by Nan Ryan
“Is White Hair in Santa Fe this afternoon?” he asked.
“Waiting at End of Trail Saloon,” she said.
“Well, I guess I better go over there and talk to the old buzzard; tell him again, no more contracts.”
Micoma liked that. Smiling, she said, “Tell old buzzard, no more contracts!”
“That’s right,” West said, and dropping one knee to the stone porch, he shoved a hand deep into his pants pocket and withdrew a silver coin. He pressed it into Micoma’s palm and closed her brittle fingers tightly around it. “Promise me you’ll buy yourself a hot meal.”
“Too old to promise anything, West Quarternight.”
West touched her wrinkled brown cheek, rose to his feet, turned and walked back across the dusty plaza, thinking that if anybody had a hard head, it was Micoma.
And Grady Downs.
How many times did he have to tell Grady that he was through as a guide, quitting?
“Damn it, Grady, how many times do I have to tell you I’m quitting?”
“Now, Sonny, just you wait till you hear what I’ve got lined up for us.”
The two men stood at the long polished bar in the End of the Trail Saloon. The small saloon just off the east side of the plaza, marking the end of the Turquoise Trail, was Grady’s favorite watering hole. It was shadowy and quiet and served, Grady claimed, the best Kentucky bourbon in all of Santa Fe. And the barkeep was an impressionable Alabamian who would listen attentively to Grady’s tall tales by the hour.
Tossing down a straight shot of that fine Kentucky bourbon, West wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and said irritably, “I warned you not to go lining up more contracts. You and Taos want the work, fine. But count me out. I’m not interested.”
“Will you just wait until you hear what I’ve got to say?”
“No,” West told him. “I won’t. You’re wasting your breath. The way I figure it, we’ll finish with our final contract around the last of April or the first part of May. Then I’m long gone. Riding out of New Mexico for good.”
As though West hadn’t spoken, Grady said, “You know that Curtin-Lancaster expedition that came through here a month or so ago? Them rich boys from out of New York City that was a-heading down to the south part of the Territory? ’Member them?”
“What about them?”
“They’re missing! Them and all the Mexicans they hired to go down the trail with ’em. Vanished right off the face of the earth!”
West skeptically raised a dark eyebrow. “And now we’re supposed to find them? We’re booked the next four or five weeks.”
Grady was sure he sensed a trace of interest on West’s part. Hastily he said, “Sonny, the Curtin fellow that’s lost, he’s got an older brother back there in New York City. The brother’s fixing to come out here and search for the missing expedition. He wired Martin Exley to contract for qualified guides to lead him. The timing’s might near perfect. Curtin should reach Santa Fe around the time we’ll be coming down from the Four Corners.”
“The answer is still no.” West downed his second whiskey and said, “Nice talking to you, Grady. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll hunt a poker game.”
“Speakin’ of poker, guess it’s time I show you my hole card,” said Grady, grinning from ear to ear and stroking his flowing white beard. Abruptly, he reached up and slapped the taller man on the back and named an incredibly generous sum of money which he claimed on his mother’s grave Edmund Curtin was prepared to pay. Spot cash.
Frowning now, West remained silent. He motioned the bartender to pour him another whiskey. He reached into the breast pocket of his tailored navy shirt and withdrew a long brown cigar. For a long moment he idly rolled the cigar between his thumb and forefinger.
Grady waited, as silent as West. Afraid to speak, afraid to move, holding his breath.
West stuck the cigar between his lips, bit down on it with even white teeth, and languidly leaned across the bar to the lighted match the barkeep held out. He lifted his head, slowly drew smoke deep down into his expanding diaphragm, then released it. He took the cigar from his mouth, stared at the hot orange tip.
Finally his head swung around, he grinned boyishly and said, “Grady, tell Mr. X to inform Curtin he’s just hired himself the best damned guides in the Territory.”
“Praise the Lord!”
Elizabeth Montbleau Curtin got her first look at Santa Fe, New Mexico, late one clear May afternoon. She stood alone on the jutting precipice of a hill overlooking the ancient city. The sun was low on the western horizon, its fanlike rays tinting the billowing clouds varying shades of red and staining the rugged mountain peaks a deep purple.
