Son of a bitch, but it was cold. Ralph Hansom leaned against the truck and shrugged deeper into the long wool coat he'd bought on one of his trips back east. The hicks in Allegro had laughed at him the first time he'd worn it on the streets there. No one would ever need a coat like that this far south, they'd told him. Well, he was the one laughing now. Maybe they hadn't had so much as a killing frost until a week ago, but those bastards digging and crawling through the tunnels not a quarter of a mile away were freezing their asses off now.
He stamped his feet, feeling the crunch of the frozen grass beneath them. There was one blessing to the cold. With all the rain they'd had, even the abandoned roadbed where they'd parked wouldn't have been protection enough, but maybe Jackson wouldn't get mired down trying to get out of here after all.
Not that he was worried about Tom Jackson. He'd paid the man enough over the years for him to take the risk. And if Jackson hadn't figured out he was risking more than losing his new truck in the river bottoms if it mired down, if the men who owned the leases for digging found out what he was doing—and had been doing since long before they had taken steps to legitimize their own plundering—then who was he to tell him?
Should he be here? He hadn't bothered to return since his first visit two years ago, when dealers had been invited but were treated like beggars for the grave goods being brought out. He'd long before learned the general location of where Jackson was obtaining the objects he'd been bringing him for almost a decade, just not exactly where and how, something he'd rather not be too familiar with. Rather than submit himself to the haggling, the bickering, the total lack of respect he'd found on that one trip, he'd decided to continue his more than lucrative association with the one-time dirt farmer. And Jackson hadn't been averse to doing so. Granted, it was a little more risky for him than it had once been, but the artifacts more than made up for the increased sums the man demanded.
Ralph could see the flare of bonfires from the site, smell—what? Cedar?—burning, and hear the noises from the digging, oaths and groans and shouts all carried on the wind from the northwest that hurried across the river but seemed to gather strength when it reached the grove where Hansom and the truck waited.
Oaths and groans and shouts and—and what? For a moment Hansom thought he heard footsteps in the frostbitten underbrush beneath the trees surrounding him. The footsteps of something large and restless. Pacing. Pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth. For a moment he thought he saw a glow—Someone coming with a torch? But that was gone. And then it wasn't his eyes that were alerted to strange goings-on but his ears. A growl?
The wind.
Moaning through the dead leaves still clinging to otherwise bare branches.
Moaning around the hills to the west that had been built by a race far removed from the one that now scrabbled to find the treasures hidden there.
Moaning in the dips and hollows of the river-bottom lands and erosion creeks.
Still—
A branch snapped beneath something heavy, and Ralph Hansom swung around with an oath of his own.
Another branch broke in the underbrush. Hansom twisted in that direction, reaching for the Colt revolver in his overcoat's deep pocket. This time he was sure he heard a growl. Mountain lion? It was possible farther south, but here, along the river? Whatever it was, it was big. Damned big.
He heard the wind moan again, recognizing it this time for what it was, and told himself to relax. He was getting too old for skulking in the bushes. If tonight hadn't been the last chance, if Jackson hadn't sworn it would be worth his while, if he hadn't had a buyer with more money than China had people, he wouldn't be here now. If he hadn't been here before, if he hadn't known what was causing those sporadic leaps of flames, his imagination might not be playing these tricks on him.
He understood the diggers burning the cedar poles and beams they brought out of the mound. Unless they were written on or painted or carved, they had no value except as firewood, and God knew the diggers needed something to burn for heat.
But the bones?
He didn't want them; no buyer he knew of wanted them. What the hell did he expect the diggers to do with them? Take them back into the mound after they'd made sure they contained nothing of value? Call a preacher out here to say prayers over the heathens? They didn't have time for that. Ralph knew it, even understood it. Midnight, which was coming soon, marked the end of the lease and the end of the only job the few, trusted hired workmen had been able to find in months. Marked the end of the time the state of Oklahoma had insisted the leaseholders had before they had to stop, forever, the private excavations regardless of what kind of a deal they could work out with the landowners. Marked the end of the time that Hansom, with Tom Jackson's help, would be able to provide his carefully cultivated group of collectors with the items they had grown to covet.
