The Secret of the Stones (25 page)

Chapter
41

Blue
Ridge Mountains

Sean
felt horrible about Joe’s truck.
 
The vehicle had basically been totaled from the two firefights it had
endured thus far.
 
How the thing
had kept running boggled his mind.

“Aw,
heck Sean, I appreciate it.
 
But I
ain’t worried about it,” Joe had replied to Sean’s apologies with a huge grin
and a pass of the hand.
 
“Now my
wife on the other hand…”

They
both laughed, imagining the scene when they returned to the cabin with a truck
full of bullet holes.
 
The look on
Joe’s wife’s face would surely be one for the record books, followed by a
fairly certain divorce filing, or at least the threat of one.
 

No,
Sean would definitely see to it that the truck was replaced with one that
looked exactly the same.
 
The less
Mrs. McElroy knew, the better.
 

The
group got out of the truck and made their way up the short set of stairs into
the old looking brick building.
 
It
seemed the library was in good keeping with the town aesthetic.
 
In the small Main Street district, most
of the other buildings were very similar.
 

There
had been a time, long ago, when the area was booming.
 
During the Georgia Gold Rush in the early 1800s, people had
moved there seeking fortune.
 
But
the vein of gold that had been found locally did not last long.
 
A lasting tribute to the city’s past
was the gold dome on top of the town hall, plated with metal from a mine
nearby.

After
passing through the security sensors, the room opened up into a much bigger
facility than seemed possible from the outside.
 
To their right was a spiral staircase that led up to a
second floor where it appeared many of the books were located.

On
the ground floor, there was an open area in front of the long librarian’s
checkout counter.
 
Several
computers were set up at one end.
 
Through large, wooden, doors behind the main counter was a large room
with at least ten rows of reference books.
 
Every ten feet there was a large window that looked into the
reference room, perhaps to monitor patrons while they worked.
 

Beyond
the staircase, a section for periodicals contained dozens of magazines and
newspapers.
 
A few empty couches
that looked as old as the building sat quietly in front of the shelves.
 

A
skinny librarian, probably in her upper fifties, was standing behind a computer
and asked, “May I help you with something?”
 
Her face seemed pleasant and honest behind the wire rimmed
glasses.

“Yes,
Ma’am,” Joe replied.
 
“We just need
to use one of your computers for a minute or two.”

She
continued smiling, “Help yourself.
 
Right over there,” she replied, pointing at the machines before going
back to pecking at the keys on her own computer.
 
The three visitors quickly stepped over to the computer
nearest the door.
 
Its screen was
already on, as were the other six computers stationed in the little area.
 

Sean
removed the digital camera from its black hard case and laid it next to the
monitor.
 
It was then that he
realized they actually would need something from the lady behind the large
counter.
 

“Ma’am,”
he interrupted her politely.
 
“You
wouldn’t happen to have a camera USB cable would you?” Her eyes raised just
above the glasses that were situated on the tip of her nose.
 
The woman was still smiling as if her
face were frozen permanently that way.
 

“Of
course.”
 
She clicked her mouse a
few times, evidently saving what had been on the screen.
 
Turning from the computer, she
languidly moved over a few feet to her right.
 
Seconds later, she had removed the needed cord from a drawer
in the long counter.
 
“Here you
go,” she said stepping toward the visitors.
 
“Just be sure you give it back to me.”
 

Not
like they would be able to escape the building without her noticing.
 
She was the only other person there.

“Thanks,”
Allyson offered to her.
 
They
certainly had to look awkward, the three of them coming to the library in the
middle of the afternoon on a weekday.
 
Even though the librarian was still smiling, she had to be thinking
something wasn’t quite right about the crew that had just walked through her
door.

“You’re
welcome,” the kind voice replied. She went back to her computer, minding her
own business.
 
They must not have
seemed like too much of a threat. A minute later, Sean had connected the camera
to the computer and was pulling up the images they had viewed earlier.

“So,
now what?”
 
Allyson asked.

“I’m
going to pull up all of these images on the screen and see if they make any
sense together.
 
If they don’t…” he
was already busy lining up the pictures from left to right, “…then we move them
around until they do make sense.”

“Like
a jigsaw puzzle.”

Joe
stood behind them, looking between their heads as Sean continued to arrange the
photos.
 
Once he had finished, the
entire layout was even more confusing than when they had been looking at the
actual boulders, if that was possible.
 

“I
gotta say,” Joe started, “I don’t see how you are going to make any sense of
this.”

No
reply was offered.
 
Wyatt had to
admit, there was a little hope in his mind that once the pictures were on the
computer it would all come together.
 
Unfortunately, it still seemed like a bunch of jumbled, meaningless
drawings of animal tracks, lines, and circles.
 

After
staring for a minute or two, he began rearranging the images on the
screen.
 
Another problem that
presented itself was that looking at the boulders as entire units did not work.
 
Essentially, Sean was now breaking up
the large rocks into chunks in order to separate the symbols themselves.
 
