Cliff-Hanger (3 page)

Jack felt a surge of impatience. “So? Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Well, I'm wondering if she used to live here.”

“That's not it.” Jack jerked his mother's suitcase off the conveyor belt and set it down hard.

“You don't know that,” Ashley said, her voice rising. “And why are you getting so touchy? I thought maybe you'd seen the same thing, and we could tell Mom and Dad and then maybe they could find out if Durango is her real home.”

“What is it with you, Ashley?” he demanded, grabbing another bag. “It's like you've turned into a spy or something. Why don't you just leave her alone?”

Now it was Ashley's turn to look at him in stony silence. She might have said more, but right then Steven walked up. “Great. Our luggage made it. You two wait here with the suitcases while I go pick up the rental car.”

“What kind of car did you get, Dad? Is it a red one?” Ashley asked hopefully.

“Yeah. A Lamborghini,” Jack added.

“No, we can't fit in that, so pick a Rolls Royce,” Ashley joked.

“A Hummer.” Jack was getting into the spirit of it, glad the tension with his sister was melting. “A Hummer with Utah Jazz seat covers and its own television and VCR inside.”

Steven laughed. “You got it. I'll make it a red one. Meet me out front, guys.”

I
t turned out to be a white Ford Taurus, just like most of the other rental cars—not that Jack had expected anything racier.

Ashley wedged herself into the middle of the backseat between Jack and Lucky. Jack had to peer around his sister every time he wanted to say something to Lucky. That didn't happen often, because Olivia kept up a steady stream of talk.

“Isn't this a beautiful place? It's a lot more mountainous than Jackson Hole, although I think they're close to the same altitude. Which reminds me, Jack and Ashley, both of you have to write reports since you're missing school. Ashley, yours is to be on an animal that lives in Mesa Verde, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

Olivia turned around from the front seat. “There are a lot of interesting animals in this park—coyotes and badgers and lots of mule deer and elk. Have you ever stood next to an elk, Lucky?”

When Lucky shook her head no, Olivia slipped right into her lecture mode. She loved to share information about her job at the National Elk Refuge. “Well, let me tell you, they are huge! A lot bigger than you might think. My head stops right at a bull elk's shoulder, if you can picture that.”

“Mom, I don't want to do a report on elk,” Ashley broke in. “What else is there? Give me something with teeth.”

“OK, how about a black bear? They have them in Mesa Verde. And, of course, the cougar. Did you know the cougar is also called a mountain lion and a puma? They've got several names for the exact same animal. That might be interesting to mention, Ashley, if you do your paper on
Felis concolor,
which is, as you can probably guess, the scientific name for a cougar.” Olivia was growing excited. “Hey, really, cougars would be great for you to write on, since I've already gathered a lot of information. I could highlight some of the data….”

Ashley rolled her eyes at Jack to show she did not want to talk about school reports. Jack agreed. What was the use of getting a couple of days off if they had to worry about homework right from the start? Homework could wait. School would be over at the beginning of June—just two more weeks.

“How do you know about all those animals, Mrs. Landon?” Lucky asked.

“It's my job. I specialize in endangered and threatened species. You heard about the cougar attack I've been called to investigate?”

Lucky nodded. “I heard a little, but not much. What's going on?”

Running her fingers through her hair, Olivia sighed. “It's really tragic, Lucky. Last week a little boy was walking with his family down a trail, and he got too far ahead of them. There was a scream. When the parents came around the bend….” She paused, shaking her head. “It's not the way cougars usually behave. That's what's so frightening.”

“Was the boy all right?” Lucky asked.

“He had quite a few bites around his face, but I understand he'll make it. The park hunted down the cougar and caught it. I was asked to examine it, to check for disease or age or any other cause that could explain such an attack.”

Olivia turned back toward the front of the car but twisted around again when Lucky said, “I bet it took lots of years in school to learn all that you know about animals.”

“Uh-huh. A whole bunch of years,” Olivia admitted. “But it doesn't seem long when you're doing something you love.” She paused, then asked, “Where do you go to school?”

Lucky didn't miss a beat. “Home schooling.”

“Where's your home?”

Lucky shrugged and smiled. “Wherever.”

“Do you travel a lot?” Olivia pressed.

“Mom!” Jack protested. Talk about a grilling! His mom was sounding like the FBI. Next she'd be pulling out the truth serum. “Lucky doesn't have to answer that,” Jack said.

“Actually, I'd rather not,” Lucky murmured, very polite and still smiling.

