Kathleen O' Neal & Michael W. Gear - People 2 - People Of The Fire

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PEOPLE OF THE FIRE

Kathleen O'Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear

By Kathleen O'Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear from Tom

Doherty Associates the first north americans series

People of the Wolf

People of the Fire People of the Earth People of the River

People of the Sea

People of the Lakes

People of the Lightning

People of the Silence

People of the Mist People of the Masks the anasazi mysteries series

The Visitant The Summoning God

By Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Thin Moon and Cold Mist

Sand in the Wind

This Widowed Land

By W. Michael Gear

Long Ride Home

Big Horn Legacy

The Morning River

Coyote Summer forthcoming

W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear

PEOPLE OF THE FIRE

TOR

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

To Gaydell and Roy and the rest of the Backpocket Ranch

Collier Clan,

who urged us to go for it!

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware

that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and

destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher

has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events

is purely coincidental.

PEOPLE OF THE FIRE

portions thereof, in any form.

Cover art by Royo Maps by Ellisa Mitchell

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-812-52150-1

First edition: January 1991

Printed in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This series on our nation's prehistory wouldn't be possible without the

contributions of the following people: Michael Seidman cooked up the

idea of doing a series of novels on North American prehistory, written

by archaeologists, during his days as Executive Editor of Tor Books.

Tappan King, who edited this manuscript, did a bang-up job on the

line-edit and flagged the rough spots for revision. Ray Leicht, Wyoming

State Archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management, provided

information and encouragement. Marv and Patricia Hatcher, Principal

Investigators of Pronghorn Anthropological Associates, helped with the

photocopying of stacks of archaeological reports gathered from across

the West. Dr. George Prison, of the University of Wyoming, deserves our

deepest gratitude for publishing so many of his observations on hunting

techniques and Paleo-Indian weaponry, and for sharing his personal

thoughts on the Mountain Archaic. Phyllis Boardman and the Torrey Lake

Ranch deserve thanks for access to petroglyphs. Jo Hubbard eased the

way. Walter Williams's The Spirit and the Flesh proved invaluable for

information on berdache after Dale Walker turned us on to the book. Jim

Miller and John Albanese receive special mention for their study and

interpretation of Holocene geology. (See, we remembered all those

lectures in the test pits!) [Catherine Cook and Katherine Perry read the

manuscript and provided helpful comments. Burt and Rose Crow of the

Ramshorn Inn kept Guinness on hand for us when we needed a place to

brainstorm plot. Irene Keinert and Justin Bridges of Wind River Knives

photographed archaeological resources. Finally, we'd like to acknowledge

our dirt-archaeologist colleagues for all the years of bull sessions

over a beer or the crackling of a campfire. You know who you are. If you

see your pet idea here, you've made a difference.

FOREWORD.

From the time of the first human incursions into the Western Hemisphere,

a thriving big-game-hunting tradition known as Paleo-Indian flourished

through most of North America. Highly efficient, these human

predators--in addition to climatic change and possible epizootic

diseases--accelerated the extinction of animals such as the mammoth,

giant sloth, horse, and camel. Through it all, humans, and their prey,

adapted to the gradually warming climate until roughly eight thousand

years ago. From the geological record, a dramatic climatic upheaval

occurred: the Altithermal. A series of droughts baked North America,

lowering regional water tables as much as twenty feet. Vegetation zones

shifted, topsoil eroded, drainage channels ate deeply into the earth.

The tree line climbed ever higher on the mountains. The huge lakes of

the Great Basin vanished to leave salt flats and desert in Utah and

Nevada. Giant dune fields spawned from destabilized parent material and

drifted to cover parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska, while

wind-borne loess settled over the American Midwest. Stricken with

drought, the lush grasses on grazing land deteriorated; the buffalo

herds declined in number. In this period of hardship people starved,

bands of hunters, fissioning, moving, warring--ever in search of elusive

herds of game animals. Yet, from the seeds of these hard times came the

birth of a new North American culture.

Introduction.

"Jesus! I didn't know it would be so dusty." The blond man's shovel

banged hollowly on rock as he tried to scoop it full. Muscles bulged as

he straightened and threw his shovelful of dirt into the gray-headed

man's sifter screen. The contraption rested on two wobbly legs and

consisted of a shallow box with quarter-inch hardware cloth held across

the bottom by metal strapping.

