The Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  He sighed, and smiled as though the effort pained him, picking absently at a callus on his hand. “I wish now I’d gone back just to see ‘em once, before the folks passed on and the kids all left. I regret leavin’ the way I did, but I was just a kid. Freedom meant more to me than family.”

  “Did you marry?”

  He told her about Ivy Kitchen without any hesitation at all, which surprised him. He’d always found it difficult to even mention Ivy’s name. Something in Marina, though, made him want to talk to her about his most private thoughts.

  Suddenly he felt his face heat with embarrassment. “Well, listen to me,” he said with an effacing chuckle, coming to the end of the story. “I’ve never been known to talk a blue streak, but I believe I just have.”

  Marina ignored the comment. “You have lived an interesting life, Mr. Cameron. A life of adventure.”

  Cameron shrugged. “Guess it sounds that way.”

  “What did you hope for, when you left your home?” she said.

  He smiled. “Happiness and fulfillment,” he said. “A whole houseful of kids, and a wife to talk to when they’ve all gone to bed.” He shook his head. “Not loneliness,” he said, surprised at the regret he heard in his voice.

  Marina kicked the water and sighed. “I guess we have to make do with what we are given.”

  “I reckon,” he said. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her as he’d done before. He wanted to hold her and tell her more about his hopes and dreams, and hear about hers. He forced his mind away from it.

  Standing, he said, “I’m gonna turn in.” He checked the horses again, then headed back toward the fire.

  “Good night … Jack,” Marina said from the darkness.

  “Good night, Marina.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, before the sun had penetrated the steep canyon, Cameron rolled out of his blankets and took a walk to check on the horses and gather wood for a breakfast fire. He was stooping to retrieve a branch when he saw something in the rock wall before him.

  A turtle, the very same turtle etched on Clark’s plat.

  Cameron dropped his armload of wood and staggered over to take a closer look. In awe he slowly reached out his hand and ran his splayed fingers across the figure that had been carved in the rock. It had weathered some, so that the figure would have been hard to see from far away, but the white lines were still distinct.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Cameron muttered.

  He swung his gaze in a full circle, looking around. This couldn’t be the place, the X marked on the map. None of the landmarks matched those on the plat.

  Still, he’d found the turtle. He wasted no time in telling the others.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked Going when they’d all gathered around the figure etched in the rock.

  Going looked around, tipping back his head to study the high canyon walls. After several minutes, Going shrugged. “This can’t be the place. It can’t be the X. None of the landmarks are the same as on the map.”

  “Maybe we’re close,” Clark suggested.

  Going nodded. “Sí. Maybe that’s all it means. When we see the turtle”—he shrugged—“we’re close.”

  “It may not mean a goddamn thing,” Hotchkiss groused. He hadn’t put on his shirt yet, so he stood there in long johns and suspenders with his thin gray hair mussed about the crown of his pink, bald head. “It may have been put on the map just to throw us off. I heard they do that sometimes, these old prospectors, to throw a wrench into the search if anyone they didn’t want pokin’ around for their cache went a-lookin’.”

  “Could be,” Going allowed.

  Marina, standing beside her husband, said, “Jack—Mr. Cameron—said before that prospectors used marks to point the way.”

  “That’s right,” Cameron agreed, looking expectantly at Going. “I didn’t find any more nearby, but they’re probably spaced a good distance apart. Maybe we should just ride ahead, the way the turtle’s head’s pointing.”

  “I agree, amigo,” Going said with a nod.

  Too excited for breakfast, they mounted up and headed down the canyon, eating jerked beef as they rode. The trail rose through long-needled pines on a windswept ridge where the sun peered through pink-washed clouds, then descended into another gorge. At a fork in the gorge, they found another turtle, carved in the rock, its head pointing down the left fork.

  Two hundred yards farther on, the came to another fork but no turtle. They all dismounted and looked carefully, coming up with nothing. The cool morning breeze murmured in the pines above them and tiny birds chattered in the rocks on the ridgetops. The air was heating up as the sun climbed.

  Cameron glanced around and sighed. “Well, I guess we split up.”

