Bone River (19 page)

Junius pulled the rough map Sanderson had given us from his pocket and stared at it for a moment, glancing down the shore. I followed his gaze until I saw the two large rocks on the beach—the ones Sanderson had referred to.

“There,” Junius said. He glanced at the sky. With the wind had come heavier and darker clouds, and it didn’t look as if the weather would hold for much longer. “If we’re lucky we can make it before the rain.”

He led us into the woods, the undergrowth of ferns and vines and salal tangling about our feet, making the way hard. Whatever path Sanderson had blazed was long gone; the only one was that which led to the McInery house on the right.

“Perhaps someone who lives here knows of it,” Daniel suggested.

Junius shook his head. “If they know of it, it’s too late. If they don’t, I don’t want word getting out.”

He led us deeper, past bare huckleberry bushes and redcaps, salal and salmonberry. We had to force our way through, climbing over nurse logs heavy with ferns and thick with moss. I was in the middle, Daniel following behind, cursing softly beneath his breath when a branch whipped his face. We had not gone far before the rain we’d hoped to avoid began. I could hear it more than feel it; we were sheltered by the bare, dense branches of maple and alder and the feathered ones of hemlock and cedar and fir, but the undergrowth was wet already from yesterday, and we were soaked through before we’d gone half a mile.

The woods were deep and barely touched by civilization, though I smelled smoke caught by the rain, forced to hover low in the upper reaches of the trees. The bag of provisions I carried grew heavier, and my hands and feet were so cold I couldn’t feel
them. My skirt caught on every vine and shrub I passed, and I was weary of yanking it free.

I’d lost track of how long we’d been hiking when Junius stopped so suddenly I nearly barreled into him. He jerked his head to the right. “There it is, I think.”

I saw a huge moss-covered maple, a heavily flagged cedar, a boulder dripping water and moss. Salal and ferns were everywhere.

Behind me, Daniel said wearily, “Where? I don’t see anything.”

Junius strode through the underbrush toward the boulder and Daniel and I followed. Junius put his hand on the rock, which was taller than he was, and stepped around, and I saw it wasn’t a boulder at all but a rocky outcropping, the entrance hidden by angles—a rock face jutting before it, a narrow split that widened into an entrance.

Junius disappeared inside. I waited a moment, until I heard his, “Yes, this is it,” before I bent to follow him through. There was not much of an entrance, a few feet, sandstone walls wet with water, and then they were suddenly dry. My boot scraped something that scattered—perhaps the remains of a fire—and then the cave opened before me. I felt the space, and heard the size of it in the hollow sounds of our breathing and rustling. But I could see nothing. The daylight, bruised as it was with clouds and rain, did not penetrate far. It was so dark I could not see Junius at all.

Nor could Daniel see me. He bumped right into me, stumbling, so I grabbed him to steady him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

I heard Junius rustling about in his bag, the strike of a match against the stone wall, and then a light flickered, sputtering as he held it to one of the candles we’d brought, which caught and took hold, and the cave came into dim view, a faint glow surrounding
us, swallowed by the dark shadows at the edges. The floor was packed dirt, the ceiling perhaps six feet high—just tall enough for Junius to stand straight.

“Well, let’s take a look around, shall we?” he said, the strange hollowness of his voice flattening and bouncing against stone walls. Junius reached into his bag for another candle and lit it, handing it to me, and then another to Daniel, and now we had three times the light and yet it was barely brighter, as if the cave itself soaked up the light and our breath, which seemed to pulse against the walls.

“It feels like a tomb,” Daniel said.

“It
is
a tomb,” Junius said. He stepped in a circle, holding the candle out, measuring the depth of the cave. The candlelight played on the walls, which looked water-carved, smooth and cupped in some places, pocked with deeply burrowed holes. It was probably about fifteen feet square, with no other entrances or tunnels that I could see, and no other trace of something living, not spiderwebs or snakes. But then, when Junius turned again, I saw it: the light dashing over a foot, the remains of a shoe woven of reeds, the creaminess of bone.

I gasped. Junius stopped, obviously seeing what I did. He stepped toward it, kneeling, lowering the light, and there they were, the skeletons Evan Sanderson had talked of, three of them, flat on their backs, arms crossed over their chests, the remains of funereal finery—one or two beads scattered in the dirt around them, a hat woven of cedar bark chewed away by rodents, the broken shards of pottery. Other bones too—animal. Deer, perhaps, or elk. But no other baskets or knives. Whatever else here of value had already been taken. Only the skeletons remained. I felt a stab of disappointment, and horror too, that we were intruding, that sense of something sacred that told me to go, to leave them in peace, and I couldn’t help shuddering when Junius knelt beside them, running his hands over them as if they were nothing more than cracked pottery, gently lifting, sending his
candlelight over them, hollow eye sockets and holes for noses, jaws that held only a few teeth.

“Indian, probably,” Junius said. “But not sugarloaf skulls, so I doubt they’re Chinook. I’ll have to measure them to know for certain. Look at the pottery, Lea—tell me what you think.”

I hesitated, but then I went to the nearest pile of pottery shards, squatting to turn over a piece that had been painted. They were all too fragmented to see much of a design. I turned over another piece, and another, and then I began to see where they had once been a single piece, and I fitted the edges together until I had a few inches of border—all geometric, not the broad form lines of the Indian design I knew. It was very similar to that on the basket that had held the mummy and the one in my dream. Still...there was something not right about it. I saw the design and felt...nothing. Nothing more than what one might normally feel scrabbling through funereal remains. The basket, my dreams, her...it all felt so far away, not present. I knew this was not her place, that these were not her people.

