“Well, it doesn’t look like we’re going to be riding very hard,” he groused. “Hell, at this pace you can nap in your saddle.”
Jimmy turned to Cameron with his jaw set. “They come up on us mighty fast, Jack.”
“The Apaches? I bet they did.”
“I—I …”
Cameron frowned. “What is it, Jim?”
The kid licked his cracked lips and turned his gaze to the rolling, sunbaked hills. “01’ Hotch, he had his six-shooter out and shot back. But me … well, I …”
“Froze?”
The kid nodded slightly. His eyes filmed over with tears.
Cameron shrugged. “Same thing happened to me when I was your age.”
The kid looked at him, wide-eyed with surprise.
“I was cowpokin’ in Nebraska one summer, just after I left home,” Cameron continued. “Me and another guy were ridin’ drag on a herd when all of a sudden about twelve Arapahos come stormin’ down a hogback, a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’.
“Well, me and Joe Luther—that was the older guy I was with—we hightailed it to a buffalo wallow and took cover. Joe Luther, he got his rifle out of his saddle boot and started sendin’ some lead after those braves, but me … Well, Joe Luther glanced over at me when he was reloadin’ and gave me the queerest look. Just then I realized my six-shooter was still in my holster. I hadn’t pulled it. I was froze up like a dead cow in a January blizzard.”
“You, Jack?”
“Yeah, me. What do you think—I’m not human? I froze up and pret’ near got Joe Luther and myself killed. Fortunately, Joe was able to squeeze off enough rounds to hold those braves off until some other drovers arrived to help out.”
“Yeah, but ol’ Hotch is dead on account of me,” Jimmy said.
“Oh, he’s not dead on account of you!” Cameron scolded. “He’s dead because it was his time to go. Nothin’ you or me or anyone else on God’s green earth could’ve changed that. When it’s a man’s time to go—or a woman’s,” he added, thinking of Ivy Kitchen, “then they go, in spite of how the rest of us feel about it or what plans we made or how much we want them to stay. That’s just the way it is. Even if you’d fired off a few rounds, the Apaches still would have killed Bill, and they probably would have killed you to boot.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Now quit sulkin’. Keep your mind on the moment.”
Cameron was about to spur his horse back toward Gomez, when Jimmy said, “Jack, you think I can get another brace of pistols somewhere? Those ’Paches took mine.”
Cameron suppressed a smile. “First chance we get, Jim,” he said, then heeled his horse up alongside the lieutenant’s.
“How is your young partner in crime, amigo?” Gomez asked him with a elf-satisfied smirk.
“Better,” Cameron said.
AN HOUR LATER they were off the wagon road and angling into the mountains. It was a rolling, rocky, water-cut country unfavorable for speedy travel, especially when you were pulling a rickety haycart equipped with a Gatling gun.
The main group went ahead of the wagon and two other soldiers, but halted periodically to wait, as the wagon bounced toward them over the eroded, cactus-studded country. The thing looked as though it would lose a wheel or break its axle at any moment. Cameron wished it would; then they would have no choice but to abandon it and really make some time.
Cameron was eager to find his group. The cries he had heard last night still haunted him, and he wanted to confirm that Going, Clark, and Marina were safe.
He still wondered … If it had not been one of the men of his party he had heard last night, then who?
The answer came when one of the rurales who had been scouting ahead returned to the column and reported seeing what looked like a human tied to a piñon tree under a distant cliff. Cameron, Gomez, and two other men rode out to take a look.
Fifteen minutes later they ascended a gravelly finger splitting two dry washes, to the base of the granite escarpment. They found the man staked to the tree, facing out from the cliff, head down, long, sandy-blond hair hiding his face.
The man was naked and covered with dried blood, crawling with ants and abuzz with flies. He’d been castrated, partially skinned, and several of his fingers were missing. There were hardly three square inches on him that had not been violated with a sharp knife.
