No shit Sherlock. She knew that already. They
all
knew that already. Probably no bear or mountain lion in there, high as it was. And it was August, not hibernation season yet. So steep though. Her stomach fluttered contemplating the climb,
but fuck it
. She was in better shape than either of the guys.
First they needed to cross. Ron stared from the edge, left-right, down, said —I think we can descend right here, hike up to the cave from below, choose the best ascent there.
—Sounds good to me, bro. Lead on.
Ron looked back at Sue-Min a second, said —Whadda you think, baby? Looks good?
Only he turned before she could answer, dropped to his knees and slid his legs over the edge. Pete followed soon as Ron was all below. He looked up at her once his head had descended, said —Come on in, the water’s fine!
What an asshole.
She let him climb down at least two full body lengths before she commenced her own descent.
The slope on this side was moderate, the handholds regular and reliable. Soon she reached Pete and Ron at the bottom, or almost at the bottom, wedged between walls only a few feet apart and tapering beneath to a terminal V too tight for traverse, both braced in position with arms and legs splayed out, an awkward pair of mothmen. She wished she’d worn her gloves for this shit. She saw Pete had his on now.
The stagnant murk in the crease beneath their feet could only be Blossom Creek. What they saw of the stream was little more than a foot wide and all but dry, its pitiful arrested trickle of water a black coffee hue.
Oily
black coffee. Only hard rain or snowmelt would make it flow again. Broken branches choked the creekbed’s acute angle. She considered how much further each flash flood would propel the jumble of jagged wood, how long some of it lingered in this isolate groove. . .
They had to chimney along from there, splayed legs and outstretched arms holding them over the creekbed’s crevice. It was a familiar caver’s maneuver, and they progressed in this peculiar style as if awkward angels.
Below them bleached branches clogged the trench, broken ends awaiting only one missed step to punch through clothes and flesh and draw blood, or just the next flash flood to move them along. She looked upstream at what she could see of the sky. Distant rain would send a torrent toward them even when the sky overhead was blue. No cumulus clouds, no rain. At least so far as she could see.
They made their clumsy way along, hand foot foot hand. Where the cave mouth had to be close to overhead Sue-Min saw forms below like broken rib bones protruding from the opaque water.
Human
ribs. Three curved gray somethings arching up from the coffee hued creek amidst more vegetal forms. And there—wasn’t that cracked rod a barely submerged long bone? Once more she took a breath to speak out, but froze.
No way those could be human bones. No way would she give Pete a chance to mock her, think he was bonding that way. Or worse, to offer sympathy if Ron mocked her. Just funky sticks, bones of livestock or mountain goats at most, nothing to see here. . .
Neither of the guys noticed. They pressed ahead until they estimated the cave was right above. The left slope seemed steeper now, nearly vertical. Sue-Min contemplated climbing it wearing her frame pack, how to balance. Yet the alternative was to leave the pack down here, with all her gear, likely to slip into the foul stagnant cola below no matter how tightly wedged. No way to open it here either, take out just those items she might need—and no way to tote that stuff up without a pack if she did. Going up would be all or nothing.
Ron went first, gripping the corroded ridges of tuff, faded khaki pack bobbing on his back as he rose. Pete followed straight off. Sue-Min was ready to go second after Ron, but got no chance. It hadn’t taken long for that to become the pattern . . . Ron, Pete, her, repeat.
Her turn came. She all but pressed her breasts against the wall as she took a grip. The rock was not so friable as it appeared, and the thin horizontal ridges cut by ancient floods and flows offered hand and footholds more stable than expected. The slope, though not as extreme as she anticipated, was still steep, and she steeled herself to flatten against it if she slid, avoid tumbling backward and losing all stability. Pressed face forward she might yet regain her grip in a slide.
