Chapter 3

Valerie Boren-Odell, 1990

The trail there was called Horsethief Trail and went from Texas to Kansas. It crossed the Winding Stair Mountains and passed close to Talihina.

—George Lewis Mann, 1937, aide to US marshal, Indian Territory. Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection, interview by Grace Kelley.

Human skeletal remains—that's what my co-workers have been keeping from me while I've been acclimating myself here at Horsethief Trail. The bones of three children, silted in and partially decayed. Based on pelvic structures and teeth, the eldest was around the age of puberty, but small. The other two were younger, one with permanent front teeth only partially grown in, one at the stage of second molars.

A smattering of forensics and archaeological training runs through my mind as I squat on the cave's cool, sandy floor. So much of a society's history—and an individual's—is wrapped up in how people are buried, a visiting antiquities specialist once told me when Joel and I were wide-eyed newbies at Yosemite. The story is there in ceremonial items, burial shrouds, the way in which bodies are placed. Bones don't talk, yet they speak.

There was no pageantry in the placement of these poor little ones, however, only the nestling of bodies side by side. The bones aren't ancient or recent, but somewhere in between. Chances are, the dry environment inside the cave has kept them remarkably well preserved. Slabs of stone had been propped against the wall, hiding the remains through seasons and decades until the cave was found by a couple of truck drivers who stopped off for a hike while working in the area—at least that was the story told by a woman who called in an anonymous tip, saying she heard some guys talking about it in a local bar.

The accidental discovery of this place seems implausible, considering the cave's remote location and well-hidden entrance. It's more likely that someone came here treasure hunting. Loot legends make great campfire tales and tourist fodder, but they also bring in diggers looking to turn a buck by stealing artifacts from federal land. There are some theories that if the guys were truck drivers, they were local and familiar with the mountains, maybe working for the county road service or Parker Construction, which operates a nearby quarry.

What else was here when someone first disturbed the site? Anything? If not, why were these children laid to rest this way? There's no evidence of funerary or comfort items having been placed with the bodies. No bone or metal buttons or buckles left behind after clothing decomposed. Not even names scratched into stone, yet the bodies seem to be protectively wrapped around one another, eldest to youngest. Thirteen-ish…ten or eleven…five or six years old maybe…

I carefully bypass seven, Charlie's age, and try not to imagine his thin arms and legs, cracked and battered like this, never allowed to mend. Time ran out for these little ones. Somehow they ended up in a cave. Alone. In the dark. Forgotten. Hidden.

These were somebody's children.

A partial hole in the smallest skull makes me wince, even though I've been told about it ahead of time. According to the tipster, when the truck drivers finally noticed that one of the skulls had been bashed in, they got spooked, ran all the way back down the mountain, and went for drinks to get over the experience. They weren't willing to report the discovery because their boss might fire them for goofing off on a workday.

None of that explains the condition the site is in now. Based on the variety of fresh shoeprints, any number of people have tromped through here in the past twenty-four hours. No real effort has been made to preserve the scene, even though the discovery of human remains on federal land is a sensitive issue. From what I've been able to glean, Frank Ferrell, my second-shift counterpart, didn't take the call-in tip seriously and failed to act on it at first, and Chief Ranger Arrington—who's away on personal business for the second time in two weeks—is mainly concerned with figuring out how to handle the whole debacle quietly.

I'm only learning about the bones after having cornered the most na?ve staff member available—a twenty-one-year-old summer seasonal named Roy—and pretending I knew about the burial site already. I convinced him that I needed to take a look, and Roy filled me in while we drove the overgrown forest road up here. Along the way, he let slip that I had somehow elbowed out several local applicants for my slot at Horsethief Trail. I'm still probing for the reason I was selected, and why the crew here treats me like a redheaded stepchild…but one they must handle with velvet gloves. It's not just because I'm female, which in general does you no favors in the NPS system. If you're harassed, hazed, ogled, propositioned, whatever, you're expected to tough it out, deal with it yourself, grow a thicker skin, and move on.

I'll get the details out of Roy sooner or later. He is a typical college boy—talkative, friendly, unguarded. I know a bit about him from listening to daily chatter over the radio. His mother is Choctaw and his father is Australian, a horse trainer, but out of the picture. Roy is fond of doing the Okie version of an Aussie accent to make people laugh. He's eager to be liked and is giddy about his first seasonal NPS gig. He's especially keen on the uniform and service vehicle. He knows a lot about power players within the Choctaw tribe and other various area folks, factions, and history. Apparently, lost graveyards and hastily discarded human remains have never been all that uncommon up here. Back in the day, these mountains were frequented by loggers, hunters, prospectors, whiskey runners, dirt-poor squatters, and outlaws looking for places to hide or to run riot. Jesse James, Belle Starr, and a host of others took advantage of the seclusion and rugged terrain. Roy has also given me the lowdown on what are locally referred to as the Dewy trees. According to Roy, Dewy was a notorious bootlegger of wildcat whiskey who carved his name into trees to warn others to keep off his territory…or else.

