Conard County Watch. Rachel Lee

not troubled, exactly,” she answered. “It’s just that this cleft is odd. I’ll need to ask Claudia about it when she gets here. Or maybe it’s nothing unusual at all, just a problem with my understanding of how Gray Cloud described it.”

      “That’s possible. Different cultures and all that.”

      He sat up and poured himself some more coffee, taking one of the remaining rolls.

      Curiosity about something besides old bones awoke in her. “How much did you immerse yourself in the local cultures when you were...over there?”

      “As much as I could.” His gaze grew distant. “Know your enemy and all that. Except most of the people weren’t our enemies at all. They were ordinary people who were trying to live an ordinary life in the midst of chaos. I was lucky to have a facility with languages so I could even make some friends.” He seemed to shake himself, then his gaze fixed on her again. “Ever seen a goat climb a vertical rock face?”

      The change of subject was startling. She guessed he was trying to shake off memories he’d awakened. “Can’t say I have.”

      “They’re amazing. They’d climb up and down those rocks as if they were level. Even the smallest of them are good at it. There was a day when I was an outpost, and I watched them for hours. Walking and jumping like it was nothing at all. A human rock climber wouldn’t be able to do it like that on his or her best day.”

      That turned her attention back to the rock face. “I wonder if the mountain goats will try that wall?” The idea worried her. So much possible damage.

      “I think they stay at higher elevations. Anyway, there’s nothing they’d want on that rock. Nothing growing, and probably not enough salt to make it appealing. It just reminded me of them.”

      She smiled at him, glad she’d allowed herself to invite him to join her team. They might not have a crying need for a historian, but he probably had a lot of good stories to tell, and his perspective on the past could be useful.

      Impatience began to tickle her again. God, how she wanted to start excavating those bones. It would be such a painstaking process, to do it correctly, that she couldn’t imagine being very far along by the end of the summer. Almost before she would know it, they’d be covering up all that history to protect it from snow, wind and rain. To keep it pristine. To prevent site contamination.

      It had survived the past winter with little protection, if any. No reason to get worked up about next winter. “Dang,” she said suddenly. “I’m such a worrywart. Already planning how we’re going to protect this face from next winter. Heck, it made it through the last winter.”

      “Unless the mountain decides to shake, I doubt it’s going anywhere.”

      She returned her attention to him. “You’re an odd man, Carter Copeland.”

      He flashed a charming grin. “Blame it on my past. I’ll never be ordinary again. So much the better if I deal with life with humor. So.” He paused. “Who all is going to be part of this team?”

      “Claudia Alexander I already mentioned. She’s a geology postdoc who’s curious to find out why there are so many fossils here.”

      “How come? Apart from a disaster happening all at once.”

      “Fossilization is a rare thing, believe it or not. Special conditions are required, and nothing can disturb them for a long, long time. That’s why we actually have so few fossils, although you probably wouldn’t believe it when you go to a museum. In fact, when you go to a museum and look at those big statues of, say, a tyrannosaur, you’re seeing a lot of fake bones. Partly because we don’t have complete skeletons, and partly because the real fossilized bones are usually radioactive from all the centuries buried in the ground. When we display a genuine bone, we give it a coating of lead paint.”

      Oh, she had his interest now. His gaze became piercing and she could almost sense the thoughts running around inside his head. “I never guessed that.”

      “Most people don’t.” She set down her cup, pulled the band from her ponytail, and scooped her long auburn hair into a fresh one beneath the bottom of her yellow hard hat. “People think of the ground beneath their feet as this totally benign floor. But you dig deeper into it and you start to find all kinds of poisonous heavy metals. Some are very useful to us, but few of them are safe for extended exposure. For an example, I’ve seen tailings piles from mines that were over a century old where not even a blade of grass could grow.”

      He nodded. “So we shouldn’t stand too close to that rock face.”

      She laughed quietly. “Open air and all that. But yeah, you should shower at night, and when we start working on it, we’ll wear dust masks as a precaution. I doubt any part of that is radioactive enough to make someone sick, but why chance it when we’re going to be exposed all summer?”

      “I agree.” He drained his coffee cup, then asked, “Okay, a geologist is joining the team. Any other paleontologists?”

      “For right now, interns. Mostly grad students, some of them mine.”

      At that moment her attention was drawn by a sound at the east end of the cleft, from within the trees. Gray Cloud? Not likely. That man moved with enviable silence. Who then?

      After a half minute or so, a figure emerged from the trees into the clearing not far from the rock face. Renee wasn’t certain anyone else was allowed here, so she stood at once.

      Cope apparently picked up on her unease and stood too, calling out, “Could you hold it there, please?”

      The rider stopped. “Sorry if I’m disturbing. I’m Loren Butler from the ranch to the south. I heard something was going on up here and wanted to check it out.”

      Renee chewed her lip. Was she going to have to defend this site from everybody who decided to take a ride?

      “This is tribal land,” she called back. “Sacred. We have permission to work here. Do you?”

      The man chuckled. He tipped back his head a little, revealing a pleasant face as the sun slipped beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “Nope,” he said frankly. “I heard there was some kind of rockslide up here last summer. Frankly, it’s a weird-looking one. Not exactly a cleft like Gray Cloud said. Or maybe part of the cleft is broken. Guess I won’t find out today. You can tell the elders I was here. I prefer to stay on good terms with my neighbors. But you can also tell them I was curious about what exactly happened.”

      He paused, then added, “Just a couple miles south of me, on Thunder Mountain, they had rockslides a few years back ago that put a halt to building a ski resort. Makes you wonder if Gray Cloud ain’t right about this mountain having a brain. See ya.”

      He turned his horse with a few clucks of his tongue and rode slowly back into the woods.

      “I guess he has a reason to be curious,” Cope remarked. “If the mountain’s going to get busy making rockfalls, he might have something to worry about.”

      But Renee’s thought had turned in a different direction. “It was a cleft.”

      Cope turned to face her. “Was?”

      “Last fall I was visiting my cousin and Gray Cloud brought me up here to show me.” She turned, taking care with the placement of her feet. “Right now it looks like a slide,” she said, pointing toward the rock face, “but when he showed it to me last fall, there was a narrow cleft in the rock, just enough for one person to walk through. The part to this side, where you can see the creek below, was thin but still tall and upright. It didn’t contain anything interesting I could see, so I wasn’t upset when I came back this year to discover that part of the top of the narrow piece had apparently crumbled. Gives us more room for work.” She shrugged. “But we’re still going to have to check all the stuff that fell below as well as what’s beneath us in the cleft.”

      “Obviously,” he agreed. “What about farther up,