The Lies Uncovered Trilogy (Books 4, 5, and 6 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (46 page)

"So then," Ryan said, as he continued scraping away at the excavation, "Other than the shape of his balls, what else does Marc have going for him?" He turned and looked at her. "Actually, I'm serious. Dad always thought Marc had the most potential as rodeo material because he was a natural on a horse and could throw a rope better than the rest of us, but Marc wasn't interested. And he stayed to himself a lot of the time, mostly digging around here, but other times he did experiments that made no sense to us, so half the time we didn't know what he was doing and didn't care."

"I know," Kit said. "It's kind of sad. But I actually understand. He's a complicated, but very amazing man, probably the most intelligent man I've ever known, with so much information stored in his brain it would boggle your mind. But he's also perceptive and insightful, except with himself, and fun and funny, and he has the potential of becoming a really great family man, and he's sensitive in a way that even he doesn't realize, and he makes my…."

Heart start pumping hard and my progesterone rise off the scale, and me want to crawl into bed with him and stay there throughout eternity...

"Like I said, I get the picture," Ryan replied. "Then you two have plans for the future?"

"Ha! I wish. Let's just say Marc's a work in progress and I'm not done yet, but I'm patient, and he's worth the wait."

Ryan looked at her, perplexed. "But that thing on your neck?"

"That's where it stopped," Kit said. "Ranch rules."

"Are you serious!?" Ryan exclaimed. "I can't believe Marc's still that way."

Kit laughed. "He isn't. He's been trying to get in my tent since Belize, but he has a few issues to work through and I reserve the right to insist on commitment before sex, and he doesn't realize he's falling in love yet, so for now we're just a couple of field archaeologists digging up dirt, well, maybe kissing some too. Like I said, Marc's a complicated man so it's not your ordinary courtship. He wouldn't know how to handle that."

Ryan looked over at Marc, and said, "I guess I never knew him very well."

"I doubt many people do, including him," Kit replied. "He's like a newly discovered yet unexplored archaeological site, and I've been given the rare opportunity to be able to scrape away the many layers, and with every level I uncover another treasure." She looked at Marc and smiled because she liked what she was seeing.

Ryan saw her smiling, and said, "Well, if you manage to pull it off, then welcome to the family. But just for the record, if Marc wasn't around and you'd come to the ranch to dig up the mound on your own and you met me instead, would I have been in the running?"

Kit looked at Ryan, whose face was serious, and said, "You're a big handsome guy, and somewhere out there is a beautiful, sexy young lady who can throw a rope, and ride a horse, who'll give you a run for your money, even though she's actually setting a trap to land you, and when you least expect it, the trap will spring and you won't know what hit, but you'll be really glad it did."

Ryan smiled. "That's the best brush off I've ever had. I'll keep it in mind."

Kit glanced over at Marc again and saw him crouched on the balls of his feet, studying something in his hand. After a while, when he remained where he was, she walked over and saw that he was holding a toy tractor with a blade rusted in place, but with enough paint remaining to know the tractor had once been yellow. Taking the opportunity to touch him, something she'd wanted to do all day, she placed her hand on his shoulder and said, "Should we document it?"

Marc shook his head. "It was Adam's. He got it as a present on our eighth birthday. We had a big fight about something, I don't remember what, but I took the tractor and buried it out here. Later, I got to feeling bad, but when I went to dig it up, I couldn't figure out where I'd buried it. Since I didn't want Dad to know what I'd done, I never said anything, but it always bothered me because Adam wondered what happened to it and he never got a chance to play with it."

He looked toward the line-up of cabins on the creek, and said, "I have some unfinished business. I'll be back in a little while." Taking the tractor, he left the site.

***

After washing and oiling the tractor, Marc headed for Adam and Emily's cabin, hoping to find Adam there. He also brought along a book for Jesse.

Adam answered the door, and looked surprised to see him. Then the surprise changed to wariness, like he didn't know what to expect.

"I have something for you," Marc said. He pulled the tractor out from behind his back and offered it to Adam

Adam looked it, a puzzled frown on his brow. "You're giving me an old tractor?"

