The Night Visitor (17 page)

The rancher pointed the pipe stem at Moon. “Lissen, Charlie—I coulda already dug up that whole damn elephant all by myself with just a pick and shovel. But those two are so afraid of scratchin' one of them old bones, they're digging with teensy little dental picks and toothbrushes and stuff like that.” He snorted in disgust. “Anyway, I hired a man to help 'em.”

Moon turned his back to the fire. “Anybody I know?”

McFain shook his head. “I doubt it. This fella's from Arkansas. Claims he's done a lot of bone-diggin' before this, so I expect the Silvers was happy to get him.” He looked through the window toward the long ridge. “I let him park his trailer up at the RV campground. I got everything up there. Electric. Gas. Water. Septic tank. Big investment.” And this was the first paying customer in almost six months. The cabins did better. But not by much.

The policeman tried to ignore Vanessa's frank gaze. She seemed amused at something. Him, maybe. “Well,” he zipped his jacket, “I guess I'll go over and have a look at the elephant.” Best if they didn't think he was concerned about the
boundary dispute. Which he wasn't. “Where, exactly, is this hole in the ground?”

Nathan jerked a thumb. “The big tent. Down back o' the barn.”

The young woman pulled on a heavy denim jacket—her father's castoff—and jammed a battered cowboy hat onto her head. “I'll take you there. Wouldn't want you to get lost.” She took his left arm.

McFain chuckled. “You better look out, Charlie. Nothin' worse'n a woman approaching spinsterhood. I think this chicken's wantin' to find herself a rooster and build a nest.”

She stuck her tongue out at her father and maneuvered the tall Ute through the door. Vanessa clung to Moon's arm like a rose vine on a fence post. She leaned slightly against him as they walked around the barn. There was a muttering diesel sound ahead of them. A thin man sat in the bulldozer's steel seat, pushing and pulling on levers with the easy confidence of a worker who knows what he's doing. Almost unconsciously, the policeman's mind made notes. The ranch hand wore a ragged-looking gray overcoat. Faded jeans that were much too large for him. A dirty red sock hat with a little white ball of fluff on the end. Looked like he'd stole his clothes off a scarecrow who'd fallen on hard times.

“New hand?”

Vanessa nodded. “Poor man's deaf. Showed up hungry and desperate for work. And you know Daddy—he can't turn his back on someone who's in need.”

Moon nodded. Nathan McFain can't turn his back on a bargain. “What's his name?”

The young woman smiled at the policeman. Charlie Moon was a typical cop. Just couldn't resist the urge to pick up bits of useless information. “Jimson Beugmann.”

Moon seemed to be making small talk. “Looks like a city fella.” The man's face was very pale, his hands bony. Looked like he'd been sick.

She shrugged as if it hardly mattered. “I imagine he'll work a few weeks to make himself a stake. And then wander off.” It was a familiar pattern.

Moon gave the deaf man a friendly wave.

Beugmann, whose gloved hands were occupied with the half dozen levers, nodded in response. He was scooping out a shallow pond behind the barn. It was a satisfying, if simple task, such as children and grown men enjoy. Push away the rocky earth on the slight incline, pile it up on the low end to make a dam. Later on, lay in a four-inch iron pipe for overflow. When the spring snows melted in the pasture, the depression would be half-filled with water. Summer thunderstorms would do the rest.

When they were far enough away from the bulldozer's labored grunting and clanking for conversation, Moon looked down at the top of the woman's head. Her hair was parted very neatly down the middle. Like she'd used a straight-edge with the comb. “So what's so special about these particular mammoth bones?”

She smiled up at him. “Daddy was about to bust because you didn't show the least interest in his big secret. It was mean of you not to ask him—he was
dying
to tell you.”

“I'm sorry.” He wasn't.

She squeezed his arm. “First of all, these bones are over thirty thousand years old.”

“I don't think that's all that unusual,” Moon said cautiously. “Few years ago, up in Wyoming, a road crew dug up some mammoths that were over a
hundred
thousand years old.”

She nodded. “But that's only the half of it. Daddy's mammoth has butchering marks.”

Moon stopped in his tracks. The skin on the back of his neck was prickling. “Are you sure?”

