Valley of Fire

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Finally, Geneviève Tremblay sought out my advice.

  “I heard the train just now,” I said, all conversational-like. Hoping she’d get my drift.

  She didn’t. Or if she did, she ignored it.

  “Heading to Las Vegas,” I said.

  She ate more soup.

  “Wonder if Sean Fenn’s on it.”

  She kept right on eating.

  I got her meaning. Turning to Jorge de la Cruz, I said, “I reckon it would be good to rest here. Maybe I can catch some trout in the river. Cook some up for supper.”

  It is what I done.

  Didn’t get thanked for that, neither.

  Here’s one of the first mistakes—not counting falling off the train and into the Pecos River—Sister Geneviève made. She smiled too often at Jorge de la Cruz. Oh, not that he got any manly notions, not as old as he must’ve been, but he just couldn’t let that lovely nun out of his sight.

  Next morning, after cooking us a fine breakfast, he insisted that he would escort us down to Anton Chico. It was too far to walk, he said, for a woman of the cloth with such a fresh wound to her limb. So I saddled the two mules that I’d had to unsaddle the previous night, and the big farmer helped Geneviève Tremblay into the saddle, practically barreling me over to do the deed. Made sure she was comfortable, handed her a canteen of water and a sack of tortillas and cabrito.

  Yep, they rode, and I walked. Twelve miles south. Having spent the night in the lean-to with that farmer, who snored like a dozen damned howitzers, keeping me awake all night. Twelve miles down the river, and Jorge de la Cruz didn’t shut up once, just kept talking to Sister Geneviève the whole day.

  Anton Chico ain’t nothing but a village in the Pecos River Valley, but it was a mighty important one—a million-acre land grant full of cattlemen, sheepherders, freighters, and the like. The Spanish colonists had built it like a fort when they was settling here in the early 1860s. Homes of stone, and high walls, a church built stronger than the Alamo.

  They rode right through the village, the Sister and the farmer, with me walking behind them, hat pulled low and head bowed, just in case any of Felipe Hernandez’s men was watching.

  We passed a nice stone building with a barn and corral, and there was plenty of good horseflesh in that corral—which caught my fancy.

  “Look at those horses, Mister Bishop,” the nun called out. “Are those the kind of horses you have expressed an interest in purchasing?”

  They was sure worth stealing, but I didn’t answer.

  “Sister Gen.” The farmer had trouble saying Geneviève, so he’d shortened it to Gen just how Sean Fenn had done and how I did on occasion. “That is the home of Demyan Blanco, surely one of the finest caballeros in the Río Pecos Valley.”

  “Does he sell horses?” she asked.

  “But of course.” Jorge de la Cruz turned to give me a look I’d seen plenty of times before, like when waiters and hostelers was wondering if I could pay my bill. “But he is a tough one to haggle with, especially over horses.”

  We went on to Abercrombie’s Store, which was right next to the San José church, but the bells was ringing in those twin towers by the time we got there. It had taken us all day to ride and walk to Anton Chico on account that de la Cruz insisted on traveling like a snail so not to wear out Sister Gen, and we’d stopped for a noon meal that had taken a coon’s age to finish on account that even while eating, the farmer couldn’t shut up.

  Geneviève swung off Lucía, and tested her leg. “It is Mass. We should attend.”

  “Bueno,” de la Cruz said. “Afterward, I shall introduce you to Padre Guerra.”

  “Gracias,” she told him, and leaned against his massive body so he could help her inside the church. “But it would be much better if you could introduce Mister Bishop to Señor Blanco.”

  He shouted something, belching out a laugh, saying that he would be much happy to do that, and that Demyan Blanco was his cousin.

  So I went to Mass. Sat squirming on the back pew, all that Latin and all that kneeling and such bringing back to mind my years at the Sisters of Charity orphanage. I knowed I couldn’t partake of any of the doings, since I’d never been confirmed, and knowed if I done something only Catholics could do, I’d be struck dead by lightning and sent straight to Hell. So I squirmed, and got to thinking about Sister Rocío and the Valley of Fire. But I couldn’t think of nothing that one-armed hag had told me, nothing that made sense, nothing that would explain why a nun would bust me out of jail. I couldn’t think why a nun like Sister Geneviève would stay with me and insist on finding something buried in a bunch of lava rocks, or what a nun knew that would interest Sean Fenn.

