when Chuck didn’t respond. “I asked you a question, boss.”
Chuck looked past Clarence at the students—the six male members of Team Nugget and six women on Team Paydirt—as they made their way along the trail.
Silver-haired Ernesto Sartore, Chuck’s anthropology professor two decades ago at Fort Lewis College in Durango, had called in April from out of the blue to offer Chuck a job running a group of students through Fort Lewis’ eight-week field school in historical archaeology at the site of long-abandoned Cordero Mine, high in Rocky Mountain National Park.
“You’re the top graduate our School of Anthropology has ever produced,” Sartore told Chuck. “All your published papers, your finds displayed in museums across the country—you’re our rock star.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Chuck demurred, pleased by the unexpected praise from Sartore, with whom he hadn’t been in contact for years.
He accepted Sartore’s offer when Janelle agreed to bring the girls and spend the summer with him in Estes Park, thanks to her scheduled summer leave from the school receptionist position she’d found upon moving to Durango after their marriage last fall. Chuck called Parker, an old high-school buddy from Durango, and secured the secluded cabin at the back of the Y of the Rockies complex for himself, Janelle, and the girls, and use of Raven House for the students, with Clarence and Kirina providing live-in supervision.
Upon the start of the field school in June, Chuck, for the first time in his life, experienced the satisfaction of coming home to family at the end of each work day, and his insistence on sticking to schedule this morning was born of that contentment. He’d brought the students up into the mountains as planned today despite—or, more accurately, because of—last night’s events; he wanted to assure no glitches during the final three days of the program put his plan to run another field school for Sartore next year at risk—he wanted to spend another contented summer with Janelle and the girls.
“You agree with Parker?” Chuck asked Clarence, changing the subject. “You think the thing with the blood isn’t that big a deal?”
Clarence stopped and faced Chuck in the middle of the trail. “Tell you the truth, more than the blood itself, what really confuses me is the anonymous phone call.”
Parker had told Chuck, and Chuck had told Clarence, that a 911 emergency phone bolted to a post in the grass fields at the center of the compound had been used in the middle of the night to alert the police to “something suspicious” next to Raven House. According to Parker, the unknown caller had spoken with a muffled voice, likely through a cloth wrapped around the receiver to avoid leaving fingerprints.
Clarence continued, “Somebody comes across some blood on the ground? That I can buy: a cook or dishwasher from Falcon House gets his hands on some chicken blood from the kitchen and dumps it on the ground—gross out your buddies, trick them into walking through it in the dark, snap a pic and put it online, whatever.”
“Sounds like something you’d do.”
“Sure. But if I did, I wouldn’t call the cops about it. And if someone else saw it on the ground and felt the need to report it, why’d they work so hard to hide who they were?”
“Maybe if they were tricked into stepping in the blood,” Chuck theorized, “and they wanted to get the person who did it in trouble without getting in any hot water themselves.”
“The whole thing’s strange, you ask me. Those cops, though?” Clarence blew a derisive jet of air through his lips.
“What about them?”
“So serious. They stayed till dawn—for a puddle of blood.”
“It’s Estes Park, population what, five thousand? Their whole careers are spent dealing with jaywalkers, shoplifters, people going thirty in a school zone. This is big stuff for them.”
“Still. Crime scene tape? Spotlights? All the pictures they took? I’m telling you, if this had happened in the South Valley, the cops wouldn’t even have shown up.”
“You saw me talking to the guy in charge, Hemphill, the one I heard on the radio thinking he’d found a homicide. He seemed okay to me. Just trying to do his job.”
“That’s because you’re from a small town, too, bro.”
“He’s watched a few too many cop shows on TV, that’s all.”
“Maybe,” Clarence said. He shot Chuck a look. “Or maybe he knows something you and I don’t.”
The sun was well up and the day quickly warming by the time Chuck gathered the students before him at the mine site.
Cordero Mine sat on a flat triangle of open, rock-strewn ground well above tree line on the east flank of Mount Landen, a mile around the peak from Trail Ridge Road. Ore cart tracks, bent and rusted with age, ran a hundred feet from the mouth of the long-abandoned mine’s single underground tunnel to where the mountainside fell away to the east. A dark tongue of dumped tailings extended down the steep slope from the end of the tracks. The site was devoid of structures, save for a collapsed log cabin at the lip of the embankment that had housed miners a century ago.
The field school students stood in a half-circle in front of Chuck, their hardhats tucked beneath their arms. Several of the students cast tired looks at Chuck. Sheila, usually the liveliest of the group, appeared particularly wiped out.
Chuck lifted a consoling hand to the students. “I know you didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. But we only have three days to go, and Professor Sartore wants to make sure you get your money’s worth.”
Sheila opened her mouth in an exaggerated yawn. “All I want to do is take a nap. I couldn’t even make it for my spirit time today.”
Sheila took a few minutes to herself each morning after breakfast, wandering up the slope into the forest behind the dormitories. She was a short, stocky Navajo steeped in spirituality and mysticism. Her cheeks were round and merry, her chestnut eyes generally filled with mirth. All summer, she’d rebelled—good-naturedly—against the field school, claiming her participation was due only to the fact that completing the course was required for her to graduate.
“I’m an anthropology major,” she explained. “I just want to study my Diné people. But they say I have to do some field work if I want my degree, so here I am.”
She had predicted the students’ presence at the abandoned mine site would stir up ghosts—known on the Navajo reservation as skinwalkers. The male members of Team Nugget had declared their readiness to take on any and all angry spirits that dared haunt them.
Chuck lowered his hand. “The sooner we meet today’s work goal, the sooner we can leave. We’re almost there—today and tomorrow here at the mine, Thursday at Raven House finishing up the last of the logbooks, and Friday we are—” he held his hardhat in one hand and drummed it with the other “—outta here.” He looked around the group. “Okay. Team Nugget in the tunnel, Team Paydirt’s got the cabin.”
The six young men of Team Nugget groaned in unison.
Acting on a suggestion from Professor Sartore, Chuck had selected the mine tunnel along with the collapsed miners’ cabin
