With a grin, I told them, “We’re a peaceable bunch. Just shuck off shell belts and revolvers. Leave them on the ground. Then climb on up. And welcome.”
By grab, they actually shucked their hardware and started climbing.
Well, I considered shooting them both in their heads as they picked their path up the ridge. Probably would have done it had Geneviève and Rocío not been with me. They would have done the same to me. The two Hernandez cousins, I mean. Not Rocío and Geneviève. Instead of killing them, I helped Cousin Bowler up, even brushed off the bottoms of them fancy buckskin trousers he wore.
They removed their hats as they stood there, taking me in, stepping back from Rocío, and eyes practically bulging out of their skulls when they looked at Geneviève.
“Don’t y’all want to know where that gold is?” I had to interrupt that love gathering. Made me all jealous.
“Where is it?” Bowler Cousin asked.
I give them one more look over. “Any of you birds know how to get to Crockett’s Cave?”
They didn’t look at me. Stared at each other. Then Black Hat Cousin repeated, “Crockett’s Cave?”
“That’s where the gold is. All of it.”
That, I figured, was a lie worthy of ten Hail Marys to start off with.
“Señor,” Cousin Black Hat finally said, “I live in San Miguel County, and my cousin here”—he gestured toward Cousin Bowler—“is from Chama, just below the border of Colorado. We are not familiar with this country at all.”
Figured. But it was worth a shot.
Then Sister Rocío said, “I know where it is, Micah. I can feel it. It is this way.”
Geneviève grabbed her arm before she stepped off and fell.
“It is this way,” the blind woman said. “I feel it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
We basically followed a blind woman like she was a divining rod.
I kept that Dean and Adams in my hand at all times and kept them eyes of mine on Cousin Bowler and Cousin Black Hat. Geneviève never let go of the Remington, never let them man-killing cousins get too close to her or Rocío. We went down, and the temperature dropped considerable as we’d climbed into the shadows out of the sun. ’Course, it wasn’t freezing. Not in July. Not in the Valley of Fire.
Dark clouds kept approaching, and my nerves got tighter than a miser gripping a three-cent piece. Sister Rocío was humming. The two cousins wasn’t saying nothing. We climbed over a sandstone ridge, went back down in the lava, and kept walking south and west, then west and south. Geneviève held that big .44 in one hand, and the other gripped Rocío’s arm, the blind nun acting like it was a Sunday stroll to church in the city of Rome.
Thunder rolled across the sky and lighting slashed to earth.
“Monsoon,” one of the cousins said, pointing at the dark line beneath the cloud that told us it was pouring rain a few miles ahead.
“Micah,” Geneviève called out. “Those clouds are moving fast.”
“I know.” I done a quick look behind me, then turned back to make sure the cousins weren’t up to something no good. They wasn’t. Then I realized what I had just seen, and slowly, almost forgetting about Cousin Black Hat and Cousin Bowler, I turned and stared again, and quickly faced front.
“There’s no place to hide back there,” I said, though that ain’t what I’d been looking for. “Let’s try to find the cave.”
A hundred yards later, I smelled rain on the horizon, and it had turned downright chilly. Didn’t want to catch my death in some thunderstorm, but I didn’t think there was much I could do about it.
Off to the right, I saw Cousin Bowler waving his hat over his head frantically, and we all hurried over to that big old boy, who was pointing at an opening in the ground.
“Crockett’s Cave?” Cousin Bowler asked.
“Absolutely,” I said, though I didn’t know for certain-sure. When I was hiding from them fellows from White Oaks, I must’ve come in through the other entrance, off to the west. Bowler went in first. Then Geneviève. Followed by me and Rocío, and I turned to make sure Cousin Black Hat followed, which he done. Moments later, we could hear the rain drenching the earth, but we was safe in Crockett’s Cave.
A match flared. Cousin Bowler frowned. “Where’s the gold?”
I pointed. They turned, saw something, and headed over.
The match went out, and darkness enveloped us again. The rain sounded odd, almost like it was echoing. Cousin Bowler spoke to Cousin Black Hat, and their voices bounced around the dark dungeon we’d come into.
