Thunderhead

Suddenly, the smile on his face was replaced with a look of shock. “What the hell?” He spun around. Following his gaze, Nora saw Smithback’s pack horse, Beetlebum, dart back. A rope of saliva was dripping off Smithback’s leg.

“That damn horse just tried to bite me!” Smithback roared, full of indignation. The pack horse looked back, his face a picture of surprised i

“That old Beetlebum,” said Swire, shaking his head affectionately. “He’s sure got a sense of humor.”

Smithback wiped his leg. “So I see.”

After another half hour of uneventful riding Nora brought the group to a halt. From an aluminum tube tied to her saddle, she removed the U.S.G.S. topo onto which Holroyd had superimposed the radar data. She examined it for a moment, then motioned him over.

“Time for a GPS reading,” she said. She knew that six miles up Serpentine Canyon they had to branch off into a smaller canyon, marked HARD TWIST on the map. The trick would be identifying which of the endless parade of side canyons they were passing was Hard Twist. Down on the canyon bottom, every bend looked the same.

Holroyd dug into his saddlebag and pulled out the GPS unit, a laptop into which he had downloaded all the navigation and waypoint data. While Nora waited, he booted the computer, then began to tap at the keyboard. After a few minutes he grimaced, then shook his head.

“I was afraid of that,” he said.

Nora frowned. “Don’t tell me it isn’t powerful enough.”

Holroyd laughed crookedly. “Powerful? It uses a twenty-four-cha

“Then what’s the problem? Broken already?”

“Not broken, just unable to get a fix. It has to locate at least three geostationary satellites simultaneously to get a reading. With these high canyon walls, it can’t even pick up one. See?”

He turned the laptop toward Nora, and she nudged her horse closer. A high-resolution overhead map of the Kaiparowits canyon system filled the screen. Atop lay smaller windows containing magnified charts of Lake Powell, real-time compasses, and data. In one window, she could see a series of messages:

NMEA MODE ENABLED

ACQUIRING SATELLITES . . .

SATELLITES ACQUIRED SO FAR: 0

3-D FIX UNAVAILABLE

LAT/LONG: N/A

ELEVATION: N/A

EPHEMERIS DATA UNAVAILABLE

RELOCATE UNIT AND REINITIALIZE

“See this?” Holroyd pointed to a small window on the screen in which various red dots orbited in circular tracks. “Those are the available satellites. Green means good reception, yellow means poor reception, and red means no reception. They’re all red.”

“Are we lost already?” called Black from behind, a note somewhere between apprehension and satisfaction in his voice. Nora ignored him.

“If you want a reading,” Holroyd said to Nora, “you’ll have to go up top.”

Nora glanced at the soaring red walls, streaked with desert varnish, and looked back at Holroyd. “You first.”

Holroyd gri

“Want me to climb up and take the reading?” Sloane asked, riding forward with an easy smile.

Nora looked at her curiously.

“I brought some gear,” Sloane said, lifting the top of a saddlebag and displaying a gear sling loaded with carabiners, friends, nuts, and pitons. She gave the rock walls a calculating look. “I could make it in three pitches, maybe two. Doesn’t look too bad, I could probably free climb my way up.”

“Let’s save that for when we really need it,” Nora said. “I’d rather not take the time right now. Let’s do things the old-fashioned way instead. Dead reckoning.”

“It’s your gig,” Sloane said good-humoredly.

“Dead reckoning,” Smithback murmured. “Never did like the sound of that.”

“We may not have satellites,” Nora said. “But we’ve got maps.” Spreading Holroyd’s map across her saddlehorn, she stared at it closely, estimating their approximate speed and travel time. She marked a dot at their probable position, the date and time beside it.

“Done a lot of this before?” Holroyd asked at her side.

Nora nodded. “All archaeologists have to be good at reading maps. It’s hell finding some of the remoter ruins. And what makes it harder is this.” She pointed to a note in the corner of the map that read WARNING: DATA NOT FIELD-CHECKED. “Most of these maps are created from stereogrammatic images taken from the air. Sometimes what you see from a plane is a lot different from what you see on foot. As you can see, your radar image—which is absolutely accurate—doesn’t always correspond to what’s printed on the map.”

“Reassuring,” she heard Black mutter.

Replacing the map, Nora nudged her horse forward and they continued up the canyon. The walls broadened and the stream diminished, in some places even disappearing for a while, leaving only a damp stretch of sand to mark its underground course. Each time they passed a narrow side canyon, Nora would stop and mark it on the map. Sloane rode up beside her, and for a while they rode together.

“Airplane pilot,” Nora said, “expert horsewoman, archaeologist, rock climber—is there anything you don’t do?”

Sloane shifted slightly in her seat. “I don’t do windows,” she said with a laugh. Then her face became more serious. “I guess the credit—or the blame—goes to my father. He’s a man with exacting standards.”

“He’s quite a remarkable man,” Nora replied, hearing a slightly acerbic tone creeping into Sloane’s voice.

Sloane glanced back at her. “Yes.”

They rounded another bend and the canyon suddenly widened. A cluster of cottonwoods grew against the reddish walls, late afternoon sunlight slanting through their leaves. Nora glanced at her watch: just after four. She noted with satisfaction a broad sandy bench where they could camp, high enough to be beyond the reach of any unexpected flash flood. And along the banks of the creek were abundant new grass for the horses. True to its name, Hard Twist canyon veered off to the left, making such a sharp turn that it gave the illusion of dead-ending in a wall of stone. It looked ugly—choked with rocks, dry and hot. So far the trip had been an easy ride, but Nora knew that could not last.

She turned her horse and waited while the others straggled up. “We’ll camp here,” she called out.

The group gave a ragged cheer. Swire helped Black off his horse, and the scientist limped around a bit, shaking out his legs and complaining. Holroyd dismounted by himself, only to fall immediately to the ground. Nora helped him to a tree he could lean against until he got his legs back.

“I don’t like the look of that canyon,” Sloane said, coming over to Nora. “What if I scout up a ways?”

Nora looked at the younger Goddard. Her dark pageboy had been tousled by the wind, but the disarray only enhanced her beauty, and the golden desert light made her amber eyes as pale as a cat’s. During the day Nora had noticed several of the company, particularly Black, clandestinely admiring Sloane, whose tight cotton shirt, unbuttoned at the top and slightly damp with perspiration, left little to the imagination.

Nora nodded. “Good idea. I’ll take care of things here in the meantime.”

After assigning the camp chores, Nora helped Swire unpack and unsaddle the horses. They lined up the pa

As soon as the horses were unpacked, Swire remounted Mestizo. During the ride, he had talked and sung to the horses constantly, making up verses to fit the small events of the day, and he sang another as Nora watched him drive the sweaty remuda toward the creek: