The Visitant: Book I of the Anasazi Mysteries by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear Page A
Authors: W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear
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son’s burial ladder, and a tortured expression creased his face.
Catkin rose to her feet. “Go. I will take care of this.”
Browser lightly touched her hair, and walked away like a man about to face his own death, his chin up, shoulders squared.
4
T WO DUST DEVILS—THE CHINDI OF THE NAVAJO—danced in the flats to the west of the site. Dusty watched them as he planted a foot squarely in the soft back-dirt pile and supported the wooden-framed screen with his thigh. Digging, like anything else, had its moments. This wasn’t one. The temperature had topped out at one hundred and four just after noon. Dust-caked perspiration had dried to a white stain on his T-shirt.
The sounds of the site surrounded him. The hollow metallic song of a trowel being scraped across hard sand, the clang of the flat shovel as it encountered a random rock tumbled from one of the pueblo walls. A symphony of shish-shishing came from the screens as they separated the tan sandy loam from bits of pottery, flakes, and the occasional stone tool. The idle chatter of the field crew had dropped to a bare mumble as the heat pressed the last vestiges of energy out of their dirty bodies.
That, more than anything else, gave Dusty a definite understanding of how the heat was affecting his people. Even the word games, the final resort of field archaeologists in the middle of a dig, had dribbled to the essentials of communications—and most revolved around motel rooms in Gallup, iced drinks, cold showers, and air conditioners.
Dusty ran his callused fingers through the pebbles, bits of root, and insect shells in the screen. He came up with a big, fat zero. Not a single artifact. He artfully lowered the back of the screen, and flipped the junk onto the back-dirt pile.
Bending down, he reached for his half-empty thermos—the iced tea had turned tepid hours ago—and nodded to Bruce Thompson, who tossed another shovelful of dirt into the screen.
“Hey, Dusty!” Michall shouted. “There’s a truck coming! Swing
lo, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me to Santa Fe and cold beer, I hope!”
“Dream on,” Sylvia countered. “It’s probably some Park Service control freak coming to ensure our tents are in the right order before he goes to measure the depth of the contents in the Sanolet.”
“Shows what she knows,” Bruce muttered as he pitched another shovelful onto the screen. “No bureaucrat measures smelly stuff. They order the seasonal temporaries to do it.”
Dusty straightened and looked. The truck bobbed and lurched down the dirt track, trailing a thin yellow plume of dust. “Okay, Dr. Thompson, the pit is yours. Don’t exceed a ten-centimeter level, and don’t pocket any golden idols while I’m a co-principal investigator.”
“Right, chief.” Thompson gave him a crooked grin. The kid was still working on his B.A., couldn’t tell ten centimeters from ten feet unless his eyeball was stapled to the tape measure, and probably wouldn’t have recognized a golden idol unless it stood up and announced the fact. Fortunately, so far “Four north, Eight east,” the two-by-two meter square that Thompson was digging, had been a “sterile” pit, meaning it had produced no artifacts.
Dusty walked along the line of stakes that made up the site grid. The datum line ran north-south, the baseline, east-west. Any artifact located would be mapped in according to its Cartesian coordinates, the distance from those two lines. When the site had been excavated, it would look something like a waffle: big empty squares separated by narrow walls of dirt.
Dusty ran a grimy forearm over his sweaty brow. The dirt on his arms streaked his forehead. As he walked out to the road, he slapped dust from his Levi’s and brushed at the sweat stains on his T-shirt.
The approaching truck clattered and growled, its diesel idling along. The vehicle, a big Dodge extended cab pickup, sparkled, rich metallic red paint gleaming as it pushed through the gnarly
Catkin rose to her feet. “Go. I will take care of this.”
Browser lightly touched her hair, and walked away like a man about to face his own death, his chin up, shoulders squared.
4
T WO DUST DEVILS—THE CHINDI OF THE NAVAJO—danced in the flats to the west of the site. Dusty watched them as he planted a foot squarely in the soft back-dirt pile and supported the wooden-framed screen with his thigh. Digging, like anything else, had its moments. This wasn’t one. The temperature had topped out at one hundred and four just after noon. Dust-caked perspiration had dried to a white stain on his T-shirt.
The sounds of the site surrounded him. The hollow metallic song of a trowel being scraped across hard sand, the clang of the flat shovel as it encountered a random rock tumbled from one of the pueblo walls. A symphony of shish-shishing came from the screens as they separated the tan sandy loam from bits of pottery, flakes, and the occasional stone tool. The idle chatter of the field crew had dropped to a bare mumble as the heat pressed the last vestiges of energy out of their dirty bodies.
That, more than anything else, gave Dusty a definite understanding of how the heat was affecting his people. Even the word games, the final resort of field archaeologists in the middle of a dig, had dribbled to the essentials of communications—and most revolved around motel rooms in Gallup, iced drinks, cold showers, and air conditioners.
Dusty ran his callused fingers through the pebbles, bits of root, and insect shells in the screen. He came up with a big, fat zero. Not a single artifact. He artfully lowered the back of the screen, and flipped the junk onto the back-dirt pile.
Bending down, he reached for his half-empty thermos—the iced tea had turned tepid hours ago—and nodded to Bruce Thompson, who tossed another shovelful of dirt into the screen.
“Hey, Dusty!” Michall shouted. “There’s a truck coming! Swing
lo, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me to Santa Fe and cold beer, I hope!”
“Dream on,” Sylvia countered. “It’s probably some Park Service control freak coming to ensure our tents are in the right order before he goes to measure the depth of the contents in the Sanolet.”
“Shows what she knows,” Bruce muttered as he pitched another shovelful onto the screen. “No bureaucrat measures smelly stuff. They order the seasonal temporaries to do it.”
Dusty straightened and looked. The truck bobbed and lurched down the dirt track, trailing a thin yellow plume of dust. “Okay, Dr. Thompson, the pit is yours. Don’t exceed a ten-centimeter level, and don’t pocket any golden idols while I’m a co-principal investigator.”
“Right, chief.” Thompson gave him a crooked grin. The kid was still working on his B.A., couldn’t tell ten centimeters from ten feet unless his eyeball was stapled to the tape measure, and probably wouldn’t have recognized a golden idol unless it stood up and announced the fact. Fortunately, so far “Four north, Eight east,” the two-by-two meter square that Thompson was digging, had been a “sterile” pit, meaning it had produced no artifacts.
Dusty walked along the line of stakes that made up the site grid. The datum line ran north-south, the baseline, east-west. Any artifact located would be mapped in according to its Cartesian coordinates, the distance from those two lines. When the site had been excavated, it would look something like a waffle: big empty squares separated by narrow walls of dirt.
Dusty ran a grimy forearm over his sweaty brow. The dirt on his arms streaked his forehead. As he walked out to the road, he slapped dust from his Levi’s and brushed at the sweat stains on his T-shirt.
The approaching truck clattered and growled, its diesel idling along. The vehicle, a big Dodge extended cab pickup, sparkled, rich metallic red paint gleaming as it pushed through the gnarly
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