by Jack L Knapp
We dropped the connection and I went back to reading the short article. The photographer had apparently been photographing raptors in the mountains and he swore he saw a man flying with the eagles. There was a short discussion about the man maybe having a wingsuit on, one of the ones with short wings that a few were now using after dropping from airplanes. A few had even fitted jet engines to the package; they’d flown over the Alps, and one had flown across the English Channel.
But there was no sign of that in the photo, and people in wingsuits fly with their body parallel to the ground. The photo clearly showed me upright, leaning slightly forward. My face was obscured by distance and the goggles I’d been wearing.
We dropped the connection and I went shopping for costume accessories. I found a store downtown that had a long beard, Santa Claus style, and another that looked like it would be at home in a Harry Potter film. They also had a couple of witch hats that kids might use on Halloween, so I bought those too. Cash purchases, of course; the guy in the store might remember me, but he wouldn’t have a paper trail to follow.
I got to Ray’s cabin by late afternoon. He had steaks and potatoes and had picked up a bag of salad greens from a store in Los Alamos, and we fixed a nice dinner using his barbecue.
We spent most of the time laughing while he cooked the steaks (the potatoes went into the microwave for cooking first, then were wrapped in foil to finish on the grill), and one outlandish idea followed another. Float past while holding an arm outstretched in front, maybe improvise a cape from something, take a photo on timer with the two of us pretending to cast spells at each other, arms up and hands facing the other guy…if anyone ever tried to use any of these, we’d simply release the rest of them. The cape idea eventually got used with capes improvised from two trash bags and duct tape.
Maybe the beer had something to do with the laughing. We had one during dinner and another after, not enough to affect us, but maybe enough to help us relax.
We had tripods for our cameras and tomorrow would be time enough to begin.
“Tell me more about this treasure hunting idea, T.”
“I’m not spending anything I haven’t found yet, but we could use a different income until our business gets going. And really, the things I told you before are reasonably well documented. The church in Socorro had silver appointments, not only the vessels used in services but the communion rail and other stuff. People who saw those things said they were solid silver and the new church even offered a million dollar reward in the 1980’s to anyone who found the hidden silver.
“The priests and their Indian helpers disassembled the silver appointments and hid them somewhere, probably not far from the church. This happened in 1680 and they needed to leave ahead of the hostile Indians. Some didn’t make it. About four hundred people were killed before they could escape, a lot considering how sparsely settled the area was.
“As it happened, the Spanish came back in a few years during the reconquest, but not to Socorro. They didn’t reopen the church immediately. The Spanish were short-handed when they returned and they just didn’t have the soldiers to garrison the smaller towns.
“The Spanish probably should have waited until they had more troops, but they were afraid that the Americans would move in if they didn’t hustle back and regain control. So they set up in Santa Fe to keep Los Americanos out, but they didn’t have enough people to protect anyone in Socorro. That was their problem from the beginning. They claimed most of North America but never had the people to back up the claims. So Louisiana went to Napoleon and he sold it to the US. Eventually the rest of Spain’s possessions went, but Mexico had the same problem. Too much land claimed, not enough people to occupy the land or hold it. Americans wanted to trap for furs, set up trade routes, and do mining. Ranching too, later on. The Indians weren’t pushovers, either. They remained a problem throughout Spanish New Mexico and later even Texas until the mid-1880’s.”
We turned in early and set up T’s coffeepot for the morning.
#
Cameras were set up and we began taking pictures next morning. This lasted for a couple of hours, one hilarious idea following after another. A few of the photos were fairly serious and straightforward; those were the ones we’d mail to the newspapers. The funny ones would be saved for later after the first group captured the attention of reporters. We printed copies after downloading them to T’s computer. A backup copy went onto a pair of thumb drives before we wiped the originals from the computer and the camera as well. After that, we took a few shots around his cabin to blur any residual image that might be on the camera’s memory chip. The photos went into an envelope and we took them into Albuquerque with us.
T bought a Bounty Hunter 505 detector and a pinpoint detector for close up work after something was found. There were more powerful detectors, but this one was reported to be easy to use and it would do for what T had in mind. He also bought a collection of tools that included a gold pan. Who could say? We might find a placer deposit up in one of those lonely canyons!
