by David Dodge
I didn’t move. He said angrily, “Damn it, we’ve gone too far to let anybody interfere with us now! If you’re afraid to use the gun, give it to me.”
“I’ll use the gun any time I have to.”
“Then get up there on top—and stop anybody who comes too close!”
He jumped down into the pit.
I don’t know if I would have used the gun in a pinch. I might have. The fever was pretty hot. I squatted in the dew-wet wheat above the pit while Jeff worked with the crowbar down below. Both he and Tacho were out of sight. I was nearly hidden by the wheat, and there was nothing particularly strange about three stray burros in a field. Several Indians, shapeless in their ponchos, passed along the road without noticing anything out of the ordinary. Stars faded as the light grew brighter in the sky. I smelled the heavy loaminess of turned earth, the stink of burro, the rich greenness of growing wheat, and gold, gold, gold! It was as strong as the odor of blood. My heart pounded in my chest.
The crowbar came up out of the pit. Jeff followed it, panting. He hauled Tacho up behind him.
“Got it,” he said. “Come on.”
The three of us put our weight against the far side of the boulder. It rocked, came back, rocked again, came back…
“¡Ya!” I dug in my toes.
Jeff’s muscles cracked. Tacho grunted. The boulder balanced, swayed, and went into the pit, exposing a rectangular base, perfectly flat, except for the groove cut for the keystone, and mortised to fit the cavity below as neatly as if it had been cast in a mold. The cavity itself, cut from solid bedrock, was full to the brim of smooth, undisturbed sand.
I think even Tacho swore. I dropped to my knees and began to paw the sand like a dog, forgetting Jeff, the gun, everything. Jeff was beside me, making noises in his throat. My fingers hooked something. I heaved, got another grip, and came up with a heavy, hammered disc the size of a dinner plate, crusted with the oxidization of four centuries but still with enough glitter left to wink dully in the first rays of the sun peeking over the mountains, sun winking at sun.
14
We took ninety-three pieces out of the hole, instead of eighty-four. Jeff’s translation had been off somewhere. They weighed over three hundred pounds, at a guess. The hole was five feet long, a yard deep, and two and a half feet wide, full of fine sand that had silted in through the hair-line crack around the base of the boulder. Gold, silver and jeweled metal filled the sand like potatoes. Tacho, the smallest man among us, got down in the hole and dug them with a spade. Once a couple of Indians coming up the road from town stopped to point at us and jabber, but they didn’t come any closer. They must have smelled death in the air.
We worked fast, not even bothering to knock the sand out of hollow ware. There were extra ponchos on the packsaddles. The ninety-three pieces made three packs, with the ponchos for covering. The burros went right on snatching mouthfuls of wheat while we loaded them. They were starved, skinny beasts, covered with sores, and they were having the best feed of their lives. But we had to get them moving soon, because the town below us was waking up. More Indians were coming up the road.
I was fastening the last lashing of one of the packs. Jeff worked on another, Tacho a third. I said, “We have to get this stuff under cover before we get picked up for ruining some cholo’s wheat patch.”
“You won’t have to worry about that,” Jeff answered.
I looked up from the knot I was tying.
He had another gun. It pointed at me over the back of the two burros standing between us.
“Just finish the knot,” he said. “You’ve given me a lot of trouble, smart guy. You’re through now.”
I tried to swallow, staring at the gun. But I was already dead. There wasn’t anything in my mouth except dust.
Jeff grinned his wolf grin.
“You’ve got a stronger heart than Berrien,” he said conversationally. “When I lifted him out of his bunk, he woke up and tried to yell. I put my hand over his mouth and he bit me, so I stuck the gun into his face and said, “Los muertos no muerden, amigo Alfredo,” letting the hammer come back slow—the way it’s coming back now, smart guy—adiós…”
His finger cramped on the trigger. The hammer lifted. But the gun didn’t have the easy pull he was used to, and the hammer was still going back toward cock when I kicked the burro, ducked, threw myself to one side, and reached for the pistol in my belt, all at the same time.
