tent, looking frowsy and bedraggled. Wordlessly, he stumbled over and helped himself to coffee, then squatted on a nearby rock, hunched over his tin.
“It’s cold,” he muttered. “I barely slept a wink. Normally, on the digs I investigate, they at least have a couple of RVs parked nearby.” He looked around at the surrounding cliffs.
“Oh, you slept fine,” Smithback said. “I’ve never heard such a cacophony of snores.” He turned to Nora. “How about if we institute co-op camping for the rest of the trip? I’ve heard all about the ‘tent-creeping’ that goes on around expeditions like this.” He cackled salaciously. “Remember, happiness is a double mummy bag.”
“If you want to sleep with the opposite sex, I’ll have Swire put you out with the mares,” Nora replied.
Black barked a laugh.
“Very funny.” Coffee in hand, Smithback settled on a fallen log, next to Black. “Aragon tells me that you’re an expert on artifact dating. But what did he mean when he said you were a Dumpster diver?”
“Oh, he said that, did he?” Black gave the older man an angry glare.
Aragon waved his hand. “It’s a technical term.”
“I’m a stratigrapher,” Black said. “Often, midden heaps provide the best information at a site.”
“Midden heaps?”
“Trash piles,” said Black, his lips compressing. “Ancient garbage dumps. Usually the most interesting part of a ruin.”
“Coprolite expert, too,” said Aragon, nodding toward Black.
“Coprolite?” Smithback thought for a moment. “Isn’t that fossilized shit, or something?”
“Yes, yes,” Black said with irritation. “But we work with anything to do with dating. Human hair, pollen, charcoal, bone, seeds, you name it. Feces just happens to be especially informative. It shows what people were eating, what kind of parasites they had—”
“Feces,” said Smithback. “I’m getting the picture.”
“Dr. Black is the country’s leading geochronologist,” Nora said quickly.
But Smithback was shaking his head. “And what a business to be in,” he chortled. “Coprolites. Oh, God. There must be a lot of openings in your field.”
Before Black could answer, Bonarotti announced breakfast was ready. He was dressed, as the day before, in a neatly ironed jacket and pressed khaki trousers. Nora, grateful for the interruption, wondered how he could have kept so prim while everyone else was already verging into grubbiness. The wonderful aroma stanched further curiosity, and she quickly fell in line behind the rest. Bonarotti slid a generous slice of perfectly cooked omelette onto her plate. She took a seat and dug in hungrily. Perhaps it was the desert air, but she’d never tasted eggs half as delicious.
“Heaven,” Smithback mumbled, mouth full.
“It has a slightly unusual flavor, almost musky,” Holroyd said, looking at the forkful in front of him. “I’ve never tasted anything like it before.”
“Jimson weed?” Swire asked, only half jokingly.
“I don’t taste anything,” Black said.
“No, I know what you mean,” Smithback said. “It’s vaguely familiar.” He took another bite, then set his fork down with a clatter. “I know. At Il Mondo Vecchio on Fifty-third Street. I had a veal dish with this same flavor.” He looked up. “Black truffles?”
Bonarotti’s normally impassive eyes lit up at this, and he stared at Smithback with new respect. “Not quite,” he replied. The cook turned to his curio box, opened one of the countless drawers, and pulled out a dusky-colored lump, about the size of a tennis ball. It was flat along one side where it had been scraped by a knife.
“Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” Smithback breathed. “A white truffle. In the middle of the desert.”
Smithback shook his head slowly. “You’re looking at about a thousand dollars worth of fungus right there. If we don’t find that huge stash of Indian gold, we can always raid the Cabinet of Doctor Bonarotti.”
“You are welcome to try, my friend,” Bonarotti said impassively, pulling open his jacket and patting a monstrous revolver snugged into a holster around his waist.
There was a nervous laugh all around.
As Nora returned to her breakfast, she thought she heard a noise: distant but growing louder. Looking around, she noticed the others heard it, too. The sound echoed around the canyon walls and she realized it was a plane. As she searched the empty blue sky, the noise increased dramatically and a float plane cleared the sandstone canyon rim, early morning sun glinting off its aluminum skin and bulbous pontoons. From upcanyon, the horses eyed it nervously.
“That guy’s awfully low,” said Holroyd, staring upward.
“He ain’t just low,” Swire said. “He’s landing.”
They watched as the plane dipped, its wings waggling an aviational hello. It straightened its line, then touched down, sending up two fins of water in a flurry of spray. The engines revved as the plane coasted toward the tangle of logs. Nora nodded to Holroyd to take the raft out to meet them. Inside the cockpit, she could see the pilot and copilot, checking gauges, making notes on a hanging clipboard. At last the pilot climbed out, waved, and swung down onto one of the pontoons.
Nora heard Smithback whistle softly beside her as the pilot took off a pair of goggles and a leather helmet, giving her short, straight black hair beneath a shake. “Fly me,” he said.
“Stow it,” she snapped.
The pilot was Sloane Goddard.
Holroyd had reached the side of the plane by now, and Goddard began swinging duffels into the raft from the cargo area behind the plane’s seats. Then she slammed the hatch shut, slid down into the raft, and gave the copilot a sign. As Holroyd rowed back through the tangle of debris, the plane turned and began to taxi down the canyon, where it revved its engines and began its takeoff. Nora’s eyes moved from the vanishing plane back to the rapidly approaching figure.
Sloane Goddard was sitting in the rear of the raft, talking to Holroyd. She wore a long aviator’s leather jacket, jeans, and narrow boots. Her hair was done in a classic short pageboy, almost decadent in its anachronism, that reminded Nora of a Fitzgerald-era flapper from a 1920s fashion magazine. The almond-shaped, brilliant amber eyes and sensuous mouth with its faint, sardonic curve lent an exotic touch to her features. She looked almost Nora’s age, perhaps in her mid- to late twenties. Nora realized, quite consciously, that she was looking at one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen.
As the raft ground to a halt on the shore, Sloane leaped nimbly out and came walking briskly into camp. This wasn’t the skinny sorority girl Nora had imagined. The woman approaching her had a voluptuous figure, yet whose movements hinted at quick, lithe strength. Her skin was tan and glowed with health, and she brushed back her hair with a gesture that was both innocent and seductive.
Still grinning, the woman walked over to Nora, slipped off her glove, and extended her hand. The skin was soft, the grip was cool and strong.
“Nora Kelly, I presume?” she said, eyes twinkling.
“Yes,” Nora exhaled. “And you must be Sloane Goddard. The belated Sloane Goddard.”
The grin widened. “Sorry about the drama. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, I’d like to meet the rest of your team.”
Nora’s alarm at this easy tone of command abated at the words
“I’m Aaron Black,” Black said out of turn, approaching the woman with an extended hand, his belly sucked in, his back straight.
Sloane’s grin widened. “Of course you are. The famous geochronologist. Famous
At this reference to the destruction of another scientist’s reputation, Black swelled with visible pleasure.
Sloane turned. “And you must be Enrique Aragon.”
