Season of Death (17 page)

The dark eyes continued their piercing assessment of him. The shotgun remained steady. “You look like a miner to me. You’re filthy dirty. Just like the miners.”

“I’m not a miner. I just … had a bad day,” Ray told him.

“Is that right?” The barrel of the rifle jabbed him in the gut. “Let’s go.”

“I nearly drowned—twice,” Ray explained, moving in the direction indicated by the shotgun. “Almost got shot. Lost my kayak.”

“Sounds terrible,” the man deadpanned, urging him along the trail.

“Not all bad though. I found out I’m going to be a father,” Ray said.

“Congratulations.”

“Got any kids?”

“No.”

“Married?”

“No.”

“Are you planning to kill me?”

“No. But if it turns out you’re from Red Wolf, me and my partner will have to give you a good beating. Now shut up and walk.”

Ray closed his mouth and set off down the trail. Talk about the perfect ending to a perfect day: getting the stuffing stomped out of you by a couple of muscle-bound Asians.

They had walked for less than a quarter mile when the man tapped Ray’s arm with the shotgun. “This way.” He nodded at a depression in the brush that led up an almost vertical hillock. Ray started the climb, kicking his boots in for traction on the loose soil. With the “specialist” behind and below him, he toyed with the idea of doing something: turning to wrestle the gun away, leaping for the trees, catching him with a surprise high kick … None of these seemed plausible. The line of poplars was too far for a single, sudden jump. He would be gunned down long before he reached them. A surprise kick? What if he missed? What if he didn’t?

Ray was still mentally evaluating the situation, studying it, trying to come up with a palatable solution, when they made the rise and he saw the camp. It was directly below them in an open flat about fifty yards wide that dropped off on the farside, down to the river, he supposed. A half dozen green and orange tents were set up in a ragged semicircle. Wooden crates were stacked in the gaps.

Beyond the tents the earth had been violated in a perfect square, the top layer neatly peeled away to reveal a collection of rocks and dark, dry soil. Stakes with fluorescent pink streamers glowed in the failing light, marking the corners of the digging area. Yellow string ran at perpendiculars throughout the site, giving it a grid effect. Near the center, man-made, earthen stair steps led down into a ten-by-ten pit. People were scattered across the excavation site, most kneeling, some holding trowels, others with what appeared to be shaving brushes, all scrutinizing the dirt.

“Keep going,” the specialist ordered. The barrel tapped Ray’s shoulder.

They half walked, half trotted down the steep, sandy path, breaching the ring of tents and their nylon rain canopies before another bulging Asian bounded up to them. He was six inches shorter than the specialist, but just as tough-looking: intense eyes, miniature goatee and pencil mustache, a ponytail not quite as long as Ray’s, absolutely nothing between torso and skull, legs as big around as Ray’s waist. The shotgun cradled in his arms seemed wholly unnecessary.

After smirking at Ray, the man addressed his partner. “What’s up?”

“Found this guy on the trail.”

The smirk became a scowl. “Another Wolf?”

“Says he’s a cop.”

The man took another look at Ray, squinting at him this time. “A cop?”

The specialist shrugged. “Thought maybe the docs would recognize him. They know most of the Wolf people.”

“If he’s lying …” the stubby man said. He completed the comment in another language, then burst into laughter.

The specialist joined in on the joke, snapping back with a paragraph of gibberish. After another round of belly laughs, he asked, “Where’s the boss?”

“In the hole.” Stubby nodded stiffly, proving that his head was not anchored in concrete atop his ponderous shoulders but could actually tilt and rotate slightly.

The threesome marched in single file along the near edge of the dig zone as if conducting a prisoner transport. All that was missing were the handcuffs. The specialist turned crisply around the corner stake and took them up the right side. When they were approximately halfway across the square, they stopped, and the two gargoyles looked stupidly at a huddle of people ten yards inside the excavation area.

Three youths in the eighteen-to-twenty range were hunched over what appeared to be a raised, carefully exposed collection of coffee-colored twigs. The teens were entranced, their expressions solemn, eyes wide as they watched another person caress the sticks with a toothbrush, meticulously whisking away pebbles and flecks of soil. The individual with the brush was squatting, back to Ray and his newfound friends, long blond hair spilling from a baseball cap.

The hat wearer, sensing their presence, abruptly ceased working, rose and turned to face them. It was a woman. She had on a purple T-shirt with “U-DUB” emblazoned across the front in gold. Tall and slender, she filled out the shirt with a vengeance. Long, tan legs extended from her cuffed shorts, curving smoothly into a pair of Nike boots. Beneath the brim of the cap, two remarkable blue eyes inspected him. They were accessorized by full, sensuous lips, and the thin, almost gaunt cheeks of a fashion model.

“Doctor,” the specialist called, as if she was blind and hadn’t noticed them. “We found this guy hanging around on the trail. Think he’s from Red Wolf.”

Her lips formed a pronounced pout as she considered this assessment.

“You’re in charge, ma’am,” the specialist continued. “But my advice is that we send a message to the miners. Let ‘em know we won’t put up with any more crap.”

Her face screwed at this. She glanced down at the sticks, then at her entourage.

“Do we have your permission to rough him up a little, ma’am?”

Ray smiled at her, pleading with his eyes. “I’m not from Red W …” The specialist jabbed him with an elbow. Gasping, Ray dropped to one knee.

“Zach! Doug!” the woman called. Her gaze was directed at a pit where two men were shoveling dirt. A pair of heads shot out of the hole. “Seen this guy at Red Wolf?”