It was no good. Jeff’s slug hit me like a baseball bat, high up in the shoulder, knocking me stumbling back on my heels. In the time it took me to go down, I heard a burro scream through the roar of the gun, saw the animals jump and scatter, heard Jeff shout. Tacho started toward me, but I wasn’t around when he got there. I was falling, falling, falling…
A rectangle of bright sky hung over my head when I came back to earth. For a long time I couldn’t figure out where I was. I seemed to be in a box of some kind, like an open coffin. The coffin was too small for me. I was all hunched up, my legs doubled over nearly to my chest. I tried to change my position and gave up the idea when broken bones scraped in my shoulder. The shock of the bullet had worn off by then. The wound throbbed and burned. There was a sticky warmness under my back, and something sharp that dug into my flesh.
I worked my good hand underneath me, inch by inch—I was pretty weak—and pulled out the thing that was digging me.
It was an image of a vicuña, about three inches high, the long snake-like neck curved down as if he were feeding, the ears flat against the narrow skull. I looked at it for a couple of minutes before it meant anything. Then I knew that I was in the treasure box, bleeding to death with a dirty chunk of solid gold in my hand.
Good joke on Jeff, I thought dimly. The parchment had said ninety-four pieces, not eighty-four.
I lay there, feeling light-headed and weak and thirsty, wondering how long it would take me to die, and thinking, sucker, sucker, sucker. You should have known he would find another gun. Adiós, smart guy. The stickiness under my back was spreading. My louse-bites itched. I scratched a couple I could reach, and thought how dumb it was to check out scratching louse-bites. It would be better to use the energy yelling. I tried it, but my head was cramped down against my chest and I didn’t have enough steam left to raise more than a thin bleat. And when I got through bleating, I was too tired to scratch.
“Los muertos no muerden,” Jeff had said. The dead don’t bite. They don’t itch, either, I thought. Have to make a noise, somehow. Where’s the gun?
I couldn’t find it in my belt. When I tried to paw around under my legs, the bones scraped in my shoulder and I passed out.
That was my last effort. Afterward I kept coming on and going off like a dim light, my thoughts getting hazier all the time until they were all concentrated in the throb of my shoulder. There was a lucid interval when I wondered why Jeff hadn’t finished me off with another bullet, or cracked my skull with the crowbar if he was afraid of a second gunshot. Then I began to talk to the vicuña. We had a nice little conversation, all about gold and the fine taste of clear water. He sprouted a human head after a while, a pock-marked cholo face with a green traffic cop’s helmet that hung over me with its mouth open and its eyes sticking out. I blinked at the face and made a clacking noise with my dry lips. The face blew up like a balloon.
The next person I saw was Ana Luz. She was feeding me water from a glass tube. She wore the white ribbon in her hair, just as she had when I first met her.
I was burning with fever, but I pushed the tube out of my mouth with my tongue and said foolishly, “What are you doing here? There isn’t room for both of us.”
“There’s plenty of room. You’re all right. Be quiet and drink.”
She put the tube back in my mouth.
It tasted real. So did the water. I thought: At least I think I’m drinking, so I might as well enjoy it.
I took a couple of long pulls at the imaginary water and went to sleep.
My head was clear when I woke up
the next time. I was in bed in a room that opened on a sunny patio full of flower bushes. A mimosa, bursting with yellow bloom, grew just outside the window. I could smell the blossoms. I could smell medicine, too, and my own body sweat. My left arm was locked up over my head in a cast that made me feel like the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t hurt anywhere, except for a headache, but I was too weak to do any more than lie there and wonder why I wasn’t dead.
Somebody said, “Hello.”
I turned my head.
It was Julie. She put down the magazine she had been reading and came over to the bed. She didn’t look bad at all, except for a drawn face. Somebody had taught her how to use make-up since the last time I saw her.
I said, “How did you get here? How did I get here? Where am I?”
