"If somebody took one of those huge ditchers and started chewing a trench through Forest Lawn you can bet there'd be an outcry. It just wouldn't happen." Ladling a bite of some pasta concoction into her mouth as if to calm her nerves, Jamie went on. "You can't go around digging up white people's cemeteries. Oh no. Big sacrilege. They won't get away with it." Jamie inhaled another serving-spoonful of pasta. "The whole mesa is sacred ground."

  Though it had been in vogue at one time, there wasn't any archaeological evidence to support that theory, but Anna didn't say anything. She dumped her hat and gun on the dinette table and collapsed in one of the straight-backed chairs.

  "They're not going to get away with grinding our bones up. Not this time."

  Anna noted the "our." She also noted that Jamie's brown roots were just beginning to show at the base of her part. Raising her eyebrows politely, she invited Jamie to continue ranting.

  "Solstice is coming," the interpreter said with finality.

  June twenty-first; perhaps that was the proposed date of some planned event. Anna let the idea filter through her mind. Why would Jamie divulge that bit of information in the presence of a law enforcement ranger? Unless, as was often the case in publicity stunts, the law was necessary to provide the drama required to lure out the press. It was illegal for government employees to "tattle" to the press on touchy issues. But bringing down the wrath of the six o'clock news was almost the only way to effect any real change. Like any other entrenched bureaucracy, the Park Service was filled with people passing the buck and covering the hindmost parts of their anatomy.

  "What happens on solstice?" Anna asked.

  "It's a sacred day to the Old Ones," Jamie replied, with the air of an insider who only hands out information in pre-approved sound bites.

  "Are they going to hold those Indian dances or something?" Jimmy Russell wanted to know.

  "Not likely. 'They' have been dead for seven hundred years," Anna told him.

  "They might," Jamie said cryptically.

  "Ah. Chindi." Anna was suddenly too tired to play along.

  "The spirit veil, ooooo—" Jimmy's wail ended abruptly at the look on her face.

  "Are you driving, Jimmy?"

  "Yes, ma'am." He dangled his car keys.

  Anna took them and slipped them into her pocket. If Russell was her chain-swinging eco-terrorist, he was too far gone to do much damage till morning.

  "You're drunk. Sleep on the couch. I'll leave your keys on the table when I go to work. Good night."

  A few minutes of murmuring came through the wall as Jamie dragged out bedding for the inebriated helitacker, then the house was blessedly quiet. Anna took two aspirins for her head. For her nerves she recited the only prayer she knew all the way through: "From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties/And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!"

  5

  AT EIGHT A.M., when Stacy pulled up in the patrol car, Jimmy Russell was still curled up on the couch. He didn't even twitch when Anna walked through. Without so much as a twinge of guilt, she let the door bang shut behind her.

  Usually Stacy's aesthetic countenance was a welcome sight, but lack of sleep had left Anna surly. Evidently the night's festivities had left their mark on him as well. In lieu of "good morning" he said: "Mind if we stop by my house? Rose's going to Farmington and Bella needs a ride to Maintenance. Drew said he'd keep an eye on her till six."

  Anna wanted to ask why Rose didn't take the kid along, but she minded her own business. The radio was tuned to a Navajo station and a language that sounded like Chinese sawed at her nerves. With an abrupt movement, she switched it off.

  "Wrong side of the bed?" Stacy asked.

  "Tired. My housemates kept me up after our rendezvous in Maintenance. Jamie said she'd seen a veil or some damn thing. Chindi passing from the underworld to this one. They were out at Cliff Palace, drinking and scaring each other is my guess."

  "I checked the book." Stacy sounded alarmed. "There were no permits for Cliff Palace last night."

  Any employee going anywhere—or anytime—the public was not allowed had to have a backcountry permit signed by the chief ranger. Cliff Palace after hours fell under that restriction.

  Anna wondered if Stacy entertained the same suspicions she did about possible monkeywrenching business. "If that's really where they were then I doubt much harm was done."

  "When I made my sweep at eleven I didn't see any cars," he said stubbornly.

  "Maybe they were on bicycles." Leaning her head back against the seat, she closed her eyes and let the subject drop.

