Redeye (19 page)

In the ruin we unearth relics, pottery, and other objects. My major responsibilities are to draw, take photographs, and catalogue.

At noon we have a meal—a can of meat with bread, for with
all our equipment to transport we cannot afford to bring very much with us. Then at day's end we climb up out of our ruin with our transportable finds and return to camp, which is soon lit with the light of the campfire. Once again we dine from the breakfast menu.

The routine is most satisfying to me. It is hard to believe I might ever tire of this life.

Dearest Father, if only I had photographs to send you now, I do believe you would marvel at the splendid pottery we are finding, not to speak of the implements and other treasures I will describe below. Our findings strongly authenticate my earliest hopes and suspicions. The cowboy Merriwether says the pottery surpasses that made by contemporary Indians in this area of the world, and, Father, this pottery was fashioned hundreds of years ago at least. The pot and bowl meanderings are at once prehistoric and precise. I now see that I may be able to trace the formulations from primitive weaving patterns through more and more intricate pottery meanderings—something not attempted in the only recorded study of similar cliff dwellings I have found (1874). To date we have found
no trace of any metal
. I believe that these facts alone require my efforts as described in earlier correspondence. I fervently hope you concur.

We are confident that this cliff village was peopled well before the Spanish visited this area in the early 1500s. We hope to begin to predict just how much earlier. Tonight, our fourth night, we are back at camp although Mr. Merriwether stayed
behind to work and sleep in the ruins. A cowboy, Zack, is in charge here at our base camp. I am finding that my schooling in science and my reading, thanks in such large part to your suggestions and guidance, have prepared me to offer advice during our work. How greatly I am indebted to you. Also my training in Morse code has proven worthwhile as Merriwether has installed a helioscope on the mesa so that with a single relay mirror he is able to communicate with the ranch.

Merriwether has graciously promised me the first duplicate of any finding, which will allow me to gather a significant collection. I am certain there is no English collection from the western United States; I suspect mine will be more valuable in England than in the United States, although of this I am not certain.

But I must, Father, before I grow too weary to write more, tell you about the day's major event. This I have purposely saved until last: Excavating a trash heap with the assistance of a young cowboy, I came upon an oval-shaped mound. We took to it, gently, with our shovels. When we uncovered a matted material we began working with my trowel and a wooden trowel we had fashioned, and uncovered a skeleton, probably that of a female. The skeleton was fully exposed on one side, but the remains on the other side were
mummified
. One hand, with several fingernails intact, was preserved. She was wrapped in a shroud of “feather cloth,” which is quite interesting in itself—Merriwether is not aware of any such cloth among present Indians. Study of this cloth alone could fill my available time here.

This discovery increased my hopes of finding a fully preserved mummy. Beside the first mound was a second, which we also excavated. By this time others were watching us and Merriwether had to order them back to their own digging. In the second grave we found only a skeleton. But in the third, we found what we had hoped for—a complete mummy, shrouded in a network of cords wrapped in thongs of hide, and buried unflexed (according to Merriwether, an uncommon burial). A skin cap rests upon the head, over thick black hair. On the feet are moccasins and on the rest of the body are the remnants of hide clothing. I must repeat, this is a
completely
mummified female body. The skin is dark and very hard. There is a clearly discernible nose, and clean, yellow teeth.

I should add that several weapons were also discovered today, including a quite precious cache of arrows.

Dearest Father, I am feeling so very well. I believe that my enthusiasm for our work and the arid climate are working together to restore my good health.

Give Mother my warmest regards and please tell Mary Charlotte that I hope that she is now recovered from the consumption. Please offer John Charles use of my tennis racquet until I return. He always admired it more than his own.

I pray that you may judge favourably the requests in my recent correspondence.

With Sincerest Regards and
with Love, I remain
Your faithful son,
Andrew

When we got ready to leave White Rock Campsite to come home, Mr. Merriwether said he'd stay in the ruins for another week. There was a lot of rooms we didn't get to, so he decided he'd stay. He kept food and one extra horse and his bedroll and the ledger. If he needs anything desperate, he can send signals by this mirror thing that he set up with a relay in line of sight with his ranch. There's one at the ranch, too. Helioscope. You can aim it when the sun is out and send messages back and forth. He's got it all set up with a book in a box on each end that says how to use it, and Mrs. Merriwether is learning to use the one at the ranch, so we sent some signals back and forth. It's Morse code and it takes a long time to figure out all the letters unless you've done it a lot—like the telegraph.

We all came back the same way we went, with Zack in charge. We brought back two wagons full of pottery and other relics and the two skeletons and a full
mummy
woman.

When we got back to the ranch they had fixed a feast and threw a big supper party. Juanita, the cook, and Mrs. Merriwether was in charge. It was a big change from camp, even though the trail cook, Pete, does know how to make things taste
good up in the mesa, especially hedge hen and grouse, when we shoot him some.

At the ranch, they cooked twenty rabbits along with all sorts of vegetables, and we had fruit pies and buckets of ice cream. A Mexican woman rocked the ice cream in a rocking chair on the porch—in
ice
chips in a washtub around water buckets of ice cream—for it to freeze. The ice was shipped in on the railroad. Indians and the Mexicans came and some of their families came, except the Indians were mostly Navajo from close by. Mudfoot and Lobo had turned off and went back to their village north of the mesa when we was coming back that way.

