Valley of Fire

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Well, the way I figured it, I’d walked a lot farther than that.

  “He’ll have to,” Fenn said to her. “There’s no way I’d ever trust Micah Bishop on a horse, especially my horse.”

  Even I had to laugh at that one.

  Here’s another reason I didn’t like Sean Fenn. He had no respect for nobody but hisself. You take the ruins of Gran Quivira. He said only fools would have lived in this country, he called the Indians that had called this country home “diggers,” and said while these savage Indians didn’t even know about the wheel, the Renaissance was happening in Europe. And . . . the priest who had started the big church never even finished it.

  “Because,” Fenn reasoned, “he was smart enough to leave.”

  I looked at those crumbling walls, some of them thirty feet high and six feet thick, and the rotting rafters that must have weighed maybe as much as two tons—from trees that had to have been fifteen miles from here—and I had nothing but respect for the Indians who built this place.

  But I reckon sentiments such as them won’t be enough to get me through them pearly gates, or slip me out of a hangman’s noose.

  Anyhow, they herded Gen and me into a square room without windows and only a single exit in one of the smallest structures. One of Fenn’s men taken the horses somewheres. There was coffee in a pot, cold, since they had no fire going at the moment, and soup in a bucket, likewise cold. They fed Gen. Told me to sit down.

  Fenn had three men with him, the gringo with the bushy mustache and Texas hat, Corbin. Another one wore a sugarloaf sombrero, and I think his name was Benigno. The third one, lanky and rawboned and ugly as sin, I never heard called nothing. His face was heavily scarred, so I just thought of him as The Pockmarked Man.

  Once Fenn made sure Gen was comfortable, he left her to her soup, which she could barely eat, and knelt across from me, rolling a cigarette with one hand.

  The other three men stood behind him, holding their guns.

  “Mind if I ask you something?” I said, all polite and friendly.

  “Ask away. I’ll be asking you questions as soon as I have myself a smoke.”

  “How’d you get off that train?”

  He grinned.

  To make him feel proud of hisself, I added, “Figured they would haul you all the way to Santa Fe.”

  “They did.” He found a lucifer in his vest pocket, struck it on a rock, and got his cigarette going. “Took me all the way to the county jail.”

  “And?”

  “Santa Fe is in Santa Fe County. Las Vegas is in San Miguel County. There’s no love lost between those two jurisdictions, and not much cooperation among the legal authorities.” Fenn smiled. “Besides, you’ve lived in this territory long enough to know that. ”

  Should’ve knowed. He’d bribed his way out of the calaboose.

  “How long have you been waiting here?”

  He wagged a finger at me and blew a smoke ring into the air. “You asked me something, Bishop. Now it’s my turn. Fill me in, pretty please, on what happened since you left my company.”

  I told him what I figured he needed to know, nothing more.

  “You expect me to believe that bit of nonsense?” He blew smoke in my face, but I didn’t cough.

  I just stared back at him. I hadn’t lied. Everything I told him had been gospel.

  “It’s true, Sean,” Gen said.

  She was standing, though leaning against the rocky wall to keep from falling.

  Fenn glanced at her, then leaned toward me and crushed his cigarette out on my forearm.

  I couldn’t just stare him down then. I yelped, slapped at the burn, then he slapped my hat off, and punched me to the ground. My teeth clicked hard against each other, and I spit a bit of blood onto the rock. One of his boys hooted. The others said nothing.

  “Leave him alone, damn you!” That come from Gen.

  Fenn had balled his hand into a fist, and I was expecting another hammer to my head, but he turned and saw Gen. His fingers reappeared, and he pushed back his hat. First he looked at her, then at me, then at her, then again at me, then at her, and when he turned to face me again, he was grinning.

  “Were your evenings with her as pleasant as she once made mine?”

  That’s another thing I despised about Sean Fenn. He knowed how to hurt a person, not just with guns and fists, but words. “Go to hell, you son of a bitch,” I told him.

  That prompted him to hurt me more with fists, which, you might find hard to believe, I preferred to his words.

  When I come to, I peeled the wet bandanna off my eyelids, squinted at the bright sunlight, and felt fingers on my forehead, fingers whose touch I’d recognize anywhere.

