Thunderhead

reproachful memory of Fiddlehead. She thought of Swire’s poem to Hurricane Deck, almost a love ballad to the horse. She wondered how she was ever going to work things out with him.

They traveled down the valley, which narrowed as it approached the broad sandstone plateau, rising in front of them now less than a mile away. Nora glanced up at the cliffs as they passed, noting again the odd lack of ruins. This was an ideal valley for prehistoric settlement, and yet there was nothing. If, after all that had happened, this turned to be the wrong canyon system—she shut the thought from her mind.

The stream made another bend. The naked plateau loomed ever closer, the stream at last disappearing into the narrow slot canyon carved into its side. According to the radar map, the canyon should open, about a mile farther along, into the small valley that—she hoped—contained Quivira. But the slot canyon itself that lay between them and the inner valley was clearly too narrow for horses.

As they rode up to the massive sandstone wall, Nora noticed a large rock beside the stream with some markings on its flanks. As she dismounted and came nearer, she could see a small panel of petroglyphs, similar to those they had found at the base of the ridge: a series of dots and a small foot, along with another star and a sun. She couldn’t help but notice that there was a large reversed spiral carved on top of the other images.

The rest came up beside her. She noticed Aragon gazing at the glyphs, an intent expression on his face.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I’ve seen other examples of dot patterns like these along the ancient approaches to Hopi,” he said at last. “I believe they give distance and direction information.”

“Sure,” Black scoffed. “And the freeway interchanges and the location of the nearest Howard Johnson’s, I’ll bet. Everyone knows Anasazi petroglyphs are indecipherable.”

Aragon ignored this. “The footlike glyph indicates walking, and the dots indicate distance. Based on other sites I’ve seen, each dot represents a walking distance of about sixteen minutes, or three quarters of a mile.”

“And the antelope?” Nora asked. “What does that symbolize?”

Aragon glanced at her. “An antelope,” he said.

“So this isn’t a kind of writing?”

Aragon looked back at the rock. “Not in the sense we’re used to. It’s not phonetic, syllabic, or ideographic. My own view is that it’s an entirely different way of using symbols. But that doesn’t mean it’s not writing.”

“On the other side of the ridge,” Nora said, “I saw a star inside the moon, inside the sun. I’d never seen anything like it before.”

“Yes. The sun is the symbol for the supreme deity, the moon the symbol for the future, and the star a symbol of truth. I took the whole thing to be an indicator that an oracle, a kind of Anasazi Delphi, lay ahead.”

“You mean Quivira?” Nora asked.

Aragon nodded.

“And what does this spiral mean?” asked Holroyd.

Aragon hesitated a moment. “That spiral was added later. It’s reversed, of course.” His voice trailed off. “In the context of the other things we’ve seen, I’d call it a warning, or omen, laid on top of these earlier symbols. A notice to travelers not to proceed, an indication of evil.”

There was a sudden silence.

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my,” murmured Smithback.

“Obviously, there’s still a lot we don’t know,” Aragon said, the slightest trace of defensiveness in his voice. “Perhaps you, Mr. Smithback, with your no doubt profound knowledge of Anasazi witches and their modern-day descendants, the skinwalkers, can enlighten us further.”

The writer rolled his tongue around his cheek and raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

As they moved away, Holroyd gave a shout. He had walked around to the side of the rock nearest the entrance to the slot canyon. Now he pointed to a much fresher inscription, scraped into the rock with a penknife. As Nora stared at it, she felt her cheeks begin to burn. Still staring, she knelt beside the stone, fingers slowly tracing the narrow grooves that spelled out P.K. 1983.

23

AS NORA TOUCHED HER FATHER’S INITIALS on the rock, something inside her seemed to give way. A knot of tension, tightened over the harrowing days, loosened abruptly, and she leaned against the smooth surface of the rock, feeling an intense, overwhelming flood of relief. Her father had been here. They had been following his trail all along. She realized dimly that the group was crowding around, congratulating her.

Slowly she rose to her feet. She gathered the expedition under a small grove of gambel oaks, near the point where the stream plunged into the slot canyon. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits except Swire, who silently moved off with the horses to a nearby patch of grass. Bonarotti was busy cleaning the dirty cookware in the stream

“We’re almost there,” she said. “According to our maps, this is the slot canyon we’ve been searching for. We should find the hidden canyon of Quivira at the far end.”

“Is it safe?” Black asked. “Looks pretty narrow to me.”

“I’ve kept my eyes on the canyon walls,” Sloane said. “There haven’t been any obvious trails that would lead up and over to the next valley. If we’re going on, this is the only way through.”

“It’s getting late,” Nora said. “The real question is, shall we unpack the horses and carry everything in now? Or shall we camp now and go in tomorrow?”

Black answered first. “I’d prefer not to carry any more equipment today, thank you, especially through that.” He gestured past the canebrake toward the narrow slot, which looked more like a fissure in the rock than a canyon.

Smithback sat back, fanning himself with a branch of oak leaves. “As long as you’re asking, I’d just as soon sit here with my feet in the stream and see what victuals Signore Bonarotti brings out of his magic box.”

The rest seemed to agree. Then Nora turned toward Sloane. In the woman’s eyes, she immediately saw the same eagerness that was kindling within her.

Sloane grinned her slow grin and nodded. “Feel up to it?” she asked.

Nora looked at the entrance to the slot canyon—barely more than a dark seam in the rock—and nodded. Then she turned once again toward the group.

“Sloane and I are going to reconnoiter,” she said, glancing at her watch. “We might not be able to get in and back before darkness, so it may turn out to be an overnight trip. Any objections?”

There were none. While the camp settled down to its routine, Nora loaded a sleeping bag and water pump into a backpack. Sloane did the same, adding a length of rope and some climbing equipment to hers. Bonarotti wordlessly pressed small, heavy packets of food into each of their hands.

Shouldering their packs, they waved goodbye and hiked down the stream. Past the grove of oaks, the rivulet burbled across a pebbled bed and entered the canebrake outside the mouth of the slot canyon. Much of the cane had been torn and shredded into a dense tangle, and there were several battered tree trunks and boulders lying about.

They pushed ahead into the cane, which rustled and crackled at their passage. Deerflies and no-see-ums danced and droned in the thick air. Nora led, waving them away with an impatient hand.

“Nora,” she heard Sloane say softly behind her, “look carefully to your right. Look, but don’t move.”

Nora followed Sloane’s glance toward a piece of cane perhaps eighteen inches away. A small gray rattlesnake was coiled tightly around it at about shoulder height.

“I hate to tell you, Nora, but you just elbowed this poor snake aside.” It was meant to sound lighthearted, but Sloane’s voice carried a small tremor.

Nora stared in horrified fascination. She could see the cane still swaying slightly from her passage. “Christ,” she whispered, her throat dry and constricted.

“Probably the only reason he didn’t strike was because it would have caused him to fall,” added Sloane. “Sistrurus toxidius, the pigmy gray rattler. Second most poisonous rattlesnake in North America.”