The shirtless diggers leaned on their shovel handles and examined Ray. After several seconds of scrutiny, one of them shrugged and shook his head. The other took a deep breath and continued his examination. He seemed unsure. Climbing out of the pit, he dropped his shovel and walked to the woman’s side.

“Mmm … Could be a miner. But … they don’t have many Natives over there.”

“Too undependable,” the other man called from the hole.

“I don’t recognize him,” the woman said. Frowning, she retained her appeal.

After a final glare, the man announced, “Nah … He’s not one of them.”

The woman walked over and helped Ray up, offering a penetrating smile. Extending her hand, she said, “I’m Dr. Farrell.”

EIGHTEEN

“R
AY
A
TTLA
.” H
E
shook the hand she was extending. “Nice to meet you, Doctor.”

“Call me Janice,” she insisted, still radiating sensuality and charm. “Sorry about all of this. We’ve been having some trouble.” She looked Ray up and down. “You’re big.”

“For an Eskimo,” Ray said, completing the familiar comment.

To the brutes she said, “You can go now, fellows.”

“You sure, Doc?” the specialist asked. He was giving Ray the evil eye.

“Yes. We’re fine.” She turned and started back across the digging site. Ray followed, grinning over his shoulder at the guards. They scowled at him before departing.

“Dr. Farrell, I was hoping you might have a radio,” Ray said. When Farrell didn’t reply, he added, “I left a couple of friends back at the river. They’re hurt and …” She continued on, oblivious, a pace ahead of him.

Reaching the grid, she glared at the ground and jabbed the air with the toothbrush. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?”

Ray glanced at the dirt. No, it didn’t. Despite the approach of dusk, he could make out exposed soil, pebbles, the cluster of mocha twigs … Not exactly buried treasure.

“You do have a radio, don’t you?”

Farrell missed this, her concentration complete. She bent and began fussing over the sticks, carefully whisking away soil. “But this represents a significant find.”

Ray eyed the “find,” his mind struggling to determine what was significant about old, weather-hardened wood. Unless … “Are those bones?”

Farrell’s head nodded slowly, her gaze still on the ground.

Glancing around, Ray realized that the crooked stalks the doctor had exposed were lying on the edge of another larger, perfect square that was cordoned off by more yellow string. The fifteen-by-fifteen square was stepped, each miniature pit littered with similar piles of bones. They were everywhere, rising from the earth at odd angles, in contorted, tangled arrangements.

“What are they?” he finally asked. There were no skulls in evidence, no antlers. Still, they could have been musk ox. More likely, caribou. This was, after all, right on the migration path. “Caribou?” he suggested.

One of the students, a nerdish-looking kid with hornrimmed glasses, scoffed at this. “Thule,” he sniffed, as if this explained everything.

Ray squinted, his mind slow to grasp the idea. “Thule?”

“A culture predating Eskimos,” the kid offered.

“I know who they were,” Ray assured him. He winced at the realization that they were standing atop the site of an ancient human tragedy or massacre.

“…The aboriginal group indigenous to this region,” the kid continued unabated. “They swept eastward around 800
B
.c., waging war with the Dorsey People.”

“That’s
Dorset
People,” Ray corrected. It was bad enough to be lectured by a pimple-faced dweeb. But to be told where his own people had come from … “And they didn’t wage war with them, so much as they absorbed them, starting about 800
A.D.”

His abbreviated history lesson drew a frown from the
wonderkind.
Farrell’s lips curled into a wry smile. Ray wasn’t sure if she was amused, surprised by Ray’s knowledge, or if this was an admonishment for mixing it up with a lowly undergrad.

“We’re not positive it’s Thule,” she clarified. The toothbrush had become a baton, and she waved it enthusiastically, conducting an invisible orchestra. “But we do know we’re dealing with the ASTT period.”

“That’s the Arctic …” dweeb-boy started to say.

“Arctic Small Tool Tradition,” Ray said, cutting him off. “Expert hunters, accomplished tool and weapon craftsmen …” This kid was starting to get on his nerves.

“ASTT made its way across the extreme north, reaching Greenland by around 2000
B.C
.” the kid rattled off, obviously trying to put Ray in his place. The other students were slack-jawed, watching the battle. “When the Bering Land Bridge flooded in 10,000 b.p.,” the boy droned, “the peoples of the Arctic were separated from the peoples of Asia.”

Ray blinked at this, trying to remember what “b.p.” stood for and, at the same time, silently willing the arrogant little twerp to a fiery resting place. Farrell looked at him expectantly, waiting for a rebuttal. Unable to recall what the letters stood for, he retorted, “The Thule moved inland after the climate shift of 1200. The summers got shorter, the winters longer. Sea ice choked off the straits and bays, restricting whale movement. The Thule were forced to move south and take up a nomadic hunting lifestyle.” So there.

“Thule hunted the same animals and employed basically the same methodology as the Eskimo,” the kid explained in a know-it-all tone. “Contemporary Eskimo and Aleut dialects suggest that they all stem from a common language, probably that of the Thule.”

“About the radio …” Ray tried to interrupt, but the kid was on a roll.

“Little is known about the proto-Eskimo because predators scattered most human remains. However, it is believed that the Dorset were large people, well-accomplished hunters. The Thule were small and timid.” He sneered triumphantly.

“Close,” Ray said. “According to folklore, the Dorset were the dwarfs and the Thule were the giants. And that probably had nothing to do with actual body size. More than likely it was the size and shape of their dwellings that gave rise to the myth.” Touché!