THE DISCOVERIES WERE so exciting, and coming so thick and fast, that nobody wanted to stop for lunch, so Nora just let them keep going while the afternoon lengthened. At first, she checked on Clive every half hour, but when it was clear he was doing a slow and painstakingly methodical job, she decided he could be left to his own devices. Thanks to the joint efforts of Salazar and Adelsky, the midden heap was yielding up more and more artifacts: not only a third skull and numerous other human bones, but scraps of clothes, buttons, lockets, and jewelry. Everything was carefully tagged and logged and situated using the suite of powerful archaeological software on their tablets. Salazar pointed out that here and there the midden heap showed signs of animal disturbance, but it looked old—probably dating back to the tragedy—and after a brief conference they came to the conclusion that these were most likely the result of brief scavenging attempts after the first spring thaw. Nora knew there would not be many animals at this altitude, and in any case what bones remained would have been covered in dust, dirt, and grass soon enough.
It was around three thirty—with a gorgeous afternoon just beginning to settle toward evening, the sun hanging low over the snowy mountains and bathing them in light—when Clive came over to the square that Nora was carefully photographing.
“Have you got a minute?” he asked. “I’d like to show you something.” His voice was calm, but there was a curious expression on his face that she hadn’t seen before.
“Sure.” She slung the camera around her neck and followed him over to the far end of the dig site, away from the others. Here, in these grids farthest from the main camp, the ground was already under the shadow of the pine trees. A late breeze swept through the meadow, rippling the fresh grass and bringing with it the scent of flowers.
Nora saw that Clive had excavated the square she’d assigned him, E10, down to ten inches and—finding nothing, having secured and documented it in the manner she’d demonstrated—he had moved on to the adjoining square, E9. It was toward this that he pointed.
Nora knelt for a closer look. Clive had carefully removed the carpet of grass in a single section, and excavated down no more than two inches. Something wrinkled and rough was protruding from the soil. At first, Nora thought it might be a saddle or the hide of some animal, but a closer look revealed it was the rotting remains of an old boot. Peering even more closely, she could see toe bones peeking out from within.
“It was so near the surface,” he explained, “that I barely did more than remove the grass. A few whisks of the broom, and the earth just fell away.”
Nora examined it from various angles. “Might be a burial,” she said. “Or it might have just been left where it—where the man—died. The boot leather is the one thing nobody would have eaten: even a starving person knew it was madness to eat the only thing protecting you from the cold and snow.”
“Makes sense. But that’s not what I brought you here to see.” He knelt down beside her. “This is.” And, taking up a paintbrush, he turned to a small mound of disturbed dirt at one side of the ancient boot.
Nora watched as the first whisk of the brush exposed a small leather bag, bound with a thong and crumbling into dust. A second gentle whisk revealed where the bag had rotted and split. It revealed the glint of gold.
For a minute, Nora just stared at it. Then she looked at Clive.
“Once I discovered what it was, I covered it back up,” he explained. “I wanted you to see it before…before anyone else did.”
Nora glanced over her shoulder. Salazar and Jason were on the far side of the old camp, busy with the midden. She looked at Clive. Normally one didn’t cover something back up unless it was at the conclusion of the dig, but in this case she nodded her approval.
“What we need to do next is figure out exactly what you’ve discovered,” she said. “And get it out of the ground and under lock and key.”
Taking over from Clive, she gently excavated the rest of the square. The earth was just as soft and yielding as Clive had said it was, and within half an hour she’d exposed the lower legs, feet, and crumbling leather boots of what appeared to be two adult men lying side by side, positioned away from the gridded area. Neither the foot bones, the tibias, nor the fibulas showed any sign of dismemberment or cannibalism. In the boots, each man had hidden a pouch of coins. After carefully photographing and recording them in situ, Nora removed the two pouches and placed them on a small conservator’s tarp nearby.
“Hey!”
Nora looked over quickly. It was Salazar, waving from the midden heap. “We never ate our lunches. Can we secure things and call it a day?”
She glanced over at Clive. He met her glance, shrugged.
“Bruce, Jason—you finished your quads?”
“Yup!”
“Uploaded all your survey and coordinate data?”
“Sure have.”
“Go ahead then, stow your gear and head back. Clive and I will close up the site. You can shut down the network, too—I won’t have any more data to add today.”
“Okay.”
“Tell Maggie to save some dinner for us. We won’t be long.”
As the two assistants took off their masks, hair nets, and gloves and began to stow their tools, Nora and Clive returned to the moldering leather pouches. Using a thin pair of forceps and a loupe, Nora pried gently at one. It immediately fell apart, revealing five pieces of gold.
With a gloved hand, Clive picked up one of the coins by the edges and turned it around. Even covered with dust and soil, it glinted in the sun.
“It’s a ten-dollar gold eagle,” he said. He peered closer. “Looks uncirculated, save for a high degree of bag marks. Struck in 1846—from the Philadelphia mint.”
“Wolfinger’s treasure?” Nora asked.
Taking the forceps from Nora, Clive teased open the remains of both bags. They each held five ten-dollar gold pieces, virtually identical.
“The year is right,” he said. “The mint is right. It’s just the number that’s wrong. There aren’t a thousand here—only ten.”
“After all this, you’re the last one I’d figure for a pessimist.”
Clive broke into a smile. “Pessimist? With those coins winking back at me? I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’d call proof. Now let’s find the rest.”
“If it’s here.”
“It will be,” said Clive. “Think about it. These two were already suspected of foul play. They were ostracized, not allowed to join the others in their shelter. So they made their own little camp here. And hid their gold somewhere close by. Don’t you agree?”
Nora felt a little uncomfortable speculating like this, but she couldn’t fault Clive’s logic. “I agree.”
She picked up the broom and the trowel and went to work on the site, moving quickly but expertly, wasting no time but missing nothing. Within an hour she had both skeletons exposed as far as their rib cages. Not only that, but she had uncovered some exceedingly rotten planks that appeared to be the remains of a small, crude shelter made from wagon pieces.
She sat back on her haunches while Clive used her camera to photograph the exposed portions of the skeletons and the pieces of wood.
“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“You’re the archaeologist.”
“You’re the historian. But okay. Two individuals, both in their thirties, as best I can tell. Their skulls aren’t exposed yet, so I can’t be sure of the sex, but they appear to be male. No signs of violence so far. No cannibalism, either. Based on the fact that there are two of them placed here together, away from the main group, and judging by the gold on their persons—specifically, 1846 ten-dollar gold eagles hidden in their boots—I would say they are almost certainly Reinhardt and Spitzer.”
“All that’s missing is the gold. And, like I said, they would’ve hidden it around here somewhere.” Growing more animated, Clive added, “Nora: think what we’ve accomplished. We’ve been here less than a week, and look! Not only this—” he gestured at the money pouches— “but the Lost Camp. The Lost Camp. And we found it. Or rather, you found it.”
Nora considered herself an old hand at dirt archaeology, and she’d found several important sites over the years. But this sudden enthusiasm, this praise by an amateur—not an amateur, actually, but a historian who’d made this very discovery his life’s work—left her blushing with pleasure.
Without speaking further, they wrapped up the remains of the coin purses and their contents and placed them in an artifact container; secured the grids and exposed skeletons with tarps and fixed them carefully in place; returned to the HQ tent and placed the coins in the strongbox—and then headed down the trail, toward the campsite and dinner.