She froze. The horse’s hindquarters dropped and the foot kicked out twice, looking for a purchase that wasn’t there. As she watched, the horse’s balance shifted inexorably backward; the animal dropped over the edge, rolled once, and then hurtled down toward her, letting out a strange, high-pitched scream. Nora watched, paralyzed. Time seemed to slow as the horse tumbled, limbs kicking in a terrifying ballet. She felt its shadow cross her face, and then it struck Fiddlehead, directly in front of her, with a massive smack. Fiddlehead vanished as both animals hurtled off the edge of the ridge into the void. There was a moment of horrible, listening silence, followed by double muffled thumps and the sharp crackle of falling rocks far below. The sounds seemed to echo forever in the dry valley, reverberating from ever more distant walls.
“Close up and keep moving!” came the harsh, strained command from above. Forcing herself into action, Nora urged the new rearward horse forward—Smithback’s horse, Hurricane Deck. But he wouldn’t move; a clonus of horror trembled along the animal’s flanks. Then, in a galvanic instant, he reared up, whirling around toward her. Nora instinctively grabbed his halter. With a frenzied clawing of steel on rock, Hurricane scrabbled at the edge of the trail, wide eyes staring at her. Realizing her mistake, she released the halter, but her timing was slow and already the falling horse had pulled her off balance. She had a brief glimpse of yawning blue space. Then she landed on her side, her legs rolling over the edge of the cliff, hands scrabbling to grip the smooth sandstone. She heard, as if from a great distance, Swire shouting, and then from below the soggy, bursting sound of a wet bag as Hurricane Deck hit bottom.
She clawed at the rock, fingernails fighting for purchase as she dangled in the abyss. She could feel the updrafts of wind tickling her legs. In desperation, she clutched the stone tighter, her nails tearing and splitting as she continued to slide backward down the tipped surface of stone. Then her right hand brushed against a projecting rill; no more than a quarter inch high, but enough to get a handhold. She strained, feeling her strength draining away. Now or never, she thought, and she gave a great heave, swinging herself up sideways. It was just enough to get one foot back onto the trail. With a second heave she managed to roll her body up and over. She lay on her back, heart hammering a frantic cadence. Ahead and above came a whinny of fear, and the clatter of hooves on stone.
“Get the hell up! Keep moving!” she heard faintly from above. She rose shakily to her feet and started forward, as if in a dream, driving the remnant of the remuda up the trail.
She did not remember the rest of the journey. The next clear memory was of lying facedown, hugging the warm, dusty rock of the ridge summit; then a pair of hands were gently turning her over; and Aragon’s calm, steady face stared down into her own. Beside him were Smithback and Holroyd, gazing at her with intense concern. Holroyd’s face in particular was a mask of agonizing worry.
Aragon helped Nora to a nearby rock. “The horses—” Nora began.
“There was no other way,” Aragon interrupted quietly, taking her hands. “You’re hurt.”
Nora looked down. Her hands were covered with blood from her ruined fingernails. Aragon opened his medical kit. “When you swung out over that cliff,” he said, “I thought you were done for.” He dabbed at the fingertips, removing a few pieces of grit and fingernail with tweezers. He worked swiftly, expertly, smearing on topical antibiotic and placing butterfly bandages over the ends of her fingertips. “Wear your gloves for a few days,” he said. “You’ll be uncomfortable for a while, but the injuries are superficial.”
Nora glanced at the group. They were looking back at her, motionless, shocked to silence by what had happened. “Where’s Roscoe?” she managed to ask.
“Back down the trail,” Sloane replied.
Nora dropped her head into her hands. And then, as if in answer, three well-spaced gunshots sounded below, echoing crazily among the canyons before dying away into distant thunder.
“God,” Nora groaned. Fiddlehead, her own horse. Beetlebum, Smithback’s nemesis. Hurricane Deck. Gone. She could still see the wide pleading eyes of Hurricane; the teeth, so strangely long and narrow, exposed in a final grin of terror.
Ten minutes later Swire appeared, breathing heavily. He passed Nora and went toward the horses, redividing and repacking the loads in silence. Holroyd came over to her and gently took her hand. “I got a decent reading,” he whispered.
Nora glanced up at him, hardly caring.
“We’re right smack on the trail,” he said, smiling.
Nora could only shake her head.
* * *
Compared to the nightmarish ascent, the trail down into the valley beyond the hogback ridge offered few difficulties. The horses, smelling water, charged ahead. Tired as they were, the group began to jog, and Nora found the events of the last hours temporarily receding in her devouring thirst. They splashed into the water upstream from the horses and Nora fell to her stomach, burying her face in the water. It was the most exquisite sensation she had ever felt, and she drank deeply, pausing only to gasp for air, until a sudden spasm of nausea contracted her stomach. She backed away, retiring to a spot beneath the rustling cottonwoods, breathing hard and feeling the sting of evaporation on her wet clothes. Gradually the waves of nausea passed. She saw Black bent double in the trees, vomiting up water, joined shortly by Holroyd. Smithback was kneeling in the stream, oblivious, bathing his head with cupped hands. Sloane staggered over, sopping wet, and knelt beside Nora.
“Swire needs our help with the horses,” she said.
They went downstream and helped Swire drag the horses out of the water, to prevent any possibility of fatal overdrinking. As they worked, Swire refused to meet Nora’s eyes.
After a rest, the group remounted and continued downstream into the new world of the valley. The water ran over a cobbled bed, filling the air with tranquil noise. The sounds of life rose about them: trilling cicadas, humming dragonflies, even the occasional eructation of a frog. As Nora’s thirst abated, the sickening horror of the accident returned with fresh force. She was riding a new horse now, Arbuckles, and every jarring movement seemed a reproachful memory of Fiddlehead. She thought of Swire’s poem to Hurricane Deck, almost a love ballad to the horse. She wondered how she was ever going to work things out with him.
They traveled down the valley, which narrowed as it approached the broad sandstone plateau, rising in front of them now less than a mile away. Nora glanced up at the cliffs as they passed, noting again the odd lack of ruins. This was an ideal valley for prehistoric settlement, and yet there was nothing. If, after all that had happened, this turned to be the wrong canyon system—she shut the thought from her mind.
The stream made another bend. The naked plateau loomed ever closer, the stream at last disappearing into the narrow slot canyon carved into its side. According to the radar map, the canyon should open, about a mile farther along, into the small valley that—she hoped—contained Quivira. But the slot canyon itself that lay between them and the inner valley was clearly too narrow for horses.
As they rode up to the massive sandstone wall, Nora noticed a large rock beside the stream with some markings on its flanks. As she dismounted and came nearer, she could see a small panel of petroglyphs, similar to those they had found at the base of the ridge: a series of dots and a small foot, along with another star and a sun. She couldn’t help but notice that there was a large reversed spiral carved on top of the other images.