Colonel Sir Edward Ware has hidden the Lawrence maps, key to world domination, just about everywhere in the world —- except a petrified log. He has hidden the maps in the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. He has hidden it in his tent in the Syrian Desert during the Great War and the Arab Revolt when he was fighting under Lawrence of Arabia to free the Arabs from the Ottoman Turks. Dora, his fiance and then his wife, hid the maps in her bedroom closet at her house in Pittsburgh also during the Arab Revolt. Later Edward and Dora hid them under the floorboards at Ware Hall, Edward’s estate in the south of England. Numerous times Edward was forced to hide the maps up his uniform sleeve. He had a special compartment sewed in his clothes to house them while spying on Hitler for Winston Churchill.
But while fleeing spies who have been trailing him since New York, while heading down the Lincoln Highway to meet Churchill’s agent to hand over the maps, his back is up against the wall literally. This time it is a petrified wall made of petrified rock. He veers off course before he gets to Yellowstone and heads south all the way to the desert to hide. Where shall he hide the maps?
The Painted Desert spread out before him, an infinite badlands, punctuated by petrified logs. It is tempting to pick one of them for the maps. The maps would be almost impossible to find. No one would have a clue in such a vast wasteland which petrified log to explore. But he had better not lose the key to where he hid them or he might never find them again himself.