We ran the photos through a copier at Staples. Originals would be destroyed at some point; the copies, handled carefully to keep fingerprints off, would be mailed to the reporter at the Times and to a few other newspapers. Possibly we were being paranoid, but paranoia is a useful trait in a time where cameras and drones are all too common.
We were on our way back to Jemez Springs by early afternoon, photos mailed off, equipment and extra batteries in hand. I commed Ana Maria but the conversation was short and nothing was resolved. She was home, her father was talking but still cold to her, and her mother was angry at her father.
Happy homecoming, Ana Maria.
I s
pent the afternoon at T’s cabin with headphones on, learning to listen to tones from the metal detector. T packed things and I added my sleeping bag and pad to the stash in his truck.
We had time to talk later.
“The places you have in mind for prospecting, T. Are they on private property or government land? Either way, someone’s going to want a share of whatever you find.”
T’s eyes narrowed. “If I pick up something about the treasure in Socorro, the one claimed by the church, I don’t know. It might be easier to point out where it was hidden and have you claim the reward. I don’t plan to prospect on private land, though. As for government land, if they can catch me, they can tax me.
“All those fees and claims, they’re just taxes. No matter how much extra they get in taxes, they never use those to reduce personal taxes or do something good for people. Instead, the money goes to some Congressman’s district to buy stuff that the Army doesn’t need instead of buying things that would benefit the troops. They forget that the troops in combat are their real constituency. Instead, they only think about the people who might vote for them.
“I saw that first-hand, Ray. I picked up bodies that didn’t have to be there. But we were always playing cowboys and Apaches, a few people way out in front because politicians wouldn’t pay for enough troops to actually do the job. All those guys, including the ones I led, got wasted in a war that was mismanaged from the beginning by politicians. I left the Rockpile because my own people were trying to kill me. In fact, Henderson had already killed others like me or at least put the explosive in that someone else triggered. The ones who came back…well, we know how much money the VA gets, don’t we?
“If the government wants whatever’s out in those hills, they can go find it themselves. Of course, that would cost money too, wouldn’t it? And no pork for some deserving politician to use to get more votes. They won’t get a dime from me if I can avoid paying it.”
“You sound pretty bitter, T.”
“Good word for it, Ray. I got dumped on the Army because the School didn’t have any better use for me. They couldn’t have cared less if I got killed. It would have solved a problem for them. As it was, they killed everyone else who completed the School’s program, even Surfer. He didn’t put the charge into his neck, the one that smashed his spine.
“No. The less I have to do with the government, the better I’ll like it. Maybe if there’s something that will really help people, I could do that. But as for me voluntarily paying money that will be misused by politicians, I won’t do it.
He grinned crookedly. “They give a lot of tax breaks to businesses. I’m just cutting out the middle man, Ray. I’ll give myself a tax break without bothering Congress.”
We left it at that. I thought his views were a little extreme, but maybe if I’d seen the things he had seen, and done what he’d done….
That ended our conversation for the night. We crashed and I went to sleep.
I woke up later. T was making a sobbing noise and shivering in his bed, even though the cabin was warm. I watched for a time, not knowing what else I should do. Finally he quieted and I went back to sleep.
Chapter Seventeen
T:
T commed Shezzie while Ray was finishing breakfast. She had rented a hotel room and planned to try to find a lawyer today who would represent her through the process of regaining her identity. She would also see about finding a source of identity papers. The man she’d bought her other papers from had vanished. Still, there was a demand for identity documents, so there would be someone who would provide them. It was only necessary that she find him, perhaps among immigrant support groups. Someone among the immigrants would need papers, and others would be thinking about how the documents could be obtained.
Ray put the rest of the equipment in the truck while T cleaned up the kitchen. A few minutes later found them driving south on NM 4 in T’s truck.
Turning east at San Ysidro, they bought gas in Bernalillo before heading south on I-25.
They left the interstate highway at Socorro for lunch. Before leaving the town, T decided to visit the old church of San Miguel.
The church had been built over the ruins of an earlier chapel, destroyed during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. This was the site where one of the legends of lost treasure had originated, and T wanted to see if he felt anything when he was nearby. It would be an easy test of his precognitive Talent.
He parked and the two of them walked around the old church, T concentrating on whatever he was feeling and Ray examining the architecture of the nineteenth-century structure. T was grinning when they got back to the truck.
“Ray, one of the lost treasures? I’ve found it, I think.”
“Wow, T. That was fast. Where is it?”