She shrugged. “That's what Professor Silver says.”

The Ute took a deep breath. Butchering marks on an animal that was grazing here thirty thousand years ago. That would mean that human beings got here almost three times as long ago as the experts thought. Maybe even some of his own ancestors.

The large tent loomed in front of them. Backed up very close to the western boundary fence. Moon noted. The excavation was right on the edge of Southern Ute holdings. Or—depending on who had moved the boundary markers last—maybe some of it was
on
Ute land. “What's your major
up at the university?” he asked. Psychology, he figured. Or sociology.

She broke off a dead stalk of grass and stuck it between her perfect teeth. “Computer science.”

“Oh.” Moon considered himself a reasonable, open-minded man. He was happy with many of the products of modern technology. Like the Hubble telescope. Fuel injection. Anesthesia. Microwave ovens. Laser gun sights. But computers… well, that was another matter. It wasn't so much that he didn't like them. But they were much like porcupines—a sensible man didn't touch one of 'em.

She sensed his disappointment with her chosen profession. “I read lots of stuff in other fields. And go to talks on all kinds of subjects. It's one of the advantages of being in a university town.”
Compared to Boulder, things are pretty dull down here on the farm.
She pushed aside the framed door, rigged by Horace Flye to replace the drafty tent flap.

Charlie Moon had expected to encounter a sedate scene inside the sprawling excavation tent. A little old man, scribbling arcane data into a notebook. His prim daughter, picking away at fragments of fossilized bones with a pointed trowel. And Horace Flye, of course. On the lookout for a pocket to pick. It was admittedly an uncharitable thought. But lawmen are not paid to give fellows of Flye's ilk the benefit of any doubt.

The tent door opened onto a scene that was quite different from what the Ute policeman had expected.

It was busy as an anthill on the last day of summer.

A half dozen flood lamps encircled the sandy basin where an assortment of massive fossil bones had been exposed. The excavation was neatly divided into squares by an array of pine stakes. Various colors of cotton twine connected the wooden markers.

An aristocratic-looking fellow was sitting at a folding table, engrossed in a sheaf of papers. Vanessa whispered in Moon's ear. “That's Cordell York. He's actually a medical doctor. The little man in the pit with Professor Silver—that's Robert Newton. York and Newton were called in by the Silvers. Some sort of consultants, I think.”

Delia Silver, Moon thought, was prettier than her newspaper picture. The young woman was adjusting an archaic view camera. In the gloomy atmosphere of the tent, the flood lamps were evidently not sufficient for her photographic work. They were augmented by several tripod-mounted aluminum reflector sheets, their surfaces polished to a mirrorlike finish.

The two old men were hip-deep in the sandy pit, which was generally rectangular and, Moon estimated, about thirty feet by twenty. Moses Silver was making a measurement on a fossil bone with a pair of calipers. Robert Newton was muttering to himself, pulling at his earlobe.

Horace Flye was working on a motor-driven contraption that the Ute guessed was a sifter. The Arkansas man was on the far side of the floodlit pit and had not yet noticed the newcomers.

The appearance of the intruders was barely noted by the scientists. Moses Silver looked up from his work. He recognized McFain's tall, skinny daughter with a polite nod, but dismissed the tall man in the sheepskin jacket as just one more curious neighbor in a long line of such folk who—despite McFain's promises to keep them away—wandered in and out all day as if the excavation was some kind of dude ranch sideshow. The paleontologist had learned to avoid eye contact with the locals. And so he ignored the very tall man the McFain girl had brought into the tent.

The Ute policeman was content to wait and watch. Vanessa was leaning against his arm. He was surprised to hear the creak of a metal chair from the darkness behind him. And a voice.

“Ahem.”

The Ute could not recall ever hearing a person actually use that word—if it was a word. Moon turned. A pale face emerged from the shadows. The head was accompanied by a short, trim-looking body. Astonishingly, he was dressed in an immaculate three-piece suit. Pale yellow silk shirt. Narrow red tie with an opal tack. His small shoes were spit-shined. A pale, immaculate hand was extended to Moon. “I am Ralph
Briggs.” He said it as if the name would be instantly recognized.

It was not. Moon accepted the delicate hand. It was cold and limp. Like picking up a dead trout. “Charlie Moon.”

