Yosemite Fall (National Park Mystery Series) Read online

Clarence extended his lower lip. “Then, when the warriors tumbled rocks down the drainage at them from above, they’d have been forced to fall back to avoid being hit.”

  Rosie yanked on Chuck’s forearm. “Let’s go up there.”

  Chuck tensed his arm muscles and lifted her off the ground. “I told the foundation people that’s where I thought we would start.” He lowered her back to the meadow grass. “Race you.”

  He slid Grover’s account back in his pocket and set off at a jog with Rosie at his side. They angled across the last of the valley floor to the foot of the hillside below the granite outcrop. They slowed as they made their way up the steep slope toward the base of the outthrust nose of granite, climbing through breaks in the manzanita understory. Rosie matched Chuck’s pace while the others trailed behind.

  They left the brush covering the lower slope and entered a grove of ponderosa pines, growing tall where moisture from the Sierra’s pounding winter storms saturated the slope below the cliffs.

  Chuck paused to lift his cap and wipe sweat from his brow. He looked up the steep slope through the tree branches to where the granite bluff reared into the sky. A lower cliff, hidden from distant view by the ponderosas but visible through the tree trunks from where Chuck stood, rose straight up out of the slope. A narrow ramp ran up to the lower cliff face. The ramp ended at a bench of level ground that extended several feet from the base of the imposing prow of granite towering above the treetops. He resettled his cap and resumed the upward climb, slowing to allow Rosie to surge ahead of him.

  She made her way up the ramp to the dirt bench, three feet wide, beneath the prominent granite nose. She leapt up and down at the base of the outcrop, dust rising around her hiking boots. “I’m the winner!” she cried, her arms lifted in triumph.

  Reaching the bench, Chuck picked her up and gave her a congratulatory cheer. He set her down and together they surveyed the valley floor, visible through breaks in the trees. The Merced River described a winding S across the meadow in the center of the valley. An open area half a mile to the east, where the meadow ended at a thick stretch of forest next to the river, marked the place the prospectors likely had pitched their camp. If true, the bluff beneath which Chuck stood with Rosie would have been the most logical destination for the prospectors when the warriors cut off their down-valley retreat.

  Rosie extended a hand, helping Carmelita up the last of the sloping ramp to the level bench at the base of the granite nose. Janelle and Clarence followed.

  “Is this where they ran to?” Carmelita asked Chuck.

  “It certainly fits Grover’s description,” Chuck answered. “The prospectors would have ‘hugged the bluff’ as they made their way up the ramp to this ‘shelf-like projection’ in the ‘turn of the wall.’ We’ve reached the shadowed alcove we spotted from below.” He pointed around the face of the cliff, beneath the overhanging nose of granite. “After holding off the warriors until dark, they most likely would have made their escape that way.”

  “But it’s straight up,” Carmelita said, craning her head to study the nose of rock.

  “I bet you could do it, Carm,” Rosie told her sister. “You can climb anything.”

  Carmelita blushed.

  Chuck told Rosie, “Even if Carm could climb up from here, the prospectors couldn’t, not with the guns and ammunition they were carrying.” He leaned outward from the bluff and aimed his finger farther left, where the bench continued around the base of the outcrop toward the brush-choked water drainage visible from below. “They’d have gone up the chute, working their way through the bushes. Want to see if it’s possible?”

  At Rosie’s energetic nod, Chuck led the way along the base of the cliff to where the dirt bench gave way to the water channel, dry this time of year. He grasped small oaks and manzanitas that grew alongside the granite outcrop to hoist himself as he led the others up the steep chute.

  “You really think they could have climbed this?” Clarence called up to Chuck from his place at the end of the line, below Janelle and the girls.

  “They were desperate,” Chuck called back down. He pointed farther up the valley wall, where the channel tightened to a series of ladder-like stone ledges, then opened to a forested slope. “They were looking for any way out, and that may well have been it, straight up there.”

