She pulled her saddle out of the back of her truck and stepped around. “Roscoe Swire?” she asked.
He turned and removed his hat in a gesture that managed to be both courtly and ironic. “At your service,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. He had a great overhanging mustache, droopy lips, and large, cow-sad eyes. But there was a certain scrappiness, even truculence, about his manner.
“I’m Nora Kelly,” she said, shaking the small hand. It was so rough and scabby, it was like grasping a burr.
“So you’re the boss,” said Swire with a grin. “Pleased.” He glanced at the saddle. “What you got there?”
“It’s my own. I figured you’d want to load it with the rest in the front of the trailer.”
He slowly placed his hat back on his head. “Looks like it’s been drug around a bit.”
“I’ve had it since I was sixteen.”
Swire broke into another smile. “An archaeologist who can ride.”
“I can pack a set of panniers and throw a pretty good diamond hitch, too,” said Nora.
At this, Swire took a small box of gingersnaps out of his pocket, placed one underneath his mustache, and began to chew. “Well, now,” he said, when his mouth was full, “you ain’t shy about your accomplishments.” He took a closer look at her gear. “Valle Grande Saddlery, three-quarter-rigged with the Cheyenne roll. You ever want to sell this, you let me know.”
Nora laughed.
“Look, the others just went up to the circle. What can you tell me about them? Buncha New Yorkers on vacation, or what?”
Nora found herself liking Swire and his sardonic tone. “Most of them I haven’t met. It’s a mixed group. People seem to think all archaeologists are like Indiana Jones, but I’ve met plenty who couldn’t ride to save their lives, or who’d never ventured beyond the classroom and lab. It all depends on what kind of work they’ve done. I bet there’ll be a couple of sore butts by the end of the first day.” She thought about Sloane Goddard, the sorority girl, and wondered how she, Holroyd, and the rest were going to fare on horseback.
“Good,” said Swire. “If they ain’t sore, they ain’t having fun.” He pushed another gingersnap into his mouth, then pointed. “It’s up that way.”
The fire circle lay north of the corrals, hidden in a stand of scrub juniper and piñon. Nora followed the trail, quickly spotting the flickering fire through the trees. Huge ponderosa logs were arranged in broad rings, three deep. The circle lay at the base of a tall bluff, which was pockmarked here and there by caves, a pendulous overhang across its top. Light from the fire leaped and flickered, painting the sandstone bluff lurid colors against the dark. A fire circle before a long journey was an old Pueblo custom, Nora knew, and after witnessing the incident with the Mimbres pots, she wasn’t particularly surprised Goddard had suggested it. It was another indication of his respect for Indian culture.
She stepped into the firelight. Several figures were seated on the ponderosa logs, murmuring quietly. They turned at her approach. She immediately recognized Aaron Black, the imposing geochronologist from the University of Pennsylvania: six-foot-five-inches tall or more, with a massive head and hands. He held his head erect, chin jutting forward, which both added to his stature and gave him a slightly pompous air.
But the look belied Black’s towering reputation. She had seen him at numerous archaeological meetings, where he always seemed to be giving a paper debunking some other archaeologist’s shaky but hopeful dating of a site; a man of intellectual rigor who clearly enjoyed his role as spoiler of his colleagues’ theories. But he was the acknowledged master of archaeological dating, at once feared and sought after. It was said that he had never been proved wrong, and his arrogant face looked it.
“Dr. Black,” Nora said, stepping forward. “I’m Nora Kelly.”
“Oh,” Black said, standing up and shaking hands. “Pleased to meet you.” He looked a little nonplussed. Probably doesn’t like the idea of having a young woman for a boss,she thought. Gone were the trademark bow tie and seersucker jacket of his archaeological conferences, replaced by a brand-new desert outfit that looked as if it had been lifted straight out of the pages of Abercrombie & Fitch. He’s going to be one of the sore ones,Nora thought. If he doesn’t get his ass killed first.
Holroyd came over and shook her hand, gave her a quick awkward hug, and then, embarrassed, stepped back in confusion. He had the luminous face of a Boy Scout setting out on his first camping trip, his green eyes shining hopefully.
“Dr. Kelly?” came a voice from the darkness. Another figure stepped into the light toward her, a small, dark man in his middle fifties who radiated an unsettling, even caustic intensity. He had a striking face: dark olive skin, black hair combed back, veiled eyes, a long, hooked nose. “I’m Enrique Aragon.” He briefly took her hand; his fingers were long, sensitive, almost feminine. He spoke with a precise, dignified voice, in the faintest of Mexican accents. She had also seen him many times at conferences, a remote and private figure. He was widely considered to be the country’s finest physical anthropologist, winner of the Hrdlicka Medal; but he was also a medical doctor—a highly convenient combination, which had undoubtedly figured in Goddard’s choice. It amazed her again that Goddard could have gotten professionals of the stature of Black and Aragon at such short notice. And it struck her even more forcefully that she would be directing these two men, very much her superior in both age and reputation. Nora shook off the sudden surge of doubt: if she was going to lead this expedition, she knew, she had better start thinking and acting like a leader, not an assistant professor always deferring to her senior colleagues.
“We’ve been making introductions,” Aragon said with a brief smile. “This is Luigi Bonarotti, camp manager and cook.” He stepped aside and indicated another figure who had come up behind him to meet Nora.
A man with dark Sicilian eyes leaned over and took her hand. He was impeccably dressed in pressed khakis, beautifully groomed, and Nora caught the faint whiff of an expensive aftershave. He took her hand and half-bowed with a kind of European restraint.
“Are we really going to have to ride horses all the way to the site?” Black asked.
“No,” Nora said. “You’ll get to walk some, too.”
Black’s face tightened with displeasure. “I should have thought helicopters would make more sense. I’ve always found them sufficient for my work.”
“Not in this country,” Nora said.
“And where’s the journalist who’s going to be documenting all this for posterity? Shouldn’t he be here? I’ve been looking forward to meeting him.”
“He’s joining us at Wahweap Marina, along with Dr. Goddard’s daughter.”
The others began to range themselves around the fire and Nora settled down on a log, enjoying the warmth, inhaling the scent of cedar smoke, listening to the hiss and crackle taunt the surrounding darkness. As if from far away, she heard Black still muttering about having to ride a horse. The flames capered against the sandstone bluff, highlighting the black, ragged mouths of caves. She thought she saw a brief glow of light inside one of the caves, but it vanished as quickly as it had come. Some trick of the eye, perhaps. For some reason, she found herself thinking of Plato’s parable of the cave. And what would we look like,she thought, to those dwellers deep inside, gazing at shadows on the wall?