Chapter Nine
She shook her head but walked onward until they rounded a bend, and the rock shelter, hidden from the ground level above them and commanding its incredible vantage across the canyon, loomed into view.
Rose paused, her breath catching. Toby came up behind her, resting his palm on her shoulder, and took a deep breath. A fine sight to behold. It had been too long since he’d looked upon this amazing pictograph. The art, so protected from the elements, seemed just as bright as it had been when he was a kid frolicking through these canyons with his brothers—a gem in this fabric of human history. They’d sat within this shelter time and again, basking in its cool shade or overlooking the canyon after a rare, blessed rainstorm coated the arroyo with a glistening veneer of evaporating water.
The long body of the shaman and his panther head, with what looked like incense burners on chains in a cathedral dangling from his arms, soared up the rock wall, stretching over them as if to encompass them in his embrace. His torso, a long rectangle, was filled with concentric designs, and surrounding him were images of tiny deer in red ochre; little blue, yellow, and red ovals with spines sticking out of them like sunrays; and a series of other shamanesque images surrounding his head like a halo.
As a boy, he’d always been mesmerized and had known this site was significant, though his dad had kept it a secret from friends and nosy scholars alike, not wanting the public with their cameras and vandalism to upset nature’s delicate balance and potentially ruin it. They all knew what had happened at that rock art site in El Paso, when “law-abiding citizens” had sandblasted a pictograph to remove graffiti, having removed the whole damn painting, too. Never would anything like that happen here. His dad had insisted they tell no one. Good citizens, and vandals alike, could cause a helluva lot of damage. And given that the rock shelter floor was several layers of humanity thick, there would have been plenty of things to loot, too.
“Wow, it never fails to amaze me. Every year, I have to spend a minute absorbing this painting’s magnitude,” she said on a sigh, reaching up to take hold of his hand on her and squeeze it. “You’re one lucky bastard to own this slice of history.”
His hand warmed at the feel of her squeeze. He squeezed her back. She was having a religious experience, and he was the fortunate one who got to share it with her.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been called a bastard before—and prick,” he quipped.
She swatted at the hand she’d just squeezed and tossed a glare over her shoulder. He treated her to another one of his grins, and then she did the same, her smile lighting up her bright hazel eyes, such a pretty green brown, though there was still a hint of redness to them from earlier.
She walked into the site, careful to stay on the delineated path she’d mapped out on an exposed stretch of limestone, and removed her pack, taking a drink of water from her bottle. Toby did the same. One was stupid not to keep hydrated out here. It was easy to not feel thirsty, until you were parched. She then pulled out her clipboard and a manila file folder and opened it, securing it to the board, and pulled her glasses free of their case to slip over her eyes.
“Okay, so what do you want to know?”
Hell if he knew. He’d talked her into this hike so he could be alone with her, not because he cared about the radiocarbon dates of the painting’s pigments. “So, eh, how old do you think it is?”
“Radiocarbon dates put it at about 4,000 to 4,500 BCE. The red ochre deer, though, come quite a bit later and were superimposed upon the original painting by other peoples.”
Radiocarbon dates.He smiled. She sure delivered on his expectation anyway.
“Were they related to the ones who made the shaman?”
She shook her head and shrugged. “We’re talking thousands of years of human habitation. There’s no way to know if they were painted by a new group migrating into this area or if there was direct descent. Given that permanent agriculture hadn’t been developed in these parts—and that hunting and gathering persisted—it seems likely that it was an unrelated group of people.”
“What does it all mean?” He chuckled at himself. He was fishing for the lamest questions that she, no doubt, was asked all the time.
Still, Rose was returning to her element, and he was glad to see the dregs of bitterness recede from her brow. On top of upsetting her, he sensed she’d been embarrassed reacting the way she had in front of him, and he didn’t want there to be discomfort between them.
“Ah, you ask the proverbial question with no definite answer. We don’t even know with certainty if the artifacts here were left by the ones who made the painting, although we find similar types of things—matting, netting—at other sites with art of this tradition, so it’s probable that they were the same. The art seems ceremonial, and there’s no doubt this shelter has a controlling vantage over the gorge because if you stand here at the outermost part—”
She strode to the protruding ledge overlooking the drop down to the arroyo, now demarcated by a rope railing. It gave his heart a moment’s jump to see her go so close, and it was the strangest sensation, feeling such concern.
“You can see all the way to the bend, where it looks like a tiny rock shelter is cut into the side over there, and you can see down to the bend at the other end, too.” She pointed. “No one was sneaking up on these folks. They’d be able to see anyone coming. There’s also a small niche opposite us; though from over here, there doesn’t look to be a way to access it.”
Toby thought as she took a moment to inspect the view. The two shelters she’d just pointed out were sites that his family hadn’t told a soul about. The niche straight across the canyon had been a special place to these ancient peoples, he knew for a fact. Did he dare tell her what he’d found there? His daddy would roll over in his grave. Did he dare tell her that not only that, there were also pristine panels of art up and down Ghost Canyon—sixteen rock shelters in total?
He smiled at the thought of Rose going nuts if he told her about it or, better yet, took her to one. She’d geek out so hard, and the thought of making her mind explode made a wistful smile pull the corner of his lip up higher. He knew just the rock shelter to which to take her, too, if he wanted to see her jaw drop: the one his brothers and he had dubbed the sun god shelter.
“Since there’s no way to reach either that one or this one directly from the ground overhead, they were protected in these cliff faces,” she continued. “Which makes me think that the shaman on this wall evoked protection over their everyday lives.”
“Is that your theory?” he asked. She was still standing close to the edge. “And, eh, would you mind taking a step back? You’re making me nervous.”
Her brow quirked up. “I’m making you nervous?” She dared him by slipping her foot an inch closer to the edge.
“Hey.” He lunged out and snatched her, dragging her back. “That ain’t funny.”
She looked up at him, surprised, as he noticed he’d pulled her to his chest.
“Dude, there’s, like, two feet between my foot and the edge.” Her eyes twinkled. “Are you afraid of heights?”
“Not for myself. Others, though. Those little buggers yesterday walked way too close to the edge of Cerro Casas Grandes’s path for my comfort level. It’s put me on edge more that I realized.”