Sulfur Springs

by William Kent Krueger

  * * *

  I drove to Sylvester’s place on the hill above town. His truck was there, but when I knocked on the door of his odd adobe house no one answered. There may have been nothing unusual in this, but considering that his mule, Franklin, had been killed and Marian Brown had been murdered, I was concerned. I tried the knob. Locked. I circled the house, attempting to peer through the windows, but every shade had been drawn.

  Inside Rosa’s Cantina, I found Sierra wiping down a table. She looked up when I walked in and she frowned. “Here comes trouble.”

  “Not my fault,” I said.

  “Goes with you everywhere like dog shit on the sole of your shoe.”

  “Are you talking about anything in particular?”

  She fisted the rag she’d used to clean the table. “I heard about Marian.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Maybe not, but since you came here, there’s been nothing but a landslide of bad. What do you want?”

  “I haven’t eaten today. How about a little breakfast?”

  “I’ll get you a menu,” she said but not graciously.

  “No need. I’ll have the huevos rancheros.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen, and I sat at a table next to a window that overlooked the main street of Sulfur Springs. I could see all the way to Gallina Town, and I was struck again by the profound difference of everything south of the narrow bridge, which felt in so many ways like its own, separate community. I thought about the music I’d heard playing, the dancing in front of the taqueria, the brightness with which the homes, even the shabby trailers on cinder blocks, were decorated. Many of these people worked hard at jobs that no one else wanted and were poorly paid, I was sure. But it seemed to me that there was something resilient in their spirit, some essential quality that kept the music and the dancing and the color alive. I thought about the people of my own heritage, the Anishinaabeg, who’d been lied to and cheated and herded onto reservations, who fought against poverty and all the ills that came with poverty. But the Ojibwe I knew well, my family and those I counted as friends, had in their spirits the same resilience I saw reflected in Gallina Town. And I thought, as I had so many times before, that what’s important to a human being, any human being, isn’t the wealth that comes from money, but the richness that comes from community, a sense of connectedness to family and to friends and, as Rainy and Henry would probably have said, to the spirit of the Great Mystery that runs through all creation.

  “Sorry I ragged on you earlier,” Sierra said, setting the plate of eggs and beans in front of me. “Things have been rough here lately. Unsettled. I don’t like unsettled.”

  “I get that. Have you seen Sylvester today?”

  “No.” She stood there looking down at me. “We all heard about Franklin. Should I be worried about Sylvester, too?”

  “Not necessarily. But like you say, things are unsettled here. It’s not a bad idea to be a little worried.”

  “If something’s happened to that wonderful old coot, I’m taking to the warpath myself.”

  “Who would you go after?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Mike Sanchez.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a man without a heart or a spine. The only reason he got that badge was Marian. And now that she’s gone . . .” She finished with a shrug.

  “Is he involved in something a man wearing a badge shouldn’t be?”

  “Anything that goes on in Sulfur Springs that’s not on the up-and-up, Sanchez is involved. We all know it.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “White Horse?”

  “If we had the Ku Klux Klan here, he’d be wearing a hood.”

  “But his heritage is Mexican.”

  She shook her head. “Spanish. He’s very clear on the distinction.”

  “Have you seen him today?”

  She shook her head. “Hasn’t been in yet. But he will be. He always comes in.”

  “The sheriff’s been looking for him. Can’t seem to find him.”

  That gave her pause. She stared down at me. “Like Marian, you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  Her eyes went to the empty street outside the window. “Is anybody safe?”

  That was a question I couldn’t answer.

  Outside, after I’d finished my breakfast, I discovered a note slipped under the wiper blade of my pickup: If you want answers call me. There was a number with it. No name. I’d been watching my truck through the cantina window the whole time I’d been inside. No one had come anywhere near the pickup. I figured it must have been put there the night before, and I’d been so intent on other things that morning that I simply hadn’t noticed it. I stood in the late morning sunlight and made the call.

  “About time.” The voice at the other end was surly and familiar.

  “Been busy. But I’d like answers.”

  “Not over the phone.”

  “Where?”

  “The El Dorado Mine.”

  “When?”

  “Now. Come alone. I’ll be watching. If you’re not alone, no answers. I may even shoot you.”

  I got into the truck and started down the street toward Gallina Town. I hadn’t gone far when I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a dusty, little ATV swing around the corner behind me, a familiar figure gripping the handlebars. I braked to a stop and rolled down the window as Sylvester pulled up beside me.

  “Is that your alternative to Franklin?” I asked.

  “It don’t give me the companionship that old mule did, but it gets me to the same places in these mountains and a hell of a lot faster.”

  “I just talked to Sierra. You’ve been scarce.”

  “Been trying to track down Mike Sanchez since I lost Franklin. Figured that like everything else rotten in Sulfur Springs, he had a hand in it. Him and Marian.”

  “Marian’s dead.”

  “I heard. So that leaves Sanchez.”

  “I’m on my way to see him.”

  He shoved the bill of his ball cap up and sat back in the seat of his ATV. “You got business with that snake?”

