“Have a seat—show me!” Montana intoned, stretching an arm to indicate the table. “I’ll have the señoritas bring you a plate of stew.
“Who’s this?” he asked Bachelard, gesturing at Juanita.
“Doña Juanita Martínez,” Bachelard said grandly, as if introducing the child at her coming-out party.
The girl stared ahead through the arched windows, at the green bushes moving faintly in the faded sunlight. Her filthy black hair hung down both sides of her face. Montana regarded the girl curiously, seeing nothing special about a dirty little peasant girl. He looked at Bachelard befuddled.
Bachelard said, “Have you seen anything so pure and innocent and lovely?”
“Well, I…”
“I don’t believe I have ever seen a treasure like this one here. When she looks at me I feel like I am twenty years younger, before the war…” Bachelard’s voice trailed off, and his thoughts drifted back to the bayous of his childhood and the skinny, dark-haired girl who had been the first love of his life. He looked at Montana. “She’s a little worse for wear, I admit, but once she’s cleaned up, you’ll see my future queen shine!”
“Yes…” Montana hedged, returning to his place at the table. “Come on, Gaston, have a seat.” He half turned to yell through another arched doorway, in Spanish. “Girls—come! Bring another plate. El Capitán Bachelard is back and he is very hungry from his long journey. Isobel, Habra!”
Bachelard helped Juanita into a chair so large she appeared lost in it. Then he took a seat between her and Miguel Montana.
Two girls appeared from the kitchen doorway. One carried a big stew pot; the other carried a basket of tortillas, a glass, and two plates. Bachelard glanced at them, turned to Montana, then quickly back to the girls, shocked to see they were both naked from the waist up.
Bachelard turned back to see Montana staring at him with a wistful smirk. “You like the uniforms I ordered for the girls, compañero?”
Bachelard looked again at the girls setting down the pots, dishing up the food, and pouring the wine. Judging from their faces and the firmness of their breasts, they were about sixteen or seventeen years old.
They did not look at Bachelard. They seemed in a trance, concentrating solely on what they were doing at the moment. Bachelard gave an exclamatory grunt. Then he laughed.
“What have you got going here, Miguel?” he asked, genuinely amused.
Chewing a mouthful of stew, Montana covered his mouth and snickered. “They were acting so damn uppity, these superior rich girls, that I decided to humble them a little, eh? Now, you would think that just being made to serve, when you have been served all your life by the poor peasants from the village, would be enough to cow them. But no! Still I caught them looking at me as though I were a lowly little peon bandit who had invaded their home and killed their parents and brothers just for fun. They do not realize that I—we, of course—are the next kings of Sonora.”
He shrugged his shoulders and brought his wineglass to his lips. “So I ordered them to disrobe. They’ve orders not to wear blouses again until I, their king, give them permission to do so.”
He took a large drink of wine, swirled it around in his mouth, and swallowed with a loud sucking noise. He smacked his lips and grinned at Bachelard, who had started laughing again as one of the girls refilled Montana’s wineglass.
Montana lurched forward and kissed one of her breasts. Ignoring him, she and the other girl drifted silently back to the kitchen.
Bachelard sat back in his chair, facing Montana and shaking his head with admiration. No, he did not care for this little greaser, but apparently he had not given Montana credit for a rather colorful imagination. Bachelard liked men with imagination. Montana had come up a notch or two in his estimation.
He laughed again, picked up his fork, and dug into his stew. After a moment he realized that Juanita was sitting before an empty plate.
Dropping his fork and picking up her plate, he exclaimed, “Ah, Juanita, you must eat! We have another long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
He scooped stew onto the girl’s plate, set a tortilla on it as well, and set the plate down before her vacant gaze. She gave no indication that she even saw the food before her.
Scowling, Bachelard picked up her right hand, shoved a fork in it, and waited until she slowly began eating, one small morsel at a time. He turned to Miguel, who had been watching the fiasco with cautious reserve, and shook his head as if to say, Kids.
“You were going to show me the plat,” Montana said, sliding his gaze from the nearly comatose girl to Bachelard.