“It’s in the church, somewhere underneath, where the foundations of the old church are located. I could probably refine the location if I went inside, but we would never be able to dig and anyway we wouldn’t be able to explain how we came to know where the treasure was buried.
“There are subfloors and burial sites beneath the church, and I’ll bet the padres dug a cache down there, maybe by the graves of some of the old priests. Bury the church’s treasures, let the spirits of the priests who died here watch over them.
“The Apaches who killed off the remaining Piro Indians wouldn’t have dug under the church. If the Navajo ever raided this far south, they too would avoid a place that contained dead people.
“By the time the Spanish came back and settled the area again, there was no sign that anything other than graves was down there. But it’s there, and I can feel it. The deposit’s bigger than I read about too. Maybe some of the churchmen who came south stopped here and left the treasures from Santa Fe. The old church could have been a collection point for every Spanish settlement from Socorro north.”
“The Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe still claims ownership of the treasure, T. They would pay a reward for recovering the articles.”
“Maybe, Ray. Would they dig around those old graves, or would they decide to leave them undisturbed? If they didn’t dig, they wouldn’t need to pay a reward. Just file a report, and maybe someday excavate the area under the church if they changed their minds.
“But it’s been worth the stop. I’m sure now that if we get close to anything worthwhile, I’ll know it. Maybe not everything, but I can feel silver and probably gold too. There was more than silver in that cache under the church.
“We need to get on the road now. I want to be parked west of Magdalena before dark. We can leave the truck at a campground and set up camp in one of the canyons back in the mountains. There were mines up that way, still are for that matter, and at least one of the legendary lost mines is supposed to be in the area.”
Ray chuckled along with T. “Under the church all this time. You’d think they’d have thought to look there before now.”
The two picked up takeout meals, their last cooked food for the next week, and headed west on US 60.
Ray:
I hadn’t worn a backpack in a long time, but the technique soon returned. I shrugged into the shoulder straps, buckled the wide belt around my waist and shrugged my shoulders until the weight felt comfortable. I carried the metal detector in my hand, now broken down and packed in a carry bag.
My backpack contained the extra batteries for the metal detector, the main reason the pack felt heavy. We had bought several packs of spare batteries, and since T had the food and camp gear I got to carry batteries and the detector. Both of us carried our own sleeping bags, pads, and personal gear.
We left T’s truck parked at Water Canyon campground. We hiked up the canyon, and as soon as we were out of sight of anyone who might enter the campground, T lifted off…and promptly tumbled forward, barely saving himself from falling by quickly dropping back to the ground.
“What happened, T?”
“I lost my balance. I tried to balance the same way I’ve done before, but I didn’t allow for the ex
tra weight of the pack. If I hadn’t dropped to the ground I’d have landed on my face. Be careful when you levitate. It’s tricky to balance yourself when there’s nothing touching your boot soles.”
I quickly found out what he meant. I lifted a couple of inches, found my balance, then leaned very gradually until I began moving forward. T was ahead of me now and I followed as he picked up speed and altitude.
The Magdalena Range runs north to south. There are three mines still producing in the western part of the range, commercial operations that produce a variety of low-value industrial ores. There have been no gold or silver mines of note in this area, at least in recent times, but those metals had been found further south and the churchmen at Socorro had acquired the church treasures somewhere. They were unlikely to have traveled far at a time when transport of valuables was slow, difficult, and dangerous.
T had a pair of topographic maps he’d acquired that showed elevations and landforms. We wanted to avoid the mines, so he’d used the maps to pick a likely campsite for us away from where mine traffic might be expected and also out of view from the observatories atop the mountains.
We followed Water Canyon south for about two hours before drifting up the eastern wall.
North-south ridges form the boundaries to the canyon and we soon crossed the eastern ridge, dropping into a canyon that began just below the ridgeline before continuing west until it reached the desert floor. This was the northern part of a pair of such canyons, separated by a volcanic highland extending between them. We traveled down this lesser canyon for almost an hour before reaching the site T had selected for our camp.
We went to sleep early and got up before daybreak. We breakfasted on cold MRE’s and bagged the trash, leaving it in camp.
I left my pack at the camp, taking only a couple of water bottles, the metal detector, and a pack of spare batteries. T would explore the northern branch of the pair of canyons while I would examine the southern one. We’d maintain contact during the day by comming details about anything interesting we might spot.