Johnson Tale of the Broken Spoke

A Sedona Chi Mystery
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-0983-5472-5
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

In 'Tale of the Broken Spoke,' Skip Rhodes, an enigmatic tour guide, unknowingly threatens the looters of ancient Native ruins. Skip's sidekick, Kukulkan Bonifacio Baltazar, a half-Mayan, half-Yaqui plumber to the stars, and Lilac Williams, Skip's hot-tempered ex-girlfriend who teaches yoga and firearm training, join together to uncover an artifact smuggling ring and investigate a cold-case murder- all while being distracted by an intergalactic swindle perpetuated by an Arizona sidewinder straight out of the old west. Set in artsy Sedona, Arizona, 'Tale of the Broken Spoke' introduces a quirky cast of characters including new age spiritualists, chakra and crystal experts, mystics and fortune tellers, vortex believers, alien researchers and abductees, tribal politicians, and archeologists. In eccentric fashion, these characters provide clues and insight into the mysteries facing Skip and his team. The clues take them deep into red rock canyons and on remote trails sculpted into towering sandstone formations. There, they uncover a thousand-year-old mystery and confront Native taboos. The story builds to an exciting climax with Skip and Lilac trapped in an undocumented Native cliff ruin fighting for their lives.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Johnson, Paul

Leseproben

Prologue

Tall Boy’s Last Ride

The mountain biker rode down Jacks Canyon Trail looking for signs he hoped he wouldn’t find. He’d slipped into the wilderness area; bikes were prohibited because nature had been declared too fragile for rubber tires, as if the ageless red rocks of Sedona, remnants from ancient sea beds, wouldn’t still be there long after he was gone. Two miles back, he’d cruised past the Forest Service marker threatening a significant fine if caught. As a local, he knew the trails weren’t patrolled past Labor Day when the tourists left. Tourists were the good and ugly of Sedona. They brought money on the one hand, but on the other they overwhelmed the streets and trails. He kept pedaling, alone with his thoughts and the canyon’s spirits.

The biker was testing his almost new Santa Cruz Tallboy 29 Carbon R bike. It was her maiden ride, with him anyway. Once he graduated from Northern Arizona University and was getting a paycheck, he’d upgrade to a CC frame, but for now the C frame would have to do. What did another tier of carbon do for performance anyway? It would have cost him another semester’s tuition. The new bike had a longer frame and more reach than the old one his great aunt had given him when he graduated high school. That made it a lot more stable. He could already tell from the bigger boulders he’d glided over. This bike had more than enough performance and speed to get him out into remote areas for his studies of past civilizations and geology.

The side canyons in this area were full of Sinagua ruins. Sinagua was the Spanish name for the Puebloan people who had scratched out a living in this part of the arid Southwest long before the conquistadors and the missionaries arrived. They were the current focus of his thesis. He had been exploring the faults and cracks of the Verde Valley and Oak Creek Canyon since he was a kid. When he began learning about the people who had lived there, in his high school history class, his path in life was set. A scholarship to NAU turned it into a professional passion. At first he’d been torn between archeology and geology. But when it came time to choose, he had opted for people over rocks.

The day was beautiful. Most fall days in Sedona are after the monsoon rains stop in mid-September. The rusty red sandstone and gleaming white Coconino formations of Lee Mountain were backstopped by a brilliant baby blue sky. They’d stood in contrast to each other for over five-hundred-million years. The large fluffy cumulus clouds softened the hardness of the jagged peaks. Biking in this setting was like riding through a Thomas Moran landscape. What better way to spend a weekday morning? The young idealistic biker basked in his good luck and promising future.

The trail had narrowed considerably, twisting and climbing a slight grade the entire way. If he rode it long enough he’d end up on the Colorado Plateau. But he had no intention of going that far or that high. Biking had to be your career to tackle that. He was looking for smaller unexplored faults. That’s where it got really remote and challenging, off the main trail and into areas man seldom visited. Archeologists were still discovering untouched smaller ruins or ones that hadn’t been seen since the 1860’s cavalry patrols were hunting Apaches. He always looked for animal trails; passages wide enough to get his bike down. His new Tallboy opened up rougher possibilities.

Up ahead he could see a side canyon disappearing into the mountain. By the looks of it, it was a box canyon with only one way in and one way out. Those had often been places of habitation, especially if there was a spring. The biker had won more than a few bar bets with out-of-state friends over which state had the most natural springs - Arizona. He’d studied how in the late Sinagua period there was evidence of conflict with other migrating Peoples. Hidden, easily defensible canyons with sources of water would have been popular and fought over. The Sinagua didn’t locate based on the proximity of a super Walmart. Sure enough, there was an overgrown deer path heading into the gap.

