From the air, the high plains of eastern Colorado look flat as a pancake, and mostly they are. But people who live out there know that the place has some major wrinkles. They also know these are places to be avoided when the weather comes down.
Deputy George Tanaka had been watching thunderheads building off to the south since mid-morning, and they were getting closer. Periodically one would light up from the inside, followed by a low rumble loud enough to hear from inside his vehicle. It was late August, normally a dry season in Bridger County. But there were times when the summer monsoon would drive a front all the way up from the Gulf of Mexico, and then all hell could break loose. The deputy was pretty sure this was going to be one of those days. It was good news for ranchers depending on rain to green-up the range, but not so good for folks trying to get somewhere on backcountry roads that could go from dust to quagmire in a matter of minutes.
Particularly dangerous were places where contours in the land gathered the runoff into a local torrent. Almost every year some idiot tried to drive through a flooded wash, often with fatal consequences. Usually it was a city dweller from Denver or Fort Collins who didn’t have the brains or the experience to recognize a potential death trap when they saw one.
The worst area for flash floods in Bridger County was the draw below a cliff called the Maitland Scarp. It was one of hundreds of “cedar breaks” scattered across the plains, so named because of their precipitous topography and the aromatic junipers that grew on them. Some of the scraggly trees had survived there for hundreds of years, because these were about the only places where old-time prairie fires hadn’t burned them out.
Maitland Scarp had a bad reputation. One stormy afternoon in 1957 landowner Jarvis Maitland was out chasing strays when a lightning bolt struck one of the junipers. His horse bolted and they both went over the side, buried in a landslide triggered by the sheets of water pouring down off the scarp.
Or that was the story, anyway. Maitland definitely went missing that afternoon, but nobody actually saw it happen. The Bridger County sheriff just assumed the rancher was down in that mess somewhere. They dug around for two days, but after the backhoe got mired down for the third time and they still hadn’t found anything, they just gave it up.
Strange things kept happening out there. The old man had a daughter Ruth and a son Randy, who were twins. In 1964 they found Randy dead at the foot of the cliff, lying beside the body of a math teacher from the local high school. There were ugly rumors that took years to die out. Ruth Maitland had no children and there was no record she’d ever been married. By now she was well into her 80s, but she continued to run the ranch all by herself except for a handful of part-time cowboys who helped out during roundup time.
In January of 1985 a family from the Northern Arapaho Tribe got caught in a blizzard at the base of Maitland Scarp. They were found two days later, frozen to death in their minivan. Nobody could figure out what they were doing out there in the first place.
These seemingly unrelated events reinforced the locals’ belief that the place was haunted, probably by the ghost of Jarvis Maitland himself.
* * *
Deputy Tanaka was a no-nonsense guy, and he thought stories about the scarp being jinxed were a bunch of bunk. But he knew it was a dangerous place to be caught in a storm. So when he noticed an especially tall thunderhead building in that direction, he decided to drive over and check things out. It took him about a half-hour to get there, by which time the storm had already passed. The gravel road was still wet with big puddles, and he could tell from the way debris had backed up against the rabbit brush growing in the wash that it must have run pretty hard.
He was relieved to see there were no vehicles or people around, and he was about to continue on patrol when something in the wash caught his eye. It looked like a branch sticking up out of the sand, except it was too pale and it had a knob on the end. He pulled his Chevy Blazer off to the side of the road and got out for a better look.
The air hung heavy and humid, ripe with the pungent smell of freshly bruised rabbit brush. He heard distant rolls of thunder, so far away he guessed the storm was all the way up in Wyoming by now.
The walk out into the wash took longer than he expected, because his boots kept sinking into the wet sand and he had to struggle to pull them back out. The closer he got, the less the object looked like a branch. But it wasn’t until the very end that he figured out what it was. By then he was soaked up to his knees, and sweating hard. But it turned out to be worth the effort, because the thing sticking up out of the sand turned out to be a bone.