Bachelard produced the rolled javelina-skin from the inside pocket of his gray coat and set it on the table, then picked up his fork and began shoveling stew into his mouth with hungry grunts. Montana untied the leather thong from the skin and, shoving his plate aside, unrolled it before him.
His brown eyes grew thoughtful as he studied the markings. He nodded, mumbling to himself.
“Does any of that mean anything to you?” Bachelard asked him after a while.
Montana nodded slowly. “Sí, I recognize some of these formations. And this here, this must be a village—San Cristóbal, it appears—and this must be the Rio Bavispe.”
He paused. His brows furrowed. He turned the plat toward Bachelard. “What is this?” he asked, pointing to several curlicues within curlicues, forming what looked like a crude turtle, on the bottom left corner of the plat.
“I thought you would know.”
Montana lifted his head. “Carlos!” he shouted.
When the guard who had taken Bachelard’s horse appeared a moment later, Montana said, “Bring Xavier Llamas to me at once!”
“At once—sí, el capitán!”
When at last a stoop-shouldered old man appeared, holding his hat and looking fearful, Montana beckoned him to his side and showed him the plat. “Tell me, Xavier, do you recognize any of the formations drawn on this map?” He pointed out the turtle. “Do you recognize this?”
The man set his straw hat on the table and shifted his head around to focus his aging eyes on the plat. Talking to himself, Adam’s apple working in his skinny, leathery neck, he ran a dirty, blunt index finger over the drawn lines forming caricatures of mountains, streams, canyons, and villages.
His finger halted at the large X drawn at the base of a butte with an arrow-shaped ridge, then continued on to the turtle.
He looked up at Montana with serious eyes. “Sí,” he said with a nod. “I have seen these things, los capitánes. I used to graze my goats not far away.”
“What is this?” Montana asked, pointing to the turtle.
The man shrugged as if it were not significant. “The turtle was carved into the rocks by the ancients. I know not what it means.”
“Have you seen the turtle anywhere else before?” Bachelard asked the man. “Anywhere but in the region where you grazed your goats?”
“No, el capitán.”
Bachelard shrugged at Montana. Montana shrugged back.
Bachelard asked the old man, “Xavier, can you take me to the X on the map?”
“It has been many years, and it is clear across the mountains, but I think I can find the way,” the old man said, nodding. He put his finger on the arrow-shaped peak. “I have seen this before. Below, there are ruins left by the ancients. The X is here by the old homes of the ancients.”
“How long will it take?”
Xavier shrugged noncommittally. “Two weeks. Maybe three. But…” The old man’s eyes acquired a haunted cast. “But this is where Apaches are, los capitánes.”
“We’ll need plenty of men,” Bachelard said to Montana.
Montana shrugged. “If you are sure the gold is there, my warrior companion, we will take all the men it takes to get it out. If it is as much gold as you say, we will soon have enough guns and ammunition to take all of Mexico, and all of your country as well!” Montana’s eyes were big and his chest heaved as his breaths became irregular.
Bachelard, too, was getting excited. Not only had the map been validated by the legends of the lost church he had heard in cantinas and brothels throughout Sonora, but now this old man concurred, with his recognition of the formations drawn on the map.
Bachelard threw down his napkin and stood slowly. To the old man he said, “Be ready to ride tomorrow at dawn, old one.”
“Sí, sí, el capitánes!” the old man intoned, nearly overcome with a newfound sense of his own importance. “Sí, sí. Tomorrow we ride at dawn!”
CHAPTER 18
CAMERON SIPPED HIS coffee and waited for the sun to rise.
A day’s ride had put Contention City well behind them. He stood now on a low hill looking east across a flat valley studded with cholla and mesquite, and the occasional barrel cactus, witchgrass, and rocks.
The rising sun touched it with pink. A damn pretty sight. It would have been even prettier if, five minutes ago, Cameron hadn’t spied movement out there about two hundred yards away.