  Gen came into focus.

  “You’re a damned fool,” she said.

  I could tell she’d been crying. That was easy. Tears cut quite the path down all the dirt on her face, but I guess she still looked beautiful to me. Over her objections, I pushed myself up, leaned against the rocky wall, and felt my right boot.

  “How bad is that foot?”

  “It’s all right,” I said, and let out a sigh of relief.

  “Let me look at—”

  “No!” I grabbed her arm before it touched my leg, and she jerked from my grip, my anger, my reaction.

  “You ain’t a nun, are you?” I said.

  Her lips trembled, and she had to wipe away the tears that had begun flowing down those dirty cheeks. Her head shook. She couldn’t speak.

  “I figured.” I spit out some blood, run my tongue over my teeth, and didn’t notice none missing. Fenn wasn’t hitting as hard as he once did, or maybe he realized he needed me to be able to talk.

  Her head bowed. I let her sob. She choked out something, then spoke so I could understand. “I tried to tell you.”

  My head shook, and maybe that broke her heart. “You didn’t try that hard, Geneviève.” I figured it had come time to drop the Gen. For now. Sean Fenn called her Gen, and I didn’t like nothing about Sean Fenn.

  “Did I tell you . . . any . . . anything?” she asked.

  She must’ve blocked out her confession, and I don’t rightly blame her for that. I even hoped she had forgotten most of what had happened, wouldn’t recollect The Voice and Vern, or, for that matter, even Jorge de la Cruz.

  She was reaching under her ripped shirt, into her chemise, but my hand stopped her, gently this time, and I shook my head. “Keep that,” I whispered.

  “I can’t.”

  “Please.”

  Her hand fell away from her chest, and I sighed with relief.

  “Can you forgive me, Micah?” she asked, hopeful.

  I smiled, which hurt like hell. “Already done that.”

  She leaned over and kissed my bearded cheek. That hurt like hell, too, but I didn’t mind, didn’t wince, didn’t complain.

  “Damn,” Fenn’s voice called out, “I can’t leave you two lovebirds alone for a minute, can I?”

  Geneviève turned around, and even beneath all that dirt, and dried trails of tear, I could see her face flaming red. “Don’t you touch him again, Sean Fenn. Don’t you ever lay a hand on him.”

  Fenn’s face hardened, and he reached for his holstered revolver. “Mind your tongue. Out here, I’m God.”

  “We need him,” she said, spacing her words out for emphasis.

  “Why do you think I busted him out of jail?” He pushed her aside, and pointed a finger at me. “Think that deal in Las Vegas was for old time’s sake, pard? Is that what you think?” He was madder than Geneviève. “Here’s the deal, Bishop. You live as long as I let you live. You don’t make love to my girl behind my back—”

  “I never—”

  He slapped me down. That one really hurt. Didn’t knock a tooth out, but it sure loosened one of them big ones. My head slammed against a rock, and blood gushed from my head. Reckon that blow jarred some sense back into me, as instantly I recollected that I’d never been real good at planning things, and this plan—if I ever
had one—wasn’t turning out the way I’d hoped.

  “Leave him alone!” Like a catamount, Geneviève leaped on Fenn’s back, but he flipped her over his head, the wind whooshing from her lungs when she landed.

  That I saw, and I came up, blinking blood from my left eye. Fenn turned, drawing his revolver, but I wasn’t going after him. I was crawling to that girl, lying, eyes staring vacantly, and me fearing that bastard had broke her neck or back. Her lungs fought for breath, and I lifted her into my arms as Fenn eared back his Colt’s hammer. I expected we was both dead, but one of Fenn’s men—Corbin, it was—stopped him from really making a mess of things.

  “You best control your temper, Fenn,” the gunman said. “I didn’t hire on to be part of a lover’s quarrel. You promised us a fortune in gold. And to hear you talk, you need that fellow there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Since Corbin had probably just stopped Fenn from killing me and Geneviève, I decided that I liked that fellow, and would regret when it come time to kill the bastard. His words somehow quieted Fenn’s anger.