Below, in the darkening valley, at the base of the soaring Sangre de Cristo mountains, lights began to twinkle on, one by one, enchanting her, inviting her to come down. Elizabeth felt her weariness melt away and a tingling excitement stir the blood in her veins.
“Ready, Elizabeth,” called Edmund.
“Coming, Edmund,” she said, and took one last lingering look below, inhaled deeply of the fresh ponderosa-scented air, and hurried to climb back into the coach for the last leg of their journey.
The entire valley was cloaked in darkness when the stage drove up San Francisco Street, Santa Fe’s main thoroughfare. But gaslights lined the avenue and a mix of people, as diverse as those living in New York City, milled about on the streets, talking, laughing.
The coach came to a stop before the La Fonda Hotel, on the plaza. Elizabeth preceded Edmund inside the two-story adobe structure. The beamed ceiling was high, the floor was of polished tile, the walls of dark wood adorned with colorful Navajo blankets.
Edmund engaged a suite on the second floor; two bedrooms joined by a common sitting room. Once upstairs, Edmund directed a pair of mannerly brown-skinned Mexican youths to take Elizabeth’s many bags into the room to the right of the parlor, the larger, grander of the suite’s two bedrooms.
Elizabeth followed the boys into a spacious, cheerful room dominated by a huge pine bed, its headboard soaring halfway to the high ceiling. A matching pine highboy on the west wall was as tall as she. A long Spanish baroque settee upholstered in pressed red leather faced a pair of sturdy armchairs before a fireplace of natural stone. A fire, newly laid and burning brightly, took off the nighttime chill.
As soon as the boys left, Elizabeth crossed to a pair of carved wooden doors, pushed one open, and tentatively peered out. She was delighted to find that her room, fronting the city’s placita, opened onto a wide wraparound balcony bordered by a solid, waist-high adobe railing.
Smiling, she held the heavy door partially open with a knee and a shoulder while she swept a heavy wool shawl up over her head and around her shoulders. Then she eagerly rushed outdoors to get another look at the lights of the sprawling high-desert city, glittering like diamonds in the darkness.
But just as she gripped the rough railing and leaned out, a match flared in her side vision, startling her. Elizabeth’s shawled head snapped around and her heartbeat immediately quickened.
A tall man, his back to her, stood a few feet away on the balcony, coatless in the night. His dark head was bent forward, his arms lifted. The fabric of his black shirt pulled tautly across his back and shoulders as he cupped his hands soldier-style around the red glowing tip of a cigar he was lighting in the wind.
Before he could see her, Elizabeth dashed back inside, slamming the heavy carved doors shut. For a long moment she stood there, her back pressed against them, her breath coming fast.
Then she laughed at herself, and blamed her irrational fear on exhaustion. She was being silly. A dangerous journey was finally behind her. She had reached Santa Fe and was now safe.
Totally safe.
13
THE NEXT MORNING DAWNED bright and clear in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The sky was a deep shade of azure, the air dry and crisp in the seven-thousand-foot-high capital city.
By early afternoon, when Elizabeth and Edmund left the La F
onda for an appointment with Edmund’s agent, Martin Exley, the day was sun-kissed and balmy.
Dressed in a smart traveling suit of rust cotton, a high-necked blouse of pale peach batiste, her abundant red hair swept up under a becoming hat with the brim pulled low, Elizabeth took Edmund’s arm as they crossed busy San Francisco Street.
After dodging carts and carriages and mounted cowboys, the pair reached the safety of the sidewalk and paused to look in shop windows lining Washington Street.
Wishing they had time to go inside and browse, Elizabeth gazed in the window of a small store filled with beautiful silver Indian jewelry and colorful clay pottery. Next door was a saddle shop, the strong scent of leather carrying out onto the sidewalk.
Just beyond the saddlery a small open-air restaurant was crowded with men, white and brown, consuming huge portions of spicy native dishes made of corn, chili peppers, pinto beans, squash, and beef. Past the café, a saloon called The Nugget was filling with afternoon drinkers and card players.
