Valley of Fire

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Crockett’s Cave,” I said.

  “What?” Geneviève asked.

  “Yes,” Rocío said. “That was the name Cortez used. Crockett’s Cave.”

  “You know of it?” Geneviève asked.

  I nodded. I’d hid in that thing, dodging them boys from White Oaks. Didn’t know its name till I got found.

  “We need to go west some,” I said. “And south a bit.”

  Nudging the bay into a walk, I tried to find a way to cut through the massive black wall of lava. It would take some doing, but I was already doing some figuring, and remembering. Through my head, that poem ran over and over again.

  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 tried to recollect something near that cave that fit that description. And then I started swearing under my breath.

  You’re that close to a big cave, Rocío. Why couldn’t you have found it, stashed the gold and the bodies in that? Instead of sticking everything in a hole and burying it all with black lava?

  Like she read my thoughts, my mind, Sister Rocío said, “Purgatory is suffering.”

  And we was about to suffer.

  Oh, I reckon we got farther than I really expected us to get on horseback in that country, winding this way, then that, coming to a dead-end, doubling back, finding another trail . . . till the trails played out. After checking the sun to determine the best direction, I dropped to the sandstone grit, and began unsaddling the bay. “We walk.”

  “What about the horses and mules?” Geneviève asked.

  There was grass and some shade. I mean, it wasn’t like that livery stable in Dodge City where Big Tim Pruett and I once spent three weeks—I mean to tell you, that stable was better than some hotels we’d hung our hats in—but considering where we was, it was right respectable for two horses and a couple mules.

  “We’ll water them before we leave, tether them. They should be all right. If we ain’t gone too long.”

  She moved closer to me, Geneviève did, put a hand on my arm as I was taking off the bridle, and said in a whisper, “And what about Rocío?”

  With a shrug, I answered, “She comes with us.”

  “Micah.” Her head titled back to that mountain of black. “Over that?”

  “We ain’t got much choice,” I told her. I mean, if we headed back north, then cut west, we’d likely run into that dust I’d seen. This way, Sean Fenn would have to come looking for us. Given the size of the Valley of Fire and just how many nooks and crannies we’d already uncovered, well, it might take him a passable amount of time.

  Once I got the horses on a picket rope, giving them plenty of room to graze and all, I taken the canteens, a sack of jerky, and biscuits. “We find the place first,” I told Geneviève. “Then we come back for the horses, the gold—”

  “And the bodies of Lorraine and our other Sisters,” Rocío said, her ears just as sharp as they’d been during lessons.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I told her, and moved over, put my arm over her shoulder. Being all encouraging and the like, I said, “Sister, I’ll need you to hold my hand. Don’t fret. We got to climb, find a good trail up this hill of lava. I’ll tell you where to step, what to avoid, things like that. And I won’t drop you. Won’t let go of your hand, no matter what. Think you can do it?”

  “Of course, my son. Our Father, our Blessed Mother, will guide my way.”

  I led her past the horses and on toward Geneviève, who was looking at me like I was out of my mind. As I passed her, I had to remind her, “I didn’t drop you from that train, did I?”

  Didn’t drop old Rocío, neither, though it did get kinda ticklish there.

  First off, there weren’t no trail up the lava. Had to climb a good twenty, twenty-two feet. I got a hand hold, felt my way up a bit. Reached down, taken Sister Rocío’s hand, told her what to do. She got up just fine. On the other hand, Geneviève had mountain goat in her veins. She scurried up one way, then t’other, leaning forward, leaping. She made it to the top and called down to ask if she should toss down a rope. ’Cause she’d taken the pack of supplies (biscuits, jerky, rope) up with her.

  “We’ll make out fine, Sister,” I told her. No way she could pull either Rocío or me up, thin as she was.

  I seen a yucca over some sharp rocks a ways up, so I told Rocío, “Sister, this is gonna be like a dance of some kind. I’m gonna slide up a bit, then you slide up beside me. I’ll have your hand the whole time. Ready?”

