In front of me is a woman sitting in a very large chair. A guard stands on each side of her. I take in a sharp breath. The two guards flanking the woman as if she is a queen are dressed in crude Jaguar Knight costumes, similar to what I had seen at the Zócalo in the city, and on the train.
The “knights” are holding broad wooden swords that look like the obsidian-edged swords shown in Aztec motifs. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that creates a super-sharp edge, enabling the wielder to whack off a head with one swing. These wooden swords probably have the same head-whacking edge as the Aztec ones did.
The woman’s features are fanned by flickering torchlight and shadows, but I can make out just enough of her face to see that it’s painted in wild shapes and colors.
“Buenas noches, señora. I hope you speak English.” And I hope she doesn’t hear the jitters I hear in my voice.
“Where is the map?” The woman’s voice is heavily accented, but I get the gist of it.
“The map?” I know exactly which map she is asking about, but the question catches me by surprise. Why is she asking me about the map? If these are followers of the ancient cult protecting Montezuma’s treasures, don’t they know where the disk is?
Why does everyone keep thinking I know where the treasure is?
“I don’t have the map.”
“The golden calendar round belongs to the sun god. It must not be disturbed. I will stop you and the other gringos from stealing it.”
“I don’t disagree with you, but I don’t have the map.” It’s pretty clear that she isn’t a keeper of the secret and is lusting after Montezuma’s treasure herself.
“You’re lying. You must give us the map. Otherwise, we will have to harm you, as your people have harmed us.”
My heart leaps into my throat. “There! It’s there.”
As I point behind them to the bushes, the witch—queen, whatever she is—and her guards with the big swords turn. I whip around, taking off like Juan—a bat out of hell—hopefully back in the direction from which I came.
I have heard enough to know there is nothing here for me but unthinkable pain or death.
Driven by the mindless mania of pure panic, I fly past a startled peon holding a flaming torch and head into the dark foliage.
Running, stumbling, falling, and getting up again, I hear men thrashing through the bushes behind me. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s the two with the swords sharp enough to lop off a head.
It doesn’t matter who catches me anyway—I would get dragged back to that nightmare of a hag and whatever she had in mind about “harming” me.
My foot catches on something and I go flying forward, taking a dive to the ground. I hit hard, knocking the wind out of me. For a frozen, terrifying moment, I am unable to move and lie sprawled out, paralyzed.
I’m rolling over and trying to get to my knees when the witch’s guard, in a jaguar suit, almost runs into me. For a second, he is as startled as I am, but he recovers instantly and, with a snarl, raises his broadsword.
Something whips by me and connects with the man’s face with a sickening thump, knocking him backward.
Roger appears beside me, holding a tree branch.
We hear the other jaguar guard breaking through the foliage, coming in our direction.
Roger drops the branch and pulls a pistol out from under his clothes.
“Run!”
51
“Why did you hit him with a branch rather than shoot him? You have a gun.”
We’re back, within a short distance of the tents, and my breathing and heart are getting back to normal. But it’s dark and I’m still on edge. An oil lamp is burning next to the water barrel in the center of the circle of tents and another in front of the latrine just outside the circle. If I have any calls of nature tonight, they will be held till morning so that I don’t have to leave my tent and risk running into two-legged creatures of the night again. I have had enough of them for one night.
“Sorry, but I don’t usually kill people. Not strangers at least. Besides, I was carrying the staff to kill a snake if I saw one in the dark, before it got me. Swinging it was the first thing that came to mind.”
He stops short of the little tent city and begins packing his pipe. I know what he wants: an explanation. My mind has been churning away since we broke out of the thicket and saw the safety of the tents in the distance. I’ve been trying to think of a good reason as to why I was being chased by men dressed as jaguars at night in a jungle in Mexico.
Nothing clever comes to mind.
He peers at me as he lights his pipe, and I feel the compulsion to wiggle out of the jam I am in.
“Roger. I’m sure you saved my life tonight. I am forever grateful to you. It was courageous. Thank you.” I go up on tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek. I mean every word of it. I am close to tears from the fright I suffered and the gratitude I feel. “Good night.”
I take one step before he says “Nellie,” and I turn back.
“One more thing,” I say, “please don’t mention what happened to anyone. It will get back to Don Antonio and he’ll ship me home on the grounds that I am out to cast this lovely country in a bad light.” I squeeze his arm. “You will promise me not to tell anyone, won’t you?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
Here we go again. “Okay. You deserve an explanation. I saw something in the bushes. I thought it was a cat or dog—”
“I see there is a light on in Don Antonio’s tent. We should let him know there is a threat to the camp.”
“All right, all right. You really do deserve an explanation. I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened on the train and to me in Mexico City. That’s all there is to it.”
“Were-jaguars,” he says.
“Were-jaguars, the Cult of the Jaguar, Montezuma’s treasure, and a nasty character called La Bruja, a witch who has to do with some or all of it. I don’t know. I went to the Aztec museum in the city to learn more about the jaguar legends. When I was there, a young man, the assistant curator, who is the curator’s nephew, told me that La Bruja was a good source for information about were-jaguars and dream dust.”