A voice whispered right next to my ear, and I liked to have soiled my britches it scared me so much ’cause I wasn’t expecting it. I calmed down because it was Geneviève.
“What are we doing here?” she said.
I could tell she was seething, but I answered her. “Well, it beats waiting out in the rain.”
Another match flared. I heard Cousin Black Hat say, “What is that rabbit doing hanging upside down like that?”
The match moved, then got flicked rapidly out, or got dropped. All I know was that it was dark again.
In the darkness, Sister Rocío said, “It is not a rabbit, señor, but a Townsend’s big-eared bat.
“Señor,” Cousin Bowler called out, and his voice danced around the cave. “I see no gold.”
“Of course not,” I said, and started walking over to him. I reminded myself that I’d never done much planning, and most of the plans I’d come up with never had worked. This here time down in Crockett’s Cave was pretty much a prime example of why Big Tim Pruett never trusted me to do more than saddle his horse or take his weighted dice and slip him a fair pair because I was good at slight of hand and he didn’t want to get run out of town on a rail.
Crockett’s Cave, I read in The Nation while in the privy waiting to be hanged, ain’t what one would call small. It was part gypsum, part limestone, with one big passage and a few shorter ones along the sides. The big room was about a hundred feet by three hundred. It smelled like dust.
About that time, I’d come up amongst Cousin Black Hat and Cousin Bowler, who struck his lucifer. The light made me back up, but then I seen the glint of something in Cousin Black Hat’s hand, and I knowed it was a gun. Even if I hadn’t noticed it right then, Cousin Bowler was telling me, “Do not speak loudly, señor, but talk in an easy voice. We do not wish to alarm the nun and the young—”
“She’s a nun, too,” I lied, and didn’t feel no urge to say a Hail Mary or Our Father over that fib.
“Very well. My cousin has a Remington over-and-under .41-caliber derringer in his hand. I think he can see you long enough to put a bullet in your belly.”
“Most likely,” I said, but them boys didn’t know how fast I can move when somebody’s about to shoot me in the stomach.
Nasty way to die. A bullet in the gut. I wonder if hanging’s a better way to go.
“I see no treasure here, señor,” Cousin Black Hat said. “Do you?”
“Of course you don’t,” I said, thinking to myself because it ain’t here, you damned fools, but saying, “Because you don’t leave a fortune in gold just sitting out in the open, even in a cave. You bury it.”
Slowly but surely, I stepped between the cousins. The match went out, and I was in darkness, though I could still see light seeping through the opening to the cave. I was kneeling and saying, “You got to dig,” when a new lucifer flared into life.
That give me a clear target, and I taken it. My hands scooped up all they could hold, and I flung guano into the eyes of Cousin Black Hat, you know, the one holding the derringer.
He used an English cuss word, which was good and accurate since that’s exactly what I’d throwed into his nose and eyes and mouth. The match went out, and then there was this terrible scream, one of uncontrollable rage, and not close, but from the entrance to the cave.
It was complete darkness until I pulled the trigger on the Dean and Adams. The flash about blinded me, and the noise liked to ha
ve deafened me. Up ahead, near where I’d left Rocío and Geneviève, come cussing and a click that even where I was working the trigger on that .436 again I recognized as a Colt being cocked.
Then come more flashes, which sent pain through my eyeballs.
Something else I learned about Crockett’s Cave. It’s a big room, but when folks start shooting, it’s hard on one’s ears and eyes. Bullets ricocheted off the limestone, kicked up gypsum, and the roar of them guns proved terrible painful. A bullet burned my arm, right above the elbow. I had my finger on the trigger, but I couldn’t see nothing to shoot at. But Geneviève was shooting, and somebody else had just entered the cave, and he was blasting away, too. Nobody could see nothing.
“During the gun battle in the depths of Hades, with thousands of bullets and arrows bouncing off the walls around him, The Bishop kept his nerves under absolute control. He knew to rush would rush him to death.”