“Cuzco. Don Ubaldo’s house. Wait a minute.”
She left the room. Waiting was all I could do, so I waited. Pretty soon she came back with Naharro.
He said, “How do you feel, Señor Colby?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Very well. Do you feel strong enough to talk?”
“About what?”
“What we have always talked about.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down, ignoring Julie. She stood there meekly, watching first my face and then Naharro’s, trying to make something out of our Spanish.
Naharro said, “It will be best for you to guard your strength, so I will talk first for both of us. You and Jefferson arrived here five days ago. When you did not take the train to Mollendo, I had inquiries made at the station, learned where you had gone, and followed immediately by car. You had another photograph of the manuscript, which I had stupidly not considered, from which Jefferson made a translation. With that, you found the treasure. Either Jefferson or another man who was with him shot you. The burros on which the treasure was loaded stampeded at the shot, and by the time Jefferson and the other man had rounded them up, some Indians from the road were on hand to prevent them from coming back and finishing you off. They disappeared with the burros. You had either fallen or been thrown into the pit from which the treasure was taken. The Indians called a policeman from town in time to keep you from bleeding to death in the pit, but you were dying in the clinica here when I arrived. I wired for the best doctor in Lima, who flew here and saved your life. You have had a number of blood transfusions. Your collar bone and shoulder blade are broken, but the bones have been properly set. You are in my house in Cuzco, where I ask you to stay as my guest until you are fully recovered. Is there anything else I can tell you?”
“Many thanks. What am I to do for payment?”
“Help me to recover the treasure.”
“You’ll have to find Jefferson for that. All I got for my trouble was a three-inch gold vicuña—if it hasn’t been stolen.”
“The vicuña is safe. And we will find Jefferson, eventually. All the roads and trains are being watched, as well as the airfields. It will be difficult for a gringo of his size to disguise himself. But I am afraid that he may melt the metals down, to make their transportation easier, and the thought makes me sick to my soul, Señor Colby.” Naharro blinked his lashless eyes at me. “He is a barbarian. I have had dealings with him before. Even Alfredo Berrien would have appreciated what you found for what it is. To Jefferson, it is so much gold and silver. Unless we can find him, and soon—I am afraid…”
He let it hang.
I said, “Who is watching the roads and trains?”
“The guardia civil.”
“You told them?”
He nodded heavily.
“I told them. I will not say that I did not hope at one time to find the treasure myself. But rather than see it taken out of the country, melted down and lost forever to the world, like the spoils of the Conquest, I have informed the government. I ask your help to stop Jefferson before he can destroy it.”
“How am I to help?”
“You must have made plans to smuggle it out of the country, some way. Where would he go?”
“My plans were to turn it over to the government for the discovery reward.”
He frowned.
I said, “You can believe what you like.”
“I cannot believe that Jefferson would agree to that, even if I accept your word. He would know how small the discovery reward is compared to the true value.”
“It is clear that he had plans of his own.”
“You do not know what they were?”
“I will have to think.”
I closed my eyes. It wasn’t only to shut him off. I was really tired, just from talking. After a minute, he said, “If anything occurs to you, all Peru will be grateful. But the time is short.”
I heard him leave the room.
I was thinking: Across Lake Titicaca from Puno to Bolivia. Jeff had done it before, he could do it again. He must believe that he had killed me. All that stood between him and a fortune was a police cordon looking for a big gringo traveling by road, rail or plane. They’d never stop a couple of Indians with three burros, cutting across country to Puno. All they would do would be to make it necessary for Jeff to stick to the hills.
But that way, it would take him a week, maybe more. The train had taken nine hours to come from Juliaca to Cuzco, and Puno was on the other side of Juliaca. Say two hundred and twenty-five miles. With his starved, heavily loaded burros, Jeff couldn’t make more than thirty or forty miles a day, however he drove them. And I wasn’t afraid that he would melt the stuff down. Whatever Naharro thought of him, he knew the value of what he had.