It could have been a coyote, but he didn’t think so. A coyote wouldn’t have slipped from one shrub to another and stopped. It either would have pounced on whatever it was hunting or it would have kept moving. Besides, the shape and size of the form told him whatever was out there was human.
Apache, maybe, or one of the Hawkins brothers. Hell, it could be one of Bachelard’s men, sent to keep Clark away from the gold.
That didn’t seem likely. Cameron doubted that Bachelard saw Clark as enough of a threat to send men out to kill him. The way Bachelard probably saw it, when he’d gotten the map, the gold—if there was any gold—belonged to him. He must know Clark had a copy of the plat, but he probably also figured he had enough men and guns to fight off anyone who came between him and the cache. And he probably did.
Bachelard probably had enough men to fight off anyone who came gunning for him, as well. Cameron hadn’t yet given enough careful consideration to how he was going to get to Bachelard without getting himself and the others killed, but he was confident he’d come up with something.
First he had to locate the man.
Finding the gold was of only secondary importance to him. Still, he had to admit a twinge of gold fever; it came and went, like arthritis pangs or a minor toothache. For the most part, he kept his mind off it and on Bachelard. And on Leonora Varas and her children, whom he would have to tell about Pas’s senseless murder. He would have to inform them they no longer had a husband or a father, and he would have to listen to their screams, their begging him to tell them it wasn’t true. He’d have to watch them smash their fists against their heads and tear their hair, faces contorted with unbearable grief.
Eventually they’d accept that Pas was gone. But they would always tend the wound. Cameron knew, because it was a wound like the one he tended himself, every day of his life.
Cameron sipped his coffee and turned to look down the other side of the hill, where the breakfast fire glowed orange in the stand of cottonwoods. Before leaving Contention City, Cameron had traded the buckboard for two more mules. Pooling their money, he’d bought three more. He had wanted at least five, to pack a relatively light load of dry food, oats for the horses, extra rifles, and mining equipment in case they needed to dig. It was really more pack animals than they needed on the way in, but you never knew when one of them—or one of the horses, for that matter—would go down. There was no way they’d get a wagon in and out of the country to which they were heading.
The horses and mules grazed in a picket line about thirty yards from the fire.
Beside the dry riverbed where they’d camped, Clark and Marina were taking down their old cavalry tent, which Clark had coaxed the liveryman to throw in with the mules. Hotchkiss and Jimmy Bronco were rigging up their horses, tightening cinches, with the stirrups thrown up on their saddles. They’d already rigged the panniers and wooden pack frames to the mules and were nearly ready to start their second day on the trail to Mexico.
Cameron turned back to look out over the valley where he’d seen something move. He’d left his field glasses in the saddlebags on his horse, so he had only his naked eyes for picking movement out of the ever-pinkening landscape before him.
Whatever it was—if it was indeed anything at all, and not an optical illusion or merely a shadow caused by the rising sun—was keeping out of sight. Whatever or whomever it was had maybe seen him and was staying put behind a mesquite shrub.
Cameron tossed out the cold coffee dregs and walked down the hill to the camp, where Hotchkiss was kicking dirt on the fire. Clark was stowing the tent on a mule. Marina and Jimmy Bronco were mounted and waiting, their horses friskily waving their tails and craning their necks, ready to go.
The tops of the cottonwoods turned gold as the sun rose from the desert and filled the sky with light.
“What’s got your tail in a knot?” Hotchkiss asked Cameron, seeing the strange look in his eyes.
Cameron shrugged as he approached, taking long strides down the grade. “I don’t know. Maybe nothin’, but I thought I saw something move, just for a second. I think I’ll ride out with you, then slip off my horse and hang back for a while. If it’s anything except my imagination or poor eyesight, they’ll probably want to check out our camp.”
“Could just be someone out huntin’ deer,” Hotchkiss said. “Some farmer or rancher.”
“Yeah, that’s probably all it is,” Cameron said as he fished in his saddlebags for his moccasins, then sat down to put them on. “I just want to make sure, that’s all. No sense in not being careful. This is Apache country.”
“You got that right,” Hotchkiss said darkly, giving one more kick to the fire and heading for his mount.
