Thunderhead

“So exactly how did I screw things up?” Smithback asked suddenly.

Nora twisted to look at him. “Huh?”

“At the bottom of the ridge, you said that I almost screwed things up for you. I’ve been thinking about that, and I don’t see what I’ve done that you weren’t already doing yourself.”

Nora urged Arbuckles forward. “I’m afraid that anything I say, you’ll just use in your book.”

“I won’t, honest.”

Nora moved forward without speaking.

“Really, Nora, I mean it. I just want to know what’s going on with you.”

Again, Nora felt a strange sense of pleasure from his interest. “What do you know about how I discovered Quivira?” she asked, returning her eyes to the trail.

“I know how Holroyd helped you pinpoint the location. It was Dr. Goddard who told me your father was the one who originally discovered it. I’d been meaning to ask you more about that, only . . .” Smithback’s voice fell away.

Only you knew I’d snap your head off, Nora thought with a twinge of guilt. “About two weeks ago,” she began, “I was attacked in my family’s old ranch house by a couple of men. At least, I think they were men, dressed up as animals. They demanded I give them a letter. My neighbor chased them away with her shotgun. At the time, I didn’t know what they were talking about. But then I came upon this letter my father had written to my mother, years and years ago. Somebody mailed it, just recently. Who, or why, I don’t know, and I can’t get that out of my head. Anyway, in the letter, my father said that he’d discovered Quivira. He gave directions—vague, but with Peter’s help, enough to get us here. I think those stalkers also wanted to learn the location of Quivira. So they could loot it, strip it of its treasures.”

She paused and licked her lips, painfully dry in the sun. “So I tried to keep the expedition a secret. Everything was coming together just right. And then you showed up at the marina, notebook in one hand and megaphone in the other.”

“Oh.” Even without turning around, she could hear the sheepish note in the writer’s voice. “Sorry. I knew the purpose of the expedition was secret, but I didn’t realize the expedition itself was.” He paused. “I didn’t give anything away, you know.”

Nora sighed. “Maybe not. But you certainly created quite a stir. But let’s forget it, okay? I overreacted. I was a little tense myself—for obvious reasons.”

They rode quietly for a while. “So what do you think of my story?” Nora asked at last.

“I think I’m sorry I said I wouldn’t print it. Do you suppose these guys are really still after you?”

“Why do you think I insisted on taking this little field trip myself? I’m pretty sure that the people who killed our horses, and the ones who attacked me, might be the same. If so, that means they’ve learned where Quivira is.”

Abruptly, the trail left the weird tangle of stone and topped out on a narrow, fingerlike mesa. Breathtaking views surrounded them on all sides, canyons layered against canyons, disappearing into the purple depths. The snowcapped peaks of the Henry Mountains were now visible to the east, blue and inexpressibly lonely in the vast distance. At the far side of the mesa stood some rocks, hiding the landscape beyond from view.

“I didn’t realize we were gaining so much altitude,” said Smithback, stopping his horse and gazing around.

Just then Nora caught a faint whiff of cedar smoke. She signaled Smithback to dismount quietly.

“Smell that?” she whispered. “We’re not far from a campfire. Let’s leave our horses here and go ahead on foot.”

Tying their mounts to sagebrush, they began walking through the sand. “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a bathtub full of ice and cervezas on the other side?” Smithback said under his breath as they approached the jumble of rocks. Nora dropped to her knees and peered through a gap in the rocks. Smithback did the same, creeping up beside her.

At the naked end of the mesa, under a dead, corkscrewed juniper, was a small fire, smoking faintly. What appeared to be a jackrabbit, ski

The view from the point of the mesa was spectacular. The land dropped away in a great sweep of erosion, down into a wrinkled and violent landscape, dry, lifeless, webbed with alkali washes, dissolving into a badlands peppered with great rock megaliths, casting long shadows. Beyond lay the heavily forested Aquarius Plateau, a black irregular line on the horizon. A grasshopper scratched forlornly in the late afternoon heat.

Nora slowly exhaled. It was a barren place, and she knew she ought to feel a little silly, crawling up the ridge, peering melodramatically through the rocks on hands and knees. Then she thought about the matted, hairy figures in the deserted farmhouse, and about the coils of horse entrails, flyblown and steaming in the sun.

The unshod tracks they had been following led around the rocks and straight into the camp.

“Looks like nobody’s home,” whispered Nora. Her voice sounded loud and thin in her ears, and she could feel her skin prickle with fear.

“Yeah, but they couldn’t be far. Look at that rabbit. What do we do now?”

“I think we mount up and ride in, nice and easy. And then wait until they or whoever returns.”

“Oh, sure. And get shot right out of the saddle.”

Nora turned to him. “Got a better idea?”

“Yeah. How about if we head back and see what Bonarotti’s got cooking for supper?”

Nora shook her head impatiently. “Then I’ll go in there alone, on foot. They’re not likely to kill a lone woman.”

Smithback considered this. “I wouldn’t recommend that. If these are the same guys who attacked you, being a woman didn’t stop them before.”

“So what do we do?”

Smithback thought for a while. “Maybe we should hide ourselves, and just wait near here for them to return. We could surprise them.”

Nora looked at the writer. “Where?”

“Back up in those rocks, behind us. We can look down and over the end of the mesa. We’ll see them as they come in.”

They returned to their horses, moved them well off the trail, and brushed out their tracks. Then they climbed up behind the camp and waited in a small nook between two large boulders. As they settled in, Nora heard an ominous, rattling buzz. About fifty yards away, in the shadow of a rock, a rattlesnake had reared up in an S-coil, its anvil-shaped head swaying slightly.

“Now you can show me your brilliant marksmanship,” said Smithback.

“No,” said Nora instantly.

“Why not?”

“That gun’s going to make a pretty loud doorbell. Do you really want to alert whoever’s out there?”

Smithback suddenly stiffened. “I think it’s too late for that,” he said.

There, on one of the flanking ridges behind them, Nora saw a lone man silhouetted against the sky, his face in shadow. A gun was hanging off his right hip. How long he had been waiting there, watching them, Nora could not say.

A dog appeared over the ridge behind the man. As it saw them, it broke into a flurry of outraged barking. The man spoke a brief command and it slunk behind his legs.

“Oh, God,” Smithback said. “Here we are, hiding in the rocks. This isn’t going to look too good.”

Nora waited in indecision. The weight of her own gun felt heavy on her hips. If this was one of the men who had attacked her, killed the horses . . .

The man stood motionless as the late afternoon deepened.

“You got us into this,” Smithback said. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. Say hello?”

“There’s brilliance for you.” Smithback raised a tentative hand. After a moment, the man on the ridge made a similar gesture.