Contlnued sn Next Roclc

by R, A. Lcfferfy

Up in the Big Lime country there is an upthrust, a chimney rock that is half fallen against a newer hill. It is formed of what is sometimes called Dawson Sandstone and is interlaced with tough shell. It was formed during the glacial and recent ages in the bottomlands of Crow Creek and Green River when these strearns (at least five times) were mighty rivers.

The chimney rock is only a little older than rnankind, only a little younger than grass. Its formation had been upthnrst and then eroded away again, all but such harder parts as itself and other chimneys and blocks.

A party of five persons came to this place rn'here the chimney rock had fallen against a newer hill. The people of the party did not care about the deep limestone belowr they were not geologists. They did care about the newer hill (it was man-made) and they did care a little about the rock chimney; they \vere archeologists.

Here was time heaped up, bulging out in casing and accumulation, and not in line sequence. And here also was striated and banded time, grown tall, and then shattered and broken.

The five party members came to the site early in the afternoon, bringing the working trailer down a dry creek bed, They unloaded many things and rnade a camp there. It wasn't really necessary to make a camp on the ground. There was a good motel two miles away on the highway; there was a road along the ridge above. They could have lived in comfort and made the trip to the site in ftve minutes every morning. Terrence Burdock, however, believed that one could not get the feel of a digging unless he lived on the ground with it day and night.

The five persons were Terrence Burdock, his wrfe Ethyl,

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Robert I)erby, and Howard Steinleser: four beautiful and balanced people. And Magdalen Mobley who was neither beautiful nor balanced. But she was electric; she was special. They rouched around in the formations a little after they had made camp and while there was still light. All of them had seen the formations before and had guessed that there was promise in them.

"That peculiar fluting in the broken chimney is almost like a core sample," TerTence said, "and it differs from the rest of it. It's like a lightnir,g bolt through the whole lengih. ft's already exposed for us. I believe w-e will remove the chimney entirely. It covers the perfect access for the slash in the mound, and it is the mound in which we are really interested. But we'll study the chimney first. It is so available for study."

"Oh, I can tell you everything that's in the chimn€Y," Magdalen said crossly. "I can tell you everything that's in the mound too."

"I wonder why we take the trouble to dig if you already know what we will find," Ethyl sounded archly.

"I wonder too," Magdalen gfumbled. "But we will need ttre evidence and the artifacts to show. You can't get appropriations without evidence and artifacts. Robert, 8o kilt that deer in the brush about forty yards northeast of the chimney. We may as well have deer meat if we're living primitive."

"This isn't deer season," Robert Derby objected. "And there isn't any deer there. Or, if there is, it's down in the draw where you couldn't see it. And if there's one there, it's probably u doe."

"I.{o, Robert, it is a two-year-old buck and a very big one. Of course it's in the draw where I can't see it. Forty yards northeast of the chimney would have to be in the draw. If I could see it, the rest of you could see it too. I.{ow go kill it! Are you a man or a mNrs miuotus? Floward, cut poles and set up a tripod to string and dress the deer on,"

8o

^*You had better try the thing, Robert,'o Ethyl Burdock said, "or we'll have no peace this evening."

Robert Derby took a carbine and went northeastward of the chimney, descending into the draw at forty yards_" There was the high ping of the carbine shot. And after some moments, Robert refurned with a curious grin.

"You didn't miss hi*, Robert, you killed him," MagdaIen called loudly. "You got him with a good shot through the throat and up into the brain when he tossed hls head high like they do. Why didn't you bring him? Go back and get himl"

"Get him? I couldn't even lift the thing. Terrence and Howard, come with me and we'll lash it to a pole and get it here somehow."

"Oh Robert, |ou're out of your beautiful mind," N{agdaIen chided. "It only weighs a hundred and ninety pounds. Oh, I'll get it."

Magdalen Mobley went and got the big buck. She brought it back, carrying it listlessly across her shoulders and getting herself bloodied, stoppirrg sometimes to examine rocks and kick them with her foot, coming on easily with her load. It looked as if it might weigh two hundred and fifty pounds; but if N{agdalen said it weighed a hundred and ninety, that is what it weighed.

Howard Steinleser had cut poles and made a tripod. He knew better than not to. They strung the buck up, skinned it off, ripped up its belly, drew it, and worked it over in an almost professional manner.

"Cook it, Ethyl," Magdalen said.

Later, as they sat on the ground around the fire and it had turned dark, Ethyl brought the buck's brains to Magdalen, messy and not half cooked, believing that she was playing an evil trick. And Magdalen ate them avidly. They were her due. She had discovered the buck.

If you wonder how Magdalen knew what invisible things were where, so did the other members of the party always wonder.

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"It bedeviis me sometimes why I am the only one to notice the analogy between historical geology and depth psychology," Terrence Burdock mused as they grew lightly profound around the campfire. "The isostatic principle applies to the mind and the under-mind as well as it does to the surface and undersur{ace of the earth. The mind has its erosions and r,veatherings going on along with its deposits and accurnulations. It also has its up-thrusts and its stresses. It floats on a similar magma. In extreme cases it has its volcanic eruptions and its mountain buildirrg."

"And it has its glaciations," Ethyl Burdock said, and perhaps she was looking at her husband in the dark.

"The mind has its hard sandstone, sometimes transrnuted to quartz, or half transrnuted into fiint, from the drifting and floating sand of daily events. ft has its shale from the old mud of daily ineptitudes and inertias_" It has limestone out of its more vivid experiences, for lime is the rernnant of what was once animate: and this limestone may be true marble if it is the deposit of rich enough emotion, or even travertine if it has bubbled sufficiently through agonized and evocative rivers of the under-mind. The mind has its sulphur and its gemstones—" Terrence bubbleC on sufficiently, and Nlagdalen cut him off.