"Yeah, maybe you don't remember it. You got it for our eighth birthday and then it disappeared."

Adam took the tractor, and as he studied it, an awareness began to dawn. "It disappeared right after the party," he mused. "Where did you find it?"

"Where I buried it," Marc replied. "It was a rotten thing to do but I was mad at you for some reason. I know we had a pretty big fight."

"I broke your model airplane," Adam said. "You had it hanging from the ceiling and I was practicing throwing my rope. The rope got tangled up in it and when the plane fell, the wings and tail broke off. That was probably about the time Dad decided to add the new rooms. He was afraid we'd kill each other."

Marc had forgotten why they'd had the fight, but he did remember building the model plane. It wasn't much of a model kit, but enough to be a challenge to a seven-year-old. "Then maybe we're even," he said, "except you have your tractor and I still don't have my plane."

Adam smiled. "Are you going to beat the crap out of me again?"

"I never beat the crap out of you," Marc said. "You were always bigger."

"Yeah, but you were a lot quicker," Adam replied. "The only reason I never got beaten up was because Mom always came to your rescue."  

Marc laughed. Then he looked beyond Adam to where Jesse was standing in the hallway, watching him, like he wasn't sure whether to come in the room or not, which was understandable. The last time his uncle stopped by he wasn't very friendly. "I have a book for Jesse," he said. He held out the book.

Adam took the book. "
My First Book of Space
," he mused. "It was your favorite book."

"I've gone a little beyond it now," Marc said. "But I also want Jesse to have Grandpa Hansen's telescope later, if he's interested."

"I'll make sure he is. Or better yet, you can make sure he is," Adam said. "You're the one with the brains in the family. I'm just a cowboy."

"Last I heard you had a degree in ranch management," Marc said.

"Yeah, but last I heard you were going for your PhD," Adam replied. "Grandma Hansen's really proud of you, and Dad too. I was there last night when Dad was having one of his long-winded talks with the boys. He's using you as an example of what can be accomplished if they set their sights a little higher than a bull pen and use the brain in their heads instead of the other one. You know how Dad gets. He's pretty straight-forward with the talk, had us all squirming."

"Why you?" Marc asked. "You're married."

"I'm also Dad's shining example of what happens if you don't keep it in your pants."

"Do you regret it now?" Marc asked.

Adam shrugged. "It's kind of a double-edged sword. If I hadn't gotten Emily pregnant I wouldn't have Jesse, and Emily would probably still be with Erik. I guess you heard about that?"

Marc nodded. "Rick told me. That was tough."

"It was worth it," Adam said. "I have everything I want now and little Gracie on the way."

"So, you're naming her after Mom."

"Emily's idea. Mom's the mother Emily never had, so yeah, we'll have our own little Gracie. Mom will have her dressed head-to-toe in pink, like it was when they brought Maddy home from the hospital. You remember that?"

Marc smiled. "Yeah, I remember." He couldn't get that image out of his head, or the one Kit planted there the night before, a little daughter, a mini version of her mother, with big blue eyes and a mouth with a tiny little bottom lip that stuck out some, but instead of socks with lace, Kit would have her in tiny field boots, or maybe mini toe shoes...

Adam looked at Jesse, who was still standing in the hallway, and said, "Come on out, son. Uncle Marc brought you a book about stars. It'll have constellations in it, like what we see when we sleep out at night."

Jesse came over and stood next to Adam, and while looking at the book in his father's hand, said to him, "Will it have the twins in it?"

"Yeah, Gemini will be in it, and the big dipper."

"And the bull?"

"Taurus will be there too," Adam said. "Uncle Marc will read all about them."

Jesse smiled, scampered over to the couch, crawled up onto it and waited.

Adam handed the book to Marc, and said, "I think this next generation's a lot smarter than us. Well, smarter than your bunch of bull-riding brothers, but Dad's really into expanding everyone's horizons now. I know he could use your help."