George Tanaka had studied criminology at the university. Part of his education included a class in human anatomy, so he knew right away the bone was far too thick to be human. But it certainly could have been a horse. He’d heard the stories about the Maitland Scarp. Had he just found Jarvis Maitland’s ride, brought to the surface after all these years by the force of today’s flood? Was the old man’s skeleton somewhere close? He retraced his steps and retrieved a spade he kept in the back of his vehicle for emergencies. Then he slogged back out and started digging.
He had been hard at it for the better part of an hour, when he his shovel hit something big and hard. He got down on his knees and began carefully scraping the sand away with his hands. Gradually a broad bony plate came to the surface. It had saw tooth sutures running across it and eye sockets on each side. It was a skull, but it was flat on top rather than round like a human skull, and it had two curved horns growing out of it. The deputy was disappointed that he’d found neither Jarvis Maitland nor his horse. Obviously it was either a bull or a cow, and therefore not Sheriff’s Department business.
Tanaka was ready to pack it in and get back to his rounds, when he noticed three more bone-like objects sticking up out of the sand about a hundred yards downstream. What the hell? Had a whole herd drowned here at some time in the past? Could these be the strays that Jarvis Maitland was chasing the day he and they went over the cliff together?
He could have kept digging that afternoon, but he’d been trained in crime scene investigation and knew better. Instead he went back to the Blazer and got on the radio.
* * *
The Bridger County Sheriff’s Department occupied the second floor of the county courthouse in the town of Hercules, Colorado. Sheriff Percy Conway was at his desk when Deputy Tanaka’s call came in. His wife Thelma was in the outer office, handling things as usual, and she took the call. A little while later she came to his door.
“I’ve got George on the radio. He says he’s found a bunch of bones in the wash below Maitland Scarp.”
“What kind of bones?” Percy asked.
“He says they look like cattle, but old, like maybe they’ve been down in the sand for a long time. Apparently the place flooded this afternoon. He wants to know what to do.”
“Tell him to sit tight, and wait for me to get there.”
“Why do you care about a bunch of cow bones?”
“Just a hunch. I’ve always had a feeling about that place.”
“Huh,” said Thelma, who’d been married to Percy long enough know that his hunches usually were more than just hunches.
The Sheriff went downstairs, got in his cruiser, and followed Main Street north out of town. Hercules was about to host its annual “Bridger Daze Festival,” and the local committee on arrangements was busy hanging American flags and strings of colorful pennants from the light posts. It would do little to disguise the fact that half the buildings along Main Street stood forlorn and empty, having long since succumbed to the lure of big box stores in places like Sterling and Greeley and, of course, to the internet.
The Sheriff waved to the committee members as he drove by, and some of them waved back. For the twelfth year in a row he would be Grand Marshall of the Bridger Daze parade. For the twelfth year in a row, it would be the only time he actually got on a horse.
When he reached the city limits, which was only four blocks away, he turned right and followed County Road 17 out onto the prairie. This was cattle country, arid and treeless except for cottonwoods and Russian olives whose roots had found water around scattered ranch houses and windmills. And scattered they were, given that the average ranch property included better than twenty-five thousand acres. The cattle mostly were Herefords, and mostly they were clustered near the windmills.
Off to the north, but farther away than he could see, the South Platte River ran its course from the Rocky Mountains east into Nebraska. It was a different world over there, with stately cottonwoods growing thick along the banks of the river, and farmers using the water to irrigate fields of corn and beans and sugar beets. The drainage below Maitland Scarp eventually found its way to the Platte. Percy wondered if today’s floodwaters had gotten that far before they disappeared into the thirsty ground.
He pulled in beside George Tanaka’s Blazer and got out of his cruiser. The two men exchanged greetings, and then walked together out into the wash. It was late afternoon, and the scraggly shrubs cast long shadows across the sand.
