Cliff-Hanger, page 11
“Dear Jack Landon,” the letter began, “We wish to express our deep appreciation to you for returning the turquoise frog fetish to the museum association. When you gave it to us, you expressed the opinion that the fetish, although old, didn’t have an especially great financial value. It is correct that small stone carvings cannot usually be dated because they are noncarbon-based materials—”
“What does that mean?” Ashley asked, pointing to the line Jack was reading.
He jerked the paper away. “Who said you could read my mail?”
“Oh, come on, Jack. I was as much a part of that night as you were. What to they mean about the dating?”
He sighed. “Carbon dating only works on things that were once living—like the fiber in sandals, or the turkey-feather blankets the People made, or old bones. Not on stone or turquoise or anything that wasn’t alive. Now back off while I finish reading this.”
He turned his attention to the letter in his hand.
“…noncarbon-based materials,” he continued. “However, it happens that this turquoise fetish is different. As we examined it, we realized it had once held tiny gemstones for eyes. The gemstones are long gone, but residue remains of the pitch that was used to glue the eyes in place. And pitch, because it comes from pine trees, can be dated. Very preliminary test results lead us to believe that this fetish was made approximately 780 years ago. Since its age can be certified, the piece is priceless. Of course, even if it had little financial value, the fetish would be invaluable to us as an artifact that expands our knowledge of the prehistoric Puebloan culture. For that reason, we extend to you our heartfelt thanks. Sincerely, Linda Martin, Curator.”
In a handwritten note at the bottom of the letter, she’d added, “Just for fun, Jack, if I had to put a price on the fetish, I’d guess about a quarter million dollars.”
Jack closed his eyes and leaned back so far he nearly fell off the bench.
“Can I see it now?” Ashley asked. He handed it to her.
“Wow!” Ashley jumped up, waving the letter. “Wow! Lucky would curl up and die if she knew about this—a quarter million! Wow!”
“She would have given it back anyway, because it belonged in the park,” Jack insisted.
Ashley laughed so hard Jack felt a slow burn crawling up his cheeks. “Oh yeah! Sure she would, Jack! You are some dreamer. She thought it was worth about a hundred bucks, so she gave it back. But a quarter million? No way!”
Steven came out of the house then. “They can’t trace Lucky and her dad from the phone calls they made,” he said. “The calls were just to sporting-goods stores and travel offices and places like that. I guess they drove from El Paso across the border into Juárez. Ms. Lopez says she’ll call the border checkpoints, but she suspects O’Doul was an alias, too. They probably used lots of different names, and had several different passports.”
“Dad, you might want to see this,” Jack said. He handed his father the letter from Mesa Verde. Without another word, Jack went inside.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He’d been waiting for a chance to be alone in the house. That evening, at last, his mother and dad and Ashley had gone to a movie. Jack had begged off, saying he was halfway through a book more exciting than any movie playing in Jackson Hole that week.
Eighteen days had passed since Lucky had run away from him, disappearing into the forest on top of the mesa. In all that time, his film had remained inside his camera, untouched.
He hadn’t been trying for pictures when he fired his camera’s flash at the cougar. All he’d wanted was to scare the big cat, to make it go away. He hadn’t pointed the camera, he hadn’t focused, he’d just pressed the shutter button to make the automatic flash go off. Later, when he looked at the number showing how far the film had advanced, he discovered he’d clicked the shutter 14 times. No wonder the flash had stopped recharging.
Fourteen wild, random shots. What were the odds that he’d captured something on film? Anything? As he made his way to the basement to his father’s darkroom, he held his hopes in check.
After filling the tanks with water and chemicals, he turned off the lights and loaded the film onto the processing spool. As he worked, he kept checking the glow-in-the-dark numbers on the clock they used to time steps in the developing process. He wanted everything finished before his parents and Ashley came home.
As he took the roll of negatives from the stabilizer solution, he caught his breath. He didn’t want to look too closely—not yet—but he thought he might have lucked out on at least two frames. Don’t get your hopes up, he told himself.
Negatives dried. Paper in the developing tube. Jack checked the clock again, sending mental signals to his parents to take Ashley for ice cream after the movie. When at last he allowed himself to really look at his prints, his heart thudded.
Twelve of them were useless. They showed slabs of rock, bits of trees, the cougar’s left front foot, half of its face—or nothing at all.
But one! One was a magnificent shot of the cougar in full snarl. Each whisker stood out against the dark background. The pink nose and the ridge of fur behind it wrinkled menacingly. And the eyes—the flash had caught them full on, so that they gleamed like beacons. It was an almost perfect picture. Later, Jack would show it to his father, who would probably blow it up to poster size in the studio where he worked.
Then, as if he might be handling the Grail, Jack turned his attention to the picture that mattered most, the one he’d been hoping against all odds would turn out to be good.
