Jason sat under the swinging sign in front of the old hotel. Colleen had gone back inside to the gift shop to buy a postcard for her mom, and because of the stifling heat Jason had elected to wait outside. Sitting in the shade gave the illusion that it was cooler, though he knew it wasn’t really true. Colleen was an energetic seven-year-old, in love with the old west, and a precocious student of Native American and First Nation Peoples. This vacation was in part for her.

It had been an uneventful trip thus far; they were on their way to meet Phyll in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where she had been the featured lecturer at the annual convention of NASA, the North American Society of the Antiquities. Phyll is Dr. Phyllis Barnham, wife and mother, archaeologist, professor and lecturer, and author of the recent best seller, “Digging For Fun and Prophet,” a scholarly though readable accounting of her study of the sages and medicine men of the Anasazi.

Her parents were both professors, though her father as an electrical engineer was in a field on the far side of Phyll’s interests and predilections. Her mother is an English professor, with a decided preference for latter-day poets of Eastern Europe. Her facility with the English language she passed on to Phyll in her ease and facility with communications, both in the spoken as well as written word. Words represent power, and Phyll is masterful in their use. There are a lot of things about Phyll one could easily see came from her parents. Her parents, though, had a terrible sense of humor, as witnessed in the moniker they tagged on her: Phyllis Terra Barnham – P.T. Barnham, for short. It was a name she didn’t mind when she was young because it felt good rolling off the tongue. And, it was fun. But, it soon became a point of ridicule, especially when the other kids learned its association with clowns, three rings and very large tents, and it became something she sought to live down, and wished would just go away.

When she married Jason Turner, though, she decided to keep her family name, a matter of professional practicality. As a lecturer on archaeological digs in the American southwest, the name sometimes came in handy, and she took advantage of its associations in her animated deliveries. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, her class lectures were always well attended and well received, and her stature amongst her students was strengthened and elevated.

Jason is a dreamer – an inventor of gadgets with no previously known purpose and likely no generally accepted use, a writer of haiku in Latin, and ardent lover of deep space and the mysteries of the heavens. He completes the New York Times crossword puzzle from memory after viewing it for a mere 15 seconds, working it out totally in his mind – and he tosses a perfect spiral with Colleen. He is notoriously forgetful. His work as senior astronomer and director of the NASA – the other NASA – Andromeda Radio Astronomy Center 50 miles southeast of Alamogordo in southern New Mexico, takes him to interstellar realms well beyond those familiar to most individuals.

His innovative work involving Computer Rendered and Electron-microscopy Enhanced Photographic Imaging, CREEPI for short, has won him recognition within an exclusive and close-knit fraternity of radio astronomers and other esoteric scanners of the heavens. Colleen is a dreamer, too, and even at her age listens with rapt attention when her father waxes mystically about the birth of stars, the nature of black holes, and the aging of galaxies. She doesn’t always have the correct terms, but she speaks intelligently about galactic phenomena, including supernovae, her special interest, to the wonder and delight of her dad’s colleagues, who have adopted her as their own.

Colleen often accompanies her mother in the field on her special digs, and discovered her first artifact while with her in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of north-central New Mexico. The primary dig was in a secluded gully, an offshoot of the main river running through an isolated canyon. Her mother’s team had unearthed a number of ancient relics thought to be left by previous inhabitants of the region, and hopes were high that on closer scrutiny a connection would be established with the Anasazi of old.

Colleen had decided she wanted to explore a little rise beyond the gully, and with her mother’s permission, had taken trowel and paintbrush to the hillside. When she proudly returned with a flint flake, her mother sent a team back with her to mark her very own dig site. While nothing else of note emerged from efforts focused on the alternate location, Colleen felt a sense of kinship with her mother’s work through that flint flake, which now hangs mounted in a frame with appropriate nomenclature, and the name of the young archaeologist, on her bedroom wall.

Today, Colleen and her dad stopped for lunch at this old 19^th century hotel in the middle of the stretch of desert between Las Cruces and the White Sands Missile Range. The hotel was a relic of the old west, and stood as a charming reminder of a highly romanticized period in our history. The hotel had been refurbished by the owners for the tourist trade, and it wasn’t too hard to tell how much of it was authentic and how much commercial retrofit. Colleen, though, was taken with the place.

It was quaint, and, she felt, ancient – a place with the feel of time standing still. This was Anasazi country; it was the land of Coronado and the Seven Cities of Gold; and, Colleen felt she’d been here before in another lifetime. She mentioned her feeling to her dad, and he smiled and said he thought he had, too. At first, Colleen thought he was kidding her, making light of something very real to her. When he held her eyes and said there was a mesa nearby where First Nation Peoples once held their sacred ceremonies and would she like to visit it, she knew he was serious.

It didn’t take long to drive to the location overlooking a broad river valley.

“How did you know about this place?” asked Colleen; “Did someone at the hotel tell you about it?” Her dad looked over at her and smiled.

“No, no one there knows about it. I don’t know how I knew, exactly. I just sort of knew it.”