"Suy simply that we have rocks in our heads," she said. "But they're random rocks, I tell you, and the same ones keep coming back. It isn't the same with us as it is rn'ith the earth. The world gets new rocks all the time. But it's the same people who keep turning up, and the same minds. Damn, one of the samest of them just turned up again! I wish he'd leave me alone. The answer is still no_""

Very often Magdalen said things that made no sense. Ethyl Burdock assured herself that neither her husband, nor Robert, nor Howard, had slipped over to Magdalen in the dark. Ethyl was jealous of the chunky and surly girl.

"I am hoping that this will be as rich as Spiro N{ound,'o Howard Steinleser hoped. "ft could be, you know. I'rn

8e

told that there was never a less prepossessing site than that, or a trickier orre. I wish we had someone who had dug at Spire."

"Oh, he d,rg at Spire," Magdalen said with contempt.

"He? Who?" Terrence Burdock asked. "No one of us was at Spiro. Magdalen, you weren't even born yet when that mound was opened, What could you know about it?"

"Yeah, I remember him at Spiro," Magdalen said, "always turning up his own things and pointing them out."

"Were you at Spiro?" Terrence suddenly asked a piece of the darkness. For sorne time, they had all been vaguely aware that there were six, and not five, persons around. the fire.

"Yeah, I was at Spiro," the man said. "I dig there. I dig at a lot of the digs. I dig real well, and I always knor when we come to something that will be important. You give me a job."

"Who are you?" Terrence asked him. The man was pretty visible rlow. The flame of the fire seemed to lean toward him as if he cornpelled it.

"Oh, I'm just a rich old poor man who keeps followitrg and hoping and asking. There is one who is worth it all forever, so I solicit that one forever. And sometimes I am other things. Two hours ago I was the deer in the dravr. It is an odd thing to munch one's own flesh." And the man was munchitrg a joint of the deer, unasked.

"Him and his damn cheap poetry!" Magdalen cried angrily_"

"What's your name?" Terrence asked him.

^*ManlT)enny. Anteros Manytrlenny is my name forever."

"What are you?"

"Oh, iust Indian. Shawnee. Choe, Creek, Anadarko, Caddo and pre-Caddo. Lots of things."

"How could anyone be pre-CaddoP" Like me. I am.

^*fs Anteros a Creek name?"

^*No. Greek. Man, I am a going Jessie, f am one digging mant I show you tomorro\v'."

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I\{an, he was one digging man! He showed them tomorrow. With a short-handled rose hoe he began the gash in the bottorn of the mound, working too swiftly to be believed.

"He will smash anythitg that is there. He will not know what he comes to," Ethyl Burdock complained.

"Wom&r, I will not smash whatever is there," Anteros said. "You can hide a wren's egg in one cubic meter of sand.. I will move all the sand in one minute. I will uncover the egg wherever it is. And I will not crack the egg. I sense these things. I come now to a small pot of the proto-Plano period. It is broken, of course, but I do not break it. It is in six pieces and they will fit together perfectly. I tell you this beforehand. I{ow f reveal it."

And Anteros revealed it, There was something wrong about it even before he uncovered it. tsut it was surely a find, and perhaps it NDas of the proto-Plano pericd. The six shards came out. They were roughly cleaned and set. It was apparent that they would fit wonderfully.

"Why, it is perfect!" Ethyl exclaimed.

"It is too perfect," Howard Steinleser protested. "It was a turned pot, and who had turned pots in America without the potter's wheel? But the glyphs pressed into it do correspond to proto-Plano glyphs. It is fishy." Steinleser was in a twitchy humor today and his face was livid.

"Yes, it is the ripple and the spinosity, the fish-glIph_o" Anteros pointed out. "And the sun-sign is riding upon it. It is fish-god."

"It's fishy in another way," Steinleser insisted. "I.{obody finds a thing like that in the first sixty seconds of a dig. And there could not be such a pot. I wouldn't believe it was proto-Plano unless points were found in the exact site with it."

^*Oh here," Anteros said. "One can srnell the very shape of the flint points already. Two large points, one small one. Surely you get the whiff of them already? Four more hoe cuts and I come to theilt."

Four more hoe cuts, and Anteros di,d corne to them. He

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uncovered two large points and one small one, spearheads and arrowhead. Lanceolate they were, with ribbon flaking. They were late Folsom, or they were proto-Plano; they were what you will.

"This cannot be," Steinleser groaned. "They're the missing chips, the transition pieces. They fill the missing place too well. I won't believe it. I'd hardly believe it if rnastodon bones were found on the same level here."

"fn a moment," said Anteros, beginning to use the hoe again. "Hey, those old beasts did smell funng! An elephant isn't in it with them. And a lot of it still clings to their bones. Wiil a sixth thoracic bone do? I'm pretty sure that's what it is. f don't know where the rest of the animal is. Probably somebody gnawed the thoracic here. Nine hoe cuts, and then very careful."

Nine hoe cuts—and then Anteros, using a mason's trowel, unearthed the old gnawed bone very carefully. Yes, Howard said almost angrily, it was a sixth thoracic of a mastodon. Robert Derby said it was a fifth or a sixth; it is not easy to tell.

"Leave the digging for a while, Anteros," Steinleser said. "f want to record and photograph and take a few measurements here."