We left the pottery and mummy and stuff packed in the wagons until after supper. Then we unloaded it into this little building that Mr. Merriwether has cleaned out to use as a museum, but people went out to look at the mummy all along. Mr. Merriwether would have had us unpack as soon as we got back, but Zack ain't as strict.

They had tables with tablecloths set up for us along the irrigation ditch under the cottonwoods. There was three Mexicans with guitars playing music on the porch, with little Jose Hombre singing sometimes. People played horseshoes, and somebody had all the children out in the field behind the house playing ring around the roses. Star and Andrew had set down on the fence that looks toward the river and started talking like they was sparking. I wish I was seven or eight years older and it would be me.

Mr. Blankenship and Mr. Copeland were there, too. Them and Mrs. Merriwether, Zack, and me were all sitting at the end
table under the cottonwoods, talking. I wished that Mr. Merriwether was there talking and getting all steamed up about the finds up in Eagle City. He told me I had the eye of a archaeologist.

Mr. Blankenship had this to say about it: “I think we have stumbled upon something of greatest significance. First thing we've got to do is have a little showing of some of this beautiful pottery and relics in Mumford Rock and up in Garvey Springs and see if we can't get some interest generated—some tourist interest generated. That, my friends, is the wave of the future. The Denver and Santa Fe Railroad is ready to hop into something like this, and I know all the right people there. And I know the Denver Historical Society is interested. There's
money
waiting to be made. For everybody. Tourism. Show off stuff in Mumford Rock and Garvey Springs and then take people right up into them cliff dwellings. Get some Indians up in there. Show them making some pottery, shooting bows and arrows. Sell some Indian pone. Hell, easterners would give big money to get up in there. And foreigners. They're doing it in Mexico.”

“The Moqui villages down south ain't that much different from the cliff dwellings,” says Zack. “Except the Moqui villages stink.”

“There ain't
mummies
in the Moqui villages down south,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Do you realize what your average man from New York City or Philadelphia would pay to see a mummy that's been around since before the Egyptian pharaohs? And the Moqui ain't making pottery like that pottery. That's fine stuff. Where you ever seen pottery like that? And ain't the Moqui getting tourists? There was a bunch through here last
week
from some university
in Chicago. To study
Indians
. I tell you there is money to be made. Big money. And we'd be doing the world of culture and colleges and universities a great favor.”

“You'd take that mummy to town?” asked Mr. Copeland.

“Why not? It's an archaeological find. It's public property come from government lands.”

“You better ask Merriwether about that.”

“I've already talked to Merriwether.”

“I mean about taking that mummy to town.”

“He'll come around. This'll help him support his expeditions. He could use some financial support, wouldn't you say so, Zack?”

“I reckon,” said Zack.

“He could use some financing, yes,” said Mrs. Merriwether.

It was late in the day and the air and weather was beautiful and clean and clear. Cobb Pittman was off by hisself like he usually is, with Redeye. He was sitting, leaning against a fence post, eating. Mr. Blankenship went over and sat with him for a little bit, and motioned with his arms, a rabbit leg in his hand, telling about his ideas for the tourists, I guess. Then Mr. Pittman talked awhile.

I was thinking it might not be a bad idea, especially if it would get some girl tourists out here, and I could be one of the guides. But I didn't think Mr. Merriwether would cotton to it.

Juanita kept bringing out food. Jose Hombre sang some more songs. Meantime, Andrew and Star had got their plates and gone back to sitting on the fence looking toward the Bright Owl.

Mr. Merriwether has a wide board nailed to the top of the corral fence so people can sit up there comfortably and watch the horse-breaking. You can turn around and look the other way for chicken pulls and horseshoes. And without my corset on I can easily get up there and sit down.

In any case, on this wide board is where Andrew Collier and I sat yesterday evening during the supper party that Juanita, Libby, and I prepared for the men returning from the mesa. We prepared hot, succulent rabbit and vegetables.

For dessert we had ice cream on top of hot peach pie—as delicious as anything I've ever eaten. Andrew brought mine to me from the porch and we continued sitting and talking as the sky glowed a deeper and deeper red. Mesa Largo itself seemed to turn black in the evening stillness.

And in that red stillness I envisioned the face of Bishop Thorpe, his kind, pleading, deep eyes, his strength and bearing. He is, I have come to realize, not unlike a Confederate general. Of course, I had nothing to feel guilty about by sitting on a fence with Andrew Collier and talking about the weather and his recent trip onto the mesa. Yet . . . yet, inside me there was the feeling of
being split somehow, a kind of foreboding of a decision to be made, and I was confused. On the one hand, I could not help but venture forth in the imagined arena where Andrew Collier might ask for my hand in marriage, followed by a triumphant trip to England for the ceremony and then perhaps world travel. Of course I would never confess this to anyone, but the thought, the feeling, the tiny light of hope was there. But then, on the other side of myself there was the pull of the tidy, organized, clean, and moral village of Beacon City, where I could learn a whole new way of life in God and the Saints—in a religion of today
and
yesterday, not just yesterday.