The sound of a motorcycle, distant now, but coming closer, diverted his attention momentarily.

"Damn motorbikers, ruining the desert," he said to himself. A few decades alone in the desert gave him little patience for other people.
He chipped a few more chunks off the exposed rock face. No tell-tale glints of gold greeted his weary eyes. The motorcycle was closer now, he could hear it just over the next hill.

Suddenly it burst over the top with a roar, bringing a cloud of sand and exhaust fumes with it. The rider, an Indian boy of about eighteen, skidded the bike to a stop just below where the old man was working.

"You're not gonna find anything out here, old man," he shouted as the dust settled around him. "Everybody knows they took all the gold outta these hills ages ago."

"Now what would you know about it?" the old prospector spat back.

The boy dismounted and approached, wiping the grimy sweat from his eyes.
"My grandfather, he knows all about this desert; my people have lived here forever you know."

"Your grandfather don't know everything, boy. There's still a strike to be found and I aim to find it!"

The boy knelt down beside the old man and picked up a handful of reddish dirt, absent-mindedly sifting it through his hands. "You know, my ancestors are buried all over this desert, in caves."

"If I run into any I'll let you know," the old man replied between blows of his pickaxe.
The boy sat silent, watching the desert beyond as if searching for his ancestors among the rocks and cactus.

"Well, it's been nice talking to you old man," he said only half-sarcastically, wiping the dust from his hand on his pant leg. "If you find any of that gold, remember, the tribe has first dibs."

The old man didn't respond, but kept on digging under the unrelenting afternoon sun.

Before he could reach his bike the boy was stopped short by a cry from the old man.

"Well, I'll be damned! Hey boy, I think I found one of them caves you was talkin' about."

The boy turned. Where the old man had been chipping away he saw an opening about the size of a man's head. The sunlight beaming in showed a hollow extending deep into the hillside.

"What can you see?" he asked, crouching down to peer in.

"Wait'll I widen the hole some more."

A few minutes of digging revealed a cavern, apparently manufactured, and at least twenty feet deep. From his vantage point at the mouth the old man could see arrayed around the sides of the void a series of metallic bins, each sealed with a domed lid and covered with a coating of dust.
The boy was first to scramble in. He brushed the dust off of one bin, revealing a transparent material resembling plexiglas.

"Aliens! I don't believe it! Goddam aliens!" He excitedly rushed from one to another, inspecting each box, wordlessly exclaiming over each one like a kid who's just gotten everything he wanted for Christmas. Wiping the thin layer of accumulated dust from each box he could see in each a figure, a creature, of humanoid appearance. Each was distinguishable by their varying skin tone: some a light tan, others tending towards gun-metal gray, all clothed in similar skin-tight uniforms of a dull olive color. A patch on each uniform, just above the left breast, depicted a dual-star system containing an even dozen planetary objects.
Meanwhile, the old man had climbed in after and, sweating from the exertion, stood wiping his dripping face.

"No such thing as aliens, boy."

"These sure aren't Indians!"

The old man stood silently now and focused his eyes on what he didn't want to see, but now confronted, had to admit to himself. He'd always considered himself the most level-headed of men, not given to the silly indulgences of other folks. When locals talked of UFOs, or lights in the desert sky, he dismissed them all as fools, allowing their imaginations to get the better of them.
"No time for such nonsense" he had said whenever the subject was broached.
"Some people only see what they want to see" was his considered opinion; now he wasn't sure whether to trust his own eyes anymore. If not for the Indian boy's presence he might have convinced himself it was all an hallucination, brought on by sunstroke and dehydration. He sat on a pile of rubble and rested, not taking his eyes off the alien sarcophagi for fear they might be an hallucination.

"I gotta get back and let 'em know what we found!" the Indian boy exclaimed.

"What WE found?" the old man responded with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. "Seems to me I did all the diggin'."

"Yeah, yeah, right. Anyway, I'm goin'.'
The boy clambered out into the blistering sunight, blinking his eyes hard after becoming accustomed to the dingy cavern. He raced to his bike, jumped twice on the kick start, and sped off.

"Damn fool kid, probably break his neck before he even gets to the highway." The old man watched the bike and its rider disappear in an ever shrinking cloud of dust behind the hills to the east, then headed back the way he had come, through the dry wash leading south. In fifteen minutes he was in his battered old pickup and back on the highway.

Arriving home the old man rummaged through a small storage shed behind the house, found the box he was looking for, and returned to his truck.

The reddening sun was beginning to set behind the tallest hills as he parked at the foot of the dry wash. He hefted the old wooden crate out of the pickup's bed and trudged off up the wash.
The last dynamite charge had just been set in place when once again he heard the motorcycle's sputtering engine. The boy came racing up the wash and skidded to a stop, barely saving himself from falling off the bike in his enthusiasm.

"Where're your people?" the old man queried, half-knowing the answer before it came.

"Ah hell, they don't believe me. My grandfather says it's probably just another burial cave and we should leave 'em to rest in peace."

"Your Grandad sounds like a wise man." The old man continued to snake the wire down to the detonator he'd left a few hundred yards around the bend.
"C'mon son. You don't want to be around when this thing blows."

"Blows? What do you mean 'blows'?"

"Got to do it my boy. It's for their own good."

"For who's own good?"

"People. 'The damned human race' Mark Twain used to call them. They can't get along with each other, how d'you think they're gonna deal with that? Just give 'em one more thing to fight over. Maybe someday they'll have grown up enough to play outside their own sandbox. Today ain't the day."
The old man calmly fastened the wires to the detonator posts, simultaneously ignoring the boy's objections. "Better plug your ears!"
The sere hills were buffeted with a resounding blast resulting in a shower of debris raining down on the two. Gradually, silence regained its hold and the desert returned to its reposeful state.

"Now they'll never believe me," the boy said sadly.