companies and he's bringing along one of his patents, so it's a very good job.'
'Is that what he's working on out here?' McKee asked. 'Trying it out.'
'Oh, no. This is another one, I think. I-well, I wish I understood it better. Something to do with very narrow- range sound transmission. He explained it to me-quite often-but I don't really understand it.'
McKee started to ask her why she was looking for Dr. Hall and bit back the question. The answer was obvious, and none of his business. A woman who loves a man would simply want to see him.
'Dr. Canfield was nice, he was nice, a nice man,' Ellen said. 'But he was too polite to ask why I was chasing after Jim. And you've been nice, too. But would you like to know?'
'It's your private business,' McKee said. 'No, I don't want to know.'
'I want to tell you. I have to tell someone,' she said. 'I came because I wanted to tell Jim-to tell him that I think he's wrong, and he's going to have to make a choice. He's got to quit wanting a million dollars. He has to. I've come all the way out here. He has to understand.'
It sounded utterly feminine to McKee, the reverse side of Sara's logic, and a simpler assignment. A brilliant, ambitious man could easily enough fail to make a fortune. But how could a Bergen McKee, a natural on the treadmill, make himself rich?
And, thinking that, McKee, after forty hours without rest, was suddenly asleep.
Now he was fully awake again. He pushed himself to his feet and surveyed the room. The floor was covered with a heavy deposit of dust. He could feel it, flourlike, under the soles of his shoes. But the condition of the room was surprising. It was virtually intact. The roof sagged only at one corner, where the ceiling beams had snapped with rot, and plaster still clung to most of the lower portion of the walls.
McKee flaked off a section of plaster with his thumbnail, broke it and examined it. Inside it was almost black-a mixture of animal blood and caliche clay used by the pueblo-building people.
It was stone-hard and would last for centuries, and so would the cedar poles in the roof when protected from weather under a cliff. But not for this many centuries. Left alone, the roof would have crumbled long ago and the top of the walls would have fallen inward. This ruin must have been partially rebuilt-restored by one of the later pueblo people who used the canyon before the Navajos arrived and drove them out.
It was then he saw the face. He stood for a moment staring at it, putting together what it meant, feeling a sense of excitement building within him. The face was drawn on the plaster in something yellow-probably ocher. It was faded now and partly missing where chips of plaster had fallen away. A roundish outline with a topknot, long ears, and a collar. The figure was unquestionably a Hopi Kachina-either the Dung Carrier or the Mud Head Clown. And below it to the right were two more stylized outlines.
From the Hopi mythology McKee recognized Chowilawu, the spirit of Terrible Power, with four black-tipped feathers rising vertically from his squarish head and a horizontal band of red bunding his eyes. The third head had been almost erased by flaking. Only the dim outline of a protruding ear and the double vertical cheek stripes signifying a warrior spirit remained. Down the wall there were other markings-the zigzag of lightning, bird tracks, the stair-stepped triangles of clouds, and a row of phallic symbols. Undoubtedly, one of the Hopi clans had used this as a ceremonial kiva.
He stood absolutely silent a moment, thinking, and then squatted beside Miss Leon and put his hand on her shoulder.
Time to wake up.'
She rubbed her arm across her eyes.
'Very domestic,' McKee said.
She looked up at him and then pushed herself up against the wall, trying to straighten her tousled hair with her fingers. 'Oh. What time is it?'
'About four forty-five,' McKee said. 'We shouldn't have wasted all that time. We need to get out of here.'
'Out of here? But I don't see how we can.' Miss Leon looked up at the exit hole in the roof and then at McKee. 'What do you mean? How can we?'
'The Hopis lived in this. They rebuilt it. Have you read anything about how the Hopis build their pueblos?' It occurred to McKee as he said it that he was showing off and the thought embarrassed him. Ellen looked puzzled.
'They always built an escape hatch at the bottom of a wall,' he explained. 'A hole into the next room, and then they would fill it in with rocks that could be easily pulled out. Kept them from being penned up in part of the structure if they were under attack.'
'Oh,' Ellen said. 'You think there's a way out, then.'
'I think so. We can find out. It would be in one of the inside corners.'
And most likely, McKee thought, in the corner adjoining the cliff. Bracing over the escape hole would have been easier there.
The corner was littered with broken cedar sticks. Above, occasional moisture seeping down the cliff face had accelerated the slow work of decay. The builders had cut holes into the soft stone to support the ends of ceiling beams and here the rot had started first.
McKee selected one of the sticks and began pushing the debris away from the corner. He worked carefully, trying to avoid noise. But the powdery dust rose in a cloud around him. Ellen knelt beside him, pushing the dust back carefully with her hands.
'Don't make any noise.'
'Do you have any idea what this is all about?' she whispered. 'Why does he want you to write that letter?'
'I don't know what's going on,' McKee said. 'Maybe they're crazy.'
'I think you know about the letter,' Miss Leon said. She stopped digging and looked at him. Her face was chalky
