People of the Fire (2 page)

            
'Jesus! I didn't know
it would be so dusty." The blond man's shovel banged hollowly on rock as
he tried to scoop it full. Muscles bulged as he straightened and threw his
shovelful of dirt into the gray-headed man's sifter screen. The contraption
rested on two wobbly legs and consisted of a shallow box with quarter-inch
hardware cloth held across the bottom by metal strapping.

            
The screen made a
shish-
shishing
sound, pebbles and rocks clattering
across the mesh.

            
"Yeah, pretty
dusty. That's the way it is in these rock shelters like this." A pause.
"Nothing but them chips in this one. Keep digging."

            
The older man pulled
a red handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at his nose. He wore an old
checked shirt, and blue jeans hung from lean hips. While he waited he pulled a cigarette
from his pocket, using a lighter to get it going.

         
   
With a practiced eye, he looked around the
shelter, gauging the extent of it. "Bet there's ten feet of fill in
this."

            
The blond might have
been in his late twenties, tanned, with rippling muscles in his arms and back.
He stood
hipdeep
in an irregular hole he'd pounded
and hacked through the rocky soil at the back of the limestone overhang.
Shirtless, he, too, wore Levi's, held up by a western-style tooled leather belt.
A can of chewing tobacco had worn a round circle in his back pocket.

   
         
"Sure is dusty. And there's all
this charcoal.”

            
"Injun fires,
Pete, my boy! Injun fires! You look at the roof of this thing, now, and you'll
see all that soot. That's how you know. And there's giant wild rye growing in
front. Injuns ate that stuff and it
growed
here when
they dropped the seeds."

 
          
 
The young man threw up another shovelful and
used the spade to scrape off the wall, collecting another load to throw up. He
banged the shovel and a large flat slab of wall rock cracked off.

 
          
 
"Burt? You're sure we won't get in
trouble for this?"

 
          
 
"
Naw
!" The
older man hawked and spat into the back dirt at his feet. "Hells bells, I
been digging for arrowheads for years. Nobody ever bothered me none." He
gestured around before he clawed through the dirt. With a flip of his arms, he
emptied his screen. ''Clear up here? Forest Service don't drive that two-track
very often. And we're back off the road."

 
          
 
"So, like, what happens if they catch
us?" Pete muscled the heavy slab of rock up out of the hole and paused to
wipe at the sweat beading on his forehead.

 
          
 
"Tell us to go away—and that it's against
the law, probably. They got more important things to worry about . . . like
selling trees to make money and fighting all them forest fires burning around.
They
ain't
gonna
bust us.
Makes '
em
look too bad. Like they're picking on the
citizens. And I go to church of a Sunday."

 
          
 
Burt caught another shovel load of dirt,
sifting it in back-and-forth motions. A grin split his long face. "Hey!
Lookee
here. Bone bead. See how they polished it?"

 
          
 
He dropped the find into a sack. "Yep,
you keep working these places, and you'll have a wall full of arrowheads pretty
quick. Most of the ones out laying around, they been picked up."

 
          
 
"Huh." The blond moved, squinting at
the flat slab of rock he'd muscled out. He wiped at it, cleaning out the
grooves, then looked at the wall. "Look at this. Something pecked in the
wall. Looks like a spiral ... but I busted it in half."

 
          
 
"Spiral, huh?" The gray-headed man
bent and squinted. "Never seen one of them. Mostly it's critters and such.
Too bad it broke in two. Otherwise we could take chisels and cut it out. Make a
neat rock for someone's fireplace. Might be able to glue it or some such. We'll
bring a chisel next time. See if we can whack the other half out. If it busts
again, well, hell, that's the way the cookie crumbles, huh?"

 
          
 
"And the Forest Service doesn't care
about that?"

 
          
 
"
Naw
. And even
if they did, what we're doing is small change. So we make a couple hundred
bucks selling arrowheads? There's guys in
Utah
making thirty thousand for an
Anasazi
bowl."

 
          
 
“Bet they bust them good."

 
          
 
"Yeah, maybe. But then I remember a
couple of years back, some
fellas
found a mummy up in
the rocks south of here. You know, all stiff like and dried out.
Sorta
like them Egyptian kinds. The boys got drunk one
night, tied a rope around its neck, and left it dangling from a telephone pole.
All they got was a couple hundred dollars in fines and probation."

 
          
 
"Hell! I get more than that for getting
in a fight in the bar!"

 
          
 
The older man grinned, exposing brown teeth.
"See, kid, nothing to it."

 
          
 
They worked for a while longer, the young man
shoveling dirt up to the old, listening to the shish-shish of the screen.

