Janelle gazed past Chuck at the point where the pictograph met the floor of the cave. “I don’t get it,” she said. “It looks like the painting continues right down into the ground.”
“Sanford agrees with you,” Chuck replied. “So do I. There’s definitely more of the pictograph hidden beneath the sand floor of the cavern, maybe lots more. That would explain how the painters were able to do such detailed painting in here, particularly without obscuring their renderings with smoke stains from fires to provide light while they worked.”
“But they’d have needed light from somewhere.”
“The mouth of the cavern is directly beneath a cut in the top of the sandstone wall above it. I’m not sure if you noticed, but grains of sand fell on you when a gust of wind blew over the top of the wall while we were outside. The sand gathers on the windward side of the stone barrier the same way snow gathers behind snow fences next to highways. The cut in the top of the wall above the cave mouth acts as a funnel, so even more sand falls to the ground in front of the cavern than anywhere else. That accounts for the opening in the sagebrush in front of the cave—so much sand gathers below the cut in the wall that no plant growth can get started before it’s covered up.”
Janelle settled back on the sandy floor beside Chuck. “So the cave was a lot bigger when it was painted?”
“The concept is that, over time, the cave has filled in with sand swirling into its mouth, almost like a sand dune on the move. The cave might’ve been so big back when the pictograph was created that the painters were able to stand up in here while they did their work. If so, sunlight would have come inside, with no need to paint by sooty firelight. That would explain the crisp clean lines of the pictograph.”
“The fact that the sand filled the cave almost to the roof would explain why no one ever spotted it, too, wouldn’t it?”
“Yep. Until the little girl came along a couple months ago.”
They wiggled out of the cavern and stood in the opening, surrounded by the head-high sage plants.
Janelle slapped sand from the seat of her jeans, her eyes on the low cave mouth at the base of the wall. “When news of the pictograph becomes public,” she said, “every vandal on the planet will be drawn here.”
Chuck rubbed his palms together, sending grains of sand cascading to the ground. “They had to bar the entrances to the Lascaux caves in France. They built a replica of the caves nearby for tourists to visit. I could see something like that happening here.”
Janelle folded her arms around her waist, frowning. “It’d be like Disneyland, contrived and fake.”
“Sometimes that’s what it takes. Arches National Park provides an easy way, right outside Moab, for more than a million people each year to drive on a paved road and see Utah’s incredible red rock country from the comfort of their air-conditioned cars.”
Janelle loosened her arms from her torso and pushed back the hood of her jacket. “They don’t exactly experience the real desert that way.”
“It’s true they don’t get down and dirty with all the grit and scorpions and rattlesnakes. But the hope is they come away from visiting Arches with an appreciation for canyon country that leads them to support efforts like returning the national monuments to their original size. Besides, any land preservation is good preservation, Arches included, as far as I’m concerned. The cave and pictograph have been right here—undiscovered, a couple hundred feet from Devil’s Garden Trail—while millions of visitors have streamed through the park over the last few decades. Who knows what’s still out there in more remote parts of the park? Artifacts and pictographs and petroglyphs that, because they’re inside the park boundary and therefore off limits to drilling and development, are safe from being bulldozed and destroyed.”
Chuck’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it, finding a text from Sheila: Wonderful to hear your voice! I’m ready for you anytime today!!
He groaned as he showed the text to Janelle. “I guess the time has come.”
“You’ve put off meeting her long enough,” Janelle said. “Besides, I want to find out what she knows about the woman who died beneath Landscape Arch.”
The front-end loader approached Chuck and Janelle from the direction of the toppled span when they reached the trail junction at the start of the loop trail. They waited as the machine bounced across the flat toward them. Exhaust belched from the loader’s stack, dissipating in the stiff wind. The front bucket cradled a black body bag bulging with the shape of a human body inside it.
The two O&G Seismic workmen rode the front-end loader as before, the manager, George, driving, and the younger workman squatting behind him. Sanford trailed the loader on foot. The rangers and first responders trudged down the muddy path behind him, their packs low on their backs and their heads bowed.
George braked the loader to a stop at the trail junction and glowered at Chuck from the driver’s seat. The machine swayed on its shocks, its engine rumbling. Sanford halted next to the loader.
George said to the chief ranger out of the corner of his mouth, “I thought you cleared the trail of visitors.”
“I cleared the whole park,” Sanford told George. “We closed the road at the entrance station. We couldn’t empty out the campground, though.”
George tilted his hardhat at Chuck. “This guy shouldn’t be out here.” George’s eyes went to the bucket at the front of the machine, his jaw trembling. He threw the front-end loader into gear and accelerated past Chuck and Janelle toward the parking lot with a jouncing burst of speed.
Without speaking to Chuck, Sanford led the rangers and first responders down the trail behind the loader.
Janelle spoke after everyone passed. “He looked pretty upset.”
“The O&G guy, George?” Chuck asked. “He killed that woman.”
“He didn’t kill her. His company did.”
“Corporations don’t kill people. The people who work for corporations do.”
“You saw his chin shaking. He knows what he did.” She took Chuck’s hands in hers. “You shouldn’t be so upset with him. He’s just doing his job. It’s the same with Carmelita. She can’t help how she’s acting. Your backtalk only makes matters worse.” She massaged his knuckles with her thumbs. “You have to be able to accept these things, Chuck.”
“I agree with you when it comes to Carmelita. But George? I’ll have to give that one a lot of thought.”