The stench was almost palpable. Even Cameron, who had seen the grisliest of Indian outrages, had to work to keep from gagging.
Lieutenant Gomez said, “Ai-yee,” and crossed himself.
One of the men next to him vomited.
Cameron dismounted, walked over to the body and lifted the chin. The man’s eyeballs had been burned out with pokers; his nose was smashed and his jaw broken, but Cameron still recognized him.
It was Ed Hawkins—Jake’s brother. What the hell was he doing here?
Ed and Jake must have followed him and the others from Contention City. The Apaches must have found him on Cameron’s trail last night. Serves you right; Cameron thought, staring into the empty eye-sockets. But where was Jake?
The answer came to him like a sudden onset of the flu. No doubt Jake was still trailing Adrian Clark, Marina, and Tokente. Maybe he’d shown himself by now and the others were in trouble. Cameron’s urgent need to find the others renewed itself with vigor.
“You know this man?” Gomez asked him.
Before Cameron could answer, the head moved slightly and the lips parted. Cameron’s heart thumped.
Ed was alive.
“Jesus God,” Cameron breathed.
The man’s lips formed the words long before he could give them voice. “Help … Help me … please …” The voice was little more than a labored rasp.
Feeling sick, Cameron pulled his bowie—he did not want to signal his presence with the Colt—and plunged it into Ed’s chest just beneath the breastbone. Ed shuddered as if chilled.
When the body was finally still Cameron removed the bowie and cleaned it in the sand. Standing, he turned to Gomez, who was watching him, white-faced, with newfound respect.
“No, I don’t know him,” Cameron said. He grabbed the saddle horn and climbed back into the leather, then spurred his horse back toward the column.
As they made their way farther into the mountains, Cameron considered ways he could get rid of the rurales and back to Tokente, Marina, and Clark. For the moment, he and Jimmy were safest in the soldiers’ company, but tonight he wanted to keep traveling—only him and Jimmy.
There would be a moon by which to navigate, and the Apaches would have a hard time cutting their trail without the sun, so he and Jimmy could travel relatively safely. They’d no doubt catch up to the others sometime tomorrow morning.
It would take these distinguished upholders of Mexican law another week to cover that much ground, especially if they kept packing the cannon.
An hour later Gomez halted the column for the day, in a spot protected by a steep, sandstone ridge on one side, and brushy arroyos on two more. A spring bubbled out of several places in the rocks. The sun turned the sandstone ridge the color of copper; above, a hawk hunted, turning lazy circles in the cerulean sky, where a crystalline moon shone.
There was still at least another hour of good light left, but Cameron was glad the lieutenant had decided to call it a day. Traveling with these men was an exercise in frustration. Nearly all but Gomez looked greener than spring saplings, and had probably spent most of their lives hoeing beans and peppers. Cameron wondered if any of them even knew how to shoot the outdated Springfield rifles poking out of their saddleboots. In addition, could Gomez keep them from bolting or freezing when and if things got sticky?
Something about the man’s countenance, no less dubious and defensive for being so overbearing, told him not to count on it.
Cameron slipped the saddles and bridles from his and Jimmy’s mounts, then tethered them in a patch of grass near the water. He built a small fire. Gomez left his mount to be tended by one of
his men, spread his bedroll in the shade of a boulder and collapsed on it, producing a bottle from his saddlebags, a dreamy cast entering his eyes as he uncorked it.
Cameron and Jimmy shared the dried goat-meat and cheese the prefect’s wife had sent with them, Cameron giving Jimmy the brunt of the portion. When Jimmy had finished eating and had a cup of coffee, he went out like a light.
When the sun set, Cameron rolled up in his own blanket and tipped his hat over his face. He wanted to catch a few hours of shut-eye before he and Jimmy tried lighting out on their own.
Sometime later he opened his eyes to a sky full of stars, the crescent moon shimmering and bathing the foothills in ghostly light.
