by Joan Druett
Ducatel—ranch. The two words seemed linked. Wiki frowned, and turned back to the first ledger, the one that recorded ordinary trade. A little gust came in the front door as he riffled through the pages, and a paper fluttered out of the back.
“What’s that?” said Stackpole.
Wiki bent to retrieve the document, which had fallen to the floor. Then he unfolded it, and spread it out on the top of the counter. Stackpole breathed heavily from behind his shoulder as he read it.
The paper was a standard printed form, with gaps that had been filled in with inked names, a date, and a sum of money, and had been signed by Adams and a man who wrote in an illegible scrawl. Wiki scanned the copperplate script with growing stupefaction: “… whereas said schooner and outfits as she now lies at El Carmen de Patagones is this day sold by Rowland Hallett to Caleb Adams on behalf of S. R. Stackpole for the sum of one thousand…”
He looked up at Stackpole and exclaimed, “It’s the deed of sale for the Grim Reaper!”
The whaling master’s eyes widened for an instant, but then he grimly nodded. To have it confirmed that Caleb Adams had bought the schooner with his money and then sailed off with his property did not surprise Captain Stackpole at all.
Three
When Wiki crossed the verandah of the store and went out into the afternoon sunshine, to his great surprise he found that a dozen gauchos on angular, unshod horses were waiting in the street, though he hadn’t heard them arrive. They were sitting sideways on their great fleece-covered saddles, brushing back their ferocious black mustachios to puff judiciously at skinny cigars of flaked tobacco wrapped in scraps of paper, and gave every appearance of having been there quite a while.
Wiki studied them, and the cowboys studied him back with narrowed eyes. A gust lifted their ponchos and ruffled the hairs on the back of Wiki’s neck. Then, as the striped fabric fell back against their lean bodies, one of them lifted a yellow-stained finger, and in the accent of the arribeño of the upper provinces stated, “We believe you have lost an article of value.”
Stackpole asked, “What did he say?”
“They know you’ve been robbed,” Wiki told him.
“They’re probably the men who helped Adams sail off with my schooner,” the whaleman growled. “Now they’ve come to claim a fee for pretending to hunt for it.”
“Be careful what you say—they often understand some English. They’re rastreadores, professional trackers, and very proud men. They make their living by finding strayed animals, and hunting down thieves.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve ridden with men like them before.”
“So how do they know I’ve been robbed?”
“By magic,” said Wiki dryly. It was well known in the Río de la Plata that if the owner of a ranchería woke up one morning to find horses or cattle gone, a rastreador would magically arrive at his door. “If there’s a chance of getting your schooner back, these are the men who’ll do it.”
Meantime, he was studying the rastreadores’ spokesman very thoughtfully. Walking up to him, he asked permission, and then inspected his steed. It was a good horse, with one white forefoot and one white hindfoot, which according to gaucho lore guaranteed it to be fast. As further testament to its quality, it bore several marks on its flanks, evidence that it had been bought and sold several times. When a man acquired a new mount, he put his personal brand on it, and then when he sold it he repeated the brand, doubling it to show that the horse was no longer his property.
Wiki tapped a double brand made up of four stars in the shape of the Southern Cross, and said, “I knew the man who owned this mark.”
“My brother,” said the rider.
“Your brother?” Wiki echoed, astonished, and said, “May I ask your name?”
“Bernantio,” said the other. “Manuel.”
Wiki lifted his brows, amazed at the coincidence, though he knew from personal experience how wide and far the gauchos wandered—and how many brothers they had, some by birth, others adopted. “I believe your brother is Juán,” he said after identifying himself. “A year ago, I rode with him.”
“He spoke of you,” said Bernantio without a trace of surprise. Then he added, “He also said that your comrade was a tall man with yellow hair whose face resembled that of a sheep.”
Wiki ducked his head, partly to hide his grin at this apt description of George Rochester, and partly to show his respect for the gossip of the pampas, which apparently was as accurate as shipboard scuttlebutt.
“He is well?” the gaucho inquired. Wiki, who had almost forgotten the elaborate courtesies of the region, assured him of George’s health, and asked equally politely about the welfare of Bernantio’s brother Juán. That ritual over, Bernantio remarked, “I was reliably informed that you had long hair like our own. Something has happened?”
Typically, these gauchos had hair that fell past their shoulders, and were inordinately proud of the black tresses that flew in the wind as they galloped. Wiki’s own hair had indeed been as long as theirs, but was now reduced to six-inch ringlets springing ferociously about his face.
“It was cut,” he admitted.
“May I ask the reason?”
“For a woman. As a sentimental gift for her to remember me by.”
Bernantio nodded judiciously. “Without doubt she had an elegant ankle.”
“A most elegant ankle,” Wiki reminiscently agreed, then returned to business. “You can help us find the schooner that Captain Stackpole has lost?”
“Perhaps if you accompanied me to the back of the store, it would assist.”
