His thoughts returned to Eden Foster and the Navajo girl who worked for her. He remembered how the girl had looked directly into his eyes, but in no flirtatious manner. Had she been trying to warn him? Or had she been measuring him against them? A bright girl, Gallagher had said. He must talk with her, somewhere alone when Eden Foster was not around. Raglan made coffee and ate a few more crackers while waiting for it, adding fuel to his fire meanwhile.
In their heyday the Anasazi occupied more than 40,000 square miles in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. Their ruins were everywhere, some mere heaps of debris, some broken walls of carefully laid masonry, indicating a growing skill in architectural construction.
The study of such ruins was comparatively new, and the science of archaeology itself was scarcely one hundred years old, much of that time a learning process. First it had been necessary to learn how to conduct a dig, how to determine the ages of the sites and objects discovered, and how to preserve what they had found.
The science had suffered and still suffered from preconceived ideas, and attempts to make discoveries fit preconceived patterns. One such idea was that the introduction of agriculture had given birth to other dramatic changes. Discoveries at Bat Cave, for one instance, showed that the introduction of planting long preceded the production of pottery.
The fact was that in the beginning, agriculture had demanded longer hours of disciplined labor than food-gathering and hunting. To a settled community a crop failure could be a disaster. Supposedly, planting had caused hunting to fade into the background, but the Cheyennes had given up agriculture and returned to hunting. Without a doubt this had been due in part to a population explosion among the buffalo, providing a stable diet to a people to whom hunting was a sport as well as subsistence.
He poured his coffee and looked over his shoulder. It was dark. In the distance beyond No Man’s there were stars, but were they the same stars?
He shook his head to shake off the disturbing thoughts. He was creating ghosts where none existed. Kawasi had said the mesa looked familiar, like something from the Other Side. Could something exist in two worlds at the same time?
Suddenly he realized he was hearing footsteps, approaching footsteps. A figure loomed at the edge of the firelight. It was Gallagher.
“I figured you needed company,” he said.
And what, Raglan asked himself, did he know about Gallagher?
XVIII
Gallagher took a campstool and sat down. “Got worried about you,” he said, pushing his cap back on his head, “and I figured we should talk some more.
“I’m not much on talk, usually, but sometimes something comes of just bringing out all aspects of a problem and just mulling over it.”
Raglan offered no comment. He was thinking about Gallagher and how he had arrived. Had Mike been so preoccupied that he had not heard the sound of a car arriving? Or had Gallagher’s car simply not made that much noise? Or could he have used some other means of arrival?
Despite his suspicions he trusted Gallagher. He liked the man, believed he wanted to cope with the situation, but understood that, although he acted friendly, he was on the whole impersonal in his attitude—as he should be.
“We’ve got two ways to look at this,” Gallagher said. “We can look at it logically like it was a kidnapping or murder, and investigate it from that standpoint. Or we can accept this idea of another world and see where that leaves us.”
“Which we’ve both been doing.”
“Right.”
Gallagher poked a stick into the fire. “Had a couple of queries about Hokart. From back east. Seems he usually calls his office and they’ve not heard from him.”
They sat listening, and Raglan looked at Chief. The big dog had not lifted his head from his paws but his ears were up.
“If he doesn’t show up soon we’ll have a lot of inquiries. Hokart’s a mighty important man, seems like, and yesterday, while I was gone, somebody from the governor’s office called. He said the governor wished to consult with Erik Hokart and would he call back as soon as possible?
“We’ve got to find him, Mike, and right away. This is going to blow the lid off.”
“Does Eden Foster know?”
“I made a point of talking about it. I was over there today, just sort of dropped in. She always wants to know what I am doing, so I told her I was hunting a missing man, and that if I didn’t find him there’d be people all over the country around here, looking into everything.
“I also mentioned that one of the places they would immediately check would be Hokart’s camp, and the kiva.”
“What did she say to that?”
“Not much, but I could see she was bothered. She was kind of impatient, wanted to know what was so important about him, and I just told her any citizen was important, as she should know, but Erik had worked with some important people and was considered very special by many of them. Then I told her they’d never stop looking until every possibility was exhausted.”
“Did she say anything about me?”
“I was coming to that.” He chuckled. “First time I ever saw Eden pay much mind to anybody in other than a business or social way. She asked me if you were married.”
“Probably wondering if anybody would miss me if I disappeared.”
“Oh, no. Not this time. Sounded like she had a personal interest.”
Raglan was skeptical. Eden Foster was an attractive woman who might be expected to have an interest in men, but he doubted if she had anything other than a business interest in him. He said as much.
Gallagher refused to accept it. “If I know anything at all about women, she’s interested in you.”
Raglan looked out of the door and across the mesa toward No Man’s. “If I know anything about women,” he said, “Eden Foster is nobody to mess with. She’s got a mind, but she also has a will and she doesn’t like being thwarted. I could see that in her. I have a hunch that intellectually and personally she’s a defector.”
“A defector?”
“Suppose what we surmise is true? That she’s an agent, a lookout station for the Other Side? My hunch is that she has come to like it over here, and although she could never be one of us, she likes the life here better than where she comes from.
“I don’t mean she’d betray them. She’s like some of the Soviets sent here or to Europe. They begin to enjoy the life and they don’t want to go back. Here they have access to things they cannot get over there, and they are free of many of the pressures.”
Gallagher was silent, mulling it over. The air was, cool and the night was still. Chief arose and walked outside, stretching.
“What worries me,’ Raglan said, “is that we don’t know their capabilities, nor do they know ours.”
“They know a damned sight more about us than we do of them,” Gallagher said. “Eden Foster is here. She’s been making contacts, listening, reading, learning. We don’t have any communication with her side of things, nor do we actually know there is another side. I still can’t escape the feeling we’re being had.”
Raglan was uneasy. The kiva was there and its opening into another world, or whatever it was, an unpleasant fact. Erik Hokart was over there somewhere, and it was a fact that those who held him must know something of this world.
Yet how much did they know? How accurately had Eden Foster judged this world, and how accurately had they read her messages, if such there were?
It was never easy for one people to understand another when their cultural backgrounds differed drastically. If he only knew more of how the Anasazi had lived and thought. Many of the outward evidences of their living were obvious. Their buildings, from pit houses to cliff apartments, were easily seen. Some of their pottery, their tools and weapons remained. Yet as they ground their corn with mano and metate, what were they thinking? What was it that ordered their existence?
“Have you got a knife?” Gallagher asked. “Sometimes one can be mighty handy.”
“I have one.”
Gallagher glanced at Raglan, a wry look on his face. “Sometimes I think I should pull you in just to see what you’re carrying.”
“You’d make me mighty unhappy,” Raglan commented. “I might just move out and leave you with your friends from over the line. Then you could handle it all by your lonesome.”
Chief had returned and was lying across the doorway, his head on his paws.
“Anything you’re carrying,” Gallagher said, “you’re likely to need. You might have a chance if you could tie up with that old cowboy you told me about. The one called Johnny.