  Every once in a while, I’d catch myself praying, coming up with the right responses to something the priest said, but mostly I wondered if Felipe Hernandez, or Sean Fenn, would be waiting for me once I stepped out that front door.

  They weren’t. Maybe God listened, though I doubt if He cared a whit for me.

  It was nigh dark. Anton Chico was about to go to sleep, but we headed to Abercrombie’s Store, where Sister Geneviève pulled out her purse and paid for supplies. Coffee and tortillas, grain for horses, canteens, bedrolls, jerky, enough grub to last a week or so, I figured.

  “How about this here Winchester?” I hefted a big old Centennial model, a big caliber baby that would be sure to stop buffalo, which we wasn’t gonna run into, or Sean Fenn, which I was certain we would see.

  “No firearms,” the nun said. “The Lord will provide.”

  Easy for her to say. She still had that little derringer, which wouldn’t stop Sean Fenn, and maybe not even a scrawny jackrabbit.

  She spent her last coins on the stuff, then said we’d be back to pick up our supplies after we’d bought some horses and tack from Señor Blanco. The merchant was glad to wait on her. The cad wouldn’t give me the time of day. Then we wandered off to see Demyan Blanco.

  Blanco, indeed, proved to be the best haggler in the territory. Only he didn’t haggle. He set his price, and stuck with it, on account, I reckon, that he saw how desperate we was. Even de la Cruz couldn’t persuade him to lower his price, which wasn’t even close to being fair. I had half a mind to walk away, then come into his corrals later that night and steal some. In particular, that fine blue roan that I knowed could go across the desert like a camel. That was a fine piece of horseflesh, but even that gelding wasn’t worth $200. A hundred, maybe.

  “Señor,” Sister Geneviève pleaded, “all we seek are two horses, and you have many, and perhaps a pack mule, but the prices you stick with are—”

  Angry, de la Cruz interrupted the Sister, yelling at his cousin. “Perhaps I shall ask Father Guerra to read your name in Mass, Cousin.”

  I figured they were distant cousins, or just didn’t like one another.

  Demyan Blanco grinned. “Did you see me at Mass tonight, Cousin?”

  Sister Geneviève had to step in front of the big farmer to stop the fisticuffs before they begun. “We are a civilized people and we are Christian.”

  “I am a freethinker,” Blanco said.

  “And you shall burn in Hell for your wickedness,” the farmer roared.

  The nun stared, giving Blanco her best, most un-nun-like smile, her eyes twinkling, but that Demyan Blanco was the hardest rock in a county of hard rocks.

  “How much for the roan?” the Sister asked. That had taken me for surprise. I’d been eying that fine gelding, had casually asked about him, but directed most of my bartering and haggling and questioning at a bay mare and a piebald gelding.

  “As I told your amigo, two hundred dollars, American. Gold preferred. Ten dollars for the saddle and bridle. I have a sidesaddle that I can let go—”

  “No sidesaddle. We have hard country to ride across.”

  That stopped Blanco, who wet his lips, and reevaluated the nun.

  “How do you ever sell any horses?” I asked. “If you don’t give and take?”

  “I give,” he said, opening
his palms in a gesture of gentility. “I give horses. I take money. And I even lower the price when it suits me. It does not suit me now.”

  “You are—” de la Cruz started, but Sister Geneviève hushed him.

  “I will take the blue roan”—she shot me a quick look—“for me. The paint horse I will pay no more than fifty dollars for, and you will throw in the saddle for Mister . . .” She had forgotten the name I was using. Hell, so had I. “For my guide.”

  “Let him ride bareback.” Blanco was a nasty man.

  “You will throw in the saddle or we will walk away.”

  “As you wish.” He bowed.

  “And the mule over there.” She pointed to a big mule. “How much for him?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  That was fair.

  “And a pack saddle?”

  “Twenty?”

