She blinked. Like she’d been struck dumb. I got a handhold above me, climbed up to the remnants of a rafter, hoped it would support my weight, and pulled myself up. I reached down, taken hold of Geneviève’s hand, and helped her up beside me.
“Everything?” she asked.
I tried to get my balance, almost slipped once, but found a grip on another rock, and Geneviève was holding my leg, making sure I didn’t topple over.
“I don’t know what all you’ve done in seven years,” I said, “but I got the gist of things.”
Up to the top, I pulled myself, rocks tearing through my already ruined shirt, and scratching my ribs all to hell. Then I rolled over, leaned down, grabbed her outstretched hands, and pulled her all the way to the top.
“But you still came here,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Why on earth . . . ?”
“It seemed a good idea at the time,” I said.
She was on her side, and staring right into my eyes, still trying to find some sanity, or secret genius, to my thinking. But she couldn’t. Probably on account that none of it was there.
I reached over and put my hand on her cheek, and felt the tears. She grabbed my hand and held it against her. I wet my lips, and really, really, I wanted to kiss her, but I knowed that Sean Fenn wasn’t no fool. If we was going to get out of there, it was the time to go.
Besides, there was that dark shadow again, standing behind Geneviève. I looked up to tell Sister Rocío that we’d be leaving, and that I hoped to hell she could ride, but I got kicked in the head. That kick snapped me back and up, and down I went back into the pit from whence I’d clumb up.
I hit with a thud, missing the sharp pointed rock that had likely bruised Geneviève’s buttocks, but the ground was hard enough to knock the wind out of me. Another thump, and Geneviève shouted a cry of pain that I could hear real clear in the pit. Then the shadow was beside me, grunting as it hit.
When I could see enough from the moonlight, I spied the original shade, the dark ha’nt that had stood next to the white specter back when I thought Geneviève was a ghost. I knowed then that there was two dark ghosts around. One was Sister Rocío, who stood silently above. The other jerked me by my torn shirt and ripped off the whole left sleeve. He shoved me over Geneviève, who he’d also flung into the pit.
“I will take that cross,” Benigno said. I could hear clearly in the pit. I heard the Mexican cock a revolver.
I was on my back, slowly pulling myself up, pulling my knees up to my chest, my back braced against the rocky side of the pit. “I don’t have that damned cross.”
“I am not talking to you, señor,” Benigno said. “It is Señorita Tremblay I address. Hand it over.”
“What?” she said.
“I am no fool like the gringos I ride with, señorita. I saw the cross underneath your chemise. I noticed it because I was staring at your pechos, and your shirt was torn. I honestly do not see how Fenn or Corbin missed it, but they are fools. I will take the cross, señorita.” He aimed the big Remington at Geneviève’s chest.
The chance of the bullet getting deflected by that silver Cross of Lorraine then ricocheting and plugging the Mexican betwixt his eyes wasn’t good at all.
“¡Al demonio! Give it to me. Muy pronto.”
She sat up, pulled open her ripped shirt, grabbed the mescal beads, and there was that silver cross, reflecting moonlight.
Benigno smiled, crossing hisself with his hand that wasn’t holding that .44.
“Forgive me, señorita. I hate that I must kill you both, but it is for the best. I will take the cross and find the gold. I will tell Fenn that—”
“Shouldn’t you look at the directions, first, Benigno?” I asked him. He was dumber than me. “It ain’t exactly—”
When he turned, I shot him right betwixt his eyes.
Don’t reckon he’d ever seen that Dean and Adams. Oh, he was fine at spotting a cross hanging below a beautiful young woman’s breasts, but nobody had thought to look inside my left boot. I was glad to get that .436 out, as it had been tormenting my calf and ankle for so long. I was even gladder that it hadn’t misfired, considering all the beatings I’d took. But I was most glad to see Benigno standing there for a good five or six seconds. The Remington slipped from his fingers—it didn’t go off—then he just toppled over backward.
