“You’re eyes are just as good as ours,” Garrett said, still holding the light out to Marko. “Everyone in this crew gets an equal shake, regardless of diplomas.”
Marko glanced at Leah, who nodded and grinned. “Take it; I’ll give my halogen to Garrett and use the penlight. I’m so pumped, I swear I can see in the dark.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Marko said after taking the halogen.
Leah pointed to the rear of the cavern. “Take your light and explore.”
“What should I look for?”
Leah ran her small flashlight over the wood and adobe structure before responding. “If you run into any cliff dwellers chipping away on arrowheads or painting on the walls, I’d want to know about that right away.”
Marko looked so shocked that Garrett and Juan chuckled.
Leah had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. “I’m kidding.” She had to redouble her efforts when he visibly relaxed.
“One more thing,” Leah said.
Marko glanced up.
“Don’t touch anything.”
The climber nodded, then held the light out in front and tiptoed past Leah on his way toward the rear of the cavern.
“Light up the walls, Garrett. Juan, take look through this mess on the floor — see if you can find something that’s gonna blow me away.”
Garrett swung his light onto the vertical rock walls while Juan lowered his to the cavern floor.
Leah noticed right away that the cavern featured pictographs, some of them painted by highly skilled artists, others more crudely done.
“Ever seen a dwelling with this much art?” Garret asked.
“Never.” Leah examined the ancient art on the walls, using her smaller light to illuminate the detail. The pictographs appeared to have been painted using ground red clay mixed with water, making a paint-like paste. The one before her featured a number of stick figures that Leah interpreted to be people. Behind them were much taller figures without defined shape, as if they’d been covered in blankets from head to toe.
“Not sure what this means, but—” Leah stopped short.
The next pictograph featured the same faceless, oversized figures that Leah could only assume were totemic creatures or some sort of holy people. In this pictograph, the figures had wings sprouting from their shoulders and what Leah interpreted as raptor-like talons serving as legs and feet.
“I have no idea what this means,” Leah said. “These big, vague figures are odd enough. But wings and talons? I’ve never seen that before.”
Garrett walked down the cavern wall, illuminating several pictographs at a time. “Leah, how many stick figures are in the pictographs you’ve seen?”
“Seems to vary; some have four or five, some less. Why?”
“The ones down here, they’ve got a lot more, but as I work down your way, there’s fewer in each picture.”
“How many of yours have these big creatures or whatever?”
“Most of them.” He stopped. “Damn.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sure now. Each pictograph shows fewer of the stick people — the tribe members, right?”
“Maybe it represents some kind of epidemic that hit ‘em.” Leah worked her way down the wall. “I’ve never seen something like that documented in such detail, though.”
Juan spoke next. “You’re gonna want to see this.”
Leah walked over and knelt beside Juan, using her small light to illuminate several clay pots that had been laid carefully together.
“That’s not Mogollon or Anasazi.”
Juan nodded. “Simple coil and pinch construction, then fired and covered in hot piñon pitch. What does that tell you?”
“Navajo jar. Textbook.”
“No shit.”
“What’s a Navajo jar doing in a Mogollon cliff dwelling?”
“Exactly….” Juan replied.
“If you like that,” Garrett said from a few feet away, “this is really gonna blow your skirt up.”
Leah turned to join him. “What?”
“I’m scared to get too close. You’d better come over and have a look-see.”
Leah stood, brushed off her jeans, and used her light to guide her through the debris-filled cavern.
She knelt beside Garrett, who held the light on the object with one hand while keeping his long hair away from his face with the other.
“I wouldn’t have a clue,” Garret said, “except I’ve had the pleasure of sitting through plenty of your lectures on ancient Native American cultures — especially the ones that disappeared.”
When Leah focused on the object, she felt her heart skip and beat and her forearms swelled with goose bumps.
“Oh my God….”
Unlike the Navajo jar, this was a large bowl made of fired-clay. The surface was smooth and had been crafted by a skilled artisan, who’d painted it with a series of bold geometric patterns in black and white.
“Well?” Garrett asked.
“Mimbres burial bowl.”
“That’s what I thought — but I’d only ever seen one in your slide show, so I wasn’t sure.”
Leah looked up. “Where’s Marko?”
“Over here,” the climber replied. “I haven’t found anyone yet, it that’s what you want.”
“Ha-ha,” said Leah. “Get your butt over here.”
Marko stepped cautiously around the pots and shards, making his way to where Leah, Garrett, and Juan were gathered around the artifact.
“Take a good look at this.” She illuminated the bowl. “If you see anything like it, anything at all, you tell me right away.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a Mimbres burial bowl.”
“Is it, like, really rare?”
Juan and Garrett chuckled.
Leah nodded. “The Mimbres culture consisted of several hundred small villages in southern New Mexico. Sometime around 1200 AD they completely disappeared. The only records we have of their existence are extremely rare pottery samples, like this burial bowl.”
“Why was it called burial bowl?” Marko asked.
“Because it was placed over the head of the deceased when they were buried, then a hole was knocked in the bottom of the bowl.”
Marko shuddered.
“Weird, right?” Leah gestured at the cavern. “Well that’s nothing compared to what we’re seeing here.”
“What’s that?” Marko asked.
Leah stood. “So far we’ve found evidence of at least three distinct ancient Native American cultures all living within one cliff dwelling and enough pictographs to fill the Louvre.”
“That’s unusual?”
“It’s unheard of.”
She used her light to illuminate the structure. “Let’s spread out. I want to discover as much about this dwelling as we can with the time we have remaining.” She glanced at Garrett. “I’d guess there’s another way in and out of here besides roping down that cliff face. How about if you and Juan see if you can locate it.”
The two of them nodded.
“Marko, see if you can find more pottery near the rear of the dwelling. I’m going to search around inside the adobe houses. I want to see just how many different cultures were shoehorned into this dwelling at one time.”
Within minutes, Leah had found pottery and shards indicating that at one time Navajo, Hopi, Mogollon, Pueblo, and Mimbres Indians had lived in the cliff dwelling. She stopped for a moment to absorb what she’d just discovered. It was the discovery of a lifetime. Unprecedented. A surreal sense of elation unwound inside her, and she suddenly felt better than she had in months. It dulled the nagging pain of a marriage on the rocks and her recent and bitter divorce from her federal-government dream job. It was almost as if—
A sudden scream shattered the silence, followed by the sound of someone breaking through adobe.
CHAPTER 3