  That wasn’t.

  “Then I owe you two hundred eighty dollars.”

  By grab, she had done all that ciphering in her head.

  “American.” Demyan Blanco smiled. “Gold preferred.”

  “But, of course.” Sister Geneviève was smiling herself. “I spent my last eagles at Abercrombie’s.” She reached into her habit.

  I stepped back, ready for her to pull that little pepperbox pistol and watch Demyan Blanco wet his britches.

  But that ain’t what the nun pulled out at all.

  What she held in her hand almost made me piss in my pants.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It wasn’t big. Pressed thin, it probably didn’t weigh more than six ounces, but, damn, it was beautiful.

  Sister Geneviève held it reverently, even seemed to be holding her breath, then she extended her hands, balancing the ingot on her fingertips.

  There was all sorts of delicate designs on the top, including a square stamp on the left end, with a small o above a large capital M. Next, you could see what appeared to be a crown, a fancy V and some pretty and peculiar designs. The ends was curved. Demyan Blanco’s eyes glazed over. The farmer’s lips parted. I kept waiting for him to drool.

  “Is that . . . ?” The horse trader couldn’t finish.

  I started to touch it, but the Sister handed it to the farmer, who gripped it in them sweaty hams he called hands, and he staggered back against the corral post.

  “It is a gold ingot, most likely assayed and minted during the reign of Philip IV.”

  “How much is it worth?” Blanco asked.

  Sister Geneviève pointed at the V with her index finger. Demyan Blanco moved closer.

  “That symbol is the Roman numeral five, which means it equals five Spanish ounces. An old Spanish ounce is slightly larger than how we measure an ounce today, but not much. So I’d say you’d be safe in saying this weighs almost six ounces.”

  Señor de la Cruz tested the weight of the ingot, lifting it up, lowering it, lifting it, his head bobbing all the while.

  “Now,” Sister Geneviève said, “as a nun, I do not know what the current price of gold is—”

  “Eighteen dollars and ninety-four cents,” I said.

  They all looked at me.

  I shrugged. “You play poker, you know them kinds of things,” I said, but hell, the price of gold hadn’t changed much in thirty years.

  “Eighteen ninety-four an ounce,” Blanco repeated.

  “A troy ounce,” the nun corrected.

  “Sí,” he said, as if he had any idea what a troy ounce meant.

  “Which,” Sister Geneviève said, “would convert this piece to a hundred and thirteen dollars and sixty-four cents . . . if you were measuring it by its weight alone.”

  She’d done that ciphering in her head, too. Didn’t even have to slow down to think on it any.

  “But this”—she plucked the ingot from the farmer’s hand, and the gold bar disappeared inside her habit—“an ingot minted more than two hundred years ago, must be worth three or four times its weight.”

  “Sí,” the farmer and horse trader harmonized.

  “Would you . . .” With great hesitation and deliberation, the ingot reappeared in her hands, and she held it out, letting the farmer pick it up once more. “I hate to ask. I’m not sure I should. But would you be willing to take this for the horses, mule, and tack?” She asked that awful timidly.

  “But of course.” Demyan Blanco jerked the ingot from de la Cruz’s fingertips. It slid into the rear pocket of his duck trousers. “If you step inside my office, I will give you bills of sale for the animals, and Jorge will be happy to saddle the animals for you. Please. Come with me. I believe I have a fresh pot of coffee on the stove.”

  His tune had changed, and pretty soon we were sitting on his portal, while he filled in the bills of sale, sipped coffee, and made polite conversation.

  Polite conversation my arse. He was fishing.

  “Sister, may I ask where you happened to acquire such a wonderful relic from our past?”

  The nun give him the dumb look, and I mean to tell you it was perfect. I had to bite my bottom lip to keep from laughing. When Blanco looked up, he saw that expression, and explained, “The ingot?”

  “Oh.” Sister Geneviève smiled. “I am so ignorant. It was a gift from a dear friend.”

  “You have no more?”

  “We Sisters of Charity have little need for gold ingots, señor.”

  “That is true. So how did you happen to have this one?”

  “As I said, it was given to me by a dear friend.”

