Cameron instinctively liked the woman and thought Going had chosen a good wife, but he could not help stealing glances at the poor woman’s nose, which bore distinct marks of teeth across the bridge and down the sides of both nostrils. If not for the scar, she would be pretty. Cameron wondered if she had indeed received the bite in a fight over Going, but doubted he’d ever really know. Going was a master jokester, and you never knew when he was serious.
When Cameron was not sneaking looks at She-Bear’s nose, or busy listening to another of Going’s stories about people he’d known, renegades he’d tracked, horses he’d ridden, women he’d loved, and the money he’d made in the mines, his gaze strayed to Marina. She smiled at Going and Hotchkiss’s verbal sparring, throwing her hair back as she ate.
Once, as she tore meat from a bone with her thumb and index finger, looking down and frowning with the effort and against the pain of the hot meat, Cameron indulged in a study of her face. Marina lifted her head to drop a chunk of chicken into her mouth, and as she simultaneously chewed and sucked in air to cool the meat, she caught him staring.
She flushed and smiled. Before she looked away, Cameron felt her penetrating gaze as a sudden flash of fire, all the way to his bones.
When everyone had finished the main meal, She-Bear served queso de tuna, a traditional Mexican sweetmeat made from the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, and rich black coffee with goat’s milk. Cameron savored every bite of the dessert, knowing it would probably be his last for several weeks, maybe a couple of months. It was a long way into the Sierra Madre, and a long way out again, with hidden perils all along the trail.
When the meal was finally finished, Going poured another round of wine for his guests while She-Bear cleared the table. Marina started to get up and help but was quickly pushed back into her chair by the grumbling She-Bear.
“Please, you can’t do all this work alone,” Marina objected in Spanish.
She-Bear turned away with an armload of plates. Going put his hand on Marina’s wrist, grinning knowingly and wagging his head. Nothing would have embarrassed the Indian woman more, Cameron knew, than having a young lady of obvious aristocratic breeding help her with such menial chores as supper dishes.
“Clark, why don’t you show Alfred your plat?” Cameron said.
Clark flushed in the lantern light playing across his face, and regarded Cameron gravely.
“It’s all right,” Cameron assured him. “He won’t steal it from you.”
Cameron had studied the map their first night on the trail, but as he’d expected, he hadn’t recognized any of the crudely drawn landmarks. He’d journeyed into the Sierra Madre after Apaches, but he’d been too busy looking for Indian sign to notice much else. His own prospecting, years ago, had taken him farther west, into the Mojave Desert of California. He knew that if Clark had a chance of finding the X marked on the map, he’d have to have help from someone who knew the country and recognized at least one or two of the plat’s represented landmarks. Cameron hoped his old friend Going would be that person.
Reluctantly Clark removed the pocket he’d sewn into his coat, undid the thong, and handed the map, copied on a large sheet of parchment, to Going, who accepted it soberly. Going shoved his cup and wine bottle aside and drew a lantern near, then unrolled the wrinkled paper on the table before him, weighting the ends with cups.
“Any of those figures mean anything to you, Toke?” Cameron asked after a while.
Going was studying the turtle in the bottom right corner. Furrows in the bridge of his nose deepened and his jaw loosened as he considered the curious mark.
“This figure here I recognize,” he said slowly. “I saw it drawn on some rocks not far from the village of San Cristóbal when I was digging for gold. Just some figures drawn by the ancients,” he added with a shrug.
“Have you seen it anywhere else?” Clark asked.
Going pursed his lips, thinking, and shrugged. “No … I don’t think so.”
Cameron sighed and pushed a fork around with his thumb. “There was a miner in the Mojave some years ago. He marked the way to his placer by chiseling little stick figures into the nearby rocks, sort of like Hansel and Gretel dropping crumbs to find their way in the forest. Each one was a little different, depending on how close they were to the mine. They were his secret code, so he could find his way back to the place after shipping out a load of ore.”
