The Lies Uncovered Trilogy (Books 4, 5, and 6 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (42 page)

Ryan looked at Kit and said, "Is Marc putting us on?"

Kit shook her head. "I tell you what. Come out to the site and help dig and see what it's all about."

Before Ryan could respond, Marc said to him, "Keep in mind that Kit's field director, so you'll have to take orders from a woman. Are you man enough to do that?"

Ryan shot a look of irritation at Marc. "I can take orders from a woman."

Kit looked around the table at the eager faces, and said, "I appreciate any help I can get. Besides, having a team of husky, good-looking cowboys will be a new experience."

Kit glanced to one end of the table at Jack, who was looking at the opposite end of the table at Grace and smiling at her, probably because she was smiling at him, and it came to Kit that Grace was a very pretty woman. She hadn't been so before, when her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and her hair looked as if it hadn't been tended to in months, and her face was drawn and her mouth drooped. But now, she seemed to glow, and Kit could see why Jack had been attracted to her. And from the look of pure devotion in Jack's eyes, she knew he was still very much in love with his wife. Now that was true commitment. One day soon she'd point it out to Marc.

***

An hour later, Kit stood within a circle of Marc's four younger brothers, who were all holding posthole diggers and listening as she explained what came next. Marc stood off to the side with his arms half-folded, and the thumb and forefinger of one hand stroking his jaw, like he was skeptical about what they'd accomplish. Kit was glad they had the extra help.

"Okay guys, this is how we'll do things," Kit started in. "Marc and I have sectioned off a one-hundred-foot square study area that's divided into fifty-foot quadrants—quadrants one, two, three and four. Since there are four of you, it will work out perfectly. The idea is to locate the area with the greatest volume of debitage, which is basically a garbage dump of artifacts and pottery shards and the remains of their manufacture, and that's where we'll excavate."

After giving them a quick tutorial about what debitage included, Kit took Ryan by the arm and pulled him into the northwest quadrant, and said, "This is quadrant one. Marc got it started, and he already found a grinding stone so it looks very promising. You can continue digging holes two feet deep and at ten-foot intervals, which is where the flags are located." She pulled Josh into the next section and said, "This is quadrant two and you'll do the same as Ryan." Motioning to Jeremy, she said, while pointing, "You'll be over there in quadrant three, and Tyler, you'll be here in quadrant four. If any of you encounter what's called hole refusal, which is when you hit something you can't get past, call me over and I'll take a look and see what's stopping it. If it's a root you'll move over one posthole digger width and dig there. If it's something else we'll dig it up. Either way I'll want to note on a Posthole Test Record form what caused the hole refusal, as well as any soil anomalies or indications of archaeological features."

Kit looked at the deadpan faces, which were a far change from the enthusiasm earlier, and had to suppress a smile. But Jack Hansen wanted to expand the horizons of this bunch of bull riders and she needed diggers, so it seemed she and Jack were a team of sorts.

"Once we've defined the area with the most debitage," she continued, "we'll start the two exploratory excavations, which will be five-feet-square each. We'll excavate in arbitrary six inch levels, and at each level make notes about the color and condition of the soil before it's passed through a mesh screen and dumped into those five-gallon buckets over there."

All heads turned to the long line-up of white plastic buckets, and Kit knew there wasn't a guy among them who wasn't wishing he could be mucking out stalls instead.

"Cheer up, guys," she said. "We could be on the cusp of discovering the fossil remains of a giant grasshopper or another
Jaekelopterus
rhenaniae
."

"I thought this was a garbage dump," Ryan said, but with far less bluster than before, like maybe being hooked up with an archaeologist wouldn't be all that great.

"It is a dump," Kit said, "but all kinds of discoveries are made when you're digging for something entirely different from what you start out to find." She saw Ryan look towards the stables, like he was thinking about leaving, so she walked over to where he stood with his wrist resting over the wooden bar of the posthole digger, placed her hand on his bicep and squeezed, and said, "You're well-muscled. You should be able to churn these holes out in record time." She removed the little flag marking the spot to dig, and stepped back.

