Page 26 of Present Danger (Rocky Mountain Courage 1)

THIRTEEN

Terra followed Jack away from the cabin until he found a signal, then he made the call requesting a warrant. He eyed her the entire time he spoke into the cell.

He ended the call and tucked his cell away. “I need to stand here and wait for a call back. Or we could head back to our vehicles and wait there. You know, it could take ten minutes or hours.”

“You stand there, and I’ll look around to see if I come across any ‘anomalies,’ as you put it earlier.” But she’d already come across one.

“Or you could stay here and talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking. You deal with this artifact business more often than I do. What can you tell me?”

She exhaled. The temps were starting to warm up, and she shrugged out of her pack and jacket. Terra grabbed water and tossed a bottle to Jack.

That storm had blown over without dumping rain on them. But thunder sounded in the distance.

“On my last assignment with the National Park Service, I worked undercover. We were working in the four corners—where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona come together.”

“Anasazi. Native American pueblo people.” Jack flashed his dimpled grin.

Terra waited a few heartbeats, then said, “You know more than you let on, Jack Tanner.”

“I should be honest with you. Aunt Nadine has a book on her coffee table.”

Interesting. “People have taken arrowheads and more home for decades. We know that. Although depending on where and how the item was taken, it’s probably still illegal. Our sting operation had to do with things taken and sold on the black market. They were pilfering from historic ruins, selling to collectors.”

“And you think Jim could be involved in something similar?”

“I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

“That, I already know.” He swatted at an insect.

“Most pothunting, as we call it, is in the southwest. In Jim’s cabin, I spotted a couple of items on that shelf through the window. Contemporary Native American art brings in millions, even billions of dollars. But a big problem exists in that people who buy the art might not understand if they are buying something old or something new. Something legal or something illegal—the new laws are curbing even the purchase of contemporary Native American art.”

“And Native American artists depend on that for their livelihood,” he said.

“The art they produce is contemporary and obviously completely legal to buy and sell, and there are even legal artifacts to be possessed too, but this is where it gets murky because of provenance.”

“You mean, where did the items originate from?”

“Yes. And was it from public or private land? Was it taken from a gravesite? Or created from an endangered species?”

“Things have changed in the last two decades. Aunt Nadine used to take me out to collect arrowheads.”

“And that’s perfectly fine if the arrowheads are found on private land, and again, they aren’t pilfered from a gravesite or a site of historic significance. But she would know that.” Aunt Nadine probably wasn’t breaking the law, Terra hoped, but many broke the laws without realizing they were doing so, especially since those laws had changed.

“There’s even a law, NAGPRA—the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act—that outlines how museums and federal agencies should return Native American objects to the original tribes. Again, complicated.”

Jack chugged from his bottled water.

“There’s also NHPA—the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966—but that’s mostly to do with someone trying to bulldoze land or build a pipeline that comes across an archaeological site. As for my job as a forest service special agent, I’m more concerned about ARPA, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.”

“My head is spinning already. Dumb it down for me, okay? I’m only a meager county detective.” He grinned.

“ARPA basically says you can’t loot on historic sites or dig up graves, collect or deface historic sites. This is what the forest service special agents investigate. Forest service law enforcement officers protect the resources, and if there are violations and no one has been apprehended, those cases are then reported to criminal investigators—special agents like me so we can dig deeper. So far on my job here, I haven’t had an archaeological case, but with my past experience, that’s more my specialty.”

Jack’s eyes filled with appreciation when she’d expected them to glaze over like most people’s did. Terra averted her eyes, hoping he didn’t see her blush under his stare. The two of them had come a long way. They were both different people now, yet so much about her remained the same. It seemed that was true for Jack as well.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s say we get the warrant and get into the cabin. You’re calling the items artifacts, but they could be made by contemporary Native Americans and not artifacts at all.”

The pots still had dirt on them, as if someone had recently dug them up. “Maybe, but what I saw ... I’m leaning artifact. The Montana tribes, the Crow tribe for instance, followed the bison. They were considered Plains tribes and didn’t spend much time making pottery. These pots look more Hopi anyway.” Even stranger.