Marquez set his mind on extracting as many stones as he could in the brief time he had left. His days became longer as he struggled to remove the red crystals with nothing but his miner's pick and a wheelbarrow to carry the ore to the bucket for the ride up to the mine's entrance.
As he walked through the tunnel, he stepped around old rusting ore cars and drills left by the miners when they had deserted the mine. There had been no market for the equipment, since nearby mines were closing down one by one at the same time. It was all simply cast aside and left where it was last used.
Seventy-five yards into the tunnel, he came to a narrow cleft in the rock just wide enough for him to slip through. Twenty feet beyond was the rhodochrosite lode he was mining. A light bulb had burned out on the string hanging from the roof of the cleft, and he replaced it with one of several he kept in a backpack. Then he took his pick in hand and began to attack the rock that was embedded with the gemstones. A dull red in their natural state, the crystals looked like dried cherries in a muffin.
A dangerous overhang of rock protruded just above the cleft. If he was to continue to work safely without being crushed by a rockfall, Marquez had no choice but to blast it away. Using a portable pneumatic drill, he bored a hole into the rock. Then he inserted a small charge of dynamite and wired it to a handheld detonator. After moving around the corner of the cleft and into the main tunnel, he pushed down on the plunger. A dull thump echoed through the mine, followed by the sound of tumbling rock and a blanket of dust that rolled into the main tunnel.
Marquez waited a few minutes for the dust to settle before carefully entering the natural cleft. The overhang was gone. It had become a pile of rocks on the narrow floor. He retrieved the wheelbarrow and began removing the debris, dumping it a short distance up the tunnel. When the cleft was finally cleared, he looked up to make certain that no threatening section of the overhang remained.
He stared in wonder at a hole that had suddenly appeared in the roof above the crystal lode. He aimed the light atop his hard hat upward. The beam continued through the hole into what appeared to be a chamber beyond. Suddenly consumed by curiosity, he ran back up the tunnel for fifty yards, where he found the rusty remains of a six-foot iron ladder among the abandoned mining equipment. Returning inside the cleft, he propped up the ladder, climbed the rungs, and pried loose several rocks from the rim of the hole, widening it until he could squeeze through. Then he thrust his upper torso inside the chamber and twisted his head from shoulder to shoulder, sweeping the beam of his hard hat's light around the darkness.
Marquez found himself staring into a room hewn in the rock. It looked to be a perfect cube approximately fifteen by fifteen feet, with the same distance separating the floor and roof. Strange markings were cut into the sheer, smooth walls. This definitely was not the work of nineteenth-century miners. Then, abruptly, the beam of his hard hat's light struck a stone pedestal and glinted on the object it supported.
Marquez froze in shock at the ungodly sight of a black skull, its empty eye sockets staring directly at him.
2
The pilot banked the United Airlines Beechcraft twin-engine plane around a pair of cotton-fluffed clouds and began his descent toward the short runway on a bluff above the San Miguel River. Though he had flown in and out of the little Telluride airport a hundred times, it was still a chore for him to keep his concentration on landing the aircraft and not on the incredible aerial view of the spectacular snowcapped San Juan Mountains. The serene beauty of the jagged peaks and slopes, mantled with snow under a vivid blue sky, was breathtaking.
As the plane dropped lower into the valley, the slopes of the mountains rose majestically on both sides. They appeared so close that it seemed to the passengers as if the aircraft's wings would brush the aspen trees on the rocky outcroppings. Then the landing gear dropped, and a minute later the wheels thumped and screeched as they touched the narrow asphalt runway.
The Beechcraft carried only nineteen passengers, and the unloading went quickly. Patricia O'Connell was the last one to step to the ground. Taking the advice of friends who had flown into the resort town for the skiing, she had asked for a rear seat so she could enjoy the fantastic view without its being blocked by one of the aircraft's wings.
At 9,000 feet in altitude, the air was thin but incredibly pure and refreshing. Pat inhaled deeply as she walked from the plane to inside the terminal building. As she passed through the door, a short, stocky man with a shaved head and a dark brown beard walked up to her.
"Dr. O'Connell?"
"Please call me Pat," she replied. "You must be Dr. Ambrose."
"Please call me Tom," he said, with a warm smile. "Did you have a good flight from Denver?"
"It was wonderful. A little rough coming over the mountains, but the beautiful scenery easily offset any discomfort."
"Telluride is a lovely spot," he said wistfully. "There are times I wish I could live here."
"I don't imagine there are many archaeological sites to study for a man of your experience."
"Not this high," he said. "The ancient Indian ruins are at much lower altitudes."
Dr. Thomas Ambrose may not have fit the stereotype of an eminent anthropologist, but he was one of the most respected people in the field. A professor emeritus at Arizona State University, he was an accomplished researcher, meticulous with written reports of his on-site investigations. Now in his late fifties- Pat guessed him to be ten years younger- he could boast of thirty years spent on the trail of early man and his cultures throughout the Southwest.
"Dr. Kidd was very mysterious over the phone. He offered almost no information at all about the discovery."
"And neither will I," said Ambrose. "It's best that you wait and see for yourself."
"How did you become involved with this find?" she asked.
"The right place at the right time. I was on a skiing vacation with an old girlfriend when I received a call from a colleague at the University of Colorado, asking if I'd take a look at the artifacts a miner reported finding. After a quick study of the site, I realized that I was in over my head."
"I find that hard to believe of a man with your reputation."
"Unfortunately, my area of expertise does not include epigraphy. And that's where you come in. The only one I know personally who specializes in deciphering ancient inscriptions is Dr. Jerry Kidd at Stanford. He wasn't available, but recommended you highly to take his place."
Ambrose turned, as the outside doors to the luggage drop were opened and the terminal ticket ladies who doubled as luggage handlers began throwing suitcases onto a sloping metal tray. "The big green one is mine," said Pat, thankful a man was there to tote her fifty-pound bag, which was packed with reference books.
Ambrose grunted but said nothing as he manhandled the heavy bag out to a jeep Cherokee that he'd parked in the lot outside the terminal. Pat hesitated, before entering the car, to absorb the magnificent view of the pine and aspen forests ascending the slopes of Mount Wilson and Sunshine Peak across the valley. As she stood enthralled with the panoramic scene, Ambrose took a moment to study her. Pat's hair was a radiant red and cascaded to her waist. Her eyes were a sage green. She stood as if sculptured by an artist, her weight on her right leg with her left knee turned slightly inward. Her shoulders and arms suggested a build more muscular than most women's, no doubt fashioned by long hours of exercise in a gym. Ambrose guessed her height at five feet eight inches, her weight at a solid 135 pounds. She was a pretty woman, not cute or strikingly beautiful, but he imagined she'd look very desirable when dressed in something more alluring than jeans and a mannish leather jacket.