My certainty took me aback. It was so strong I could not dispute it, and I knew this was a waste of time, that we would find nothing of her here. But what nonsense was this?
Facts
, I told myself.
You need facts.
But the words wouldn’t stay in my head; I felt as if everything I’d known and been taught was slipping away, and fiercely I grabbed and held on, gripping tight.
What kind of a scientist are you?

“Well?” Junius asked.

“Similar to the basket,” I said. “But...”

He shifted to look over my shoulder. “It’s very like.”

“You think she came from here?” Daniel asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

Junius looked at me in surprise. “No? Why not? That design is more than similar. And these skeletons don’t have sloped skulls—neither does she.”

“I just don’t think they’re related,” I said quietly.

“What reason have you to say that?”

“I don’t know. I just...it’s an...instinct.” I winced even as I said it.

“
Instinct
.” Everything Junius thought about that was in his sigh.

“Is there anything of value?” Daniel asked.

“Only the skeletons,” Junius told him.

I said nothing to that. I’d known already that we would take them back with us. I’d only hoped there would be something else here too, something either to dissuade him from taking the bodies or to provide some clue to her origin. But there was neither, and I rose, tilting my head back, stretching a little so the light from my candle wavered and spun across the ceiling, touching upon a deep black mark—

I frowned, bringing the candle higher, bringing into the light the mark—not a straight line but one that curved unnaturally, down and around, forming a back, a leg, an antler—

“What’s that?” Daniel asked.

I brought the candle higher, motioning for him to add his light to it, which he did, and then I saw that it was a painting, brief lines, little embellishment, but it was clearly an elk, and beside it something else—another elk and then something that looked like a bear, but very large and...different. A cave bear.

Suddenly Junius was beside us, breathing into my ear. “Drawings. Will you look at that? Sweetheart, I think we’ve hit the mother lode.”

“T
HE MOTHER LODE
?” Daniel asked, his voice sharpening. “What do you mean?”

Junius ignored him. “Sanderson said nothing about these.”

“Perhaps he didn’t see them,” I said. “We almost didn’t.”

Daniel asked, “You mean...drawings like this aren’t usual?”

“No,” I told him. “These are the first I’ve seen, though I’ve heard of others.”

“Lea—this is proof that the mummy’s ancient. Her people did this, and they were no Indians.” Junius’s voice was keen with excitement.

“We can’t know that,” I said cautiously—and I wasn’t certain why I felt the need to say it, except that I was suddenly irritated at the way he leaped to conclusions. “There’s nothing here to connect with her.”

Junius studied the drawings. “Nothing except the fact that the patterns on the pottery look very like those on the basket. And look at the way these are drawn, Lea. There’s something similar here, too.” He pointed to the antlers on the elk. “Here, for example. The line stroke—these drawings must have been made by the same people.”

Junius was so positive that I found myself suddenly uncertain. I had no reason to disbelieve him except for my own feelings, which I knew weren’t to be trusted.

“You aren’t looking close enough,” he said to me. “Bring up your light—there, like that. You see the similarities now?”

He looked at me, intent, and I peered at the drawings, trying to see what he saw. Perhaps he was right about this. Junius was better at making conclusions than I. I was always so hesitant, so...slow. He was brilliant, and what was I? Only a woman, as Papa had told me a hundred times.
It’s not your fault, Leonie. We shall make a scientist of you yet.
I remembered his intensity, the way he’d looked at me as if he could
make
me what he wanted through sheer force of will:
Promise me you’ll fight such sensibilities. Logic, my dear. Logic is your only friend.

Now, that memory kept me silent. I was more aware than ever of my shortcomings, how I’d let dreams and feelings lead me, how disappointed Papa would be in me now if he were here. Because no matter what Junius said, no matter the evidence, I could not make myself believe the drawings had anything to do with the mummy. They were beautiful, but they were not hers, and I could not bury my feelings in logic. My flaw, again.

Junius reached out to touch them, following the curve of the line with his finger. “That’s paint, not charcoal. Whoever did this wanted it to be permanent. I wonder if there are any others?” He stepped away, walking about the cave, raising his candle to look, crisscrossing the walls with the dim light.

Daniel said quietly to me, “What does he mean, a mother lode? Are these worth something?”

“Monetarily? I don’t know. But in terms of knowledge...they could be very important.” I reached out to touch the bear. Candle wax dripped over my gloves, which were thick enough that I didn’t feel the heat of it. In the wavering candlelight, the figures almost seemed to move, as if the elk were truly leaping across some field, the cave bear growling as it gave chase. I
studied the long, simple lines, the way one faded at the end as if the artist required more paint on his finger or his brush. I was caught up in the drama of the story the figures told, the beautiful simplicity of it. I could not take this ceiling with me, but I knew I would never forget these drawings. “Perhaps these will tell us something to change everything we know about the past,” I said quietly. “Perhaps we’ll be the ones to discover it. Perhaps not. But these don’t belong to anyone. Some things can’t be bought and sold.”

Junius was still scrabbling about the edges, searching. I knew, though I couldn’t say how, that he would find no other drawings here, that these were the only ones. But again, it was just a feeling. I noticed the way the ceiling was blackened a short distance away. Soot, from a fire, and I imagined it: the cave filled with smoke, the flames dancing, someone dipping his finger in a pot of paint, red and then black and white, drawing so quickly in the firelight the elk and the bear looked alive, animated by flame and smoke. Laughter as another described what had happened, hands moving rapidly in gesture and paint.

“It was a hunt,” I murmured. “They were hunting elk, and the bear came from nowhere, and here”—I pointed to three parallel lines—“the spears from the hunters. One struck him”—I touched the bear’s shoulder—“here. The bear turned on them. The spear wounded him and made him angry, and he was a cave bear three times their size. The elk ran off, and then there were only the two of them and this bear...” I saw him advance, the sharp yellow of his teeth, the rotten scent of his breath, claws like razors and wild eyes—