Olivia took the hint and turned again toward the front to talk to Steven. Ashley, who was usually a chatterbox, was silent for a change. Jack could see she was chewing over these newest crumbs of noninformation Lucky had just spilled, although there wasn't much to digest.

No one spoke for a while. Jack watched the minutes tick by on his watch and the high mountains fly past the car windows. Those peaks looked as sharp and white as a wolf's teeth. After a while they gave way to a wide valley, and then, farther south, a different kind of elevation. Lucky exclaimed, “That mountain over there looks like a sphinx.”

“It's called a mesa, not a mountain,” Ashley said a bit testily. “‘Mesa Verde' is Spanish for ‘green table.' A mesa isn't the same as a mountain.”

“Well, it sort of is.” Jack knew why his sister was sounding peevish. Ashley tended to get carsick, and the curling route was guaranteed to make even someone with an iron stomach feel queasy. “Here, trade places with me,” he suggested. “You'll feel better next to the window.”

The narrow road that led to Mesa Verde wound higher and higher, as though a long ribbon had been carelessly tossed onto the mesa's spine. Back and forth the Landons went, twisting around one hairpin turn after another.

“You don't look too good,” Lucky told Ashley. “Are you OK?”

“I'll be all right as soon as we stop moving,” she answered through gritted teeth. Ashley, who felt nauseated during ordinary drives, clung to the door in agony. The window was rolled down a third of the way so she could drink in fresh air, but Jack could tell by her gray pallor that it wasn't helping. Since Ashley was smashed against the car door, there was plenty of room in the backseat for Lucky and Jack to spread out.

“Tunnel coming up,” Steven announced. Before the words were out of his dad's mouth, Jack found himself in utter blackness. He blinked hard. His eyes couldn't adjust to more than the tiny strips of lights on the tunnel floor and the small, baseball-size circle of light at the other end.

“Ohhh, I can't see a thing!” Lucky cried. “I hate it when it's so dark—spooks me out!”

And then he felt it. She was holding his hand! Before he even had time to think about what was happening, the tunnel ended and the car burst into the light again. Lucky pulled away. But when she looked at him with a shy smile, Jack understood what she was saying: There was another link between the two of them. Another secret Jack and Lucky shared.

“Hey, what happened to the trees?” Lucky asked, peering out the window. “They're all burned.”

“A huge fire was started by a lightning strike in 1996,” Olivia explained. “The damage looks devastating—and it was—but there's an exciting part to it. The burn areas revealed a lot of archaeological sites that haven't been excavated yet. They're like a treasure trove, just waiting to be discovered.”

Lucky leaned closer to the front seat. “You said treasure. You mean there are jewels and stuff lying around that they haven't dug up?”

This time Steven answered. “No, not that kind of treasure. Things like pots and tools and jewelry. They're valuable because they reveal the history of the people who were here 800 years ago.”

Lucky pursed her lips. “So the stuff out there's not worth any money?”

“I wouldn't say that,” Olivia told her. “Years ago, greedy people robbed the sites, sold the artifacts, and made themselves a fortune. But doing that is wrong. The past belongs to the people who used to live here, not to thieves who want to cash in.”

Ashley groaned, “Dad, I think I need to stop for a minute. I really feel sick.”

Glancing at his daughter in the rearview mirror, Steven said, “OK, honey. Hold on. I'll pull over just as soon as we can. Are you going to make it?”

Clamping her hand over her mouth, Ashley whispered, “Hurry.”

When the shoulder of the road widened into a lookout point, Steven stopped the car. He'd barely jerked on the hand brake before Ashley bolted from the backseat. The others followed her.

Charred, twisted tree skeletons marched right up to the road's edge. Fire had leaped across the asphalt to ravage both sides, leaving an ocean of blackened juniper and pinyon pine. It was hard to think the destruction had done any good at all—it looked like nothing more than a graveyard of trees. A path bordered by a wooden fence led up to a lookout point. “Come on, Jack,” Lucky told him, playfully pulling on his shirt. “Let's go see what's up there. It looks like Ashley's going to take a while.”

He saw his sister bent over, breathing deeply, with their parents at her side. Ashley hadn't thrown up, but she looked as though she could at any minute. “You two stay together,” Steven warned. “I don't want you going far from the road.”

“No problem, Dad. We'll stay close.”

Passing a sign that said North Rim Overlook, Jack and Lucky wandered down the asphalt path to a railing that blocked them from going farther.

“Oh my! Look at that,” Lucky gasped. She gripped the rail tightly, even though there was still a wide jut of ledge beneath her. “It's like I can see the whole world.”