George took Percy to the place where he’d unearthed the skull. The Sheriff bent down for a closer look.
“It’s from a cow or a bull, right?” George asked.
“Yeah, but maybe not the domestic kind.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think these are bison bones.”
“You mean from a buffalo?”
“Buffalo, bison, same thing. You said there’s more?”
The deputy pointed downstream. “But there’s not much to see because I haven’t dug any of ‘em out of the sand.”
“And you’re not going to, either.”
George Tanaka took off his cap with the official Bridger County Sheriff’s Department logo on the front, and scratched his head. ”What went on here, Sheriff? And why is it important? Why are we interested?”
“Unless I miss my guess, this place was a buffalo jump. Back before Indians got horses from the Spanish, about the only way they could kill bison was to drive them over a cliff.” The Sheriff paused to point back over his shoulder. “Like the Maitland Scarp up there.”
“You mean we’re standing in the middle of a buffalo graveyard?”
“Could be. We need to call in the archaeologists. They’ll know how to excavate properly and respectfully. They’ll map the kill, assuming there was one, and they’ll know how to identify marks on the bones showing that the animals were butchered.”
“Sounds like you’ve read about this somewhere.”
“I have, and I’ve always wondered if Maitland Scarp could have been a jump. It’s the right sort of place.”
George Tanaka turned and stared up at the cliff, squinting into an orange-red sun that was about to drop below had the horizon. “All those rumors about the Maitland Scarp being haunted? The old rancher, his son, those Indians that froze to death? You think it really started with a buffalo jump, maybe thousands of years ago?”
Percy Conway grinned. “You’re not getting all spiritual on me, are you Deputy?”
“No, it’s just—”
“I know. Me too. I wonder especially about those poor folks from the Northern Arapahoe Tribe.”
“Like maybe they knew it was here?”
“Something like that.” Percy stopped to clear his throat, and then his head. “In any event, when the archeologists begin their excavations—”
“They might find Jarvis Maitland and his horse?”
“Yep. But before anybody starts digging around here, I need to pay a visit to Ruth Maitland, because this place is mostly on her land.”
* * *
Headquarters of the Rocking M Ranch included corrals, a hay barn, two windmills, a rusty steel-rim stock tank, and the ranch house itself. The house was built out of ponderosa pine logs hauled down out of the mountains nearly a century ago.
Ruth Maitland was in a rocking chair on her front porch drinking coffee out of a white porcelain mug when Percy Conway pulled into the ranch compound early the next morning. In her day she’d been a tall redhead, rawboned, with piercing blue eyes. She was shorter now, and bent, and her hair was mostly gray. But the eyes still sparked, especially when she heard or saw something she didn’t much like.
Percy told her about the buffalo kill at the base of Maitland Scarp, and asked her permission to invite a woman from the university museum out for a preliminary look.
Ruth Mailtland’s blue eyes immediately got that look. “Why would I want to do that? They’ll want to tear up my range and make a big mess. So it’s a bunch of dead buffalo. Who gives a shit?”
“You know there’s a chance they’ll also find your Dad’s body or that of his horse. Wouldn’t that bring you some closure?”
The Sheriff had played his trump card, but it got him nowhere. The old woman stopped rocking and shook her head.
“Closure my ass. Now listen here Percy, don’t you think that place has brought me and my family enough pain already? If Dad’s down there somewhere, just let him be. He ain’t never coming back. Nor my brother neither.”
Her voice trailed off and her eyes drifted toward the horizon. Percy thought he saw a change in those eyes, less fierce and less blue somehow, and perhaps a bit wary?
The Sheriff shrugged, and then pointed out the obvious. “A big swath of that area is part of a county right-of-way. I’ll ask the folks from the museum if they want to dig there. Then maybe, if they find something, you’ll change your mind about the rest.”
“Not gonna happen.” Ruth Maitland put down her coffee cup and stood up out of her rocker. “Now, I gotta go tend to some calves.”
