The Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  They hit the floor, cowering under the heavy slugs pocking the ceilings and walls, looking around.

  As Bachelard had suspected, no one was here except a dead Indian woman. Also as he had suspected, there was a back exit to the cave, possibly leading to a room where the gold was stashed. He’d have to be careful now, for it could be a trap.

  “This way,” he ordered, leading the way through the door.

  Lighting a match and cupping it in his hand, he led the way through the low-ceilinged corridor. When they came to where it opened into another room, he dropped the match, sidled up against the wall, thumbed back the hammer on his revolver, and called, “Cameron?”

  No reply.

  “Clark?”

  Silence.

  He heard no breathing, sensed no presence in the heavy darkness. The only sound was the distant rumble he’d heard as soon as he’d stepped through the door at the back of the cave.

  “Where the hell are they?” he mumbled to no one in particular.

  He stepped softly into the room, lit a match and cupped it away from his body in case someone would train a bullet on the flame. No gunfire sounded, however.

  Perspiration streaming down his face and into his scraggly goatee, Bachelard lifted the match and walked around the room as the four Mexicans shuffled around the entrance, their backs to the wall, breathing fearfully.

  Bachelard found the candles, lighting several. No one was here. But there was a pit, and a rope dangling into it.

  “Damn! They got the gold!” he cried. Swinging his gaze around, he saw the back entrance. “And they’ve taken it out!”

  He bolted through the door, and the four Mexicans followed.

  “I’ve got you now, Cameron!” Bachelard screamed. “I’ve got you now!”

  CHAPTER 38

  CAMERON HAD NOT heard Bachelard’s yell, but he heard the shooting—seemingly random shots echoing within the chamber.

  “Everybody back against the wall!” he said, drawing his Colt, aiming it into the tunnel, and squeezing off two quick rounds.

  The ground trembled. Several chunks of rock broke away from the dome and plunged into the river and onto the banks, dangerously close to Cameron and the others.

  INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN, Bachelard felt the trembling as well. Rocks fell from the ceiling, and cracks appeared in the walls.

  What the hell was happening—an earthquake?

  He stretched out his arms to steady himself against the walls as he made his way awkwardly down the corridor, toward the circle of light growing before him.

  “Onward, men! Onward!” he ordered the Mexicans, whom he’d shoved out in front of him to absorb any more bullets Cameron’s group decided to fling his way.

  CAMERON, TOO, WAS thinking it was an earthquake. Then he remembered the Gatling gun. The loud reports and heavy, thunking rounds of the big weapon, in addition to all the other shooting, had probably opened some fissure inside the mountain. It probably wouldn’t take much of a crack to start a chain reaction and to get the whole mountain coming apart at the seams.

  Marina, Jimmy, and Clark pressed their backs against the chamber wall and darted wide, frightened eyes this way and that as several stalactites loosed from the ceiling like spears from an angry god and shattered on the rocky floor of the chamber. One fell only a few feet to Jimmy’s right. Marina jerked the boy away from it.

  She turned to Cameron. “We have to get out of here!”

  Cameron nodded fatefully. “The river’s the only way.”

  She seemed to have drawn the same conclusion herself, and looked at Clark.

  “No way,” he said. “I’ll never make it.”

  “You have to,” Marina pleaded.

  Clark laughed. The bandage on his breast was bright with fresh blood. The wound had opened. “Now you’re trying to drown me! Forget it. I’ll stay here.” He turned to Cameron. “Give me my gun.”

  Another stalactite plunged to the floor only ten feet away, spraying them with pink-and-white sandstone.

  Cameron grabbed Marina and Jimmy by their arms and led them to the lip of the bank, staring at the dark water broiling below. He grabbed the saddlebags off Jimmy’s shoulder and draped them over his own.

  “The river’ll take you through that tunnel and out of the mountain,” he said, with more certainty than he actually felt. “It’s the only way. Don’t fight it. Just try to keep your head above water and let the current do the work.”

  “I can’t swim!” Jimmy exclaimed, terrified.

