“Well done, son. It’s a Lissodus from the Upper Cretaceous period. It’s in very nice condition too.”

“Is everything OK with you?” Josh pressed on, trying to keep his father talking. He glanced at the door, wishing his sister would come in. He could distract his father with questions, but the same trick wouldn’t work with his mother, and he guessed that she was hovering at his father’s shoulder and would pluck the phone from his fingers at any moment. “How’s the dig going?”

“It’s been great.” Wind howled at the other end of the line, and dust and grit crackled against the phone. “We discovered what we think is a new ceratopsid.”

Josh frowned. The name was familiar. When he’d been younger, he used to know the names of hundreds of dinosaurs. “Is that a horned dinosaur?” he asked.

“Yes, from the Cretaceous, about seventy-five million years old. We also found a small and possibly untouched Anasazi site in one of the canyons, and some extraordinary Fremont-culture petroglyphs outside of the Range Creek Canyon site.”

Smiling at his father’s bubbling enthusiasm, Josh walked toward the window. “Which race are called the Ancient Ones in Navajo?” he asked, although he already knew the answer. “Fremont or Anasazi?” He wanted to keep his father talking, to give Sophie more time.

“Anasazi,” Richard Newman said. “And actually, the proper translation is ‘Enemy Ancestors.’”

The two words shocked Josh to a standstill. A couple of days ago, the name would have meant nothing to him, but that was before he’d learned of the existence of the Elders, the race who had ruled the world in the distant past. He had come to realize that there was more than a grain of truth to every myth and legend. “Enemy Ancestors,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice steady. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Richard Newman said, “but I prefer the term Ancient or Ancestral Pueblo or Hisatsinom.”

“But it’s such a strange name,” Josh persisted. “Who do you think used it? They wouldn’t have referred to themselves that way.”

“Probably another tribe. Strangers, outsiders.”

“And who came before them, Dad?” Josh said quickly. “Who came before the Anasazi and the Fremont?”

“We don’t know,” his father admitted. “That’s known as the Archaic period. Why the sudden interest in ancient America? I thought archaeology bored you.”