Free Ancient Enemy by Michael McBride Page B

nearly impossible to tell it was a mesa until you reached the far end to the south and the hundred-foot deadfall to the valley below it, which, as far as such things went, was rather unspectacular. Sandstone showed through the windswept snow, from the cracks of which grew the twisted and forked trunks of evergreens, many of them brown and skeletal, others well on their way there. The crisp leaves of the scrub oak still clung to the branches like so many dead butterflies.
    I didn’t know where to start. I was surrounded by a veritable forest maybe ten to twelve feet in height, just tall enough that I couldn’t see over the trees from Yanaba’s back as we wended our way aimlessly through the thickets and I thought about all of the times I’d been hunting up here with Grandfather. Most of the time, the deciduous trees had been bare and there’d been snow on the ground and we’d been following hoof prints on foot. I’d been so focused on the tracks that I hadn’t paid any attention to my surroundings. With the exception of the sporadic ponderosa pine, every tree looked just like the last and I found myself questioning my sense of direction with the way the forest dictated our course.
    I tried to think about this logically. If the map was consistent—which I had no reason to doubt—I was looking for a pit house. By definition, that meant it had once been a wood-framed structure covered with mud-plastered brush, built over an area of excavated earth prior to the end of the first millennium. They’d been erected near fields that the inhabitants farmed using primitive means of watering their crops since rainfall alone in this corner of the state was nowhere near enough. Runoff irrigation—sowing seeds where mesa tops or other natural formations diverted the runoff from the occasional storms—was especially common. They would have needed soil, too. More than sand and gravel that surrounded me now, anyway.
    I took the object I’d removed from the ration pouch from my pocket and held it in my palm, hoping to draw inspiration from it. I pocketed it again and kept moving. With as flat as the mesa was, I could only think of one place where I could be certain the water would drain, and that was into the valley below, where a narrow seasonal stream, all that was left of the great river that carved it, still flowed.
    “It’ahlo,” I said and Yanaba slowed to a halt.
    I clapped her on her flank and stood up in the saddle. Looked over the treetops as far as I could see in all directions. To the south, the break in the trees coinciding with the edge of the mesa was readily apparent. The same to the east. The transition seemed the most gradual to the west, where the forest grew denser and the skeletal branches of the aspens, birches, and poplars peeked through the overlapping branches of the evergreens. That was definitely where I’d find the richest soil, and presumably the mesa’s watershed.
    Yanaba gave a huff of impatience and I dropped back into the saddle with at least some idea of where to begin my search.
    The snow grew deeper and the gray wood of the dead trees faded behind me. I welcomed the gentle breeze that ruffled the pine needles and caused them to fall to the ground around me. The shade was dramatically cooler and only served to remind me that time continued to pass as the shadows shortened. Yanaba’s hoof beats became softer as the soil grew deeper and grasses peeked out from the accumulation. The hard layer of stone remained beneath, though. I know little about farming crops, but I was confident that if some of these trees were knocked down to clear space, the soil here would probably be deep enough for something like maize to take root.
    There wasn’t much of a slope to the ground, at least not where I was now. I could see where it dipped down into the valley ahead, though. I checked the rawhide map. I couldn’t pinpoint where the pit house should have been, but it appeared to be somewhere in this general