Bernantio slid down from his horse, handed the rein to a companion, and then led the way around the corner with a great clattering of dragging spurs. He opened a big double gate in a wooden fence, revealing a spacious yard at the back of Adams’s store. There was a privy in one corner, a dusty bougainvillea growing in another, a pile of empty sacks where a cat was raising a family of kittens, and a large, broken-down cart. A ramp led up to a wide set of two doors, confirming that this was the way goods were received and discharged. Alongside it was a single, narrow door, and though it didn’t have a notice Wiki judged it led to the disused surgery.
He looked back at Bernantio, and waited. The gaucho blew a stream of tobacco smoke out of the side of his mouth, took out his thin, misshapen cigar, and used it to gesture about the trampled dried mud of the yard. “There were horses here,” he said. “Many horses. They were loaded, and then driven away. Another rider followed later.”
So this was how the missing goods had been carried, Wiki thought—to be stowed on board the schooner. It looked increasingly as if Stackpole were right, and Adams had paid for the Grim Reaper with the draft, waited until the Athenian men had finished their business and gone, and then placed his own goods on board to provision the voyage before taking the schooner downriver to the sea.
But why the horses? Presumably, they had been used for carrying the provisions down the streets to the riverside, to be ferried on board the Grim Reaper—perhaps because the cart was broken. Wiki hunkered down, but could see nothing but shuffles in the dust. He looked up and said, “By what magic can you discern all this?”
Bernantio smiled. “Can’t you, yourself, see how the packhorses were always the same space apart—which means that they were roped together? The mount of the man who followed favored its left hindfoot—see how the mark is uneven? And see how its prints overlay all the others?”
Wiki peered, but could discern nothing to match what the rastreador said. He stood up, shaking his head in wonder, and said, “Can you tell how many days have passed since the packhorses were driven out of here?”
“Some day since the last rain,” the gaucho said, and shrugged, looking up at the bright blue sky. Obviously, it didn’t rain often in the summer.
“Can you follow these tracks?” The lane that ran past the gate on the way down to the river was unpaved.
“I believe they will le
ad upriver.”
Wiki only just stopped himself from exclaiming out loud in disbelief. According to the bill of sale, the schooner had been lying off the pueblo at the time—and it was logical for the contents of the store to be stowed in her holds as soon as the Athenian men had left. Yet, as Bernantio stalked to the front of the store and remounted his steed, his demeanor was remarkably confident.
Wiki went inside, where Stackpole was back to trying to pry information out of the clerk, and conveyed this puzzling news. The whaling master didn’t look particularly surprised, remarking, “The schooner must’ve been up at the dunes.”
“Dunes?”
“Salt dunes. They’re at the edge of the river where it runs closest to the salinas.”
Wiki was none the wiser. “Salinas?”
“The great salt lake. It’s about five miles inland. The salt is dug there, carted to the riverbank, and piled up in dunes, ready for loading.”
Stackpole had told Adams to load the schooner with salt as well as provisions, Wiki remembered, so it looked as if the storekeeper had been following the whaling master’s instructions right up to the moment of the robbery. But why pack the provisions to the dunes, instead of waiting until the schooner had been sailed back to El Carmen, where it would have been so much easier to stow them on board?
Stackpole interrupted his meditations, saying impatiently, “Come on, let’s go.”
“Don’t you think we should be asking more questions while we’re here in El Carmen?” They should notify the governor, too, Wiki thought.
“About what?” the whaling master demanded.
“About Rowland Hallett, for instance. Is he the master of the Athenian?”
“Nope. The captain of the Athenian is a fellow called Nash.”
So who was Hallett? An officer who belonged to the Athenian—the sealing master, perhaps? Or had he been an agent, like Adams, acting as Nash’s representative?
Wiki said, “Have you ever heard of this man Hallett before?”
“Nope. All I know,” said Stackpole bitterly, “is that he’s got my money, but I don’t have a schooner.”
“Do you know Captain Nash?”
“Never clapped eyes on neither him nor the Athenian. I heard lots of gossip that they did uncommon well in the sealing line, and that’s it.”
“What about Dr. Ducatel? Do you know him?”
“Aye.” Stackpole grinned contemptuously. “He’s a joke. Three or four Americans live here, trying to make their fortune up the Río Negro. Caleb Adams is one of them, and Ducatel another. But at least Adams behaves like a regular Yankee. Ducatel acts like a comedian.”
“What kind of comedian?”
“He pretends to be a real live gaucho, wears their fancy gear, rattles away in some kind of Spanish. The governor encourages him because he finds it so comical.”
Reminded of the governor, Wiki said, “We should pay our respects to His Excellency.”
“Damn it, no. By the time we got through with all the ceremonious nonsense these trackers would’ve given up and gone home.”
This was a good point, Wiki thought, but objected, “It’s late. We’ll probably be out overnight.”
“What difference does that make?”
Wiki shrugged, and headed into the store. Inside, he chose a brown-striped poncho, pleasantly surprised at the weight and quality of the wool, and paid over some coins to the clerk, who didn’t look at all excited about making a sale. Back at the door, he had another thought, and returned to the counter to sort through the red bandannas. When he rejoined the whaling master, he was wearing one of these tied about his head at forehead level, gaucho-style, taming most of his ringlets, while the folded poncho lay over his left shoulder.
Stackpole studied the effect with open contempt, but said, “Out all night?”