Terrence Burdock and Magdalen Mobley were working at the bottom of the chimney rock, at the bottom of the fluting that ran the whole height of it like a core sample.

"Get Anteros over here and see what he can uncover in sixty seconds_r" Terrence offered.

"Oh him! He'll just uncover some of his own things."

"What do you mean, his own things? Nobody could have made an intnrsion here. It's hard sandstone."

"And harder flint here," Magdalen said. "I might have known it. Pass the damned thing up. I know iust about what it says anyhow."

"What it says? What do you meanP But it is markedt And it's large and dressed rough. Who'd carve in flint?"

"somebody real stubbonr, just like flint_r" Magdalen

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said. ^*All right then, let's have it out. Anteros! Get this out in one piece. And do it without shattering it or tumbling the whole thing down on rrs. He can do it, you know, Terrence. He can do things like that."

"What do you know about his doings, MagdalenP You never saw or heard about the poor man till last night."

"Oh well, I know that it'll turn out to be the same damned stuf[."

Anteros did get it out without shattering it or bringing down the chimney column. A cleft with a digging bar, three stieks of the str-rff and a cap, and he touched the leads to the battery when he was almost on top of the charge. The blast, it sounded as if the whole sky were falling down on them, and some of those sky-blocks were quite large stones. The ancients wondered why fallen pieces of the sky should always be dark rock-stuff and never sky-blue clear stuff. The answer is that it is only pieces of the night sky that ever fall, even though they may sometirnes be most of the daytime in fallirg, such is the distance. And the blast that Anteros set off did bring down rocky hunks of the night sky even though it was broad daylight. They brought down darker rocks than any of which the chimney was composed.

Still, it was a small blast. The chimney tottered but did not collapse. It settled back uneasily on its base. And the flint block was out in the clear.

"A thousand spearheads and arrowheads could be shattered and chipped out of that hunk," Terrence rnarveled. "That flint block would have been a primitive fortune for a primitive man."

"I had several such fortun€s," Anteros said dully, ^*and this one I preserved and dedicated."

They had all gathered around it.

^*Oh the poor man!" Ethyl suddenly exclaimed. But she was not looking at any of the men. She was looking at the stone.

"I wish he'd get off that kick,ⁿ' Magdalen sputtered

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angrily. "f don't care how rich he is. I can pick up better stuff than him in the alleys."

"What are the women chirping about?" Terrence asked. "But those do look like true glyphs. Almost like Aztec, are they not, Steinleser?"

"Nahuat-Tanoan, cousins-gerrnan to the Aztec, or should I say cousins-yaqui?"

"Call it anfhirg, but can you read it?"

"Probably. Give me eight or ten hours on it and I should come up with a contingent reading of many of the glyphs. We can hardly expect a rational renderirrg of the message, however. AII Nahuat-Tanoan translations so far have been gibberish."

"And remember, Terrence, that Steinleser is a slorv reader," Magdalen said spitefully. ^*And he isn't very good at interpreting othnr signs either."

Steinleser was sullen and silent. How had his face come to bear those deep livid claw-marks today?

They moved a lot of rock and rubble that morning, took quite a few picfures, wrote up bulky notes. There were constant finds as the divided party worked up the shag-slash in the rnound and the core-flute of the chimney. There were no more really startling discoveries; no more turned pots of the proto-Plano period; how could there be? There were no more preficted and perfect points of the late Folsom, but there were broken and unpredictable points. No other mastodon thoracic was found, but bones were uncovered oI bi,son latifrorw₂ of dire wolf, of coyote, of man. There were some anomalies in the relationships of the things discovered, but it was not as fishy as it had been in the early mornitrg, not as ftshy as when Anteros had announced and then dng out the shards of the pot, the three points, the rnastodon bone. The things now were as authentic as they were expected, and yet their very profusion had still the smell of a small fish.

And that Anteros was one digging man. He moved the

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sand, he moved the stone, he missed nothing. And at noon he disappeared.

An hour later he reappeared in a glossy station wagon, coming out of a thicketed ravine where no one would have expected a way. He had been to town. He brought a variety of cold cuts, cheeses, relishes, and pastries, a couple cases of cold beer, and some V.O.

"I thought you were a poor man, Anteros_r" Terrence chided.

"I told you that I was a rich old poor nlan. I have nine thousand acres of grassland, I have three thousand head of cattle, I have alfalfa land and clover land and corn land and huy-grazer land—"

"Oh, knock it off!" Magdalen snapped.

"I have other things," Anteros finished sullenly.

They ate, they rested, they worked the afternoon. Ndagdalen worked as swiftly and solidly as did Anteros. She was young, she was stocky, she was light-burned-dark. She was not at all beautiful. (Ethyl was.) She could have any man there any time she wanted to. (Ethyl couldn't.) She was Magdalen, the often unpleasant, the mostly casual, the suddenly intense one. She was the tension of the party, the string of the bow.

"Anteros!" she called sharply just at sundown.

"The turtleP" he asked. "The turtle that is under the ledge out of the current where the backwater curls in reverse? But he is fat and huppy and he has never harmed anything except for food or fun. I know you do not want me to get that turtle."

"I do! There's eighteen pounds of him. He's fat. Fle'll be good. OoIy eighty yards, where the bank crumbles down to Green River, under the lower ledge that's shale that looks like slate, two feet deep—"

"tr know where he is. I will go get the fat turtle," Anteros said. "I myself arn the fat turtle. I am the Green River." He went to get it.

"Oh that damned poetry of hist" Magdalen spat when he was gone.

