“Dude, this place is seriously dry. Somebody turn on the humidifier.” Bones unscrewed the top of his bottled water, chugged half of it, and dumped the rest on top of his head. He let loose with a massive belch and tossed the empty bottle into the back of Isaiah’s pickup. “You didn’t tell me it would be like this, Cuz.”
Isaiah frowned. “You realize this is a desert. What did you expect?” He hitched the backpack over his shoulder and leaned in through the driver’s side window to grab his clipboard and notebook. Straightening, he fixed Bones with a level gaze. “Bones, this is a serious dig, and the first one I’ve ever directed. Promise me you won’t be…” He paused, searching for the words.
“Be myself?” Bones asked. He had to laugh when his cousin nodded in affirmation. “All right Cuz, I’ll behave. Honest injun!” He raised his hand like a plains warrior.
Isaiah rolled his eyes. “Bones, you know I hate it when you talk like that. It degrades our people.” He shook his head. He knew Bones well enough to know his sense of humor would never change. “Forget it. Grab that other bag.” He nodded to a black duffel bag in the bed near the wheel well on Bones’ side of the truck.
“Are you sure we’re related?” Bones kidded, hefting the bag. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re swimming in the same gene pool, know what I mean?”
“Our mothers were related. I don’t claim you at all, Cuz.” Isaiah grinned and winked. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to be late on my first day.” He led the way down a dusty gravel drive past a line of dirty trucks and SUVs that Bones assumed belonged to the workers on the dig. Falling a few steps behind his cousin, Bones licked his finger and wrote “YOUR MOM IS THIS DIRTY” on the back of a Range Rover before picking up the pace to catch up.
“You know you love having me around,” he said, clapping a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “By the way. Think you could explain to me how my Tonto act disgraces our ancestors, but it’s all right for you to dig up their bones?”
“We’re not exhuming any graves,” Isaiah said. His long, thin face visibly pained. “We’re examining pictographs, and excavating artifacts from the site
“Oh,” Bones said, shrugging. “I thought it was because these guys are Fremont, and we’re Cherokee.”
Isaiah snapped his head around and raised a finger, looking every bit the junior college professor that he was. His lecture was thankfully cut off by an attractive young woman in a business suit.
“Excuse me. Are you Dr. Horsely?” she asked though her tone indicated that the question was a mere formality. She knew exactly who Isaiah was.
Bones chuckled, drawing annoyed glances from her and Isaiah. His cousin’s family name was Horse Fly, but Isaiah had legally changed it when he went to college.
“Yes, I’m Isaiah Horsely. How may I help you?” Isaiah took the woman’s proffered hand, looking distinctly uncomfortable. He had always been shy around women.
“I’m Amanda Shores of the Deseret Bugle. I’d like to ask you a few questions about the dig.” Not waiting for Isaiah’s reply, she thrust a digital recorder in his face and pushed the record button. “What do you expect to find in this site?”
“I can’t say yet,” Isaiah said, taking a step back. “This site’s very existence is a new revelation, and we’ve made only a preliminary survey. There are quite a few fascinating pictographs…”
Amanda cut him off. “Why do you think Mr. Orley has kept this site a secret for so long?” She took a step toward him, keeping the recorder in his face. “What do you think he has to hide?”
“He kept the site a secret in order to protect it.” Isaiah looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I have no reason to believe he is hiding anything.”
“We really have to go Miss Shores,” Bones said, taking Isaiah by the arm and guiding him around the reporter.
Amanda was not deterred. She stepped in front of Bones, blocking his path. “And who might you be?” Challenge shone in her hazel eyes as she faced him.
“Uriah Bonebrake, but you can call me Bones. I’m just a grunt on this expedition, helping Dr. Horsely with his project. But if you’re going to do a write-up on me, would you mention my band? We’re called ‘Custer’s Next-to-Last Stand’. I’ve got a demo tape…”
“I’m sorry, that’s not my department,” Amanda said, cutting off the recorder and tucking it into her purse. She pointedly turned her back on Bones as she turned back to Isaiah, proffering a business card. “Here’s my card, Dr. Horsely. If you find anything of interest, I would appreciate a call.” She said it as if it was an order rather than a request.
Isaiah nodded and tucked the card into his pocket. Together he and Bones made their way toward the dig site.
“What is Deseret, anyway?” Bones asked.
“That was the proposed name of a state that Mormon settlers tried to establish back in the 1800’s.”
“So, you gonna’ call her? The reporter chick, I mean.” Bones stole a glance over his shoulder as Amanda climbed into her car. “She’s cute in a brunette gymnast sort of way.”
“You’re crazy, Bones. I don’t know how you lived this long.” Isaiah chuckled and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “And yes, I just might call her.”
They walked in silence for a short while. Bones took in the high skies and rugged terrain. It was beautiful, but a bit confined for someone accustomed to the sea. He tried to imagine being a native tribesman a thousand years ago, fighting to survive in this desolate land. Isaiah had assured him that despite appearances, Utah was far from barren. In fact, the land was teeming with life if you only knew where to look for it. Bones supposed that made it like the ocean in a way: bleak on the surface, but abundant life concealed within its depths.
They had not walked far when a short, square man in a weathered John Deere hat hailed them. He wore a flannel shirt in spite of the heat, and sweat rolled down his florid face. He drew a pack of Beech-Nut from the back pocket of his jeans and packed a wad into his cheek before speaking.
“You gonna’ keep them diggers over at the site where they belong?” He looked at Isaiah as if daring him to say ‘no.' “I don’t want ‘em nowhere else. This is a working ranch, and I ain’t got time to be chasin’ college kids all over the place.”