“Can I not ride drag today, Jack?” Jimmy Bronco asked pleadingly.
“I don’t know. You over your hangover?”
“Just about.”
“Okay, you got point,” Cameron said, shoving his boots into his saddlebags and mounting up. “Keep your eyes open.”
Cameron kicked his horse and led up the procession, then halted twenty yards up the trail and turned back to see Clark taking a swig from one of his brandy bottles before corking the bottle and stowing it in his coat. Clark touched his chestnut with his spurs, giving a yank on the lead rope attached to the pack mule, heading out.
Cameron looked at him with mild concern. “How you feelin’?” he asked.
Clark grinned brightly as he passed, the morning breeze playing with the brim of his new black slouch hat. “Never better. I think this dry air is doing wonders for my pleurisy.” He gave a raspy cough as he passed Cameron.
Cameron watched the procession jog down the old cattle trail they were following back out to the freight road that would take them across the border and into the foothills of the Sierra Madre. He’d heard enough coughs like Clark’s to know the man did not have a simple case of pleurisy; Cameron would have bet his last peg pony it was consumption, and it didn’t sound to him like it was getting any better, either. From all the coughing Clark had done on the trail yesterday, Cameron could tell it was getting worse. Trail dust and sleeping on the ground, not to mention the sheer physical drain of travel itself, would take its toll. Cameron just hoped Clark wouldn’t succumb before they got back.
Cameron heard hooves clomping and turned to see Marina approach, looking at him with eyes that told him she shared his concern for her husband. Marina looked lovely, her hair bouncing on her shoulders, the horsehair thong of her flatbrimmed hat loose beneath her chin. She wore a white blouse and a pair of boy’s butternut slacks tucked into riding boots outfitted with big, Spanish-roweled spurs. A Henry rifle rode in the saddleboot beneath her knee, and around her waist she wore a cartridge-belt and a holster with a light, pearl-gripped pistol—all bought at the dry-goods in Contention City.
“That brandy isn’t going to do him any good,” Cameron told her.
“I know,” she said, reining her horse to a halt beside him. “I’ve tried to get him to give it up but it seems to gi
ve some relief, so he keeps drinking.”
Cameron scowled and shook his head. “It’s only gonna bring it on all the faster.”
“You think it is consumption, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She nodded and turned to look at the Missourian receding in the distance. “I thought so, too, but I wasn’t sure.” She turned back to Cameron. “Will he die?”
He was a little taken aback by the baldness of the question. Hers was a mettle definitely forged in fire. “I don’t believe there’s a cure, but people can live with it quite a while if they take care of it. He’s not taking care of it.”
“Maybe he will after we have the gold,” she said.
Cameron nodded and smiled faintly, vaguely amused at her certainty about the gold. “Yeah, he probably will.”
She smiled, her brown eyes suddenly bright with amusement. “It is there,” she said, nodding her head and raising her lovely brows. She clucked to her horse and started out ahead of him. “It really is there.”
“Show me,” he groused to her back.
“I will, Mr. Cameron,” she said, half teasing, giving the black her spurs and galloping after the others.
Cameron clucked to his own horse and caught up with Hotchkiss, who was riding up beside Jimmy Bronco, ahead of Clark. “We should make Toke’s place tonight,” he said to the graybeard.
“Tokente?” Bud asked, looking at him brightly. “He lives out here?”
Cameron nodded. “He ran into a nice-sized vein and bought himself a little spread just west of here, not far off the trail. We can hole up in his barn and fill our canteens and water barrel. In the meantime, I’m gonna drag back and see what, if anything, is followin’ us.”
He held his reins out to Hotchkiss. “Take my horse. I’ll catch up to you later.” Holding fast to the horn and cantle, Cameron brought both his moccasined feet onto the saddle, positioning himself to spring onto a passing boulder. Wanting whomever was following them to believe they’d all ridden off together, he didn’t want to leave any footprints.
“Be careful,” Hotchkiss warned.
Dakota Kill and the Romantics Page 39