Wild Inferno (19 page)

Friday, 1300 Hours

Back at the ICP, I asked to use one of the laptops in Plans while they took their lunch break. My request was granted, and I searched the Internet for information about archaeological sites in southern Colorado. Site 8AA.104 had been excavated more than twenty years ago. I didn't recognize the lead archaeologist's name, but the anthropologist listed was Elaine Oldham.

I learned that the little cave before which Crane and I had found the bear effigy had once been used as a granary, which was often the custom of the people once known as the Anasazi. The architecture of the site was certainly early Puebloan: before they constructed block wall structures, the Ancient Ones dug pits and made pit houses. Stone tools used to grind corn—called mano and metate—had been found there. The mano was the hand tool used to crack the kernels when rubbing them across the flat or scooped-out grinding stone, the metate. The presence of something the archaeologists called “flake” meant that blades and tools of flint had been made there. Evidently, none of the pots collected were remarkable enough to mention.

I found nothing noteworthy in the site details, but I printed what I found just in case. As I was waiting for the printer to warm up and feed out my page, Steve Morella and Elaine Oldham came in the room. Morella spoke. “Well, hey, stranger. Where is everybody?”

“Lunch, I think.” I quickly logged off the Internet and closed the window of the browser.

“Must be. The parking lot was all but abandoned. What are you doing here? Didn't like the mystery meat they're serving in the chow tent today?” he asked.

“No, it's not that. Actually, I'm waiting for a call. I was just checking my e-mail.” I walked to the printer, took the two sheets it spit out and rolled them into a tube, then stuck them in the side cargo pocket of my wildland pants. After the discovery of the bear effigy, I was pretty sure the site I'd been researching would be a sore subject with Elaine.

“So, there was nobody in the war room. Your IC's not here, I guess?” Steve asked. Elaine removed her hat and set it on a table, then wandered over to a row of fire photos pinned to a bulletin board and began studying them.

“No. Actually, he's the one I'm waiting to hear from. One of the Three-Pueblos Hot Shots is getting out of the hospital, and he's coming to Fire Camp.”

“I know. There are flyers about it everywhere, even in the porta-johns. They're having a big party. How's he getting here?”

“I'm driving him.”

“You're picking him up from somewhere, then?”

“Yes, as soon as I get the word, I'm going to Durango to get him.”

“In your Jeep?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw your Jeep in the parking lot outside. It looks like someone used it for target practice. No one got hurt, I hope.”

“No, it happened in Ignacio when I was in a shop there. The tribal police said that some kids on the reservation had been taking potshots at Forest Service vehicles.”

“Does Mountain get to go with you to Durango?” Elaine asked, turning from the photos.

I hadn't thought about that, but I was pretty sure Momma Anna would enjoy a break. “That's a good idea. I think I'll go get him.”

Just then, the fire management officer from the Columbine Ranger District, Frank McDaniel, leaned his head in the door. He smiled at us, white teeth showing beneath his perfect mustache. He spotted Elaine and said, “You owe me a firefighter time report for the other morning. I never got your hours.”

She looked at him with a startled expression. “I do? Oh, okay. I'll get that to you. I guess I don't understand all these firefighter forms.” She hurried out of the room.

I looked at Steve Morella. “So what are you and Elaine doing here in the middle of the day?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Trying to figure out where they want us to go next. I've done all I can in Division Zulu for now. We finally got the paperwork pushed through this morning so Elaine can drive her own rig on the fire. She needs to know where they want her this afternoon.”

Just then, Elaine reappeared with a frown on her face. She scanned the room and then spied her hat on the table. Without saying a word to us, she snatched it up and left again.

“She seems a little out of her element,” I said, smiling.

“She's been under a lot of strain. Elaine has a daughter with severe disabilities, you know.”

I was only half-listening, thinking about the site information I'd just seen on the Internet. “Yeah, she mentioned that to me.”

“Well, confidentially, she got word that the facility that cares for the girl is closing. I guess the only one that will take her now costs three times as much. It's got Elaine worried sick.”

I nodded. “I can imagine…”

“Don't tell her I told you that,” he hastened to add. “She's a very proud woman.”

“Do you think—when she originally excavated—she could have missed the bear effigy we found?”

“Anyone could have missed it. The little recess was used as a small granary. No one would have expected to find an effigy in there, and as small as this one is, it would have been easy to miss. If they were limited on time or funding, or coming to the end of their contract, they might have had to make some hard choices about which areas of the site to finely sieve.”

“But you think the effigy was from that site originally?”

“We won't know until we get to examine it, and perhaps not even then.”

“I imagine the news of this bear is not sitting well with Elaine.”

“Careerwise, it's probably like finding out you gave a winning lottery ticket to someone else,” he said.

“And you're that someone else.”

He widened his eyes and nodded. “Guilty as charged.”

“Steve, could you help me find some information?”

“Certainly, I'll try.”

I unrolled the report I'd downloaded off the Net and spread it out on the desktop.

He scanned both pages. “That brief form is from the Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation's computerized database. It's not the main one that the contractors filled out originally. I can get you a copy of that. It'll have much more detail and a site map and personnel list. I have to request it, but I could probably get it for you pretty quick.”

“How quick is pretty quick?”

“Maybe a day or two.”

I rolled up the papers again and stuck them in my cargo pocket. “That's no good. I need it right away.”

“Well, I could see if I could pull some strings.”

“Would you?” I flashed him my best smile. “How long have you been working on the Pagosa Ranger District?” I asked.

“Seven years.”

“Did you know Ned Spotted Cloud?”

“No, I didn't know him. Why?”

“I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out what he was doing at that site. Let me ask you one more question: do you know anything about a grandmother related to that site, or maybe to the bear effigy we found?”