  Hotchkiss nodded. “Jack, why don’t me and Jimmy take the fork to the right, and you four continue that way?”

  “Meet back here in an hour?” Cameron said.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Cameron glanced at the kid, whose sun-bleached hair, wispy curls sweeping his peeling cheeks, had gotten shaggy enough to brush against his neck. “No shooting, Jimmy—unless you’re sure you’re in trouble.”

  “I ain’t no retard,” the kid complained, spurring his mount after the graybeard, a packhorse jerking along behind him.

  When the pair had disappeared, Going started down the left fork. Cameron paused to drink from his canteen. When he lowered it he saw Clark looking at him, an impudent expression on the Missourian’s face.

  “Well, Mr. High-and-Mighty—do you believe us now?”

  “About the gold? I still have to see it to believe it, but I have to admit, things have gotten a mite interesting.” Cameron smiled agreeably.

  Clark’s eyes grew hard. “What are you gonna do when we find it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you gonna kill me and take my share?” He looked at Marina. “—And my wife?”

  “Adrian,” Marina objected, “please … I am your wife, and I will always be your wife. That was the agreement.”

  Clark nodded and made a face, as though he’d bitten into something sour. “Yes, that was the agreement, wasn’t it? … As long as I’m alive.”

  Cameron leaned forward, resting his forearm on his saddle horn, and pinned Clark with a direct look. He tried to sound as hard and cold as he could, trying to convince not only Clark, but also himself, of the truth in his words. “Get this straight, Clark. I have no intention of taking your gold or your wife. You can’t blame a man for lookin’ at her. If you were so damn worried about it, you shouldn’t have brought her out here. Now just get it out of your head. I have.” Then he rode after Going.

  Clark fished his brandy bottle from his saddlebags and took a liberal pull. But it only made him angrier—angry at Cameron and Marina, angry at the world, and angry at himself. Would the gold finally bring him happiness? Would it make up for everything he lacked?

  Going had just discovered another turtle when the flat pops of distant gunfire rose from the south, in the direction Hotchkiss and Bronco had ridden.

  Cameron reined his horse around, drawing his Colt. “Shit!” he exclaimed, wide-eyed with urgency. “Toke, you three stay here. I’ll take a look.”

  “You want me to go with you, Jack?” Going called as Cameron started off.

  “No. They could’ve ridden into a trap!”

  CHAPTER 24

  THERE WERE ONLY a few spurts of gunfire before everything went quiet. Cameron felt the blood rush in his ears like waves against a pier.

  His tongue tasted coppery. He had long ago learned to take that as a sign that Apaches were close. Some men sweated profusely. For others, old wounds ached. For Cameron it was that coppery, bloodlike taste on his tongue.

  He had a bad feeling about Bud and Jimmy. He didn’t like the silence that seemed to grow, like an invisible black cloud, as he rode.

  The trail twisted through chalky buttes spotted with yucca and catclaw. At the bottom of the gully, along a rocky cree
kbed, grew gnarled, wind-stunted trees that looked like something in a death dream. Far above these twisted sycamores hung three vultures in a loose orbit. Cameron’s breath caught in his throat as he wound around a stunted butte and spied a body about fifty yards beyond the trees.

  Keeping his eyes on the terrain around him, Cameron reached down, smoothly shucked his Winchester, and jacked a shell into the chamber. As he rode up to the man on the ground, he talked to himself, trying to remain calm. The hair on the back of his neck was standing upright, his heart was drumming like trains coupling, and his mouth was full of pennies.

  It was Hotchkiss. He was moaning and cursing, writhing in pain. The three arrows embedded in his belly, chest, and thigh danced as he moved.

  “Stay still, Bud,” Cameron said, dismounting, scanning the area as he moved carefully toward the old frontiersman, as though the man were booby-trapped.

  “Get … Get the hell out of here, Jack” Hotchkiss urged between grunts of pain, breathing heavily. “It’s no use … it’s no goddamn use.”

  “Sh. Take it easy.”

  “They had us sittin’ down here like ducks on a pond.”