I said, “How long did you say I had been here?”
I was talking to Naharro, forgetting that he had already left the room. Julie answered apologetically, “I’m sorry. My Spanish isn’t very good. What did you say?”
I opened my eyes. She was still standing in the middle of the room, watching me.
I said, “What’s the matter, haven’t you got a knife handy? We’re all alone.”
She took it with her chin up.
“You’re entitled to that, I suppose. But I wouldn’t have wasted my own blood if I were going to use a knife on you.”
She turned her arm over, showing me the patch of bandage below her elbow where the artery had been tapped.
I said, “Why?”
“I didn’t want you to die.”
“Why?”
“I know what you think of me, and I don’t care. You did something awful to me that—that night in the hotel.” She blinked quickly. “I wanted to get back at you, and I did, and when Raul told me that he and his father were following you to Cuzco I came back to see if I could do anything else to hurt you, but I never wanted you to die. And I think we’re even now, so if you don’t want anything more from me, like blood or—or something, I think I will go to Lima.”
She was trying her best to make a good exit. It was too much for her. Her voice broke at the end. As she turned away, I said, “Wait a minute. Come over here and sit down.”
She came to the bed and sat down, both hands over her face as they had been the night I showed her herself in the mirror.
I said, “I never thought you were a tramp, Julie. I think your sense of values is wrong, and you’re pretty young to be kicking around on your own, but it takes more than that to make a tramp. I know I was brutal in Arequipa, but I was trying to show you something.”
“You did.” Her voice was muffled by her hands. “I haven’t had a drink since. Not one.”
“One or two or a dozen never hurt anybody, if you don’t let it get away from you. If I were your father or your brother, I would have spanked your behind instead. That’s all I meant by it, a spanking. If I did anything else to you, I’m sorry.”
She took her hands away from her face, smiling tearfully.
“I guess I need a father or a brother or somebody. I never had anybody that I can remember, only too much money. I guess I’m pretty badly spoiled.”
“You’re all right. You’re just headed in the wrong direc
tion.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, like a child.
“What’s the right direction for me?” she said, after a minute.
“I don’t know. You have to work it out yourself. Some women get married and raise a family.”
“I’d like a family. I’d like a big family, with aunts and uncles and babies and cousins all over the place. I haven’t a relative in the world that I know of. Or even a good friend. Everybody I know…”
“Don’t go around feeling sorry for yourself. Pick a good man with plenty of cousins and aunts and raise the rest yourself.”
“I’ve picked him. It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It just won’t, that’s all.” She stood up. “You’re supposed to rest, and not talk so much. Is there anything you want? A—” she blushed “—bedpan or something?”
“No bedpan. I’d like to know who you’ve picked and why it won’t work.”
She shook her head. I said, “Get it off your chest.”
She kept her mouth stubbornly shut. I said, “Come on.”
She looked down at me for another minute before she gave in.
“Raul.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to say, of all the men in the world…But I said, “Why him?”
“He’s my type, I guess. I know you don’t like him. He doesn’t like you, either. But he likes me, and he’s the kind of a man I need—I guess. Somebody to boss me around. You made me do a lot of thinking, after that night in the hotel. I was pretty miserable when he came along. At first he was only somebody I could use to get back at you, but then—I don’t know what happened. Maybe I just needed somebody then worse than I ever had before. He was nice to me—I suppose because he wanted my help—it’s hard to explain…”
“I know. You want to be bossed, and he likes to boss people. Why won’t it work?”
“His father. He thinks I’m a—tramp, or whatever it is in Spanish, and he wants Raul to marry Ana Luz. Raul doesn’t want to marry her, and she doesn’t want to marry him, and I want to marry him, and he wants to marry me, I think—or he would if I worked on him a little—but they have to do what his father says because Ana Luz is really his slave—his father’s, I mean—and it’s all so mixed up and hopeless it just isn’t worth talking about. Now go to sleep, for Heaven’s sake!”