“Aye.”
“Then perhaps I should get one of those ponchos.”
“Good idea,” said Wiki.
Instead of waiting for Stackpole to make the purchase, he mounted and cantered after the gauchos, who had already headed off down the street. The whaleman seemed to take a long time, because when he rejoined them they had arrived on the path that led upriver, and were waiting impatiently to go. Bernantio was in the lead, leaning down from his saddle at such a steep angle that he could have dragged his knuckles on the ground, but keeping his seat with miraculous agility. Once, he pointed at a mark in the sandy embankment, and even Wiki could see the print of a horse that had favored one foot.
Soon, however, the baked mud of the track turned into stones and gravel, furrowed with old wagon wheel ruts that were encrusted with some kind of chalky mineral deposit. Bernantio stopped, and slid to the ground stealthily, as if the hoofprints Wiki could barely distinguish would take flight if disturbed. They all waited as he cast back and forth. Then, with an abrupt movement, he sprung back onto his horse, beckoning his companions from over his shoulder as he went.
“They went that way,” he said, and pointed up the trail.
* * *
As the troop rode inland, always heading west, the valley widened into a plain of gravel, pumice, and sunbaked mud. The pink and gray rampart of the sandstone cliffs, which had been so close to the river before, was now about three miles away. The scant growth that struggled to survive in the flatness the cliffs had left behind was studded with small thorn bushes, and trampled with ruts and dried wallows, which straggled off to the side of the trail. These old tracks had been made by parties who were traveling back and forth between scattered ranches and the river, Wiki supposed. Then, however, Bernantio pointed a finger at the distant cliffs, and said significantly, “Men who plot rebellion against de Rosas have their hideouts there.”
Wiki, feeling interested, would have liked to rein in and have a better look, but the rastreadores kept on, and he was forced to gallop after them. As they progressed, the cliffs receded even further, so that the expanse of the plain became immense. Then the flatness of the vista was interrupted by strange pale pyramids that stood up out of the hammered clay. As Wiki cantered closer, they proved to be heaps of salt piled up on the bank of the Río Negro, blindingly white against the background of the black water. They had been pushed into the curved shapes of dunes by the wind, so that Wiki was yet again reminded of Arabia. A rough pier extended out into the water, but no vessel was moored there. Nor were there any craft at anchor, the only feature disturbing the rushing water being the willow-swathed islets dotting the way upriver.
Here by the dunes, the wagon wheel ruts became denser than ever, their furrows, both old and recent, interspersed with the hoofmarks left by the bullocks that had drawn the carts. It was impossible to distinguish one mark from another in the dusty muddle, Wiki thought. He watched as Manuel Bernantio walked his horse back and forth, leaning precipitiously from his saddle again, and was not at all surprised when the rastreador straightened, reined in, and said regretfully, “The trail is lost.”
When Wiki translated, however, Stackpole exclaimed, “No!”
The rastreador contemplated him with the disdain of a man looking at someone who refuses to see the obvious—that they had reached a dead end, that the prints were irretrievably confused with the tracks of many wagons, many bullocks, and many horses. Instead of troubling to reply, he lifted his shoulders in an eloquent shrug. Then he set to scraping a plug of tobacco with his huge knife, and delicately prodding the shreds onto a thin piece of paper, which he rolled into yet another skinny cigar.
Stackpole said to Wiki, “The schooner must have been moored at the wharf when they loaded her—so where has she gone now?”
Out to sea with whatever crew Adams had been able to scrape together, Wiki thought, but, instead of saying so, he asked, “How long would it take to stow the provisions and load salt?”
“Days! How much salt do you think a sealing voyage requires?”
The whaling master knew what he was talking about, Wiki supposed, but still thought he’d been wildly overoptimistic to hope to
find the schooner here. He slid down from his horse, at the same time keeping a firm hold of the rein, because if the mare ran away it was a long walk back to the village. Then he went over to a trench that had been dug out of the side of the nearest dune, and hunkered down to study its shape. The edges were crumbling and falling in, making it evident that the digging had been done some days ago. He scooped up a handful of salt and let it run through his fingers, surprised at the size and squareness of the crystals, rather like the brine that crystallized on the surface of old salt meat, only pure white instead of brown.
The gauchos sat on their saddles and watched him. Most were smoking, and none of them spoke. Instead, they watched and waited. Wiki had the strong impression that the leadership of the group had moved from Bernantio to him, and they were waiting for him to make the decision about what to do next. Brushing his palm against his thigh to dislodge the last of the salt, he looked around, disturbed by the empty desolation of the scene. Where there had been bullocks, horses, and men, there was no one, and he wondered where the salt harvesters had gone.
And the packhorses—where had they been driven after the Grim Reaper had taken on the provisions, and finished loading with salt? He was very conscious of the strong tang of dried brine overriding the warm sweat scent of the mare and the musty wool smell of his saddle fleece. When he looked up at the sky, the scudding clouds were spreading out toward the horizon, their edges shining gold and pink with the late afternoon sun.
Then Wiki’s quick eyes spied black specks high in the sky, revolving over an unseen spot that could be as far as several miles away.