Ryan glanced around at his brothers, like he'd scored a hit, then grabbing the wooden cross bar with both hands, jammed the posthole digger into the ground and started turning it.

Following his lead, the others started in.

By late afternoon, with all four guys covered in sweat and dust, and the area dotted with small mounds of dirt and debitage, Kit and Marc determined that the two five-foot-square exploratory excavations would be positioned about a hundred feet apart, and placed in quadrant one, where the grinding stone was uncovered, and quadrant four, which was diagonally opposite quadrant one. It was decided that Ryan and Jeremy would work with her in quadrant one, and Josh and Tyler would work with Marc in quadrant four.

As Kit was standing outside the quadrants, while describing the initial procedure, which would be to carefully remove the plowzone, she saw Ryan look in the distance again, like this time he really would bolt, and the others appeared as if positioned to follow their brother if he took off. Walking over to Ryan, Kit placed her hands on her hips, scanned the length of him, and said, "You must look pretty impressive on a bull. Do you get this covered in dust when you're conquering the beast?"

Ryan smiled in a way that told her he knew what she was pulling but still liked the praise, and said, "The battle with a bull is over in eight seconds."

Kit smiled back, and replied, "But when the ride's over you've got to be real sore in a couple of places."

Ryan eyed her dubiously, as if he wasn't sure she'd implied what he thought she had, and said, "Yeah, my butt can be a little sore afterwards."

"Then you have two butts?" Kit asked.

Josh let out a hearty laugh. "She got you on that one, Ryan. But she's right. Your other butt's stuck to the top of your neck."

Ryan eyed his brother with irritation. "Yeah well maybe I'm sore some after a ride, but you don't have to worry about that because you haven't got anything there to get sore."

Josh let out another sharp laugh, and said, "I've got more than you. I just don't go flashing them around."

"Okay guys," Kit said. "I'm sure you both have enough down there to get real sore, but digging won't do them any damage. So, moving on..."

Kit couldn't help glancing at Marc, who gave her a thumbs up and smiled, and all she could think at the moment was placing a kiss on that sexy smile and having Marc pull her against him like he had up at the cabin, and just letting things go from there. She imagined the kiss taking place in her tent where no one would see them, and Marc would pull her down onto the mattress and stretch out with her and hold her against him.

Glancing beyond him she saw Jack walking toward them in long strides, and she wondered, as he closed the gap between them, if he'd changed his mind about the dig. There was definitely something imminent on his mind.

"Sorry to break this up," Jack said, as he approached, "but Adam needs someone to lead the trail ride. He scheduled a sundown ride up on the ridge and he can't make it." He looked over his sons. "Any volunteers?" Within seconds, all four abandoned their quadrants and got into a four-way argument as to who was best qualified to lead a string of greenhorn guests on a trail ride.

Kit approached the group, and said to Jack, "The worst of the digging's over. Marc and I will be fine on our own." But still wanting to hold onto a couple of diggers, she glanced around, and said, "It's just too bad you're all leaving when we're getting into the good stuff. This mound could be way more than just a pile of broken flint tools and animal bones. Recently, in North Dakota, a group was digging in a mound like this and one of them dug up the fossilized remains of a 67-million-year-old dinosaur that had been mummified through a natural process. They could see skin and muscle and tendons and even internal organs. Right now he's at Boeing being analyzed in the world's largest CT scanner. The best part is, when there's a find, whoever makes the discovery gets to name it, so the paleontologist named the dinosaur Dakota, and both their names are written up in the records."

"Maybe I'll stay," Tyler said, stepping away from the group.

Ryan hoisted the posthole digger onto his shoulder. "How recently was the find? A century ago?" he asked, with irony.

