Dissolution: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book One Read online

  The man’s battered-looking dark-gray cowboy hat was pulled down tight; gray hair poked out from beneath. Holly’s long face looked weathered and tough. As a final accent to his personality, a long-stemmed pipe was clenched in his teeth.

  At sight of Amber, thin lips curled around the pipe, and Holly’s faded blue eyes warmed. Dropping the pipe into one of his pockets, he called, “Hey, girl!” and pulled Amber into an embrace.

  To Sam’s complete surprise, she didn’t jack a knee into the guy’s nuts and deck him with a roundhouse right. No one touched Amber. She actually—but awkwardly—returned the hug.

  “Still a lech, aren’t you, Evan?” She pushed back, grinning as if in real delight. Flinging a hand Sam’s way, she added, “This is my crew chief, Sam Delgado.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’ve admired your work,” Sam said, shaking the man’s big hand. It swallowed his, and Holly’s grip was like being squeezed by two-by-fours.

  Holly barely spared Sam a glance. “Nice to meet you.”

  I might have been cold lunch meat.

  Holly’s attention was on Amber as he seated himself and said, “You’re looking good, girl. How was the trip out?”

  “Long. Tense,” Amber told him. “Lot of anxiety out there. COVID has most of Iowa shut down. Made it to Casper just as this credit card thing hit. You heard about Denver? The other cities? Remarkable distraction just hours before China landed troops in Taiwan, don’t you think?”

  “Shit’s hitting the fan,” he muttered, pulling off his big hat and dropping it on the floor beside his chair. “How’s that old scoundrel Ricci?”

  To most students, Don Ricci—the head of the anthro department—was like some sort of living god.

  “Dr. Don’s fine. He said to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  Sam swallowed hard, a nervous quiver in his stomach as he waited for the explosion.

  Holly just grinned. “Never thought much of him until he sent you my way. Good call that. Might have steered you toward those ninnies down at Colorado State. Then where would you be?”

  Holly glanced Sam’s way and said, “Easy, son. You’ll figure it out one of these days.”

  Sam felt his ears begin to burn, that sense of humiliation stewing in his gut. While Amber was technically his academic equal, there was a difference between them: she had a funded dissertation topic.

  Evan’s eyebrow arched. “You heard that the secretary of state is on his way to Beijing to find a way to, as he says, ‘defuse the situation?’”

  “Yeah.” Her gaze went distant. “Didn’t get much coverage, did it? The news either seems fixated on cute stories about who can’t buy McNuggets with their VISA or who’s burning which neighborhood down.”

  Dr. Holly grunted.

  For Sam’s part, the credit card thing was a hell of a lot more important. That was here. Not a half a planet away.

  Amber changed the subject. “Enough of the world falling apart. I’ve got everything on the list that you asked for. God knows how we’re going to pack all of it up to the site.”

  “The Tappans will handle it. Their motto is, ‘Ask a Tappan, they’ll make it happen.’ Talked to Bill last night. He said the kids had already been up to the camp, cut wood, dug a latrine, and set up wall tents. They were packing the groceries in today.”

  “You said you had a surprise.” Amber tilted her head suggestively.

  Dr. Holly leaned back in his chair; his expression smug. “There’s a cave, Amber. Just down from the site in a side canyon in the limestone. Frank Tappan found it when he was a kid out elk hunting.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “I’m going to wait until you can see for yourself.” Now that he had both Amber and Sam hanging, Holly leaped to his feet, padding off for the coffee pot and cups on the buffet bar.

  “Cave?” Sam asked, gaze following the old anthropologist.

  Amber was tapping her fingers on the table. “He’s like a kid at Christmas. Must be pretty awesome.”

  “I don’t think he likes me.”

  She shot Sam a quick look. “He respects scholars who are proficient in their discipline. Beyond that, he expects you to pull your weight and then some. Go the extra distance.”

  Holly strode back and seated himself, coffee in hand.

  “What kind of crew have you got?” he asked, forestalling any more talk about the cave.

