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knew the function of the structure high above me on the pine-crowned bluff, with its reinforced outer walls and both circular and square inner rooms.
    From where I stood, shielding my brow from the blinding sun and its reflection from the snow, I couldn’t even see it all the way up there. I was looking for something entirely different, regardless, and I was having a devil of a time finding it. The temple itself had been built on a great stone pinnacle at the confluence of two vast canyons. I’d wasted precious hours searching the scree-lined steppes and dense pine thickets of Cliff Canyon and was nearly to the point of calling Fewkes Canyon a total wash when I finally saw what I’d come here to find. It certainly wasn’t a massive cave crawling with great hunchbacked animals with horns, nor did it really look like it had a whole lot of potential. It was little more than an oblong amoeboid shadow high up on a ledge amid the boulders that had collected there through the eons after crumbling from the buttes, the kind of thing you would never see if you weren’t specifically looking for it. Truth be told, I couldn’t be entirely certain it actually was the mouth of a cave and not a trick of the late afternoon shadows, that I wasn’t just seeing what I wanted to see. And even if it was an opening, it barely looked large enough for a coyote to wriggle through, let alone someone my size, but I could worry about that later. The biggest problem from my current vantage point was figuring out how in the name of God I was going to get up there.
    Nearly a thousand years ago, there’d been toe trails and handholds that were now smoothed to mere impressions by the abrasive winds of time, tall wooden ladders that connected ledges that had since fallen to ruin, and paths that had grown trees and shrubs that were now impossible to get around. And even with that in mind, it was hard to imagine that there was a single inch of this area that hadn’t been explored and excavated by the anthropology classes from every major university that descended upon this area every summer in hopes of learning why, after building such a truly phenomenal society, the Anasazi had simply disappeared without a trace.
    The sun was already well into its descent by the time I picked my way up the talus slopes and navigated the seemingly insurmountable cliffs to reach the orifice I’d seen from below. It was a narrow crevice in the limestone, a point where the warring currents of ancient rivers had met and created curious eddies and unique erosion patterns. It was nearly sealed by the loose rock that had accumulated over it with the passage of time. The stones made clacking and clattering sounds when I shoved them out of the way and sent them tumbling out over the nothingness.
    The rocks inside were dramatically cooler and their smooth surfaces felt almost polished. It was hard to believe they were composed of the same type of stone as the dry limestone riddled with superficial cracks all around me. I had to lower myself to my belly to see inside. As I stared into the darkness, its cool breath upon my face, I had to wonder what I was doing here. Granted, we’d lost a good number of animals and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what kind of predator had attacked them, but the notion of hunting it by following the clues I gleaned from petroglyphs that were only visible when I shook my grandfather’s rattle filled with quartz shards seemed positively ludicrous.
    I glanced back down below me to the bottom of the ravine, where Yanaba grazed amid the trees. It was going to take hours to get back down there. As it was, there was no way I’d be home in time for dinner and I’d be lucky if I made it before nightfall. What the hell was I doing up here anyway, chasing mythical horned creatures with an old rattle? I hadn’t slept in days and every inch of my body had begun to ache. What I really needed was sleep. Everything would make more sense without the