One player, a man with jet-black hair and silver-gray eyes, sat at a green baize table with his back to The Nugget’s slatted swinging doors. A brown cigar clamped firmly between his teeth, the silent man unemotionally studied his cards. The other players, anxiously studying him, caught the slightest narrowing of his unreadable gray eyes.
The player’s opponents never knew that his almost imperceptible movement was not a reaction to the last card he had drawn, but rather to the faint scent of perfume—vaguely familiar—drifting into the smoke-filled saloon from a woman passing the saloon within six feet of where he sat.
Directly past The Nugget saloon, at the corner of Washington and Palace Avenue, a furniture store displayed heavy, intricately carved pieces fashioned from native woods.
On busy Palace Avenue, Edmund and Elizabeth turned west and soon were strolling past the low-slung one-story adobe Palace of the Governors on the plaza’s north side. Large gatherings of men stood talking under the roofed portal of the old government building.
But it was a woman who caught Elizabeth’s eye.
Seated cross-legged on the stone porch in the shade, her back resting against the building’s adobe exterior, an ancient-looking Indian woman seemed oblivious to all the activity going on around her. Her wrinkled lids drooped low over flat black eyes. Eyes that looked neither to the left nor right, as if she were certain this life no longer had anything of interest to show her.
Abruptly releasing Edmund’s arm, Elizabeth ventured closer. When she stood a few feet away, the old woman’s gray head slowly lifted. Elizabeth smiled with uncertainty at the somber woman, and was genuinely surprised to see a wide, toothless grin quickly spread over the wrinkled brown face and the black eyes suddenly sparkle with life.
An arthritic hand covered with silver and turquoise rings lifted and motioned Elizabeth closer. Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. She hurried forward and quickly sat down on her heels facing the woman, the rust cotton skirts of her suit mushrooming out around her.
“I’m Elizabeth Curtin,” she said warmly, reaching for the dry, withered hand adorned with glittering silver.
“I am Micoma,” said the Indian. Then immediately asked, “Have you seen my sons?”
“Your sons?” Elizabeth was puzzled. “No, no I haven’t.”
“Your hair is strange hue.” The Indian woman had already forgotten her sons, for the moment. “Never see hair like that. Take off bonnet.”
Elizabeth immediately reached up, withdrew the long hat-pin from the straw crown, and plucked the hat from her head. The slanting rays of the early afternoon sun fell full on her, bathing her with bright, unfiltered light.
“There. How’s that?”
“Look like head on fire,” said the Indian woman, fascinated.
Elizabeth laughed, then glanced up at Edmund, waiting patiently. “I must go, Micoma. Will your sons be coming for you soon?”
“Yes, they come soon.”
“Good.” Elizabeth impulsively took the small copper brooch from her suit’s high collar, leaned forward, and pinned it to the old woman’s chamois poncho. “I want you to have this, Micoma. You can tell your sons it came all the way from New York City.”
Micoma beamed happily. As Elizabeth started to rise, she reached out and stopped her. “Wait,” she said, and took a shiny silver ring set with a turquoise stone from her finger. “For you.”
“Oh, Micoma, no … I can’t—”
“You take.” Micoma’s black eyes shone like polished quartz. “Keep. You tell your sons come all the way from Nacimiento Peak.”
Uncertain what she should do, Elizabeth looked up at Edmund. “She wants you to have it,” he said gently. “To refuse might hurt her feelings.”
Her hearing as keen as ever, Micoma nodded. “Might hurt old Micoma’s feelings, Fire Hair.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Thank you, Micoma. I will treasure this ring always.”
“Go now,” said the old Indian. “Be late for appointment.”
Elizabeth’s finely arched eyebrows lifted. “And how do you know we have an appointment?”
Micoma gave her a sly smile. “Hear everything, know everything,”—her smile fled—“but sometimes forget.”
Leaving the old woman looking after them, Elizabeth said softly to Edmund, “I hope her sons come for her soon. She’s surely tired of waiting and should be taken home.”
“She’ll be fine. Now, we really must hurry. We’re still a couple of blocks from Exley’s office.”
The pair hurried on down Palace Avenue, turning right when they reached Grant Street. Halfway down the block they paused before a two-story stucco building. A dentist occupied the ground floor. Directly above, gold lettering on the frosted glass window proclaimed “The Curtin Company, Martin S. Exley, Agent.”