“You think that’s what these are?” Going said, pressing an index finger to the turtle on the map.
“Could be,” Cameron said with a shrug. Clark was studying him thoughtfully, eyes bright with hope. “I still don’t believe there’s gold, you understand,” Cameron said to him. “But if there is gold, that mark might lead the way.”
Clark nodded slowly. “Of course.”
Marina’s eyes brightened as she studied the map before Going. “Sí,” she whispered. Turning slowly to Cameron, she said, “I have seen the turtle. When I was a child, my father would take me on his hunting trips to the mountains.” She shook her head, awestruck. “I had forgotten.”
“Were they near this village of San Cristóbal?” Cameron asked her.
She frowned and shook her head. “I remember a village, but I do not remember which one. I was too young.”
Clark turned to her sharply. “You must remember, Marina, please!”
“Was it in a valley closed off from the south by three sharp peaks?” Going asked her.
Marina was frowning and studying the table, trying to remember. “I … I think so … si,” she said, lifting her eyes to Going’s. They grew bright with recollection.
“You are looking for the Lost Church of San Bernardo,” Going said to Clark, a knowing smile growing on his lips. “Hee.”
“You know it?” Clark asked with some urgency.
Going spread his hands. “Who does not know the legend?”
“Have people tried to find it?”
“Of course, señor. But most people believed it was south of San Cristóbal, behind those three peaks. That was what the Jesuit register said in Mexico City. But you know you can never trust the word of a monk. Hee.”
“You think there’s a possibility it’s really there … somewhere?” Cameron asked, unable to keep a growing touch of eagerness from his voice.
“You know me, Jack,” Going said. “I am just a superstitious old heathen with gold on the brain. I will believe anything until it is proven false.”
Marina looked at him urgently. “Please, Señor Going. Lead us to the turtles carved in the rocks. I would not remember the way.”
“Hee. That is Apache country. Not to mention that it is also the home of much revolutionary fighting. Hell, there are even scalp-hunters out there, and with a scalp like mine”—Going ran a big hand over his thick black hair—“they might mistake me for an Apache.”
“If there’s gold out there, we’ll find it ourselves,” Cameron said to Marina with a thin smile, sneaking a look at Going.
Predictably, the short, stout man jumped to his feet. “Not without me you won’t!”
“Wait a minute!” Clark objected, casting an angry look at Cameron.
“You know how big that country is?” Cameron said. “We could spend years scouring one small section of it and coming up with nothing but Apache arrows.”
“I don’t like the idea of splitting the gold up any more than I have to,” Clark said, nonplussed.
Going grinned and said slowly to Clark, in a hushed, reverent tone, “If there is as much gold at San Bernardo as the legend says there is, you could bring the whole Mexican army into the search and still make out a millionaire, señor.”
Clark studied the man for a long time, his expression softening. Stifling a deep-throated cough, he poured more wine and threw it back.
Going smiled across the table at Cameron. “Hee,” he said.
“It’s settled, then,” said Marina, relieved, ignoring the look of irritation her husband shot her as he poured more wine.
&
nbsp; CHAPTER 20
CAMERON AND THE others were waiting for Alfred Going to finish using the outhouse, around which three goats grazed in the morning sun. The rest of the group was mounted and ready to go.
Going had decided at the last minute—he already had mounted his horse, in fact—to take his constitutional, and the others waited self-consciously. Cameron held the reins of the Mexican’s horse; Clark, Marina, Hotchkiss, and Jimmy Bronco sat their tail-whipping mounts by the corral, Clark coughing into his handkerchief every few minutes.
Hotchkiss made small talk with Marina until there was nothing left to say. Finally he asked Cameron, with a touch of anger, “Did he always do this when you were getting ready to go somewhere?”
“Yeah … I guess I’d forgot,” Cameron said regretfully. “If I’d’ve remembered, don’t think I would have pushed him to come along.”
“A damned annoying habit,” Hotchkiss allowed.