  “Typical field school. A sprinkling of graduate students and the rest undergrads. Most are anthro majors, but I’ve got an English major, a computer science geek, and a social work major who is going to be...interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “Shanteel is from Philadelphia. She’s twenty-two, raised in one of the tough neighborhoods. Philadelphia cops shot her mother dead in one of the early Black Lives Matter marches. Shanteel took an anthropology course because an aunt told her that some of her ancestors were Cherokee Seminoles. But instead of academic interest, I think she signed up for the field school to keep from having to take care of a younger sister in Philadelphia.”

  “So?”

  “So, she’s got an attitude about all things Western, redneck, and rural.”

  Holly was grinning. “I like her already.”

  “Did you catch that part where I said she had an attitude?”

  “If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be worth spit.” Holly took a sip of his coffee. “Cherokee Seminole, huh? She ever met an Indian?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Thomas Star will be up at the site in a couple of days. I thought he should see it.”

  “Who’s Thomas Star?” Sam asked.

  Holly shot him a measuring look that didn’t bode well for Sam’s future. “He’s a puhagan.”

  Sam nodded, ever thankful for the reading Amber had made him tackle: Hultkrantz, Shimkin, Loendorf, and Stewart among others. Puhagan. Medicine man. A Shoshoni holy man.

  Sam felt a slight lessening of Holly’s disdain. Probably because he didn’t ask what a puhagan was.

  But then, Sam had never met a real Native American either.

  “Why would we need a Native monitor?” Amber asked. “Don’t tell me there are burials up there.”

  “Don’t know about any burials.” Holly sucked down another gulp of coffee and made a face as he stared at the cup. “That’s really rude stuff.”

  Then he waved a hand dismissively. “You better brace yourself, Amber. You’re about to blow your career wide open up on that mountain.”

  The Collapse

  Looking back, I doubt the cyberattack was supposed to destroy the banking system. Just wound it. Sow suspicion and distrust among the people. I wonder what kind of “Oh shit” moment they had in Pyong Yang, Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, or wherever, when they finally realized the extent of the collapse.

  See, when the US banks couldn’t cope, they closed their doors. By the time they discovered the extent of the malware, could begin to implement a patch, it was too late.

  Americans were looking for an excuse. The people had already turned on each other.

  — Excerpt from Breeze Tappan’s Journal.

  Chapter Four

  Sam drove Kirstin’s BMW as they left the little hamlet of Hot Springs that sunny Wyoming morning. The students had settled the bill for rooms in cash. Sam and Amber had covered Jon’s share. Some, like Danielle and Kirstin, were down to the change in their pockets. Their habit had been to depend on credit cards down to buying a tube of Chapstick at the truck stops.

  “You’ll see,” Dr. Holly had promised. “They’ll have it cleared up by the time we’re back down from the mountain. It’ll be a story you can all tell. ‘Remember the time when the credit cards were all declined.’”

  Worry about the banks and concern about family back home was tempered by the fact that no one who’d called home had heard anything dire.

  Should have called, Sam chastised himself. But, damn it, he could imagine The Yucatec. Mama would be wound up like a spring. Her life depended upon the
ritual, running the register, taking orders, and serving. The woman turned manic on the few days they had ever taken off. They’d be closed until noon anyway. Sure, they’d be insisting on cash, but he knew they’d take IOUs from long-time customers.

  Again, Sam drove last in line behind Dylan’s Dodge Ram. Dylan followed Amber in the college van, who in turn followed Dr. Evan Holly up in the lead who drove a battered Jeep Rubicon.

  From town they wound their way up through broken sandstone anticlines and into broad sagebrush-covered valleys. Awesome geology—especially the brilliant red-sandstone uplifts. When seen against the cerulean sky, the effect was like Sam had never imagined.

  This was about as far from Sam’s Hempstead Long Island roots—and The Yucateca—as he could get. In that world of streets, people, traffic, and graffiti, his father ran the kitchen; Mama held dominion over the dining room and kept the books. The day he left for graduate school Sam swore he’d never bus another table, carry out the trash, or stack the dishwasher again.