 
          
 
"So, like, don't the geologists get
pissed off when they find these sites all dug up?"

 
          
 
"Archaeologists."

 
          
 
"Huh?"

 
          
 
"That's archaeologists. Not geologists.
And yeah, they bitch and moan. But who listens to them? They got lots of laws
on the books, but after the shit they pull in
Washington
these days, who the hell cares about a
bunch of dead Indians?"

 
          
 
"Whoa! A keeper!" The old man pulled
a white
chert
projectile point from the screen,
holding it up to the light, cleaning the dirt off with his thumb.

 
          
 
"What kind?" Pete asked when he
finally got to see. He held the point up, a glint in his eyes.

 
          
 
"Looks like one of them Medicine Lodge
Creek points. Probably eight thousand years old. Might be worth, oh,
seventy-five or eighty dollars."

 
          
 
"Wow!" Pete's grin didn't fade as he
fingered the stone. "Hey, I
ain't
selling this
one. That's my first!"

           
 
"Yeah, you ought to keep it." Burt
shook his head. "Damn stupid government! Got laws against everything
anymore. So many they don't care. Down on the reservation, the fool Injuns
squawk. But then, Injuns always squawk. Say we're
foolin
'
with their ancestors. Hell, most of '
em
don't know
who their daddy is."

 
          
 
"So this is a pretty good site?"

 
          
 
"Yep,
this's
a
good one. We ought to be able to dig here for quite a while. Got money in this
one. I can feel it. Like knowing when you go into a bar that you're
gonna
get laid." Burt winked, a happy leer on his
face.

 
          
 
"I'll tell Louise on you."

 
          
 
"Hell you will. You'll find your nuts
handed to you on a platter, too."

 
          
 
Pete chuckled. " 'Course an old duffer
like you
ain't
about to get it up just any old night
either."

 
          
 
He resumed his digging, the shovel ringing off
the rocks. The shadow in the rock shelter increased as Burt had to move his
screen from the growing pile of back dirt.

 
          
 
"Whoops!" Pete stepped back.
"Got a bone. Damn near cut it in two with the shovel!"

 
          
 
Burt came to look over his shoulder.
"Burial? Or just a buffalo leg?"

 
          
 
"
Kinda
thin for
buffalo,
ain't
it?" He moved back to let the
more experienced eye of his mentor judge.

 
          
 
"Ah, that's human, all right. I seen
enough of them. That ought to just pull right out of there. That's a
shinbone."

 
          
 
Pete pulled, nothing happened. He looked up.
"There
ain't
any haunts that go with this, is
there?"

 
          
 
"Who you been talking to?
Naw
. You been going to too many of them creepy movies.
Hell, shovel that dirt out up above there where the thigh would be. That's
it."

 
          
 
Pete attacked the rubble, shovel blade
ringing. He worked, tongue stuck out, undercutting the wall. He scraped the
last of the dirt back, pulling on the bone. He jerked at the loud snap, rolling
back on the dirt, holding up his trophy.

 
          
 
"Holy shit! Look at that, the knee's
plumb
growed
together! Must've been a cripple. Too
bad I busted the thighbone in two."

 
          
 
"Yeah, they didn't have much in the way
of doctors back then. Why, just think, maybe that's Geronimo's busted knee you
got there!"

 
          
 
Pete grinned. "Shit! And you Ye full of
it. Looks like it's almost dark. I
gotta
date with
Lorena tonight. Might get lucky like you'll never see again. Give me a hand out
of here."

 
          
 
"Yep,
s'pose
we
otta
get going. You
gonna
keep that leg?"

 
          
 
"Damn right. Make a hell of a thing to
talk about next time I throw a party at my place. Maybe so I'll file a groove
here where I busted it off and use it for a cigarette holder. That
otta
show
ol
' Dink a thing or
two."

 
          
 
"All right, but I get the skull when we
get it. There's money in skulls. I'll take the leg and stuff if you can carry
that spiral you busted in two."

 
          
 
Pete looked up at the sunset, gaudy and blood
red. "Sure is dry anymore. Like the world's changing. All that drought in
the farm states. Must be that damned greenhouse thing.
Yellowstone
burned up and now
Washington
and
Oregon
. Guess that'll keep the Forest Service off
our backs for a while."

 
          
 
"Bullshit. There
ain't
no goddamn 'greenhouse effect.' You'll see." Burt spat into the grass.
"Government just tells you that to keep you scared."

 
          
 
It took two trips to get artifacts and
equipment down to the pickup.

 
          
 
Pete grinned and popped the top off a hot
beer, handing it to Burt. Then he opened one for himself, climbing into the
driver's seat. The big V-8 roared to life.