The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (5 page)

“Basalt?”

“Yeah.
The Rio
Doloroso
flows into
the Rio Grande Gorge. But the Rio Grande didn’t dig out that gorge the way the Colorado dug the Grand Canyon. The gorge was formed by volcanic action, and all the rivers and streams fell into it by gravity.
So the sides
of
the canyons
are
mostly
the basalt left by eruptions.”

“I’m sure this is fascinating
to a geologist
, but what
does it have to do with your escape from the cliff dwelling?”

“Basalt is basically lava. It cracks when it cools, so there were plenty of places to hold on to.
I walked sideways facing the cliff and concentrated on handholds.
”

“If you had on blinders, how did you know you needed to hold on?”

“T
he need was psychological. I didn’t hold on to keep from falling. I held on to keep from having a heart attack.
The worst part was right at the end. There’s a stack of boulders you have to work around, and they seemed none too stable.
”

I was happy to see
Angie
with our
refills.
Recounting my misadventure h
ad me needing a drink.
I took a sip and discovered it was as good as the last one.
“I was hoping to see the Bronco when we reached high ground, but all I saw was
Cerro Roto
.”

She did that thing she does where she pushes her shoulders one way and her head another. It means she’s confused, but it’s becoming in a strange way.

“You heard the Bronco start up and drive away. What part of that made you thin
k
it would still be there?”

“
I heard it start, but I didn’t know how far it was driven. For all I knew it was only a hundred yards away.”

“Why would someone drive it a hundred yards and then just leave it there?”

“Here’s a better question
,” I said
.
“
W
hy would a car thief be
where there is no road? Not exactly fertile hunting ground for cars.
Here’s another good
question
.
How did he get there? It’s in the middle of nowhere, so he didn’t walk.
He probably got there in a
four-wheel-drive
truck or a jeep
.
So if he drove the Bronco away
,
he’d have to leave his own vehicle behind.”

“
Unless
he had a partner in crime.
”

“T
hat still
wouldn’t
explain what they were doing there
o
r why they would
want a beat-up old Bronco.
If you rule out car theft, the only expl
anation for the
Bronco
being moved
is someone moving it just to take my rope away. In that case, all he had to do was drive it a few feet and leave.”

She twirled her glass while she considered it.
“So
it was either a car thief or someone who wanted to strand you.”

“Why
would a car thief be—”

“You already asked that. There are a thousand answers. He was dove hunting
, riding a dirt bike, prospecting for gold. It doesn’t
really
matter. A car thief can be anywhere. And if he happens to come across a car… were the keys in it?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“There’s more
,
isn’t there?” She sees right through me.

“It was running.”

“You left the engine running while you descended down to the cliff dwelling?”

“
The wi
nch draws a lot of current. If the battery died, I wouldn’t be able to get back up using the rope, so I left
the engine running to keep the battery charged.”

“It could have been teenagers pulling a prank.”

“
Maybe. Despite Alvar telling me
that
no one knows where the place is, there was evidence of campfires, and not ancient ones.”

“Maybe they consider it their secret hiding place
,” she said
.
“
Kids like to do that. Like the Indian cave in
Dead Poets Society
.”

“
Having
a secret place
is fun
, but
stranding
someone in a cliff dwelling is hardly a prank.”

“Teenagers don’t think straight, Hubie. It’s their
hormones
.”

I watched her sip her margarita while
her
wheels turned.

“Maybe it was another treasure hunter who didn’t want you snooping around his secret pot-hunting place.”

She seemed determined to add a second pot hunter to the story, either as the corpse I defiled or as a competitor stealing my truck.

When I didn’t comment, she said, “Or an Indian who wanted to punish you for defiling a holy place.”

“
Or maybe the spirit of the dead guy drove it away
,
”
I said.

6

Despite my brilliant reasoning,
t
he Bronco was nowhere in sight
when we cleared the canyon
. We had to walk back to civilization.

Or what passes for civilization in New Mexico.

I took the gunny sack off the rebar and the rebar out of my hat. But
even though I was now able to look back, I didn’t
.
I needed to concentrate on getting out.

The surest path would
have been retracing
the route I took to get there. But that route
had taken me
over
an
old low bridge
across the Rio Grande
and far
below the surrounding plateau.
After crossing the bridge and maneuvering the narrow switchbacks up the other side,
I
had
left the road and
dr
iven
t
hirty
miles weaving between
dunes, arroyos, lava flows and brush. I
had
check
ed
the topo map frequently because
my primary means of navigation was comparing the contour lines on the map
with
the ground I was covering. That and judging the
sight-line
angles
to
Cerro Roto
.

I might have been able to find enough of my tire tracks to
follow them
back to the road
. But it would be slow going in rough terrain. Especially wit
h a wounded coyote in my posse.

It was noon by the time we reached the rim of the Rio Doloroso Canyon. There was no way we could reach the road before dark. We’d have to spend the night on the plateau, reach the road in the morning then spend the rest of the day
getting to the Rio Grande.

At which point the trip would become even more challenging. We’d have
to descend down a narrow switch
back road to the low bridge. I remembered a park ranger saying if the Empire State Building were placed in the Rio Grande Gorge, the mast at the top would be
the only thing
visible.
So you could at least see Kin
ve="+0" face="Palatino Linotype">g
Kong if he were up there swatting at planes.

We’d probably arrive around dark. So we’d be making the descent after walking
thirty
miles and sleeping rough.
I wasn’t confident we could make the trip on our
nine
legs.
Ten if Wile
y
’s left
front
one
could be depended
up
on.

Another option would be to head to the
Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.
Unlike the old low bridge, it spans the Gorge at the top
so there are no switchbacks and climbs
.
But it was
even
farther away. And i
t’s the
third
highest bridge in the country which was r
eason enough for an acrophobe like me to avoid it
.

Then I remembered looking at the topo map with
Alvar
Nuñez
.
We could go to La Reina.
It was only twenty miles away, a long hike across rough terrain, but closer than
either
bridge and also level.

Except the topo map was in the Bronco.
I tried to picture
it.

The map, that is. I
didn’t need to picture the Bronco. I
knew exactly what
it looked like. Which was good because the mental image was the only
thing I had to remember it by.

ze="+0" face="Palatino Linotype">Even the key was gone.

I realized my house key was on the same ring. Great. If by
some miracle I made it back to Albuquerque
, I’d have to break in to my own ho
me
.

I
f the mental image I concocted
of the map
was correct, we needed to travel northwest at about 315 degrees.
We set off in that direction.

It wasn’t long until
Wiley
was looking haggard.