So she was all for taking the job. Cormac replied to the email, laying out his requirements, a hefty fee, and the fact he couldn’t make any guarantees. A response came back almost immediately: that was fine, Walker had nowhere else to turn, and even a small amount of information would be better than nothing.
“Here’s the thing,” Cormac said to Amelia. “University archeology departments don’t usually have a lot of funding to spare for paranormal investigators and that’s a pretty big number we gave her.”
I doubt she even reported it to her department. She might be planning to pay out of her own pocket, to keep this out of the books.
That made sense. He checked the email again—it wasn’t a university address. So, keeping it really off the books. A serious archeologist wouldn’t exactly want to advertise that she was consulting with a paranormal investigator. It also made him nervous.
We will be careful, Amelia assured him.
They were always careful. At least, they always tried to be careful. But you couldn’t plan for all the things that might get you. The one that got you would be the one you didn’t expect.
So, we go with caution.
Always, always.
Getting to South Dakota took half a day of driving across an unending sweep of classic Great Plains rangeland, miles of rolling prairie and cattle country, driving on a grid of state highways set at right angles to each other, on and on, punctuated every now and then by some microscopic town that had looked exactly the same for the last fifty years. Cormac preferred the mountains, someplace to put your back against to see what was coming. Out here, there was no place to hide.
Amelia was riveted. This sky, look at it! This wonderful huge sky! I can almost see it curving around and under us to the other side. It’s like being under a bowl. Three hours into the trip, she still hadn’t gotten tired of it.
Walker had asked to meet them at a turnout on a county road near Badlands National Park. She had to give him GPS coordinates. Cormac wasn’t sure he’d still have a phone
connection by the time they got there—in another two and a half hours of driving.
I never got to this region in my travels. I had meant to. I was so looking forward to seeing the great herds of bison.
“They’d mostly been killed off by your time,” Cormac said. Amelia had been so fascinated by stories of the American West, but by the early 1900’s that world had vanished.
Do you think we’ll see any bison?
“I don’t know.”
And Deadwood—do you know we’ll only be a couple of hours away from Deadwood? After we’ve consulted with Professor Walker, perhaps we can visit?
“What’s in Deadwood?” Cormac asked tiredly.
Calamity Jane’s grave. And Wild Bill Hickok’s. It’s where he was shot. There’s a museum there I’d like to see.
“Why?” he said curtly.
Well. Just to see it.
“We won’t have time—”
This meeting will surely not take very long, and since we’re already in the area—
“Can we talk about it later?”
She fell silent, finally, thankfully. He didn’t want to see Deadwood, he didn’t want to do anything but the job. The bison around here were probably all kept on farms. There wasn’t any point to it.
Cranky and sweaty after a day on the road was probably not the best way to meet a client, but he didn’t think the job would take more than an hour. Amelia would take a look at the artifact, decide it was nothing special, and they could turn around and go home.
No, she muttered. You will not. We’ll find a room, rest for the night, and explore tomorrow.
He’d see how they felt at the end of the day.
A room and a hot shower.
“We’ll talk about it later.”