Marc started to tell him he'd be coming back to the ranch to visit, but he wouldn't be staying, then decided to let things ride. For the moment, he had a nephew waiting on the couch who wanted to know all about the universe. He could handle that.

Sitting on the couch beside Jesse, Marc opened the book, turned to the first page and started reading, "This is how our planet Earth looks from a spaceship. It floats in space like a beautiful blue marble, covered with swirling clouds..."

A little while later, Jesse became restless and went off to do something else, so Emily joined Marc and Adam in the kitchen, and while they were having coffee and visiting, they were startled by a sharp rapping on the door.

When Adam opened it, Kit stepped inside and said, in a frantic voice, "We have a major problem on our hands. While I was working with Maddy and Tyler, Ryan got carried away and dug deeper than he was supposed to and he uncovered a human skull. Your father's out there right now and he's pretty upset."

CHAPTER 11

By the time Kit returned to the site with Marc, a crowd that included ranch staff, guests, and family had gathered around the dig. Jack broke from the crowd and headed toward them, and from the grave look on his face, Kit knew big trouble was just ahead.

Walking up to them, Jack said, in a forceful voice, "This is exactly why I never wanted any digging around here! If it's an Indian, the feds will be here running the place, and if it's not an Indian we need to know how a body turned up on the Dancing Moon Ranch."

Before Marc could respond, Kit said to Jack, "This is very unusual, finding a body in a midden. I feel like it's all my fault."

"No," Jack said. "It's my fault. I never should have agreed to this. My brother just got back from being out of town and he doesn't even know I allowed the digging, and he and his wife are in charge of the guest ranch. Whichever way it goes, the publicity's going to be bad for us." He looked over to where the guests and staff were standing in a circle around the dig area. "There's no way to keep this from the media. We'll be hearing about it on the six o'clock news."

"I'll get rid of the bystanders," Marc said. He walked over to the gathering, and raising his hands to get their attention, said to them, "We need to clear this area and stake it off, so go on back to whatever you were doing. This is simply the remains of one of the Native American villagers. It happens frequently during archaeological digs."

After the crowd left, Jack and Kit joined Marc, who said, "Other than the digging I did when I was a kid, this place has been undisturbed for as far back as the family's owned the ranch, so if the bones are a white person's they'll be those of a trapper, homesteader or logger. I'll take a look at the skull and see if it has Indian characteristics."

"And if it does?" Jack asked, in a dark tone.

Marc shrugged. "We'll follow the procedures established by NAGPRA—the Federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. I'll also contact the commission on Indian services to find out who the appropriate tribes for the area are, as well as the state commission on historic cemeteries. They'll decide on a course of action."

"What about the police?" Jack asked. "We are dealing with human remains here."

"Yeah, I'll be calling them too," Marc said, "but that's just routine. In any event, we have to stop excavation in this test unit, but we'll continue the other, mainly because I want to show that this isn't a burial ground. The bones are either the remains of an early settler or those of a villager who died during the winter and was buried here."

Marc picked up the skull, hoping it would show white characteristics, but after carefully studying it for fifteen minutes he drew in a long breath, let it out slowly, and said in a morose voice to Kit and his father, who were waiting, "It's an Indian, looks to have been a man in his sixties when he died."

Kit stepped to his side, and staring at the skull, said to him, "How did you arrive at that?"

Marc replied, while pointing, "The skull's broad around the face, has square forward-sloping wing-like cheekbones, a low nose bridge, and the upper incisors are shovel-shaped. The skull of a white person would be narrower, the cheekbones flatter, there would be a high-bridged nasal bone, and the upper incisors would have a flat lingual surface. The skull's also flattened in back from a cradle board."

"And the age?" Kit asked.

Marc dragged his finger along the barely visible zigzag seam across the top of the skull, and said, "The cranial sutures are obliterated and the skull's almost smooth. He had to have been at least in his late fifties, but my guess is sixty or older when he died."

Kit glanced at Jack, who was studying Marc, and she could tell from his expression that he was impressed with Marc's knowledge, even if he was troubled by the ramification of what this would mean. Then Jack moved to where he could look at the skull, and said, "Why do you think it's a man?"