  She nodded, and I ripped my pants. Damned embarrassing, but nothing could be done. She slid up easy. Then we done it again. And again.

  “This is hard on one’s buttocks,” she said when we rested by the yucca.

  “Too bad you never had no buttocktologist lecture at one of your meetings,” I told her.

  “You never were very funny, Micah,” she said.

  Up we went.

  She slipped once, but I didn’t drop her. We swung over a deep crevasse. I put my other arm around her to steady her, then squeezed her shoulder.

  “I was almost flying like an angel,” she said, and grinned. “This is exhilarating.”

  “It scares the Jesus out of me,” I told her.

  She would’ve skinned my head with her knuckles, but I held her hand. Instead, she told me to say ten Hail Marys, which I done on the last leg up the hill.

  ’Course, up top, I seen a real problem. We was sky-lining the country. Sister Rocío wore black, which would make it hard for even a person with spyglasses to see, but me and Geneviève had on light-colored duds.

  “All right, Sister,” I said, finding a canyon. “Now we go back down.”

  They didn’t question me. Seemed to accept that I knowed what I was doing, where we was going, none of which was true.

  “There’s a jumping cholla about ten feet to your left, Sister,” I said as I eased her down. “Other way. Other way!” I had to swing her, lessen she get a mouthful of cholla spines. She hit hard. Geneviève gasped. I almost let go of the blind woman’s hand.

  “Are you all right?” me and Geneviève yelled at the same time.

  First, she tried to cross herself, but couldn’t on account that I gripped her one hand with all the muscle I had left in me. She made the motions with the stub of her other arm, shook her habit, which had gotten kinda askew from bounding off lava, and said, “I will be, if Micah ever learns the difference between right and left.”

  Well, we made it down into that canyon, with Rocío getting three, four more bruises, and me with ripped pants. We moved through that trail, climbed up again, and kept right on going.

  We climbed up a hill, not Ararat or nothing like that, and looked west. All you could see below was black, broken by juts of piñon and yucca and cholla. It appeared to stretch all the way to the Rio Grande, but I knowed it didn’t.

  “The, uh, Crockett’s Cave”—I pointed—“is off that ways a bit.”

  We rested. I opened the bag of biscuits, handed the two ladies some water. Sister Rocío went off to nature’s call. Even nuns have to potty here and there.

  “Micah.” Geneviève’s voice was quiet.

  “Yeah.” I was looking at all that awful country, trying to figure out where the hell Crockett’s Cave was. Hell, I hadn’t been near that hole in the ground for better than half my life.

  “I didn’t want to mention this, didn’t want to scare you or Rocío, but . . . well . . . earlier . . . I saw dust.”

  “Yeah.” I was resigned. Seemed to have become more Calvinistic or Presbyterian in my thinking. What happened, happened. A sinner and mortal like me couldn’t stop it.

  “You saw it, too?”

  “Yeah.” I looked north. No dust. Just more black.
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br />   “Micah.”

  I looked at Geneviève. She pointed east. “I saw dust . . . that way.”

  That could’ve been what I saw. I mean, Sean Fenn could have kept riding. Geneviève had spied the dust long after I’d seen it off to the northeast.

  “When did you see that dust?” I asked.

  She might have answered, but the only thing I heard was the gunshot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The bullet clipped a sprig off a juniper as I grabbed Geneviève’s arm and pulled her down on top of me. Another bullet left a white mark across a chunk of lava. Rolling off me, Geneviève screamed out Rocío’s name, and when I sat up, clawing to get the Dean and Adams out of my waistband, I seen the blind nun just standing there, a yucca on one side of her and a long drop to the ground on the other.

  “Geneviève, Micah!” the old woman called out. “What is going on!”

  “Get—!” Stopped myself. I was gonna tell her to get down, but if she went into the yucca, she’d get sliced to ribbons. If she went the other way, she’d likely break her neck. Had to be an eighteen-foot drop down to nothing but more black rocks. So hero that I was, I was off and running, telling Geneviève, “Cover me,” and hearing her say, “What?”

