about him was his sense of smell. Brett had picked him as a puppy from a litter sired by a male who—so his owner claimed—could track a rolling rock through a gully washer in the middle of the night. The bitch who mothered him could perform the same miracles—but with a head cold. Xenophon's biggest problem was that most of the time he was about as lazy as a dog could be. Even when he'd been a puppy, he'd preferred sleeping with his belly to the sun rather than romping about. Put him on a scent, though, and he'd follow until forced to take a break.

After securing the Pom and several of the older cats inside the cabin, Brett swung into the saddle. As Timpani walked purposefully in the direction of the exit tunnel, he checked his supplies: food, water, first aid kit, bow and arrows, knives at his waist and in his boot tops. He didn't figure he'd be fighting, but it was best to be prepared. He had a good lasso in easy reach, as well as odds and ends of wire, string, and suchlike tucked into his saddlebags. His best binoculars were in a case where he could easily reach them. Given that he had no idea what he'd find, if anything, he was as prepared as he could be.