The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (Pot Thief Mysteries) Read online

  Her face lit up. “Maybe he wasn’t one of them. Maybe he was a treasure hunter like you and died while searching for the same pots you were searching for.”

  Susannah has a vivid imagination and loves mysteries.

  “No way. He was two feet under the ground. If he was a modern human who wandered into the ruin and died, he would be right on the surface.”

  “Why wouldn’t one of the original cliff dwellers also be right on the surface if he died of natural causes?”

  “Because a lot of dirt and debris can be deposited in a thousand years. This guy was far enough under that he had to be an original inhabitant.”

  She had a skeptical look. “How can you be sure?”

  “I was in the graduate program in archaeology at UNM.”

  “Yeah, but they kicked you out before you got a degree.”

  “That’s their problem.”

  She was right. I made my first significant find back in the eighties as a student on a summer dig. I knew the faculty leaders were digging in the wrong place as soon as I saw them drive the stakes and stretch the string.

  They were jealous when I unearthed three rare pots from a spot I selected on my own. Even though treasure hunting was legal back then, they expelled me because I refused to give them the pots. I sold them instead and used the money to make a down payment on the building where I have my shop. I even had enough left over to buy the Bronco, but I guessed that part of the investment was now history.

  When I finally got to the part about the coyote, she said, “Wait. A coyote actually let you remove a trap from his leg?”

  “I’m not sure ‘let’ is the right word. He did let me get close to him. He’d lost a lot of blood and was probably weak and disoriented. And maybe he appreciated the chorizo I gave him. I made soothing noises as I approached.”

  She was giving me another skeptical look. “What sort of soothing noises?”

  “Nice doggy, nice doggy.”

  “Coyotes are not dogs, Hubert.”

  “I know that. But ‘nice coyote, nice coyote’ didn’t spring to mind, so I just went with what did. When I was near enough, I shoved a gunny sack over his head and pulled it taut. Then I jabbed the rebar between the teeth of the trap and pried it open. He yelped and squirmed in the sack, but when I took it off, he didn’t bolt. I wish I hadn’t had to use the gunny sack, but I didn’t want to get bitten.”

  “And what was Geronimo doing while you were playing coyote whisperer?”

  “He was raising his head towards the moon and pursing his lips. But no sound was forthcoming.”

  “Face it, Hubie. Your dog is weird,”

  “That’s because he’s half anteater.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Right. So then what?”

  “I gave each of us a ration of chorizo and we went to sleep.”

  “And how did you get back to civilization?”

  “After we had breakfast—”

  “More chorizo?”

  “Right. I explained that Geronimo would lead the way since he knew the path, I would follow and Wiley would bring up the rear.”

  “Wiley?”

  “Yeah. You know, Wile E. Coyote. Like in the Roadrunner cartoons.”

  “You named the coyote?”

  “Why not? He looked a lot more like a dog than Geronimo.”

  “Sheesh. So then what?”

  “I shoved Geronimo down the path and took a step after him. I looked back and told Wiley to follow, but when he put weight on his injured foot, he flopped back down. I went back and sat down a few feet away from him. He didn’t seem to mind. So I opened the first aid kit and sprayed the wounded area with Bactine.”

  “So after you played vet, you went down the path?”

  “No. I figured he needed time to let the anesthetic work. I gathered some wood and started a fire.”

  “And the three of you sat around the campfire singing Kumbaya.”

  I ignored her sarcasm. “Nope. Wiley fell asleep, Geronimo didn’t know the words and I didn’t feel like doing a solo. So I just sat there trying not to think about the path. As it turns out, that was the easiest part of the day.”

  4

  The earnest young man entered my shop on July 14th. I remember the exact date because I’d finally finished reading The Wooing of Malkatoon by Lew Wallace and was calculating how long it had taken.

  Four months to the day.

  I’m not a slow reader. I just couldn’t take more than a page or two a day. I probably completed sixty books during those four months, doing a few pages of Malkatoon in the lull between other books.

  I stuck with it only because the centennial of New Mexico’s statehood was coming up, and I’d decided to focus my reading on my native state. I selected Wallace because he was New Mexico’s Territorial Governor from 1878 to 1881 during which time he published his most famous work, Ben-Hur. I was fascinated that someone who governed New Mexico during its Wild West days was also writing the book that eventually became the blockbuster movie starring Charlton Heston.

  But all I was thinking about when the handsome young man passed over my threshold was how happy I was to be finished with Malkatoon. I felt like I deserved something for my persistence, and he delivered it, placing a small Anasazi bowl on my counter.

  Or, more accurately, two pieces of a small Anasazi bowl. Joining them at their edges produced about two thirds of the original. Among serious collectors, anything over half is a bowl. Anything less is a shard.

  I looked up at his honest face. “You want to sell this?”

  “Make me an offer,” he said.

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way. Sellers set the price. If I like your price, I’ll take it. If not, we can haggle. But you’ve got to start.”

  “You have me at a disadvantage. You’re in the business. You know how much the pot is worth.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  He hesitated. He looked to be around thirty. In addition to his honest face, he had a pleasant smile, intelligent eyes and a strong chin. “I got it from a teenager who said he found it in a cliff dwelling,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “At my office.”