  I heard two, three more shots, but nothing hit me. No bullet whined off rocks. Old Rocío stood fingering her rosary, opening her mouth to ask another question when I grabbed her by the waist and brought her down, twisting my body so she landed on my stomach, and liked to have broke my backbone. I think she did crack a couple ribs.

  “Micah!”

  I groaned.

  “What is going on?”

  I made myself sit halfway up, turning to peer down the edge of the ridge we was on. Them boys was shooting uphill, so it’d take a might fine shot to plug one of us. Didn’t see no smoke from carbines or rifles, but I heard some cussing, the voices bouncing off the rocks so there was no chance to tell where they was hiding.

  “Micah,” Rocío said again.

  “Jesus Christ!” I snapped. “Are you deaf, too? Didn’t you hear them gunshots?”

  “There is no call to take the Lord’s name in vain, Micah Bishop.”

  “There ain’t no call in me getting my head shot off, neither, trying to keep you alive.” I wasn’t in a forgiving mood. “Next time you hear a gunshot, you duck. Something goes ka-boom, just fall to your belly no matter what. You savvy?”

  For once, she didn’t try to brain me with her knuckles, or give me some penance. She merely nodded.

  There was another shot, this one high, but Rocío ducked. Just flattened herself on the rock.

  “Good girl,” I told her. But to them boys doing the shooting, I wasn’t so polite. “You damned miserable sons of bitches!” I yelled, and heard my profanity echo across the Valley of Fire. “That’s an eighty-year-old blind nun you’re shooting at, Fenn!”

  A few more shots, and when the last bullet whined off a boulder higher up the hill, Rocío pointed out, “Micah, I am not eighty years old.”

  Damn a woman’s vanity. Even a blind nun’s.

  Then a voice spoke. “I have learned not to trust nuns, amigo. At least, I do not trust nuns that travel with the likes of you, cabrón.”

  Son of a bitch. I’d almost forgotten all about Felipe Hernandez.

  “What the hell!” I said, more to myself. Had Hernandez been waiting all this time for me to turn up in the Valley of Fire, miles from nowhere?

  Actually, checking the copy of the Las Vegas Daily Optic that I ain’t used for privy paper yet, I read that the “Roving Territorial Reporter” learned that Hernandez followed a cold trail from Las Vegas to Anton Chico to Puerto de Luna to Fort Sumner to White Oaks and finally to Carrizozo where he had spent some time in a house of ill repute before giving up and deciding to follow the trail from Carrizozo to San Antonio (New Mexico Territory’s town, not the Alamo burg in Texas). According to a chica de la noche whose charms Hernandez had admired, the son of a bitch had given up on ever seeing me, Micah Bishop, dead. He and the two cousins who hadn’t given up on what they considered a forlorn chase, happened upon me, Micah Bishop, by pure, accidental luck.

  ’Course, none of that I knowed certain-sure till my trial and conviction. All I knowed then was that I was in a peck of trouble.

  Geneviève come crawling on hands and knees through a natural depression, bringing the sacks with her. As long as she kept her head down, she was pretty much safe. For now.

  “I tell you what, amigo!” Hernandez called up to us again. “I will let the nun go free. On my word as a gentleman, I guarantee that she will not be harmed.”

  One nun. They’d seen Rocío, but not Geneviève. who had just reached us.

  I helped her out of the little ditch, handed her Benigno’s Remington, and told her to make sure Rocío didn’t draw no fire from them boys down below.

  “Are those gentlemen after the gold ingots, too?” Rocío asked.

  “They’re after my arse,” I said, not loud enough for even old elephant ears to hear. “They don’t know a thing about the gold, Sister.”

  I then repeated it to myself, out loud, just to make sure that I understood what I’d just said. “They don’t know a thing about the gold.”

  My eyes met Geneviève’s, held for a moment, then I turned back to look down the slope.

