Cliff-Hanger (5 page)

“Does it have a door?” Jack asked.

“Yes, but no window, so it might get a bit stuffy in there. But it's just for two nights, and it ought to be cool enough after the sun goes down.”

“OK,” Jack said. He wouldn't mind being on the upper level with the girls as long as he could have some privacy.

“I don't know how much hot water there's going to be for showers,” Olivia announced. “Who wants to go first?”

“I will,” Lucky said. “Let me just get a few things out of my duffel.” She unzipped the canvas bag to pull out clean clothes. Jack was no expert, but it seemed to him that Lucky's things looked expensive. The shirt was designer—he could see the label. The jeans were brand name, too.

“I'll carry Lucky's tote upstairs,” Ashley volunteered, trying to make amends, Jack supposed.

The round house was so small they could hear Lucky turn on the shower. She started humming, then she sang out,
“Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that the heart does go on….”

Steven chuckled, “She's a good-looking girl, but she sings off key.” Olivia giggled at that, but Jack glowered. He was still scowling when he looked up to see Ashley coming down the stairs, slowly, quietly, one step at a time, holding a small square of paper in her fingers.

“Look at this,” she said, handing it to Olivia.

“What? Numbers. Wait—this is my telephone credit card number. Whose handwriting is this?”

Tossing her head, Ashley gestured toward the bathroom, where Lucky's singing had grown even louder,
“You're here, there's nothing to fear….”

“How did she get my phone card number?” Olivia wondered. Her brows knit together as she looked at Steven questioningly.

“I know,” Ashley answered. “When you made that phone call in the Denver airport, Lucky was standing real close behind you, watching you dial.”

“And she wrote down the number?”

Shaking her head, Ashley said, “She must have memorized it.”

Steven glanced at the paper. Sounding incredulous, he exclaimed, “Fourteen digits? She could memorize fourteen digits without writing them down? Uh-uh, I don't think so. Anyway, where did you get this?”

Ashley flushed bright red. “I—found it.”

Pulling himself up to his full five-foot-six-inch height, Jack asked menacingly,
“Found
it? Where?”

Ashley stammered, “Her tote bag was open.”

“You went through her things!” Jack's fists clenched. He felt like decking his little sister.

“I saw her pick up something from the burn area! I saw it, whether you believe me or not. She had to hide it
somewhere!
I was trying to find it.”

“Ashley, I'm ashamed of you,” Olivia declared. “It's not right to go through someone else's personal property. Don't you ever do anything like that again. Now give me that piece of paper. Your father and I need to discuss this problem alone.”

“But Mom—”

“I said now!”

Ashley handed over the paper, then burst into tears and ran up the steps.

“…and my heart will go on and on,”
Lucky sang from the shower.

T
hey ate breakfast in the same restaurant where they'd had dinner the night before, since the next nearest restaurant was six miles back along the park road. The tables were small squares, which made it hard to ignore someone who was only three feet away, but Jack and Ashley still were not speaking to each other. Jack pored over a map of the park, while Ashley, eyes glued to her lap, twisted a napkin into a string.

“What's everyone going to do today?” Olivia asked brightly. “I've got a meeting concerning the cougar right after I finish here. As you can imagine, the rangers weren't very happy when I told them I believed they caught the wrong cat. We're going to try to make a game plan on how to search out the real one, which means”—she took a sip of coffee—“you'd better plan the day without me.”

Steven answered, “I want to photograph Cliff Palace. It's the largest cliff dwelling in the park. It's got some intact rooms, and in a few places there are interesting designs painted on the inside walls. I should be able to get some great shots.”

“That sounds good, Dad,” Ashley said. “Cliff Palace is the most famous place here. I can't wait to see it.”

Jack looked up from the map. “Fine. Drop us off at Balcony House.”

Steven asked, “Drop who off?”

“Lucky and me.” Eyes lowered, Jack tried to fold the map back into its original shape, but like all maps, it resisted. “Balcony House is just down the road from Cliff Palace. You and Ashley go on and get your pictures, Dad. I'll be at Balcony House with Lucky.”

“We can all start at Balcony House. I wanted to get some shots there too—” Steven began.

Jack looked up abruptly. “You can take your own pictures when you come to pick us up. Lucky and I want to go alone.”

“I think that's a tour where kids have to be accompanied by an adult, Jack,” Olivia said gently.

“Couldn't you just call one of the rangers you know and ask if the person giving the tour can be in charge of us? I mean, it's not like we're little kids or anything, and you're busy working on park business so that almost makes you an employee of Mesa Verde”—Jack took a breath—“which means they might give us a break and let us go alone.”

When his mother hesitated, Jack pressed harder. “We'll stay right with the ranger and do whatever he or she says. Lucky and I really want to go there by ourselves. Please, Mom? It's just one hour.”

Steven and Olivia exchanged glances. Olivia nodded, and a wisp of a smile brushed Lucky's lips.