“Dream dust?”
I quickly tell him about dream dust.
“So you came to Teo to contact her?”
“Sort of. I actually got invitations to come to Teo from several people. And earlier tonight, when Gertrude and I went to see the ruins, a man suddenly appeared with a note from La Bruja—that note you caught me rereading at dinner.”
“The treasure hunt.”
“Yes.” I go on to tell him about doll man and my brief but explosive meeting with the witch and her bodyguards. “I have no idea how she even knew I would be here in Teo or what I look like.”
“She thought you had the map?”
“Have the map or know something about it.”
“And you thought she would have the map?”
“No, not the map. I thought she might be the head of the cult or whatever that is sworn to protect the golden disk and that she could provide information about the jaguar figures I’ve seen. But from the moment she opened her mouth, it was obvious that she only wanted information about the treasure. Which means she’s nothing but a treasure hunter herself.”
We walk slowly toward our tents.
Roger looks at me. “So, what do you make of it? The attack on the prospector, the vanishing indio porter on the train, the stuff called dream dust, Montezuma’s treasure?”
What I make of it is a good question, one I can’t answer because I just don’t know. It is a puzzle surrounded by fog.
“Someone believed the prospector actually had a map,” I finally suggest. “No use getting rid of the man if he had only a peso map.”
“The cowboys?”
“I’m not sure. They acted like he was a joke to them. But he wasn’t a joke to someone. And then there’s the mask the person who attacked him wore. It was like the ones those street performers use and th
at the witch’s thugs wore tonight. I believe someone was being clever and wanted to rob the man of the map in a way that he wouldn’t be identified.”
“Or frighten it out of him,” Roger says. “The prospector seemed to be constantly boozed up and believed he was being stalked. Maybe he wasn’t imagining it. Somebody could have been wearing a jaguar mask to frighten him into giving up the map.”
Roger’s theory rings true to me. “What I find most interesting about the jaguar mask I saw on the train is that it was so crude, so much an obvious costume. If I had gotten a good look at it, instead of in the dark through a dirty window, I’m sure I would have thought of it as a clownish mask. And that’s another reason La Bruja didn’t impress me. The men holding the torches looked like nervous farmers, and the two guards were wearing the crude masks I’ve seen street entertainers wear in the city.”
He shrugs. “What did you expect? Real were-jaguars?”
“Yes.”
We stop in front of his tent and I speak so that my words won’t carry.
“I saw something in the bushes outside the train that time the train stopped to let Traven load cargo.”
I tell him about the thing—creature—I saw in the bushes.
“You think you saw a real were-jaguar?”
“I don’t know what I saw, but it was very different from the simple masks that street performers use. It was really creepy.” I rub the goose bumps on my arms.
“That is creepy,” he says while tapping the stem of his pipe against his teeth. He pulls a face and shakes his head. “You have been a very busy young woman since you crossed the border.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“There’s another person who’s also been very busy. The prospector, the indio porter, the attack tonight. Have you thought about the fact that someone is keeping close track of your movements?”
Licking my dry lips, I give him a forced smile. “Oh yes. That thought has occurred to me.”
“They must think you know something about the map. Do you?”
I shake both my fists in frustration. “No, no, no. And I wish I did. I have run every drunken word Howard spoke to me over and over in my mind, looking for something I might have missed. I can’t make anything significant out of it. For sure, he never spoke of Teo, a giant golden disk, or anything else that would even be a link to the treasure.”
I don’t say it aloud, but I am also plagued by whether I missed an important clue from the prospector because his drunkenness reminded me of my stepfather’s booze talk. I was just trying to be free of him. I didn’t care and wasn’t listening to what he was saying. It wasn’t important to me—then.
“Well, one thing is for certain,” Roger says. “Somebody thinks you know more than you do and thinks that you’re just not willing to tell or planning to grab the treasure yourself. They want to know whatever they think you were told by the prospector, and it’s a pretty narrow field. It has to be one of your intimates.”
“What do you mean?”
“The harassment has followed you from the train to the city and now to Teo. La Bruja didn’t invite you here. She wouldn’t even know who you are if someone you knew from the train hadn’t told her.”
“I got invitations to visit Teo from just about everyone.”
“Except me.”
I hadn’t thought of it, but he’s right.
“You’ve gotten a confession from me,” I tell him, “but you haven’t told me how it happens you were out there.”
He turns to go into his tent as he answers. “I was taking my evening constitutional when I saw a dog or cat—”
“No you don’t!” I grab his arm to jerk him back to face me.
He spins around, grabs me, and pulls me against him, his lips very close to mine.
I freeze up and then instantly melt, pressing against him, my lips melting with his as they had once before.
He lets go and I step back, flushed.
“If you hear any strange noises tonight,” he says, “just pull the blankets up over your head.”
As I turn to go to my tent, I find Gertrude standing in the entrance.
She gives a smile full of tease. “Just a platonic relationship…”
“Oh, be quiet.”
