metals. Some are very useful to us, but few of them are safe for extended exposure. For an example, I’ve seen tailings piles from mines that were over a century old where not even a blade of grass could grow.”
He nodded. “So we shouldn’t stand too close to that rock face.”
She laughed quietly. “Open air and all that. But yeah, you should shower at night, and when we start working on it, we’ll wear dust masks as a precaution. I doubt any part of that is radioactive enough to make someone sick, but why chance it when we’re going to be exposed all summer?”
“I agree.” He drained his coffee cup, then asked, “Okay, a geologist is joining the team. Any other paleontologists?”
“For right now, interns. Mostly grad students, some of them mine.”
At that moment her attention was drawn by a sound at the east end of the cleft, from within the trees. Gray Cloud? Not likely. That man moved with enviable silence. Who then?
After a half minute or so, a figure emerged from the trees into the clearing not far from the rock face. Renee wasn’t certain anyone else was allowed here, so she stood at once.
Cope apparently picked up on her unease and stood too, calling out, “Could you hold it there, please?”
The rider stopped. “Sorry if I’m disturbing. I’m Loren Butler from the ranch to the south. I heard something was going on up here and wanted to check it out.”
Renee chewed her lip. Was she going to have to defend this site from everybody who decided to take a ride?
“This is tribal land,” she called back. “Sacred. We have permission to work here. Do you?”
The man chuckled. He tipped back his head a little, revealing a pleasant face as the sun slipped beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “Nope,” he said frankly. “I heard there was some kind of rockslide up here last summer. Frankly, it’s a weird-looking one. Not exactly a cleft like Gray Cloud said. Or maybe part of the cleft is broken. Guess I won’t find out today. You can tell the elders I was here. I prefer to stay on good terms with my neighbors. But you can also tell them I was curious about what exactly happened.”
He paused, then added, “Just a couple miles south of me, on Thunder Mountain, they had rockslides a few years back ago that put a halt to building a ski resort. Makes you wonder if Gray Cloud ain’t right about this mountain having a brain. See ya.”
He turned his horse with a few clucks of his tongue and rode slowly back into the woods.
“I guess he has a reason to be curious,” Cope remarked. “If the mountain’s going to get busy making rockfalls, he might have something to worry about.”
But Renee’s thought had turned in a different direction. “It was a cleft.”
Cope turned to face her. “Was?”
“Last fall I was visiting my cousin and Gray Cloud brought me up here to show me.” She turned, taking care with the placement of her feet. “Right now it looks like a slide,” she said, pointing toward the rock face, “but when he showed it to me last fall, there was a narrow cleft in the rock, just enough for one person to walk through. The part to this side, where you can see the creek below, was thin but still tall and upright. It didn’t contain anything interesting I could see, so I wasn’t upset when I came back this year to discover that part of the top of the narrow piece had apparently crumbled. Gives us more room for work.” She shrugged. “But we’re still going to have to check all the stuff that fell below as well as what’s beneath us in the cleft.”
“Obviously,” he agreed. “What about farther up, like that guy just mentioned?”
“He’s right. It’s more of a cleft beyond those trees there, but you can’t tell if it all happened at once. Maybe Claudia will be able to. Regardless, I looked at it last fall and it didn’t appear promising. Which doesn’t mean I won’t check it out anyway.”
Cope fell silent, and Renee continued to stare at the rock face, but her thoughts were moving through time, not space. “You know,” she said after a minute, “it’s really weird that part of that narrow wall of rock collapsed like that.”
She fixed her gaze on Cope. “It’s almost as if someone deliberately knocked it down. As if they wanted samples and disturbed more than they intended.”
She watched Cope’s face darken, but he didn’t respond. Of course not. He was the one who had suggested security that she couldn’t afford. On the other hand, who the hell would want anything from here other than a cool fossil? And freeing something from the rock would take many hours. The most any trophy hunter could have hope of finding was something that was already loose.
That hardly required full-time rent-a-cops.
Another bunch of small rocks tumbled down from above. “Let’s get your hard hat,” she said. “Then I need to think about how we can stabilize the top of that wall.”
“I’ve got some ideas.”
She didn’t doubt it for a moment.
The plan was to start off small, but the group didn’t feel all that small when they gathered at Maude’s diner that night, some meeting others for the first time.
There were Larry, Maddie and Carlos, all undergrad interns. Then there were Bets, Mason and Denise, her three graduate interns. And last but not least, Claudia Alexander, the geology postdoc, a woman with short, no-nonsense dark hair and huge gray eyes that seemed almost too big for her face. She stuck out among a group of young people who seemed almost blended in their similarities. That would change as Renee got to know them all better, but for now she hoped no one expected to be called by name.
“Okay.” She decided some honesty might be helpful up front. “I’m terrible with names. I’ll recognize your faces for the rest of my life, but give me time with your names. I’m better at identifying fossils.”
Laughter rolled around the tables that had been pulled together with the permission of the diner’s owner, Maude. In fact, Maude was already pouring coffee all around with a great deal of clatter and frowning. A couple of Renee’s interns looked intimidated by this, but once Cope ordered a dinner for himself, suggesting they all do the same if they were hungry, they relaxed. Maude, he told them sotto voce, was a local character.
Renee had met the woman last summer and was prepared for the graceless service they were receiving. Still, it was nice to know everyone was a target.
Soon they had ordered a meal from the menus. Young, active, with healthy appetites. Not surprising. Renee ordered a steak sandwich along with the majority, knowing it would probably be too much to eat, but once the dig got under way they’d all be working long hours, most of them physical. In her experience, on a dig like this, most people lost a bit of weight. You ate while you could. Soon enough they’d all be sick of beans heated on the portable stoves.
“I’m going to run over the basics again,” she said when everyone was served and eating. Playful conversation had been rather desultory as the interns tried cautiously to feel one another out. “We’re guests on tribal lands. Invited guests. That invitation will last only
