River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(35)

"No, ma'am," he drawled mildly, though I could see a dimple peeping out. I loved his dimple--and I loved it even more when he dropped into the accent of his youth. I especially loved the warm strength of him against me. I was so easy. "I'm a Southerner."

"Just like most of the cowboys he painted," I told him. "The West was populated by Southerners who didn't want to fight in the War Between the States--or who came here after they lost. That, my dear uncultured wolf, is a Charlie Russell--cowboy turned artist. Without him, Montana's history would just be a footnote in a Zane Grey novel. Charlie drew what he saw--and he saw a lot. Not a romantic, but a true realist. Every once in a while, some old Montana rancher still finds a few of his watercolors rolled up and forgotten in the bunkhouse. Like winning the lottery, only better."

Adam's shoulders shook. "I sense passion," he said, his voice soft with laughter, tickling my ear as he spoke into it. "But is it the art or the history that speaks to you?"

"Yes," I said, shivering. "I showed you mine. Which one is your favorite?"

He pulled away and directed me to a painting on the next wall. The woman sat in a cave, a dim waterfall to the left and behind her, a pool of water at her feet. The extraordinary thing about the work was the luminescence of the central figure achieved by some alchemy of the color and texture of her skin and of the fabric of her clothing combined with the shape of her pose. Solitude was its title.

This had none of the dirt and roughness of detail that appealed to me in the Russell painting. This wasn't a woman who had to get up and wash her clothes and fix dinner. Yet . . .

"Okay," I said. "I wouldn't get tired of seeing that on a wall, either. But I'm warning you, it will look odd next to my Charlie Russells."

He kissed my ear and laughed.

The American Indian exhibit was in the basement. Sam Hill had, apparently, collected Native American baskets along with his artwork. Lots and lots of baskets. Over the years, other things had been added--some terrific photographs, for instance, and large petroglyphic rocks. Still, the overall effect was a million baskets and a few other things, too.

Here, too, we weren't alone. The family from upstairs was examining the petroglyphs. The oldest, a girl, pulled free of her parents and put her face against one of the Plexiglas display cases.

There was a middle-aged Indian woman on her own. Her face was serious, though it was a face that was more comfortable with smiles than with grimness. There were lines of laughter and weather near her eyes and mouth, and all of her attention was on Adam and me.

It made me a little uncomfortable for some reason. So I turned from the stone carvings near the doorway to the baskets, putting my back toward the woman.

The baskets were extraordinary. In some of them, the designs of almost-stick-figure animals were surprisingly powerful in a way I wouldn't have thought possible with such extreme stylization as required by the weaving.

"It's a good thing I wasn't born back then," I told Adam. "I took an art course in college, and one of the projects was weaving a basket. Mine looked sort of like a disproportionate hammock complete with holes. I never could get the handle to stay on both sides at the same time."

But not even my history-driven passion could keep me interested in the million and twelfth basket, as beautifully made as they were--and I outlasted Adam by a fair bit. These weren't the kinds of baskets used on a daily basis. Most of them were made to sell to collectors and tourists.

They reminded me of a history professor of mine who mourned the loss of everyday things. Every museum, she said, had wedding dresses and christening dresses galore, Indian ceremonial robes and beaded or elk-tooth dresses worn only on the most special occasion. People don't save Grandma's work dress or Grandpa's hunting leathers.

I couldn't help but wonder what Gordon Seeker had wanted us to see here. The family had moved on--I could hear the children talking in the hallway outside this exhibit room. I didn't see the woman who'd been watching us.

I paused by the big chunk of stone near the hall that led to the rest of the basement exhibits. There were several blocks of stone, with petroglyphs incised into their surfaces, in the room. From one, a giant predatory bird glared at me.

"I wonder when this was done," I said, letting my fingers hover over the stone. I could have touched it--others were touching the gray rocks --but I couldn't quite make myself do it. As if the press of my fingers might damage it, when hundreds and maybe thousands of years of wind and rain had not. "And how long it took to carve it."

"These were taken out of the original site when the river was dammed, and the canyon they were in was flooded," Adam said thoughtfully, reading the little card next to the exhibit. "I'd figure it was carved a long time ago, or you'd see more roughness from the creation process. A thousand years almost certainly. Could be ten thousand, I suppose."

We had sandwiches in the museum deli, right next to the Rodin exhibit, then headed out to Horsethief Lake, about fifteen miles west of the museum.

JANICE LYNNE MORRISON WAS A THIRD- GRADE TEACHER and a camera nut. Her photos would never grace a museum, but she loved to scrapbook her adventures. This adventure, in particular, needed scrapbooking because she was unhappily certain that her life was about to fall apart.

They had stopped at a picnic area on the Columbia for lunch--after this it would be restaurants until they reached Lee's parents' house in Wyoming. Everyone had eaten, the remnants of the food were packed away for snacks, and the boys were playing on the rocks.