She shook her head. “I don’t believe it. If it’s true, that it’s aligned with the setting sun in midsummer, then they didn’t paint this here by accident.”
Toby shook his head. “Nope. I’m no expert, but I’ve looked at it up close. I reckon they made that long line as the sun lit it up and centered the shaman on it. ’Cause if you look close, the shaman is painted on top of the line—the line’s not painted over it. It’s got to extend thirty feet or more.”
“Or someone else painted the line to mark the seasonal turning point, and this canyon culture came along afterward and put their shaman on it.” She seemed to gather her thoughts and finally stepped away from him, though her hand lingered upon him for a moment longer before it fell, a tender gesture that spoke of comfort.
“True. But look up there. Right at the top of the line where it exits the rock shelter.”
She squinted up at the mouth of the shelter where the artwork started, walking out beneath it. “Looks like there’s part of a design there. But some of the limestone has flaked off and took the other part of the painting with it,” she observed.
“Yeah, looks like to me the little flecks of paint that haven’t yet fallen off are in the same style as your shaman. Maybe sunrays, like it’s harnessing the sun lightin’ it up.”
“My shaman…” she muttered to herself, shaking her head and propping her hands on her hips. “I wish it was.” She glanced back at him. “This is incredible. Just incredible. Is that why you call it the sun god?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know if it’s supposed to be a god or not, but yeah.”
Rose smiled. “It’s a good name. Has anyone else been here? Is this site at least registered somewhere?”
Toby jammed his hands into his pockets, glancing away from her to squint out into the canyon below. Why did it feel as if he was about to hand her a fourteen-carat gold ring?
“No one except my brothers and my ranch hands know about this place. My granddads all knew about it and took the secret to the grave. Ain’t been registered anywhere. There are sixteen shelters bearing artwork that we’ve mapped, spanning roughly from north to south through the Legacy over a stretch of eighteen miles and ending with the panther shaman site.”
“Sixteen?” Her eyes widened farther. “Excuse me, but repeat that? Sixteen rock shelters decorated in art?”
He nodded. “Yup. My pops worried that if folks found out about them, we’d get trespassers, universities would want to get their hands on everything and cut ’em all up.” His eyes reconnected with hers. “You’re the first person to come here.”
“Why me?”
He shrugged indifferently, but it wasn’t indifferent at all. Because I’m falling… In such a short time, he’d already concluded that this woman was worthy of the honor. As the sole expert of panther shaman, she’d relish it and respect it.
“I, eh, felt as if you’d appreciate it.”
She gazed at him. He could see desire jump like candle flames in her eyes to ask him for his permission to document it. “But your company invited us out to see the panther shaman site eventually. That photo my professor gave me was from the nineties, so at some point the university was notified.”
Toby shook his head. “That was my momma’s doing, not my dad’s. She felt that taking measures to document it was more important than my dad’s paranoia. If someone trespassed, on foot, they’d have a helluva long trek and would need to carry gallons of drinking water—pretty laborious. If they brought a vehicle and compromised the property fencing, we’d find out about it. But when my dad discovered what my momma had done, he was pissed. They had one of the few fights my brothers and I remember hearing, no holds barred, and let me tell you, Deborah Dixon could throw down if she needed to. They finally compromised and agreed that the university dude would be allowed to survey one shelter only, the one closest to the main house so my dad could check up on him—panther ahaman. After that, he’d have to leave. Your professor got to document, photograph, draw the shelter, but he wasn’t allowed to take any artifacts.”
“But you guys contacted us about the field school three years ago, when I sought the role as principal investigator. Was that your dad who did it?”
Toby shook his head and chuckled, but it wasn’t with humor. “Naw, my dad wasn’t even a month cold in the grave. In spite of all my momma’s grief, she still called the anthropology department at UT and invited y’all back out. That professor from the nineties was about to retire.”
“I remember that,” Rose said.
Toby watched her. Odd that they’d known about the same things from opposite sides of the decision without knowing a lick about each other. For three years. So close, yet far apart.
“My supervisor was ecstatic. He came with me the first year even though it was my gig, simply because he’d been awed by the shelter and its art. He was sad to see the pottery gone. He speculated that it had been looted. He said recording the panther shaman site was the one part of his career he wished he could have accomplished and counseled me to do it justice. I know he’d be relieved to learn that the pot’s safe.”
Toby nodded. “I don’t mind if you tell him.”
He walked a careful path into the center of the shelter so that he stood beneath the shaman’s long belly and glanced up to examine part of the painting, a tangle of oval-esque discs with spikes coming off of them. He’d seen on Howie’s rock art forms that the similar designs at the panther shaman shelter were interpreted to be prickly pears.
“You think these are supposed to be prickly pears?” he asked.
She nodded. “I bet they are, but it’s not necessarily what they are that makes me curious. I’d rather know what they were used for and why.”
He’d already learned new things from her about these sites. And every time he asked her a question, she had more answers, offering him so much more to learn. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to open everything up to Rose. He could put protections in place, gate the shelters off. Revamp the few security cameras installed around the Legacy’s perimeter which were to ward off cattle thieving.
His momma had taken his hand that day so long ago and told him to make the most of this land, to make his own legacy. Whether she was encouraging him to get these sites registered and documented or just encouraging him to not feel encumbered by his father’s vision didn’t seem to matter. The message had been clear: This land, sparse of life and water as it was, was rich and filled with meaning, and it would be a shame to never realize those riches.
“I wish I’d had both feet on the ground and wasn’t finishing up my last year of grad school or in the panhandle or hiking the alps. Maybe we would have met back then. I knew I was inheriting this spread, but I tried so hard to run away.” He looked back at Rose. “It would have been cool to know you sooner.”