"Number two," Lisa said.

Anna's mind snapped back to the lesson at hand. Evidently she had missed number one.

"Feces," Timmy said succinctly. Anna had not missed number one. He held up a pile of zipper plastic bags. "In the bag. Zip it. Double bag. Zip it." Fleetingly Anna thought this would make a heck of a commercial for Gladlock green-seal bags. "Wrap it all in tinfoil. Pack it out."

"Burrito bags," Lisa said, and Anna detected a hint of mischief in the guileless eyes.

Caving, deep, serious caving, was beginning to take on the trappings of an expedition into outer space.

Things moved quickly, and for that Anna was grateful. This was not a time she would welcome interludes for deep introspection. Shortly before four p.m. Oscar Iverson and a man he introduced as Holden Tillman picked her and her gear up at the resource management office. She was unceremoniously stuffed into the back of a covered pickup truck along with packs, ropes, helmets, and other assorted paraphernalia. She would have preferred the distraction of conversation to being left alone with her thoughts. That option denied, she stared resolutely out through the scratched Plexiglas over the tailgate.

The ceiling of clouds had fractured. An ever-widening strip of blue pried open by the last rays of the sun shone on the western horizon. Rain and the season had leached the desert of color, leaving a palette of gray to be painted by the sunset. Drops of water clinging to the catclaw and sotol soaked up the light and refracted it in glittering facets of gold. The stones and black-fingered brush dripped with molten finery. Faint rainbows bent over the desert, where rain still fell through veils of light.