He squeezed Jimmy’s shoulder, and touched his index finger to his lips. The boy came awake and instantly began rolling his blanket. When Cameron had done the same, he looked around.
The rurales were dark heaps around the three guttering fires. Their snores rose on the vagrant breeze.
Gomez had posted guards on the perimeter. Cameron knew that he and Jimmy would have to make as little noise as possible so as not to alert them. Cameron figured they’d be seen eventually, but he hoped it wouldn’t be until after their horses were saddled.
He and Jimmy saddled the horses in anxious silence, glancing around, then led the animals down one of the arroyos, where the sandy bottom muffled the sounds of their hooves. They’d gone about seventy-five yards down the twisting, turning course when Jimmy’s horse started at some night creature scuttling in the shrubs. The animal jerked to a stop and whinnied.
Cameron and Jimmy stopped, listening. Cameron was about to sigh with relief when he heard questioning voices in the distance.
“Let’s go!” he said, and he and Jimmy quickly mounted and spurred their horses down the arroyo.
A rifle popped behind them, then another.
With Jimmy following closely behind him, Cameron traced the arroyo for half a mile, then followed a game trail up the bank through a narrow cut in a ridge, then higher into the mountains. Post oaks and piñon pines rose around them, silhouetted by the moon. Last night Cameron had oriented himself using the distant ridges as a guide, and now he rode in what he hoped was the general direction of the rest of his party.
When they were a good three miles away from the rurale bivouac, Cameron halted his horse on a ridge, turned back and cocked his head to listen. He thought he could hear a thin, distant voice or two, but nothing else aside from the labored breathing of his own horse and the mournful howl of a wolf higher up in the mountains.
“I think we’re rid of ‘em,” Cameron said, smiling at Jimmy. “How ya doin’, kid?”
“Just fine, Jack,” Jimmy said, in a voice that sounded very much like his old self.
“Let’s ride, then,” Cameron said, giving his horse the spurs.
CHAPTER 30
PERRO LOCO HAD crossed the Rio Bavispe four days behind Cameron and the others, two horses tied behind the mount he was riding. He traveled all day and most of the night, stopping only for catnaps and to eat the birds and rabbits he trapped or killed with a slingshot, not wanting to announce his presence with a gun.
He had reached the place where Cameron had left the others, though Loco could not know exactly what had happened. The Apache knew only that two riders had left the group about a half-mile back and that now another rider was heading back up the trail at a gallop.
Loco traced one of the hoofprints with his index finger, gripping the rifle he had taken from Tokente’s woman, pondering the situation.
Three had gone south and three had lingered here for several hours before riding on. Where was Cameron?
Perro Loco slung the rifle over his shoulder and mounted the white-man’s saddle, which he had found more comfortable than bareback riding for long distances. Something told him Cameron had ridden south. He reined his horse around in the direction the lone rider’s hoofprints pointed, and headed south.
Roughly four miles behind him, She-Bear studied Perro Loco’s trail along a dry riverbed. Like Perro Loco, she trailed two horses behind the one she was riding.
One was rigged with packs of food supplies, two extra rifles, a pistol, and ammunition. The other horse she had ridden until an hour ago. She was resting it now. She’d use it later, when the one she was riding had tired.
She-Bear gripped her rifle in her hands, tossed the hair from her eyes, scratched the scar on her nose, and continued on …
ALFRED GOING, ADRIAN Clark, and Marina came upon another turtle etched in a stone ridge, about three circuitous miles from where they’d waited for Cameron and the others. It was their third turtle that day.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Clark said, dismounting his horse.
“Not only that, but that,” Going said, lifting his chin to indicate something above and behind Clark.
“What?” Clark said, turning.
Marina had already seen it. “Oh my God …” she breathed.
Clark lifted a hand to block the sun and squinted at the formation towering above them. It was a stone spire with an arrow-shaped cap. The arrow was pointing due east, straight down the volcanic lava bed they had been following, the ancient path down which the turtles had been leading them.