  “You won’t need to, Jim. Go!”

  Marina looked at him desperately, then shuttled the look to her husband, crouched against the wall with his Bisley in his hand.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Cameron told her.

  She brought her eyes back to him. “I’ll see you on the other side?”

  “It’s a date,” Cameron said, conjuring a feeble smile.

  “Let’s go, Jim,” Marina said to the kid. Grabbing his hand, she said, “When I count to three, we’ll both jump.”

  Jimmy stared at the water and shook his head. He was saying something but Cameron couldn’t hear it above the rumble of the mountain and the broiling of the water.

  “ … three!” Marina said. Hand in hand, she and Jimmy plunged into the river, disappearing at once. Their heads reappeared several feet downstream, barely discernible in the foam-ravaged tumult. They bobbed for a few seconds before passing into the tunnel on the right side of the chamber.

  “Come on,” Cameron said, turning to Clark.

  “I told you, I’ll never make it. I’ll die here—dry, at least. Maybe I can even take one of the bastards with me.”

  Clark coughed several times, peered into the tunnel, jerked away as several shots chipped stone from the side of the entrance, then fired two quick rounds into the darkness.

  Cameron stood on the lip of the bank, staring at Clark, not sure what to do. He knew Clark was right—he’d never make it in the river.

  Clark laughed angrily. “You stupid bastard. This is the best thing that could happen to you. Now she’ll be all yours—if you make it, that is—and I’ll be out of the way.” He laughed again, but it was mostly a cough.

  “I don’t deny that I love your wife, Clark. But it was a marriage of convenience, for chrissakes!”

  Clark could not argue with that. He hauled himself to his feet and stepped to the edge of the bank. “All right, I’ll jump—on three.” He shot Cameron a dark look.

  Cameron counted to three and stepped off the bank, plunging into the icy water, surprised to find it wasn’t as deep as he’d suspected. His feet hit the bottom, and he shoved himself back to the surface even as the enormous weight of the saddlebags urged him back down.

  Looking around as the current pulled him toward the tunnel, he saw Clark standing on the bank, smiling and giving a broad wave. Hearing something behind him, the man turned. That was all Cameron saw. Suddenly he was in the tunnel and careening downstream, bouncing off rocks, fighting against the deadly weight of the saddlebags.

  He knew that if the river were any deeper he would have to let the bags go. As it was, however, whenever they pulled him to the bottom, he got his legs beneath him and propelled himself back to the surface, keeping one arm hooked around the leather band between the two bulky bags.

  BACK IN THE chamber, Clark had turned to face the two Mexicans aiming revolvers at him. He lifted the Bisley but before he could fire, both Mexicans triggered their own weapons. One slug went through Clark’s chest, just beneath the knife wound; the other entered his belly and lodged against his spine. He flew off his feet with a shriek.

  It wasn’t the bullets that killed him, however. What killed him—and the two Mexicans who had shot him—was the collapse of virtually the entire domed ceiling of the chamber. In seconds the men were buried under a mountain of sandstone and limestone.

  But as the roof disintegrated, Gaston Bachelard flung himself off the riverbank. With rocks falling all about him, he shot into the tun
nel.

  THE RUSHING WATER spun Cameron like a top, slamming him against submerged rocks—first a knee, then his jaw, then a shoulder—untii his whole body was numb with scrapes and bruises.

  His biggest enemies, however, were the saddlebags containing the statuettes. A collision with a boulder stunned him. The weight of the gold pulled him down. Before he realized what he was doing, he’d inhaled half a lungful of water.

  He kicked, trying to get back to the surface, but the current swept his legs out from under him and he sank even farther. He was about to release the bags—five statuettes, even if they were worth four thousand dollars apiece, were not worth his life—but from somewhere he mustered the strength to get his legs beneath him again. Finding a shallow boulder, he fought for the surface.

  When his head broke through, he sucked air into his lungs while coughing and vomiting up water. Opening his eyes he saw the eerie, twilight world of the tunnel, with its lowarching, vermilion ceiling. Two boulders grew larger and larger before him, until he smacked into them, hard, with his face and chest.