  “More like he has business with me,” I said and filled the old prospector in.

  “I don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve,” Sylvester said, “but it ain’t gonna be good. Could be he killed Marian and maybe he’s got it in his head to do the same to you.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s scared, but not of me.”

  “Still, best you got backup.” He dropped a hand to a leather scabbard he’d affixed to the ATV in which a lever-action rifle was nested.

  “He made it clear, Sylvester. Just me.”

  The old man chewed on that, then said, “Take your time getting up to that mine.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “You’ll know it when the time comes.”

  He swung the ATV around and headed back the way he’d come.

  I drove south through Gallina Town, which felt deserted with so many of its people off working in Cadiz or wherever. Well outside Sulfur Springs, I turned onto the winding road that led up to the old mine works. I couldn’t help thinking about the Guatemalans who’d been found slaughtered inside the tunnel there, and I glanced at the Winchester on the seat beside me, which I’d made sure was fully loaded before I left town. When I pulled onto the big flat where the rusting mining equipment and abandoned materials lay, I saw Mike Sanchez’s cruiser, but I didn’t see the man himself. I grabbed the Winchester and stepped from the pickup, keeping the truck between me and the dark mine entrance.

  A few moments later, Sanchez emerged with his hands open in front of him, showing me that he wasn’t armed. He came to the place where the old railroad ties were piled.

  “You don’t need the rifle,” he called. “In fact, if you want answers, you’ll put your Winchester down.”

  “Turn around,” I said.

  Sanchez turned. I couldn’t see any evidence of a handgun, so I started toward h
im around the pickup.

  “The rifle,” he said. “Leave it. I know what happened to Marian. I’m not going down the same way.”

  I set the Winchester on the hood of the truck and walked to Sanchez.

  “A bunch of badges out looking for you right now,” I told him.

  He lowered his hands. “They’ve got nothing on me. I didn’t kill Marian.”

  “Royal Diggs is in custody. They’re sweating him as we speak.”

  “Diggs? They’d have better luck sweating a rock.”

  “Did he kill Marian?”

  “Doubt it. She was his bread and butter.”

  “How so?”

  “Who do you think supplied him with the drugs he peddles?”

  “I thought that might be you.”

  He shook his head. “I’m just paid to turn my back.”

  “Paid well, are you?”

  “Was. Things are different now.”

  “That’s why you’re willing to talk?”

  “I want protection.”

  “You think I can protect you?”

  “You can help me get that protection. You’ve got connections with Sprangers and that task force of his.”

  “You know about them?”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  I could have argued the point but saw no reason. At the moment.

  “How did it work?” I asked.

  “You’ll help me?”

  “I’ll help you in any way I can.”

  “Let’s sit,” he said, indicating the stack of old railroad ties.

  “Long story?”

  “Could turn out to be.”

  There was something in his demeanor that wasn’t right. Maybe it was his eyes, which kept looking everywhere except at me. Or his hands, with his fingers working themselves as if trying to rub off glue. Or his suggestion that we sit, which would have made it difficult for me to bolt if I had to. I looked behind him toward the mine entrance.

  “You alone?”

  “Of course,” he said in a way that told me it was a lie.

  I stepped back and made a half turn toward my truck.

  Sanchez leaped at me and wrapped his fat fingers around my arm. I wrenched myself from his grip, and as I did I saw three men break from the shadowed tunnel entrance of the mine. They were all dressed in black, looking like pieces torn from the dark of the El Dorado itself. They carried assault rifles. For an instant, I considered trying to make it back to the truck and to my Winchester, but between the three of them, they had enough firepower to cut me into a hundred pieces.

  When they saw that I had no intention of running, they slowed their approach. Two of the men were very young, early twenties at most, Latino. The man in the lead was older, maybe thirty. They spread out in a triangle that enclosed me and Sanchez.

  “O’Connor,” the older man said.

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” I said.

  “Joaquin Rodriguez.”

  “Any relation to Carlos?”

  “My father.”

  We faced off in the shadow of the mountain that rose above the El Dorado, the sky overhead a clear, painful blue, a slight breeze blowing out of the northeast, the smell of creosote from the old railroad ties drifting around us. It could have been a peaceful moment, if I’d been alone.

  “How is your father?” I asked.

  “Doing well. Better, I think, than you.”

  “Better than Marian Brown, too.”

  “We heard about that.”

  I was surprised. “Not your doing?”

  “Why would we kill her? We’re not animals. We only kill when we have reason to.”

  “I did what you asked,” Sanchez said. His nervous demeanor hadn’t changed. “He’s all yours.”

  “You did exactly as I asked,” Rodriguez acknowledged. “Manuel, give this man his reward.”

  One of the young men pointed his assault rifle at Sanchez, and a burst of gunfire killed the still of the morning and along with it the only cop in Sulfur Springs. The suddenness and the sound were startling, but not really the action itself.

  Rodriguez looked at me and shrugged. “We had a reason.”

