Renegade Man (24 page)

When she reached
the lavish home in the North Addition, she pushed past the startled maid and
stormed into the den. C.B. was sitting in his favorite chair, a half-empty shot
glass in his hand. She glanced at the coffee table and noticed that the snake
was missing, then was surprised at her lack of satisfaction.

C.B. didn’t seem
startled by her abrupt entrance. His eyes empty, he stared at her over the rim
of his glass. “I know why you’re here, girl, but despite whatever you may think
about me, I wasn’t responsible for what Buck did to your dog. I don’t hold with
cruelty to animals.”

She had an
insane, scary fear that she was going to laugh. Laugh! She opened her palm, and
the object she had taken from the grave dropped with a clunk onto the coffee
table. Puzzled, C.B. glanced down at it, then up at her.

“My
grandmother’s Eastern Star ring, C.B.,” she said coldly.

In the heavy
silence, their gazes locked. He swallowed hard, and she asked in a deadly soft
voice, “You may not hold with cruelty to animals, but what about cruelty to
humans?”

He shook his
head, like a swimmer trying to clear the water from his ears. His lips
trembled. His face went the same dead white as his shirt, and the glass slipped
from his hand to thud on the hardwood floor. “As God is my witness, I loved
him,” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “I loved him as much as I love my own
life. Chap was my life! ”

Her knees
buckled, and she collapsed onto the leather couch. She stared sightlessly at
the ring, unable to bear the anguish in the old man’s face. “Why, then? Why?”

“I didn’t mean
for it to happen!” His tears coursed down his weathered cheeks. “The night you
left town, Chap got drunk and came—”

“Chap never
drank.”

“I know. But he
did that night.” C.B. covered his face with his age-spotted hands. “He barged
into the ranch house. He was furious that I had talked him into giving you up. I
had been hunting and was getting ready to clean my guns. We got into an
argument over you. I don’t know how it happened, but we ended up wrestling for
the shotgun . . . and, my God . .. My God, it went off!”

She closed her
eyes against the horror of the image. “That’s why you wanted me to leave
Tomahawk Flats, wasn’t it?” she said tonelessly. “You knew I might discover
your grisly secret.”

He hung his head
and wept, great, body-wracking sobs. “You don’t know how often 1 wished it was
me who had died that night. I’ve been condemned to a living hell ever since.”

She rose and
stared down at him. “I don’t think I could ever have thought up a revenge that
would have . . . How ironic. There’s a certain awful justice to it, isn’t
there? The secret’s yours, C.B. You have to live with it the rest of your life,
God help you.”

She turned to
go, and he said in a voice that was roughened by tears, “The sheriff will be
out at Tomahawk Flats tomorrow morning. I’m turning myself in. I can’t go on
like this anymore. Believe me, Ms. Randall, I’m glad it’s all over with. It was
too heavy a burden.”

He had called her
Ms. Randall, she thought in amazement.

She said
nothing, simply walked out. In the entryway, she passed the gilt-framed mirror.
Her face was ashen, but the bitterness, the same bitterness she had seen in
C.B.’s eyes when she had first returned to Silver City, was gone. She was at
peace at last. But it was a hollow peace that only time could fill.

The sheriff came
out the next morning with the fo rensics people, who gathered, collected,
photographed and took notes, their expressions bland. She answered a few
questions, then moved off to one side, watching the morbidly clinical routine
from beneath a shady cottonwood. Magnum and Jonah hovered around her, the Lab
at her side, whining nervously, Jonah behind her, his strong hands gentling her
tense shoulders.

“What will
happen to him? To C.B.?” she asked, turning her gaze up to Jonah.

His features
were granite-hard. He shrugged. “He turned himself in of his own accord. He’s a
native son. I think the judicial system will be lenient with him.”