  At the housing loop, she fiddled with the radio while Stacy went in to fetch Bella. A little mental arithmetic told Anna that Bella was his stepdaughter. She was a first- or second-grader and he'd met his wife three years ago. Taking on the responsibility, not only of someone else's child, but a child with a disability, spoke of powerful love—or powerful need.

  "Hello, my little pine nut," she heard Stacy call when he was halfway up the walk. He disappeared into the house to reappear moments later with Bella. The child's face was a testament to her mother's youthful good looks. A rounded heart set off by a crop of carefully tended curls. Brown hair, several shades lighter than Rose's, caught the morning sun and glinted with blond highlights. Wide-spaced eyes sparkled above a small straight nose. This loveliness made more pathetic the rolling gait and bowed legs, far too short for her upper body.

  Hand in hand with Stacy, Bella chattered up at him. For every glitter of hero worship in her eyes, there was an answering glow of adoration in his. Stacy's slender frame shaped itself into a question mark as he curbed his steps, leaning down to hear her.

  What Anna had seen as a burden clearly lightened the load Stacy professed to have carried after his first wife left him.

  "You're Anna Pigeon," the child announced when they reached the car.

  "You got me there." Anna leaned over the seat-back to shove briefcases and hats out of Bella's way. Fleetingly, she wondered if Stacy had been talking about her.

  "I read your name tag," the child explained as she swung herself into the rear seat. "That's in case you thought I might be a psycho or something."

  Stacy laughed. "Psychic, pine nut. Psycho is crazy."

  "I'm not old enough to be crazy," she said confidently. "Do you have children, Mrs. Pigeon?"

  "None to speak of."

  "Oh." Bella sounded disappointed.

  "I have a cat." Anna tried to exonerate herself.

  "Don't you like children?"

  "Some of my best friends are children." Anna was thinking of Alison, her Michigan housemate's daughter.

  The truth must have rung through the words. Bella brightened immediately. "That's okay then. If the cat has kittens, can I play with them?"

  "Your mom's allergic, pine nut," Stacy reminded gently.

  "Not have, Stacy. Play with. I'd wash after."

  "Piedmont's a boy cat," Anna said. "So no kittens. But he might like it if you'd come play with him. Sometimes I suspect he misses the little girl we used to live with."

  "Does he try to hide it?" Bella asked, and Anna sensed she was already adept at hiding hurt and loneliness.

  "Yes. Sometimes he goes out and kills mice. Then I think he feels better."

  "I like mice."

  "So does Piedmont." Anna was losing ground in this conversation. A smile played on Stacy's lips. She was willing to bet it was at her expense.

  The maintenance yard was loud with heavy equipment. Stacy pulled up in front of the fire cache. "Stay in the car, honey. Too much traffic. I'll find Drew."

  "Are you married?" Bella resumed the interrogation as Stacy disappeared into the cache.

  "Used to be," Anna replied.

  "Did he divorce you?"

  "He died." Anna wished Stacy would come back. "Maybe I'd better go and see what's keeping your dad."

  Her cowardly exit was thwarted. "No. Stay. Stacy'll be right back. He never forgets. My first dad divorced us because I wasn't born normal," Bella stated matter-of-factly. "Momma said."

  Anna didn't know what to say to that. She was saved by Stacy's reappearance, Drew beside him. Drew Kinder was as close to a "mountain of a man" as Anna'd ever met, made of a core of stone-hard muscle covered with a layer of baby fat a couple of inches deep. Unruly eyebrows and a moth-eaten mustache grew like lichen on his round face.

  Next to the helitacker, Stacy's six-foot-two looked average, short even, and his slenderness was accentuated. Seeing the two men together, an image of a bass fiddle and bow flashed through her mind.

  "Hiya, Drew," Bella called.

  "Hiya, beautiful." Drew leaned down, hands on the door frame. His head filled the window. "I gotta fuel the truck, then we hit the road."

  "Hit the road," Bella repeated, as if the phrase had struck a harmonious chord within her.

  "I'll help you with the truck," Anna volunteered. She didn't want to be left alone with Bella again. The child's unrelenting forthrightness was unsettling.

  "Can't hack it?" Stacy asked over the roof of the patrol car as she climbed out.

  Anna just laughed.

