Them Bones

Bessie III

While they were waiting, the first of the trucks drove up.

The crew led by Dr. Jameson arrived just after noon. Bessie and Kincaid had gone up to check the survey and the preliminary stakedown on the larger mound, and planned the trench to take them a few feet off center, from ten feet out to twenty feet beyond the mound.

Jameson looked at the horse skulls and the cartridges, then without a word went down to the trench in the smaller mound and crawled under the tarp to have a look for himself.

He came back wiping sweat.

‘I couldn’t see any goddamn intrusions,’ he said to Kincaid. ‘Uh, pardon me, Bessie.’ His sunburned face went redder. He was just over forty, already stoop-shouldered from crawling around digs with no headroom in them.

He was dressed in dark brown jodhpurs, a khaki shirt and an old Marine campaign hat. Bessie knew that his role model (from the field of paleontology, not an archeologist at all) was Roy Chapman Andrews, whose spectacular find of dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia was the biggest news since Carter opened Tut’s tomb in ’26.

Jameson had eyes the color of the dust he was always covered with.

‘It’s possible we’re dealing with two things here,’ he said, taking off his hat, spinning it and catching it repeatedly as he talked.

‘One, a post-Columbus survival of the culture, entirely possible, combined with a Spanish incident, perhaps de Soto, perhaps as late as the French. That would be rare enough itself.

‘And, two, an intrusive cartridge burial.’ He stopped.

‘Don’t say it. Someone shot a bunch of rounds into the mound, one of which just happened to hit one of the equines. Then the spent cartridges worked themselves down to that level in a few years.’ He looked at them.

‘It’s a hoax,’ he said. He looked at them a minute more, while they said nothing. On the desk before them were the skulls, cartridges, potsherds and field notes.

‘I need a drink,’ he said finally, and sat down on a camp stool.

‘It’ll have to be lemonade or water,’ said Bessie. ‘I don’t think Washington made a run to the bootlegger this week yet.’

‘Well, I did,’ said Jameson. He disappeared out the tentflap, returning a moment later with a hip flask. He offered them a drink, which they refused.

He looked over the field notes again. ‘Goddamn Coles Creek rolled rim potsherds,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen enough in the last two weeks to keep me the rest of my life. I sometimes think all those people did was sleep, eat, bury their dead, and make pots.’

‘Well, it’s good that they did,’ said Kincaid, ‘or we’d all be out of jobs.’

‘Gillihan at least got that rock shelter down by the river,’ said Jameson. ‘He was real pis – very upset that you wanted him pulled out of it. He’s got the students with him, of course, and this is the best shelter we’ve ever seen. It had some big cat bones with it.’

‘Well, the real question is,’ said Kincaid, ‘do we start on the mound trench now, or do we wait for the director?’

‘I don’t want my shovels to cool off,’ said Jameson.

‘Bessie?’

‘Let’s do it. Only thing is, we’re going to have to answer some questions all over again when Gillihan gets here.’

‘We’ll leave a note on the tent telling them to look over this stuff before they come down.’

‘By the way,’ said Jameson, ‘you know it’s been raining up north for two days straight now?’