The path got wider a quarter-mile in. He started to see recent signs of activity. Javelinas, desert rodents that looked like boars, had been lunching on the prickly pear, their signature horseshoe shaped bite marks making a fat C of the pads. Sandy areas were littered with coyote scat, their undigested juniper berries still fresh. The biker even startled a group of mule deer drinking from a pool in an eroded arroyo; water, the Southwest’s oil. And he saw what he was searching for - human footprints.

The biker followed the footprints and deer trail to the head of the box canyon. Staying seated on his bike, he leaned against a pinon pine. It was shady and cool. He could hear a spring gurgling; there had been a lot of rain. It was hidden somewhere in the midst of dense acacia, better known as the Arizona ‘wait-a-minute’ bush because of its barbed thorns. He sipped from his water bottle, listening and assessing how the deer made it down from the ridge above. He could follow their switchback trail for a ways, then lose it, then pick it up again, then just make it out as it crested the top edge forty feet above. The footprints went that way too. He couldn’t heard any voices or human noises from above. The biker took a last swig of Arizona oil. Getting up and back down would be a good stress test for the Tallboy’s SRAM Eagle 12 drivetrain.

The first two switchbacks weren’t bad. He only had to shoulder the bike at the turns where the path went vertical for several feet before leveling off in the next switchback. After those it got dicey; the biker joked with himself it was a mountain goat not a deer trail. His total focus was on reading the rocks, slides, and roots. The latter were the worst; they could blow a tire sending him head over heels. Not what he wanted to do on an unmapped animal trail seven miles from the trailhead. After several harrowing slips and falls and navigating sections that were little more than two-feet wide, he reached the top.

The ridge top was level enough to navigate Tallboy. The biker picked up the deer path, which shortly ended at a dense clump of barbed acacia, cholla cactus, and thorny mesquite. He’d be shredded if he tried riding through. Leaving his bike, he rolled down his sleeves and waded into the tangled mess. After a hundred yards he spied a ten-foot rock wall with a small clearing in front. He guessed an ancient granary might be hidden behind the bushes fronting the wall. Granaries were small caves sealed by the Sinagua to store grain. Finding one was interesting, but not uncommon, unless they hadn’t been opened. What captured the biker’s attention as he drew closer, however, were the two wooden crates sitting in the open.

He didn’t see or hear anyone, but the footprints had reappeared. Hooked by what he’d discovered, he cautiously crept forward. What a find! One crate was loaded with beaded and bone necklaces, bracelets, and rings, some decorated with colorful minerals mined from nearby mountains. There were numerous small fetishes, made from cottonwood, yucca root, and obsidian. The second crate had even rarer objects, intact pre-Colombian era pottery. A quick survey of the pots proved there was artwork from not only the Sinagua people, but also the contemporaneous Anasazi, Mogollon, and Hohokam civilizations. A few pieces were filled with sea shells traded with people living on the Pacific coast. The biker was dizzy with excitement over the wealth of intact artifacts.

Behind the crates was a figure wrapped in bubble wrap. The biker carefully removed the tape, exposing something he’d never seen in any museum or textbook. It was a life-sized effigy of an androgynous figure. Male and female characteristics were finely painted over its body, with turquoise and copper embedded in its face. It seemed to be smiling at the biker. The dominating feature was an exaggerated engorged penis. The biker had seen these types of effigies before, just a lot smaller and far less adorned. They were used in fertility rites to ensure successful pregnancies and in agricultural ceremonies to ensure a fruitful harvest. The market value of a figure this large and decorated, not including what was in the other two crates, was inestimable.

He heard a rustling at the cliff edge, away from the clearing, past a low growing juniper tree. He would have heard their noises earlier if not mesmerized by what he’d found. Two men stood thirty feet away. He recognized both of them and knew he’d stumbled on their cache. The older of the two pointed at the biker and yelled his name. Both men started running toward him. The biker rushed back into the underbrush, ignoring the cuts and scratches. If he could just make it back to Tallboy he thought. The two were closing on him by the time he cleared the brush. He grabbed his bike on the run. Another ten seconds and a couple of hard thrusts on the pedals and he’d be on the switchbacks out of their reach. He had quickly picked up speed thanks to the new Eagle 12 drivetrain. It seemed he was going to escape, when, at the last minute, the younger and faster of the two men lunged and thrust a hiking pole into his front wheel just as he dropped into the first switchback.

That was it. The biker flew over the handlebars, the Santa Cruz Tallboy spiraling behind him. He flailed and grasped with one hand for anything he could find while instinctively holding onto the bike with the other. There was nothing he...