He snorted. “A grandmother?”

“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn't make any sense to me either.”

Friday, 1400 Hours

When I got up to the parking lot near the top of Chimney Rock, there were no gatherings going on that I could see. I went to the area where I knew Momma Anna had made her camp and found her stretched out on her blanket under the tree. Mountain, who had been lying in the shade nearby, clambered up and greeted me with an attack of affection: circling, wagging, licking, and pressing himself into me.

“Heat make Indun tired,” Momma Anna said. “Wolf, too. We take nap.”

“Good idea,” I said. I squatted down to look more closely at her. “Are you okay? Are you drinking plenty of water?”

She rubbed her hairline. “Just tired. That wolf wear me out.”

I smiled and scratched Mountain vigorously behind the ears. “I know. How about I take him off your hands for a few hours?”

She leaned back again, reclining on her blanket. “Okay,” she said, and she closed her eyes. “Your friend here,” she muttered.

“My friend?”

“Mm.” She didn't open her eyes.

“What friend?”

“I'm so-o-o tired.”

I picked up Mountain's bridle and led him toward the restroom facility. The parking lot remained full of cars and RVs, yet there was no one in sight. I eyed the blown-in door of the ladies' room. A row of ice chests lined the other side of the building in the shade, and I opened one and scooped ice water across Mountain's neck and back. He shook the water out of his mane and then drank from the icy liquid in the cooler. Excited by the cold, he began to quiver and bound, straining against the leash, leaping in circles around me.

“Shhhhh, quiet!” I whispered to him. “Everyone's napping.”

I loaded him in the back of my Jeep, and he settled instantly onto the blanketed rear deck, excited to be going with me.

“We're going for a ride!” I said.

I shifted the automatic transmission into drive and started down the steep, winding gravel road. Our speed picked up, our momentum increasing as we coasted rapidly down the narrow curves. The road was little more than one lane, and the edge was unprotected by guardrails or posts. I put my foot on the brake to slow the car, and I felt as if my boot had missed the brake entirely. There was no resistance, and my heavy lugs went all the way to the floor. The Jeep began going faster, and I stomped again for the brake, and this time I realized the pedal was there…but the brakes were not. A few quick, narrow curves demanded all my attention as I maneuvered sharp turns at a too-high speed. My disbelief kept me trapped in repetitive action as I continued to step on the useless brake pedal, all the while staring at the road wide-eyed, and muscling the wheel to navigate the sharp turns.

It was then that I saw the giant green sanitary truck lumbering up the road two or three curves below me, probably coming to pump the restroom holding tanks and porta-johns. My eyes quickly darted from one side of the road to the other, measuring. There was no way we were going to pass one another unless one of us stopped at one of the few wide spaces along the track.

By this time, Mountain had sensed my panic, and he moved up behind me, stumbling from side to side as he lost his footing, finally getting himself planted so that his head lowered enough to permit him to see out the front windshield. He panted heavily from the heat, and a huge strand of sticky drool dripped onto the side of my head and my ear.

“Mountain, get back!” I yelled as I maneuvered the steering wheel first one way and then the other as we careened ever faster. I worried that he'd become a huge projectile, perhaps sailing through the front window of the car, or snapping my neck as he slammed from the back into the front. “Get down, buddy! Lie down!”

Mountain licked his chops nervously and tried to lie down, but I had to jerk the wheel suddenly to manage a turn, and he rose to all fours again, straddling as wide a stance as he could manage.

The tires crunched along the gravel, spitting up a thousand tiny rocks into the undercarriage, against the oil pan, in the wheel wells, a deafening din of erratic drumming from under us. The treads were starting to slip and slide as we sped faster downward along the gravel, the Jeep skidding broadside into the curves as I cranked the steering wheel first one way and then the other in reaction to the switchbacks.

Mountain's jawbone banged hard into the top of my head as he lost his balance, and I yelled “Damn!” above the Gatling-gun noise of the gravel against metal.

The sanitary truck chugged toward us, the driver gunning it hard to make it up the steep incline, and suddenly, perched high above the big green engine housing, I could see the driver's eyes, the alarm in his face. I had an insane stream of thoughts:
I should jump…but I'm on the side with the truck…it will hit me before I can…Mountain!…he won't know what to do!…he'll go over the cliff in the Jeep…a sanitary truck…why does it have to be a truck with a tankload of shit?

All at once, the cliff edge began to pull at me.
I should drive right over and take my chances at flying…or maybe a tree will break our fall…gravity's bound to be kinder to us than what we're facing…

The shit truck was almost upon us when I thought to grab the gearshift and pull it back from drive. A rapid transition from automatic to third, and I felt the engine squall—then low, and the car lurched and shook—there was rapid shuddering and a howling sound of metal shearing metal—and then I let go of the gearshift and reached my hand back and pulled up hard on the emergency brake. The Jeep staggered between stop and go and heaved and shimmied sideways toward the front of the sanitary truck—which seemed to be roaring as we came nearer, a high, sharp, sustained yowl of a sound. Mountain plunged forward like a heavy bag toward the front of the car, then—when the vehicle pitched sideways—he toppled onto his side and into the rear, up against the hatch door, then back into the spare tire. I tried to keep my eyes on him as I yawed first forward into the shoulder strap of my seat belt, then back against the headrest, then to the side across the center console, finally smashing back to the opposite side so that my head and neck went out the open window and my shoulder slammed hard into the door.

“Mountain!” I screamed as the car jolted and stopped. Through the web of shatter lines in the passenger-side window, and the prominent hole in the center of that motif, I could see the front grille of the sanitary truck, not six inches away from the Jeep, its pistons hammering, the blistering breath of its engine blasting at me, and I felt myself slipping away.