  Clinging to brush with both hands to maintain his place in the chute, Clarence jutted his chin at the drainage above Chuck. “Which means that’s where the tribespeople would have rolled rocks down from above, keeping the prospectors trapped on the ledge.”

  Chuck said to the girls, who stood on the slope between him and Janelle and Clarence, “Imagine what it must have been like for them. They were surrounded, trapped from above and below. But they had one key advantage.”

  “Their guns,” Carmelita said without hesitation.

  “Blam, blam, blam!” Rosie shouted.

  “Right,” Chuck said. “The five prospectors who escaped from the camp used their rifles to hold off the attackers until they could escape after dark.”

  “Geezo majeezco,” Rosie said.

  “But Clarence and I are here on account of the prospectors who were trapped on the far side of the river. The three of them were left for dead—” Chuck paused and raised his eyebrows “—but only two actually died.”

  “You mean, one of them escaped?” Carmelita asked.

  “One of them survived, let’s put it that way. How and why he survived are the questions your uncle and I have been contracted to look into.”

  “But why are we way up here if you’re studying the ones who were trapped down in the bottom of the valley?”

  “Because no one has ever done any excavating above the valley floor.”

  “What are we looking for up here?”

  “Confirmation of Grover’s story. If we can find proof that the prospectors really were trapped here on the side of the valley like he says, that will add veracity—truth—to the rest of Grover’s account, including the questions he raises about who really was responsible for the deaths of the two prospectors down below, on the far side of the river.”

  Perched in the drainage, Chuck again took out the sheets of paper. “In his account, Grover said the chief, Tenaya, was relaying instructions to a sub-chief, who directed the warriors shooting arrows from below and tumbling boulders from above. Grover reported something very important about that point in the attack.” He read from the prospector’s account. “‘The arrows whistled among us thick and fast, and I fully believe—could I visit that spot even now after the lapse of all these years—I could still pick up some of those flint arrow points in the shelf of the rock and in the face of the bluff where we were huddled together.’” He paused, eyeing Rosie and Carmelita. “If Grover could just ‘visit that spot’ where he and the other prospectors were trapped,” he hinted as he replaced the printout of Grover’s account in his pocket.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” Rosie exclaimed, thrusting her hand in the air. “We’re the ones who are coming back for a visit. We’re going to look for the arrowheads.”

  “Right you are,” Chuck said. “In fact—”

  A loud crack sounded from the drainage above, followed by a deep rumbling sound.

  “Run!” he screamed.

  PART TWO

  “The captives declared that the valley was their home, and that white men had no right to come there without their consent.”

  —Early California explorer Lafayette Bunnell

  11

  “Rock!” Chuck yelled. “Everyone, run! Back to the shelf!”

  The rumbling grew louder. Clarence led the way back down the drainage, grabbing branches as he plunged lower. Janelle and the girls bounded downward behind him. They, too, grasped branches for balance, gaining on him with each running stride.

  From above, the rumbling noise built to a roar as Chuck charged down the drainage after the others, the sound signaling the approach of a dislodged boulder tumbling toward them from higher in the chute.


  When Clarence reached the flat bench of soil at the base of the bluff, he skidded to a halt and, holding out his hand, tugged the girls and Janelle past him to safety. Rosie, Carmelita, and Janelle sprinted along the dirt bench and out of sight around the base of the rock outcrop.

  Clarence looked up the drainage past Chuck, his eyes widening in horror. Chuck glanced over his shoulder. A rounded hunk of granite the size of a small car hurtled down the drainage toward him, smashing undergrowth as it came. The rolling boulder struck the trunk of a stout ponderosa. The trunk bent at the force of the blow but did not break. Instead, the boulder caromed off the tree trunk and bounded straight for Chuck, less than ten feet away. He spun and leapt for Clarence’s outstretched hand. Clarence grabbed his wrist and they tumbled backward onto the dirt bench at the same instant the boulder slammed into the place where Chuck had just stood.