Well, hell, whoever the bones had belonged to was dead. Long dead. Each and every one of them. Think of this as a delayed cremation. Some ancient civilizations had cremated their dead, hadn't they? He wasn't too sure of that. He could recite the going price for an Egyptian scarab or a Mayan celt or a Spiro gorget dead drunk or in his sleep; his knowledge didn't extend to the people who had made these things. Hadn't had to. Wouldn't need to.
It was just a bone pile, he told himself. Just a damned bone pile. Every rancher he knew had one. A place in a ravine or gully or grove of trees, where he dragged the carcasses of his disease- or predator-killed livestock and left them there to rot or be scavenged, until the ravine or gully or copse was full of bleached white skulls and bones.
It meant nothing there; it meant nothing here.
What did mean something here was that one strange, carved pipe and the wealth of arrowheads and pots and engraved shells that Jackson had been bringing him for almost a decade.
What meant something here was the comfortable lifestyle he had made for himself placing those arrowheads and shells and heathen treasures with so-called connoisseurs of history. Connoisseurs, hell. They were greedy bastards, every one of them. But they had served him well. Ellie's family didn't dare look down on him now, didn't dare say that he wouldn't have a home or two dimes to rub together if it hadn't been for her land and money.
Some said the people who had built these mounds were the ancestors of Ellie's people, not that anybody knew for sure, but wouldn't that be justice of the nicest kind—that in the long run the very people who had proved so tightfisted with the money from their land and coal and gas royalties had provided him with the means to tell them all to go to hell, that he didn't need them anymore? Not them. Not Ellie. Not the brat she had presented him with.
He heard a shout from the direction of the mounds and a strange silence before voices broke out in a confusing babble of sound, and then a crashing through the underbrush as of something heavy running. He felt a bead of sweat pop out on his upper lip and chill in the night air. He yanked the Colt out of his pocket even as he opened the truck door, preparing to leap into the cab.
Jackson. Ralph sagged against the truck door. Only Jackson. Running. For his life? And then Ralph noticed what he should have seen at once. Jackson was empty-handed.
"Get in the truck," Jackson called out in an urgent hiss. "Now!"
Other sounds intruded over the calls from the excavation, and three men broke from the woods carrying a strange, long litter of some sort, canvas covered, sagging between the poles and with at least three baskets jumbled on top. Ralph hesitated at the truck door while Jackson lowered the tailgate and directed the dumping of whatever the men carried into the bed of the truck. One man crawled in with the litter, but when the other two tried, Jackson waved them back. "On the running boards," he told them. "And for God's sake, be quiet."
Ralph slipped into the cab of the truck and eased his door shut. Jackson leapt into the driver's side, glanced at Hansom and jerked Ralph's hat down to cover his eyes just as one of the men jumped up onto the running board beside Jackson, the other beside Hansom and looked into the cab. "Who's this?"
"Never mind, Billy Ray. You don't want him to know who you are, either."
The man called Billy Ray grunted an acknowledgement. "You got that right. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Not yet," Jackson said grimly.
Jackson sat in tense silence behind the wheel, not reaching for the starter, obviously waiting. But for what, Ralph wondered.
When the explosion rocked the ground even as far away as they were parked, he had his answer. And the leaseholders had their revenge. Jackson fired the engine and spun them out of their hiding place, slewing chert and shale and frozen mud behind them as the two on the running boards swore and grabbed for purchase. Jackson didn't stop or slow down until they reached the old Fort Coffee cemetery, where he wheeled in and skidded to a stop.
Jackson left the engine running while he got out of the truck and joined the three men at the back. Ralph stepped out in time to see Jackson lift a basket from the back and hand it to the one he'd called Billy Ray.
"There's enough here to keep the two of you well for a long time," Jackson said. "Just don't be in too big a hurry to let anyone know you've got it. And if you're thinking about coming back on me for more, I can see that the other men who paid your wages tonight find out that you were working for more than one. You got that clear in your minds?"
Ralph caught only a glimpse of the contents of the basket Beads, pearls, a few broken shells. For a moment he considered arguing Jackson's method of payment, but he recognized the wisdom of it. What the men were taking wasn't that valuable in the overall scheme of things, depending on what was in the other baskets and under the canvas, and giving it to them made them more active participants than just hired hands. Well, well, maybe the dirt farmer had learned a few of the finer points of stealth and deception while he was grubbing around in the back of a man-made hill. Of course, knowing that made Hansom realize just how much he'd have to keep his eye on Jackson.