  “You can’t trust them,” Geneviève said.

  “I know that.”

  “They’ll kill you just as soon as they can.”

  “Most likely. But I don’t think they’ll shoot Rocío.” I met her eyes again. “Can’t say the same about you. You did club the jailer when you busted me out, and Felipe Hernandez’s reputation stinks like a week-dead coyot’.”

  I taken me another deep breath, studied things over some in my mind, and finally decided to strike up a conversation with the boys down below with guns. “Felipe!” I called out. “How did you know it was me up here?”

  “I didn’t, cabrón! Until you told me.”

  “So you just fired on a nun?”

  “I’d fire upon my own mother to see you swing. Gomez was my favorite uncle’s son.”

  I wet my lips. Rubbed my chin. Bit my bottom lip. Finally decided to take a risk. You gotta do that when you’re playing cards. Sometimes that risk will prompt the guy with the winning hand to fold.

  “Felipe!” I shouted. “What if I told you that I knew the general whereabouts to a fortune in gold?”

  “I would say,” Hernandez said, and he said it.

  I had no idea what he was saying because of all the echoes and the fact that my Spanish wasn’t that good. “Speak English!”

  “Then I would say that I cannot trust this Micah Bishop. And that I own a hotel, an emporium, I have real estate and investments in the train depot, two hotels, a grain mill, a gambling parlor, the local mortuary, a sawmill and a farm and a rancho in the county. And much, much more. I would say that I do not need to go chasing a dollar or two in gold at every drop of the hat.”

  So I yelled back down to him that $750,000 ain’t quite the same as chasing a dollar. I looked on the ridge we’d clumb up. It was sandstone, and it ran a few hundred yards, then dropped below the black lava, but I could see that it was something like an arroyo. It would make a pretty good trail for mules and horses, maybe even a wagon.

  There was some talking among the cousins and Felipe Hernandez. Finally, Hernandez yelled that he would never, ever trust the likes of me, and that I should say my prayers and send my confession to one of the nuns, because he was done talking and was ready to avenge Gomez’s death.

  “Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in ancient Spanish ingots!” I yelled. “Buried not more ’n a mile from here! Ingots made for King Richard III.”

  “Philip IV,” Geneviève corrected.

  “It don’t matter.” To them killers below, I hollered, “Remember the story of the lost gold mine in Mora? This is where most of the ingots will be found.” So I give them the story as best I could.

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bsp; “I do not want gold,” Felipe Hernandez snapped once more. “I just want you, Micah Bishop, and I want you dead.”

  There was more cussing echoing across the rocks, and then there was a gunshot, and it didn’t bounce off the country so good on account that it had been muffled. As if it had been fired at a target fairly close.

  “Señor!” a new voice said. “I have killed my cousin Felipe. My cousin Carlos and I never cared much for him anyway. If we come up with our guns holstered, will you talk to us more about this gold?”

  I lifted my head up a ways, wet my bottom lip, and wiped my palms on my pants legs. “Step out in the open. But remember, I’ve got a Sharps Big Fifty, and ain’t never missed with it.” Because I’d never shot a big buffalo rifle. Didn’t have it with me on this little expedition as I hadn’t never owned one.

  They stood above some boulders, probably sixty yards down the ridge, one in a black, wide-brimmed hat, the other wearing a tan bowler. They kept their hands out from their sides, palms facing me, and started walking toward us.

  When they got closer, I could tell that they was both older men, maybe in their fifties, with silver hair, one sporting a goatee, the other a gold tooth. The stopped at the edge of the ridge.

  “Can you trust them?” Geneviève asked.

  I give her a look of contempt. I mean, I loved her, and she’d saved my hide, and she didn’t have to be a nun—that was all well and good with me—but she had just asked one damned fool question.

  “They just shot their cousin dead.” I let it go at that.

  “Señor!” Cousin Bowler called out.

  I answered.

  He said, “We cannot climb up to you with our hands like this.”