Chapter 1

The digger ripped the skull from its skeleton and held it high in the moonlight like a pagan priest offering ghoulish tribute. When he saw the black gap left by two missing front teeth he was tempted to throw it away, but the night had been full of disappointments, with a dozen empty holes and next to nothing to show for his time. He turned the skull slowly in his hands, thinking. Normally he would throw a skull like this away, as he had several others earlier in the evening, but his bills were piling up and he figured anything he could get for it was better than nothing.

Most people he knew harbored a morbid fascination with skulls and when they saw one up close they usually wanted to know who or what it had once been and how it had died. Had the skull been a simple farmer who died of disease, or was it once a warrior gloriously killed in some long forgotten battle? Of course there was no way to know these things but his buyers would study the skull anyway, sometimes for hours if he let them, as they searched for a small knife scrape, hole, or possibly an indentation caused by a warclub’s killing stroke, but what they spent most of their time studying was the skull’s teeth. To them, the teeth held the secret, the key to all the skull had once been. Yellow, rotten, ancient, teeth. They were idiots of course.

To make the skull sellable, he decided he would punch a small hole in the back and sell it packaged with an arrow­head he found in one of the nearby graves. It would be easy to claim that the arrowhead had been discovered inside the skull and was thus the cause of death. If nothing else, it would give the buyer something to talk about at cocktail parties as he gave his guests the grand tour of his collection. Often all a prospective buyer wanted to hear was a believable story so when the digger was inevitably asked what he knew about the skull’s history, he would do what he always did. He would lie.

The digger wrapped the skull in burlap and placed it in his pack with the others. That made tonight’s haul three skulls, an hour-glass basket, two gourd rattles, five flint arrowheads and a large stone spear point. Although he had people waiting in line to buy his loot, the market was flooded with skulls and prices had been going down recently. He figured what he found today would barely cover expenses. What his buyers really wanted, what they would pay top dollar for, was ancient Indian pottery. But not just any pot. They wanted premium quality with bright colors, patterns, handles and spouts, not the faded, brown pots with cracked sides you found gathering dust on minor museum basement shelves. If he found what he was looking for, all it would take would be a quick call followed by an emailed photo and the deal was done. Money would be deposited electronically to his account and once verified, he would call UPS and schedule a pickup.

While he had found some nice fetishes and clay pots in the graves he dug up over the last year, they were not the quality he was looking for. He was convinced the best pieces would be found not in the graves, but rather where the ancient Indians lived and cooked their food, or better yet, in the kivas where they performed their religious rituals. All he had to do was somehow find the village.

The digger stood on a nearby pile of dirt and studied the canyon while the moon was rising full. The land behind him was a maze of pits and trenches, each surrounded by a tall pile of dirt mixed with pottery fragments, rotten burial garments, and scattered white bits of human bone and broken skulls. The problem he faced finding the village was that a thousand years of rain and accumulated runoff had buried it five to ten feet below the surface in a canyon six miles long by a half mile wide so the village could literally be anywhere. From where he stood he could see a curving line of rocks near the canyon’s northern face that could be what was left of an ancient riverbank or it could be nothing. Ancient Indians rarely lived far from water so he knew he had to check it out. With growing anticipation he grabbed his gear and started walking.

As the digger neared the area, he started probing the ground using a six-foot stainless steel rod with a half-inch ball-bearing welded to its tip. This was the grave robber’s primary tool and over the years he had become expert in its use. By holding the shaft lightly in his left hand as he hammered it into the ground he was able to feel the texture of the soil as the probe sliced and vibrated through the different layers. On his fifth test he felt a sofening of the dirt starting three-feet down followed by a sudden two-foot surge as the rod pierced an air pocket. He knew there were a lot of things that caused air pockets  - most of them man-made. It might end up being yet another grave but the pocket felt deep, like what might be caused by a partially collapsed ceiling or possibly a room filled in by soft river sediment after a flood. Leaving the probe in place as a marker, he grabbed his shovel and started digging.

Sweat streaked his face and stung his eyes as he tossed shovels of dirt and broken pieces of pottery, called potsherds, onto a growing pile of flotsam behind him. He stopped often to drink from his canteen and wipe his face with a wet rag. Even this late at night the temperature hovered around a hundred degrees. He didn’t buy that bull about it being a dry heat as if that somehow made it acceptable. People who said things like that never had to work in it.

He discovered the canyon a year earlier using commercial satellite mapping technology that cost him a modest subscription fee and the price of a home computer. The canyon was located high in the San Carlos Apache reservation and matched all the geological features and environmental parameters that would be necessary for an ancient Indian people to live and survive: There was evidence of a once-steady water source, steep canyon walls perfect for cliff dwellings or defense, and enough farmland to support a large tribe.