* * *
Seven months later, on a blustery March afternoon, Sheriff Conway got a call from Dr. Pamela Wrightson, Curator of Archeology at the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder. She and her team had been working steadily at what was now officially called the Maitland Jump. So far they’d uncovered the skeletal remains of better than three-dozen bison, most of which had been butchered, but Ruth Maitland hadn’t budged in her refusal to let them work on her land.
“Morning, Sheriff, this is Pam Wrightson. I’m out at the dig, and we’ve just unearthed something I think you should see.”
“Is it a man and his horse?”
“That’s part of it, yes. And we know the person wasn’t a Paleo-Indian, because of clothing associated with the skeleton. So it could be the rancher you told me about that supposedly went over the cliff a while back.” She paused to clear her throat. “But that’s not all we found. I’m not sure I should tell you over the phone.”
“Go ahead. Nobody’s on the line except me and my wife.”
There was a pause. “It’s the skeleton of a baby.”
“A human baby?”
“Yes. Based on the size and development of the bones, we’re guessing it’s actually from a newborn infant.
“Dear God.”
“And there’s something else. The skeleton . . . uh, it’s not right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just get out here, okay? And bring your medical examiner.”
* * *
The Sheriff called Doc Blevins, who was the county coroner and medical examiner. By the time they got to the site, a light snow had begun to fall, and the whole area was covered in a thin layer of white powder. Pam Wrightson led the two men out to the area with the human remains, which her team had covered with a blue tarp to protect it from the weather. The Curator was a solidly built fifty-ish woman with a thick mane of glossy red hair and skin leathered by a lifetime of fieldwork.
Wrightson rolled back the tarp, and the three of them moved to the edge of the shallow excavation. She and the Sheriff knelt down for a closer look, while Doc circled the site, taking photographs from various angles. The horse—big and heavy-boned, with the remains of a saddle still across its back—lay on its side about five feet away from a pair of human remains. The Sheriff noticed boots and a leather belt on the larger of the two skeletons, along with shreds of what probably had been a pair of blue jeans. There was no sign of any clothing on the tiny remains lying immediately beside it. Its thin bones were pale yellow, and even in the snow-filtered evening light he could see most of them were crushed and broken. He felt an emotion something like the need to protect a vulnerable child, while at the same time another part of his brain understood this particular little soul was long past any such need.
“Looks like Jarvis could have been holding the infant when they went over the side,” the Sheriff said.
“But who was the baby, and what in God’s name was it doing out here?” Doc asked.
“First things first,” replied the Sheriff, pointing to the larger skeleton. “Let’s make sure that actually is Maitland. Don’t I see a buckle on that belt? Maybe it could give us a clue as to the man’s identity.”
“Let me check,” said Doc, as he stepped down beside the body for a closer look. He poked and prodded, and—to the Sheriff’s puzzlement—actually seemed to be spending more time examining the smaller of the two skeletons. Eventually he stood back up and turned toward the Sheriff. “Yeah. It’s a buckle all right. Looks like silver, and it’s engraved with the Rocking M brand. This has got to be Jarvis Maitland.”
“Which brings us back to the baby,” said the Sheriff.
“It does indeed,” Doc replied as he stepped back up out of the hole. “Dr. Wrightson, could I speak to you a minute?”
The Sheriff was surprised and not entirely happy when Doc and the archeologist walked some distance away and huddled together in a whispered conversation. It was getting dark, and snowing harder, and after about two minutes he ran out of patience. “What?”
“It’s about the baby,” Doc replied, turning back in the Sheriff’s direction. “Dr. Wrightson and I agree. Even though it’s hard to be sure given the condition of the skeleton—and I’ll hold final judgment until we get the remains back to the morgue—it looks like this infant suffered from severe skeletal deformities. Grotesque, actually.”
“Grotesque how?” asked the Sheriff.
