Читать книгу Conard County Watch - Rachel Lee - Страница 12

Chapter 3

The night still ruled the land when Renee and Denise arrived at the foot of the gorge in the morning. Renee was impatient because she wanted to get to the rock face before the first glow of dawn began to light it, but she was extremely aware that either one of them could have an accident and be stuck on the mountainside until Cope happened on them.

They both had heavy-duty flashlights with strong beams to light their way, but even as the path before them was revealed, the woods became darker. Creepier. A thought that wasn’t familiar to Renee.

She tried to ignore the feeling, wondering where it came from, but she couldn’t escape the sense that from the corners of her eyes she could see shapes flitting among the trees, dark shapes. It almost felt like they were being paced on both sides by something.

Maybe Gray Cloud had some of his people out here, keeping an eye on matters. That would be okay, but she’d like to know about it.

On the other hand, she remembered the guy who’d ridden up there just yesterday, unheralded and curious. He’d said he was a neighbor. Was he?

But who besides another paleontologist could be interested in this area? Sure, you could make money from some dinosaur bones, but you were more likely to have them confiscated the minute the state found out what you were doing if they were in any way unique.

Deliberately, she tried to shake off the feeling that they weren’t alone on this part of the mountain. Dang, maybe Gray Cloud was right. Maybe the mountain itself was watching them.

She reined that thought in immediately. No craziness. For this job she had to remain firmly centered in science.

She glanced around, though, and decided if anything was dancing among the trees following them, it must be the shades of the newly revealed saurian bones. They might be interested in how their discovery was handled. The thought drew a small laugh from her.

“What’s so funny?” Denise asked.

“I’m having early-morning crazy thoughts. Don’t worry, I just need to finish waking up.”

Denise gave an answering laugh. “I hear you. I half feel like I’m still dreaming. The woods are encouraging some nutty images. Too dark under some of those trees.”

Glad to know that she wasn’t the only one with a runaway imagination, Renee said, “Not much farther now.”

“Good, because I’m beginning to see some predawn lightening to the east. I want to see this place the way you did when you took those photos.”

Denise got her wish. A dozen yards later they emerged onto the ledge that had been left behind by the rockfall. There was just barely enough light to see the face of it, but nothing more because the predawn twilight was still so flat.

“It’s weird,” Renee said as she slipped off her backpack and lowered it to the ground. “This was originally a narrow cleft. When Gray Cloud brought me here last year it really was a cleft so narrow we nearly had to move sideways to get into it. Then over the winter the other side thinned out and part of it fell, probably down to the stream below. We’ll have to check all the rubble, but first...” She pointed. “First I wanna get at that.”

“I can see why,” Denise answered as the light strengthened and shadows began to appear. “My God,” she breathed. She hunted quickly for a central position and pulled out her large tablet. On the screen the rock face grew steadily more visible as the light brightened slowly and the shadows grew. Denise wasted no time using a stylus to start a grid.

“Where did you want to begin?”

Renee hesitated only a moment before pointing. “There’s an egg here. I realize I’m going to have to move a whole lot of mountain above it to reveal it, but it’s too promising to pass up.”

“That’s where the grid will start then. But if you change your mind, it’s okay. By the time I’m done, everything will have coordinates on the x and y axes. We also need some GPS to back us up.”

“I can do that,” Renee answered, although she didn’t jump to it. She was growing mesmerized again as the morning light painted the shadows that revealed darn near everything.

“My tablet will get the coordinates,” Denise said. “Just enjoy.”

Renee found a place to settle beside Denise and just drink in the wonder before her.

“It’s amazing,” Denise murmured. “Has there ever been a fossil bed like this?”

“Yeah, there are some good ones. The whole area of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas is loaded with fossils, and there are some parks devoted to them.”

“So what is it about this one?”

“It’s there?”

Denise laughed. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. The fact that it’s here would be enough. But the density of the fossils makes it especially interesting. So many packed in like this raises a bunch of interesting questions.”

And that egg, Renee thought. That egg. If there were more of them, if most of the fossils appeared to be the same species...well.

While Denise worked, Renee continued her study of the rock face and the fall around it. Soon, unable to hold still for long, she began moving along the ledge, studying the spoil beneath her feet. Every so often she spotted what appeared to be some bone poking out of a rock, but she left it alone.

