LC 02 - Questionable Remains by Beverly Connor Page A

an opiate for pain, something he
had learned from the Indians in his campaign with Pizzaro.
"Toma," commanded Diego.
    Calderon sipped the bitter drink as best he could. It was only a
little better than the repugnant taste already in his mouth.
    "Es malo," rasped Calderon.
    "Necesitas cura de reposo," said Diego. "Rest."
    The drink helped the pain, and made him drowsy, but it also
gave him enlightenment. Eso es, thought Calderon. Es claro. It
was Roberto. I should not have trusted him. Roberto gave
the savages the wrong message in order to stop me, Esteban
Calderon, from getting my treasure. That was it. I should
not have told him I married Cristina. That was a mistake.
Roberto knows where the treasure is hidden. He has lived
among them so long. He wants it for himself. But he's dead now, dead and rotting on the ground. Or is he? "Diego," he
called out, and coughed.

    Diego rushed to his side. "LQue necesita, Don Calderon?"
    "Roberto," whispered Calderon in his garbled speech. ",Se
murtio? Did you see hint die?"
    "No. He did not die immediately. He was injured. He is probably dead now."
    "Vive," Calderon whispered so lightly that Diego barely heard
hint. El Sabe, thought Calderon. "He knows where the gold is."

    Lindsay bought a new tire in the next town before she
resumed her drive into the mountains. The higher elevations brought cooler temperatures and some relief from the
heat. She had turned off her air-conditioning and rolled
down her windows to listen to the sounds of the mountains, the streams that flowed down the hillsides, the birds,
the wind as she drove. She heard these things, but saw little of the holly, Cherokee roses, laurels, and magnolias that
grew in great abundance in the mountains. Her mind was
on the conversation she'd had with John West. She wondered if John would agree to having the burials excavated
under his tribe's control or if his opposition was too deeply
rooted in his religion. She didn't want to tell him she
wouldn't stop excavating. She couldn't; she did not want to
abandon the quest to discover as much as she could about
the indigenous inhabitants of this continent. Maybe she
could find a compromise.
    When Lindsay crossed into the national forest, she pulled
to the side of the road to consult the map Jane had sent her.
In about a mile and a half she should come to the dirt road
that would take her most of the way to the site.
    Lindsay found the road. It had a chain across it with a
sign that said the road was closed to the public. Jane's letter
said to drive around the barricade. It was a tight squeeze, but Lindsay drove around and up the winding road. After
five miles of rutted and washed road she spotted a university van, Alan's old '78 Chevy, and a couple of other vehicles parked under a grove of large trees. Lindsay pulled her
Land Rover in between a Ford Explorer and a Jeep
Cherokee. She slung on her backpack, hung the trowel on
her belt, and started the two-mile hike up the trail to the
rock shelter.

    The three-foot-wide, well-worn trail inclined gently and
steadily into the forest. She breathed in the fresh air. It
smelled good to her-no odor of exhausts or industry, only
the smells of clean earth and vegetation; no sounds but for
the twittering of birds and the wind in the trees.
    She stopped and took a swig of water and continued on,
her hiking boots making a gentle crunching sound on the
trail. After another half mile her legs and back began to feel
the exertion. She stopped, adjusted her pack, and made a
mental note to add a few hills to her jogging route when she
returned home. She rounded a turn and came face-to-face
with Grizzly Adams, or at least someone who looked like
him, dressed in a dirty white T-shirt, cutoffs, and hiking
boots. The shaggy brown beard and long hair made him
look older, but Lindsay guessed he was actually in his midtwenties.
    "This trail is not open to the public," he said. "Can't you
read?" He looked down at