  I’d been at the edge of dead before and had looked down at that long fall, but so far I’d always managed to keep my footing. One of the things that has happened to me when I’ve thought that I could see my own end has been the blessing of an odd calm. It was there in that moment, a quiet place inside me, and I spoke from it, not caring about the consequence, which was pretty obvious.

  “You want to know about Peter Bisonette. You want to know where he is.”

  “Oh, yes,” Rodriguez said. “Very much.”

  “Because he helps poor people slip through that greedy net you have along the border?”

  “There is a much bigger reason.”

  I thought about it for a moment, and the pieces fell into place. “You think he has your stash of drugs.”

  “They are not where they should be.”

  “What makes you think Peter took them?”

  “He filed a claim on the land. And after he took what belongs to us, he tried to kill my father.”

  “That wasn’t Peter’s doing. That was the work of Marian Brown. And if your drugs aren’t where they should be, I have it on pretty good authority that she’s the one responsible.”

  He squinted at me, and his eyebrows came together like little black leeches mating. “What authority?”

  “Royal Diggs.”

  “Diggs.” The name wasn’t new to him.

  “A bunch of men with badges are talking to him right now.”

  He turned his face from me and stared toward the desert that stretched into Mexico. There were mountains in the southern distance, looking blue and cool. I wondered if, like me, he would rather be home.

  “Maybe that’s true,” he said, his gaze returning. “But I would still like to get my hands on your Peter Bisonette.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “I think I cannot take your word for that.” Rodriguez laid his assault rifle against the pile of railroad ties. “Eduardo, your knife.”

  The man who hadn’t shot Sanchez pulled an ugly-looking blade from a sheath on his belt. He stepped to Rodriguez and handed it to him, hilt first.

  “Since I was a boy, I have hunted elk in the mountains of Colorado,” Rodriguez said. “I remember the first bull I brought down. When my father and I had hung him from the branch of an aspen, I gutted him. It was a very cold morning. I remember how the animal’s entrails steamed as they fell onto the ground. I have the head of that elk mounted on the wall in my den. Perhaps I’ll do the same with yours.”

  We were separated by half a dozen feet. I took a step back, putting more distance between us. I was thinking that I would run, thinking with that odd calm that being mowed down by a stream of bullets would be infinitely preferable to a slow gutting.

  “Grab him,” Rodriguez snapped.

  Before any of them could move, the still of the morning air was broken again by the sound of gunfire, and Manuel slumped to the ground. The shot had come from the north. Eduardo turned himself in that direction and brought his rifle to his shoulder. Rodriguez also looked that way. When he did, I leaped at him, grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the knife, and twisted it violently so that I felt something snap. Rodriguez cried out, and the knife fell to the ground. I fisted my right hand and slammed it into his face. He stumbled back and fell across the pile of railroad ties. I turned to Eduardo. He was no longer standing but, like Manuel, lay bleeding in the dirt. When I looked north, I saw Sylvester appear like an old, bearded angel. Instead of a harp, he carried a rifle in his hands.

  I grabbed the assault weapon Rodriguez had given up in favor of the knife. He looked at me and tried for bravado.

  “You shoot me, my father will kill you and everyone you have ever loved.”

  His arm hung uselessly at his side.

  “Kill you?” I said. “I’m not an animal. I only kill when
I have reason to.” I lifted the rifle, the barrel level with his chest. “And I have pretty good reason now.”

  “What do you want?” he said, breathless and desperate.

  Sylvester joined us.

  “Anybody ever tell you that you’re beautiful?” I said to him.

  “Never anyone of the male persuasion.”

  “Back road?”

  “Wouldn’t call it a road, but it got me here quick. So, what are you going to do with him?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  I studied the man in front of us, his eyes apprehensive and dark, his face handsome, a young man who was clearly afraid he wasn’t going to get any older. I figured this was the first time Joaquin Rodriguez had ever really stood at the edge of dead. I bent and picked up the knife he’d been holding only minutes earlier.

  “In Minnesota, we hunt deer,” I told him. “But we gut ’em just like you did your elk.”

  CHAPTER 36

  * * *

  The trail that led into the Coronado Mountains above the El Dorado Mine was a rough one, better suited to a mule than to the borrowed pickup truck I drove. I took it slow, working over and around the rocks that littered the way. More than once, I was sure I was going to tear off the oil pan.

  “You’re certain about this?” I asked Sylvester, who was in the seat beside me.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  He was one of the few in Coronado County that I did, so I kept following his directions.

  “It might almost be faster on foot,” I said, after twisting the truck around an especially precarious curve on a narrow shelf of rock.

  “Reason Peter chose it,” he said. “Not particularly welcoming to the casual traveler.”

  “He found this place without your help?”

  “Resourceful young man. One of the things I like about him.”

  We came to a flat that looked across a small desert valley several hundred feet below. A familiar black SUV was parked there, and beside it stood Mondragón, cradling his scoped Weatherby.

  “Rainy and Peter?” I asked when I got out.

  “Waiting in the mine,” he said. “I wanted to make sure of things.”

  Which I understood and appreciated.

  “You’re Sylvester?” he said to my companion.