The muzzle flash hurt my eyes, and I rubbed them furiously. I crawled to Geneviève, who wasn’t where I thought she’d be on account she had run over to the dead Mexican. She was grabbing his Remington and pointing it up. For a second there, once I could see clear enough, I thought she was about to blow a hole through Sister Rocío, but she didn’t. Then I knowed. She was waiting for Fenn or Corbin or The Pockmarked Man to come and investigate . . . and fill us with bullets.
But only the shade that was Sister Rocío stood there.
Geneviève turned toward me, and I rubbed my eyes some more, finally got to where I could see fair enough. Nobody had come. Waiting for us up top? To shoot our heads when they appeared over the earthen walls?
That’s when I understood.
“The wind,” I said. “They didn’t hear nothing. Not with us in this pit. Not as loud as the wind’s blowing.”
She smiled, like luck was shining on us more than the moon, and done the damnedest thing. She lowered the Remington’s hammer, and handed the gun to me.
That is when I realized Geneviève loved me. Why else would she give me a loaded revolver?
I shoved it into my waistband and went back to the rubble, I reclumb my way up to the top, helping Geneviève behind me, and when we was back at ground level, nobody killed us. All we saw was those eerie walls glowing from the moonlight. All we heard—and felt—was the violent wind.
She ran over to the shadow that was Sister Rocío, and I caught up with her. Rocío hadn’t heard the gunshot that’d blowed out Benigno’s brains, proving that my theory about the wind was right. She hadn’t seen the gunshot because, well, she was blind.
“Which way?” I asked.
Geneviève pointed. She whispered something to Rocío, or maybe she shouted it, but I couldn’t hear because of the roar. I could see because of the moon, and I followed the nun who wasn’t, who led the nun who was. We ran one way then another and up over a wall, and down a hill, and there was Fenn’s claybank, two pack mules, and the bay horse that Corbin had been riding.
They’d been picketed on a rope stretched between two piñons. They weren’t in the mood for a moonlight ride in a violent wind, but the mule didn’t seem to mind when Geneviève eased Sister Rocío into the saddle.
“You must hold on tight, Sister Rocío!” Geneviève shouted, and even I heard that. The old nun nodded. Geneviève swung into the claybank’s saddle, which left me the bay, and I taken the lead rope to the other mule, the one with a pack saddle but no packs.
“Where are the other horses?” I yelled.
“What?” she shot back.
“The other horses?”
“I turned them loose! Ran them off. So Sean can’t follow!”
Or couldn’t. For a while. Till he caught up with them mounts. Then he’d come, and come a-killing.
He would know where we was going.
To the Valley of Fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Purgatory is suffering.”
Them words Sister Rocío had spoke to me some fifteen, sixteen years earlier come back as we rode south. I figured all them levels of Purgatory lay between Gran Quivira and the Valley of Fire.
“We must empty Purgatory with our prayers,” Sister Rocío said as dawn broke. We’d been riding forever, and my backside and thighs felt like we’d already covered six or seven levels of Purgatory. You recollect how many times I’d gotten my arse whupped, and how long I’d been in that desert without hardly a bite to eat, and how long it had been since I’d been horseback. We’ll, I’d been doing some praying that night.
One prayer got answered. The wind had died down about 3 A.M.
&n
bsp; We stopped in a forest of cholla, letting the horses and mules rest a bit while we drunk tepid water from canteens and chewed on jerky.
“How are you feeling, Sister?” I asked, handing the blind nun my canteen.
“Are we at the Valley of Fire?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I answered. “Best drink some. You want to get off that mule, stretch your legs?”
She drank, and grinned. “I fear, my son, if I dismounted, I would not be able to climb back on again.”
I taken the canteen she handed back to me and corked it. “I got a similar fear my ownself.”
“Can you see Mount Ararat?” she asked. Once she’d let go of the canteen, she’d gripped the saddle horn like it was the Good Book. She wasn’t used to riding, and we’d be riding hard.
All I could see was cholla and dead grass. Where we was, the land looked flat and ugly, but this country could fool a body. It resembled the plains of Kansas, except for them big cactus, but it wasn’t flat. You’d come out of a dip, climb a bit, and then you’d see the Capitans down to the south and east, and off to the west, Cupadera Mesa.
