Jemimah hoped some small clue might have been missed in the recent shootings at San Lazaro. Her job as a forensic investigator provided great latitude in her duties, and right now there weren’t too many criminals for her to profile. Besides, she needed some hands-on field experience to hone her skills. Medicine Rock was on the edge of the pueblo ruins. An enormous monolith some twenty-eight feet high, it lodged comfortably at the edge of the barbed wire fence encircling the ruins. In the center of the prehistoric site was a cave, a place where a thousand years of wind had eroded the soft shale into a haven from the elements. She sat down on an immense sandstone boulder four times the size of a basketball lodged on the floor of the Medicine Rock cave.
When she reached down to tie her shoelace, the rock shifted with her weight. When she tied the other shoe, the shifting occurred again. She stood and pushed on the rock. It moved a little to the left. Using all the strength she could muster, she rolled the rock on its side to expose a deep hole below, roughly three feet in diameter, a few inches smaller than the boulder. Jemimah unbuckled the flashlight from her belt and beamed it into the hole. A short wooden ladder against the side covered with layers of dust and cobwebs caused her to exclaim, “Lordy, Lordy! What do we have here?”
Unsure of the stability of the ladder, she stepped carefully onto the first rung, clinging to the edge of the opening. Assured it would hold her weight, she descended the remaining steps to the dirt floor. Pointing her flashlight ahead, she could see she was in a tunnel. She hadn’t used this flashlight for a long time, but it seemed to have a bright enough light. She walked a few careful steps forward. For about five hundred feet, flashlight in hand, she eased her way through the tunnel, crouching down every so often in case the ceiling might decide to cave in on her head.
As she rounded a small curve, she stopped in her tracks and gasped. Up ahead, a life-sized sandstone effigy leaned against the wall, its eerie obsidian eyes staring toward her. Standing in sandy soil up to its knees, the effigy appeared to emerge from the ground below. The figure loomed ominously, prompting her to consider turning back. She couldn’t help but think it was there as a warning. Was there a sentry up ahead? A guardian of the gate? Overactive imagination, she thought to herself.
Jemimah flashed the light down to ground level as she walked. At its highest visible point, the tunnel appeared to range from seven feet down to six feet high and as much as three feet wide. She hoped it wouldn’t go any lower before she reached the end. She continued walking slowly for several hundred more feet. A musty smell, like damp earth, greeted her. Spookily quiet. The only sound was her breathing. And then, something else … A sound she recognized from her childhood living in the Utah desert reverberated through the tunnel. Rattler!
Jemimah shone the light about five feet ahead; the snake slowly raised its head, slithered to the left, and shook its rattles. There was little time to think. She shuddered as she reached for her .22 pistol. Concerned that the bullet might ricochet across the walls and hit her or alert someone else to her presence, she hesitated. It didn’t look like the snake was going anywhere. She knew that its first instinct was to escape. It would warn her, stay its ground to see what she was going to do, and then either strike or move away. Jemimah believed in desert karma, each creature having a right to live. No human being should kill them, or the act would follow them forever.
She took a deep breath and held tight to the walking stick she’d used to move debris on the floor of the tunnel. It had a V-shaped handle. She turned the stick upside-down, slid it slowly toward the snake—wondering all the while how it survived down here—and held it down by its head until she could walk by. Once beyond the snake, she breathed freely. Mission accomplished.
The flashlight began to lose its intensity and provided only weak illumination. She rifled through her backpack for batteries. Finding none, she turned around and walked back to the entrance. The snake was no longer in sight. As she emerged from the tunnel, she took a quick look around. Nothing had changed. She rolled the boulder back over the entrance and walked to her 4Runner, eager to get in touch with McCabe. Her original purpose for being there had been sidetracked, but she felt ecstatic.
Jemimah sat in her car and surveyed the landscape. She had mixed feelings about this place. It was both peaceful and unsettling. Maybe she had walked into a sacred area. Could it possibly be true that some spirits wandered freely long after their demise?
She drove home in silence as the sun gave its last peek over the Ortiz Mountains.