B8

Anteros brought back the fat turtle. He looked as if he'd weigh twenty-five pounds; but if Magdalen said he weighed eighteen pounds, then it was eighteer].

"Start cooking, Ethyl_:' Magdalen said. Magdalen was a mere undergraduate girl permitted on the figgttrg by sheer good fortune. The others of the party were all archeologists of moment. Magdalen had no right to g.ve orders to anyone, except her born right.

"I don't know how to cook a furtle," Ethyl cornplained.

"Anteros will show you how."

"The late evening smell of newly exposed excavation!" Terrence Burdock burbled as they lounged around the campfire a little later, full of turtle and V.O. and feeling rakishly wise. "The exposed age can be guessed by the very timbre of the smell, I believe."

"Timbre of the smell! What is your nose rvired up toP" from Magdalen.

And, indeed, there was something time-evocative about the smell of the diggings: cool, at the same time musty and musky, ripe with old stratified water and compressed death. Stratified time.

"It helpr if you already know what the exposed age is," said Howard Steinleser. "Here there is an anomaly. The chimney sometimes acts as if it were younger than the mound. The chimney cannot be young enough to include written rock, but it is."

"Archeology is made up entirely of anomalies," said Terrence, "rearranged to make them fit in a fluky pattenr. There'd. be no system to it otherwise."

"Every science is made up entirely of anomalies rearanged to fit," said Robert Derby. "Have you unriddled the glyph-stone, HowardP"

"Yes, pretty well. Better than I expected. Charles August can verify it, of course, when we get it back to the university. It is a non-royal, non-tribal, non-warfare, non-hunt declaration. It does not come under any of the usual rafical signs, any of the categories. It can only be categor-

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ized as uncategoried or personal. The translation will be rough."

"Rocky is the rvord," said Magdalen.

"On with it, Howard," Ethyl cried.

"'You are the freedom of wild pigs in the sour-grass, and the nobility of badgers. You are the brightness of serpents and the soaring of vultures. You are passion of mesquite bushes on ftre with lightning. You are serenity of toads."'

"You've got to admit he's got a different line," said trthyl. ^*Your own love notes \,vere less acrid, Terrence."

"What kind of thing is it, Steinleser?" Terrence questioned. "It must have a category."

"I believe trthyl is right. It's a love poem_" 'You are the water in rock cisterns and the secret spiders in that water. You are the dead coyote lying half in the stream, and you are the old entrapped dreams of the coyote's brains oaziog liquid through the broken eyesocket. You are the huppy ravenirrg flies about that broken socket,"'

"Oh, hold it, Steinleser," Robert Derby cried. "You can't have gotten all that frcm scratches on flint. What is 'entrapped dreams' in Nahuat-Tanoan glyph-writing?"

"The solid-person sign next to the hollorv-person sign, both enclosed in the night sign—that has always been interpreted as the dream glyph. And here the dream glyph is enclosed in the glyph of the deadfall trap. Yes, I believe it means entrapped dreams. To continue: 'You are the corn-worrn in the dark heart of the corn, tire naked small bird in the nest. You are the pustules on the sick rabbit, devouring life and flesh and turning it into your own serum. You are stars compressecl into charcoal. But you cannot Sve, you cannot take. Once again you will be broken at the foot of the cliff, and the word wilt remain unsaid in your swollen and purpled tongue."

"A love poem, perheps, but with a difference" said Robert Derby.

"I never was able to go his stu{f, and I tried, I really tried_r" Magdalen moaned.

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^*Here is the change of person-subject shown by the canted-eye Slyph linked with the self-gllph," Steinleser explained. "It is now a first-person talk. 1 own ten thousand back-loads of corn. I own gold and beans and nine buffalo horns full of watermelon seeds. I own the loincloth that the sun wore on his fourth journey across the sky. Only three loincloths in the world are older and more valued than this. I cry out to you in a big voice like the hammering of herons' (that sound-verb-particle is badly translated, the hammer being not a. modern pounding hammer but a rock angling, chipping hammer) 'and the belching of buffalos. My love is sinervy as entwined snakes, it is steadfast as the sloth, it is like a feathered arrow shot into your abdomen—such is my love. Why is my love unrequited.?' "

"I challenge you, Steinleser," Terrence Burdock cut in. "What is the glyph for 'unrequited'?"

"The gtyph of the extended hand—with all the fingers bent backwards. ft goes oil, 'f roar to you. Do not throw yourself down. You believe you are on the hanging sky bridge, but you are on the terminal cliff. I grovel before you. I am no more than dog-droppings."'

"You'll notice he said that and not me," Magdalen burst out. There was always a fundamental incoherence about Magdalen.

"Ah—continue, Steinleser_r" said Terrerfce. "The grl is daft, or she dreams out loud."

"That is all of the inscription, Terrence, except for a final glyph which f don't understand. Gl)ryh writing takes a lot of room. That's all the stone would hold."

"What is the glyph that you don't understand, Howard?"

"It's the spear-thrower gbph entwined with the time glyph. ft sometimes means 'flung forward or beyond.' But what does it mean here?"

"ft means 'continu€d_r' dummy, 'continued_r"' Magdalen said. "Do not fear. There'll be more stones."

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^*I think it's beautiful," said Ethyl Burdock, ^*in its own context, of course."

"Then why don't you take him or, Ethyl, in his own context, of coutrse?" Magdalen asked. "Myself, I don't care how many back-loads of corn he owns. f've had it.^-

"Take whom on, dear?" Ethyl asked. "Howard Stein-leser can interpret the stones, but who can interpret our Magdalen?"

"Oh, I can read her like a rock_r" Terrence Burdock smiled. But he couldn't.