  Losing consciousness, Cameron released the bags, which immediately sank. He clawed at the smooth-polished stone, pain searing his skull. The current quickly swept him away from the rocks and dragged him under.

  Suddenly the current weakened noticeably. He was vaguely aware that he’d passed from the darkness of the tunnel into bright sunlight, and was swirling between low, red banks. Weak from exhaustion and nearly drowned, he tried once more to find a purchase on the bottom.

  His boots dug into the sand. He tried to stand, fell, tried again, fell again. He reached instinctively for a rock on the bank. Surprised to find himself clutching it, he ground his fingers into a cleft.

  He hung on for a long time, coughing up water and sucking in air, his body racked with pain. When he finally felt as though he’d purged himself of the river and his head had cleared, he glanced around.

  The water was churning around him with less vigor, and the level seemed to be dropping, judging by the old waterline.

  Frowning, puzzled, Cameron looked back at the mountain. Dust was billowing skyward in great mushroom clouds that were slowly dispersing.

  The whole chamber must have collapsed and dammed the river. He thought of Clark with a surprising sadness.

  Cameron began to search for Jimmy and Marina. No doubt they’d been propelled farther down the canyon; they’d had no gold weighing them down, and the river had not yet dammed when they’d gone through the tunnel.

  The bank was too steep to climb here, so Cameron waded downstream, steadying himself on the rocks, watching the river sink lower and lower, its eddies straightening, the riffles around snags disappearing. Submerged rocks rose, shining wet in the bright, midmorning sun. It was good to feel the heat through his wet tunic, to see birds twittering and bouncing in the shrubs up high on the bank.

  Tempering his own relief at having been spit from the river alive was his distress over Marina and Jimmy. Had they made it or had they been slammed against the rocks and drowned? He didn’t want to think about it, but he kept an eye out for corpses just the same.

  He’d walked maybe twenty yards, the water down around his knees, when he stopped suddenly and peered ahead, feeling his heart skip a beat. Lying close to shore, in a cove of the stone embankment, was a body.

  Cameron ran clumsily, splashing through the water, nearly tripping. Relief buoyed him as he approached the corpse. The body lying facedown, long silver hair floating about its head, was not Marina or Jimmy.

  Gaston Bachelard.

  The crazy old Cajun Confederate floated there in the dying current, legs angling beneath him. His gray hair wafted out around his skull like the tendrils of a sea creature. His open eyes, a washed-out, reptilian blue, dully reflected the sun. Already the hollow cheeks were darkening. The river must have propelled him past Cameron as Cameron struggled with the saddlebags.

  “Do you feel cheated?”

  Cameron turned sharply to his right. Marina stood on the stone embankment across the river. She was soaked, long hair plastered to her head and shoulders, blouse pasted to her breasts. She looked fine. She looked wonderful.

  Cameron smiled at her. He’d never felt so relieved.

  He shook his head. “No,” he replied to her question.

  It was enough that Bachelard was dead. He was even grateful he hadn’t had to kill him. There’d been enough killing.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “A few bruises here and there, but I am fine. Jimmy is resting back in the bushes. I think he is more terrified than anything.”

  “I guess that’s to be expected.”

  “Adrian?”

  Cameron shook his head. “He wouldn’t come.”

  “I didn’t think that he would,” Marina said with a fatalistic sigh, looking upstream with a melancholy expression on her face. “The gold?”

  “I lost it upstream a ways, but with the river going down like it is, I bet it won’t be hard to find.” He held out his hand to her. “Join me?”

  She looked at him, tears glistening in her eyes. She climbed down off the rocks and moved quickly toward him. She flung out her arms and wrapped them around his neck, burying her face in his chest.

  “I was so worried,” she cried.

  He engulfed her in his arms, rubbing his hands down her slender back, pressing her close, never wanting to release her again.

  “I was, too.”