  The granite outcrop shuddered when the boulder struck it a solid blow before bouncing away and tumbling on down the mountainside. The rumbling noise diminished as the rock crashed through a thicket of manzanita where the drainage opened and the steepness of the slope lessened near the bottom of the valley. The boulder slowed, then came to rest in the thicket at the base of the slope. On the two-lane road a hundred yards beyond, traffic continued unabated.

  Janelle reappeared from around the base of the cliff with the girls, who huddled behind her.

  “Oh . . . my . . . God,” she breathed, her hand to her chest.

  Chuck climbed to his feet and swept dirt from his pant legs, avoiding Janelle’s gaze.

  “What . . . ?” she asked. “How . . . ?”

  “Gravity’s a bitch,” Clarence joked, but his face was pale and his hands trembled at his sides.

  Rosie tugged Janelle’s arm. “What’s a bitch, Mamá?”

  Spots of cherry bloomed on Janelle’s cheeks. “It’s a word your uncle shouldn’t say in front of you.”

  “Sorry, sis,” said Clarence.

  Chuck directed a thumb behind him, where the boulder had struck the cliff wall and careened on down the drainage. “That, right there,” he said, “was a perfect example of the difference between sport climbing and big-wall climbing.” He looked at Carmelita, his heart rate gradually returning to normal. “And why, as talented as you were on the sport wall this morning, I’m not sure I like the idea of you ever climbing any big cliffs.”

  “Isn’t that what you used to do?”

  “Yep. Which is why I know what I’m talking about. Sport climbing is safe and controlled—Jimmy’s accident this morning notwithstanding.” He touched the rock wall beside him. “But anything can happen on cliffs and mountains out here in the natural world. That boulder was probably sitting there, ready to let loose, for decades.”

  “You really think,” Janelle said, “the rock happened to choose right now, this minute, to fall—just when we were climbing toward it?”

  Chuck turned away, his insides thrumming.

  Always the truth between them, he and Janelle had promised one another when they’d first become a couple. Always.

  Over the last three years, he’d worked hard to maintain that pledge. But how to do so now?

  He turned back to her. “The small vibrations through the ground from the five of us working our way up the drainage could have set it off,” he offered in halfhearted defense of his earlier comment.

  He pointed east, where a dozen boulders the size of houses rested haphazardly at the foot of the next drainage up the valley. Cars filled a parking lot on the valley floor between the gathered boulders and Southside Drive. “That’s Cathedral Bouldering Area, where climbers attempt short routes on rocks that have tumbled into the valley,” he said. “In geologic time, Yosemite Valley is a newborn baby. That’s why its walls are so vertical, and why chunks still break off and roll down to the valley floor. There’s even a name for it; it’s called spalling.”

  Janelle pulled Rosie close. “I’ve had enough spalling for one day.” She reached for Carmelita’s hand. “I say we get out of here.”

  Chuck breathed a silent sigh of relief. His half-version of the truth had worked.

  “Awww,” Rosie moaned. “I want to go back up where the prospectors went.”

  She aimed a frustrated kick at the loose dirt of the bench, then stopped, looking down. She stooped and plucked a small object from the ground at her feet.

  “What’s this?” she asked Chuck, holding it out to him.

  Chuck placed the object in his palm. It was a black sliver of obsidian shaped like an isosceles triangle, no larger than a quarter.

  “This is incredible,” Chuck cheered Rosie, intent on putting the close call with the boulder behind her and the others. He tousled her thick hair. “You’ve done it!”

  “What have I done?”

  “You’ve taken a huge first step for us.”

  Rosie’s eyes lit. “It’s an arrowhead, isn’t it?” she asked, shoving out her chest.

  “A projectile point,” Chuck agreed, using the academic term. “You’re an official archaeologist now.”

  She took the sliver of glass-like stone from Chuck and laid it in her open hand. “What should I do with it?” she asked.

  “Put it back where you found it.”

  She frowned at Chuck.