But it had fastened on them. It was all about them and through thern: the brightness of serpents and the serenity of toads, the secret spiders in the water, the entrapped dreams oozing through the broken eyesocket, the pustules of the sick rabbit, the belching of buffalo, and the arrow shot into the abdomen. A,.nd around it all was the night smell of flint and turned earth and chuckling streams, the mustiness, and the special rnuskiness which bears the name Nobility of Badgers.

They talked archeology and myth talk. Then it was steep night, and the morning of the third d*y.

Oh, the sample digging went well. This was already a richer mound than Spiro, though the gash in it was but a small promise of things to come. And the curious twin of the mound, the broken chimnay, confirmed and confounded and contradicted. There was time gone wrong in the chimney, or at least in the curious fluted core of it; the rest of it was nonnal enough, and sterile enough.

Anteros worked that d*y with a soft sullenness, and I\{agdalen brooded with a sort of lightnitg about her.

"Beads, glass beadsl" Terrence Burdock exploded angrily. "All right! Who is the hoaxer in our midstP I will not tolerate this at all." Terrence had been ansy of face all d"y. He was clawed deeply, as Steinleser had been the d*y before, md he was sour on the world.

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"There have been glass-bead caches before, Terrence, hundreds of them," Robert Derby said softly.

'There have been hoaxers before, hundreds of them,'" Terrence howled. "These have 'Hong Kong Contemporury' written all over them, damned cheap glass beads sold by the pound. They have no business in a stratum of around the year seven hundred. All right, who is guilty?"

"I don't believe that any one of us is gUilty, Terrence," Ethyl put in mildly. "They are found four feet in from the slant surface of the mound. Why, we've cut through three hundred years of vegetable loam to get to them, and certainly the surface was eroded beyond that."

"We are scientists," said Steinleser. "We find these. Others have found such. Let us consider the improbabilities of it."

It was noon, so they ate and rested and considered the improbabilities. Anteros had brought them a great ioint of white pork, and they made sandwiches and drank beer and ate pickles.

'You know," said Robert l)erby, "that beyond the rank impossibility of glass beads found so many times where they could, not be found, there is a real mystery about all early Indian beads, whether of bone, stone, or antler. There are millions and millions of these fine beads with pierced holes finer than any piercer ever found. There are residues, there are centers of every other Indian industry, and there is evolution of every other tool. Why have there been these millions of pierced beads, and never one piercer? There was no technique to make so fine a piercer. How were they done?"

Magdalen giggled. "Bead-spitter," she said..

"Bead-spitter! You're out of your fuzzy mind," Terrence enrpted. "That's the silliest and least sophisticated of all Indian legends."

"But it os the legend," said Robert Derby, ^*the legend of more than thirty separate tribes. The Carib Indians of Cuba said that they got their beads from Bead-spitters.

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The Indians of Panama told Balboa the same thing. The fndians of the pueblos told the same story to Coronado. Every Indian community had an Indian who was its Bead-spitter. There are Creek and Alabama and Koasati stories of Bead-spitter; see Swanton's collections. And his stories were taken down within living memory.

"More than that, when European trade-beads were ftrst introduced, there is one account of an Indian receiving some and saying, 'I will take some to Bead-spitter. If he sees them, he can spit thern too.' And that Bead-spitter did then spit them by the bushel. There was never any other Indian account of the origin of their beads. AII rvere spit by a Bead-spitter."

"F.eally, this is very unreal," Ethyl said. Really it was.

"Hog hokey! A Bead-spitter of around the year seven hundred could not spit future beads, he could not spit cheap Hong Kong glass beads of the present timel" Ter-rence was very angry.

"Pardon ffi€, yes sir, he could," said Anteros. "A tsead-spitter can spit future beads, if he faces l{orth when he spits. That has always been knowfi."

Terrence was angry, he fumed and poisoned the duy for thern, and the claw marks on his face stood out livid purple. He was angrier yet when he said that the curious dark capping rock on top of the chimney was dangerous, that it would fall and kill sorneone; and Anteros said that there was no such capping rock on the chinnney, that Terrence's eyes were deceivir.g hi*, that Terrence should go sit in the shade and rest.

And Terrence became excessively angry when he discovered that N,fagdalen was trying to hide somethirrg that she had discovered in the fluted core of the chimney. It was a large and heavy shale-stone, too heavy even for Magdalen's puzzlittg strength. She had dragged it out of the chimney flute, tumbled it down to the bottom, and was trying to cover it with rocks and scarp.

"Robert, mark the extraction pointt" Terrence called

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loudly. "It's quite plain yet. Magdalen, stop thatt Whatever it is, it must be examined now."

"Oh, it's just more of the darnned same thing! I wish he'd let me alone. With his kind of money he can get plenty girls. Besides, it's private, Temence. You don't have any business reading it."

"You are hysterical, Magdalen, and you may have to leave the digging site."

"I wish I could leave. I can't. I wish I could love. I can't. Why isn't it enough that I die?"

"Howard, spend the afternoon on this_r" Terrence ordered. "It has writing of a sort on it. If it's what I think it is, it scares me. It's too recent to be in any eroded chimney rock formation, Howard, and it comes from far below the top. Read it."

"A few hours on it and I may come up with something. I never saw anything like it either. What did you think it was, Terrence?"

"What do you think I think it is? ft's much later than the other, and that one was impossible. I'll not be the one to confess myself crazy first."

Howard Steinleser went to work on the incised stone; and two hours before sundown they brought him another one, a gray soapstone block from higher up. Whatever this was covered with, it was not at all the same thirrg that covered the shale-stone.