  “Where’s Jimmy?”

  “If he ain’t dead, they took him. They hit me first. Didn’ … didn’ even know what was happenin’ before I was layin’ here on the ground and they was screamin’ and flingin’ arrows from those buttes up yonder. I squeezed off a couple shots but I didn’ hit nothin’ but air.” He lifted his head and smiled with a sharp prod of pain. “Oh Jesus, it hurts!”

  “Rest easy, Bud,” Cameron instructed. He studied the arrows sticking out of bloodholes in Hotchkiss’s body. He knew he couldn’t remove the one in the man’s belly without pulling out half his stomach.

  Cameron touched the other arrow, over Hotchkiss’s right lung. Hotchkiss yelled, “Ah, God … Don’t, Jack! It’s no use. It’s no goddamn use. I’m a goner.”

  Cameron knew with an overpowering anguish that it was true. He was torn between staying here and trying to do something for Hotchkiss, and going after Jimmy.

  Hotchkiss was reading his mind. “Get the hell out of here, Jack. Don’t go after Jimmy. There was at least ten of ‘em, and they’ll get you, too. They’re prob’ly heading back to their rancheria. Even if you find ‘em, there won’t be nothin’ you can do. They’ll just do to you like they done to me.” He arched his back and gave a cry of pain. “Ahhh … goddamn … that smarts!”

  Cameron knew Apaches well enough to know they had taken Jimmy alive for one reason and one reason only—to torture him. For Apaches, torture was sport, and they’d honed that sport to an art. He imagined the boy’s cries of pain, which the Apaches could prolong for days, and it sickened him.

  “Hand me my pistol, will ya?” Hotchkiss said.

  The long-barreled Smith & Wesson lay in the gravel about five feet to Hotchkiss’s right. Cameron knew why the graybeard wanted the gun; he’d’ve wanted it for the same reason. Cameron set the weapon in Hotchkiss’s outstretched hand. The old man’s eyes were rolling back in his head, showing the whites, and he was panting like a woman in labor.

  “God, I’m sorry I got you into this, Bud,” Cameron said, shoving off his hat and running a rough hand through his curling blond hair.

  “It weren’t none o’ your fault,” Hotchkiss said, getting a good grip on the pistol. “It’s just that … goddamn, we were so close to the gold!”

  “If I hadn’t wanted to go after Bachelard, none of this ever would have happened. You’d be back in Goldneld—”

  “I wanted to go after Bachelard as bad as you did.”

  “We should’ve known better.”

  “Go.” Hotchkiss waved him away. “Get out of here. Go back.”

  “I’m going after Jimmy.” Cameron snugged his hat back on his head and lifted his rifle.

  “It’s no use; he’s as good as dead.”

  “You were one of the very best men I ever knew, Bud,” Cameron said. He squeezed Hotchkiss’s shoulder for a moment, then stood. The older man grinned briefly, then said, “Just tell me one thing. Do you believe in God?”

  Cameron considered this for a moment, dropping his eyes. “Sure,” he said woodenly.

  Hotchkiss grinned again. “I don’t, either. So I guess I’ll see ya in hell, then.”

  “See ya, Bud,” Cameron said.

  “Later, Jack.”

  Cameron mounted his buckskin, then looked once more at his friend. His eyes veiled with tears. Brushing the moisture from his cheek with the back of one hand, he rode off, heading down the path the Apaches had left in the sand.

  He was fifty yards away when he heard the pistol pop.

  He didn’t look back.

  COMING TO A freshet bubbling down from a spring, Cameron stopped and watered his horse. He dismounted to take a good look at the tracks, holding the horse’s reins loosely in his hand.

  About two twisting, turning miles back, he’d seen from the scuffed tracks of leather heels—a single pair among the prints of unshod hooves—that Jimmy Bronco was being forced to walk, probably with a rope around his neck. The tracks told Cameron the kid had fallen several times and been dragged before he’d regained his feet. In the last mile or so, he’d been falling more and more often and getting dragged farther and farther. It appeared one of the riders pulled him onto a horse now and then, so they could make better time; then he’d throw Jimmy down and make him walk some more.