  His father’s last words were still ringing in his ears: “Your mother and I raised you better than this. Worked our asses off so you could be the first to go to college. And you take what? Anthropology? How you gonna make a living doing that, huh? We ain’t paying no more. Comprende, niño?”

  So, here he was with thirty-five dollars in his pocket, driving Kirstin’s dream car on roads it was never designed for, headed toward who-knew-what?

  This was hard country. Edgy. Untamed. They barely spoke as he drove up out of the Bighorn River Valley and took the narrow blacktop country road west from the highway.

  Occasional ranch houses—looking battered and dingy for the most part—stood bravely beneath spreading and ancient cottonwood trees. The antithesis of those came in the form of rudely skirted and sun-faded trailer houses, usually with a couple of junked pickups out back; rusted tractors and unidentifiable pieces of agricultural equipment looked abandoned in stands of dark-green weeds.

  “Talk about Dueling Banjos country,” Ashley whispered.

  “What’s that?” Kirstin was frowning at her phone.

  “You never saw Deliverance?” Ashley asked.

  “Vin Diesel in it?” Kirstin was lifting her phone, turning it this way and that.

  “Guys from the city get raped by rednecks,” Shyla supplied.

  He loved it when she sat beside him. He could fantasize that they were a couple.

  Yeah?

  Fat chance.

  In the back seat, Kirstin lowered her phone. “Um, guys, no service. Tower must be down.”

  “Oh, man,” Ashley sounded irritated as she turned her attention from playing Wild Rush on her Samsung and checked her service. “Maybe that’s, like, because of the riots in Denver? You think they shut down service?”

  “Why would they?” Shyla murmured. “They said it was just a computer going down. I mean, banks have back-up files. What’s wrong with people in Denver? Too much weed?”

  Sam sneaked a glance at Shyla. Her gaze looked distant. Was she worried about her folks back in Vermont? Or missing her rich football-playing boyfriend who flew her off to places like Barbados and Martha’s Vineyard over break?

  A rock chipped up from one of the tires clanged off the BMW’s underside.

  “Hey! Careful with my car!”

  “It was just a stone,” Sam shot back.

  “You break this car; you’re going to know real trouble.”

  “You want to drive?” Sam asked, slowing for a rough section.

  Up ahead, Dylan’s big Dodge truck was chattering and bouncing over the weirdly ridged road surface. They would learn this was called “washboard”, formed by the tires bouncing. It was insidious. Even the BMW’s suspension was barely up to it.

  “Where the hell is Amber taking us?” Kirstin demanded.

  “End of the road,” Sam told her. “You all saw the map. There’s that one last ranch, then the national forest.”

  “People live out here?” Ashley asked in disbelief as she stared at the latest of the trailers we were passing. A woman in a weed-sprinkled yard was actually hanging laundry on a clothesline. It was like stepping fifty years back in time.

  Ashley wondered, “It’s been like an hour since we left town. They drive all that way? On this road? Just to get, you know, a carton of milk?”

  “Unfuckingbelievable,” Kirstin moaned as she shook her phone.

  Sam was pretty weirded out himself. Talk about being alone, the only signs of humanity were the dirt road, a couple of fences, and a power line. What was that term? Dueling banjos country?

  They rumbled over a cattle guard and between two tall poles. Hanging from the crosspiece a weathered sign read: Tappan Ranch.

  The little caravan followed Dr. Holly another half mile down a lane bordered on both sides by alfalfa fields. The ranch house was built of logs with a big stone fireplace at one end. Frame additions had been added haphazardly over the years—a sort of patchwork of angles stuck on the house’s back and sides.

  A big tan-colored shop building—hard to even call it a concession to the Twentieth Century—stood to the left. Along the base of the slope were a cluster of small log-and-frame cabins with tarpaper roofs. A historic-looking barn, painted dark red, posed picturesquely against a series of wooden corrals. Against the slope a long, open-fronted shed stretched a hundred feet or so. Sam could see two green tractors, a couple of older work trucks, and assorted farm machinery within. Weathered horse and stock trailers had been parked in a row at the edge of one of the fields.