Then, as she stood staring down at it, she remembered the hundred pin flags poking out of her backpack. Hurrying over to it, she pulled a handful out and made her way cautiously back to the bones she had noted. A bright orange pin flag soon marked each spot. There would be plenty of others, she was sure, and now that she had spotted these, she realized she’d better get to it before the team started arriving and important things might inadvertently get stepped on or buried before they were noticed.

The richness of the fossil bed probably extended to the rubble at the bottom of the rock face. They’d need to take extra care so as not to crush something.

The dynamics of this dig were beginning to sink in. They wouldn’t only be removing the large fossils from the rock, but they’d have to scour every inch of this ledge for items they’d never want to miss. In her initial bliss at the big find, she’d forgotten to think about all the minor details.

She almost laughed at herself. This wasn’t her first rodeo. She’d let her enthusiasm override her sense, but that had to stop immediately.

“Give it a rest,” Denise said eventually. “You’ve covered the whole ledge and you’re distracting me by moving.”

So Renee plopped down behind her on a larger boulder and waited patiently.

“And don’t look over my shoulder. It drives me nuts for some reason.”

“I’m not.” Nor was she. The shifting shadows on the fossil bed entranced her. She kept picking out new shadows that suggested great wonders. If this proved at all as productive as it appeared now, she’d probably work this site for the rest of her career. Happy thought.

* * *

The rest of the team arrived around nine. Renee had begun helping Denise measure out the area and place red pin flags for each point there would be a vertical line in the grid.

Before long, she’d sent most of the students below to hunt through the rubble beside the river. Fortunately, getting down there proved to be reasonably easy. A short way up the gorge, there was a narrow path leading down to the stream. The team went ahead with flag pins and soon their excited voices could be heard rising up from the stream.

Cope remained on the ledge with her and Denise. For a few minutes, Renee allowed herself to be distracted, thinking that he drew her interest almost as much as the fossils. Almost. Grinning inwardly, she decided to enjoy the unusual attraction.

She noted, however, that he seemed to be extremely alert, and his gaze never stopped wandering the woods around them, above them and below them.

Finally, she stepped over beside him, speaking in a voice that couldn’t easily be overheard because of the rush of the stream below.

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” His blue eyes snapped to her face. “Did you feel strange coming up here?”

“Like someone was hiking along with us?”

“That’s what you felt? Close enough. There are eyes on us, Renee. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to just watch. That Butler guy wasn’t shy about coming forward to ask what we were doing, after all.”

She had believed she was feeling weird when the thought crossed her mind that the mountain was aware of them. But now, for the first time, there was an icy trickle down her spine. “You’re sure someone is there?”

“No, I’m not. I didn’t see anyone, but I learned not to disregard this sensation.” All of a sudden, he smiled at her. “Ignore me and go back to what you were doing. I’ll play sentry for a while just to ease my mind.”

She nodded and returned to a rock where she’d been sitting with her large tablet, using a stylus to overlay outlines on some of the photos she’d taken yesterday. The egg continued to grab her attention, and it amused her to note how many photos she had taken of it yesterday morning. Carried away.

But as she outlined it, using the setting to give her fine lines resembling a sharp black pen, she pulled more detail out of it. She was definitely not losing her curiosity about it.

She lifted her head after a bit, noticing that the stream was louder today than yesterday. Much louder. It nearly swamped the voices of her team below. Had it rained up higher on the mountain? She could still faintly hear the voices. They called to one another and sounded as if they were having a good time poring through the rubble.

She lifted her gaze to Cope, and found him walking slowly around, his attention fixed on the dark places beneath the trees. The same dark places that had bothered her earlier.

He moved with remarkable grace considering the surface was rough and unstable, but his feet came down lightly and didn’t seem to disturb much when they landed. He was wearing desert boots, she realized. Probably left over from the Marine Corps days that he’d briefly mentioned. The limestone and sandstone dust that seemed to be everywhere disappeared on those boots.

She looked down at her jeans and wished they had the same ability. But mostly she wished Cope hadn’t confirmed her uneasiness by saying he felt there was a watcher.

In the first place, she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do that. In the second, she didn’t need to be on guard all the time. Every bit of her mind needed to focus on the job at hand. Even a small mistake could cause problems down the road if something was overlooked.

Cope’s voice interrupted her rambling thoughts as her hand continued to sketch. He squatted down beside her. “Why are you sketching over your photos?”

