Buffalo Mesa Mummy

Chapter 15

“Peter! Oh, Peter!” Maria called.

“Is he missing again? What is it with that guy? Every time you turn around he is gone. He is probably lost again.” Charlie said.

Just then a muffled voice called, “Come out here! You won’t believe it!” Peter’s voice was coming from the room they had just been in.

“Where are you?” Maria asked as they stepped back inside.

“Out here.” Peter answered.

“Where is out here?” Charlie asked.

Peter started whistling and it only took a moment for Maria to determine the sound was coming from the corner of the room opposite from the wall where she and Charlie had been discussing the wall art. When she walked over to the corner she could see that the two walls didn’t actually join, but rather overlapped. There was a narrow passage at the juncture and Maria entered with Charlie on her heels.

The passage made a left turn after ten feet and then a hard right turn. Maria could see bright daylight ahead and then Maria stepped back into time.

Charlie squeezed past her and stopped, staring openmouthed at what he saw. They were standing in the center of a perfectly preserved cliff dwelling village. Charlie had accompanied his father on several trips to Anastasi ruins but he had never seen anything like this. 

A village sat on a huge ledge at least fifty yards across and several hundred yards long. The wall curved out to form a roof at least a hundred feet overhead. The overhang went out past the ledge thirty or forty feet. 

The ledge was hundreds of feet from the floor of a ravine. There were dozens of kivas, some with the thatched roofs still partially intact. Charlie knew this was odd because all the old kivas he had seen had been burned when the people left for good. There were also adobe buildings three or four stories high.

“This is spooky. It feels like the people that lived here might step out and ask us what we are doing trespassing in their town.” Maria said with awe in her voice. She turned slowly trying to take it all in.

“Is this awesome or what?” Peter exclaimed as he emerged from a building twenty feet from where his two friends stood.

“Peter, what is this place?” Maria asked.

“I believe we are standing in the middle of one of the most important undiscovered ancient American Indian cliff dwelling cities ever.” Peter answered.

“You mean no one else has been here since whoever lived here left. How could this place have stayed hidden for so long? I mean we are barely five miles from town.” Charlie said, shaking his head in wonder.

“Well think about it.” Peter answered. “You probably can’t see this place from the ground and even a helicopter or airplane would have to practically fly into the wall to see it. This town doesn’t face out into the open; it is turned toward the other side of the ravine. And this overhang means there is no way of seeing anything from the top of the mesa.”

“I was practically standing on top of this place when we were looking for the smoke.” Charlie mused.

“But why didn’t the miners find it?” Maria questioned.

“The miners had no reason to even come this way. Remember this is a natural cave or tunnel and all the miners were interested in was ventilation, which they got through the fireplace.” Peter said.

“And Maria, remember I said that the rock that blocked the way earlier wasn’t a cave in. I bet whoever lived here blocked the entrance from this side.” Charlie suggested.