The outhouse door squawked open and out stepped Going, buckling his gunbelt around his waist and adjusting the soft leather holster on his hip.
“Thought you fell in,” Hotchkiss groused.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Going. “She-Bear’s huevos rancheros sometimes have a bad effect.”
“Ain’t you gonna tell her good-bye?” Cameron asked him.
Climbing into his saddle, Going shook his head. “She-Bear, like many Indians, does not believe in good-byes. I told her I was going, so she knows that I am going and that, if the Creator wills it, I will return.” He accepted his reins from Cameron and touched his steel-dust gelding with his heels.
“I bet she’d like to shoot me for stealing you away from her,” Cameron said.
“Of course she would,” Going said, chuckling. “What woman would want to see a man like me ride away? But I appeased her by telling her I would come back rich, and that lifted her spirits. She-Bear is a greedy woman—truly an oddity among her people. Once she told me she’d like to live in a city and dress like a white woman. Hee.”
A few miles south of his ranch, Going led the group off the freight trail. Cameron was wary. You didn’t leave the main trails in this part of the country unless you knew exactly where you were going. The main trails usually led to water and if you left them you had to be sure that your bushwacking would lead you to springs or creeks, or you would die. It was as simple as that.
Cameron and Going were riding about fifty yards ahead of the others when Cameron said, “You have a trail mapped out in your head?”
Going turned to him with his wide smile. “Don’t worry, amigo. I know where I am going. You forget, I grew up in this country.”
Cameron shrugged. “Yeah, I know you did. I just hope you remember where to find water.”
“I know where to find water. And, just as well, I know where not to find Apaches. Apaches have been raiding along the freight roads lately, and I’ve seen a couple of rancherias along water courses. There has been some rain lately, so the basins should be filled, and that will allow us to stay away from the riverbeds and the main springs where the Apaches will go for water.”
Cameron nodded, satisfied his old Mexican friend had not lost his touch. He held his hand out to the man. “Toke, your bowel peculiarities aside, I’m glad you’re along.”
“Me too. She-Bear I love with all my heathen soul, but it is nice to be trailing again,” Going said, shaking Cameron’s hand and grinning. “But that woman—Señor Clark’s wife—she has her eye on me. I know, I can tell these things. You better tell her that, as desirous as I am, I am no man to get entangled with.” His voice grew dark as he dragged out the words, shaking his head: “She-Bear is a very jealous woman.”
Cameron glanced back at Marina following her husband on her white-footed black. Jimmy Bronco was jawing at her, probably bragging about his lightning-fast draw.
“Yeah, I’ll … uh … tell her,” Cameron said.
They rode on, mile by slow mile passing beneath them, taking their time and saving their horses. They all kept a sharp eye on the rolling desert stretching around them, an endless, brassy waste broken by distant mountain ranges, great heaps of rock scattered over the desert floor, and huge spines of red-and-black volcanic dikes poking up from the sand, like the backs of half buried dinosaurs. Occasional playas showed in sinks when they climbed a grade—bleached desert lakebeds in which very little, if anything, grew, and around which the long-defunct waves had deposited ridges of polished rock.
The sand was etched with the tracks of deer, Gila monsters, coyotes, wolves, and the occasional scratches and blood smears where a raptor had descended on prey.
Cameron was watching for signs of human presence—the prints of moccasins or horses—when he realized they were indeed following a trail, albeit an ancient one, threading around ocotillo and cholla clumps.
Cameron was grateful for the brush but knew that while it concealed him and his group, it could also conceal twenty or thirty Apaches who might have spied them from a ridge. It was true that most of the Apaches had been driven away from the region—some had even been shipped all the way to a reservation in Florida—but renegades and misfits remained. Cameron just hoped none were of Perro Loco’s caliber.
In the early afternoon, when the heat became too intense for safe travel, the group descended an arroyo choked with mesquite and papache shrubs, and built a small fire for coffee. They ate beans, tortillas, and dried fruit, and napped in the shade beneath the shrubs. After a quarter hour, Going woke. He rolled a couple of cigarettes from his tobacco, which smelled sweetly of apples, and handed one to Cameron.