  Sort of angled off the rear of the house stood another, cruder, log structure with a white-painted door and two stove pipes sticking up from the tin roof.

  And behind it all? Sam couldn’t believe his eyes. An outhouse—just like in the historical photos—could be seen to one side at the foot of the slope. From the weeds around its front—and the lack of paint—it didn’t look like it was still used.

  Dr. Holly’s Jeep pulled up before the open-sided equipment shed; Amber parked the college van beside him, which set the pattern for the rest.

  Sam shut the BMW off and stepped out. The excited bump to his heartbeat came as a surprise.Horses were all lined up at the corral beside the barn; the animals watched them with lazy interest.

  “What happened to my car?” Kirstin cried in horror.

  Sam turned to find her staring in absolute amazement at the powdery white dust that had covered the BMW’s opalescent black paint.

  “That’s called dust.”

  She gave him a half-wild look, and Sam had to remind himself that she was a very young nineteen, and her parents were rich Washington DC lawyers.

  She said, “I need a car wash. Like right now, people.”

  “Give it a break, why don’t you?” Ashley murmured. She propped hands on her hips and looked around. “Wow, so this is home for the next two months, huh?”

  If any of the students thrived, Sam thought it would be Ashley. She was captain of the women’s soccer team and played shortstop on the university women’s fast-pitch team. Her single goal for the summer was to get a good enough grade to get off academic probation. She stood about five-foot-five, had short-cut blonde hair, and was solid muscle.

  Sam rounded the back of Dylan’s truck just in time to see Shanteel climb down from the college van. Her eyes were fixed on the yellow flag hanging limp over the house front porch. Sam didn’t need to see the text to know it had a snake on it and stated Don’t Tread on Me.

  Dr. Holly—his cowboy hat scrunched on his head—called, “Come on, people, let’s go meet our hosts. Then there’s time for a bathroom stop if you need it. After that you can unpack your gear and carry it over to the bunkhouse.”

  “What’s a bunkhouse?” Kirstin asked.

  “Like a dormitory,” Dylan told her, a crooked smile on his face. “God, where’d you grow up? Washington DC?”

  “Georgetown.”

  Sam wondered if Kirstin and Shanteel would last out the first ten-day session
up on the mountain, or if they’d bail and be headed home within the week.

  A man emerged from the house, thumped across the wooden porch, and into the yard. Okay. To call the packed-earth and gravel a “yard” was generous.

  As Sam followed the group across the small parking lot, he kept looking up at the mountains that rose around the valley. The ranks of fir and spruce were darker green and mostly on the northern slopes. The lighter green was pine with an occasional juniper, the trees more irregular where they clung to the mountain’s southern side. White patches of rocky cliff had to be the limestone Dr. Holly had mentioned. And behind it, even taller, wilder-looking mountains rose toward the sky.

  What awesome country!

  And he was going up there? To say it was a seven-mile pack trip on horseback while sitting in the safe confines of the Anthropology building was one thing. To stand in that valley, looking up at the mountainside, with the horses that would carry him and the crew just over yonder? That was something entirely different.

  “Brought you a load of greenhorns, Bill,” Dr. Holly called to the old man who limped out to meet them. The guy could have been a stereotype: With the stained gray cowboy hat on his head, he stood a little short of six feet on seriously bowed legs. A plaid snap-button shirt hung from bony shoulders on a rail-thin frame. The pointed cowboy boots that shod his feet looked so worn they should have been thrown away years back.

  Word was that Bill Tappan was seventy; he looked absolutely ancient right until he fixed you with those intense eyes of his: hazel-centered and ringed by brown.

  “Welcome to Tappan Ranch,” his voice was firm. “I’m Bill Tappan. My people have been in this valley for over a hundred years. I’m fourth generation. Frank—who you’ll meet tonight—is fifth generation, and Brandon and Celia, they’re sixth, so you might say we got roots.”

  They went through the introductions, Tappan shaking hands all the way around, although Sam could tell that Shanteel and Kirstin didn’t exactly have their hearts in it. And it wasn’t because of COVID.