the trail for thirty minutes, crossing a small bridge over the stream. The trail ended in a wide clearing dotted with stones and surrounded by young oak trees. At the far end, boulders covered a small hillside capped by a concrete cylinder grave marker.
Brophy waved toward the marker. “Bloody hideous thing. Don’t pay it any heed for the location. We should search the whole clearing.”
Dirk lowered the radar system’s rectangular antenna until it grazed the ground, then powered the unit on. He adjusted the gain until a cluster of wavy gray lines filled the top half of the screen. Similar to airborne radar, the device sent microwave pulses into the earth, which were reflected in the form of a two-dimensional image.
Brophy leaned over Dirk’s shoulder. “How’s it looking?”
“While the system’s designed to reach a twenty-foot depth, we’ll be lucky to scan a third of that. The soil is probably clay-based and moist, which is not friendly to ground-penetrating radar.”
“Or lost artifacts,” Summer said.
Brophy smiled. “Makes it harder to dig, too. Someone burying something wouldn’t likely go too deep.”
Brophy followed with Summer as Dirk pushed the GPR unit across the clearing. Dirk made orderly passes back and forth, snaking around upraised stones as necessary. He stopped at one point and had Brophy dig down a few inches until he struck a rock.
“Just testing.” Dirk smiled. “I had a dark spot that looked like a stone.”
Brophy scowled and leaned on the shovel. “I’m not here for the testing, I’m here for the finding.”
Dirk laughed and pushed the unit ahead to escape the Irishman’s wrath. He bypassed a few small targets as he worked his way to the rock-strewn monument. From there he enlisted Summer’s help to muscle the device up the hillside, maneuvering it between and around the stones that surrounded the marker.
Brophy sat on a rock watching, waiting for a cry of “Eureka!” It never came. They carried the unit back down the hill and joined Brophy on two nearby stones.
“Either she’s not here,” Dirk said, “or she’s buried deeper than we can see.”
Summer gazed at the valley that cut through the hills above them. “Could she be farther up the glen?”
“Possibly.” Brophy pulled out his clay pipe and lit a bowl of cherry tobacco. Its sweet aroma drifted over the clearing. “She could be anywhere in the Slieve Mish Mountains, I suppose. One could spend a lifetime kicking over stones and never find her.” He waved his pipe across the site. “One thing bothers me a wee bit. Our major Bronze and Iron Age burial sites are elevated spots, at strategic positions. This site is neither.” He waved his pipe toward the highest hill to the north.
“If it was me, I’d have buried her there, atop Knockmichael. But then, I wasn’t standing here, weary from a fight, thirty-five hundred years ago.”
“I agree.” Dirk rose to his feet. “Unless they buried her here in the heat of battle and never came back for her.” He began pushing the GPR across the clearing again. As he weaved around a large rock, a small blur appeared on the screen. It was one of the targets he’d ignored earlier, appearing small and indistinct next to the protruding stone. As he walked perpendicular to the earlier survey, it showed a thin, linear shape. He circled over the object a third time, stopped, and asked Brophy for the shovel.
He passed it to Dirk. “Another stone?”
“Something small, whatever it is.”
He slid the blade against the face of the exposed stone and scooped out a mound of dark, compact soil. “Surprised we saw much of anything through this,” he said. He expanded the hole, knowing the object was roughly a foot deep. The dense soil came out surprisingly easy, and he dug until the shovel clinked against a hard object.
He gently moved away the covering dirt. Summer dropped to her knees and reached into the hole, brushing away the loose soil with her hands.
“It’s a statue.” She waved away Dirk’s shovel. She clawed at the ground, pulling away small clumps of dirt until she exposed the object.
It was indeed a carved statuette, made of heavy gray stone, and nearly a foot long.
“Go ahead, take it out.” Brophy stood at the edge of the hole, leaning over her shoulder.
Summer pulled away more dirt until the statue came free. She gently lifted it from the hole and raised it in the air, like an actor winning an Oscar, holding it for the others to see.