  While Drew filled the fire truck with diesel, she leaned against the fender. In his huge hands the nozzle looked like a child's water pistol.

  "Bella's quite a girl," he said.

  "Seems smart enough. Too bad she's..." Aware she was giving pity where none was asked, Anna left the sentence unfinished.

  Drew straightened up. The sun was behind his head. In silhouette he loomed as solid as the proverbial brick outhouse. "Maybe that's what makes her so strong, so smart. She sees right through people. Maybe she got that from being the way she is. Ever think of that?"

  "I will now," Anna promised.

  "Her mom wants her to get all these operations on her legs. Pretty painful stuff. Make her more 'normal.' Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's not. All I know is it's got to hurt. I don't like seeing kids hurt."

  "Nobody does," Anna said mildly.

  Drew shot her a look that startled her with its venom. "Don't kid yourself," he said, and went back to pumping diesel. "Her folks ought to leave her alone. I'm a giant. She's a dwarf. We're the variety that adds spice."

  A blue Ford six-pac carrying five men in orange hard hats pulled up behind them in line for fuel. Ted Greeley was driving.

  "Well, if it isn't my own personal ranger," Greeley greeted Anna. "How am I doing? Running afoul of the law?"

  "Not yet," she returned.

  He looked at his watch. "It's early."

  "Did Frieda get ahold of you about last night?"

  "She did. Damn near too late. You guessed it. The son of a bitch dumped sugar in the gas tank of my ditcher. If anybody'd fired it up I'd've been proud owner of a piece of shit retailing at close to a hundred grand. I'm none too happy one of my boys left the gate unlocked and I'm none too happy one of your boys didn't catch it. I'd hate to think all my tax dollars are paying for are cute uniforms for pretty little rangers." He winked and Anna managed not to spit in his open eye.

  Silva got out of the truck. He had his shirt on this time—a western cut with pearl snaps—but the tails were out, the cuffs not snapped, the collar open. He looked just tumbled out of a woman's bed or ready to tumble into one.

  " 'Morning, Ranger Pigeon," he said lazily as he looked Anna up and down. Again she wasn't flattered.

  "That ever work for you?" she asked.

  He didn't even play coy. "More often than not. Is it going to work on you?" Silva removed his hard hat and ran a hand through his shock of black hair. "Or are rangers' sex drives too low?"

  "IQs are too high," Anna retorted.

  Everybody laughed but Silva. Anna guessed she'd struck a nerve. A smile broke slowly on Tom's face but it never reached his eyes. She braced herself. She had the sinking feeling the repartee was about to take an ugly turn.

  All he said was: "Better watch it. I'm getting more and more eligible every day. By August I ought to be Bachelor of the Year. Ain't that right, Ted?"

  Greeley didn't return Silva's smile.

  "Got to hop to it," Silva said. "The boss wants to leave early to get in a round of golf. Me, I can't play golf. I'm not over the hill yet."

  "Come on," Greeley growled. "I don't pay you to chase—"

  Anna was sure he intended to say "pussy" but he saved himself at the last second.

  "—your tail," he finished.

  "See you around," Silva said to Anna as he put his hard hat back on.

  "By the way, I never did find out anything about that truck that ran you off the road," Anna told him.

  "Was no truck," Tom said as he turned away. "I was just jerking your chain."

  He was wearing brown cowboy boots. But then so were Greeley and two of the others. So was Anna, for that matter.

  Drew finished fueling the truck and Stacy brought Bella to the gas shed. As he lifted her onto the high front seat their radios rasped to life.

  "Seven hundred, this is Beavens at Cliff Palace."

  As one, Drew, Anna, and Stacy turned up the volume on their portables. The interpreters in the ruins seldom called in unless there was a problem.

  "Lockout," Drew offered.

  "Let's hope," Stacy said.

  "Shhh."

  "Cliff Palace, this is seven hundred. Go ahead," Frieda's voice came over the air.

  "We've got a little girl here having trouble breathing. She doesn't look too good."

  Anna and Stacy began to run for the patrol car. Anna flipped on the vehicle's lights and siren. "Nothing like starting the day off right."

  "Jesus. Not another one."

  The anguish in Stacy's voice startled a laugh from Anna. "Hey, it's something to do."

