Tribal Fires

Shea McKenna’s pulse quickened as she centered thin cross hairs on the base of a buffalo horn. Sweat trickled across her forehead, but experience steadied her hand. This would be her best shot of the day.
“It’s a forgery!” Ethan Brumley’s voice boomed across the museum storeroom.
Shea jerked away from the Nikon’s viewfinder, her thumb poised on its shutter release. “What? A forgery?”
The old registrar, his back twisted like a corkscrew by scoliosis, sat hunched over a cluttered worktable. He peered through an illuminated magnifying glass attached to headgear perched on his bald pate. Knobby hands, clothed in white work gloves to protect the relics, shook as he slowly rotated a Sioux war lance.
“Miss McKenna, you need to come see this if you’re going to understand how to spot counterfeits.”
“That’s your bag. I just take pictures,” she called over her shoulder and returned to her camera’s viewfinder. “In three days, I’m outta here. Mexico, baby. Hasta la vista.”
She’d landed an assignment on the Yucatan Peninsula for Ancient Cultures magazine. Someone had discovered a Mayan temple at the Guatemalan border.
“Suit yourself.”
Ethan was right though. She needed to see what forged artifacts looked like if she were to recognize them at a dig site. Shea had majored in Archeology at the University of Missouri, but that was eight years ago. Her knowledge of Native American artifacts came nowhere near Ethan’s.
She wove her way through a maze of crates and boxes to where he sat on a metal stool. Brushing a wisp of long auburn hair from her eyes, she peeked over his shoulder. The pungent aroma of Ben Gay tweaked her nose.
He looked up, indignation etched on his age-puckered face. “This Sioux war lance, Miss McKenna, is a copy.”
As he slowly turned the weapon, glare from the overhead lights glinted along its wooden shaft. Bone beads dangling on leather strips clacked a hollow rattle. A dried splash of red at the base of the flint spearhead reminded Shea of blood.
“It looks authentic,” she said. “Wouldn’t the restorer have noticed?”
The old man peered over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses. “Young lady, I’ve been an artifact registrar since the Nixon administration. I know counterfeit when I see it.”
She bent closer. “How can you tell?”
He gifted her with a condescending smile. “To an untrained eye, a fake would be hard to spot. A forger simply cannibalizes damaged artifacts that are beyond repair to make a new lance.”
“Isn’t that what a restorer does?”
Ethan’s voice raised an octave. “A reputable restorer does not create a new piece that hasn’t existed before and pass it off as the real item. Never.”
“And that’s what you suspect.”
He ran a white-gloved hand along the lance’s smooth shaft. “The American Indian was an excellent hunter, capable of piercing a buffalo’s hide or driving a stone blade completely through a man.”
She squinted at the crusty red stain at the base of the spearhead. “What happens if it isn’t genuine?”
“If it came to the museum as such, our experts would be quite embarrassed and their credibility damaged. Knowledge and reputation are all a historian has to offer.”
“Who verified it?”
“Let me see…that would be Native American expert Tom Bennett from the Santa Fe museum and Cullen Gerard, director and acquisitions officer for the Gateway to the West Historical Society.” A pensive frown crossed the old historian’s face. “Oh, and Cheek Larson, an artifact dealer.” The corners of his mouth drooped in distaste. “Mr. Larson has a knack for ferreting out relics from private collections and shabby roadside museums. He’s part Indian…and crafty.”
She’d heard of Gerard and Bennett, but not the third man. “What did you mean by ‘if the lance came to the museum as a forgery’?”
“It’s possible someone switched it after the authentication.” He arched a thinning brow. “That wouldn’t look good for Miss Scott.”
Ann Scott was her friend and the Missouri Westward Museum’s first woman curator. Surely Ethan didn’t think her guilty of fraud? She confided to Shea she hoped to be curator of a New York museum someday. Or, dare she dream, the Smithsonian.
“Ann? Dealing in forgeries? No way,” Shea said.
“Whatever happens in this museum reflects on Miss Scott. If she used bad judgment, her credibility’s tarnished.” He threw his gloves on the table. “Her career in antiquities will be over. Remember what happened with Piltdown Man?”
She remembered reading about the anthropological scam. A man’s cranium attached to the jawbone of an ape.
“Then there’s the Shroud of Turin, a controversial piece of cloth batted back and forth for centuries concerning its authenticity. And the Hitler diaries.” Ethan clicked his tongue in derision. “You can see how one little slip can destroy a reputation.”
“How valuable is the original lance?”
“Restored, in the neighborhood of twenty thousand dollars.”
Shea whistled. “Nice neighborhood.”
He scanned the worktable. She followed his gaze as he zeroed in on an Arikara bone knife, a cluster of Navajo pottery, and a hand-carved wooden bowl of the Woodlands Indian era amidst a jumble of catalog sheets.
“A tidy fortune can be made dealing in forged artifacts,” he said. “Millions of dollars, if undetected.”
And greed could turn a friend into a stranger.
Still, Shea couldn’t imagine Ann with her manicured nails and Prada suit skulking around late at night switching artifacts.
Ethan must’ve seen disbelief in her eyes. “Mind you, I’m not accusing Miss Scott. She’s a delightful young woman and her curatorship has been without blemish.”
Shea persisted, “I can’t believe the restorer wouldn’t have noticed—”
Ethan’s hand shot out and clutched her arm. Thin arthritic fingers dug into her wrist as he stared wide-eyed at something behind her.
Unnerved, Shea whipped around, then gasped in awe at the majestic Indian filling the storeroom doorway.