“To bring out some of the details, the stuff the shadows didn’t pull out from the rock. Did you see anything?”

“Not a soul.” The corners of his eyes creased a little, a hint of a smile. “I don’t usually get unnerved this easily.”

“Frankly, I was unnerved all the way up here. I kind of wish I’d been the only one.”

She blew dust off the screen of her tablet and tucked it into its case. “I need to see how they’re getting on down below.”

“They sound like they’re having a good time.” He straightened and offered a hand to help pull her to her feet. “Let’s go see?”

Along with the heap of items the team had brought up here, they had a couple of empty five-gallon water jugs. Cope grabbed both of them before leading the way to the steep path down to the stream. “I’ll bring you some water, Denise,” he said as he walked behind her.

“Thanks. My camel pack is getting low.”

Renee’s had emptied more than half an hour ago. The mountain air was dry and her tongue was beginning to feel sticky. Behind Cope, she slid and climbed down the steep path to the stream bank. Claudia was using her geology pick and hammer to pull small pieces of the bank loose. The other five were setting out pin flags to mark items of interest, and she could see that some of the finds had been washed in the stream already, glistening and dark and standing out from the surrounding rubble.

Smiling faces greeted her. “This is very cool,” Larry—she thought it was Larry, anyway—said. “I think I found half a trilobite.” He held a wet rock up to her and she looked.

“Now that’s old,” she told him. “And you’re right about what it appears to be. We’ll need to study it more closely to peg it exactly in terms of species and probable age.”

He nodded, taking the rock back and gazing at it. “My first find.”

She was tempted to tell him to keep it, but she couldn’t do that until she was sure it was just another trilobite, of which there were a whole lot. If it proved to be perfectly ordinary and offered no insights, she’d tell him to take it home and begin a collection for himself.

But right now, they didn’t know enough to let anything slip by.

Cope had moved upstream, to a point where the water fell from a slightly higher ledge, and was filling both five-gallon bottles with fresh stream water. She saw him pop in the purification tablets so at least they wouldn’t have to boil it to safely drink it.

She decided he could be a very useful guy to have around.

It was starting to get dark here in the gorge, though. Night always came early in parts of the mountain, and she needed to get these students safely out. In a week or two they’d have an easily traversable path from below, carved by their own feet, but not yet.

She looked at Cope. “You want to lead them down and back to town? We’re losing light.”

“Not without you and Denise.” He called out to the others. “You can drink the water in this bottle in thirty minutes, not before. Unless you want to adopt some little amoebas.”

Laughs answered him. “Meet us above just after you have a good drink. Renee thinks we need to beat the light down, and she’s right.”

“We ought to camp out,” one of them said. “It would save a lot of time.”

“I have to talk with Gray Cloud about that first,” she replied. “I told you, we have to walk softly here.” And she’d been trying not to test the limits of their permission to be here, not until they’d had a chance to prove themselves to be respectful. But maybe camping was an idea she could check out right away.

Then she turned toward the path they needed to climb. “Cope?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Are you still uneasy?”

“Yup.”

She paused, her hand on a rock she planned to use to steady herself. “You see something?”

“It would be easier if I had.” Then, without another word, he lugged the other water bottle up the narrow, steep path behind her.

* * *

Nice view, Cope thought as he climbed behind Renee, then gave himself a mental slap for the thought. Shame, shame, they were working together.

He was just trying to distract himself anyway. Under other circumstances he’d be trying to get a date with her. Not under these.

He hated the skin-crawling feeling he couldn’t shake. Someone was out there watching. Why? He couldn’t dash off into the woods to look around, and it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. If there was a threat out there, he needed to be close to Renee and her team. Wandering the woods wouldn’t make him much help.

He wished Gray Cloud had shown up today. He’d have liked to question the man about whether any of his people might be watching them. If someone objected to this dig on sacred land, someone he needed to worry about.

If this continued, he was going to have to get some answers one way or another.

Maybe the worst part for him was not knowing how much of this was PTSD. He’d been luckier with that than many of his fellows, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any at all. This creeping suspicion of someone watching was too similar to experiences from his time at war. How could he be sure he wasn’t just dragging that out of his past, given that he was in the mountains and among the forest again?