  She looked at him with tears of relief and joy in her large brown eyes. “I love you, Jack Cameron,” she said huskily. “I wanted to tell you when you returned with Jimmy, but Adrian was there, and—”

  “I know,” Cameron said, looking down at her, smiling a knowing smile. “I felt the same way.”

  “I thought we would never be together. I thought I would never again know such happiness.”

  He pressed her close to him again. “Me too, Marina,” he cooed in her ear. “Oh God … me too.”

  They stood there in the river as the water gradually dropped from their knees to their shins to their ankles, holding each other close, never wanting to separate.

  But separate they did, finally. Cameron bent down and kissed her mouth. Then they turned and, holding hands, walked upstream.

  They said nothing as they walked. Words were not enough to express the relief and joy they felt at being together at last. It was enough to hear the tinny chatter of the water and the birds, to feel the warm sun radiate through their wet clothes.

  “Here we go,” Cameron said, seeing the saddlebags wrapped around the base of a boulder, all but exposed by the disappearing river, which was only a freshet now, curling down the middle of the sandy bed.

  “Oh my God,” Marina whispered.

  “Yep, it’s ours,” Cameron said, stooping to pick up the saddlebags. He turned them upside down, dumping the water, and draped them over his shoulder.

  “No,” Marina said. “I mean … what an awful thing we did—Adrian and I—getting all those people killed for such a pittance. Even if we had gotten the whole treasure, it would still be a pittance.”

  Cameron took her hand and led her back downstream. “It’s happened before,” Cameron said. “It’ll happen again. Many times. Gold is one hell of a temptation, and a harsh mistress to boot.”

  He stopped and stiffened as a gun barked once, twice, three times. The reports came from dead ahead.

  “You wait here,” Cameron told Marina, dropping the saddlebags. He drew his Colt and ran ahead, heart beating wildly, wondering what the hell could be happening now. Hadn’t they been through enough?

  When he’d run back to where he’d found Marina, he stopped and lifted the Colt to his shoulder. Just ahead were two men on mules. They were both dressed like Mexican peasants, with sombreros and patched boots. They wore serapes and gunbelts, and they were holding old-model rifles in their hands.

  At first Cameron thought they were men from Bachelard’s group, but then he saw the girl riding behind the
stout man with the thin black handlebar mustache. Each man trailed a pack mule on a lead rope.

  “Hold it right there!” Cameron yelled. “Throw those guns down.”

  Both men and the girt—a girl of about twelve, Cameron speculated—turned to look at him with fear in their eyes. They stiffened, hesitating in their saddles.

  “Amigo, we …” the man with the handlebar mustache started to say.

  “Throw ’em down!”

  The man with the mustache turned to the other, shorter man. He turned back to Cameron, took his rifle by the barrel, leaned down and set the butt on the sandy riverbed, and let it drop. The man beside him did likewise.

  “Your pistols—those, too.”

  When the men had tossed their pistols on the ground, Cameron stepped toward them. “What were you shooting at?”

  Both men turned their wary eyes to something on the ground before them. Cameron walked around the front of the mules and saw Bachelard lying where he had left him. With the water gone, the dead Cajun lay on the wet bed of the river, arms and legs spread.

  There were three nickel-sized holes in his head.

  Cameron turned a questioning look at the men.

  The one with the handlebar mustache shrugged and gestured to the girl riding behind him. She had snugged her head up tight to the man’s back, burying her face in his scrape.

  “He took my dear Juanita,” the man said, his hate-filled gaze on Bachelard. “Said he wanted to marry her.” He gestured to the other man—an old, cadaverous-looking gent with one blind eye and hollow cheeks, his head nearly swallowed up by the big sombrero—and said, “Old Juan and me, we tracked them all the way from Arizona to here, waiting for an opportunity to sneak her out of his clutches. It came this morning, during the firefight below the ruins. We snuck down and grabbed her while he and his men were shooting at the rurales.”

  Cameron nodded, stealing another look at the girl, her face still buried in her father’s back. What hell she must have been through at the hands of that mad old Confederate. Her father must have been through hell as well.