There wasn’t a one of those she had seen who was even familiar with a muzzle-loader, much less a bulldozer. Most of them came from the time of Watches-Over-The-Land and before. They could understand that the heavy machinery was a threat, and cunningly dig pit traps for it to fall into, just as they had dug pit traps for wapiti and even the occasional bison when they had been among the living. They could not understand that pouring sand into hydraulic fluid reservoirs would ruin a vital part of the machinery. They saw that the men on the site guarded and valued the dynamite sticks in the shed—which were only sticks to them. They knew that possums would eat anything, particularly if one poured bear fat over it. They would not understand that those sticks could be made to release lightning and thunder.

Not that they were stupid, and she suspected if anyone ever was around them long enough to teach them the ways of the modern world, they would be more of a menace than even she could dream. But they were facing something completely alien to the world in which they had lived and died, and faced with the alien, they could only improvise with what they themselves knew.

So the questions remained; who had raided the burial hill and cached the relics here? Who had sabotaged the dozer? Who was continuing to sabotage the site? And who had set the trap that had so nearly caught David?

Most of all—were all these acts done by the same hands?

She had to report back to Sleighbow at Romulus that if there had been any threats against Calligan or the site before the explosion, none of his men had ever heard about it. So in that much Calligan was clear.

She had no doubt that the man was a snake; the stories her mother conveyed from other realtors made that perfectly clear. If she looked long and hard enough, she would probably find some way in which he had deceived Romulus. She needed a reason to continue to stay on the case, one that would continue to supply a paycheck, and one that would let her pursue the answer to her questions.

It was time to call Sleighbow and establish that reason. David himself was in her office when she made that call, so that he could see and hear just where her loyalties were with his own eyes and ears.

She put it on speakerphone so he could hear both sides of the conversation.