The screen made a shish-shishing sound, pebbles and rocks clattering

across the mesh.

"Yeah, pretty dusty. That's the way it is in these rock shelters like

this." A pause. "Nothing but them chips in this one. Keep digging."

The older man pulled a red handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at his

nose. He wore an old checked shirt, and blue jeans hung from lean hips.

While he waited he pulled a cigarette from his pocket, using a lighter

to get it going.

With a practiced eye, he looked around the shelter, gauging the extent

of it. "Bet there's ten feet of fill in this."

The blond might have been in his late twenties, tanned, with rippling

muscles in his arms and back. He stood hip deep in an irregular hole

he'd pounded and hacked through the rocky soil at the back of the

limestone overhang. Shirtless, he, too, wore Levi's, held up by a

western-style tooled leather belt. A can of chewing tobacco had worn a

round circle in his back pocket.

"Sure is dusty. And there's all this charcoal."

"Injun fires, Pete, my boy! Injun fires! You look at the roof of this

thing, now, and you'll see all that soot. That's how you know. And

there's giant wild rye growing in front.

Injuns ate that stuff and it

growed here when they dropped the seeds."

The young man threw up another shovelful and used the spade to scrape

off the wall, collecting another load to throw up. He banged the shovel

and a large flat slab of wall rock cracked off.

"Hurt? You're sure we won't get in trouble for this?"

"Naw!" The older man hawked and spat into the back dirt at his feet.

"Hells bells, I been digging for arrowheads for years. Nobody ever

bothered me none." He gestured around before he clawed through the dirt.

With a flip of his arms, he emptied his screen. "Clear up here? Forest

Service don't drive that two-track very often. And we're back off the

road."

"So, like, what happens if they catch us?" Pete muscled the heavy slab

of rock up out of the hole and paused to wipe at the sweat beading on

his forehead.

"Tell us to go away--and that it's against the law, probably. They got

more important things to worry about .. . like selling trees to make

money and fighting all them forest fires burning around. They ain't

gonna bust us. Makes 'em look too bad. Like they're picking on-the

citizens. And I go to church of a Sunday."

Burt caught another shovel load of dirt, sifting it in back and-forth

motions. A grin split his long face. "Hey! Lookee here. Bone bead. See

how they polished it?"

He dropped the find into a sack. "Yep, you keep working these places,

and you'll have a wall full of arrowheads pretty quick. Most of the ones

out laying around, they been picked up."

"Huh." The blond moved, squinting at the flat slab of rock he'd muscled

out. He wiped at it, cleaning out the grooves, then looked at the wall.

"Look at this. Something pecked in the wall. Looks like a spiral .. .

but I busted it in half."

"Spiral, huh?" The gray-headed man bent and squinted. "Never seen one of

them. Mostly it's critters and such. Too bad it broke in two. Otherwise

we could take chisels and cut it out. Make a neat rock for someone's

fireplace. Might be able to glue it or some such. We'll bring a chisel

next time.

See if we can whack the other half out. If it busts again,

well, hell, that's the way the cookie crumbles, huh?"

"And the Forest Service doesn't care about that?"

"Naw. And even if they did, what we're doing is small change. So we make

a couple hundred bucks selling arrowheads? There's guys in Utah making

thirty thousand for an Anasazi bowl."

"Bet they bust them good."

"Yeah, maybe. But then I remember a couple of years back, some fellas

found a mummy up in the rocks south of here. You know, all stiff like

and dried out. Sorta like them Egyptian kinds. The boys got drunk one

night, tied a rope around its neck, and left it dangling from a

telephone pole. All they got was a couple hundred dollars in fines and

probation" "Hell! I get more than that for getting in a fight in the

bar!"

The older man grinned, exposing brown teeth. "See, kid, nothing to it."

They worked for a while longer, the young man shoveling dirt up to the

old, listening to the shish-shish of the screen.

"So, like, don't the geologists get pissed off when they find these

sites all dug up?"

"Archaeologists."

"Huh?"

"That's archaeologists. Not geologists. And yeah, they bitch and moan.

But who listens to them? They got lots of laws on the books, but after

the shit they pull in Washington these days, who the hell cares about a

bunch of dead Indians?"

"Whoa! A keeper!" The old man pulled a white chert projectile point from

the screen, holding it up to the light, cleaning the dirt off with his

thumb. "What kind?" Pete asked when he finally got to see. He held the

point up, a glint in his eyes.

