A history prof, she’d bet, afflicted with a lingering case of his boyhood bone-fever. Probably he’d taken a vacation to Mexico City, toured the temple at nearby Teotihuacan and been thunderstruck with the daring and originality of his own theory, which he now desperately needed to share with a kindred soul. She resumed reading, If you have any useful thoughts on this, I’d sure like to hear ’em, he’d written in closing. I collect my mail at the address below, whenever I come to town.
“Magdalena’s Cantina in Mipopo?” The bar’s address placed it in the northwest of mainland Mexico, somewhere in the state of Chihuahua. Raine chose an atlas from one of a dozen that were wedged into the nearest overcrowded bookshelf. It took her magnifying glass to find the dot that was Mipopo. A speck of a town along a rim of the—“Barrancas del Cobre” Raine murmured aloud, savoring the words like music on the tongue. So the professor was poking around the Copper Canyons, one of the last truly wild regions in North America.
Looking for Triceratops. Or possibly for Aztecs. Which, come to think of it, must be just about as extinct as dodos and dinosaurs. Raine laughed softly and closed the atlas. She’d always had a weakness for academic eccentrics.
They ate out on the narrow balcony that overlooked the backyard gardens and balconies of the adjoining block. While they talked idly of family and friends, a candle burned on the table between them. “So what now?” Jaye asked when there was nothing left but the wine.
“I’m not sure. With Ethiopia on hold, my calendar’s empty.” Not good. She and her siblings were close, but the way their father and uncle had structured Ashaway All, the top earner in any year got first claim on operational funds in the following year to finance his or her next expedition. The others had to trim their sails and their projects accordingly. It was a tough but fair system that kept them all hustling. Unfortunately Ethiopia had been all out-go, with no resulting income. Raine sighed.
“You could help me and my guys while you’re figuring it out.” Jaye was excavating for prehistoric amber in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. Most of her field crew were interns from Princeton. “Fastest way to forget about Kincade is to surround yourself with a pack of flirtatious, adorable, Ivy League hotties. Beefcake and brains is a treat to behold.”
Raine snorted. “You’re not poaching in the playpen, are you?”
“No, just waving back at ’em through the bars. That’s thrill enough. And I do have a couple of grad students old enough to grow beards. Plus their professors cruise through whenever they get the urge to take off their ties and muck in the dirt.”
“Sounds like you’ve got plenty of company already.” Raine yawned, stretched, stared up at the night sky. Not a star to be seen; the city lights had banished every one. She was restless already. And this was no time to sit and brood. Miles and motion were what she needed right now.
That and something exciting—something wonderful—to chase. If by any miracle Professor McCord wasn’t entirely a crackpot…If he’d seen some old bones, or heard of some… “I appreciate the offer, Jaye. But I’m thinking maybe I’ll fly down for a few days and check out the Copper Canyons.”
Chapter 2
M ipopo didn’t qualify as a town, in Raine’s estimation. It was a squalid little crossroads, set back a quarter mile from the canyon’s awesome rim, as if its original founders had feared it might grow dizzy and tip over. Its main street had a general store with a battered gas pump out front, perhaps a dozen ancient adobes still standing. The only inhabitants in sight were several discouraged dogs and a flock of optimistic chickens pecking the rutted road.
And if there was a bar in town, they were hiding it pretty well. Maybe the professor had made it all up? “When in doubt, ask,” she muttered, swerving in to stop alongside the gas pump.
The ancient proprietor limped out to fill the tank on her topless Jeep, then wash her bug-splattered windshield. But when it came to directions, he was a man of few words. Make that one. “Que?”
“La Cantina de Magdalena,” Raine repeated in careful Spanish. “Could you tell me where it is?”
“Que?” Raising his voice, he smiled wide enough to show her his steel eye-tooth.
“Magdalena’s bar?” Raine tried in English. Or maybe ‘what’ was all the Spanish he spoke, since that was the secondary language in these parts.
The Copper Canyons were home to the Tarahumara Indians, second largest tribe of native Americans in the northern hemisphere. According to the guidebook Raine had bought this morning in Creel, it took a linguist about twelve years to learn their language—if he had an exceptional ear. “What about a place to stay for the night?” she tried without much hope, as she settled behind the wheel of her Jeep.
She folded her hands, prayer-fashion, pressed them to one ear and cocked her head. Closing her eyes, she sighed blissfully, as if snuggling down into a comfy pillow.
“Oh, si! El doctor.”
“Clearly we don’t have a meeting of minds here. But muchas gracias, señor, all the same.”
As she eased the Jeep past a swaggering rooster and onto the road, Raine figured she had two hours before the sun dipped below the craggy peaks beyond the canyon to her west. If she couldn’t find a place to bed down in Mipopo, she supposed she could return to the motel where she’d stayed in Creel last night. Some eighty miles of butt-bruising road to the north, the little logging and tourist town boasted the main stop on the railway that skirted the canyon rim. It was the last place even pretending to civilization for a hundred miles in any direction.
On the other hand, she could press on regardless, heading south into the hinterlands. According to her map, a dotted line swerved off the rim road about ten miles past Mipopo. This track appeared to switch back down the canyon wall, dropping from bench to bench. If she made it down to the river before dark, she’d surely find a place to pitch a camp.
“Darn,” she muttered aloud. She’d pictured herself finding the professor tonight. Professor McCord had started out as the longest of longshots, barely more than an excuse for this escapade. But after her discovery yesterday in the Creel gift shop, her urge to consult him had grown more urgent. “So how do I find you?” she murmured, then glanced to her right at the building she was passing—and stepped on the brakes.
It was one of the few two-story buildings in Mipopo, and there were three battered cars and an overloaded lumber truck parked in the vacant lot beside it. Farmacia, proclaimed the rusty sign that swung above its torn screen door and sagging boardwalk, though the blinking red, chili pepper Christmas tree lights that framed each window were sort of festive for a drugstore. Plus they were either too early or way too late, this being only the first week in October. Still, if there was a pharmacist lurking within, surely he’d speak Spanish? The screen door banged shut behind her and Raine stood, half-blind in the dusky light.
“Dame una tequila!” demanded someone at her ear in a metallic monotone. She spun to find herself eyeball to beady black eyeball with a mynah bird, perched on a plastic coat hanger suspended from the ceiling.
A hand-lettered sign hung from the bird’s trapeze. “Magdalena,” Raine read aloud. “You’re Magdalena? Then this must be—”
“¡Una tequila o tu vida!” A tequila or your life! Feathers brushed her ear as the bird swooped away.
Turning to follow its flight, Raine saw the bird flutter down behind a long marble counter, fronted by a row of red-topped stools. Back in some distant and glorious past, this must have been the town’s ice cream parlor and drugstore. The round