Somehow Soren
had found out about the discovery, because he arrived a few minutes later and
bypassed the investigative team to talk to her and Jonah. Taking her hand
between his big ones, Soren said, “I just heard, Rita-lou. I’m sorry. I know
this must be hard for you.”

She could only
nod. Soren and Jonah talked in low voices for a moment; then Soren left. She
knew he was seeing Nelda these days, and hoped he would find the happiness he
was searching for.

Happiness. At
that moment she couldn’t remember what it was. After Chap’s remains had been
gathered in a zippered black plastic bag, she turned and laid her head against
the comforting support of Jonah’s chest. She was shaking with anger and
anguish. “So unfair,” she murmured thickly. “All the dreams—the hopes of
youth—silenced forever. It’s so damned unfair!”

“It’s all
right,” he said tenderly. “It’s all right now.”

For several days
she couldn’t bring herself to go back to the dig, so she puttered around the
camper or helped Jonah with the tedious task of panning. “This is how it’s
done,” he told her, still exuberant because the Assay Office had reported that
Jonah’s find indicated the presence of gold in a heavy concentration.

Wrapping his
arms around her from the back, he said, “You just shake the pan gently,
Rita-lou, so the water gradually swirls over the edges and the gold is trapped
in those riffles.”

She found it
difficult to concentrate, enveloped in those muscled arms, his breath fanning
her cheek. She glanced up to see the lusty twinkle in his eyes. “I think,” she
said coolly, “that you’ll never find your mother lode if we stay glued to each
other like this all day.” She thrust the pan back into his big hands. “Here, we
both have our own work to do.”

And she did. She
had her own dream to pursue. She deserted Jonah, and for about half an hour
merely sat in front of the grid where she had found Chap’s body. But she had
found the Clovis spear point here, too. Possibly it had been disturbed by
C.B.’s digging so many years earlier.

Sweat beaded at
her temples and along her upper lip. Sweat trickled into her eyes and down her
neck, but still she sat, absorbing the idea germinating in her mind: that
perhaps, after abandoning her in life, in death Chap was giving her her dream.

Galvanized into
action, she picked up a lightweight trencher and carefully began to shovel the
dirt from the top layer, all the while keeping an eye out for the first
telltale sign of the black earth that marked human habitation.

Half a day of
cautious digging uncovered the next zone—black soil, as she had hoped. She
immediately discarded the trenching tool and began to use her trowel again.
With gentle strokes she soon unearthed what turned out to be, after
examination, charred animal bones, perhaps those of an early bison.

She spent the
rest of the day bagging and recording her find. She was still hopeful, but she
was also exhausted. The past two days—finding Chap’s remains, the scene with
C.B., answering questions and reliving the sad memories—had taken their toll on
her.

That night Jonah
was filled with boyish exuberance, and she lay in his arms in the dark,
delighting in his nearness, in his deep voice as he talked about his favorite
seafaring experiences.

“Jonah...”

“Mmmmh?”

“If you don’t
kiss me..

He complied.
After his mouth released hers, he whispered against her cheek, “You should have
seen that schooner, Ritz. It—”

She clamped her
hands in his hair and tugged fiercely, bringing his mouth down to her own. She
heard him chuckle against her lips; then he took control in a kiss that left
her panting.  “Fuck the schooner story!”

Oh, how she was
going to miss him when he left!

Buoyed by her
premonition that she would find her Renegade Man in the same grid where she had
found Chap’s body, she arose before dawn and began dressing. Jonah reached out
sleepily to try to haul her back into the bunk with him, but she successfully
dodged him and escaped into the chill early-morning air. Magnum immediately
roused himself from his place beside the camper steps to follow her the quarter
mile to her site.

By the time the
sun tinted the eastern peaks with brilliant shades of pink and orange, she was
kneeling in front of grid five. “I’m getting calluses on top of calluses,” she
mumbled to Magnum, who expressed only vague interest by flexing his droopy
ears.