Somehow they all three made it, crawled and scrambled over a rough rock lip and into the cave. Sue-Min let herself collapse back, panting on the pebbly dusty cave floor with her pack pushed up for an uncouth pillow. Both her hands were sore and torn in several places, and she could feel the palm of her left wet with blood. Ron reclined in a position much like hers, but Pete still stood, though he trembled. She thought already of their inevitable return, whether experience would render it easier on the descent or the change in direction might make it worse. She’d at least dig her gloves out of her pack for that.
Once she got back up and looked around she found the cave was not deep, only a rockshelter really, its rear walls extending nowhere full into dark zone, barely deep enough for permanent twilight at best. The ceiling rose in half a dozen low scalloped domes whose curves extended out to the walls, giving the shelter’s interior the look of a dirty compressed cathedral. Its floor area altogether amounted to little more than a good-sized theater stage, especially if all the curtains were drawn.
While the guys unpacked and set up camp she strolled about the hole. Beneath the rear north side dome she found the excised wings of dozens of Catocala moths, strewn in a tight spread little more than one meter round. Hindwings only, some up, some down, like powder-scaly tarots, their insides striped in red and black, outsides black and white. She’d seen this sort of thing once before, in a famous shrine cave near Capitan, New Mexico. The wing scatter marked a spot where bats fed. Or perhaps the work of a single energetic bat.
But no bats hung here. And why only the bright-striped hindwings, evolved to startle birds in flight? Where the drab forewings?
She found the probable culprits over in the final south side alcove, loose cluster of at least two dozen Townsend’s big-eared bats, their little charcoal bunny ears poking down within reach, so cuddly she wanted to pet them. But, rabies. It was always a maybe. Not just from a bite—the aerosol of their saliva could spread it alone.
Sue-Min noted the shifting feel of the floor beneath her feet, a sense of gravel grinding. She looked closer at the layer of tiny cobbles covering much of the cave.
River
cobbles. Dusty pebbles two, three, four centimeters around. Rounded, roughly. From the river. Someone hauled them up here a handful at a time. The Mimbres or other Mogollon who worshipped in this place? Why? She knew of prehistoric Southwest cave shrines strewn with pottery sherds in the hundreds, sometimes a thousand or more . . . others stuffed with inordinate numbers of sandals, prayer sticks, cane cigarettes. . . These rounded but dusty river cobbles though? Could this rocky carpet be the remnant of some rain ritual, some offering to ancestors in the watery underworld of night, the rain-bringers who returned as the clouds themselves, came back as the very raindrops. . . ?
Ron called her to where he was making camp. Sue-Min opened her own pack and drew out what she’d need for the night. She forgot to pack a sleeping pad so Ron placed his own under her bag despite the perfunctory protest she made. That settled, they zipped their bags together, creating a single quilted envelope. She smiled at Ron across this square . . . then saw what Pete was doing, what he held. . .
Pete hadn’t yet spread his bag out at all. Instead he moved methodically through the cave, a flattened wand coated in gray plastic extending from his hand.
Sue-Min turned on Ron. —No way. You brought me here with a
looter?
Did you not know about this? Tell me you didn’t know he was gonna do this. Tell me honestly.
—Aw baby, I didn’t think it mattered. He’s only looking for Spanish gold, not the stuff you study. Studied. It’s a total long shot anyway. Still, Coronado
did
come up the Blue, you know. And they do say he stashed some gold in a cave here somewhere.
—Coronado came here
looking
for gold! He didn’t
bring
any!
—Sure he did. He had to pay his men with it. Makes sense he would cache some for the return trip, when he would need it the most.
—You know looters are like my natural enemy, right? Archaeologists hate looters worse than we hate . . . Nazis.
—Well, you’re not really an archaeologist, are you? I mean, not anymore, not since they kicked you out.
He looked up at her, seemed to catch the blank stare that paved over her rage and turned away . . . then dared an amendment —And Pete’s
not
a looter. He’s not looking for
Indian
artifacts. He’s only looking for
Spanish
gold . . . or maybe Spanish armor.