  “I meant where did he find it, not where did you get it.”

  “Let’s talk price,” he said.

  I decided to ask about the location of the cliff dwelling later.

  He glanced around the shop. “You have anything like this?”

  I led him to a shelf on the west wall and pointed to an ancient pot. “This one is about the same size but in better shape. You can see I have it priced at three thousand.”

  “I’ll take two for mine,” he said.

  “I’ll give you five hundred.”

  “How about this?” he offered. “You give me a thousand for the pot, and I’ll tell you where it was found.”

  I ran through the possibilities before I replied. “That won’t do me any good if it was found in the middle of nowhere. Just because the original owner dropped it doesn’t mean there will be other pots there. And it won’t help me if it was found on a reservation. I don’t dig on Indian lands.”

  “It was found on Bureau of Land Management land. But the small cliff dwelling it came from is so remote and well-hidden that I don’t think even they know it’s there.”

  He had just described my ideal pot-digging location. “What’s your name and where do you live?”

  “Alvar Nuñez,” he said. He’d been speaking perfect unaccented English, but his name rolled off his tongue as if we were in Jerez. “I live in a place you’ve never heard of.”

  “Try me.”

  “La Reina.”

  “Near the Taos County line with a great view of Cerro Roto?”

  “You’ve been there? We’re not even on state maps.”

  “I haven’t been there. But my work requires study of the USGS topographic maps, so I’ve seen every place name in the state no matter how small.”

  I had him wait while I went to my residen
ce in the back of the building and withdrew $1,000 from my secret hiding place. I also brought my topo maps back to the shop. He found the right map and marked the location of the ruin about twenty miles from the village.

  Before I handed him the money, I asked to see his drivers license. It said Alvar Nuñez. And in a break with tradition, the picture on the license actually looked like him.

  After I handed him the money, he counted it. On the trust scale, we were even.

  And that’s how I ended up a few weeks later stranded on the cliff dwelling above the Rio Doloroso.

  5

  I raised two fingers to signal our favorite server, Angie, that Susannah and I both needed refills.

  “So what happened after the coyote woke up?” Susannah asked.

  “Why don’t you call him Wiley?”

  “We don’t give names to coyotes on our ranch.”

  “Do you shoot them from aircraft?”

  “No. And we don’t set traps or poison. The only time we ever shoot a coyote is when one approaches our sheep. We protect our flocks the old-fashioned way with Euskal artzain txakurra.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Basque sheep dogs.”

  Susannah’s family name is Inchaustigui. Her family doesn’t speak Basque at home, but she learned some from her grandfather. She says she’s not fluent, but how would anyone know?

  Basque, or Euskara as they call it, is the only remaining language in Europe that predates the Indo-European languages. Some people have speculated that the Basque language evolved from an earlier version spoken by the Neanderthals. I advise you not to mention this theory in the presence of Susannah’s brothers if you value your health.

  We do know that Basque was being spoken when the Romans invaded, but the people were illiterate, so there is no history of the language. Linguists assume there were other languages spoken in prehistoric Europe, but they died out long before they could be written down. The same thing probably happened to the language of the people of the cliff dwelling above the Rio Doloroso.

  I told her Wiley slept for about an hour. He seemed better when he woke up. So I sent Geronimo ahead as scout and followed him. This time Wiley hobbled along behind.

  “What about your fear of heights?”

  “I forced the rebar through the back of my hat and hung the gunny sack from it like blinders. The only thing I saw until we reached the switchbacks was basalt.”

  “Basalt?”

  “Yeah. The Rio Doloroso flows into the Rio Grande Gorge. But the Rio Grande didn’t dig out that gorge the way the Colorado dug the Grand Canyon. The gorge was formed by volcanic action, and all the rivers and streams fell into it by gravity. So the sides of the canyons are mostly the basalt left by eruptions.”

  “I’m sure this is fascinating to a geologist, but what does it have to do with your escape from the cliff dwelling?”

  “Basalt is basically lava. It cracks when it cools, so there were plenty of places to hold on to. I walked sideways facing the cliff and concentrated on handholds.”

  “If you had on blinders, how did you know you needed to hold on?”

  “The need was psychological. I didn’t hold on to keep from falling. I held on to keep from having a heart attack. The worst part was right at the end. There’s a stack of boulders you have to work around, and they seemed none too stable.”

  I was happy to see Angie with our refills. Recounting my misadventure had me needing a drink. I took a sip and discovered it was as good as the last one. “I was hoping to see the Bronco when we reached high ground, but all I saw was Cerro Roto.”

  She did that thing she does where she pushes her shoulders one way and her head another. It means she’s confused, but it’s becoming in a strange way.

  “You heard the Bronco start up and drive away. What part of that made you think it would still be there?”

  “I heard it start, but I didn’t know how far it was driven. For all I knew it was only a hundred yards away.”

  “Why would someone drive it a hundred yards and then just leave it there?”