“Extreme scoliosis, for one thing. That’s curvature of the spine. Looks like the poor thing’s body was almost twisted in half.” Doc paused, pulled a red bandana out of his back pocket, and used it to wipe a spattering of melted snowflakes off his glasses. “And that’s not all.”
“What else?”
“The skull is misshapen, the left eye socket being almost twice as large as the other. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it.”
“Do you think it was alive?”
“When it went of the cliff? No way to tell, really, but I expect so.” Doc shook his head, and seemed to draw his thoughts back to the job at hand. “What do you want to do about the horse? I don’t think we’ll need it.”
“Can you cover it up, just for the time being? As soon as we’re done here, I’ve got to go see Ruth Maitland. Maybe she’ll want the skull or something.”
“I expect that’ll be the least of her concerns,” Doc replied.
“Yeah, no kidding. I always thought notifying folks about a death in the family was the very worst part of my job, but this one’s gonna be in a category all by itself.”
The Sheriff backed away from the hole where they’d dug out the remains, removed his Stetson 3X Beaver, and beat it against his jeans to knock off a dusting of snow. “Doc, one more thing before I go. Until we get this whole mess untangled, let’s keep things strictly between ourselves. I don’t want crazy rumors flying around the county before we get to the bottom of just what happened here. And Dr. Wrightson, I’d ask the same of you and your team.”
“Of course,” the Curator replied.
* * *
It was nearly dark by the time the Sheriff drove into the Maitland Ranch compound. A thin layer of snow covered the ground, and there were no tire tracks but his own. Heavy gray clouds hung low on the western horizon, suggesting the worst of part of the storm had yet to arrive. A dim light shown from inside the ranch house, and a thin plume of smoke curled up from the stone chimney.
He walked up onto the covered porch, took off his hat, and knocked on the heavy wooden door.
“Ms. Maitland? It’s Sheriff Conway.”
He heard approaching footsteps, and then the door swung open about halfway. Ruth Maitland stood there, dressed in faded Levis, a blue work shirt with snap buttons, and a pair of beaded moccasins.
“Yes?”
“Evening, Ruth.”
“What do you want?”
“They found something out at the scarp today. We need to talk about it.”
She backed up a step. “Guess you better come in.”
The pine-paneled living room was dark with age and smelled of wood smoke. She led him to a pair of stiff-backed armchairs on opposite sides of a low table in front of the fireplace. The embers had dropped to a dull glow. Before taking her own seat, Ruth lifted a juniper log out of a box beside the fireplace and threw it into the fire, causing a flurry of sparks to rise.
As the flames grew, she settled. “What is it you need to tell me?”
“Dr. Wrightson from the university found some bones today, out at the jump in Maitland wash.”
“Human bones?”
“Partly. We’re pretty sure one of the skeletons is your father, and another one is his horse.”
Ruth Maitland drew in a breath and slowly let it back out. “Yeah, well, I guess we always knew he was down there. Let me know when I can have the remains. We have a family plot on the place. He’ll go right next to Randy and my mother.”
Ruth stood up from her chair. “Now I expect you’ll be wanting to get back to town. Looks like this storm is about to get nasty.”
“Actually, we found something else.”
Did a look of suspicion, may even fear, flash across her face? If so, it was gone before he could be sure.
“It’s the skeleton of a baby.”
The Sheriff stopped, waiting for a reaction. Ruth froze, and her eyes briefly flicked away. But when she looked back, it was with a steady gaze.
“Is there anything you can tell me about that?” he asked.
Ruth paused, like she was making up her mind about something. “Could have belonged to one of those Indians, I suppose. You know a bunch of ‘em froze to death out there, back in ’85. Yeah, that must have been it. Only thing that makes sense.”
“Maybe. I’ll check the records. We probably can find out from the tribal police about a missing baby. And we can always check the skeleton for DNA if it comes to that, to see if there’s a match. I’ll let you know when Doc Blevins has finished his examinations. He tells me the skeleton has some . . . uh, special characteristics.”