Despite the canyon’s remote location, he knew excessive movement during the day or building a campfire at night increased the risk of being spotted so he decided early on to work the canyon only at night using the moon and stars for light.

The moon tonight was bright enough to see that the dirt he was tossing over his shoulder was thick with potsherds. The ground was sandy and he knew it was possible the broken pottery, coupled with the soft sand he was finding, might create a cushion that would protect some of the larger pieces from breakage. Concerned about damaging a valuable pot that might be only inches from his shovel’s steel blade, he took a deep breath and forced himself to work slower.

When he felt the shovel scrape something hard, he dropped to his knees and started clawing at the dirt, his eyes desperately searching the dark void. Moments later a short cry escaped his lips when he felt the smooth sides and curved lip of what appeared to be an unbroken pot. He grabbed a trowel from his tool belt and carefully dug the pot from the dirt allowing for a wide margin of error. His fingers trembled slightly as he picked up his canteen and started rinsing away centuries of packed earth that clung to the pot like cement. When the pot started to take form, he held it up to the moonlight and saw a thin line of color. Could this be? He grabbed his battery powered lantern and fumbled with the switch, his fingers suddenly thick and unfeeling. When he saw the pot in full light for the first time, he laughed and danced a short jig. The pot was yellow! He held it higher to get a better look. It was a jar with a wide base that narrowed to a short column at the top then widened to a well-formed lip. It had white bands around interlocking black triangles but the base color was de nitely yellow. Years of experience told him this was probably a Bidahochi Polychrome Pot and that meant it was made two hundred years before Columbus discovered America. It was priceless. Finding this one pot meant his years of worry and dodging bill collectors were a thing of the past. With proper authentication, his customers would pay a small fortune for this pot. And for him, documentation was not a problem. Money always resolved meaningless issues like that if you knew the right people. Eyes closed, he savored the moment then wrapped the pot in a triple-layer of burlap and placed it gently in the bag with the skulls.

He looked around the canyon and he fixed the spot in his mind. It was here. Right here. He had found the village.

He attacked the hole with renewed energy and soon discovered the outline of a second pot. In minutes he had it washed and held high in the moonlight. This one was a pitcher, with a single handle opposite a wide pouring spout. Its base color was red, with yellow lines zigzagging around its perimeter. It was so beautiful he soon had to remind himself to breathe. After wrapping it in layers of burlap and placing it in the canvas sack with the other pot and skulls, he looked back at the trench and licked his lips. Maybe there was more . . . .

An hour later he was inspecting the eyeless sockets of a tiny skull he found in a small grave below a cooking pit. This told him the Hohokam village had been built on top of an even older grave site. Knowing how superstitious Indians were, it was likely the Hohokams never knew it was there. He looked at the tiny skull and wondered how much it was worth. A number of possible buyers raced through his mind but he finally shrugged and threw it over his shoulder. Why bother, he thought. The pots would bring him more money than he would ever need. Dawn was approaching and he knew he should start packing for the hike out but greed drove him beyond exhaustion. His shovel flashed in the moonlight and dirt flew high over his shoulder onto a growing pile of broken potsherds.

A twig snapped on the cliff to his right and he froze, listening for the night sounds he knew should be there but suddenly were not. He dropped to one knee inside the hole, pulled out the revolver he always carried on his hip and held it with both hands close to his face for comfort. His heart racing, the digger rose to the top of the hole and looked out at the night with owl eyes. What he saw sent a chill down his spine. Not a hundred feet away a dozen shadows swayed in the moonlight as they left the tree line and started shuffling stiffly toward him like a macabre army of ghosts marching in lock-step. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, the shadows had returned to the tree line where they belonged. He sighed, knowing it was just fatigue and nerves feeding an over-active imagination. Shaking his head, he holstered his revolver, grabbed his canteen and drank deep, pouring some over his head. Then he picked up his shovel and resumed digging. Focus on the goal, he thought. Just one last pot before dawn. That’s all he needed. One more and he would stop.

A thick line of clouds moved in from the west, blocking the moonlight and pitching the canyon into sudden black­ness. Despite the risk of discovery, the digger turned on his lantern and continued digging. “Just one more,” he whispered repeatedly as he blindly threw dirt over his shoulder. “Just one more.”

High above the canyon floor, a dark form rose from behind a boulder and stood in the shadow of a thick juniper. When the moon was covered by clouds and the canyon was in full darkness it left the trees and started moving down the cliff, its movements soft in the night. Minutes later it stood at the edge of the trench looking down at the digger’s exposed back. Dirt flew in the air as the digger continued working, oblivious of the intruder standing above him. As the clouds parted and the moon once again bathed the narrow canyon with its soft light, the dark form slowly knelt and picked up a large rock.