Noctuidae Read Online Free

descent or the change in direction might make it worse. She’d at least dig her gloves out of her pack for that.
    Once she got back up and looked around she found the cave was not deep, only a rockshelter really, its rear walls extending nowhere full into dark zone, barely deep enough for permanent twilight at best. The ceiling rose in half a dozen low scalloped domes whose curves extended out to the walls, giving the shelter’s interior the look of a dirty compressed cathedral. Its floor area altogether amounted to little more than a good-sized theater stage, especially if all the curtains were drawn.
    While the guys unpacked and set up camp she strolled about the hole. Beneath the rear north side dome she found the excised wings of dozens of Catocala moths, strewn in a tight spread little more than one meter round. Hindwings only, some up, some down, like powder-scaly tarots, their insides striped in red and black, outsides black and white. She’d seen this sort of thing once before, in a famous shrine cave near Capitan, New Mexico. The wing scatter marked a spot where bats fed. Or perhaps the work of a single energetic bat.
    But no bats hung here. And why only the bright-striped hindwings, evolved to startle birds in flight? Where the drab forewings?
    She found the probable culprits over in the final south side alcove, loose cluster of at least two dozen Townsend’s big-eared bats, their little charcoal bunny ears poking down within reach, so cuddly she wanted to pet them. But, rabies. It was always a maybe. Not just from a bite—the aerosol of their saliva could spread it alone.
    Sue-Min noted the shifting feel of the floor beneath her feet, a sense of gravel grinding. She looked closer at the layer of tiny cobbles covering much of the cave. River cobbles. Dusty pebbles two, three, four centimeters around. Rounded, roughly. From the river. Someone hauled them up here a handful at a time. The Mimbres or other Mogollon who worshipped in this place? Why? She knew of prehistoric Southwest cave shrines strewn with pottery sherds in the hundreds, sometimes a thousand or more . . . others stuffed with inordinate numbers of sandals, prayer sticks, cane cigarettes. . . These rounded but dusty river cobbles though? Could this rocky carpet be the remnant of some rain ritual, some offering to ancestors in the watery underworld of night, the rain-bringers who returned as the clouds themselves, came back as the very raindrops. . . ?
    Ron called her to where he was making camp. Sue-Min opened her own pack and drew out what she’d need for the night. She forgot to pack a sleeping pad so Ron placed his own under her bag despite the perfunctory protest she made. That settled, they zipped their bags together, creating a single quilted envelope. She smiled at Ron across this square . . . then saw what Pete was doing, what he held. . .
    Pete hadn’t yet spread his bag out at all. Instead he moved methodically through the cave, a flattened wand coated in gray plastic extending from his hand.
    Sue-Min turned on Ron. —No way. You brought me here with a looter? Did you not know about this? Tell me you didn’t know he was gonna do this. Tell me honestly.
    —Aw baby, I didn’t think it mattered. He’s only looking for Spanish gold, not the stuff you study. Studied. It’s a total long shot anyway. Still, Coronado did come up the Blue, you know. And they do say he stashed some gold in a cave here somewhere.
    —Coronado came here looking for gold! He didn’t bring any!
    —Sure he did. He had to pay his men with it. Makes sense he would cache some for the return trip, when he would need it the most.
    —You know looters are like my natural enemy, right? Archaeologists hate looters worse than we hate . . . Nazis.
    —Well, you’re not really an archaeologist, are you? I mean, not anymore, not since they kicked you out.
    He looked up at her, seemed to catch the blank stare that paved over her rage and turned away . . . then dared an