And elsewhere things went well, too well. The old fishiness was back on it. No series of finds could be so perfect, no petrification could be so well ordered.

"Robert," Magdalen called down to Robert Derby iust at sunset, "in the high meadow above the shore, about four hundred yards down, just past the old fence line—"

"—there is a badger hole, Magdatren. Now you have me doing it, seeirrg invisible things at a distance. And if I take a carbine and stroll down there quietly, the badger will stick his head out just as I get there (I being strongly

e5

downwind of him), and I'll blam hirn between the eyes, He'lI be a big one, fifty pounds."

"Thirty. Bring him, Robert. You're showing a little understanding at last."

"But, Magda1en, badger is rampant meat. It's seldom eaten."

"Moy not the condemned girl have what she wishes for her last meal? Go get it, Robert."

Robert went. The voice of the little carbine was barely heard at that distance, Soon, Robert brought back the dead baclger,

"Cook it, trthyl," Magdalen ordered_"

"'Yes, I know. And if I don't know how, Anteros will show me." But Anteros was gone. Robert found him on a sundown knoll with his shoulders hunched. The odd nnan was sobbing silently and hls face seeil]ed to be rnade out of dull pumice stone, But he came back to aid Ethyl in preparing the baCger.

^*rf the first of today's stones scared you, the second should have lifted the hair right off your head, Terrenc€," Howard Steinleser said.

"ft does, it does. All the stones are too recent to be in a chimney forrnation, but this last one is an insult. It isn't two hundred years old, but there's a thousand years of strata above it. What time is deposited thereP"

They had eaten rampant badger meat and drunk inferior whisky (which Anteros, who had given it to them, didn't know was inferior), and the muskiness was both inside them and around thern. The campfire sometimes spit angrily with srnall explosions, and its glare reached high when it did so. By one such leaping glare, Terrence Burdock saw that the curious dark capping rock \,vas once more on the top of the chimney. He thought he had seen it there in the daytime; but it had not been there after he had sat in the shade and rested, and it had absolutely not been there when he climbed the chimney itself to be sure.

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^*Let's have the second chapter and then the third, Howard," Ethyl said. "It's neater that way."

"Yes. WeIl, the second chapter (the first and lowest and apparently the earliest rock we came on today) is written in a language that no one ever saw written before; and yet it's no great trouble to read it. Even Ter-rence guessed what it was and it scared him. It is Anadarko-Caddo hand-talk graven in stone. It is what is called the sign language of the Plains Indians copied down in formalized pictograms. And it has to be very recent, within the last three hundred years. Hand-talk was fragmentary at the first coming of the Spanish, and well developed at the first coming of the French. It was an explosive developrnent, as such things go, worked out within a hundred years. This rock has to be younger than its situs, but it was absolutely found in place."

"Read it, Howard, read it," Robert Derby called, Robert was feeling fine and the rest of them were gloomy tonight.

" 'I own three hundred ponies,' Steinleser read the rock out of his memory. 'I own two days' ride north and east and south, and one day's ride west. I give you all. I blast out with a big voice like fire in tall trees, like the explosion of crowning pine trees. I cry like closing-in wolves, like the high voice of the lion, like the hoarse screarn of torn calves. Do you not destroy yourself again! You are the dew on crazy-weed in the morning. You are the swift crooked wings of the night-hawk, the dainty feet of the skunk, /ou are the juice of the sour squash. Why can you not take or give? I am the humpbacked bull of the high plains, I arn the river itself and the stagnant pools left by the river, I am the raw earth and the rocks. Come to ffi€, but do not come so violently as to destroy yourself.'

"Ah, that was the text of the first rock of the duy, the ,d.nadarko-Caddo hand-talk graven in stone. And ftnal pictograms which I don't understandi a shot-arrow sign, and a boulder beyond."

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^*'Continued on next rock_r' of course," said Robert Derby. "Well, why usasn't hand-talk ever written downP The signs are sirnple and easily stylized and they were understood by many different tribes. ft would have been natural to write it."

'Alphabetical writing was in the region before hand-talk was well develop€d," Terrence Burdock said. "rn fact, it was the coming of the Spanish that gave the impefus to hand-talk. It was really developed for communication between Spanish and Indian, not between Indian and indian. And yet, I believe, hand-taik u)as written down once; it was the beginning of the Chinese picto-graphs. And there also it had its beginning as communication between differing peoples. Depend on it, if all mankind had always been of a single languog€, there would never have been any written language developed at all. Writing always began as a bridge, and there had to be some chasm for it to bridge."

^*We have one to bridge here," said Steinleser. "That whole chimney is full of rotten smoke. The highest part of it should be older than the lowest part of the mound, since the mound was built on a base eroded away frorn the chimney formation. But in many ways they seem to be contemporary. We must all be under a spell here. We've worked two days on this, parts of three days, and the total impossibility of the situation hasn't stnrck us yet,

"The old Nahuatlan glyphs for Time are the chimney glyphs. Present time is a lower part of a chimney and. fire burning at the base. Past time is black smoke from a chimnay, and future time is white smoke from a chimney. There was a signature glyph running through our yesterday's stone which I didn't and don't understand. It seemed to indicate somethitg coming down out of the chimney rather than going up it."

"It really doesn't look much like a chimne/," Magdalen said.

^*And a maiden doesnt look much like dew on crazy-

9B

weed in the mornitrg, Magdalen," Robert Derby said, 'but we recognize these identities."

They talked a while about the impossibility of the whole business.

