Free Outlaw by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

set up. Numbered cartons held remnants of pottery that had been taken from specific areas of the site. The shards themselves were also numbered according to the place where they had been unearthed. Whoever had the time or the desire was invited to try piecing together the three-dimensional puzzles before they were removed to the old ranch house.
     
    Ten showed a marked flair for resurrecting whole artifacts from scattered, broken fragments. In fact, more than once Diana was astonished at the ease with which he reached into one carton, then another, and came out with interlocking shards. There was something uncanny about how pieces of history became whole in his hands. His concentration on the task made casual conversation unnecessary, which relieved Diana. Soon she was sorting shards, trying out pieces together, bending over Ten to reach into cartons, muttering phrases about gray ware with three black lines and an acute angle versus corrugated ware with a curve and a bite out of one side. Ten answered with similar phrases, handing her whatever he had that matched her description of missing shards.
     
    After the first half hour Diana forgot that she was alone with a man in an isolated canyon. She forgot to be afraid that something she might say or do would trigger in Ten the certainty that she wanted him sexually despite whatever objections she might make to his advances. For the first time in years she enjoyed the company of a man as a person, another adult with whom she could be at ease.
     
    When the rain finally stopped completely, Diana stood, stretched cramped leg muscles and went to the edge of the overhang to look out across the newly washed land. Although no ruins were visible from the overhang itself, excitement simmered suddenly in her blood. Hundreds of years ago the Anasazi had looked out on the same land, smelled the same scent of wet earth and pinon, seen the glittering beauty of sunlight captured in a billion drops of water clinging to needles and boughs and the sheer face of the cliff itself. For this instant she and the Anasazi were one.
     
    That was what she wanted to capture in her illustrations—the continuity of life, of human experience, a continuity that existed through time regardless of the outward diversity of human cultures.
     
    'I'm going to the site," Diana said, picking up her backpack.
     
    Ten looked up from the potshards he was assembling. "I'll be along as soon as I get these numbered. Don't go up those ladders until they're dry. And stick to the part of the ruins that has a grid. Some of that rabble isn't stable, and some of the walls are worse."
     
    "Don't worry. I'm not exploring anything alone. Too many of those ruins are traps waiting to be sprung. With the Anasazi, you never know when the ground is a ceiling covering a sunken kiva. I'll stay on the well-beaten paths until there are more people on site."
     
    A long look assured Ten that Diana meant what she said. He nodded. "Thanks."
     
    "For what?" she asked.
     
    "Not getting your back up at my suggestions."
     
    "I have nothing against common sense. Besides, you're the ramrod on this site. If I don't like your, er, 'suggestions,' that's my hard luck, right? You'll enforce your orders any way you have to."
     
    Ten thought of putting it less bluntly, then shrugged. Diana was right, and it would save a lot of grief if she knew it.
     
    "That's my job."
     
    "I'll remember it."
     
    What Diana said was the simple truth. She would remember. The thought of going against Ten's suggestions was frankly intimidating. He had the power to enforce his will and she knew it as well as he did. Better. She had been taught by her father and her fiance just how little a woman's protests mattered to men whose physical superiority was a fact of life.
     
    "If you hear the truck's horn beep three times, or three shots from the rifle," Ten said, "it means come back here on the double."
     
    Diana nodded, checked her watch and said, "I'll be back