Merculief threw back the hood of his raincoat and squatted down to get a closer look at the gravesite without touching anything. “Deer-hoof apron, bracelets, Raven rattle… I bet you this was a shaman.”
“Like a witch doctor?” Schimmel whispered.
“Probably more like the guy who hunted witches,” Merculief said.
“A witch hunter?” Schimmel stammered. “That would be a good guy, right?”
“I’d say so.”
Schimmel’s slack-jawed gaze was glued to the bones. “No shit? The Indians around here really had witches and witch hunters?”
“The oral traditions say so,” Merculief said. “The way I understand it. The people who lived here believed witches wielded a force that made people sick. Shamans like this guy would have figured out who was the witch and then healed the sick person.”
“There’s witches in the Bible,” Schimmel muttered, always trying to remain relevant. “Did you know that?”
“I did,” Merculief said, giving this goofy dude a side-eye, then leaning forward to take a photo of the rattle with his phone.
Merculief could hear Dallas Childers talking on the radio but couldn’t make out the words over the sound of the river. The bosses had to be pissed. They were probably trying to figure out a way around this. There wasn’t one.
This find was beyond incredible.
“This rattle is different,” Merculief said, grabbing a jutting stone in the muck to support himself so he could lean in and get a closer look.
The rattle was roughly a foot long and five or six inches at its widest point. The image of a human figure in a raven mask was faintly visible on the horn body.
“All the rattles I’ve seen have been carved from cedar or other kinds of wood – and newer, otherwise they’d have rotted away. This one looks to be very old. I think it’s made of Dall sheep horn, boiled so they could form it.”
Schimmel grunted. “So?”
“Dall sheep were sacred to the Tlingit,” Merculief said. “Lots of taboos surrounded their hunting.” He put a hand on Schimmel’s shoulder, squeezing him in excitement. “I’ve got so much work to do, so many questions. I’m not even sure they had Dall sheep in this area at the time this was made. This grave could help identify ancient trade routes between coastal and inland peoples—”
“Is it worth anything?”
“The rattle?”
Schimmel nodded, chin on his hands, hands on his shovel. “Yeah.”
“I’d say it is,” Merculief said, hovering over the bones like a mother bird protecting her nest. “A wooden Raven rattle about this same size sold for over half a million bucks last year.”
Schimmel stood up now. “Half a million? Dollars?”
“Yep.” Merculief stood. He was unwilling to molest the site any more. He had Tlingit blood in his veins, but not the cultural expertise to know what needed to be done to take care of the site. “I need to make a call.”
Childers was still busy on the radio, but he looked up to listen to what Merculief was saying now.
“Sorry to stop you, guys,” the archeologist said. “We need to get someone in here who can tell us if special ceremonies are needed.”
“What do you mean, ceremonies?” Schimmel asked.
Merculief gave an emphatic nod. “If I’m right and these bones belong to an actual Tlingit shaman, there will need to be some prayers, that sort of thing.” Childers relayed everything over the radio, stopping short when Merculief said, “We may have to reroute the road.”
Childers lowered the radio a hair and glared. “We can’t reroute the road.”
Merculief, enthralled in his new find, failed to notice the darker mood shift.
Instead, he babbled on. “True, I suppose. Tlingit customarily buried their shaman in out-of-the-way places, but there is a lot we don’t know. There could be other burial sites all around here. I don’t know how much land is considered sacred around a shaman’s tomb. These are questions for a cultural expert. Not me. They’d have to make that call.”
Childers raised the radio to his lips again, listened for a while, and then held up a hand.
“Mr. Dollarhyde agrees.”
“Wait. Mr. Dollarhyde is here?” Merculief had expected to deal with Auclair, the mine foreman, not Harold Grimsson’s creepy fixer and right-hand man.
Childers gave a smug nod. He was more relaxed now that his de facto boss was on the scene. “He says to tell you good catch. This is a hell of a find, he says.”
“He’s not mad?”
“No,” Childers said, stone-faced. It was almost like he was reading from a script. “According to Mr. Dollarhyde, your bones could put Valkyrie Mine on the map. Might even help with public relations for all our other projects. He wants you to grab a few photos, and then he’ll take you back into Juneau in the fast boat.”
This was certainly not the way Merculief thought it would play out.
“No,” he said. “I should stay with the dig.”
Childers lowered his eyes, peering down from the seat of his backhoe. “You want me to get on the radio and tell Mr. Dollarhyde you said no? See how that works out for you. Personally, he says I’m going in the fast boat back to Juneau, I’m getting my ass in the fast boat back to Juneau. Sounds like he wants to do a press release with you about your discovery.”
Merculief took a half step back, shaking his head. “It’s a little early for press—”
“He’s the boss,” Schimmel grunted.
“No, Dollarhyde works for the boss,” Merculief said.
“So that makes him our boss,” Childers said.
A man wearing dark green rain gear came around the trees on a growling four-wheeler below. Auclair, the grizzled mine foreman, bounced up the rough roadbed, dodging rocks the size of basketballs. The rain was beginning to pick up, and Merculief was relieved to see that he’d brought some tarps.
“Dollarhydesaidbringthese.” The foreman habitually blurted out everything he wanted to say at once, like he didn’t want to spend the effort to space his words. “Coverthesite. Keepitdry.”
Merculief exhaled sharply through his mouth, tension leaving on the cloud of vapor. Maybe the boss was on board with this.
Dean Schimmel wasn’t