  The kid was wearing out. Cameron hoped he’d get to him before he was dragged to death. At the same time he knew that getting dragged was probably a much more pleasant way to go than what the kid probably had in store if and when the Apaches got him to their rancheria.

  Jimmy’d be the main attraction tonight. The women, kids, and even the old folks would come out to enjoy the festivities. To watch him writhe and hear him scream …

  Cameron winced at the thought, scrubbed the sweat from the back of his neck with his bandanna, then climbed back into the saddle and gave the animal the spurs. He knew the Apaches were gaining ground on him, and it frustrated him no end.

  The Apaches could keep up their breakneck pace for hours. Their mountain- and desert-bred mustangs were used to it and even if one or two of the mounts gave out, they could double up on one of the others. On the other hand, if Cameron’s gave out, he and Jimmy were dead.

  He followed a rugged, twisting trail into the high country. Pines and junipers grew out of the rocks. Grass became less scarce. Deer tracks were plentiful. Once, he saw a mangled juniper where a bull elk had scraped off its velvet, the antler tips laying the trunk open to its mushy red core. Cameron rode with his rifle light in his hands, boots soft in the stirrups, ready to come out of the leather at a split-second’s notice.

  The sun was angling down in the west, toasting the back of his neck and turning his buckskin tunic into a hot glove. His thought of Jimmy and his old pal Hotchkiss. He’d had no right to bring them along on this foolhardy mission to kill Bachelard.

  Bud was too proud to go home, where he belonged. And Cameron had been too focused on Bachelard—and Marina?—to urge the man to retreat to his ranch at the foot of Hackberry Mesa. At least he didn’t leave a wife and kids, as Pas Varas had. Bud had been married twice, to Indian women. They’d, given him two kids apiece, but had taken them when they’d left Hotchkiss.

  The sun was about a half-hour from setting when Cameron’s horse came out on the shoulder of a mountain cloaked in pines. The air was fresh and clear. A trickle of snowmelt water sluiced down a trough in the slope to his left.

  Cameron stopped his horse to listen. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of low, guttural voices.

  His heart quickening, he dismounted quietly, tied his horse to a branch, and donned his moccasins. Then he walked beneath the pines. The air was dark and filled with the heavenly smell of balsam—a sharp contrast to the overall mood of the place.

  The needles and spongy, mossy earth were scuffed, making the trail easy to follow. He wound up on a ri
dge, the slope of boulders, talus, stunted pines, and low-growing junipers falling away in a forty-five-degree angle. Below, a gorge was nestled in more pines and a few deciduous trees, mainly aspens and a few sycamores.

  Smoke smelling sweetly of pine rose up from the trees like high-mountain mist. Cookfires sparked through the branches. A dog whimpered and barked.

  Cameron crouched low, considering his situation.

  It was maybe a couple hundred feet down to the meadow, and the grade was fairly easy, something he could descend without falling if he made use of the handholds. There were plenty of boulders and trees to crouch behind. Also, it was getting darker, though the darkness would work against him as well as for him.

  How would he find Jimmy? How could he get him out of there with no light to guide him?

  Knowing it wasn’t going to get any easier the longer he waited, Cameron stole down the slope. About halfway down, he stopped and scanned the meadow beneath the treetops.

  There were two large cookfires tended by old women and girls. The braves were milling around, eating and tending their horses. Cameron could smell the unmistakable aroma of mule. Probably the braves had been out raiding pack trains when they’d discovered Hotchkiss and Jimmy. They must have brought a mule or two back on which to dine. Apaches loved nothing as well as mule—a big, succulent quarter roasted on a spit—washed down with tiswin, their near-toxic drink of choice, which turned them into a horde of drunken banshees with the devil’s own lust for blood and misery.

  Cameron wondered where Jimmy was. He had to get him out of there. He headed for a spot where the trees looked densest, one step at a time, keeping his eyes on the meadow and holding the rifle loosely before him. At last he hunkered down behind a stout pine, removed his hat, and risked a look around the tree.