That’s what that Colonel-fellow wrote about me and my adventures in Valley of Fire, Shadow of Death; Or, The Bishop and the Ingots, which I read three nights ago in one sitting. It ain’t accurate, but the colonel never asked me for no information, though I did like him calling me “The Bishop.”
Anyway, at that time, my nerves was cut open and sending panic through my body. I did have my finger on the trigger—that much, Colonel what’s-his-name knowed what he was writing about—but there wasn’t nothing to shoot at.
There was a scream off my left, but I was just seeing painful flashes of orange and red and white. Above the ringing in my ears and blood rushing to my brain, there was a voice. “You son of a bitch! I shall kill you, you son of a bitch. I shall give you exactly what you gave my favorite cousin.”
Felipe Hernandez. I should have knowed. Never trust nobody.
He and his cousins had come up with a plan. The cousins said they’d killed Felipe, then that sidewinder had trailed us to the cave. The vindictive son of a bitch figured he could find a fortune in gold and avenge poor cousin Gomez.
I heard footsteps. Kept waiting for Cousin Bowler or Cousin Black Hat to finish me off, but they couldn’t, on account that they was both lying dead, though I didn’t know that fact till later. Well, my vision cleared at last, and I figured it was God letting me see myself die.
Hernandez had a torch in his left hand, a Colt in his right.
He squeezed the trigger. The Colt roared. Almost immediately, something burned across my neck. I heard that ping—well, I thought I did, but it had to be my imagination—and I cringed, because I never really want to get shot by a ricochet again. Before Hernandez could pull the trigger again, or just swing the barrel of that gun and crack my skull, he muttered, “My God. I am killed.” And he was.
The torch dropped, and so did Felipe Hernandez, killed by a ricochet from his own gun.
The torch, still burning on the floor, give me enough light to know that the cousins wasn’t worth my time no more. I didn’t have much time left, because the rain had stopped, and the sun would soon sink. I wanted to get Geneviève and Rocío out of this cave, and find that gold, give then dead nuns a Christian burial, and get the hell out of the Valley of Fire.
“Come on!” I yelled, and headed for the opening, shining light, beautiful light, over me. “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here!” I was halfway out of the cave before I recollected that Sister Rocío couldn’t see, so I come back down, helped them both up, telling them, “There’s something I want y’all to see!”
Something glorious and wonderful and helpful.
Sister Rocío reminded me that she couldn’t see. She went out first, while I had to wait for Geneviève, who eased back into the cave to fetch the bag of hardtack and jerky and Benigno’s Remington .44.
“Let me have the gun,” I told her.
She pulled it out, give it to me butt first. “It’s empty.”
I figured. So many shots had been bouncing around in the cave. I could feel the heat from the revolver, and shoved the Dean and Adams behind me. Thought I had two shots left in my .436.
“Did I . . . ?” Geneviève began. She swallowed. “Did I kill any of those men?”
“Ricochets got them all,” I said. ’Course, I wasn’t certain of nothing about Cousin Bowler and Cousin Black Hat. They might have shot each other. Might have been ricochets. Might have been their dead cousin Felipe. Maybe I’d lucked out and killed one. Might have been God.
From outside the cave, Sister Rocío said, “Micah!”
I grabbed Geneviève’s hand, and led her into the dusk, smelling the fresh rain, feeling real good till I saw three other gents standing there. What I seen wasn’t glorious and wonderful and helpful.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Corbin give me a friendly nod and motioned at the long-barreled Colt in his right hand. The Pockmarked Man spit tobacco juice at one of them colorful frogs. He was holding a rifle.
“Hello, Bishop.” Sean Fenn had Sister Rocío right in front of him, pressing a revolver’s barrel against her temple.
“Pitch that gun you’re holding back into the pit.” I done what he said. That Remington was empty anyhow, so it wasn’t going to do me no good.
“Is the gold down there?” Fenn asked.
My head shook. “Just three dead men.”
He grinned wider. “Well, I’m sure they’ll have company.” His eyes darted over to Geneviève. “Nice to see you, honey.” He didn’t mean it.
Back to me, he said, “Who’s in the cave?”