He spent a few more minutes sliding the
pictures around and then stood still, befuddled.

“I
just don’t know what to do,” he said finally.
 
“Everything is so random.”
 
He began again, moving the digital photo squares around on
the screen, looking for something, anything that might help.
 

Allyson
leaned closer, trying her best to assist, but she was way out of her
realm.
 

Joe
appeared equally perplexed.
 
“Sorry, bud.
 
It is a
several thousand year-old mystery, you know.”

Sean
ignored the comment and kept working.
 
After ten more minutes of trying, though, he stepped away from the
computer, frustrated.
 
“I can see
why no one has been able to understand these drawings.
 
Makes me wonder if whoever drew this
was just some ancient graffiti artist leaving a bunch of meaningless art on
some rocks.”

He
sighed deeply and ran his hands through his hair, holding them on the back of
his sandy-colored head for a few seconds before dropping them down to his
side.
 

Allyson
stood aimlessly at the computer, wishing there was something else she could
do.
 

Joe’s
eyes were wandering now, looking around the old library as if the answer might
come from the old brick walls.
 
His
head stopped as he focused on a large painting attached to a column rising all
the way to the ceiling.
 
In the
picture, a Native American warrior stood on a hilltop, overlooking a
valley.
 
His eyes were staring with
a stern look into a scene of majestic, green mountains in the distance with a
fiery sunrise in the backdrop.
 

Across
the Indian’s back was a bow accompanied by a quiver of arrows.
 
His arms were muscular and, even more
defined by the colorful bands of cloth that were snugly wrapped around his
biceps.
 

What
caught Joe’s eye, though, wasn’t necessarily the beauty of the picture or the
Indian’s impressive physique.
 
It
was something smaller, fairly obscure.
 
On the young brave’s arm was a kind of tattoo.
 
To the casual observer, the mark would probably go
unnoticed.
 
But at that moment, the
little tattoo in the picture made everything much clearer to the middle aged
park ranger.

“Sean,”
he said, interrupting his friend’s discouraged thoughts.
 
“I think you should come take a look at
this.”

He
pointed up at the painting as Wyatt walked over to see what it was that had
gotten the man’s attention.

“See
the Indian?”

Nodding,
Sean continued looking at the picture, not fully understanding what Joe had
thought to be so important.
 
Allyson joined the two of them looking at the scene on the column.

“Look
at his arm,” he said finally after giving his friend a minute, “at the tattoo.”

Sean’s
face indicated that he was still not connecting the dots.
 

“Do
you not see it?” Mac seemed to think the answer was obvious.

“I
see the tattoo.
 
Looks like a bird
claw.
 
But what does that have to
do with anything?”

“There
are some bird claws just like that on the rocks in the pictures,” Joe was
talking frantically now.
 
His
demeanor had even gotten the stoic librarian’s attention as she looked up from
her computer monitor, apparently annoyed with the volume of the discussion.

Then
Sean and Allyson realized the connection he was trying to point out.
 

“What
does it mean, though?” Allyson asked confoundedly.

Joe
explained, “In ancient Native American society, there were many different
classes or castes, similar to what exists in several present day cultures.
 
Here in the United States, we have
upper, middle, and lower classes, but they are divided by socio-economic
status.
 
We don’t really have
divisions of people into groups like artists, doctors, military, clergy,
etc.
 
But in the Native societies,
they did divide things up that way.”
 
Again, he pointed up at the arm of the Indian in the picture.
 
“This young man in the picture was
obviously a warrior or a hunter because of the bow strapped to his back.”

The
other two nodded, following along so far.

“But
the bird claw tattoo is the real clue as to who this guy was.
 
Those types of tattoos were used as
markings of the warrior class.
 
Interestingly enough, the United States still uses a touch of that
symbol on many government emblems.”
 

Joe
reached into his back pocket, removing his wallet.
 
He produced a dollar bill and pointed at the image of the
eagle for the small audience.
 
“You
see there?
 
The claws are holding
an olive branch and the arrows.
 
Eagle claws were a symbol of strength.
 
And only the strong can wage war or create peace.
 
That’s how it has always been.”

Now
Sean understood what his friend was getting at.
 
“So, the claws on the rock represent locations of where the
warriors dwelled in the ancient times?”

“It
sure looks that way.
 
I would
imagine if we take a closer look, the other symbols will also have some kind of
significant representation of the ancient Cherokee cultures.”
 

The
two men quickly moved back over to the computer station with Allyson in
tow.
 
Joe took control of the mouse
and began moving some of the pictures around.
 
He moved the pointer arrow over one of the claws in one
image.
 
“Okay, we have a claw that
looks a lot like the one in the picture.”
 

He
continued as he positioned the mouse indicator around another picture.
 
“Here we have a bear paw.
 
That would probably indicate a scout or
tracker group.
 
And here,” his hand
moved the mouse again, “we have a bird with its feathers spread out, probably
the religious order of the area.”