off the blanket of despair that was closing in on him.
If only his father hadn't made him take Davy out to the charco that day. Then, none of the rest of it would have happened.
'Do I have to?' Quentin had whined to his father on the phone. 'Me and Tommy have better things to do today than haul Davy Ladd out into the desert to put a bunch of plastic flowers on something that isn't even a grave.'
'Listen here, young man,' Brandon Walker said. 'We're not talking options here. Where did you get that car you're driving?'
'From Grandma,' Quentin conceded grudgingly. 'You bought it for us from Grandma Walker.'
'That's right. Diana and I both bought it for you,' Brandon corrected. 'As long as we're paying for gas and insurance, you'd better straighten up and help out when required to do so. Is that clear?'
'I guess,' Quentin said. 'But do we have to do it today?'
'Yes. Today is the anniversary of Gina Antone's death. Rita's too busy with Lani to take care of the shrine herself and it would be too hard on her anyway, so Davy's agreed to do it for her. It's very important to Rita that the work be done today.'
'Well, I'm not doing any of it.'
'Nobody's asking you to. Davy will do whatever needs doing. Brian will probably help out too, if he can come along.' Now that Quentin was being slightly more agreeable, Brandon was willing to be conciliatory as well. 'I'll send along enough money so the four of you can stop off at the trading post and have a hamburger or a burrito on your way back. How does that sound?'
'Okay, I guess,' Quentin said.
Showing off, Quentin had driven the aging '68 New Yorker like a maniac on the way out to the reservation. Tommy was game for anything, but Quentin was waiting to see if he could scare either Davy or Brian into telling him to slow down. Neither one of them said a word. The bad part came, though, when they turned off Coleman Road and headed for the charco.
Quentin was still going too fast when they came around a blind curve that concealed a sandy wash. He jammed on the brakes. Seconds later, the Chrysler was mired in sand up to its hubcaps. By then they were only half a mile or so away from the charco and the shrine. Brian and Davy had set off with their flowers and candles. Meantime, Quentin left Tommy to watch the car while he hiked out to the highway to find someone to pull the Chrysler out of the sand.
That took time. He was gone over an hour. When he came back with a guy with a four-wheel-drive pickup and a chain, Tommy was nowhere to be found. The car was out of the sand, the guy with the pickup was long gone, and Brian and Davy were back from doing their shrine duties before Tommy finally showed up.
'Where the hell have you been?' Quentin growled.
'I got bored,' Tommy told him. 'But you'll never guess what I found. There's a cave up there,' he said, pointing back up the flank of Kitt Peak. 'It's a big one. I tried going inside, but when it got too dark, I came back.' He wrenched open the passenger door, opened the glove box, and took out the flashlight Brandon Walker insisted they keep there in case of trouble.
'Come on,' he said. 'I'll show you.'
'We can't do that,' Davy said.
'Can't do what?'
'Go in the caves on Ioligam, ' Davy told him.
'Why not?'
'Because they belong to the Indians. They're sacred.'
'That's bullshit and you know it!' Tommy said. 'Caves belong to everybody. What about Colossal Cave? What about Carlsbad Caverns? Besides, it's Kitt Peak anyway, not 'chewing gum.' '
'Ioligam,'Davy repeated, but by then Tommy was already headed back up the mountain. Quentin paused for a moment. He himself wasn't wild about exploring caves, but the idea of doing something Davy was against proved to be too much of a temptation. 'If Tommy's going, I'm going,' he said. With that, Quentin set off after his brother.
'Why are the caves sacred?' Brian asked as he and Davy trudged reluctantly up the mountain after the others.
'Nana Dahd told me that it's because that's where I'itoi goes for summer vacation,' Davy answered. 'But Looks At Nothing told me once that back when the Apaches attacked the village that used to be here, the village called Rattlesnake Skull, the only people who lived were some little kids who hid out in a cave. Later on, the Tohono O'othham found out that one of the girls from Rattlesnake Skull had betrayed her people to the Ohb. Some hunters went looking for her. When they found her, they brought her back and shut her up in one of the caves on the mountain to die.'
With three older brothers, Brian Fellows was used to having his leg pulled. 'Is that the truth or is that just a story?' he asked.
Davy Ladd shrugged. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Looks At Nothing told it like it was the truth, but maybe it is just a story.'
They had followed the older boys to the entrance of the cave and then waited outside until the flashlight gave out, forcing Tommy and Quentin to emerge.
'It's beautiful in there,' a gleeful Tommy reported. 'Unbelievable! It's too bad you're both chickens.'
'We're not chickens,' Davy said quietly.
Quentin laughed. 'Yes, you are. Come on, chicky-chicky. Let's go have that hamburger. I'm starved.'
During the next couple of weeks, Tommy had persuaded Quentin to spend every spare moment exploring the cave. When they ran out of money for gas and flashlight batteries, they stole bills from their mother's purse. And even Quentin was forced to agree it was worth it. The cave was magnificent-magnificent and awful at the same time. It was so much more than either of them had imagined and yet it was terribly frustrating. They had found something wonderful and amazing, beautiful beyond all imagining. Gleaming wet stalactites hung down like thousands of rocky icicles. Stalagmites rose up out of watery pools like so many gray looming ghosts. Here and there, pieces of crystal reflected back light like a thousand winking eyes. Tommy was dying to share their discovery.
'You know what'll happen if anybody finds out,' Quentin had warned his brother. 'They'll kick our asses out of there and we'll never get to go back.'
'Will they ever open it up? Maybe charge admission like they do at Colossal Cave?'
'Don't be stupid, Tommy. You heard what Davy said. It's sacred or something.'
It wasn't the first time Quentin and Tommy had squared off against the rest of the world. The two of them had been keeping secrets-some worse than others-all their lives. They were used to it, and they kept this one, too.
Three weeks after finding the cave, they ventured far enough inside the first chamber to locate the narrow passage that led to the second. The first room had been so rough and wet that it was almost impossible to walk in it. Starting in the passage, the second one seemed dryer, and it had a dirt floor, as though someone had gone to the trouble of covering the rough surface so it would be easier to walk on it.
Inside the second chamber they had discovered the rock slide barring most of what had once been a second entrance to the cavern. And over against the far wall, much to both their horror and fascination, they had found the scattered pieces of a human skeleton.
'Hey, look at this?' Tommy said, picking up a bone and flinging it across the cave. 'Maybe they left this guy here to guard these pots and to cast a spell over anybody who tries to take them.'
Tommy Walker's imagination and his fascination with magic had always outstripped his older brother's. 'Shut up, Tommy,' Quentin said. 'And leave those bones alone. What if they still carry some kind of disease or something?'
Shrugging, Tommy leaned down and picked up the first pot that came to hand. In the orange glow from the flashlight it looked gray or maybe beige. A black crosshatch pattern had been incised into the surface.
'I'll bet something like this would be worth a lot of money,' he said thoughtfully. 'How about if we take it to the museum over at the university and try to unload it? Whaddya think of that idea?'
'It might work,' Quentin had agreed. 'With all the gas we're buying these days, our budget could use a little
