Every Hidden Thing (12 page)

The Sioux tooth was one thing, but I'd spent a week prospecting now, and I wanted to make a proper find, a full specimen. The slope wasn't so steep, by no means a vertical drop. But you certainly couldn't walk down safely, or even scramble down on your backside. So I got down on my stomach and stretched, thinking I might be able to reach out and tap the bone. It was still too far. I squirmed more of my body over the edge.

“What're you doing?” I heard Hugh call out.

The shadow my hat cast over the rock was making it hard for me to see the bone, and I still couldn't reach it.

“Stop!” Daniel shouted. “You're going to fall!”

“I'm not going to—”

I fell, or slid, fast, belly first, trying to slow myself with my hands. I clutched hold of the protruding bone and held tight. My body swung round, and my feet kicked and found a tiny little ledge that wasn't really a ledge, just a lip of sandstone. I was standing on my tiptoes, body pressed against the rock, fingernails dug into the bone—which I very quickly realized
wasn't bone. It was petrified wood. I could see the grain all too clearly now.

I looked up. Hugh and Daniel were kneeling, peering down at me. Daniel looked terrified; Hugh looked more disgruntled.

“You were right,” I said, mouth dry. “Wood.”

I could hear bits of rock whispering and clicking down the slope from the disintegrating little ledge.

“We're going to get some rope from the ponies,” Hugh said. “Don't move.”

“I can't hold on that long.”

“You've got to try.”

I shifted my toes along the crumbling ledge. I wondered fleetingly if I was going to die and never see Samuel again.

“I might be able to go down on my backside.” I risked a glance over my shoulder and fought a swell of vertigo. The stone was gray and coarse as elephant skin, but there were all sorts of corrugations and runnels that I might be able to jam my feet into. They'd slow me at least.

“I don't think that's a good idea,” Daniel was saying.

But I didn't have any choice now anyway, because my left foot slipped altogether, and I just had time to turn myself round, back to the rock, as I started to slide. It was a terrible toboggan ride. I tried to dig in with my hands and boots, but I was mostly aware of going faster and faster and the heat on my palms and legs, and then I was sprawled in a big clump of sagebrush. It was very scratchy, but it had probably saved me from breaking a leg. I sat crumpled, feeling sick for a few moments, the breath
knocked out of me. Dimly I heard the students shouting from above.

After a moment, I lifted an arm and called out hoarsely, “I'm all right.”

I stood up. My tool pouch was still around my neck. My stockings were torn and bloodied, and my palms were lacerated and filled with splintered rock. But no other wounds. Nothing seemed broken.

“Stay there! We'll find a way down.”

It took them a while. I leaned against the stone until my breathing slowed—and then stopped altogether for a second as I stared. And suddenly I was a young girl again, standing at dawn on a farmer's field, gazing at something miraculous and ancient in the earth.

L
UCKILY, WHEN PAPA SAW ME LATER AT THE
camp, I'd already had time to wash my cuts and have the army surgeon bandage them. I'd scrubbed the dust off my face and hair and changed into a clean skirt and blouse. Still, Papa was very angry.

“They tell me you were reckless,” he said. “If this continues, I'll send you home; don't think I won't.”

This was not the reaction I'd been hoping for. If I'd been a boy would he have praised me for my devotion, my initiative?

“You might have broken your leg, or your neck.”

“Well, it was worth it,” I said.

He grimaced. “How was it worth it?”

From my saddlebag, I took the hunk of rock I'd quarried out. I knew I shouldn't have done it—we were supposed to leave it in situ
—
but I'd been too excited. In any event, I'd been very careful. I handed the fossil to Papa.

“Now these,” he said, “are very intriguing. Despite their length they look to me very much like cervical vertebrae.”

“That's what I thought!”

“You staked the site?”

“I staked it.”

He looked at the bones again. “Still yes yes, you must be more careful.”

“I'm absolutely fine,” I said, flexing my bandaged hands. “And look, I can still hold a geological hammer. Or a shovel, when we quarry it out!”

“But it's the arm bones that are really interesting,” she told me, our backs to the rock, legs stretched out. It had been four days since I'd last seen her. “A humerus, a radius, and a long metacarpal bone. And radiating from that are three stubby fingers—and one extremely long one. It's much thicker then the others, and bent back at a strange angle. There are four phalanges, three of them very stubby, and the fourth one, it must be over three feet long!”

“A wing!” I said.

“Yes!” She grasped both my hands in hers. Her eyes were lively with the same excitement she must've felt when first seeing it. “It's a flier! And I wondered how it
could
have flown. It must be almost thirty feet across!”

“Hollow boned?” I said.