But Renee had claimed to feel it as well. Maybe just jitters about a new and unfamiliar area. Even now the shadows under the tree were deepening, promising invisibility and hiding places for evil, if there was any out there.

Up top, he glanced at his watch and waited until it was safe for Denise and Renee to drink. They needed to plan this entire project better. No one should go without water up here the better part of the day. Tomorrow, those jugs and a couple more were going to be filled first thing. Excitement couldn’t be allowed to get in the way of health.

Yeah, he saw the so-called camel packs they were all wearing. He’d worn them himself countless times, but the taste of the water didn’t encourage drinking. That might make the supply last longer, but it wasn’t good for anyone to ride the edge of thirst.

The group from below drank as much water as they could, then emptied the bottle and collapsed it before bringing it up. Good thinking. Meanwhile he began to make a mental list. He was fairly certain that among this group he was the only one with the background to deal with extended periods in the mountains. If they decided they didn’t want to drive back to Conard City every night, they were going to need some help dealing with the conditions.

He knew one thing for certain: he was not going to leave this site unguarded unless he found out from Gray Cloud that his own men were watching it.

Because after this day, he had a strong feeling that someone else had an interest in this mountain, and it didn’t necessarily involve dinosaurs.

* * *

Just as they were about to begin the trek back down to their vehicles, Gray Cloud appeared, emerging seamlessly from the deepening shadows.

“Hi,” Renee said warmly, and shared a brief hug with him. “Are we doing okay?”

“It seems so.” The man smiled, then glanced at Cope. “Someone has some questions for me?”

“We’d like to camp, a little way down the mountain, so we don’t have to drive out every day,” Renee said before Cope could utter a sound. “Is there somewhere you could permit us to do so?”

“Of course. I’ll show you the place. Makes more sense than driving that distance. It’ll give you more time to work as well.” He paused, his dark eyes shifting to Cope. “Yes?”

Cope turned to Renee. “You head on down with the others. I won’t be far behind, okay?”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded, picking up her backpack. “Let’s go, gang.”

Gray Cloud waited, his arms folded, for Cope to speak.

“Since we got here this morning,” Cope said presently, “I’ve been feeling watched. Renee and Denise evidently saw shadows moving under the trees and tried to talk themselves into believing it was their imagination. I’m not certain Renee believes that. Anyway, I wanted to know if you have some people keeping an eye on us. Or people you know of who might not want us here.”

Gray Cloud lifted his gaze to the woods around. “No one is shadowing you. Not of my people. That doesn’t mean no one else is.” He turned his gaze to Cope, a piercing look. “And the mountain may be paying attention. Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing,” Cope admitted. “I spent enough time in the mountains of Afghanistan to get the feeling that mountains aren’t dead heaps of rock. But Gray Cloud, would the mountain’s attention feel like human eyes?”

Gray Cloud shook his head without hesitation. “It’s a very different kind of awareness. All right, I’ll have some men scour the area to see if there are any other outsiders prowling around. I understand this fossil bed could be very valuable.”

“Probably more valuable if it’s properly dug up.” Cope rubbed his chin, wishing he could rub away the feeling that something was wrong. “We had a visitor yesterday from a ranch south of here. Loren Butler. You familiar with him?”

“Yes.”

Something in Gray Cloud’s tone wasn’t exactly warm.

“Is he a problem?”

“Not overtly, but he doesn’t much respect our ways, although he claims to. If he comes back, I want to know.”

Cope smiled faintly. “I think Renee told him off.”

At that, Gray Cloud laughed. “She would. The heart of a wolf resides in that woman. Powerful but loving. Like her cousin. All right, I’ll have some of my people check out the area so you can concentrate on this work. It needs to be done before the mountain slides again, or shrugs it off. Too much would be lost.”

Cope agreed with that as he and Gray Cloud began to follow the others down.

Gray Cloud spoke again while the voices below were still distant. He spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want his voice to travel. “You’re a warrior, Carter Copeland.”

Cope almost missed a step. “A part of my life,” he admitted. “So?”

“I mean you’re a warrior in the right way. You don’t seek a fight, but you will protect those in your care. That’s a true warrior. I’m glad you’re here with Renee. I’m glad she invited you. I saw enough of you since you started teaching at the college to know you’re a good choice to keep an eye on this team of hers.”

“Nice compliment but...”

