Pike had once saved her life at great risk to his own, with nothing for a reward other than the fact that she’d lived, and she would never forget that. He could stomp and scream all he wanted, with her tweaking him at will, but at the end of the day she would do what he asked. And he would do the same in return.
But it was fun tweaking him.
They bounced over a set of cattle guards and Jennifer saw the line of foliage marking the Pecos River off on the horizon, a small tributary from it snaking out in the desert scrub-oak toward them. Sweetwater pulled the truck up short and she saw construction in the distance, a bucket-loader with piles of sand next to it.
The dam.
Sweetwater said, “Well, this is it. You see the tractor up there? That’s the head of the dam. From there to here I’ve found some artifacts, but I’m not sure if they’ve just been washed out by the river, or if this is really a settlement worthy of excavation. As you know, the river has probably moved two hundred feet in the last hundred years, so what I need is your official call on whether we can get an injunction on that dam. He gets it built, and whatever is here disappears.”
Having stopped behind them, Pike came up in time to hear the end of the conversation. He said, “Who owns the land? They know we’re here?”
“Yeah, they do. They’re continuing to build, but told us we can search as long as we want. Well, as long as we can, I guess.”
Jennifer exited the vehicle and saw Pike scowl about something. She glanced back and caught Mr. Proper Farmer Sweetwater gazing at her bottom as she stepped down. Which would be enough for Pike to start cracking heads just to let off some steam. He had no tolerance for anyone treating her as anything less than a scientist. Sweetwater caught the glare and quickly wandered down the stream bank, staring at the ground.
She quickly opened the tailgate and said, “Give me a hand with the GPR.”
Pike said, “Yeah, great. Three thousand dollars against a profit of two thousand. Sure. Let me help you with that.”
He leaned in and grabbed the outside edge of the cradle for the ground-penetrating radar, an all-terrain chassis that looked like a shell for a lawn-mower engine, only with larger wheels.
She saw his aggravation building and decided she’d had about enough. It was time to curb his little tantrum, and she knew she could. She brushed up against him and said, “Hey, I found a gym near our hotel. I told you I’d work while we’re here. We can’t shoot, but we can do the grappling stuff. Right?”
He jerked the chassis to the ground and stood up, wiping his brow. Glaring at her. She said, “Okay, stop the crybaby crap.” Well, she said that on the inside, anyway. Outside she leaned into the bed of the truck and pulled the GPR unit toward him, waiting.
She felt him slide in next to her, grasping the outside edge of the GPR, their bodies touching, and knew she’d won. But she didn’t dare show anything.
He said, “All right. You want to find a bunch of old pottery shards, I guess I can waste a few hours. But you’ll pay it back on the mat.”
She looked at him and saw the same unshaven, gruff growl. She elbowed his short ribs and he jerked away, grinning. And just like that, they were back on an even keel.
Jennifer heard Dr. Sweetwater shout something and left the GPR setup to Pike, running over to see what he’d found.
He said, “See! Right here! There are artifacts on the edge of the stream. Out in the open. This was a settlement.”
He held up what looked like an arrowhead, and she bent down, picking up some pieces that may or may not be ceramic shards. She gently set them aside and said, “Well, maybe, maybe not. This is a floodplain, after all.”
Sweetwater scowled and said, “This should be enough for further exploration. Write it up.”
She said, “I will. After I sector the land with the GPR.”
Pike came over dragging the lawnmower device, the GPR now settled inside. Sweetwater said, “Okay, okay. We’ll talk to you at, say, nine A.M. tomorrow?”
Jennifer said, “Sounds good.”
By the time he’d driven away, Pike was grumbling about the terrain, pushing the ground-penetrating radar over the rocks, manhandling it every fifty seconds.
She caught up to him and said, “Hey, something strange is going on here.”
He jerked the GPR forward, saying, “You mean besides me just running this thing back and forth without knowing what I’m looking at?”
She grinned at him and said, “You don’t even have it calibrated.”
He stopped and wiped his brow again, grinning back. “Okay, smart-ass. What’s so damn strange?”
“Sweetwater led me right to a couple of artifacts, but they’re completely out of time with each other. There’s no way both are sitting at ground level.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they’re both old as all get-out, but way, way out of time. It’s like someone from a thousand years in the future found a stone axe and a microwave oven. They don’t match.”
“So what are you saying?”
She fiddled with the keyboard of the GPR, going through the sequence to get it calibrated for the terrain they were on. She said, “I’m not saying anything yet. They could have been exposed by flooding here in the riverbank, and not tied to each other. Let’s get a grid search with the GPR. We don’t find anything with it, and we can write this off.”
Pike started pushing, muttering, “You mean write this off as a tax loss?”
She gave him a hip check, and he smiled. Telling her he was okay with the entire trip.
They had traversed about two-thirds of the available terrain, finding nothing, when Jennifer said, “Whoa. Stop right there.”
“What?”
“There’s something here.”
She bent down and stuck a little flag in the ground, saying, “I don’t know what it is, but it’s only about a foot down. Since it’s in the floodplain, it might be an old log. But it also might be the remains of a pueblo wall.”
When she heard nothing, she looked up, seeing Pike gazing into the distance.
“What?”
“Someone’s coming. From the other side of the creek.”
She looked up and saw a dust cloud approaching at a high rate of speed. A four-by-four slid to a stop opposite them. A man wearing one of those ubiquitous straw hats and sporting a full mustache exited. With a shotgun.
Pike immediately went into combat mode, pushing Jennifer behind him and getting ready to fight. The man stormed across the creek, heedless of the ankle-deep water. He never brought the gun to bear, but the threat was there nonetheless.
He said, “What the fuck are you two doing on my land?”
Chapter 4
Rudy Chamfer watched the truck bounce away across the scrub, headed to Highway 2. He pulled out his phone. He waited for it to connect, wondering if he should have called while they were still under his control. A man answered.
“Hey, I just chased off two people searching the riverbank.”
“Did they find anything?”
“Not that I could see. They had some contraption and was running it about, but they didn’t seem to have any focus.”
“So there’s nothing to stop the dam?”
“Not as far as I know, but I’m not a scientist. I don’t know what they have.”
The man cursed in the phone, and Rudy saw his cattle lease going up in pottery shards and government red tape. He said, “I’ll get it built. Don’t back out on me now.”
The man said, “I can find plenty of leases to graze my cattle. You’re the one that said you could provide water. I don’t have a lot of time to wait. I have to put them somewhere.”
“I hear you. Don’t worry. The dam will be built in time. I’m on schedule.”