52
“Isn’t the ancient city a marvel?” Gertrude says the next morning.
“Marvelous,” I agree. Having made a few more observations about the place that frightened both me and the terrifying Aztecs, I restrain my tongue rather than opening the gates for a barrage of questions.
We are waiting outside Lily’s big tent for the grand lady of stage and gossip columns to appear and accompany us to Traven’s dig. We have already resolved to look like ugly ducklings with a graceful swan when the three of us walk up the boulevard together.
Juan was waiting outside our tent this morning to “escort” us to the dig—and collect his fee for yesterday and another for today. His disappearing act of yesterday was not mentioned.
“I should add bandido to his job description of street hustler and ragamuffin,” I complained to Gertrude after we paid him.
Gertrude is talkative, and I pay only half attention to her. I’m quiet because my head is full of my close encounter with La Bruja and her Jaguar Knights. Last night, I tossed and turned, waking up repeatedly. The realization that I could have been murdered didn’t really hit me until I was in bed and tried to sleep.
Howard, the prospector, didn’t do me any favors by sharing his drunken mumbo jumbo with me. It sicced a crazy Mexican witch onto me—and who else? That’s the question filling my head as Gertrude talks about how exciting it is to be in a city built a couple thousand years ago.
“Marvelous,” I repeat again.
Everybody wanted me in Teo; Roger and I had discussed that last night. I exclude Gertrude from the “everybody” category because she is too young and too remotely connected to Mexico to be part of a conspiracy of tomb robbers or whatever.
The best reason I can conjure up for anyone’s wanting my presence in Teo is that someone—or maybe a bunch of somebodies—thinks I know more than I do. And it appears that Teo is the place where the treasure hunt is meant to end.
Murder has been on the table since the train, so it’s pretty clear that whoever wants me to fess up to knowing the location of the treasure is willing to flay me alive, like that nasty witch would have done, to get a chunk of gold big enough to buy a small country.
An unfortunate part of the human spirit that divides us from the lower beasts is that we all have a miserly desire to gain and hoard wealth. And not even sex or fame fires our souls with the hot passion that a pot of gold does.
And if it means murder and other high crimes and misdemeanors to get it, so be it.
“You are in dreamland,” Gertrude says.
“Sorry. I was listening.”
“No, you weren’t. If you had been, when I mentioned Roger, you would have perked up.”
“All right, you win. What about Roger?”
“Not really about Roger, but an observation about the educational system in the colonies.” She grins. “That’s what my friends at Oxford call your country.”
“I won’t tell you what my friends in Pittsburgh call Oxford.” I rather suspect people in Pittsburgh know almost nothing about Oxford, except maybe that it has a university.
She laughs at my attempt to be witty. “Yesterday, Roger and I spoke briefly when we met at that hub of society here in our tent city, the water barrel. I had a question about the Louisiana Purchase, which added so much territory to your United States. I was surprised that he knew only the basics any schoolboy would know. Frankly, I expect a person planning to teach history at university level would be a lot more knowledgeable about one of the most important events in your country’s history.”
“Hmm” is the best I can manage. Roger is on my list of favorite persons for saving me last night, but, unfortunately, he is also one of the suspects.
Like Gertrude, I’v
e concluded that there’s something unscholarly about him. Most scholars have such an interest in their field of study, they are more than willing, even eager, to talk about it. Not Roger. Plus, those magazines and books he always has his head stuck in—they are not scholarly tomes, but popular pulp. He just doesn’t fit the bill. Who is he really? Why is he here? And why is a scholar carrying a gun?
Lily comes out of the tent as bright as another sun in the sky.
Gertrude and I are both dressed sensibly for a trek up the dusty Avenue of the Dead and a climb around Traven’s archaeological dig. Lily looks as if she is on her way to high tea with the queen. Her dress is a radiant white cotton one, slim and formfitting, with delicate lace covering her neck. Even though the lace adds an elegant touch to the dress, I would imagine it will be stifling in this heat.
The back of the dress has tiny satin buttons, which must have taken a lifetime to fasten—they go from the bottom of her neck down to almost her bum. The dress stops inches above her ankles, and she is wearing dainty satin green shoes with three-inch heels, which amazes me. How does she plan on climbing steps and maybe even some rubble? Doesn’t she realize the dirt will destroy the delicate shoes?
Maybe she doesn’t care … or maybe dirt parts for her like the Red Sea did for Moses.
I glance down at my clodhoppers. Dirt seems to improve their looks. And they are comfortable and fit for climbing. Gertrude has ones almost the same style as mine, only I’m sure they are one pair of many she brought for her trip. For me, it’s my only pair.
Lily’s gorgeous hair is up in a bun, I suspect, because she’s wearing a big floppy white hat that has a big satin green ribbon around the bottom that matches the color of her shoes.
What I admire most is her skin; it’s so white and soft, all she has on is a light pinkish blush and cherry red lipstick, which emphasize her porcelain skin and full lips. All I do is put cream on my face and petroleum jelly on my lips to keep them from chapping.
No Job for a Lady Page 23