"'tr'here are scales on our eyes_r" Steinleser said. "The fluted core of the chimney is wrong. I'm not even sure the rest of the chirnney is right."

"No, it isn't_r" said Robert Derby. "We can identify rnost of the strata of the chimney with known periods of the river and stream. I was above and below today. There is one stretch where the sandstone was not eroded at all, where it stands three hundred yards back from the shifted river and is overlaid with a hundred years of loam and sod. There are other sections where the stone is cut away variously. We ean tell when most of the chimney was laid down, w€ can find its correspondences up to a few hundred years ago. But when were the top ten feet of it laid down? There were no correspondences anywhere to that, The centuries represented by the strata of the top of the chimnay, people, those centuries haven't h*ppened yet."

"And when was the dark capping rock on top of it all formed.—?" Terrence began. 'Ah, I'm out of my mind. It isn't there. I'm demented."

"No nnore than the rest of us," said Steinleser. ^*I saw it too, I thought, today. And then I didn't see it again."

"The rock-writing, it's like an old novel that I only half remember," said Ethyl.

"Oh, that's what it is, y€s," Magdalen murmured.

"But I don't remember what happened to the girl in it.^tt

"f remember what happened to her, Ethyl," Magdalen said.

"Give us the third chapter, Howard_r" Ethyl asked, ^o'I want to see how it comes out,"

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^*First you should all have u'hisky for those colds," Anteros suggested humbly.

"But none of us have colds," Ethyt objected.

'You talce your own medical advice, Ethyl, and I'll take mine," Terrence said. "I will have whisky. My cold is not rheum but fear-clrill."

They all had whisky. They talked a while, and some of them dozed.

"It's late, Howaf,d_r" Ethyl said after a while. "Let's have the next chapter. Is it the last chapter? Then we'll sleep. We have honest digging to do tomorrow."

"Our third stone, our second stone of the duy just past, is another and even later form of lvriting, and it has never been seen in stone before. It is Kiowa picture writing. The Kiowas did their out-turning spiral writing on buffalo skins dressed almost as fine as vellum. In its more sophisticated form (and this is a copy of that) it is quite late. The Kiowa picture writing probably did not arrive at its excellence until influenced by white artists.'n

"How late, Steinleser?" Robert Derby asked.

"Not more than a hundred and fifty years old. But I have never seen it copied in stone before. ft simply isn't stone-styled. There^t a lot of things around here lately that I haven't seen before.

"Well then, to the text, or should I say the pictography? 'You fear the earth, you fear rough ground and rocks, you fear moister earth and rotting flesh, you fear the flesh itself, all flesh is rotting flesh. If you love not rotting flesh, you love not at all. You believe the bridge hanging in the tky, the bridge hung by tendrils and woody vines that diminish as they go up and up till they are no thicker than hairs. There is no sky-bridg", you cannot go upon it. Did you believe that the roots of love grow upside downP They come out of deep earth that is old flesh and brains and hearts and entrails, that is old buffalo bowels and snakes' pizzles, that is black blood and rot and moaning underground. This is old and worn-out

100

and bloody time, and the roots of love grow out of its gore.^t"

"You seem to grve remarkable detailed translations of the simple spiral pictures, Steinleser, but I begin to get in the mood of it," Terrence said.

"Ah, perhaps I cheat a little," said steinleser.

"You lie a lot," Magdalen challenged.

^*No I do not. There is some basis for every phrase I've used. It goes on: 'I own twenty-two trade rifl.es. I own ponies. I own Mexico silver, eight-bit pieces. I am rich in all ways. I give all to you. I cry out with big voice like a bear full of mad-weed, like a bullfrog in love, like a stallion rearing against a puma. It is the earth that calls you. I am the earth, wootrlier than wolves and rougher than rocks. I am the bog earth that sucks you in. You cannot give, you cannot take, You cannot love, you think there is somethittg else, you think there is a sky-bridge you may loiter on without crashing down. I am bristled-bout earth, there is no other. You will come to me in the morning. You will come to me easy and with grace. Or you will come to me reluctant and you be shattered in every bone and member of you. You be broken by outr encounter. You be shattered as by a lightning bolt striking up from the earth. I am the red calf which is in the r,vritings. I am the rotting red earth. Live in the morning or die in the mornins, but remember that love in death is better than no love at all.'"

"Oh brotherl Nobody gets that stuff from such kid pictures, Steinleser," Robert Derby rnoaned.

^*Ah well, that's the end of the spiral picture. And a Kiowa spiral pictograph ends with either an in-sweep or an out-sweep line. This ends with an out-sw€€P, which means—"

"'Continued on next rock,' that's what it means," Terrence cried roughly.

"You won't ftnd the next rocks," Magda]"en said. ^*They're hidden, and most of the time they're not there yet, but they will go on and on. But for all that, you'll

101

read it in the rocks tomorrow morning. I want it to be over with. Oh, I don't larow what f want!"

"I believe I know what you want tonight, Magdalen," Robert Derby said.

But he didn't.

The talk trailed off, the fire burned down, they went to their sleeping sacks.

Then it was long jagged night, and the morning of the fourth d*y. But wait! In Nahuat-Tanoan legend, the world ends on the fourth morning. All the lives we lived or th_ought we lived had been but dreams of third night. The loincloth that the sun wore on the fourth day's journey was not so valuable as one has made out. It was worn for no more than an hour or so.