  Once his revolver was holstered, Fenn hauled Geneviève away, and Corbin and The Pockmarked Man dragged me off to another room where Corbin stitched up my head, and wrapped a fairly clean bandanna around it.

  Then he said, “Get cleaned up.”

  I saw an enamel bowl, a shaving kit, even a mirror.

  Gingerly, I moved over to the mirrored wall. Wasn’t no ceiling. No floor. Just more rock walls. After picking up the razor, I eyed Corbin. “Y’all trust me with this?”

  “Don’t cut your throat,” he said, which wasn’t my meaning.

  There was even some soap. I washed my face, and, sake’s alive, did that feel glorious. Scrubbed it good, though I left my bandaged forehead alone, and it was like I was in the fanciest hotel in Denver because The Pockmarked Man passed me another towel—not really a towel, now that I think on it, but a bandanna that wasn’t sweaty and dirty. After drying off, I found the brush in the tin, began working up a lather.

  Wasn’t till I saw my reflection that I dropped both tin and brush.

  Now I knowed what had shocked Sean Fenn so much when he laid eyes on Geneviève and me.

  A cadaver looked better than me, and it wasn’t on account of the bandage, some blood already soaking through the faded yellow silk. Wasn’t because of the bruises and scratches. Slowly, I recollected how Geneviève looked now, comparing that vision to how I recalled them memories from her arrival in the Las Vegas jail . . . and the hotel room . . . and even in that boxcar.

  My eyes was sunk way back in my head, and despite the stubble of beard I’d planned on shaving off, I could see how hollow my cheeks was. Carefully, I reached over and felt my right arm, staring at that bony thing, seeing the puckered mark Sean Fenn’s cigarette had left. I lifted up my shirt, past the green stocking bandage, saw them ribs that brung to mind skeletons. Lastly, I slipped my hand inside my trousers, made a fist, pushed against the fabric. Criminy, if it hadn’t been for suspenders, I would’ve been dragging them britches at my ankles.

  Felt my Adam’s apple bob, and had to wait till my hands stopped shaking before I could pick up the tin and the razor.

  “You best hurry,” Corbin said. “Fenn lacks patience, and we’d like to get moving out of this”—he seemed to shudder—“evil place.”

  Studied him through the mirror, I did. Big Tim Pruett once told me that you needed to know the fellow you was going up against. ’Course, he was talking about boxing and poker, but I figured that it would come in handy, too, when your life and soul depended on it. Corbin didn’t seem to be the kind of gent to spook easily, but I recollected how de la Cruz—or had it been Blanco?—had mentioned that Gran Quivira was haunted.

  “How long have y’all been camped here?” I spoke real casual, so they wouldn’t suspicion my motives, fetching razor and cup, opening the blade and wiping it on my trousers.

  “Too damned long,” he said.

  The Pockmarked Man shifted his legs, leaned against the rocky wall, and the Mexican come into the room, scraping his boot on a rock. Even better. I had all three’s attention.

  “They say many, many Indians were murdered here.” I started stropping the razor against a piece of leather hanging on the wall—like this place was a regular barber shop on the plaza.

  The Mexican stopped scraping the manure off his boot.

  “And their bodies were sealed”—I tapped the rocks and mortar—“inside these walls.”

  The Pockmarked Man straightened, moved a couple steps away from the wall that had been holding him up. He started to look back, but couldn’t.

  “A place like this,” I said, and tested the razor, “is . . . well. . . .” I shuddered. Honest. Didn’t pretend to, neither. It was like somebody had just stepped on my grave. Might have been the Mexican, which would explain how come he had manure all over the bottom of his boot.

  “Stop with the ghost stories, Bishop,” Corbin said. “And focus on making yourself presentable.”

  That got my curiosity up. “Presentable? For who?”

  He didn’t answer. Just pointed at the razor.

  Don’t reckon I filled that “presentable” bill, even though I hadn’t nicked me once with that razor, and it wasn’t that sharp and the water was only lukewarm. I mean, my face was bruised, and a scab was beginning to form on my forehead underneath that bandage.

  Still donned the miserable clothes I’d had on my back since Las Vegas. I stank to high heaven, could only imagine that I smelled worser downwind of my person. I had the ugliest green bandage on my side, my shirt was torn and ripped, my boots had holes in the bottoms and a couple in the tops, and one boot top had a three-inch slash along the seam.