“You're a Ute,” the suit said. It was not a question.

“Last time I checked my tribal enrollment status,” Moon grinned.

“Mr. Briggs,” Vanessa said with an amused smile, “owns an antique and fossil shop in Granite Creek.” It was fun to needle this little fellow.

“I am,” Briggs said to Moon, “an authority of some note on all sorts of ancient things. I have a newsletter… The
Briggs Antiquarian Monthly …
Most of my subscribers are on the Web. Perhaps you've seen it?”

Moon, who had no intention of getting caught in the Web, shook his head apologetically. “Afraid not.”

“I should not be surprised, I suppose.” This was evidently a mild rebuke. Briggs' expression softened. “The academic intelligentsia,” he nodded toward the
gaggle
of scientists, “do not welcome the presence of what they consider… outsiders. Especially well-informed outsiders like myself. I have found it best to withdraw into the shadows and observe silently. They tolerate my presence,” he added bitterly, “on the condition that I shall not publish anything about the excavation in my newsletter. Not until Professor Silver and his cohorts have presented their findings in appropriate scientific periodicals.”

“I see,” Moon said. Unless a man enjoyed the company of eccentrics, this operation looked to be pretty dull. Soon as he could let Horace Flye know that the local law had not lost interest in him, he'd be out of here. Daniel Bignight's cruiser was parked over by Capote Lake. He would pay a call on his fellow officer, see how many speeders he'd ticketed. Then there would be time to drop by and see Aunt Daisy and the little girl she was taking care of. He hoped Sarah Frank and the old woman were getting along.

Horace Flye—who had been working on the motor-driven shaker—noticed the unmistakable form of Charlie Moon. He approached the policeman eagerly, as if the Ute was counted
among his oldest and dearest friends. He poked a grimy paw at Moon. “Well, howdy doody!”

Moon accepted the dirty hand and shook it. It was a warm, firm grip.

Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “You two know each other?”

“Yeah,” Moon said. “Kinda.” One wrong word and Flye could lose his job.

“I gotta make me a cancer stick,” Flye said with a conspiratorial air. “Miss Silver,” he looked fondly toward the archaeologist, “she don't want me smokin' inside the tent. You want to go outside while I light one up?”

Moon tipped his Stetson at Vanessa. “I'll be back in a couple of minutes.”

She sighed and released her grip on his arm. “I'll be here.” She looked down her nose at the three-piece suit. “Enjoying the company of Mr. Briggs, I suppose.”

The little antiquarian made a wry face at the tall woman. “How fortunate for you.” He gestured to indicate the folding chair in a dark corner of the tent. “Shall we retire to a place amongst the shadows. I rarely have the opportunity to converse with a woman of your… stature.”

The tall woman was openly amused at this dapper little man. “Suits me, Shorty. You want to sit in my lap?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why Miss McFain—I do hope you're serious.”

Flye followed the policeman through the makeshift door, then closed it carefully behind them. There were still two hours of daylight left, but the evening chill was beginning to settle over the empty expanse of the broad meadow. The Arkansas man pulled a bag of tobacco and a package of cigarette papers from his shirt pocket. It required his entire concentration to fill a paper with the crumbled brown leaf and seal it with spit. He fumbled in his jeans until he found a plastic lighter. Flye touched a flame to the tip of the cigarette, inhaled the smoke, and began to cough. “Just what I needed,” he said with perfect seriousness.

Moon shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “Looks like you've found gainful employment.”

“Yep,” Flye said. “You can tear up them parole papers now. I'm in like Flynn here.”

Moon was amused to realize that the man had taken the charade back at the jail so seriously. “How's your daughter getting along?”

Flye glanced toward the profile of the small camp-trailer on the near hump of Buffalo Saddle Ridge. L
ooks like a fat tick on a hog's back.
“Oh, Butter's fine. Whilst I do my work, she stays in the trailer—snug as a puppy under a blanket. I go to the trailer for lunch, then I'm home again before dark. We have our supper and watch some TV and then I put her to bed. Little Butter, she's happy as a flathead catfish in muddy water.”

“The thing is,” Moon said, “I don't want you to get in any trouble. Or cause these folks any grief. So you—”