“Not yet, Sister. You rest. Sure you don’t want to stretch your legs, walk around?”
“I will stay where I am,” she said. “For now.”
After I’d put my canteen back around my horn, or, rather, the horn of the good stock saddle that belonged to Corbin, I went over to Geneviève, who was kneeling over a patch of dead grass, holding the reins to Fenn’s claybank, and chewing on jerky.
“How is she doing?” Geneviève asked.
“Better than I am,” I answered, but I wasn’t looking at her no more. I was looking north. Didn’t see no dust, and that was a good thing.
“What does she mean?” Geneviève asked, and I turned back to face her. “About Mount Ararat? What does that cross mean?”
I squatted beside her, then just sank down, and tried to massage my back. Twisted my neck one way and t’other, checked the myrtle green bandage, the bandanna over the stitched cut on my forehead, and the knot on the back of my skull.
“Do you know?” Geneviève asked. “Have you read—”
“About Mount Ararat? Yeah, I know. You do, too, if you’d tried to be a nun.”
Wrong thing to say. Pain, bad memories, or some such filled her soulful eyes, and I regretted my choice. I hadn’t been thinking. Before I could apologize, Geneviève recovered. She smiled, and it seemed like it was a warm, friendly smile, not that she was hiding nothing. “Yes, but I don’t think Moses landed the Ark out here. Do you?”
“No, I don’t. Not Moses, no how.”
She looked at me for a moment, then laughed. It was a good laugh. Real girlish and full of innocence. Leaning back, she ran her fingers through her hair, shook her head, straightened, and smiled at me. “Moses. Good heavens. I must be tired. Noah. Noah didn’t end his voyage here.”
“May I see the cross?”
Without hesitation, she reached inside her torn shirt, pulled the necklace over her head, studied what was written on the back again, and handed me the two-barred piece of silver.
It was heavy, smooth on top despite all my travels, all the Purgatories I’d been through, and reflected the sun as I looked at it. Not a crucifix, but a cross. I turned it over and read the inscription.
From the top of Ararat,
We must climb down.
Into the cañon
Beside the King’s crown,
Where black meets the red.
Into the second cañon,
We walk with pain,
Until we can touch
The cross of Lorraine.
Hallowed be the dead.
I read it. Read it again. Read it silently, then read it out loud to Geneviève. Twice. She just stared at me like I was speaking in tongues.
“Any ideas?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Benigno would have been mad as hell had he killed us and then read this.” I pitched the cross back to her. “It ain’t no map.”
“You knew that. You wore that cross for sixteen years.”
“Yeah.” I looked south again like I expected the seas to lower, the dove to fly off, and Mount Ararat to rise up and hand over a fortune in old ingots to us.
“You never thought about what that poem was supposed to mean?”
“I’m still trying to figure out what a Hail Mary is supposed to mean.”
She spoke sadly, eyes closed: “Áve María, grátia pléna, Dóminus técum. Benedícta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus frúctus véntris túi, Iésus. Sáncta María, Máter Déi, óra pro nóbis peccatóribus, nunc et in hóra mórtis nóstrae. Ámen.”
The scary thing, is, once she started with the Sáncta María, I was saying it with her.
“You really did want to be a nun,” I said after we’d crossed ourselves. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes. Even now . . .” She shrugged, sighed, and sniffed.
“What happened?” I mean, now that I knowed she wasn’t really a nun, I was kinda hopeful and all about me and her.
She was looking off to the south, too, and she slowly stood, knees popping, joints aching, and pulled on that beaten all to hell top hat. “You know.”
And, dumb as I was, I knowed. But I said, “I rode with him, Geneviève. Not for long, but it didn’t take long to know all I needed to know about Sean Fenn. He’s no good. I mean, there ain’t one decent thing about him.”
“I know that, too, Micah,” she said, and she was walking to the claybank, and what she said next like to have broke my heart. “But we can’t help who we fall in love with.”
