Read Online Tag Against Time by Helen Hughes Vick - Free Book Online Page A

dad’s strong, capable arms.
    â€œThere is something for you to do here,” Great Owl’s voice whispered amidst the devastation.
    The hair on Tag’s neck stood up. He wiped his teary eyes with the back of his hand. “But what?” His question blew away in the breeze.
    The next group of ruins looked better. The long, continuous walls that made up five homes stood intact, although the T-shaped doorways were no longer recognizable. Tag crawled over the debris and through the gap where the first doorway had once stood. Decay singed his nose. Large pieces of yucca mats lay in a pile with pottery sherds and tin cans. Small brown corncobs lay in a heap in one corner. A once-neat pile of yucca cordage used for rabbit snares lay scattered nearby.
Whose house was this?
Tag searched his memory.
Scar Cheek’s or Fawn’s?
    Tag started to climb out through the irregular opening.He spied something wedged in between the rock slabs.
What?
Tag picked it up.
A dynamite fuse! Someone blew the doorway out to have more light to pothunt!
His anger exploded. Walls that took hours of tedious and strenuous work to build had been blown apart in seconds by greed. He stared at the steep ledge below the house and realized why the stone slabs from the wall now littered the hillside.
    â€œHow can man be so stupid?” Tag screamed. He hurled a broken slab as far as he could over the edge of the path.
    Tag touched the smooth, empty trough of Littlest Star’s metate, surprised that someone hadn’t blown it apart, too. The front wall of Littlest Star’s house still remained intact. Hope swelled in Tag’s heart.
Maybe Great Owls’ home is okay too!
    The destruction was random. Many of the walls had gapping holes, while others stood strong and whole. Tin cans, bottles, and yellowing newspaper littered the doorways. Tag knew he should stop and get a date off one of the brittle newspapers, but the uncertainty of the state of Great Owl’s home spurred him on.
    â€œYes!” Both Great Owl’s and Morning Flower’s adjoining home showed no significant damage. Crawling inside Great Owl’s house, Tag saw that it was cleaned out right down to the bare limestone floor. Not even a pottery sherd remained.
    â€œThese two ruins were excavated some thirty years ago, back in 1885, by Richard Stevenson.” The gravely voice, coming from just outside the doorway startled Tag. “Everything found in these ruins is on display at the Smithsonian Institution back in Washington D. C.” The voice had a definite New York accent. “Everything that is, but the handprints in the mud plaster. You can see theseancient prints best in the ruin on the right. Go ahead and go on in. Watch your head, please.”
    It would be only a matter of seconds before someone came into Great Owl’s house. Tag pressed himself against the corner of the front wall.
    A child’s voice screeched, “The ghost boy!”
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous, dear.” A large, flowered bonnet poked through the T-shaped doorway. “That’s only a story—
ahhh!
” The woman’s head disappeared.
    A man’s head and shoulders reappeared. “Come out here, boy,” his gravely voice ordered.
    Tag gulped down his heart and crawled out. An elderly man, a middle-aged woman, and two small children hiding behind the woman’s long full skirts, stood on the path.
    â€œWhat are you doing in there?” Deep lines molded the long face of the man, in his late sixties. He wore denim pants, a long-sleeved shirt, high black boots, and a sagging felt hat.
    Tag tried to sound innocent. “Looking around like everyone else.”
    â€œDon’t remember you coming out with this group.” The man stared over his wire-rimmed eyeglasses at Tag.
    â€œHe’s not with us, Mr. Pierce,” stated the woman. She folded her arms across her ample chest, “And I certainly don’t want him with