They got out of the car, and walked a short distance to the edge of the mesa overlooking the valley below. They sat on a low rock near the edge of the canyon, and didn’t say anything for a while. The silence was palpable, and the sun though high in the sky, was losing its intense heat.

Jason was the first to speak: “Coronado was here.”

Colleen looked up at her dad, “Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Shhh,” he said, pointing off into the distance. There amongst the clusters of trees near the river’s edge, one could imagine seeing riders on horseback, clad in shining breastplates, helmed in steel with lavender plumes fluttering in the breeze, long fire sticks resting on their knees.

Colleen blinked and rubbed her eyes, for there as they watched was a phantom procession passing below them, moving off toward the western end of the valley. She looked over at her father – he was watching the shadowy figures intently.

“Do you see that?” she asked in a whisper.

“Umhmm,” he replied, his response coming slowly, his eyes fixed on the spot where the figures finally disappeared beyond the bend in the river.

Colleen grabbed her father’s hand, and pulling him, said, “We have to go down there, Dad; they’re here to see us.”

Colleen scrambled down the sloping hillside down into the valley, her dad following close behind. It wasn’t very far, and they soon reached the path along the river’s edge where fresh hoof prints marked the soft sand. Jason followed Colleen as she hurried toward the bend in the river they had observed from above. As he came around the bend following her, he was blinded by sunlight reflecting off the river’s placid mirrored surface. Colleen stood transfixed at the water’s edge. Jason grabbed her by the shoulders, and drawing her back, stepped protectively in front of her.

A large man sat on a huge chestnut horse at the head of a small group of riders. His eyes glared from behind the visor of a steel helmet, and his armor of burnished steel shone in the bright sun, while his hand held the hardwood shaft of a long lance. His face was set and hard, his beard speckled in light and dark. In spite of his grim visage, his eyes betrayed him as one with a gentle spirit, and Colleen came from behind her father and greeted the man. She spoke to him in Spanish, and his eyebrows arched in surprise. He responded, offering greetings from the Queen of Spain.

Colleen curtsied, and held her steel-grey eyes with those of the man. Jason watched, silent and intrigued, his concerns lessening. The man dismounted from his proud stallion and stood full in front of the two. He lifted the visor of his helmet, exposing blue-green flashes of light. His lips curled into a wide smile, transforming his face into a plain full of wonderful wrinkles framed in a salt and pepper beard. Colleen smiled back.

The man knelt down bringing his face level with Colleen – “Who are you, little lady?” he asked in Spanish. “And what are you doing in this wilderness without benefit of armor?”

Colleen giggled, and responded, “This land isn’t so wild or dangerous, and little girls don’t wear armor.”

“Yet, what of your father?” queried the man, persisting with his questioning. “He is ill-dressed for this land, and is without any weapons.” The man seemed truly concerned for their safety.

“My father is fine, thank you,” answered Colleen. “But, what about you – what are you doing here?”

The man chuckled, and then sighed audibly. “I seek my company of men, who have been gone now 40 years in search of the Cities of Gold. Alas, they believed the Cities were close at hand, and left in the dead of night in search of them. Only my loyal few remained with me.” The man’s eyes took on a saddened cast at these words, and his proud stance diminished a little.

“We were in the fourth year of our search, with nary a finding of such Golden Cities as myth would have it,” he said.

“Many of the men were young and impatient, and their frustration grew. The older men, those who served with me in many campaigns, they, too, grew impatient with the constant unsuccessful searching.” The man paused, and catching Colleen’s eyes, added, “They left to the last man – with the exception of these – and I have been seeking them ever since.”

Colleen listened intently. Jason came up behind Colleen and rested his hands on her shoulders. “What is he saying, Honey – what’s going on?”

Colleen, without taking her eyes from the man, whispered, “He’s looking for his company of men. He says they’re somewhere out here looking for the Cities of Gold, and have been at it for 40 years, or something. He’s been looking for them for a very long time.”

The man shifted his weight, still holding his lance.

“The Ancient Peoples who dwell in this region understand the mysteries of the land in ways we do not,” said the man quietly. “They have cloaked their Cities of Gold within those mysteries in such ways that neither we nor legions of us will likely discover their locations,” said the man.

“Our search goes on too long, and the Queen, our Mother, is distressed at the long delay in our return.” At this his eyes again took on a saddened cast.

The man sighed deeply, and placing his gloved hand on Colleen’s head, said that he had best be on his way.

“It is late in the day, and we have but a few hours before nightfall – I do not wish to lose any more time in my search for my company of men. My allegiance to my Queen presses me on.”

And, with that he turned and mounted his proud stallion, and wheeling toward the North, lifted his hand in salute and spurred his mount forward. In an instant, he and his band of men were gone around the bend of the river, and the sound of their hoof beats faded into the silence of the canyon.

Jason and Colleen retraced their steps along the river, and coming to the place where they had earlier descended, climbed the path to the top of the canyon and to their car.

The sun was nearing the western horizon, casting its gold and amber hues to the four winds, preparing the earth for the coming of a night of rest.

“What’re you thinking, button?” asked Jason.

Colleen paused for a moment, and looked toward the northern horizon – “I hope he finds his men, Dad, so he can finally go home…”