“We’ll hit the Bavispe in a few days,” he said quietly, to keep from waking the others.
“Where it curves south?” Cameron asked, taking a drag off the cigarette.
“Sí. We’ll follow it into the foothills. I’ll feel better in that country.”
“How’s that?”
“More places to hide.”
Cameron nodded.
“It will be nice to bathe in the river,” Going said, sniffing his armpit. “My first day on the trail and already I smell like a horse.”
Cameron smiled at him. “That She-Bear’s gone and civilized you.”
“Sí.” Going nodded. “When are you going to get civilized, Jack?”
Cameron shrugged and looked off thoughtfully. “I reckon I ain’t the civilizin’ type.”
“You just need the right woman,” Going said. He glanced at Marina, sleeping under her hat. “Too bad that one is married, no?”
“She’s not my type anyway,” Cameron said. He flushed a little, felt adrenaline spurt in his veins. No, she wasn’t his type, he thought. She hadn’t been dead for six years.
He waited another half-hour, then woke the others, kicked sand on the fire, and they started down the trail once again.
Four hours later the sun waned behind a red spine of rock in the west, purpling the desert. The heat went with the sun and the horses quickened at the freshening breeze. Quail called and deer came out to graze a grassy flat stretching northward, the sage showing silvery in the blond, sun-gilded forage. There wasn’t a cloud in the softening sky.
When the trail Going was following was no longer visible, the party camped in a hollow where boulders and brush hid them from view, and built a small fire over which they brewed coffee and fried bacon.
Cameron unsaddled his horse and picketed the animal in the smattering of grass available. He shucked his rifle from its boot and walked back along their trail for half a mile. Standing on a low rise, he watched and listened for anyone who might be following them.
Satisfied they were alone, at least for now, he headed back to camp. He set his rifle down and ate one of the biscuits Marina had prepared with bacon, and accepted the coffee she poured.
“Thanks,” he said.
They were the first words he’d said to her all day, having wanted to keep his distance from her. Like Going had reminded him, she was married. It might not have been a marriage made in heaven, but
it was marriage nonetheless.
“De nada,” she said, smiling slightly and meeting his gaze just for a moment.
Was it his imagination or was he falling in love with her? Or was he just aroused by the way she filled out her white blouse and the way her wool skirt pushed against her legs as she moved? Whatever it was, he had to admit that being around her, even when he was trying to ignore her, made him feel more alive than he’d felt in one long, lonely stretch of time.
Grumbling to himself, he turned away and drifted off to drink his coffee and eat his sandwich. He and Hotchkiss were talking several yards beyond the fire when Going approached.
“Nice night, eh, amigos?”
“Right fine,” Hotchkiss agreed.
Going sniffed the fresh air that smelled of creosote and the spicy mesquite burning in their campfire. “Ah … I have always loved camping in the desert on nights such as these. It brings a man back in touch with his Creator.”
“It does, at that,” Cameron said. “But I’d just as soon be sitting on my half-finished gallery, sipping tequila and watching the stars over Rockinstraw Mountain.” And hearing Jimmy shoot rats down at the trash heap by lantern light, he thought.
“What about the gold?” Going asked him. “In a few weeks, if the map is true, you will be a rich man.”
Cameron looked at his Mexican friend. “I’m not out here for the gold, Toke. I should’ve told you that before, but I’m telling you now.”
“I suspected as much,” Going said, pursing his lips knowingly. “I know you too well to believe that you would come down here, risking Apaches and rurales, to chase a legend and some figures on a map. Maybe a few years ago, but not now. I can see it in your eyes, Jack. You have lost your—” He looked around, searching for the right word. “—your sense of romance. I am sorry for you.”
“Yeah, well, just the same, I think you should know I’m going after Gaston Bachelard.”
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