“We’re fully aware of the parameters of the dig site,” Isaiah said. “Mr. Orley, I’d like you to meet my cousin, Uriah Bonebrake. People call him Bones.”
Bones reached out to shake the rancher’s hand, but the fellow just stared up at him for a long moment. He spat a small stream of tobacco juice onto the dusty gravel. “You’re one big damned Indian. I think you’re the biggest ‘un I’ve ever seen.”
“I used to model for the cigar store Indians,” Bones said, “but chewing tobacco put us out of business. Now I just go around making white people hurt their necks.”
Orley frowned and pursed his lips, glaring at Bones. He looked like he might spew out a stream of curses, but suddenly he laughed and clasped Bones’ hand. “By God, you’re a funny fellow too. This ‘un here,” he nodded at Isaiah, “you’d sooner get a tater out of a goat’s behind than get a smile out of him.”
Bones shuddered at the bizarre mental image. “He’s a college fellow,” he said in a conspiratorial tone, eyeing Isaiah out of the corner of his eye. “You know the type. Serious all the time.”
“I do know it,” Orley said. “You mean you ain’t a college fellow yourself?”
“Me? Not a chance. Retired from the Navy.” He left out the fact that he had earned a two-year degree while in the service. “You ever in the service, Mr. Orley?”
“Hell yes! Did my tour in ‘Nam and got the hell out of there.” He nodded at Bones, as if satisfied, and turned back to Isaiah. “Anyways, keep them diggers over there,” he pointed to the dig site just visible in the distance. “And stay out of the small barn,” he indicated a large shed built against a sheer rock wall about a hundred yards to the east of where they stood. “I got a sick bull in there. I don’t know that you’d catch anything, but I don’t need you upsettin’ him. We clear?”
“Absolutely,” Isaiah said, smiling. “And let me thank you again for opening up your ranch for this dig. I admire the way you’ve preserved the site for so many years, and I appreciate the opportunity to be the first to excavate it.”
“Ah, forget it!” Orley waved a calloused hand at him, and spat another brown puddle on the ground. “Ever since that feller at Range Creek opened up his place, I knew it was just going to be a matter of time before you college ‘uns started poking around. Might as well get it done.” He turned away and strode off toward his small house just visible to the southeast.
Bones looked at Isaiah, who grinned and shrugged. “He’s not a bad fellow,” Isaiah said. “I can imagine that after the undisturbed Fremont sites were opened up on Range Creek, he probably did feel like he needed to share his site on his own terms.”
“Whatever,” Bones said. “Let’s head on to the site. I’m anxious to do some digging. Should be fun.”
“This is the most boring thing I have ever done.” Bones scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot. “I had this crazy idea that a ‘dig’ might involve some actual digging.” He snapped another picture of the pictographs adorning the rock face and let out a dramatic sigh. They had spent what felt like hours photographing and cataloging the various pictures etched into the rock. The others members of the dig were mapping the lay of the land and making records of the artifacts that lay strewn across the ground. He had been surprised to see how plentiful they were, and that Orley had apparently left them untouched where they lay.
“Are you sure you’ve been on a dig before, Bones?” Isaiah did not turn to look at him, but instead kept his eyes on the pictographs. “You told me you loved archaeology.”
“Yeah, but the last dig I was on, there was climbing and people shooting at me and stuff.” He knew he sounded like a sullen schoolboy, but he didn’t care, because at least it annoyed his cousin. “It was fun!”
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” Isaiah shook his head. “I swear, sometimes you even have me believing your wild tales.” He paused to lean in close and scrutinize a picture that looked to Bones like a lumpy cow. “Anyway,” Isaiah continued, “if you don’t want to help me with this, grab a notebook and start counting the potsherds.”
“Counting the potsherds. Thrilling. Forget it dude, I’ll just stay here.” He moved along the wall, looking with disinterest at the pictographs. Isaiah had called them “fascinating,” said they were the best he’d ever seen. To Bones, all of them looked the same. The same people, the same four-legged beasts, the same weird shapes. Except for one that drew his attention. On the far right end of the rock face, where the overhanging ledge arched down, the wall receded back into the hill. The recessed area looked like it had been bricked over with inch-thick flat rocks and mud. To the left of the bricked in area was a rendering of a person. Unlike the pictographs, this one was a painting, and the fellow in the picture looked like he was bowing down to something or someone.
“Hey, check this out,” he called out to Isaiah. “This one is different.” He ran his fingers along the stone around the edge of the image, wanting to touch it, but fearing he might damage it in some way. His eyes drifted to the stacked rocks closing off the alcove. Perhaps it was his imagination, but they looked like they had been put there intentionally. He touched it with a tentative finger and found it solid. He pushed a bit harder to no effect. Stealing a glance at Isaiah, who was still scrutinizing the pictographs, Bones balled up his fist and rapped on the rocks. The sound rang hollow in his ears. There was a space behind there, he was sure of it! He knocked again, harder this time. With a loud clatter, the rock wall collapsed, falling back into the empty space behind in a puff of dust. Bones gasped when he saw what lay behind.
“Bones!” Isaiah shouted. “What did you do?” He rushed over to Bones’ side. “I can’t believe you…” Words failed him when he saw what Bones was staring at. His dark face blanched. “It can’t be,” he finally whispered.
A detailed cave painting, so unlike the simple pictographs that covered the rest of the rocky face, stared back at them. A man stood in the center of a group. Light shone all around him, creating a glowing aura about his beatific face. Although the artwork was primitive, it was clear that he was not an Indian. He had shoulder-length hair, a mustache, and a beard. He stood with his hands upraised and all around him the primitive-looking men bowed down to him.
Bones took a step back and shook his head. It was several moments before he found his voice.
“Who in God’s name is that?”