She nodded. “I looked inside a cracked bit of humerus. Paper thin. Bones light enough to fly! Imagine, they would've been soaring around up there!”

I followed her gaze to the sky and pictured them: giant reptiles circling on a column of hot air from the earth.

“There would have been swamps and lakes then,” I said. “Do you think they dived down and speared fish like the cape gannet?”

“Or they stood in the shallows and got them, like herons. I wish we had the skull.”

“It might turn up.”

“And we haven't found the other arm yet either.”

“You never get the whole thing,” I said. “That's what my father says. There's always some bit missing, maybe just a little bit, but you never get the complete skeleton.”

I suppose I was a little jealous, too, that she'd found a winged reptile before me, because I said:

“They've already found some in Europe. Pterodactylus.”

“I know, but none here yet. And most important, none anywhere near this big. This one's huge! A completely different species.”

I had to smile at her enthusiasm. “The first American dragon.”

“My father wouldn't approve of that term. Too showy, and inaccurate.”

“Catchy, though,” I said. “It's an amazing find. Congratulations. I can't believe you went over a cliff to get it!”

There was just the slightest space between us, and I felt a pull, like two magnets held very close. I closed the gap and kissed her. After a moment she pulled back.

“You still kiss me like you're afraid I'll run away.”

I looked at her, indignant, but embarrassed, too. Because it
was true. I felt like I was hurrying to convince her of something before she changed her mind.

“I won't run away,” she said. “And I'm likely to stay even longer if you kiss me gently.”

I think she meant it kindly, but I still felt exasperated. “Fine. You kiss me the way you like being kissed.”

As I expected she looked hesitant.

“Go on,” I said, triumphant. She'd be worried it was too forward or unladylike for her to initiate a kiss.

But suddenly she looked intrigued and then eager. She leaned forward, put her mouth to mine. I stayed still. It was a completely different experience, soft and unhurried. I felt every surface of her mouth. It was a kiss that took its time. It had its own pulse. Then her hands were in my hair, pulling me closer so the kiss became more urgent and it felt like we were desperate to reach each other.

“How was that?” she asked breathlessly when we broke off. She looked a little worried.

I felt strangely shy. “That was . . . excellent.”

“I found it more satisfying,” she said soberly.

I wondered how she could know so much about kissing. Had she been kissed before? Or had she just imagined the perfect kiss in her mind? Read about it? I felt ashamed of the ones I'd given before: She must have thought they were messy, careless things.

“I think I need more practice,” I said.

Amusement brightened her eyes. “Do you now?”

After we kissed some more, sheer happiness made me mute.

“Look, you've already run out of things to say to me,” she said with gentle mockery. “And I thought you found my mind scintillating.”

“I do. I just like looking at you too.”

“Well, stop it, please.”

I was delighted to see her cheeks were actually red. “Are you blushing?”

“You're making me blush. And I hate it!”

“You're beautiful,” I told her.

With a severity that surprised me she retorted, “I am
not
beautiful. At best I am striking—and only on account of my eyes.”

I wasn't quite sure what to say to this. Should I rush in and insist she
was
beautiful, or would that only insult her? She seemed to have a very set view of her appearance. I kept quiet for a moment, then said:

“Well, you're beautiful to me, and there's nothing I'd rather do than look at you.”

“You'd get bored very quickly.”

I laughed. “You're supposed to say ‘And there's nothing
I'd
rather do than look at
you
.'”

She let out a quick, exasperated breath. “It would be a lie. When the world has so many interesting things to look at.”

I shook my head. “You really don't have a romantic bone in your body, do you?”

Solemnly she shook her head. “Not one. You should know this about me. Anyway, even if there's nothing better to look at, there are better things to talk about. You haven't told me about your finds.”

“I've staked a bunch of things, but we've been spending mornings quarrying out one of Ned's finds.”

I told her about the ancient reptile he'd found. Its skull was twice the size of an alligator. The fissured bone was mottled brown, the gaping eye socket filled with rock. Its long jaws and interlaced teeth were clenched shut, like it was gripping something it would never let go of.

I loved how Rachel listened to me properly—so different from a sour teacher, or my own father with his ten-second span of attention. Always in motion. Rachel didn't look distracted or move away to some other task or room. I felt like a child showing her all my prized cartons and boxes of specimens. As I talked, she lightly traced my knuckle with the tip of her index finger. It was distracting, and I liked it.

“It's really more like a giant monitor lizard than an alligator,” I said. “It's probably a mosasaur. A Dutch surgeon found one about a hundred years ago near Maastricht. I think my father was disappointed he might not get to name it.”

“It's still a great find,” she said.

“Not as good as yours. That was an amazing bit of prospecting you did.” I could tell she was pleased by her smile. She didn't care about compliments on her hairpins or appearance, but she cared about her fossil hunting. More than anything.