Sue-Min’s voice came clipped as she answered, precise as a laser —Pothunters, treasure seekers, metal detectorists . . . they’re all the same. They trash sites, remove artifacts from their context, erase their provenience, leave them with no connection to their origin, and ruin any data. They destroy our national heritage.
Ron was down on one knee, unpacking items she mostly thought unnecessary—why had he brought four bags of
unpopped
popcorn? He did not look up. Pete meanwhile continued crisscrossing the cave floor, electronic wand angled down around 45 degrees. He swept it in short arcs to either side and ahead, ignoring Sue-Min and Ron.
—You
know
how I hate these guys, and now you drag me out in the middle of nowhere with one? I’m telling you, if he really finds anything I’m shutting him down the second he moves to break the ground!
She had no idea how she’d do any such shutting down unless perhaps Ron backed her up, but thin as Pete’s chances were of finding Spanish gold, things would probably never come to that.
Pete doubled back. Apparently he struck out so far. Beelined toward their bedroll till Ron requested he hold.
—Whasamatter, Bro?
—Can you maybe leave off with that thing till morning? Any gold here isn’t going anywhere before then. Night’s coming down and we should all crash now, get an earlier start than we did today, you know?
Pete shot back a puzzled look and shrugged. He flicked a switch on the detector and let the hand that held it drop to his side, turned and stepped back to his pack to begin spreading his own bedroll.
The cave held no wood except a few dusty twigs, so they built no fire. Instead they chatted across the gap between the sleeping bag islands where they sat, passing Ron’s half empty flask back and forth as they spoke. Their prospects for tomorrow, their luck in finding the cave, the strange pattern of the rocks they’d passed. Then Ron changed the topic altogether —When you get down to it those ranchers were decent guys, you know? Real all-Americans, really. I mean, what could be more American than cattle ranchers living down a canyon in Arizona?
Sue-Min hung her head, said nothing, which was fast becoming her routine when Ron was wrong, so she was surprised when Pete replied —Dude, those ranchers were fucking
assholes
. Their story about the bulls was . . . bullshit, and you know it. And don’t tell me you didn’t see how that one guy was checking out your girlfriend.
Sue-Min was shocked she agreed with Pete for once, but still she held her tongue.
—Duuude. Ron’s answer was forced and artificial, hands palms up on his knees in a phony Buddha pose. —Dude. You’re just projecting. They’re all right.
—Ha! Canyon dwelling inbred weirdoes . . . we’ll all be lucky if they’re not burying your truck somewhere with their backhoe right this minute.
Ron shook his head. —Chill, man. We’ll be fine.
That was it for the conversation, and as the Jack Daniels in the flask was already exhausted, they tugged off their hiking boots, crawled into their sleeping bags, and slipped into sleep, one by one.
Sue-Min woke to a mass crushing her midsection and a beefy hand clamped hard over her mouth. The cave was dark but the reek of sweat and Polo over the low aroma of rock dust told her at once it was Pete. Who the hell even slathers cologne on for a backpacking hike? She sought to struggle but her legs were trapped in the sleeping bag and Pete knelt on her arms so all she could do was thump her knees bluntly against his back through the padding of the bag. She torqued her neck, tried to scan to the sides, but the burly home builder increased his pressure and pinned her head in place.
What the fuck was going on? Where was Ron? How could Pete . . .
She couldn’t see Ron, couldn’t see much of anything. Though the cave was shallow its roof was so low no moonlight entered far. Sue-Min squeezed out a short set of stifled squeals, hoping to get her boyfriend’s attention or at least wake him if he could somehow still be asleep while his best friend raped her.
Because she knew that’s where this was headed.
Any woman would know. Pete had always given off that creeper vibe. She hadn’t worried much because Ron was always with her when Pete was around. But where was he now? The first flashes of heart-pounding panic faded and a wintry calm filled her frame in its place. She was going to
survive
. Not only survive. She was going to stop this. Even if she had to hurt him.
Even if she had to. . .
In that moment her mind became icy clear.