"Looks like one of them Medicine Lodge Creek points. Probably eight

thousand years old. Might be worth, oh, seventy five or eighty dollars."

"Wow!" Pete's grin didn't fade as he fingered the stone. "Hey, I ain't

selling this one. That's my first!"

"Yeah, you ought to keep it." Bun

shook his head. "Damn stupid government! Got laws against everything

anymore. So many they don't care. Down on the reservation, the fool

Injuns squawk. But then, Injuns always squawk. Say we're foolin' with

their ancestors. Hell, most of 'em don't know who their daddy is."

"So this is a pretty good site?"

"Yep, this's a good one. We ought to be able to dig here for quite a

while. Got money in this one. I can feel it. Like knowing when you go

into a bar that you're gonna get laid." Burt winked, a happy leer on his

face.

"I'll tell Louise on you."

"Hell you will. You'll find your nuts handed to you on a platter, too."

Pete chuckled. " "Course an old duffer like you ain't about to get it up

just any old night either."

He resumed his digging, the shovel ringing off the rocks. The shadow in

the rock shelter increased as Burt had to move his screen from the

growing pile of back dirt.

"Whoops!" Pete stepped back. "Got a bone. Damn near cut it in two with

the shovel!"

Burt came to look over his shoulder. "Burial? Or just a buffalo leg?"

"Kinda thin for buffalo, ain't it?" He moved back to let the more

experienced eye of his mentor judge.

"Ah, that's human, all right. I seen enough of them. That ought to just

pull right out of there. That's a shinbone."

Pete pulled, nothing happened. He looked up. "There ain't any haunts

that go with this, is there?"

"Who you been talking to? Naw. You been going to too many of them creepy

movies. Hell, shovel that dirt out up above there where the thigh would

be. That's it."

Pete attacked the rubble, shovel blade ringing. He worked, tongue stuck

out, undercutting the wall. He scraped the last of the dirt back,

pulling on the bone. He jerked at the loud snap, rolling back on the

dirt, holding up his trophy.

"Holy shit! Look at that, the knee's plumb growed together! Must've been

a cripple. Too bad I busted the thighbone in two."

"Yeah, they didn't have much in the way of doctors back

then. Why, just

think, maybe that's Geronimo's busted knee you got there!"

Pete grinned. "Shit! And you're full of it. Looks like it's almost dark.

I gotta date with Lorena tonight. Might get lucky like you'll never see

again. Give me a hand out of here."

"Yep, s'pose we otta get going. You gonna keep that leg?"

"Damn right. Make a hell of a thing to talk about next time I throw a

party at my place. Maybe so I'll file a groove here where I busted it

off and use it for a cigarette holder. That otta show of' Clink a thing

or two."

"All right, but I get the skull when we get it. There's money in skulls.

I'll take the leg and stuff if you can carry that spiral you busted in

two."

Pete looked up at the sunset, gaudy and blood red. "Sure is dry anymore.

Like the world's changing. All that drought in the farm states. Must be

that damned greenhouse thing. Yellowstone burned up and now Washington

and Oregon. Guess that'll keep the Forest Service off our backs for a

while."

"Bullshit. There ain't no goddamn 'greenhouse effect." You'll see." Burt

spat into the grass. "Government just tells you that to keep you

scared."

It took two trips to get artifacts and equipment down to the pickup.

Pete grinned and popped the top off a hot beer, handing it to Burt. Then

he opened one for himself, climbing into the driver's seat. The big V-8

roared to life.

The old man looked back. "Too bad about that spiral getting busted."

"You sure there ain't any bad luck in that? Some hoodoo Injun magic or

something?"

"Hell no, that's just silly superstition. What harm could it do?" Burt

paused, sucking on his beer. "Yep, that's a big shelter up there. We'll

be able to dig for years in that one. Completely clean it out. Good

money. I can just feel it!"

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PEOPLEOFTHEFIREbyKathleenO'NealGear&W.MichaelGearByKathleenO'NealGear&W.MichaelGearfromTomDohertyAssociatesthefirstnorthamericansseriesPeopleoftheWolfPeopleoftheFirePeopleoftheEarthPeopleoftheRiverPeopleoftheSeaPeopleoftheLakesPeopleoftheLightningPeopleoftheSilencePeopleoftheMistPeopleoftheMasksthea...

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