  “Here’s a better question,” I said. “Why would a car thief be where there is no road? Not exactly fertile hunting ground for cars. Here’s another good question. How did he get there? It’s in the middle of nowhere, so he didn’t walk. He probably got there in a four-wheel-drive truck or a jeep. So if he drove the Bronco away, he’d have to leave his own vehicle behind.”

  “Unless he had a partner in crime.”

  “That still wouldn’t explain what they were doing there or why they would want a beat-up old Bronco. If you rule out car theft, the only explanation for the Bronco being moved is someone moving it just to take my rope away. In that case, all he had to do was drive it a few feet and leave.”

  She twirled her glass while she considered it. “So it was either a car thief or someone who wanted to strand you.”

  “Why would a car thief be—”

  “You already asked that. There are a thousand answers. He was dove hunting, riding a dirt bike, prospecting for gold. It doesn’t really matter. A car thief can be anywhere. And if he happens to come across a car… were the keys in it?”

  I hesitated. “Yes.”

  “There’s more, isn’t there?” She sees right through me.

  “It was running.”

  “You left the engine running while you descended down to the cliff dwelling?”

  “The winch draws a lot of current. If the battery died, I wouldn’t be able to get back up using the rope, so I left the engine running to keep the battery charged.”

  “It could have been teenagers pulling a prank.”

  “Maybe. Despite Alvar telling me that no one knows where the place is, there was evidence of campfires, and not ancient ones.”

  “Maybe they consider it their secret hiding place,” she said. “Kids like to do that. Like the Indian cave in Dead Poets Society.”

  “Having a secret place is fun, but stranding someone in a cliff dwelling is hardly a prank.”

  “Teenagers don’t think straight, Hubie. It’s their hormones.”

  I watched her sip her margarita while her wheels turned.

  “Maybe it was another treasure hunter who didn’t want you snooping around his secret pot-hunting place.”

  She seemed determined to add a second pot hunter to the story, either as the corpse I defiled or as a competitor stealing my truck.

  When I didn’t comment, she said, “Or an Indian who wanted to punish you for defiling a holy place.”

  “Or maybe the spirit of the dead guy drove it away,” I said.

  6

  Despite my brilliant reasoning, the Bronco was nowhere in sight when we cleared the canyon. We had to walk back to civilization.

  Or what passes for civilization in New Mexico.

  I took the gunny sack off the rebar and the rebar out of my hat. But even though I was now able to look back, I didn’t. I needed to concentrate on getting out.

  The surest path would have been retracing the route I took to get there. But that route had taken me over an old low bridge across the Rio Grande and far below the surrounding plateau. After crossing the bridge and maneuvering the narrow switchbacks up the other side, I had left the road and driven thirty miles weaving between dunes, arroyos, lava flows and brush. I had checked the topo map frequently because my primary means of navigation was comparing the contour lines on the map with the ground I was covering. That and judging the sight-line angles to Cerro Roto.

  I might have been able to find enough of my tire tracks to follow them back to the road. But it would be slow going in rough terrain. Especially with a wounded coyote in my posse.

  It was noon by the time we reached the rim of the Rio Doloroso Canyon. There was no way we could reach the road before dark. We’d have to spend the night on the plateau, reach the road in the morning then spend the rest of the day getting to the Rio Grande.

  At which point the trip would become even more challengin
g. We’d have to descend down a narrow switchback road to the low bridge. I remembered a park ranger saying if the Empire State Building were placed in the Rio Grande Gorge, the mast at the top would be the only thing visible. So you could at least see King Kong if he were up there swatting at planes.

  We’d probably arrive around dark. So we’d be making the descent after walking thirty miles and sleeping rough. I wasn’t confident we could make the trip on our nine legs. Ten if Wiley’s left front one could be depended upon.

  Another option would be to head to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. Unlike the old low bridge, it spans the Gorge at the top so there are no switchbacks and climbs. But it was even farther away. And it’s the third highest bridge in the country which was reason enough for an acrophobe like me to avoid it.

  Then I remembered looking at the topo map with Alvar Nuñez. We could go to La Reina. It was only twenty miles away, a long hike across rough terrain, but closer than either bridge and also level.

  Except the topo map was in the Bronco. I tried to picture it.

  The map, that is. I didn’t need to picture the Bronco. I knew exactly what it looked like. Which was good because the mental image was the only thing I had to remember it by.

  Even the key was gone.

  I realized my house key was on the same ring. Great. If by some miracle I made it back to Albuquerque, I’d have to break in to my own home.

  If the mental image I concocted of the map was correct, we needed to travel northwest at about 315 degrees. We set off in that direction.

  It wasn’t long until Wiley was looking haggard.

  We stopped to eat. Wiley needed to build up his strength. He got a whole chorizo. Geronimo got half of one. I decided it was a perfect time to start that diet I’d been contemplating. I was up to 160, much more than my 5’ 6” frame is accustomed to.

  We made a few miles that afternoon, but it was clear we were going to spend a night on the Rio Grande plateau. At dusk, I found a suitable place for a campsite in a small depression between two juniper trees. I discovered a roadrunner also liked the site when I reached for some dry sticks at the base of one of the junipers and he growled at me.