Such sordid history could explain three children suffering a violent death before the turn of the century, and even well after.

"It's not a Choctaw grave, though." Roy interrupts my thoughts. He's already mentioned the general concern that laws giving tribal authorities ownership over Native American remains and funerary objects are expected to pass through Congress any day now. If the bones were indigenous, that could make this whole thing a sticky ball of wax.

"How can you tell just by looking?" Someone with advanced skills might be able to establish a racial identity based on skeletal characteristics, but Roy doesn't have that kind of training.

"Choctaws wouldn't have…well there's a lot of respect for the dead, you know?" he says quietly. "Especially in the old days, they'd be buried near the house and there'd be a pot with some food, change of clothes, blankets, maybe a toy, that kind of thing. Bones mean a lot to Choctaw people. It's in our heritage." He waves his flashlight toward the bodies, the beam bouncing around. "This is white people stuff, just dumping somebody in a cave and piling rocks over the top. Poor little girls."

"Girls?"

"They are, aren't they?"

"You can't be sure, based on subadult skeletal remains." I point to the eldest of the three, placed farthest from the wall. "Postpuberty, you can tell by the sciatic notch and the shape of the pelvis—adaptations for childbirth. This girl was still really young, though. Maybe twelve or thirteen."

Roy leans over me, his breath ruffling the loose hairs at the back of my neck. I fight the heebie-jeebies. The tragedy here feels fresh, even though it's not.

I duckwalk sideways, then stand to get a better look at him. The first thing you learn in interviewing witnesses—body language doesn't lie. His evasiveness is evident despite the fact that his features are hard to make out in the haze beyond the flashlight beam. "Any reason you assumed all three were female?"

"Huh?"

"You called them girls."

"Yeah…I dunno."

A rumble presses through the cave's entrance. Storms come spotty and fast around here, bearing torrents of rain, hail, and sometimes tornadoes. I've learned that much just by chatting with the owner of the cabin court that is my temporary home.

Roy retreats a step. "We better get back down to the truck."

Another reverberation adds urgency, and somewhere in the rock surfaces around the entrance, the wind moans plaintively through a gap.

Roy is out of there without waiting to see if I'm following. Only after he's crab crawling through the entrance do I remember the camera in my pocket. It's an inexpensive one I take hiking, but it has a flash and it'll be better than nothing. I should inherit Ranger Ferrell's files when he goes on medical leave for a knee replacement in a couple of weeks, but based on his sloppy job so far, there's no telling how the site was originally processed. For now I want to send some pictures to an archaeologist friend and ask if he's ever seen anything like this.

"Right behind you." I grab a few shots, then follow.

When I emerge, Roy casts a nervous look at the camera, but he's too young and far too junior to question me.

"Has anyone contacted a specialist at the region office to come look at this?" I ask while we reinstall the sloppy barricade over the cave's entrance.

"Uhhh…you better talk to Chief Ranger Arrington. I guess he'd know." Either the weather or the camera has Roy really spooked. "I think he's back after the Memorial Day weekend."

I'm dumbstruck. I can't imagine any chief ranger anywhere who'd remain absent after the discovery of human remains in his park. Horsethief Trail may be new, but Arrington has been a chief ranger before. He must know better.

Wind stirs the canopy of oak, elm, and shortleaf pine overhead. Nearby, a widow-maker branch crashes to the ground. Roy starts downslope, grabbing saplings as his boots slide in the moss and leaf litter. He reaches the truck with impressive speed for a big kid with a linebacker's build. He's in, with the engine fired up, before I yank open the passenger door. A clump of pine sprigs smacks the windshield as I take the passenger seat. Both of us jump.

"Dang." Roy stretches to get a glimpse of the sky. "We better move out before a tornado picks us up and drops us in the next county."

"That'd be a lousy end to a second week on the job, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

We bounce along in silence, debris pelting the truck. Leaning forward, I squint through the window. The whole tornado thing isn't new to me—we get them in Missouri—but not like they do here.

"Those're just regular clouds." Roy nods definitively. "You can take my word on that. I got a B-plus in meteorology last semester at MIT."

"MIT? I thought you were local."

"Murray in Tishomingo." He points in the direction of the college east of here, Murray State. "MIT."

"That's a good one."