  “Another Sister of Charity?”

  “In fact, she is.”

  He began working on the next receipt. “Do you know where she got it?”

  “Alas, I cannot say.”

  “I do not mean to pry, Sister. It is just”—he looked up, shrugged, signed his name, and rose to bring us the receipts—“such a piece of history, so unique, such a beautiful treasure.”

  “Yes.” She sipped her coffee. “I am glad you now possess it, for carrying such an item of value made me uncomfortable.”

  I could tell that Demyan Blanco had no problems with that hunk of metal in his rear pocket.

  We finished our coffee, shook hands with the swindler, then mounted our horses, me holding the rope to lead the pack mule, and rode back to Abercrombie’s. The clerk at the store said we could bunk in the stable, or the priest would be delighted to give us shelter for the night, what with Geneviève being a woman of the cloth and all, but the nun said we had some ground to cover.

  It was blacker than the ace of spades when we left Anton Chico. We rode, following the road that paralleled the Pecos River, like we was bound for Puerto de Luna and Fort Sumner, then easing off the road, and splashing through one of the little tributaries or ditches.

  We kept riding till there wasn’t no more water, but we still followed the dry stream bed, twisting around and about like some miserable sidewinder, the hoofs of the horses and mule clanking on the rocks, our stomachs growling, the wind blowing. When the arroyo split, we turned left, heading south and west. We didn’t stop till it was nigh midnight.

  While the nun massaged her feet and rump—riding and walking were things she hadn’t done much of—I picketed the livestock, grained them, and scooped out a hole in the moist ground till water started seeping in, giving them something to drink. I rolled out the Sister’s bedroll, left mine on a rock, then climbed up a slope to study our back trail.

  “I would dearly love some coffee, Mister Bishop,” she said.

  “No coffee,” I said. “No fire. Just water and jerky. Or you can have a tortilla and some of that goat meat.”

  “Would you care for a tortilla and some cabrito?”

  “I’d rather have that .45-70 Winchester.”

  I could hear her chewing and swallowing.

  “You don’t think they would follow us, do you, Mister Bishop?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s what I’d do.”

  She snorted. “I said I have no more ancient ingots.”<
br />
  “I heard you. So did they.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  I climbed back down, helped myself to a cold supper. Couldn’t see a damned thing what with all the clouds and no moon. Sound carried too far out in this country. I didn’t want Sister Geneviève talking too loud.

  “Where did you get that ingot?

  She swallowed and uncorked her canteen. Didn’t answer me.

  “Would have been smarter to let me borrow them horses, Sister.”

  “You have forgotten the Eighth Commandment.”

  “No, ma’am, I ain’t. Thou shalt not steal.”

  She looked impressed. She looked amazed when I next told her, “You would have done better if you’d recollected the one right after that. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

  “I did not lie.”

  I considered that for a spell. “That’s the only ingot you got?”

  “It is.” She went back to massaging her feet.

  “They’ll come after us,” I said.

  Her hand stopped.

  “Just to make sure. You should have bought that Winchester. Your Ladies Companion ain’t gonna help us much. Well, it ain’t gonna help you, anyhow.”

  I wolfed down my supper, washed it down with water, and headed to the piebald.

  “I mean to thank you for buying this horse for me, Sister.” I threw the blanket back on its back. “Most cowboys in these parts frown upon paint horses. Think only Indians ride them. But I ain’t that particular. Especially now.”

  “Mister Bishop.” There wasn’t no panic in her voice, which partly surprised me, but mostly didn’t. “Do you plan on leaving me in this wilderness? Alone?”

  “You can get back to Anton Chico,” I told her. “Just follow the canyon back to the road.”

  Behind me, the hammer clicked on her pepperbox. I kept right on with the saddle, tossing the stirrup up, and reaching for the cinch. I could hear her standing up, moving closer.

  “I wouldn’t shoot me, ma’am. Like as not, you’ll have need of all five rounds in that little popgun when Blanco and de la Cruz show up. Them guns have a peculiar habit of shooting all five chambers at once. Wouldn’t want you to blow off some of your fingers.”