Marc lifted the skull in his hand, and explained, while pointing, "The skull of a man generally has a more rounded supraorbital margin, or brow ridge, and the glabella, which is the portion between the eyebrows and nose, is bony. The mastoid back here—" he pointed behind the ear "—is larger in a male, and the mandible more squared." He returned the skull to the hole where a scatter of bones lay, then walked over to his truck and got his camera. After taking pictures, he said to Kit, "Before we turn it over to the Indians and the federal anthropologist, I want to examine the bones some since I won't get another chance after the authorities come in. I'll also record this and document it in your unit log if you want."

"I think you'd better," Kit replied. "You're way ahead of me with this."

While Marc was crouched over the excavation pit, Kit glanced up and saw a man, looking very much like Jack, heading toward them in long determined strides. From the look on his face he was angry. She also realized he was Sam Hansen, the man who gave Marc up at birth.

"What's going on out here?" Sam asked, as he walked up to Jack. "We never gave anyone permission to dig up the mound."

"I gave permission," Jack replied.

"You might have run it past me first," Sam said. "Jayne and I are running the guest ranch end of this operation and one of the guests said something about digging up a body. That should just about shut us down for the rest of the season." He glanced over at Marc, whose back was to him, and who looked as if he were studying a bone, when Kit knew he was looking beyond the bone while silently listening to the exchange.

"No one expected to find a body," Jack said, "but you might want to stop long enough to tell your nephew hello."

Sam looked over at Marc. "What are you talking about? Who's that guy anyway?"

Marc stood and turned, then folded his arms.

Sam's face slowly changed from anger, to apology, as he said, "Marc, I didn't know you were back."

"I won't be here much longer," Marc said. "We're about to wind things up and I'll make sure the mound looks like it did when I left the first time. Meanwhile, I'll notify the authorities so they can get the ball rolling." He turned and went to his truck and drove off.

***

It was after seven that evening by the time the authorities finished staking off the area with yellow tape. It wasn't a crime scene—the authorities cleared it as a pre-contact burial site with skeletal remains dating to a time before white settlement—but it was designated a restricted area. It was also up to the tribal council to decide whether to disinter and re-inter the remains in the tribal cemetery, or require the burial site to be restored to the condition in which it was found and remain undisturbed. Kit and Marc had also been cleared to excavate the other test area, but with the understanding that the tribal council might send a representative to monitor the progress.

Although Jack had stood on the sidelines watching, Sam wasn't there because he had to meet with inspectors at the winery, which was fine with Kit. Marc had serious issues to resolve with Sam and they weren't off to a very good start.

But after Marc finished completing his lengthy entry in the unit log he told Kit he was going to his tent, and left. So Kit returned to her encampment, where she grabbed a towel and went to the hot springs for a bath, then returned to fix dinner. She saw no activity at Marc's campsite but knew, from the light of the low lying sun sifting through the thin walls of the tent, and the vague shadow of a form inside, that Marc was still there. She wondered if he'd eaten and suspected he hadn't. She also wanted an excuse to talk to him. So she fixed a couple of ham sandwiches for him, and one for herself, wrapped them in plastic, and headed for his campsite. Although it was almost nine o'clock, summer days in Oregon were long, and it would be almost ten before it would be dark.

At Marc's tent, she said, to the closed front flap, "Can I come in?"

"Do I have a choice?" Marc asked, in an aggravated voice.

"No," Kit replied. She ducked through the flap, and seeing Marc stretched out on his back on a sleeping bag, with his arms bent backwards, and his head resting against his clasped hands, she said, "What are you doing?"

"Staring at the top of the tent," Marc replied, without looking at her.

"Why?" Kit asked.

"Because I'm wondering why I'm here. My father's pissed because his worst fears have become a reality, and my uncle's wishing to hell I'd stayed wherever it was I'd gone instead of coming back to be a big inconvenience again. With my luck, the bones will turn out to be another Kennewick Man, there'll be a battle over ownership, with the Indians wanting a speedy burial, and a bunch of anthropologists and archaeologists will demand the right to study the bones first, and it'll take the Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and the Department of the Interior to resolve it. And meanwhile, I'll be about as welcome as a wart. Again."