“Legends abound here in the Southwest,” said Martin Exley, standing before a mounted wall map of the New Mexico Territory. “So, of course, there’s a legend surrounding your father’s leather map and the hidden gold, Elizabeth.
“As you know, the map revealing the location of the gold was given to Thomas Montbleau by an old sourdough called Sid Grayson. Now, Grayson was a drinker and a gambler. One night in Silver City, Sid got lucky. He broke up a big poker game—this is well documented—won over ten thousand dollars. One of his opponents was young Jamie Pena, Spanish land grant family and all that goes with it. Pena felt sure his luck had to change, so he wanted to cut high card with Sid for the ten thousand dollars. Only one problem, he was out of money. No mas dinero.
“Pena offered Sid a map that had been made from a chart left by the first conquistadors. A treasure map revealing a cache of gold. Gold had been mined and smelted by Indian slave labor, then hoarded and hidden in an underground cave. The gold was cursed by the spirits of the Indians who had died while mining it. And so, it was constantly guarded by evil, winged ghost-creatures of the night.
“Well, Sid agreed to cut high card for the map against his ten thousand dollars. They shuffled, cut, and Pena turned up the queen of diamonds. Sid the king of clubs. Pena promised to take Sid to the stashed gold the next day, but a jealous husband buried ten inches of fine Toledo steel in Pena’s heart later that same night. Sid Grayson searched for that gold until the day he gave the map to your father, Elizabeth.” Exley smiled and said, “That’s the legend of the lost Grayson gold.”
Martin Exley went on to tell them that years ago he had heard about the conocimiento de Grayson, or chart of identification for Grayson. Further, he himself had visited the archives in the Palace of Governors and found, to his surprise, that Elizabeth’s father had put enough faith in Sid Grayson’s story to have the claim registered in his own name, Thomas S. Montbleau, Natchez, Mississippi. Which meant, if any gold was found, it would legally belong to Elizabeth, since Colonel Montbleau was deceased.
“Then, in your opinion, Dane and his partner are actually onto something, Mr. Exley?” asked Elizabeth. “I mean, with part of the map missing, how—”
Exley said, “The missing hexagonal section left us buffaloed for a time, but Dane was finally able to match up some known coordinates and felt sure they knew the approximate region to look for the claim, and hopefully, the gold. Only trouble is, this is wild country and it stubbornly refuses to give up some of its longest kept secrets. The boys could be walking right over the gold and never know it.”
“But you are convinced there’s gold out there,” said Edmund.
Exley answered, “Through the years more than one wild-eyed old sourdough or grizzled mountain man or frightened Mexican peasant has stumbled back to civilization, half dead, babbling about ‘rooms of gold guarded by creatures of the night.’ Is there anything to it? Is it a dream based on fact? Or imagination? Hallucination? Lies? I don’t know. I do know that Fisk and Gould threatening to corner the gold market made us believers. We thought we had nothing to lose.”
“Exactly when was the last time you heard from my husband?” asked Elizabeth.
“The last communication was on March twenty-first. Lancaster sent word from the little town of Las Palomas. Las Palomas is about two hundred fifty miles south of Santa Fe. They were camped there on the Rio Grande and were to head due east when they got back on the trail.” He shrugged. “I’ve heard nothing further.”
“Is there any chance that Dane and Lancaster are simply in an area too remote to communicate with you?” Elizabeth asked hopefully.
“Absolutely. When the boys turned east, they rode straight into some of the roughest country in the Territory. To reach their destination, they’d have to cross several mountain ranges, not to mention the badlands and the white sands. It’s the section of the Territory that the early Spaniards called Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of the Dead.”
“Sounds perilous,” said Edmund.
“It is, Ed. Some strange, unexplained things have been happening of late down in that part of the country. Last week the body of a young woman turned up in Malaga.” He glanced at Elizabeth, then added, “The woman’s body, which was left on the plaza during the night, was unclothed. The New Mexico Rangers report there were strange markings on her throat. While I’m sure the incident has nothing to do with the missing expedition, I do wish I could persuade you to remain here in Santa Fe, Elizabeth, while—”