And there was the lovely young woman from Carbondale, Illinois, with brown hair and a slender body, brown eyes, and scars and pains that run deeper than all my aches. She was talking to Sister Rocío, finally patting the blind nun’s thigh. She taken the lead rope to the mule and mounted Fenn’s horse, sitting in the saddle and waiting for me to climb into the bay’s saddle and pull the mule with the packsaddle and no packs.
It struck me then. I ain’t never claimed to be no wizard, but I knowed then. Knowed all I needed to know. Geneviève Tremblay, twenty-five, twenty-six years old or thereabouts, was young and good and kind. She should have gone on to become a nun, and worked to help wild, uncontrollable waifs like I’d been all them years ago. She could have saved aplenty, and even now, she could have saved me. She hadn’t, though. On account of a slick-talking sidewinder named Sean Fenn. She still loved him, or thought she did. I don’t know, maybe there was still enough Sisters of Charity in her to think she could change that son of a bitch, could save his soul, could make him see the light.
She probably did care for me, and it might could that she could even wind up in bed with me, which would have been glorious, but I knowed. Yes, sir, dumb as I was, I knowed.
I loved her.
But she could never truly love me.
Well, it would have been fairly easy to turn east, head to Carrizozo and on into Lincoln on the Rio Bonito, let the blind nun and the fraudulent nun go off into the Valley of Fire. I could head over to Ike Stockton’s saloon, and get good and roostered. By that time, it was really what I wanted to get. Still, I didn’t have it in me. Couldn’t leave Sister Rocío and Geneviève.
Late that afternoon, we reached the Malpais. We’d done some hard traveling, and I had to give Sister Rocío a ton of credit. She’d made it across that high desert, but now there was lava flows that stood real high.
The lava flows had begun some thousands of years ago. They stretched over better than a hundred sections. Forty-odd miles long, as much as five miles wide. We was in a sea of mostly black rocks that hit better than a hundred and fifty feet thick in spots.
’Course, it wasn’t all black rocks. No way our horses and mules could make it across that country without breaking their legs and our necks. This was what folks called the Chihuahuan Desert, and it smelled of creosote. Every now and then, we’d see patches of mesquite and yucca aplenty, and our horses chewed on bear grass wh
en we’d let ’em.
A roadrunner bolted out from one of them large holes, and liked to have spooked that bay I was riding into pitching me. He done some dancing, but I stuck with him, got him calmed down, then looked across this level of Purgatory.
Looking at the towering mounds of lava that rose above the grassy path we was on, I reined in the bay, and stood in the stirrups, looking for, but not finding, Mount Ararat.
“It has to be here,” I said to myself, but I said it out loud,
Geneviève heard me. “We’re in an ocean.”
Sure looked that way. An angry ocean, but of black rocks instead of waves.
“The wine-dark sea,” Geneviève said.
I nodded, thinking that I’d enjoy a goblet of Madeira. One time Big Tim Pruett stole a bottle, and we’d drunk it all. It hadn’t tasted bad, and didn’t leave us with no headache, but we had also emptied a bottle of mescal before Big Tim plucked that wine bottle, so it wasn’t that we really tasted much of nothing.
“It’s getting dark,” I said.
“I know.” Geneviève looked at me hopefully, but there wasn’t nothing I could do except swing off the saddle and walk over toward Sister Rocío.
“We need to make camp,” I told her. I wrapped the reins to the bay around a dead juniper and reached up to help the blind nun off the mule.
“Have you seen Mount Ararat?” she asked.
I shook my head, which didn’t tell the nun nothing, but then said, “It hasn’t been forty days and forty nights yet.”
Out in this wine-dark sea of lava, it could easily take us twice as long to find what we’d come to get.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Red lava. Black lava. Yellow sandstone slopes rising from the lava, and pink sandstone ledges on the ground. That’s all you could see, except for the clumps of brush and cactus and the mountains looking so blue and black way off to the east and west.
“Must’ve been a hell of a volcano,” I said, just to say something on account nobody had said nothing since breakfast that morning. It hadn’t really been breakfast. Mostly some hardtack that was only slightly softer than the rocks that surrounded us, and water that tasted harder than them rocks.
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