"Your father's not that mad," Kit said. "I watched him. He's impressed with you."

"He won't be when it's on the news and all over the newspapers in the next day or so, which means he'll be even more pissed when the ranch is invaded by swarms of artifact hunters and amateur archaeologists."

"It might be good advertisement for the ranch," Kit said. "Parents will flock here so their kids can see the site of an ancient Indian village where a real Indian was dug up. We could even save a few buckets of chipped stone tools and lithic flakes to scatter around for the kids to find."

"Or we could cover the pits, pull up stakes, and leave," Marc replied.

Ignoring his comment, Kit said, "When did you eat last? I brought sandwiches."

"I don't know and I'm not hungry," Marc clipped.

"Fine, I'll eat three ham sandwiches then." Kit sat cross-legged on the floor of the tent, and removing the plastic wrap from one of the sandwiches, started eating. After she chewed and swallowed the first bite, she said, "I didn't know if you liked pickles and relish and tomatoes and lettuce and cheese and mustard with the pile of ham, so I put it all on." She took another bite, and after swallowing, added, "It's cracked mustard. I like it better than yellow."

Marc removed his hands from behind his head, rolled toward Kit and propped himself on his elbow, and said, "Korban, you're messing with my head again." He reached for a sandwich then hoisted himself to sit cross-legged on his air mattress.

"I intend to mess with it even more when you're done eating," Kit said. "Incidentally, I was also impressed with you today. I don't know how you remember everything you do. I took a course in forensic anthropology and couldn't begin to remember all the names of bones."

Marc eyed her with curiosity, "What did you mean by messing with my head more?"

"We're not talking about your head right now," Kit said, "we're talking about what an impressive man you are, even if you are kind of an android."

"Which is a robot with a human form," Marc replied. "You want to explain that?"

"It's the human form part that gets my attention," Kit said. "My android's wearing a leopard skin loincloth, but he's still got all that important data stored in his head."

"Which one?"

Kit looked at him, puzzled. "You have two heads?"

Marc smiled.

"Okay, I get it," Kit said. "I don't know if there's data stored there, but there is the tattoo of a pterodactyl somewhere in the vicinity, which represents a certain amount of data and documentation."

"You're still messing with my head," Marc said.

"Not really," Kit replied. "I won't be messing with that one until you get your other head on straight. You still need to talk to Sam."

Marc's face sobered. "He pretty much said his welcomes. We don't have anything more to talk about."

"Yes you do," Kit replied. "He was shocked to come home and find someone digging up the mound, since the mound's been off limits since the beginning of time. Cut him a little slack. He found a guy with a ponytail, four years older than he was before, and looking very much like a man who knew what he was doing. It took him by surprise."

"Then I'll be sure to stop in and tell him goodbye when I leave this time," Marc said.

"When will that be?" Kit asked.

"The sooner the better."

"You're backtracking," Kit said. "Besides, I want to continue the exploratory excavation."

"Which we can wind up in a few days," Marc pointed out. "There's a project waiting for me in Belize. I want to go back to Texas and find out if I'm in."

"There's also a mother here who misses her son, and a father who spent four years reading your notebooks, and a little sister who needs to get to know her brother, and two little boys who now have an uncle to read to them, and a half-brother and a twin brother who want to be brothers to you. Is that reason enough to stay, even if you still need your dinosaur-sized nit comb to sort through things with Sam?"

Marc said nothing, just ate his sandwich in silence.

When he'd finished, Kit put her hand on his arm, and said, "Do you have any idea how much you're loved? You really didn't come back home to help me dig up the mound. You came home because you love and miss your family, just as they love and miss you. Don't throw it all away by burying yourself in the jungle of Belize under the pretext of dropping muon detectors down holes. You can do that later, but first you need to square things away here. And I need a kiss."