Gently, holding the wet print only by the edges, he gazed into Lucky’s face. She stared back at him, startled by the camera’s flash. It was just before she’d turned to discover the cougar; she didn’t yet wear the expression of terror that would twist her features just a few seconds afterward.
For a long time he stared at her, remembering the good things about her—her smile, the time in the tunnel when she’d taken his hand, the way she’d secretly passed the piece of turquoise to him just before she fled. It hurt to think that the good in her might never have a chance to grow.
All he had of her was this picture. And no one else was ever going to see it.
AFTERWORD
In my job as a park ranger at Mesa Verde National Park, I get to drive up onto this amazing mesa every day. One spring morning, just after 7 a.m., I had a terrific wildlife sighting—a cougar! He stood just above the road on a small slope. I looked at him, and he looked at me. Cougars, also called mountain lions, are mostly nocturnal hunters, so perhaps this lion was returning from a hunting trip in search of his favorite food: mule deer.
He stood on the slope in the morning sunshine, tawny brown, probably six feet long, his graceful tail a full one-third of his body length. Beautiful and awe-inspiring, he probably weighed around 170 pounds of sleek, fluid strength. As I watched, his ears perked up, and he seemed to look me right in the eyes. It sent a chill running up my spine. Almost before I realized what I had seen, he was gone.
Except for the paved road, my sighting could have been exactly like the sighting of an Ancestral Puebloan some 700 years ago. The same sun was shining on that person along a dirt trail near the edge of the same canyon. An ancestor of the cougar I saw could have stood in the same place and inspired the same feelings. Across the centuries I felt a kinship with those residents of Mesa Verde, human and mountain lion alike.
Unfortunately, since A.D. 1300 (when most people had left Mesa Verde), not everyone has felt that same kinship with the cougar. As European settlers, farmers, and ranchers moved across North America, the cougar has been pushed from its homeland, which ranged from coast to coast, from Canada to Mexico. Fear for their livestock and even for their own families has caused people to kill cougars and other predators, wherever people came into contact with wildlife. Encroaching development across the West—cities, towns, houses, ranches—destroyed habitat for the cougar. People need places to live and work, but cougars have the same needs. Cougars now live mostly in the West, pushed into islands of wilderness like Mesa Verde National Park.
Our natural fear of the cougar is not without cause. Cougars attacking people, as in this book, are events that are rare, but they do happen. You are much more likely to be attacked by another person than by a cougar. Yet when cougar attacks do occur, it’s big news in newspapers and magazines, and on the radio and TV.
Mesa Verde kids probably also heard stories about cougars when they lived in places like Cliff Palace, Balcony House, and Spruce Tree House. During the winter, around the warming fire of their clan’s kiva, these kids probably listened to cougar stories from their grandparents. The People didn’t have a written history, so stories, religion, and a strong understanding of their own family history were all passed on from one generation to the next by word of mouth. As they went to sleep at night, the children were probably afraid of the cougar, but they also would have felt that it was a natural part of their world, an animal to be respected and revered.
Mesa Verde National Park is an important place for all of us, cougars and people alike, to share our common history going back thousands of years. We need public lands to ensure habitat for all wildlife and to ensure that all of the dwellings and artifacts of earlier people are preserved for future generations.
When you have the opportunity to visit a national park, please remember that everything you find there is protected—plants, animals, rocks, artifacts, every thing. You’re welcome to take photographs, like Jack, and to take away as much litter as you can carry.
Come explore Mesa Verde National Park. Look back in time to the places where kids lived 700 years ago. Who knows? You just might see a cougar!
Will Morris
Chief of Interpretation and Visitor Services
Mesa Verde National Park, Mesa Verde, Colorado
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
An award-winning mystery writer and an award-winning science writer—who are also mother and daughter—are working together on Mysteries in Our National Parks!
ALANE (LANIE) FERGUSON’S first mystery, Show Me the Evidence, won the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America.
GLORIA SKURZYNSKI’S Almost the Real Thing won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award.
Lanie lives in Elizabeth, Colorado. Gloria lives in Boise, Idaho. To work together on a novel, they connect by phone, fax, and e-mail and “often forget which one of us wrote a particular line.”
Gloria’s e-mail: gloriabooks@qwest.net
Her Web site: www.gloriabooks.com
Lanie’s e-mail: aferguson@alaneferguson.com
Her Web site: www.alaneferguson.com
Founded in 1888, the National Geographic Society is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations in the world. It reaches more than 285 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, and its four other magazines; the National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; radio programs; films; books; videos and DVDs; maps; and interactive media. National Geographic has funded more than 8,000 scientific research projects and supports an education program combating geographic illiteracy.
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Gloria Skurzynski, Cliff-Hanger