“OK.” Steven sighed. “I guess it's settled as long as the ranger agrees to all of this. Ashley, it's just going to be you and me. Hope you won't mind being stuck with the old man.”

He'd meant to be funny, but Ashley didn't smile.

The four of them drove in stony silence as the car looped around the road to Balcony House, with Steven and Ashley in the front seat, Jack and Lucky in back. Their hands, resting side by side on the seat, barely touched.

The interpretive ranger who met Jack and Lucky at Balcony House couldn't have been more different from Nancy, the guide at Spruce Tree House. Young and thin, Stan LaPointe seemed as animated as Nancy had been soothing. His small, wire-framed glasses couldn't hide the energy in his blue eyes, and when he told stories, the crowd of people gathered around him punctuated his words with bursts of laughter. Jack knew this was going to be fun, especially since, at Olivia's request, the ranger had agreed to look out for Jack and Lucky.

“Some visitors ask interesting questions,” Ranger LaPointe told the people waiting at the starting place for the tour to begin. “They'll say, ‘Why did the Puebloans build their cliff dwellings so far from the road?'”

“'Cause there weren't roads way back then,” a small boy shouted.

“Very good.” Smiling, Stan said, “Maybe you'll grow up to be a ranger one day. How about this one? Sometimes I get asked, ‘What did the Ancestral Puebloans use for water?'”

The little boy frowned in concentration until his face suddenly cleared. “That's dumb. They used water for water.”

Throwing his hands up to the sky, Stan said, “Exactly right! Man, are you smart. If you keep this up, I might be out of a job. These folks are going to ask you to run this tour.”

Lucky giggled at the exchange, which made Jack relax a little. Since Ashley's accusation, Lucky had been withdrawn, almost cold. It was good to see her face break into its usual bright smile.

“OK. It's ten o'clock. We're just about ready to begin,” Stan announced. “I need to go over a few safety rules that are always in effect here but are especially important now because of the cougar problem. Are any of you aware of this?”

A few tourists nodded, but most looked puzzled.

“I don't want to scare you, but you need to know that Mesa Verde has been troubled by an aggressive cougar. A little boy was hurt—”

“Didn't they already catch the one that attacked him?” a woman asked.

“We thought we had, but last night we got some new information that makes us think we may have captured the wrong cougar. There's no cause to panic, though,” Stan said, holding up his hands as if he were a traffic cop. “Just follow the basic rules, and everything should be fine. Normally, the cats keep as far away from people as possible. So don't wander from the group, and make sure you stay on the established trails. Any questions?”

“Why don't you just eliminate the problem?” a man in a dusty pair of Levis asked. “Seems like the park's putting a lot of good folks in danger. Give me a rifle and about two days, and I guarantee you won't be looking into the mouth of any cougar.”

Stan colored. “Every animal has the right to be here,” he began. “We're trying to find the problem cat and get that particular animal out of the park. The rest of the cougars are necessary for keeping the ecological balance, meaning that if you take one link out of the natural chain, the entire chain becomes weak. We definitely need to keep the cougars here.”

The man in the Levis rubbed his hand against his sweaty forehead. “So, in the meantime you're just gonna let people get chewed up till you get around to catching the right one?”

Jack shook his head and murmured to Lucky, “Listen to that guy. I wish my mom was here to take him on.”

“We're doing all we can,” Stan assured him. “We realize that a lot of people have traveled halfway around the world to see Mesa Verde. Would you want us to shut down the park and keep them from seeing it?”

A chorus of “No, no!” rang in the air.

“So the best we can do is to be careful and then enjoy the incredible beauty of this park.” Stan turned his attention once again to Balcony House. “The place we are going to is really very special. Archaeologists once thought that Balcony House was a family dwelling. Now we believe that's not true. It appears to have been a place of spiritual worship. So please, treat it as you'd like others to treat your own church. Don't touch anything, or sit on the walls, or act disrespectfully here. Are you ready to go and have a great time?”

Forty-two heads, including Jack's and Lucky's, nodded yes.

Stan led them down a narrow path that skimmed the edge of the cliffs until everyone bottlenecked at a gate. “The point of no return,” Stan joked, unlocking the gate with a key. While they handed him their tickets for the tour, he kept up a steady stream of information about the park. “The Whetherill brothers named this canyon Soda Canyon. Does anyone know why?”

When no one could answer, Stan pushed his ranger hat to the back of his head, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and drawled, “It's because the brothers looked out over this canyon—the biggest one in the park—and said, ‘Well, golly, that there canyon's so'da wide and so'da deep, ain't it?'” Stan grinned as the crowd moaned. “But seriously,” he added, locking the gate behind the crowd, “it's because there's all this white deposit around here. The settlers thought it was baking soda, but it's not. It's actually calcium carbonate. The canyon was named before they figured that out.”

“Why is he locking us in?” Lucky whispered.