“I want to be a paleontologist,” she said.

“You'll make a great one.”

“Only if my father lets me go to university.”

“He should,” I said. “I would.”

“Would you?” she asked, studying me, like she wasn't convinced.

“Of course. Then we could work together in the field.”

She smiled at this, and then an angry clicking noise drew our attention. Twenty feet away, rising high from the scrub, were two rattlesnakes, necks tangled round each other. Their heads bobbed and feinted and twined. Both of us watched, fascinated. I wondered at first if they were fighting, but then understood this was a mating dance. They swayed together quite hypnotically. Bodies lifting higher and higher. Looping together until they'd formed a hoop—and started to roll straight toward us. I took Rachel's hand and pulled her out of the way, but the snakes never made it so far. Their hoop collapsed, and they were just a big tangle again on the ground, inseparable, and we were both laughing.

“They're not at all interested in us,” I told her.

“Only each other.”

“Like us.” I kissed her again. “You don't have to go yet, do you?”

“Five more minutes,” she said. “Any more and they'll think I've been kidnapped.”

Back home none of this would have happened. Rachel and me. Meeting in secret. Kissing and holding each other tightly. But out here in the ruins of the world, there were no buildings or rooms to separate or contain us. No bookish laws and rules to manacle us. It seemed ridiculous out here, all that stuff made of brick and timbers and paper and people's stale breath. Out here the rock had no rules and the hills had no laws and the vast sky was everywhere and watching, but didn't care one bit.

Halfway back to camp, I dismounted to piss against a rock.

It wasn't a sound that made me turn, but something did. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the boy sitting astride his pony. My first surprised thought was:
He belongs here
. Wearing only a breechclout that hung from his waist by a belt, he and his horse were all the colors of the landscape. He looked a bit younger than me. Muscles ridged his flat stomach and bronzed arms. Two braids of night-black hair, decorated with beads and feathers, hung past his shoulders. The illustrations in the magazines weren't enough.

Embarrassed, I quickly buttoned my trousers and turned to face him. He was about three yards away. He sat very tall in his saddle, stared down at me. How he'd gotten so close without my noticing, I had no idea. I saw the knife in his belt and the bow slung across the horse.

I thought he was Sioux but wasn't sure. I didn't know what to do, so I said, “Hello.”

No reply, just a glare. He wasn't as big as me, or tall. But he had that knife, and I didn't want to cross him. Partly it was his confidence. He looked like he had every right to be here, and I had none. Like he would fight and win.

“What's your name?” I asked.

Nothing. Maybe he didn't understand; maybe he was just ignoring me.

He didn't come any closer, but he didn't go away. I didn't know what he wanted. What would happen next? If I got on my pony and started to ride away, would he follow me? If he wanted,
he could probably shoot me with an arrow before I even got into the saddle.

My eyes strayed to my saddlebag. A geological hammer. An awl. Not much in the way of weapons. When I looked back to him, I could tell he'd been tracking my gaze. He raised his eyebrows. Mocking? Taunting? I stared back, frozen.

Then he clicked and turned his pony around and rode off. A leisurely pace. Didn't even look back once.

When I got up into my saddle, my legs felt watery. I kept watch over my shoulder the whole way back to camp, and when I got there, I told Ned and my father what had happened.

“A scout?” Father asked Ned.

“Sounds like he was too young,” Ned said. “Maybe just a boy out on his own.”

“It doesn't seem he meant you any harm,” Father said easily. “He was probably as startled as you were.”

“He didn't look one bit startled.”

“Things have been pretty peaceful since the Laramie Treaty,” Ned said. “Not to say there aren't still skirmishes. And with people getting interested in the Black Hills, that's only going to get worse.”

I'd heard of the Black Hills but couldn't remember why. “What's special about them?”

“Well, they're sacred to the Sioux, and that land's supposed to be theirs forever, according to the treaty. But some prospectors found gold up there. And I heard a rumor the army's planning an expedition to see just how much.”

“But what about the treaty?” I asked.

“Oh, I don't suppose the treaty will count for much if they find gold,” my father said. “That land'll get taken.”

He didn't seem very concerned about it one way or another, and it surprised me.

“It's a broken promise,” I said. “It's unfair.”

“I don't disagree,” he replied. “But human history is the history of the conqueror and the conquered.”

“Well, the Indians don't think of themselves as conquered,” said Ned. “Not yet anyway. They got a lot of fight in them.”

“Bows and arrows against rifles,” said my father. “They might as well try to stop the tide, or the movement of the planets. In any event, their feud's with the army, not with people like us.”

I wondered. If he'd seen that look in the Sioux boy's eyes, he might have felt differently.