  “I know it sounds weird,” he said, “but a lot of what we archaeologists learn comes not just from what we find, but where we find it, too. An archaeological excavation is like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. We uncover pieces one by one and try to understand, from what we uncover, what was going on in a particular place at a particular time. For the preliminary survey Clarence and I are conducting, we’ll be leaving any objects we discover in situ—that is, in place—where we find them.”

  Rosie closed her fingers over the projectile point and twisted back and forth, her face aglow. “I’m an archaeologist. A real, live archaeologist.”

  She stopped and opened her hand again, revealing the sliver of obsidian. “Do I really have to leave it here?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Chuck said. “If everybody picked up all the artifacts they found, pretty soon there wouldn’t be anything left to study, and archaeologists wouldn’t be able to learn about what happened in the past.”

  “Well, dingle-dongle-dingle berries,” she declared.

  She squatted and placed the arrowhead back in the divot created when she’d kicked the dirt with her boot. Chuck held out a hand to stop her before she scooped soil back over it.

  “No need to re-bury it,” he said. “It’s an important find. Clarence and I will want to catalog its location and photograph it with our camera when we come back up here.”

  “Okay,” she said, brushing her hands against one another. She rose and looked at Janelle. “Can we go now? I’m starving.”

  Rosie and Carmelita left the dirt bench together, descending toward the valley floor. Before Janelle followed them, she stared at the place where the boulder had struck the rock wall. “The girls are not coming back up here,” she said to Chuck. “Ever.”

  “Understood.”

  She stepped off the bench and trailed the girls down the slope.

  Using his phone, Chuck snapped initial pictures of the projectile point and its location on the shelf. He crouched with Clarence, studying Rosie’s discovery. Tiny scallops marked the projectile point’s two sides and shorter base, where it had been worked with a fletching tool.

  “That’s some pretty good knapping,” Clarence observed. “Any idea where the obsidian would have come from?”

  “East of the mountains near Mono Lake, most likely. There was a big quarry on that side of the Sierra, and lots of intertribal trading.”

  Picking up the point, Clarence held it to the sky between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s discolored in the center. See?”

  Chuck leaned closer. Rays of sunlight passed easily through the fluted edges of the triangular point, but the center of the piece of obsidian was smudged, nearly obscuring the light. He touched the smo
ky middle of the sliver with a fingertip. “It was heated before it was knapped. California tribes were known for that. They thought heating obsidian over a fire made it easier to work with—that it flaked more uniformly, enabling them to create finer work. But studies have shown it didn’t make any difference.”

  “You mean, preheated or not, the quality of the knapping was the same?”

  “The preheating was all peer pressure. Everyone was doing it, so everyone else kept doing it, too.”

  Clarence replaced the arrowhead in the divot and went to the edge of the shelf, ready to head down the dirt ramp and into the trees after Janelle and the girls. Chuck straightened but didn’t join Clarence.

  “I take it,” Clarence said, “you’re not coming along, are you?”

  Chuck gave a slow shake of his head.

  “I figured you were feeding us a line.”

  “It could have happened like I said.”

  “But the odds that it did . . .”

  “. . . are infinitesimal at best,” Chuck admitted.

  “Which means somebody tried to kill us a few minutes ago.”

  Chuck rocked his lower jaw back and forth in indecision. “I don’t think so. I think, instead, somebody was sending us a message.”

  “Like what? You think the ghosts of the tribespeople were trying to scare us, from 150 years ago?”

  “I think somebody from right now, today, doesn’t like the fact that we’re up here. They’re not happy with what we’re doing and they want us to stop doing it.”

  “Who would want that?”

  “Maybe somebody from the foundation. Or someone in charge of the archives. Or somebody with the park service. There’s no shortage of people who know why you and I are in Yosemite.”

  “But how could anyone have known we were coming up here this afternoon?”

  “The foundation put our plans on their website, complete with the expectation that we would start our search right here, below the outcrop.”

  “Still,” Clarence said with a disbelieving shake of his head.