Overhearing her question, Stan answered, “This cliff dwelling requires our visitors to do a lot of climbing on some pretty tall ladders. We have to make sure a guide is present at all times, for visitor safety as well as for the protection of Balcony House. Now, if any of you get truly terrified, you'll have an option: You can hike back here and wait at the gate for the next ranger to let you out.”

“Ladders?” Lucky asked. “Jack, you didn't say anything about climbing a ladder.”

“Sorry. I didn't know. Maybe that's why you're supposed to go with an adult.”

Lucky paled. “I don't like being locked in. And I don't like heights.” She gripped the top of his arm, digging her nails into his skin like tiny claws. “Come on, let's go back.”

Stan was already ahead of them, chatting as he hurried to catch up to the rest of the group, telling about the canyon wall's unique water filtration system. The people had gathered six deep around an alcove. Stan began to explain how the Puebloans might have collected several gallons of water each day from the small seep spring.

“Come on, Lucky, we'll be OK,” Jack told her. “I'll help you. Besides, if you back out now, we'll have to be with Ashley.”

“But—”

“It's a ladder!” Jack exclaimed, wearing his most confident smile, “How bad can it be?”

Later, when he stared at the double-wide wood rungs that seemed to stretch forever up the sheer cliff wall, he felt his insides quiver. He'd climbed steep places before, but never when the drop beneath him was so sharp, so certain to bring death. He envisioned himself slipping, bouncing off the alcove and then tumbling down into the deep canyon beneath. How had the Ancestral Puebloans managed? How would Lucky?

“Now
that's
a ladder,” he said, trying to laugh.

“This isn't funny. Why did you bring me here?” she hissed in his ear. “Look at that thing—it's a hundred feet tall! I can't do it! No way!”

Jack shook his head. If they returned to the gate to wait for another ranger, he'd have to face Ashley's smug expression when she learned about it. No, he wouldn't go back, which meant there was only one way out. Up. “We'll just have to do it,” he told Lucky.

“…and for those of you who don't know how to climb a ladder, I will demonstrate,” Stan said cheerily. With his back to the rungs, he crept up, facing the deep chasm below. “Only joking, folks. You do it like this.” Flipping around, he faced the rungs. “Foot, hand, foot, hand.” As easily as a spider monkey, Stan scaled the double-wide ladder until he reached the very top. “The ladder shakes slightly, especially when you get to the middle. I'll be waiting for you up here. Start going, two at a time.”

The tourists, many looking nervous, began to move up the ladder. A thin man, eyes wide, shook his head and said something in German to the man on his left. Jack decided that Lucky must not be the only one scared to go up. She hung back until all the others had reached the top. A group of them looked down the ladder at Jack and Lucky, waiting.

“Come on,” Stan yelled. “The trick is to not look down.”

“It's show time,” Jack said, trying to keep his voice light. “I'll be right beside you.”

At first, Lucky mounted the ladder almost as easily as Jack did. Hand, foot, hand, foot, hand, foot—the rhythm kept his mind focused. Every few rungs he looked over at Lucky, who gripped the rungs so tightly her knuckles jutted white but kept moving steadily.

“You're both doing great,” Stan called down.

“I really hate this,” Lucky called back. A ripple of laughter went through the cluster of tourists who waited at the top.

They'd made it three-quarters of the way up when Lucky froze. Jack could hear her breathing become rapid, as if she were panting. “You're shaking the ladder!” she shrieked. “It's moving.”

“No, it's OK. I won't move,” Jack promised. “You go on up.”

It seemed to take all of Lucky's effort to advance one hand. Then another foot. “It moved again!” she cried. “Why is it doing that?”

“I'll come down—” Stan began.

Jack had never seen Lucky's eyes as wide as they were now. “No!” she screamed. “Stay there. You'll shake the ladder even more!”

“OK, OK,” Stan called. “Don't panic. Everything's going to be fine. Would you rather back down and walk back to the gate?”

Ignoring Stan, Lucky kept her head down. “Jack! Help me! I'm going to fall!”

The people at the top had quieted down, realizing for the first time how terrified Lucky was. Instinctively, Jack knew he had to keep her calm, to coax her like the baby animals his mother sometimes brought home to nurse.

“Lucky, listen, there's nothing to be afraid of.”

“How about dying!”

“You're not going to fall. I promise, you're not.”

“I can't do it.” Her forehead was pressed into a rung. Jack could see her legs shaking.

“Just look straight ahead and take a deep breath. Take all the time you need.”

“I can't move!”

Jack noticed that her skin was turning white, and the trembling had moved up to her hands. Stan seemed to sense it was best to let Jack try coaxing her through, at least for the moment. He stood poised at the top of the ladder, waiting for a signal from Jack before he intervened.

“You have to do something for me, Lucky,” Jack went on. “You have to stop looking down.” When she raised her chin, he said, “Good. Now I want you to imagine that there's land right underneath you, OK? It's just no big deal. You're only a foot off the ground right now.”

“I…I'm trying.”

“Don't think about anything else but the next rung. Move just one rung up, OK? That's all I'm going to ask you to do.”