“We’re close, aren’t we?” Clark said, feeling as though he were about to hyperventilate. His heart was doing somersaults and his head felt light.
“Hee,” Going said by way of reply.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Clark said, mounting up.
He and Going started off down the lava bed, the shod hooves of their horses clomping loudly on the time-worn black rock of the canyon. Marina watched them go, then turned to look behind her, hoping she’d see Cameron and the others.
But there was no one there, and she was beginning to feel, with a sinking in her stomach, that she was never going to see Cameron again … that she would never be able to tell him that she loved him … that no matter what became of them, no matter what else she would lose or gain in this life, she loved him …
But Marina had a feeling that Adrian Clark was going to remain an obstacle between her and Cameron. Something told her that Adrian would kill either her or Cameron or both rather than let them be together. She turned once more to glance down the trail, seeing nothing but lava rock and the narrow defile shaded by the high rock walls, then rode on.
She caught up to Going and Clark and they came upon yet another turtle, which led them out of the canyon and into the mouth of another. There was a pile of rock between walls of andesite that jutted at least a thousand feet straight up on both sides, sheer walls, with nary a crag or crack, blocking out the sun. It looked as though, relatively recently, boulders had fallen from the clifftops and shattered in the mouth of the canyon.
Clark rode around the wreckage and had started into the canyon when he saw Tokente inspecting the rubble with a puzzled air. Clark paused and asked, “What is it?”
“The church.”
“What?”
“Look,” Going said, pointing at what remained of the ruined adobe walls and belfry. He saw no bells.
“Of course,” Clark whispered, reining his horse back to the pile.
“There must have been an earthquake.”
Clark looked at Marina and grinned happily. She returned the look and the smile. It was exciting indeed to find what they had been searching for. She only wished Cameron had found it too.
Clark removed the plat from his boot and opened it before him. He looked around, peered up at the cliffs towering a thousand feet above them, then pointed. “The gold is in there. Back farther in that canyon.”
“Hee,” Going smiled, staring into the canyon, the opening of which was bathed in golden light.
It was a mythic scene, ominous yet somehow beckoning, welcoming yet chilling. The gold would be in there, hidden in the canyon.
“What are we waiting for?” Clark asked Going.
Going shrugged. “’S awful dark. I think we should w2ait until tomorrow.”
“With walls that steep there won’t be adequate light until noon!”
“The morning will bring better light than this. It’s dark as night in there now. We won’t find a thing.” Going dismounted and started unsaddling his horse.
Clark looked irritated. “What are you doing?”
“Set up camp. Build a fire. Make coffee. That gold’s been there for two hundred years. It will be there tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait until tomorrow!”
Going pulled the saddle from his horse and tossed it on the ground, near the rubble. Marina dismounted and began unsaddling her own mount.
Clark watched them, red-faced with anger. Suddenly he coughed. The spasms lasted nearly a minute, irritating his horse.
When they’d subsided and he’d wiped the blood from his mouth, he said, “Well, I’m going in for a look. The hell with you two!”
When he’d left, Marina said to Going, “Is there water around?”
“There might be water in that little side canyon,” the Mexican said, pointing. “If there is, there’ll be grass there, too.” Going laughed and shook his head as he began gathering rocks for a fire ring.
“What is humorous?” Marina asked him.
“Life is humorous, señora. I grew up near here, in a village—I do not even know if it exists any longer. I hunted and fished in these mountains. Hell, I probably passed within two or three miles of this place. Two or three miles within the mother lode of all mother lodes of Spanish gold!”
“We don’t know it’s there yet,” Marina cautioned.
“No, but if it is there, the joke will be on me.”
“If it is not, then I guess the joke will be on us all,” Marina said.
Hefting a rock, Going shrugged. “Well, I guess we are just romantics …” he said, as if that excused them.
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