“No buts,” Gray Cloud interrupted. “You have a strong sense of duty to those in your care. That’s a good trait, the defining trait of a true warrior.” Gray Cloud flashed him a grin. “You know you’ll do what’s right. Renee has some experience on projects like this, but she and her team are innocents in the woods.”

Now that did draw Cope up short. He knew instinctively that Gray Cloud wasn’t using the word woods to refer to the trees. “What do you mean? Do you know something I should be worried about? That we should be worried about?”

He watched as Gray Cloud’s gaze grew distant. “I don’t know what I know,” the man said finally. “Right now, like your sensation of being watched, I have a feeling, nothing more. All is not well on this mountain.”

Great. Wonderful. That was so damn helpful, Cope thought as they drew closer to the team.

* * *

By late the following afternoon, after a trip to Conard City’s sporting goods supply, a camp had been created on a patch of level forest land. Tents had sprung up, tarps hung from tree trunks, metal folding tables held cookstoves and other gear, and ice chests were full of food. Most everyone on the team had some camping experience, so the setup went smoothly.

This possible expenditure had been planned for in Renee’s budget, so her credit card smarted only a bit. Keeping the team in town would have been so much more expensive in every regard.

Denise and Renee marched up the path to the cliff face to continue mapping the area, and Cope added his shoulders and arms to the effort. As they measured, he tapped small pins lightly into the rock around which black twine was twisted to mark the verticals of the grid.

Another day, Renee figured, and they’d be ready to start work up here.

It was nearly six by the time they marched down again to join the rest of the group, who’d been putting the finishing touches on the camp. Most importantly, they’d brewed coffee and tea on the camp stoves, which were hooked up to large bottles of propane. Renee was more than ready for that coffee. Its aroma had practically dragged her down the last half of the trail.

Larry handed her a cup before she could even ask and waved her into one of the camp chairs. “Gray Cloud said we could build a fire tonight if we want.”

That surprised her. “Really?” she asked as she sat. She hadn’t expected that, but rather that they’d be warned not to have any fires at all because of the dangers of wildfire.

“Yup. There’s a fire ring over there. He said not to build it too big and keep plenty of water nearby to put it out. Bets and Mason ran back to town to get some sandbags for smothering the fire just in case, and Carlos and I hiked to the bottom of the stream over there to get water to use if things got out of hand.”

She settled into her chair and smiled at him. “How many of you were Scouts?”

That caused some laughter, but it seemed some of them had been. Prepared for just about everything.

She was glad when Cope chose a chair near hers. She liked being able to glance at him and watch his face. As far as she could tell, nothing had troubled him today, but he wasn’t completely relaxed. Tension, or possibly vigilance, appeared to remain with him. Maybe he never relaxed. How would she know?

But he was still some pretty good eye candy. A pleasant warmth filled her whenever she looked his way.

Within an hour, her team had made her feel pretty special. Some of them were apparently masters of camp cooking, and soon they’d offered a meal of biscuits, bratwurst and mixed veggies.

“No reason we have to live on canned baked beans,” Mason said. “Although we’ll probably get there as we get busier. What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Before we get into that,” Renee said, “we need to talk about basic precautions. I don’t want anyone going off on their own, understood? It’s too easy to get hurt. Twist an ankle, fall and break a leg. Everyone keep your hard hats on all the time. That rock is still shedding pieces from above. And I’m not being a nanny, okay?” Not being a nanny but unable to forget the creeped-out feeling she’d gotten up there only yesterday, the growing conviction that they were being watched. Cope had felt it, too, and she’d go with his judgment as well.

Everyone nodded, as if they got it. She hoped they had, because she couldn’t help worrying that something worse might be out there than an accident.

“Then there’s the wildlife. You all received the information on the animals around here. You’re not likely to encounter them if you just stay within our area and keep making noise. And that’s the last I have to say about that unless someone has questions.”

After supper, she wasn’t even allowed to help with the cleanup. It seemed, she thought wryly, that there might be some brownnosing going on here. She wondered how long that would last.

As Bets took her plate from her and poured her more coffee out of the huge speckled blue coffeepot, she glanced at Cope and what she saw disturbed her.

He looked as tightly wound as a spring, and he was staring into the dark woods as if he could see something there.

She followed his gaze, but couldn’t see anything beyond the tight circle of their camp, which was getting darker by the minute. Overhead stars wheeled in their courses, visible wherever there was an opening in the forest canopy. Gray Cloud had put them in a clearing, so the view of the sky was superlative.

