"See that hogback?" he pointed to a very prominent one to the east of the road. "Look at the way the sagebrush grows on top of it. When it's sparse and open like that one the chance of finding sites there is small." We turned on to a poor State Forest road and bounced eastward. "But that one up ahead; it's very dense on top. See it?" There was a solid, very tight patch of sagebrush right along the ridge of the hogback.
   "When it's really thick like that, more times than not there's ruins."
   "Why is that?"
   "I think it's the way those ancient people farmed. Slash and burn. Each year they burned their rubble after harvest. The charcoal and ashes left the ground fertile. Even this much later you can tell there was a settlement there. We're going to show you."
   The truck jerked to a stop alongside the hill in a small flat area by a juniper tree. There was an old fire circle by the tree–not too old, though; there were several burned aluminum beer cans among the ashes. Dorothy brought a long thin stick from behind the seat, and we climbed the sloping side of the hill I'd call "Ridge X."
   "I just keep a look out," she said. "If I see something that might be a point, I turn it over with the stick. It saves me from bending over all the time."
   The ground was covered with live sagebrush and dead roots, sparse at first, along the edges, then thicker as we pushed into the middle of the growth. I was concerned about snakes under the thick growth, but I kept my fears to myself. Between the closely spaced clumps of brush the ground was covered with small, coarse pebbles and tiny flakes of white, gray, and red flint.
   As we neared the top of the hill the brush suddenly cleared and I saw thousands of small pottery fragments littering the ground. Some were very coarse, dark brown and sandy and completely featureless; some were smooth with painted designs. A few had fingerprints. None was larger than a half dollar. Now I could see the wisdom of Dorothy's stick. I was constantly bending to pry loose small fragments, hoping for a large one.

   We spent about an hour walking Ridge X. I found six or seven larger fragments of pottery with some bold designs. All were light gray with black markings.
   "Why are all these fragments so small?" I asked James. "Why aren't there any larger pieces?"
   "I'm not sure; but I personally think it's because of centuries of free-range cattle walking the ridge. I believe they've simply walked on everything and smashed it all." He could have been right; there were small dried pieces of manure everywhere.
   It was a fun afternoon. The Johnsons were friendly and open. They'd obviously had a lot of experience finding artifacts in the area. The day was warm and bright. And it hadn't escaped me that, once again, we were near Yabis. I'd find our location later when I noted the Forest Road number on our way out.

   I tried to imagine what sort of life had been lived here; what was done where; how many people had lived here; even how old this site really was. It was all guesswork for me. The only clue I had was the presence of large trees growing right among the rubble of several of the walls. They were piñons about ten or twelve inches thick. I guessed they were probably two hundred years old at most, and that they had not been there when the walls were new. The ground was littered with their fallen cones; but none contained nuts. The squirrels and mice had taken care of them quickly.
   The broken pottery was scattered widely, but in specific locations with wide spaces between. A very close look at what I had called very crude pottery yesterday showed it to be thin hard crusts of solidified mud and sand—totally natural in this high desert. I was surprised the Johnsons hadn't mentioned that. But the gray shards were pottery; and had the pieces been larger they would have been good artifacts.
   Small, very sharp flint flakes were everywhere, but they were concentrated in specific locations like the pot shards. I was pretty sure they were the flakes discarded during the process of point making. But in several hours of searching I found no points or fragments of finished points.
   I was thoroughly enjoying my search. The day was cool and the sun was bright. A light breeze scented with sage was delightful. But I knew that a long time here would leave me sun- and windburned. The traces of structural walls were very thin, almost grown over with grass. It was one of those times when you sort of had to squint your eyes to see the patterns the crude stones traced. I took snapshots to record them; sometimes photos helped clear up things that weren't plain before.

   I ran my metal detector around the little curved wall I'd found. I didn't really expect to get an indication here, but I had to try. I wasn't disappointed–nothing!
   After about two hours of alternately searching the ground and stopping to think, I began to feel restive. This plainly wasn't one of the towers. As I thought about the day, I wondered just how many ruins sites like this were in the area. Were small settlements like this on all the ridges? Where would I be likely to find towers? Where to next?
   I decided to do a circle of the hogback about midway down the slope to see if anything might have tumbled down the hillside. Even though, in theory, hogbacks have only one very steep side, that doesn't mean the less steeply-sloped sides were easy. These slopes were covered in loose sandy gravel and stones that made it hard to walk safely. On one side of the ridge, the soil was very dusty (ashy, really–this soil was largely volcanic fallout). There were lots of quartz flakes in the gravel.
   As I circled the west side of the ridge, the side I'd come up that morning, I found a boulder with a smooth round cup in the top surface. I recognized it immediately as a metate. Now this was exciting! In only a minute or two I found the companion mano in the soil under a small juniper. It fit the metate perfectly. I had to have it.