All day she dug
and troweled and sifted. Grid number five was nearly three feet deep when her
trowel nudged something solid, and a strange feeling took hold of her.
Excitement, although there was nothing yet to be excited about. She could
merely have found a small stone.

Instinctively
she sensed otherwise. Somehow she knew that she was about to discover something
momentous.

Before her eyes,
as she worked, a human form took shape. She had uncovered a second burial site.

She worked
quickly, but with gentle strokes. Two hours later she sat back against the grid
wall and observed her find: interred with the partial remains were a spear,
thousands of stone beads and numerous rings and anklets, undoubtedly reflecting
the deceased’s rank in society. The lavish grave indicated that these people
must have believed in a life after death.

Her trained eye
studied some of the revealed bones. They were soft and flaky and red. An ironic
smile curved her lips. She had found not her Renegade Man but a child.

A girl-child
thirty-five-thousand years old!

Chapter 16

W
hat’s with you?”
Jonah asked.

She glanced up
from her bowl of soggy cereal, but she couldn’t hold his penetrating gaze.
“Nothing. Nothing. Just tired, that’s all.”

Tenderly he
cupped her chin and forced her to look at him. “Come on, Ritz. No more moody
silences and secretive glances. We’ve been honest with each other up till now,
so what’s up?”

Behind Jonah’s
guileless green eyes there gleamed an intelligence, a sharpness, that she had
always found wonderful, exciting. But now that intelligence weighed and
measured and calculated, and she found it disconcerting.

“It’s the dig,”
she answered quickly, lying—and feeling terrible about it. But the more she
thought about it, the more she realized that lying was the only solution. If she
didn’t do something quickly, all the secrets that might be found in the
prehistoric grave would be destroyed by scavengers. Yet to rebury it now would
be to expose it to further, quicker deterioration.

What could she
do? Once her find was announced, scientists and sightseers would descend on the
place, putting an end to Jonah’s work. The site woqld be nationalized and all
unrelated digging prohibited.

“I’ve come
across some artifacts I’m having trouble dating,” she answered slowly. “And I
can’t go any further until I do. I’d like to get a lab analysis on an
arrowhead. I suppose I’m going to have to make a trip to see the boys in Santa
Fe.”

He arched a
brow. “The boys in Santa Fe?”

“The state
archaeological team there. They’ll probably be able to help me out.”

That decided,
she smiled brightly, telling Jonah that she would be back the following day,
and thirty minutes later she kissed him goodbye. “I thought you had the hots
for me,” he teased her, nuzzling her neck. “How can you leave such a good
thing?”

“Easy,” she
wisecracked. “I’ll take a cold shower at the first motel I come to.”

She had to keep
things light; she could never let him know how deeply in love with him she was.
Driving away, she felt as if she were leaving the largest part of her heart behind.

A little over
five hours of highway driving brought her into Santa Fe, New Mexico’s mountain
capital.

 The predominant
architecture was Pueblo and territorial, and the office building where the
National Park Service team was headquartered fit into the latter category.
Schotsky rose from behind his desk and smiled cheerily. She wished she could
feel as happy.

He was
completely bald and wore thick glasses that made his engaging blue eyes seem
even bigger than they were. He motioned for her to sit down opposite him. The
driving had left her weary, and she sank gratefully onto the hardback chair.

“You told my
secretary you wanted to speak with me about something important?” he prompted.

She took a deep
breath, then blurted out her precious knowledge. “I’ve found it, Ben—my
Renegade Man.”

“You did what?”
He jerked forward in his chair. “You did it? You found proof of a thirty-five-
thousand-year-old man?”

She nodded.
“There’s a slight problem, though.”

He sighed and
sat back in his chair. “I thought so. The big come-on. Now, what did you really
find?”

“I’m very
serious.” She dug into her shoulder bag and opened a small sack. Half a dozen
ivory beads rolled out onto his desk. “I found what I said. Have them
carbon-dated if you don’t believe me.”