"It gets used a lot. Outsiders fall for it every time," he admits sheepishly.

"Noted. I'll quit falling for that one. I was military, so I'm pretty adaptable to new locations."

"You live a lot of places?"

"Four countries. Seven U.S. states. Eight if you count this one."

"Dang, that's a lot."

"That was some years back, for the most part." I leave out before my husband died, but the usual knot of emotions tightens anyway. "Gateway Arch in St. Louis has been home for a while now."

Roy's brows form a knot. "Huh…I thought somebody told me you came from DC."

"DC?"

"Yeah, brass, you know?"

"What?"

"They said that was why you got the LEO job."

"They?" I'm irked to be the subject of water cooler gossip, even though I've sensed it all along. "And why DC?"

"Boren, your last name, you know? Senator Boren was one of the bigwigs behind the Winding Stair unit getting designated, right? He's been senator for long as I can remember. You're related, huh? That's why…well, I mean…Chief Ranger Arrington sort of got his pick of who he wanted for everybody else, but I heard Region sent you. Ferrell said why else does a woman keep two last names, except that she's trying to pull stri—" Roy's lips snap closed. "Crap," he mutters.

"Strings? Trying to pull strings?" That's what they think? How dare they! I kept my last name and added Joel's with a hyphen, in homage to my father, who passed away shortly before Joel and I married. Our Borens definitely had no political connections. There was no sportscar when I turned sixteen, so I learned to fix up a junker. No money for college, so I went military intending to use the GI Bill.

"Everything I have, I earned," I say, but somebody's mistaken assumption about me explains a lot. In the NPS system, political connections are the golden ticket.

"Crap," Roy says again, hammering the steering wheel. "Crap, crap, crap." His outburst rattles him. "Sorry. My stepdad says I talk too much."

"Don't worry about it." I feel a sympathetic kinship. My mother remarried when I was a teenager. My stepfather and I still haven't figured out what we are to each other.

"I didn't mean anything by it. I mean…I don't think…well, that women shouldn't work and stuff. My mama works for the tribe, and my grandmama has worked at the courthouse in Antlers, like, since forever. I'm all the way modern about stuff, and…"

"Roy, we're fine. Really. I'm better off knowing what people say."

He focuses on piloting the vehicle through a water crossing. "Don't tell anybody you heard it from me, though, K?"

"I won't."

"Or that I brought you up here. I maybe wasn't supposed to."

"Understood."

"It's just…I need this seasonal at Horsethief Trail. These slots are hard to get, and also there's not tons of good summer jobs around here and I can't ask Mama for college money. She's got enough to pay for with my little sisters and all their cheerleading uniforms and junk. When I make it through college and hire on full-time with the Park Service, I can help out. But I've gotta get the degree first, put in some seasonal hours, then hire on at a good unit, where I can move up."

A hopeful look slides my way. I feel guilty for not disabusing him of the notion that I'm loaded with helpful political connections, but right now, I need all the advantages I can get. Let people assume what they will about my last name. "Everything you said stays with me, Roy, I promise."

"Whew," he sighs. "Man, me and my big mouth. My stepdad's right."

The mother in me resists the urge to tenderly pat his shoulder. "Don't listen to that stuff. The whole stepparent thing can be rough, even when everybody's trying hard."

"Yeah, my stepdad's not real into trying."

"Then listen even less."

"That's what I tell my sisters."

"Sometimes it's good to take your own advice."

Roy straightens in his seat. "Yeah. Yup, that's true."

We wobble along, the wind drowning out any further opportunity for small talk, until we're back to the empty parking lot where The Heap awaits. Gusts sweep leaves across the pavement and oversized raindrops pelt the glass, harbingers of an oncoming deluge. Even though it's early afternoon, the boiling sky gives the feel of evening. Something primal in me recoils at the idea of three children, side by side in eternal sleep, alone in the storm.

I touch the camera in my pocket without thinking.

"You might be careful about getting those developed," Roy warns over the noise. "Chief Ranger Arrington wouldn't like it. Smooth opening for this park matters a lot to a bunch of people…and a bunch of those people matter a lot, y'know? It's not that everybody doesn't think those little girls oughta get treated respectable…just that they want it to be done quiet."

I sigh, looking down at my hand. Maybe he's right. Most likely, the deaths occurred a century ago, and if the grave is over one hundred years old, it can be excavated and relocated without many complications, particularly if there's no means of identifying the remains.

Roy squints through the rain as lightning claws the jagged peaks across the valley. "Best to just let it go. Pretend you never went up there."

"Noted. But, Roy…" I wrap my fingers around the door handle, preparing to step into the storm. "Why do you keep calling them little girls?"