And, in fact, there was something terminal about fourth rnorning. Anteros had disappeared. Magdalen had disappeared. The chirnney rock looked greatly diminished in its bulk (something had gone out of it) and much crazier in its broken height. The sun had come up a garish gray-orange color through fog. The signature-glyph of the first stone dominated the ambient. It was as if somethirrg were coming down from the chimney, a horrifyirrg smoke; but it was only noisome morning fog.

No it wasn't. There was somethirrg else coming down from the chimnay, or from the hidden sky: pebbles, stones, indescribable bits of foul oozings, the less fastidious pieces of the sky; a light nightmare rain had begun to fall there; the chimney was apparently beginning to crumbtre.

"rt's the damnedest thing I ever heard about," Robert Derby growled. "Do you think ttrat Magdalen really went off with AnterosP" Derby was bitter and fumatory this morning and his face was badly clawed.

"who is Magdalen? Who is AnterosP" Ethyl Burdock asked.

Terrence Burdock was hooting from high on the mound. "All come up," he called. "Here is a find that

102

will make it all worthwhile. We'll have to photo and sketch and measure and record and witness. It's the finest basalt head I've ever seen, man-srzed, and I suspect that there's a man-sized body attached to it. We'll soon clean it and clear it. Gahl What a weird fellow he was!"

But Howard Steinleser was studying a brightly cotrored somethirrg that he held in his two hands.

"What is it, Howard? What are you doing?" Derby demanded.

"Ah, I believe this is the next stone in the sequellce. The writing is alphabetical but deformed, there is an elernent missing. I believe it is in modern English, and. I will solve the deformity and see it true in a minute. The text of it seems to be—"

Rocks and stones were coming down from the chimneY, and fog, amnesic and wit-stealing fog.

"steinleser, are you all right?" Robert Derby asked with compassion. "That isn't a stone that you hold in your hand."

"It isn't a stone. I thought it was. What is it then?"

"It is the fruit of the Osage orange tree, the American Meraceous. It isn't a stone, Howard." And the thing was a tough, woody, wrinkled mock-orange, as big as a small rnelon.

'Tou have to admit that the wrinkles look a little bit like writing, Robert."

'Yes, they look a little like writing, Howard. Let us go up where Terrence is bawling for rrs. You've read too many stones. And it isn't safe here."

"Why go up, HowardP The other thing is coming down."

It was the bristled-boar earth reaching up with a rumble. It was a lightning bolt struck upward out of the earth, and it got its prey. There was explosion and roar. The dark capping rock was ierked from the top of the chimney and slammed with terrible force to the earth, shattering with a great shock. And something else that had been

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on that capping rock. And the whole chirnney collapsed about them.

She was broken by the erlcounter. She was shattered in every bone and member of her. And she was dead.

"Who—who is she?" Howard Steinleser stuttered.

^*oh Godl_ Magdalen, of courset" Robert Derby cried.

"f remember her a little bit. Didn't understand her. she put out like an evoking moth but she wouldn't be had_' Near clawed the face off me the other night when I misunderstood the signals. She believed theie was a sky-bridg". ft's in a lot of the mythologies. But there isn't one, you know. Oh well."

"The girl is dead! Damnation! what are you doing grubbirrg in those stones?"

'Maybe she isn't dead in them yet, Robert. r'm going to read what's here before somethitrg happens to thr* This capping rock that fell and broke, it'; i*p"rsible, of course. ft's a stratum that hasn't been laid down yet. I always did want to read the future and I mav1 never get another chance."

"You fooll The girl's dead! Does nobody carcP Terrence, stop bellowittg about your find. Come down. The girl's dead."

"come up, Robert and Howard," Terrence insisted. "Leave that broken stuff down there. ft's worthless. But nobody ever saw anything like this."

"Do come up, men_r" Ethyl sang. "oh, it's a wonderful piece! I never saw anything lik" lt in my life."

"Ethyl, is the whole morning mad?^- Robert Derby demanded as he came up to her. "she's dead. Don'i you really remember her? Don't you remember Magdalen?"

^*I'm not sure. Is she the girl down there? Isn'i she the same girl who's be_en hanging around here a couple days? she shouldn't have been playing on that high ,oik. I'm sorry she's dead. But just look what we're ,rrr.ouering herel"

o'Terrence. Don't aou remember N{agdalen?"

"The girl down there? She's a little bit like the grrl that

Lo4

clawed the hell out of me the other night. Next time someone goes to town they might mention to the sheriff that there's a dead girl here. Robert, did you ever see a face tike this one? And it digs away to reveal the shoulders. I believe there's a whole man-sized figure here. Wonderful, wonderfull"

"Terrence, you're off your head. Well, do you remember Anteros?"

"Certainly, the twin of Eros, but nobody ever made much of the symbol of unsuccessful love. Thunderl That's the name for himl It fits him perfectly. We'll call him Anteros."

Well, it uos Anteros, lifelike in basalt stone. His face was contorted. He was sobbing soundlessly and ftozenly and his shoulders were hunched with emotiolr. The carving was fascinating in its miserable passion, his stony love unrequited. Perhaps he was more impressive now than he would be when he was cleaned. He was earth, he was earth itself. Whatever period the carving belonged to, it was outstanding in its power.

"The live Anteros, Terrence. Don't you rernember our digging man, Anteros Manypenny?"

"Sure. He didn't show up for work this morning, did he? Tell him he's fired."

"Magdalen is deadt She was one of us! Dammit, she was the main one of ust" Robert Derby cried. Terrence and Ethyl Burdock were earless to his outburst. They were busy uncovering the rest of the carving.

And down below, Howard Steinleser was studying dark broken rocks before they would disappear, studying a stratum that hadn't been laid down yet, reading a, foggy future.