“The Lord God protected us,” Gordon said. “From back there, this rail looked fine. I could’ve tried to stop here, and didn’t.”
“Amen,” Wilbur added.
Wilbur swung his hammer at a tie. The hammer head buried itself in the wood.
“That’s not natural,” Wilbur announced. “We don’t need to go no further. Ties are shot, and they were new last year. Need a big crew to fix that. I’m happy to go back, unless Winston here wants to look at those house foundations.”
“You guys can wait here,” Winston said. “I’d better look. People might be missing. He pulled gloves and a box from his carryall. A trowel followed.
“I’ll be happy to hold your carpet bag,” Wilbur announced, “that slope might be easier to walk with less weight.”
“Thank you, sir,” Winston responded.
Winston paused to collect some of the rotten wood, a few steel fragments, and a solid amount of the orange sand. The sand sank under his boots, much more than Cape Cod beach sand would. There had been a house; all that was left was its foundation. That appeared to have been stone blocks, suspending the house two feet above the ground. A set of brick stairs rose at one side, leading to nothing. Indeed, the bricks looked to have been etched, pitted and crumbled.
He stopped, looking at the ground in front of him. Pale white lines looked vaguely like a human skeleton, spine and ribs superposed. It’s a trick of the light, he thought. If it were a human body. less that a day dead, there’s be at least a fairly full skeleton. So that would be the skull, and that would be the jaw. His eyes caught a metallic gleam near the jaw line. He gently probed the area with his trowel. Gold. Tooth fillings, it appears. The fillings went into an evidence bottle. Further down, he could see bones of the hands, reduced to little more than a shadow of dust. And there—protruding from the sand were a pair of rings, one a silvery metal, the other gold with the mount for a gemstone. Of the stone itself, there was no sign. Belongs to someone’s heirs now. I should get it to them.
Winston walked a loop around the house foundations. If there were other clues, he didn’t see them. The chimney had fallen. On the south side of the foundation, some lying on the ground and others imbedded in the concrete, he found pieces of glass – crystals, more like – tinted a deep violet. Those looked enough out of place that he dropped them in an evidence bag for later study.
“We can go back now!” he shouted. He plodded up the slope to his waiting travel companions.
“Any sign of people?” Gordon asked.
“One dead. Only a trace of a skeleton.” Winston shook his head. “I recovered two rings…someone’s relatives get them.”
“Just a skeleton?” Neal Connors asked. “I’m a senior lineman, and around here bodies last a while.”
“This one didn’t. The bones looked like a chalk drawing on pavement. I may be grandpa’s Associate Deputy, but this is all beyond me. Gramps has some expert help, but I’m not it.”
* * * * *
Cornelius Polk leaned against the fuselage of his Curtis Oriole. His employers had purchased it for air mail delivery, discovered that the demand was not yet there, and now rented the aircraft to all comers. The largest part of the business was flying well-to-do businessman hither and thither from the Phoenix Sky Harbor. It was five hours, weather permitting, from Phoenix to Los Angeles, and it seemed that there were enough bankers and ranchers to keep the airplane running. The occasional couple who wanted to fly up to a few thousand feet so that the young swain could propose to his bride-to-be at a unique location provided an occasional alternative flight.