But she didn’t care about that. The shadows were deepening under the trees around them and they seemed to be a growing threat.

While the others chattered and made short work of cleaning up, she rose and walked over to Cope. His blue eyes snapped up to her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

“Someone’s watching again. Maybe Gray Cloud’s men.”

It struck Renee that Gray Cloud would be unlikely to put men out here to guard them without at least introducing them so there’d be no misunderstanding.

“God,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“My cousin Mercy spent a summer on this mountain while she was researching her dissertation. Like Gray Cloud, she came to believe it’s alive.”

His face was set in stone. He didn’t disagree with her, but his gaze returned to the woods. “It’s gone now. And whether the mountain’s alive, this was no mountain I was sensing.”

She squatted beside him, holding her cup in both hands. “Do you think we’re in danger?”

The bold question popped out of her, and she wasn’t sure why she had asked it. Dinosaur digs weren’t the kind of things to result in murder or mayhem for any reason.

He sighed, relaxing visibly one muscle at a time. “No,” he said finally. “But I don’t like it when someone’s curious and won’t just come and say howdy, like that Butler guy did two days ago. That’s all.”

He had a point. She straightened and pulled her chair over closer to his. She didn’t care if her team wanted to talk about them. Nothing was going to come of it, and she and Cope were natural friends being so much older than the others.

Renee stuck her hand into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her cell phone. No signal. Sighing, she stuffed it back in. “I can’t call Gray Cloud from here. There’s no signal at all. I don’t think it’s likely he’d ask some people to keep an eye out without letting us know who they are.”

“I’m not so sure. He said he was going to have a couple of men check the area out to see if anyone had been hanging around, so maybe that’s all that happened. No reason for formal introductions if they’re just going to slip by. Who knows? Maybe a wolf was checking us out. The curiosity wouldn’t be surprising.”

“I guess not.”

Then he turned a smile on her. “Regardless, it’s gone and my reactions may be a little exaggerated because of Afghanistan. This place reminds me of some of the places I served.”

She turned in her chair to look at him better. “Is this situation causing you trouble? Maybe you don’t want to be here with us.”

He held up his thumb and forefinger, indicating a small space. “It’s giving me that much trouble. Not worth thinking about. I’m just doing a self-check on my reactions is all. Always a good thing to do.”

Probably a good thing for her to do as well, Renee thought. She had a way of letting her enthusiasm take over. “You’re remarkable,” she said after a few moments. “How many tours over there?”

“Four.”

“Definitely remarkable. You make it sound like it was nothing.”

He laughed. “Only because you haven’t heard me rant yet. So what’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“We’ve got to finish laying out the grid and tacking twine to the rock face as well as we can without damaging anything. Everything has to be accurately sited in order to interpret our discoveries. Then we’ll be ready to begin releasing the fossils.”

“I like that term, releasing the fossils.”

It was her turn to laugh. “I like it, too. I’m sure it’s not accepted terminology, but I always think of the fossils as having been imprisoned for millions of years, and we’re bringing them into the light again.”

“I like the term, too,” said Mason, wandering over to join them. “A fire while we chat?”

It was getting chillier by the moment, and the idea of gathering around a campfire appealed to Renee. Besides, she couldn’t imagine that her conversation with Cope had anywhere else to go.

“I’m in,” Renee answered. “Cope?”

“Nicest thing on a chilly night. God knows I spent enough cold nights without one. I’ll help.”

* * *

Far back in the woods, from where the campfire could be only dimly seen, eyes watched and noted. He thought he had enough information now. With so few members of the team, there would be ample opportunity to disrupt the work and scare them off. The people he worked for needed some time to complete their plan.

And complete it they would. Those rocks held far more of value than some damn fossils.

Satisfied, he slipped away into the darker shadows, careful not to make so much noise that he disturbed animals and birds into making frightened sounds. A night forest coming suddenly to life would be a warning to that guy down there, the one who used to be a soldier. He’d be aware of all the things to pay attention to.

Yeah, it might take a bit of time, but he and the others would put a stop to this dig until all the pieces were in place. They were close now. Very close.

He also had a great idea how to use this mountain to his advantage. By the time he got done, the damn tribe would be calling the dig off. The ultimate success.