  The two-way road to Cliff was narrow and twisting with no shoulders. Despite lights and sirens, tourists plodded ahead, refusing to give right-of-way.

  Trapped behind an RV, Anna and Stacy crawled along at twenty-three miles an hour. Anna grabbed the public address mike and turned up the volume. "Pull to the right, please. Pull to the right. Pull to the right, please." She repeated the command until the RV's driver came out of his comatose state and began to slow, squeezing the oversized vehicle to the side of the road.

  "Damn. Just once I'd like to ride shotgun with a shotgun and permission to use it."

  Stacy said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the road as he hunched over the wheel. Above the dark line of beard, his cheek was pale. Tension pulled his shoulders almost to ear level.

  Cliff Palace lot was full. They parked in a handicapped space near where the trail started down to the ruin and Anna called in: "Seven hundred, three-one-two, we've arrived on the scene."

  Having taken the red trauma pack and an oxygen bottle from the trunk, she led the way down the crowded trail using "excuse me" the way a frustrated motorist uses the horn.

  As soon as they climbed the eight-foot ladder that brought them within the cliff dwelling, they saw the knot of people surrounding the sick child.

  On the periphery was Jamie Burke. The moment she noticed Anna and Stacy she marched toward them. They met halfway through the alcove and the interpreter started in: "It's not like you weren't warned, for God's sake. Nobody listened. This time it's a child. Solstice—"

  "Hold that thought, Jamie," Anna cut her off. "I'll get back with you this evening." Dodging past the other woman, she plowed through the tourists at a fast walk.

  Mesa Verde's most famous cliff dwelling, Cliff Palace filled an alcove several hundred feet long. The dwelling itself was composed of two hundred and seventeen rooms, twenty-one kivas, and, at the far end, a four-story tower, the inside room of which boasted intact plaster with discernible paintings. The entrance to the tower was reachable only by ladder that led to a narrow path around yet another roofless kiva.

  In this congested part of the ruin was a frail-looking child. She strained for air with the rounded chest of those suffering chronic pulmonary disorders. Dark hair fell forward over her face, and stick-thin arms and legs poked out from beneath an oversized T-shirt. The child was propped in a sitting position against a stone wall built seven centuries before she was born. A man—probably her father—sat on the wall, one leg on either side, supporting her. A hand-lettered sign reading PLEASE DO NOT SIT OR CLIMB ON THE WALLS had tumbled to the path at the foot of the wooden ladder.

  The girl braced her hands on her knees and leaned forward. Tendons in her neck pulled like ropes with the effort of breathing, yet only squeaks of air were pushed out.

  Anna eased through the crowd and put down her gear. "Hi, I'm Anna," she introduced herself as she removed a nasal cannula from the oxygen kit and fitted it to the cylinder. "What's your name?" The girl hadn't enough breath to spare for an answer.

  "Her name's Stephanie," the man seated on the wall answered for her. "Stephanie McFarland. She's got asthma."

  An ominous blue tint colored the skin around Stephanie's lips and in her fingernail beds.

  "She was doing fine a bit ago, then she started feeling like she might throw up," a thin-faced woman in her early thirties told Anna. "She's been at altitude before and we've never had trouble like this. We're from Denver. It's nearly this high. Steph should be used to it. I'm her mom," the woman finished in a whisper.

  "Well, Stephanie, we're going to get you down to a doctor so you can breathe better, okay?" The girl nodded slightly, all her concentration taken by the effort of drawing and expelling air.

  "Meyers, hand me the—" Anna broke off as she looked over at Stacy.

  Clutching the red trauma bag to his chest as a frightened woman might clutch her baby, he stood at the edge of the circle of concerned onlookers. The blood had drained from his face and he was so pale Anna was afraid he was going to pass out.

  "Meyers!" she said sharply.

  The brown eyes turned toward her. They were clouded with fear—or shock.

  "Hand me the bag. Then give Frieda a call and see if we can't get helitack down here with a litter. We're going to need the ambulance as well."

  For a moment it seemed as if he didn't understand, then his eyes focused. Anna watched him for a few seconds more but he began making the calls. She turned down her radio so she could talk with Stephanie and her parents.