“Felipe Hernandez and two cousins.”
“Hernandez.” It taken him a while to recollect. “From Las Vegas?”
I nodded.
He laughed. “Well, I’m sure glad he hadn’t forgotten you. The boys and I were riding toward San Antonio when we heard the gunfire. Decided there was a good chance you would be involved in any shooting. Lucky us, eh?”
All I did was shrug.
“Where’s the gold?”
When I didn’t answer soon enough for his liking, which was immediate, he pressed the revolver tighter across the old nun’s noggin, bending her head back, and causing her to groan.
“Sean . . .” Geneviève pleaded.
“Shut up!” Fenn roared.
“It’s behind you,” I said. “About two hundred, three hundred yards.”
Fenn eased off with the Colt, but he didn’t turn around. The Pockmarked Man did, though. Corbin just grinned.
“Talk,” Fenn said.
So I talked. “Sister Rocío was jerked over the edge when all the mules—”
“Burros,” the blind nun corrected.
“When all the . . . when most of the burros slipped on the ice—which means they had to be traveling on a trail.” I nodded behind him. “That trail is as good as any I’ve seen going north-south.”
“All right.” That’s all Fenn said.
So I recited him the poem.
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 had to explain the poem on the Cross of Lorraine that Geneviève had kept on her person all that time. It caused Fenn’s face to crimson something considerable, but he ground his teeth, and kept that temper of his in check.
“So that’s Mount Ararat behind me?” Fenn said with a snort.
“If you look at it from where I am, you can see the Ark,” I said, studying it. “Coming over the trail, or looking at it from the north, you don’t see it. But those burros toting the nuns and gold back in forty-eight had fallen off on this side. Rocío was looking up this way, looking north, not south.”
The Pockmarked Man sprayed a lava rock with tobacco juice. “By golly, Fenn, I reckon you could say them boulders up on that hill resemble a ship of some kind.”
Fenn
chewed on his lip, and maybe his head titled slightly like he was conceding my point. But all he said was, “So we’ve climbed down from Mount Ararat. Where’s the gold then?”
“That ain’t how I figure it, Sean,” I said. “Sister Rocío was already in the canyon, so she’d already climbed off Ararat. She went into one of the side canyons.”
Fenn give me that point, too. Then he made me repeat the poem, which I did, with some help from Rocío.
“Beside the King’s crown?” he asked.
“My guess is it’s a rock that looks like a crown. That’s the canyon we need to enter.”
“All right,” Fenn said. “Let’s find that canyon.”
“Well, the problem there is that almost forty years have passed since she buried the nuns and the ingots,” I said, feeling smart all of a sudden. “Flash floods. Lightning. Wind. Hail. That rock marking the canyon could be long gone by now.”
“It’s the first canyon,” Rocío then told us. “Heading east. I couldn’t carry gold and bodies very far, now could I?”
“Well, why in hell didn’t you just write to take the first canyon?” The Pockmarked Man said, all haughty and inconsiderate.
“I do not question Lord Byron’s choice of words,” Rocío said. “Nor Longfellow’s.”
Corbin laughed. The Pockmarked Man picked his ear quickly, then brought that hand back down to the Winchester.
“‘Where black meets the red,’” Fenn repeated. “What’s that about? Darkies and redskins?”
“Red and black lava,” Corbin said, and I knowed right then that Corbin was getting tired of Sean Fenn. So was I.
“Well,” Fenn said. “I guess we should try to find it before nightfall. Lead the way, Bishop.”
Problem was, I couldn’t lead the way. They’d see that Dean and Adams tucked in the back of my waistband, and that pistol was the only chance I had to get out of this pickle alive. ’Course, I didn’t recollect how many shots I had left in that old gun. I thought only two. But Fenn had lowered his .44-40. Oh, he still held it, but the barrel was aiming at the sandstone dust, and Sister Rocío was standing in front of him. Corbin was staring at the country and the Ark. It really did look like a boat what with the sun sinking and the light fading and the sandstone rising above the black rocks and me standing in a puddle after that big rain shower.
Valley of Fire Page 24