"No, actually it was in 1999," Kit replied. "So you can look at it this way. You could either spend the afternoon riding a horse, which you can do anytime, or stay around here and maybe be the next one to discover the mummified remains of a muscular, meat-eating, macho dinosaur known throughout history as Ryan."

Ryan smiled. "You're pretty good at this, aren't you?"

"Does that mean you're passing over leading a string of greenhorns to dig?"

"It could," Ryan said. "Will there be any other benefits for me besides a dinosaur christening?"

"Ryan!" Jack said. "I think you can take over for Adam."

"I was only joking with Kit," Ryan said, in a contrite voice.

"Yeah, well, I don't like to hear that kind of talk."

Ryan eyed his father intently, and for a moment Kit was certain he was on the verge of informing him that the woman he was defending had just been talking about men's balls. Then Ryan straightened his back, and said, "Sorry."

Jack looked over his offspring. "So, who's coming with me?"

When no one spoke, Josh said, "I guess I will."

"I could still use another hand in the stables," Jack said. He looked at Ryan, who remained standing with the posthole digger propped on his shoulder.

"I'll come," Jeremy said, and followed his father and Josh back to the stables.

Kit glanced at Marc again, who looked disgusted. She'd remind him later that they got more work out of Ryan than the other three combined, and that she wasn't in danger of succumbing to his full-of-himself cowboy charm, which she wasn't. But she did find him kind of amusing—a juvenile wolf who was determined to hold his position at the top of the pack.

While Marc was on the mound staking out the two, five-foot square units where they'd be excavating, Kit stood by Marc's truck, showing Ryan and Tyler the tools they'd be using. Picking up a couple of trowels, she said, "These are Marshalltown trowels. This one with the square end is called a plains trowel. It's used to work in tight corners and keep straight lines." Holding up the other, she said, "and this one with the point can get everywhere the plains trowel can't."

Ryan eyed the small hand tools, and said, "I sincerely hope we won't have to dig up an entire dinosaur with those. Don't we get to use shovels?"

"We will at first to cut the layers, but then we scale down to trowels and toothbrushes and dental tools. You'll love it. There can be lots of tartar buildup on a dinosaur's tooth."

Ryan folded his arms, and said, "Sounds fascinating."

"It is. Just don't go at it too energetically," Kit said. "We start by stripping off the plowzone, which is the top several inches of soil about the depth of a plow, and when we're done with that, we'll dig in arbitrary levels, two-to-three inches thick. When we find patterns of intact structures, such as pit house holes we'll adapt to match what we find."

Ryan looked at her skeptically, then picked up his shovel and started in...

For the next couple of hours, Kit worked alongside Ryan, carefully stripping off the top layer of soil in their five foot square area and documenting the characteristics of the soil, while Marc and Tyler, in the diagonally opposite square, did the same. They had just made their way to where they'd have to take the layers down in two-to-three inch increments, when Kit spotted Maddy standing some distance away, watching them. Ryan turned to see what she was looking at, and seeing Maddy, said to Kit, "She's mad. She wants Marc to leave."

"Do you?" Kit asked, looking directly at Ryan.

Ryan shrugged. "It's been different around here since he left."

"Different how?" Kit asked, in a sober voice. "Is he a brother you liked having around?"

"Yeah," Ryan replied. "He was fun. I never really understood why he left."

"Neither does Maddy," Kit said, "so I'm going to try to explain it to her. Meanwhile, we're through for today. Thanks for the help and if you still want to continue tomorrow, we'll be here."

"I suppose we'll be back," Ryan said. Glancing over at Tyler, he called out, "Come on, Ty, we're done for today."

As Ryan and Tyler headed for the stable, Kit walked toward where Maddy stood, and hoped she wouldn't turn and walk off. When she didn't, Kit was encouraged, thinking Maddy felt left out of the digging, and might be open to reason. As she approached, she said to Maddy, "Can I talk to you for a few minutes?"

Maddy eyed her with suspicion. "Is it about Marc?"