“No, not that. I feel I should recognize this, but … ” All of a sudden, she stepped back and lowered the magnifying glass with a laugh. “Am I stupid, or what?”

“Sorry?”

“This photo—Gower taped it to the back of the frame upside down.” Nora turned the image one hundred and eighty degrees, then bent over it once again.

“That’s better—now north is at the top, and everything looks more familiar. That group of low mesas, there, and that canyon, twisting like that … ” Abruptly, she straightened up and smiled in triumph. “It’s Anzuelo Canyon, and that’s Navajo Ridge.”

“Where’s that?” Corrie asked.

“I’ll tell you where it isn’t—it isn’t close to White Sands or High Lonesome. It’s probably a hundred miles away, north and west as the buzzard flies.” She looked back at the photo, beckoning Corrie closer. “I recognize it because of the slot canyon, here.”

“Slot canyon?”

“You see this narrow, curved line, with that sharp bend at the end? That’s a slot canyon. It’s an extremely narrow channel of sandstone, hundreds of feet deep but only a dozen or so feet wide. There are quite a few in the Southwest.” She tapped the dark semicircle gently with a gloved fingertip. “This section, here, is known locally as El Anzuelo, which is Spanish for fishhook—for obvious reasons. And the ridge curving across the eastern side of the frame is a section of Navajo Ridge.”

“I wonder why Gower would hide a rather poor aerial photo behind a picture in the first place?”

“Beats me.”

“Is there anything else in the photograph that stands out to you? Historic, geologic, out of place? Anything?”

Nora shook her head. “Anzuelo Canyon is the only thing of interest. Above the canyon is a medium-size Tewa Indian ruin, called—what was that name?—Tziguma.”

The two women sat in silence for a long moment, staring at the old photograph.

“One thing’s for sure,” Corrie said at last. “If it was Gower who hid this—and he’s the most likely suspect—he must have done so for a reason.”

“Agreed,” Nora said. “Let’s see if we can figure out what that reason is.”

*

“All right,” Nora said, stretching and massaging the small of her back. It was an hour later, and they were in the Institute’s small, exquisitely decorated library, a pile of survey maps, atlases, and historical tomes lying on the table between them. “So that Tewa pueblo I told you about, Tziguma, appears to have once been the site of a Spanish mission church.”

“Just beyond the slot canyon,” Corrie said. “The Fishhook.”

Nora nodded. “The Tewa joined the Pueblo Revolt and killed the padre, but when the Spanish returned in 1692, the Tewa resisted, and the pueblo was destroyed and abandoned, and eventually fell into ruin. As far as I can determine, it’s never been excavated.”

“Never excavated,” Corrie repeated. “And yet it’s rumored to contain buried treasure.”

“Half of the ruined churches in the Southwest, and all of the abandoned pueblos, share that rumor.”

“Maybe. But in this case, it’s mentioned in not one or two but three separate books—including this one that probably belonged to Gower.” As she spoke, Corrie tapped the copy of Early Legends of the Western Frontier that she’d taken from the cabin.

“True.” Nora began closing the books and straightening the maps. “So what’s next? Are you going to take this up with your boss?”

“Morwood?” Corrie shook her head. “He’ll say it’s too speculative. I’ve pushed my luck with him just about as far as I can these past few days. I’ll have to check it out myself first. If it seems important, then I can loop him in.”

“Sounds good,” Nora replied. “But that leaves you with one problem. How the hell are you going to get out to Anzuelo Canyon? You’d never find it in a million years. Even your new friend Watts—” Abruptly, she stopped. “Oh no.”

“Walked right into that one,” Corrie said. Then she laughed. “Why, thanks, I’d be delighted to have you take me there.”

Although the library was sparsely occupied, Nora’s blistering response nevertheless turned every head in the room.

29

THEY PARKED THE car at the end of the track and stepped out. The long dirt road winding through the high desert had ended in a turnaround at the edge of a canyon. The air was crisp with the scents of sagebrush and blooming chamisa, and puffy white clouds passed by in the cool breeze, casting slow-moving shadows on the landscape. It was, Nora thought, a perfect day for a hike. The ridge overlooked Anzuelo Canyon, a broad cut in the sandstone plateau, with spires and hoodoos of white sandstone rising here and there like misshapen snowmen.

They had driven to the canyon in Nora’s car, because—since this wasn’t official business and it was a Sunday—Corrie wasn’t authorized to use her OGV.

“Pretty cool,” said Corrie, looking around.

Nora took out her phone and fired up a GPS app. “Looks like we’re about two miles from the ruins.”

They shrugged into their day packs and set off on a faint dirt trail. It switchbacked down into the canyon and followed a dry wash that snaked along the bottom. As they moved up the canyon, it gradually narrowed, the walls getting higher and