“Wow,” Jack said softly. “It's awesome.”

A panorama spread out beneath them, so far away it was as if a giant quilt had been unfurled. Tiny specks that must be houses dotted patches of green, stitched in borders of golden yellow. Patterns of color repeated themselves in the valley as far as their eyes could see.

“Jack, Lucky, we're going now!”

“OK,” Jack called back. He knew he should invite his parents to look at the incredible view, but suddenly he didn't want to share it. This was for him and Lucky. “You ready?” he asked her.

They walked toward the car in silence. Along the edges of the road, beneath the dead bones of the trees, grew a fresh blanket of green grasses, punctuated by blue and yellow wildflowers. The forest was healing. Suddenly, Jack felt Lucky pull away.

“Hold on a second,” she said. Without more warning than that, she darted into the trees, heading straight for a cluster of blue blossoms.

“No, don't! You're not allowed to go off the path!” Jack cried. “That's a burn area—it's off limits!”

“I just want to pick one flower.” She laughed, still running lightly. “What can one hurt?”

“Lucky, for heaven's sake, get back here,” Steven ordered. He sounded much more serious than Jack did. Lucky froze, her hand hovering over a patch of blue. Then she crouched low and turned her back toward them, obscuring Jack's view.

Steven called, “You're on a burn area. No one's allowed to walk on it. I told you to stay with Jack.”

“I'll only be a minute!”

When Olivia and Ashley joined them, Ashley asked Jack, “What's Lucky doing?”

“Uh, she wanted to pick a wildflower.”

“Hey! She can't do that!” Ashley protested.

Grimly, Jack replied, “I know. But she doesn't know about the rules of the parks. I bet she's never been to one before.” Even to him the excuse sounded lame. Both he and his dad had told her to come back, yet she hadn't moved. Hunched into a question mark, she seemed to be lost in admiration of the wildflowers.

“Come on, Lucky,” Olivia shouted. “You've got to get out of there.”

“Just one more second,” Lucky called over her shoulder.

“You're going to let her get away with that?” Rolling her eyes, Ashley announced, “Fine. I'll go get her. My feet are small so they won't squish the ground as bad. Hey, Lucky!” she cried. “I'm coming after you.”

Gingerly, Ashley picked her way toward the crouching figure. When there were less than five yards between them, Lucky twisted around. As quick as a jackknife snapping open, she jumped to her feet, jamming her fists into her jeans pockets. Head down, she hurried past Ashley, muttering, “Never mind. I'm ready to go.” Then, brushing past Olivia, Jack, and Steven, murmuring “sorry” every few seconds, Lucky climbed into the car and slammed the door shut.

For a moment, the Landons stared in silence at the rental car and its occupant. “Well,” Steven finally said, scratching the top of his head, “I guess the next time we have any trouble with her we'll know who to send in. At least Ashley gets results. Good job, sweetie,” he told his daughter.

Olivia frowned. “Odd,” she murmured. Then, shrugging her shoulders, she sighed, “I guess we should just go with whatever works.”

“Yep,” Steven agreed. “So let's get out of here.”

Ashley didn't say anything as she trailed along behind them. In silence she took her post next to the car door, her face clouded, probably in anticipation of the upcoming ride. Lucky nestled beside Jack. He listened as she chattered her apology, saying that she'd seen a footprint of what might have been a cougar until she decided it was nothing more than an imprint from a big dog. Her words swirled around him; he listened with only half his mind.

So what if she hadn't obeyed his folks? he asked himself. Lots of kids blew off adults, even if he and Ashley didn't. Besides, Jack knew Lucky didn't under stand why walking on a burn area was so bad. His dad had once explained that scorched soil was extra fragile and that feet walking on it caused it to erode—to the point that it could even trigger a mud slide. But his dad had taught them that long before Lucky showed up at their home. So how could she know?

When Ashley finally spoke, it was to ask how much farther they had to drive. “Hold out for a few more miles,” Olivia answered. “Park headquarters is at the end of this road. That's where I need to go.” Olivia looked at her watch. “It's already nearly four o'clock, so the people at headquarters won't be there too much longer. The rest of you might want to hike down to Spruce Tree House. It's the cliff dwelling nearest to headquarters.”

After they left the rental car in the parking lot, Steven, Ashley, Jack, and Lucky began winding down the asphalt trail that led to Spruce Tree House. Enough foliage grew close by that they couldn't get a clear view of the 800-year-old dwellings as they walked, although Jack strained for a look around every bend.