Two of the men left. When Jackson turned to get in the truck, he waved the third man from the back with a gesture that said plainly he was to ride up front. "My son," Jackson told him.
"Am I going to get a chance to look at what you've got before we get out of here?"
Jackson laughed. "What difference does it make now? We've got it, and if that blast was half as successful as I think it was, we're not going to have a chance to get more. Let's head to your place before someone from the site stumbles on us and decides they want to have a look at our cargo, too. I don't think either one of us would like what would happen if we're caught."
Ten miles outside of Allegro, on a muddy and potholed mountain switchback with no way to go but down, Jackson again stopped the truck and turned in the seat to look at Hansom.
"I've been thinking," Jackson said, "that I've learned a little about the stuff I've been hauling down to you over the years. I've been thinking that I've learned a little about the other folks that deal in this kind of stuff."
Ralph tensed. Maybe he'd been too trusting for too long. Maybe he should have started watching out for Jackson a lot sooner than this abandoned road in the pre-dawn hours. Cautiously he felt for the Colt in his pocket. How big a shakedown was coming? Casually, almost without effort, a hand came from behind him and clamped his in place before it ever reached his pocket. Jackson's son. Shit.
"What else have you been thinking, Tom?"
Jackson smiled at him, his teeth white in the darkness of the cab. "I've been thinking that all in all, except for the first few loads when you cheated my socks off me, you've been fair. Fair enough so that I'd hate to have to break in that fellow down in El Dorado, or one of those men from Missouri. But those first few loads do stick in my craw, Hansom. You know, like something you just have to drag out and chew on every once in a while? It leaves a bad taste, a sour stomach, and sometimes even a hangover. I sure don't want to have to add to that mess of stuff I'm already chewing on. Sure would appreciate it if I could get rid of some of the old stuff, too. So I figured I'd talk to you, maybe come to a real clear understanding about what this night is going to mean to me, especially now that I won't be able to get anything else."
Hansom drew in a shallow breath, trying not to suck in air, trying to ignore the hand clamped on his. "I thought we'd come to an agreement about what the different things were worth. Are you suggesting that we change that agreement now?"
Jackson shook his head. "No. I've been talking, casual like and real careful. I figure you were paying me right for them. It's just that I ain't never brought you anything quite like I've brought you tonight, and I think we ought to have an understanding before we get to your place."
"Or?"
"Or I let you out here, you walk home, and me and my boy drive to Missouri."
Hansom relaxed marginally. As a shakedown, it wasn't too bad, nothing, maybe, that he couldn't talk his way out of. "Just what in the hell do you have back there?"
As he appeared to relax, so did Jackson. He leaned back against the door. "There's been an archaeologist fellow there, wringing his hands and watching us dig. He even went in once, but when he found out we weren't shoring up the tunnels, he backed right out and went to moaning and groaning about the way we were treating stuff, first of all by even daring to touch it, and then in the way we handled it when it came out. You'd have thought we were in his grandmother's casket the way he carried on.
"Well, what I learned from him was that these things have more value if they're treated a certain way. Like records kept of where they were found. Like some things being kept together. He kept talking about 'intact burials' and 'integrity of the find,' or dictionary words something like that. So when we found what we found, I knew what I had to do. I'd have liked to get that other one. Whooee, that cloak was something else, all feathers and beads woven in with only God knows what. Must have been seven, eight feet long, but somebody else grabbed that right off the skeleton, and I knew I couldn't take the chance of trying to get it back.
"So me and the boys, we threw a little dirt over this one then hauled it out in wheelbarrows until I could get the tarps laced on the poles—we got all of them, too, that archaeologist would be right proud of the way we made sure of that—and hauled it out. It's all there—or most of it. We dropped some, and then we had to give that little stuff to the crew—"
Hansom leaned forward. Jackson's enthusiasm was catching. "What are you saying? Just what did you bring out?"
Jackson grinned. "Hey, partner," he said, and Hansom didn't bother to correct him, "I think we got ourselves one of their gods."