Ill Wind by Nevada Barr Page B

sharply.
    The brown eyes turned toward her. They were clouded with fear—or shock.
    “Hand me the bag. Then give Frieda a call and see if we can’t get helitack down here with a litter. We’re going to need the ambulance as well.”
    For a moment it seemed as if he didn’t understand, then his eyes focused. Anna watched him for a few seconds more but he began making the calls. She turned down her radio so she could talk with Stephanie and her parents.
    Seven minutes and Drew called on scene at Cliff Palace parking. In that time Stephanie had begun to go downhill. By the time Drew arrived with the Stokes, she had lost consciousness.
    Keeping up a running commentary to calm the parents and Stephanie if she wasn’t beyond hearing, Anna had taken the IV kit from the trauma bag and prepped the child’s thin arm. “This is just to get some fluids in her; it may help to break up the congestion. And, too, if she needs medication at the hospital, they can just put it right in.”
    She swabbed the skin with alcohol and readied a number-sixteen needle. To Drew she said: “We’re not wasting time with this. One try; if I don’t get in, we’re out of here.”
    “Do it,” Drew said.
    “Damn,” Anna whispered. “This kid has no veins.”
    “What? Have you got it?” Drew asked.
    “No. Load and go. Wait. I’m getting a flashback.”
    “Too many drugs in college,” Drew muttered under his breath.
    Anna noted the red of blood in the flashback chamber of the IV catheter with satisfaction. She was in. Carefully, she pulled the catheter off the needle, sliding it into the vein. “Pop the tourniquet.” She taped the catheter in place. “Go.”
    Anna addressed herself to the little girl strapped into the evacuation litter. “Stephanie, we’re carrying you out. You’re in good hands.” Maybe the child’s eyelids twitched in response. Maybe it was just the play of the sun.
    Drew had taken his place at the head of the litter. Crouched down, elbows on thighs, he looked solid, like a rock. When he began to rise Anna was put in mind of the unfolding of the stony peak of Bald Mountain in Disney’s Fantasia.
    Stacy knelt at the foot of the Stokes. His lips were pressed in a thin line and his eyes turned inward, unreadable.
    “Ready?” Drew asked.
    Meyers didn’t respond. “Stacy!” Drew raised his voice. Like a man in a trance, Stacy slowly began to lift. “Atta boy,” said the helitacker.
    The Stokes was of orange plastic hard enough to haul up inclines and drag over rough terrain. Encasing the fragile form of the child, it resembled a medieval instrument of torture rather than the secure embrace of modern emergency evacuation equipment, and Anna felt bad for the parents, already frightened half out of their wits.
    Four ladders of juniper wood, polished to a dark gloss by the palms of countless tourists, led up twenty-five feet through the crack in the cliff’s face to the mesa.
    Stephanie McFarland would not be roped up this incline, but carried back out the entrance trail. The distance was greater but the ascent not so precipitous.
    “Coming through,” Drew boomed. Curious onlookers parted reluctantly. Drew going first, the procession began to move down the path fronting the cliff dwellings. Tourists shifted, pressing back against stone walls. Bright-hued clothing, cameras, sunglasses, all combined to create a jarring kaleidoscope of color against the serene peach and buff of the ancient village.
    Over the centuries roofs had fallen in, paint chipped away, and fiber mats rotted from doorways; the clangor of life leeched away until the structures had taken on the timeless purity of Greek statuary. But, like the ancient Greeks who had painted their pale marble figures vivid colors, the Anasazi had plastered the warm neutrality of their sandstone exteriors, then decorated them in red and black patterns.
    Mesa Verde’s Old Ones might have been as much at home with the cacophony of neon and spandex as the