Ruth Maitland sighed, then asked him a question that wasn’t even close to the one he’d been expecting. “You ever been to Hawaii, Percy?”
He was flummoxed. “No. Why?”
“Ever read about their history? They used to have kings and queens. Tight families. Just like mine.”
He was halfway back to town before he thought maybe he’d figured it out.
* * *
Later that night, while they were having dinner, the Sheriff told Thelma what they’d found at the dig, and about the strange conversation he’d had with Ruth Maitland. He knew Thelma had grown up on a ranch not all that far away from the Maitland place.
“Do you happen to remember when Jarvis Maitland’s wife died?”
“No, Percy. I wasn’t even born yet.”
“Can you check the county records?”
“Not until tomorrow. Why do you want to know?”
“Just a hunch. Oh, and while you’re at it, find out how old Ruth Maitland was when her mother passed, and whether Jarvis ever remarried. But try not to raise suspicions. If anybody asks—”
“I know, Percy. ‘It’s just part of a routine investigation.’ After all these years, I know the drill.”
The next morning at headquarters, Thelma came to his door with a slip of paper in her hand. “Arlene Maitland died of pneumonia in January, 1949. Based on county birth records, Ruth and her brother Randy were ten years old at the time.”
“Huh. And Jarvis never remarried?”
“Nope.”
“All right. Now there’s one more thing I’d like you to do. Make contact with the Northern Arapaho government up in Wind River, and see if they have any record of an infant being lost when those Indians froze out at the Maitland Wash in 1985.”
“Will do. I’m surprised you remember the year.”
“I didn’t, but Ruth Maitland did for some reason.”
“Huh.”
“We gotta stop saying that to each other.”
* * *
One week later, the Sheriff drove again out to the Maitland Ranch. Officials with the Northern Arapaho Tribe had no record of a missing infant tied to the incident at the wash. He’d called Ruth the afternoon before and told her they needed to talk, but he’d been deliberately vague when she pressed him for details.
It was a calm sunny morning in early April. There already were hints of spring in the air, as if winter were only a distant memory. The seasons could be like that in Colorado. One day it’s snowing and the next day everybody’s in shirtsleeves. The Sheriff rolled down his windows as he drove across the prairie, so he could smell the sweet clover blooming along the roadsides and hear the meadowlarks singing from fence posts. It did little to buoy his spirits. He had some tough questions to ask, and a good part of him didn’t want any answers.
Those answers never came, at least not from Ruth. As soon as he got out of his cruiser in the ranch yard, he heard the sound of a motor was running in the garage next to the house. He called Ruth’s name, but got no response. He walked over to the garage and raised the door. Thick exhaust fumes billowed out, bringing tears to his eyes and constricting his throat. He held a bandana over his nose and mouth and plunged inside.
Ruth Maitland’s body lay beneath a canvas tarp on the cement floor next to an old Ford pickup. A green garden hose snaked from the tarp up into the tailpipe. He shut off the ignition and opened all the doors and windows. He checked her for a pulse, found none, and then looked around for a note.
There wasn’t any note, not beside her body, and not anywhere else on the property when they searched it later that afternoon.
* * *
Three days later Doc Blevins called to report that at some point in her life Ruth Maitland had given birth. Thelma pressed the Sheriff about getting a DNA workup on her body and on the bones of the infant.
He declined. There were some things the citizens of Bridger County just didn’t have to know.
Bios: Carl and Jane Bock are retired professors of biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Carl is a conservation biologist, while Jane is a botanist specializing in the use of plant materials in solving criminal cases. They have published four full-length mystery novels, two set in the grasslands of southern Arizona and two in the Florida Keys. Since retirement, they have been spending their time between Colorado, Arizona, and Florida, writing, fishing (Carl) and fighting crime (Jane). Please visit them at carlandjanebock.com
