Thunderhead

The valley had an intimate feeling: it was only about four hundred yards long by two hundred yards wide, a jeweled pocket in the red sandstone. The mellow sunlight fell upon a riot of color: blooming Apache plumes, Indian paintbrush, scarlet gilia. Puffy cumulus clouds, tinged with the afternoon light, drifted across the narrow patch of sky above the clifftops.

After the long dark crawl through the slot canyon, arriving at this beautiful valley was like stumbling upon a lost world. Everything about it—its intimate size, its high surrounding walls, its incredible remoteness, the tremendous difficulties involved in attaining it—filled Nora with the sensation of discovering a hidden paradise. As she looked around, enraptured, a breeze began to come up. As the trees rustled, cotton fell from their catkins and drifted in the lazy air like brilliant motes of trapped light.

After a moment Nora glanced over at Sloane. The woman had a look of intense, suppressed excitement on her face; the amber eyes seemed to blaze as they darted about, sca

Light as a cat, Sloane moved silently down the shallow stream to the canyon floor. Nora lagged behind for a moment. Mingled with her awe of the beauty was a fresh certainty: this was the valley her father had discovered. And with this certainty came another thought, awful in its sudde

But as quickly as it had come, the feeling dissipated. Somebody had found and mailed his letter. That in itself was a mystery, which gnawed at her constantly. But at least it meant that, wherever her father’s bones lay, they probably lay somewhere else, closer to civilization. Still, it was several moments before she followed Sloane to the flat sandy benchland, girded with rocks, well above the flash flood zone. A small grove of cottonwoods provided shade.

“How’s this for a campsite?” Sloane asked, dropping her pack.

“Couldn’t be more perfect,” Nora replied. She unshouldered her own pack, pulled out her soggy sleeping bag, shook it out, and draped it over a bush.

Then her eyes turned ineluctably back toward the towering cliffs that surrounded them on four sides. Pulling the waterproof binoculars from her pack, she began sca

She shook off the sudden cold feeling in her gut, reminding herself that if the ruined city was obvious, it would have been found. Any caves or alcoves formed in those benches above could not be seen from below. It was precisely the kind of spot favored by the Anasazi.

Her father, however, had seen a clear hand-and-toe trail. Her eyes again swept the lower rock faces, searching for the telltale signs of a trail. She saw nothing but smooth faces of red sandstone.

Nora glanced around for Sloane. The woman had already abandoned her scrutiny of the walls and was walking along the base of the cliffs, peering intently at the ground. Looking for potsherds or flint chips, Nora thought approvingly: always a good way to locate a hidden ruin above. Every fifty feet, Sloane would stop and squint up the cliff faces at an oblique angle, looking for the telltale shallow notches that would signify a trail.

Nora shoved her binoculars into her damp jeans and walked along the cutbanks and rock shelves above the stream, examining the soil profile for any cultural evidence. She knew they should be using the last of the light to build a fire and prepare di

It was the work of ten minutes to reach the opposite side of the valley. Here, the stream disappeared into another slot canyon, much narrower even than the one they had crawled through. Narrow stone benches crawled up the red walls on either side, and from the gorge below came the sound of falling water. Carefully, she crept up to its edge. Water fell from the valley in a long stream. A plume of mist rose from where it struck the rocks below, filling the end of the canyon with a watery veil she could barely see through. A small microclimate had developed, and the rocks were thickly covered with moss and ferns. She knew from the maps, though, that the stream ran on through a series of descending waterfalls and pools, each separated by twenty or thirty feet of overhanging rock. It would be impossible to descend without a highly technical climb, and in any case at its bottom the slot seemed too narrow to admit a human being. But there would be no point even in trying: as the maps indicated, the stream ran in this impassable fashion for sixteen miles, until it spilled off the North Rim of Marble Gorge and dropped a thousand feet to the Colorado River. Anyone caught in a flash flood and pushed into this canyon would emerge at the Colorado just so much ground beef.

She moved on, pausing at the large rockfall. It was cool in the shadow of the cliffs, and she shivered slightly. The rockfall, with its dark holes and hidden spaces between the huge boulders, looked like a lair of ghosts. It appeared too unstable to climb. And, in any case, the cliff face behind it was sheer and unmarked by toeholds.

She worked her way back up the other side of the creek and encountered Sloane, who had finished her own survey. The almond eyes had lost some of their brilliance.

“Any luck?” Nora asked.

Sloane shook her head. “I’m having trouble believing there was a city here. I haven’t found anything.”

For once, the trademark smile was missing, and she seemed agitated, almost angry. This city is as important to her as it is to me, Nora thought.

“The Anasazi never built a road to nowhere,” Nora replied. “There’s got to be something here.”

“Perhaps,” Sloane said slowly, peering again at the cliff faces surrounding them. “But if I hadn’t seen those radar images and the hogback ridge, I’d have a hard time believing we’ve been following any sort of road at all the last two days.”

The sun had now dipped low enough to bring creeping shadows across the valley floor. “Look, Sloane,” Nora said. “We haven’t even begun to examine this valley. We’ll spend tomorrow morning making a careful survey. And if we still don’t find anything, we’ll bring the proton magnetometer in and scan for structures beneath the sand.”

Sloane was still looking intently up at the cliffs, as if demanding they give up their secrets. Then she looked at Nora, and gave a slow smile. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Let’s get a fire going and see if we can dry out these bags.”

After she had scooped out a shallow firepit and built a ring of stones, Nora sat by the fire and changed the damp bandages on her fingers. The sleeping bags began to steam slightly in the heat.

“What do you suppose Bonarotti put in those care packages?” Sloane asked as she piled more logs on the fire.

“Let’s find out.” Nora retrieved a pot from her daypack, then grabbed the small packet Bonarotti had thrust into her hand. She unwrapped it curiously. Inside were two Ziploc bags, still dry, one containing what looked like tiny pasta and the other a mix of herbs. ADD TO BOILING WATER AND COOK SEVEN MINUTES was written on the first bag in black Magic Marker; REMOVE FROM HEAT, DRAIN, ADD THIS MIXTURE was written on the second.

Ten minutes later, they pulled the simmering mixture from the fire, drained off the water, and added the second packet. Instantly, a wonderful aroma rose from the pot.