Make No Bones

'Now, now,” Nellie said. “The necromancers have had their chance. I think we'd better let science take over tomorrow.'

'Wait a minute, Nellie,” Miranda said, “I think Gideon's done a wonderful job so far. It's sure starting to look familiar to me, and I think it'd be a pity not to finish it. How long would it take, Gideon?'

'Not long. A couple of hours, maybe. The hard part's done.'

Miranda appealed to Nellie. “Two more hours.” The students applauded.

'Why don't you finish up this evening, then?” someone asked.

The students groaned. They'd put in a long day too, and they were as tired of looking at the thing as Gideon was. Ordinarily, working in his lab, he spread this kind of work over a week or more, a few hours at a time.

'No,” he said, “I think we're all bushed. If we do it at all, it'd be better to wait until tomorrow.'

Nellie used a finger to scratch the side of his beard. “I don't know,” he said doubtfully. “I'm sure John here would like a final report as soon as possible.'

'Another few hours isn't going to hurt,” John said. He gestured at the skull. “This is interesting. I'd like to see the finished job.'

Nellie bowed his head. “I submit. All right, Gideon, it's all yours. Finish it up tomorrow.'

'Good,” Gideon said. “We'll get a good, early start—'

Julie, who had come in with the others, dug an elbow into his side. “Horseback ride,” she said under her breath. “Chuck-wagon breakfast. You are going.'

'—ah, immediately after the chuck-wagon breakfast. No later than ten.'

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CHAPTER 11

* * * *

For the first part of the way back they followed the trail they'd come on, a broad, shaded track of loamy soil that allowed them to go two by two. Gideon rode quietly alongside Julie, relaxed and content, his stomach full, enjoying the creak of the saddle under him, the pungent, gamy smell of horseflesh, the lolling, swaying, gentle gait. They rode slowly alongside Lupine Creek, through a forest of cinnamon-barked pines varied by occasional stands of western larch and aspen, with clumps of manzanita and buckbrush at ground level. (Julie told him the names, which he appreciated learning and promptly forgot.)

He had already admitted to her that the chuck-wagon breakfast had been a wonderful break. Cooked over open fires, the eggs, bacon, burned toast (Leland claimed they burned it on purpose, for atmosphere), and gritty coffee had been served up by authentic-looking wranglers in a shaded clearing, with the morning sunlight illuminating the highest branches of the trees. Tethered horses had pawed and snuffled twenty feet away, and everybody had smelled like wood smoke. It had made Chuck Salish seem like something from an unpleasant dream.

Gideon had expected to see few of the older attendees, but almost all of them were there. Leland, he was surprised to learn, was an expert rider who had requested and gotten an English saddle instead of one of the Western ones—with their big, comforting pommels and horns—which all the others had been glad to accept. Nellie was there too ('Give me the slowest, oldest nag you've got. And the biggest, softest saddle'), along with Les and Miranda. Even Callie, who had arrived back at the lodge at 6:30 A.M. after a red-eye flight from Nevada, had shown up, although the less-resilient Harlow was yet to be seen.

The only problem had been a confusion over time. The head wrangler, a twenty-year-old named Tracy, with the short hair, fresh, boyish face, and narrow, athletic hips of a youngster who lived for horses, had thought they were due back at the lodge at eleven. When she was told that the sessions began at ten, she had proposed a shortcut.

After twenty minutes of easy riding they came to it. On the way out to breakfast they had turned away from the bank of the stream in a wide arc to avoid this brief stretch of poorly maintained trail that climbed and skirted the flank of a rocky grade at the edge of the water. That was for more advanced riders, Tracy had told them, but now they would save half an hour by taking it.

She called a halt before they started up the grade. “It's not really dangerous,” she told them from horseback. “It just looks that way if you're not used to it. Just give your horse its head. They know they're going home, and they know how to get there. Let's go. Oh,” she said as she started up again, “and don't let them know you're nervous.'

'It's a little late for that,” Gideon said half aloud. Earlier, on the ride out, his horse, a placid, good-natured brown mare named Rosebud, had stopped to nibble at the trailside grasses whenever the fancy took her. Twice she'd stopped to doze, ignoring his coaxing. Julie, a competent, confident rider, had had to dismount to help him get her going again. “She's just a thousand pounds of muscle trying to figure out what you want,” she had told him. “You have to let her know who's boss, that's all.'

'Don't worry,” Gideon had said, “she already knows.'

Loose rocks now made the footing going up the grade unstable, and several times the horses slipped, bringing a few sudden intakes of breath from the less self-possessed riders, Gideon included. But only Callie's horse gave anything like trouble, skittering abruptly sidewise at one point so that Callie's leg barely missed scraping heavily against a tree trunk. Callie, who hadn't looked very comfortable on a horse to begin with, laughed it off, but seemed shakier and more tentative than ever in the saddle.

At the top of the grade Tracy called for their attention again.

'All right, everybody, now comes the tricky part.'

'I thought that was the tricky part,” Gideon said.

Julie laughed. “Relax, you're doing fine.'