  When I’d made myself as pretty as I reckon the boys figured I could ever get, Corbin pointed through the opening, and I followed The Pockmarked Man and Benigno, with Corbin keeping a safe and respectable distance behind me.

  We walked into another building, or part of the one they’d held me in, then ducked through a small door way—the Indians who’d lived here must have been real tiny individuals—and wandered through a regular maze. I figured a body could get lost in here and die of starvation or thirst before he ever found his way out. At last, we reached a three-cornered room, with three small, square windows in one side. The tops of two walls was pretty much rounded, and the floor was dirt and grass and plenty of rocks. Through the windows was green shrubbery and a cloudless sky. Looking up, I spied a couple-three ravens flying around in the wind. The sky was so blue, so beautiful. Wished I could have been flying up there with them big, black birds.

  What I noticed most about the room was the smokeless fire—they was smart enough to use dry wood—and a coffeepot resting on a rock, a bunch of cups next to the stone ring.

  Well, that ain’t altogether true, neither. What I noticed most was Geneviève. She sat in the corner under one of the square windows, the one with a bunch of loose rocks on the bottom. She looked real thin, too, and she’d always appeared to be a small, delicate woman. The bruises was showing on her face, too, now that she’d washed up, but I didn’t know how many of them purple spots come from Sean Fenn, and how many come from The Voice, or maybe just from all that hard traveling we’d done across the desert.

  “Help yourself to some coffee, Bishop.” Fenn spoke before I seen him. He come around the empty spot where a wall stood two centuries earlier.

  Bending with my leg, and head, and ribs, didn’t seem such a promising venture, but Fenn was in a friendly mood for the time. He must’ve realized the pain I was in, so he squatted to pour me a cup. I taken it and quickly sipped some.

  “Good coffee,” I said. Meant it, too.

  “Thank you, kindly,” Corbin said.

  Yep, I wouldn’t enjoy killing him.

  Fenn decided that was enough social talk. “What do you know about the gold?”

  “Probably no more than you do.”

  He motioned for me to sit on a rocky ledge
, and I done so, mainly because Big Tim Pruett had always said that coffee tastes better when you’re sitting or squatting, not standing.

  “Where’s his crutch?” Geneviève asked.

  “Walking’s good for him,” Fenn said. “A man like Micah Bishop would likely use a crutch as a weapon. Isn’t that right, Bishop?”

  “Can’t deny that.” I taken another sip.

  “The gold?” Fenn said.

  “Folks have been looking for gold since them Spanish con . . . conster . . . conquis . . . since them explorers was first here.”

  “You know the gold I mean.” Fenn’s voice lost that friendly tone.

  “Well, what I knows goes something like this. In olden times, Spanish explorers found a gold mine way up in Mora. Mine played out about the time of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The Spanish tried to make it to Mexico, hauling plunder with them. The Indians they’d enslaved helped carry their riches. Made it here, and killed the Indians.” I tapped the wall behind. “Buried them in these walls.”

  Sneaked me a look-see at the Mexican and The Pockmarked Man, but they didn’t seem scared. Not yet. But I figured their nerves wasn’t as strong as they made out.

  “There the gold sat, buried, till some scientists come here in 1848. There was a small party. They tried to make it out with all the gold, using mules to carry it. They made it to the Valley of Fire.”

  “Fires.”

  I craned my neck to see the Mexican. “Beg your pardon,” I said.

  He spoke in rapid Spanish, then told me, and the rest of our merry group, that the proper name was the Valley of Fires.

  “What’s the difference?” I said.

  “Singular and plural,” Corbin answered, him being smarter than most gunmen.

  “The map the fellow in Socorro showed me had it ‘Fire,’” The Pockmarked Man said. “I can show you. It’s in my war bag.”

  “A gringo,” Benigno said. “Norteamericano. Imbecíl.” He waved his hand. “I know this country. It is my homeland. It is the Valley of Fires.”

  “I’ve heard tell of a Valley of Fire in Nevada,” The Pockmarked Man said.