Her breathing grew strong; her chest rose and fell. The pistol leveled on him. She was angry, as he hoped.
He continued, “Ha d I expressed the desire, my father wouldn’t have let me. He never liked you. He compared you to a creature found beneath a rock.”
From one inhalation to the next, she grew in stature, and grew, and grew. If she had been a dragon, Damian thought, she would be breathing fire. Her hands tightened on the reins; he prepared to leap out of the way.
Regaining control, she denied him. “No, Damian. I can’t run you over. It would make as much sense to shoe a goose. I’d gain nothing. No, as long as I’ve got your darling wife as hostage, we’ll continue as we are.”
He was laid to rest in the lower chancel,
Barbara Allen all in the higher;
There grew up a rose from Barbara Allen’s breast,
And from his a briar.
And they grew and they grew to the very church-top,
Until they could grow no higher,
And twisted and twined in a true lover’s knot. . . .
Katherine held the watch in her hand, playing the wistful tune over and over. It comforted her and annoyed Vietta—a winning combination. Vietta had already ordered Katherine to stop it, but Katherine knew Vietta wouldn’t shoot her for a song. The woman had proven herself greedy, not insane.
“I wish the fog would lift,” Katherine said. She sat on a fallen log, her riding boots on a stump beside her. Her skirt was hitched up almost to her knees, her bare feet wiggled in the creek that trickled down the mountainside. She didn’t care about modesty or propriety; for the first time in hours of walking, the blisters on her heels were numb . Purple bruises laced her legs and arms; she hadn’t had the nerve to remove the scarf and check the damage done to her throat. Her complaint was husky. “This gray is so gloomy.”
As if responding to her words, the sun stabbed through the cloud with one beam. Katherine blinked in the sudden brightness; every pine needle, every leaf was delineated in the sharp mountain air. Above her she could see blue sky. Wisps of fog streamed past, then closed in once more.
“A valiant try,” Damian said. He shook the pebbles out of his boots and sighed. “Look at the holes in these socks. Leocadia will have a fit.”
“Your socks! Never mind your socks. We’re lost,” Vietta nagged, a peevish edge to her voice. “I wish you hadn’t lost the map.”
“You didn’t even know there was a map until I told you,” Damian snapped back.
Damian and Vietta had been arguing for the past hour, ever since they’d come to the end of the trail and found no pot of gold awaiting them. They’d argued through the meal of tortillas and cold beans Katherine had demanded. They were stuck in this perilous little spot, held by Vietta’s gun and stubbornness.
Katherine shrugged away their quarrel. Vietta’s menace had been diffused as the hours wore on. She seemed nothing more than a spinster, frazzled with the plans gone awry. Right now it was easy to forget the gun she held so firmly, the knife tucked into her belt.
“Damian didn’t lose the map,” Katherine pointed out. “He hid it under the saddle blanket of a very intelligent horse and when that horse sensed danger, he left. I wish Damian and I had been so clever.”
From their expressions, it was obvious the others failed to appreciate her logic.
Their only possible route was down the way they’d come. On one side, the ground dropped away, falling straight down to some pointed rocks. On the other side, the trail died in a sheer cliff that rose before and around them. Looking like large slices of bread dropped by a giant, slabs of rock decorated the perimeter of the cliff. Scrubby bushes grew among them. The little stream fell straight down that cliff and nourished the lone climbing rose that struggled in the rocky soil. The rose twined across the stones and around a few random sticks thrust into the ground. Carried on a moist breeze, the first pink blooms of summer filled the air with fragrance.
Katherine liked this place. All through the long, wearisome day, she’d longed for a spot to sit and rest. Here she had cold water to drink, a babbling stream for her feet, a pleasant smell, and an unhappy Vietta. What else could one ask? Inspired, she wound the watch’s mechanism once more. “I love this ballad,” she said. “I’m glad Tobias built it into the watch.” She sang, “He was laid to rest in the lower chancel, Barbara Allen all in the higher—”
“Are you sure this is where we’re supposed to be?” Vietta waved the pistol around.
“No, I’m not sure this is where we’re supposed to be,” Damian mimicked nastily. “Without the map, I can’t be sure.”
Katherine interrupted her tune. “At least Confite is safe.”
Vietta snorted, moving restlessly on the stump where she sat. “That’s a relief for me.”
“Has the poor señorita got saddle sores?” Grinning offensively at her, Katherine sang, “There grew up a rose from Barbara Allen’s breast, and from his a briar—” She faltered.
The map had said, By these signs ye shall know it.
A rose bush, lost in the wilderness, growing where no other rose bush could be seen. Growing against an impenetrable cliff where gold was supposed to be hidden.
Supporting herself with her hands, Vietta rose and stared at that valiant rose bush. “That’s it.” Vietta pointed with a shaking finger. “That’s it.”
Impatient with her, Damian ordered, “Don’t be so dramatic.”
“That’s it.” As if drawn by an irresistible force, she took a step toward the cliff. She stopped with a visible effort. “You go.” She waved the gun at Damian. “And you.” She waved it at Katherine.
Katherine knew what Vietta wanted. She comprehended the workings of Vietta’s mind in the way she now comprehended the workings of Tobias’s. The music of the watch wound down, tired with its efforts to make her understand. She slipped it into her watch pocket, lifted her feet from the water and dried them on her skirt. Thrusting her feet in her boots, wincing with the pain, she stalked towards the cliff. Damian was staring at the women as if they’d lost their minds, but he joined Katherine as she picked up the long, twining arms of the rose. She traced to the base of the plant, lifting them aside as best she could. There, beside the thorny bush, was a small hole in the wall with a clock face scratched in the stone below it.
“Tobias,” Katherine whispered.
“Madre de Dios, you found it,” Damian said in awe.
8 June, in the year of our Lord, 1777
In the darkness of the cave, in the deepest part of the night, I heard the voice of God. Fray Pedro de Jesus says the voice of God is the fount of love and kindness. I tell you here that God speaks in the tones of an avenger to one who has ignored Him. His patience with me is at an end. I trembled in the face of His terrible anger. Yet the dawn brought a relenting of His displeasure, and I crawled out of the cave tempered into a sword of God.
I assured the women of unending protection if they did as I ordered, and the voice of the Lord spoke through me, convincing them to work without a qualm. I assured Fray Lucio that he would not perish, and for the first time his paralyzing fear waned. The women labor with a will, singing the hymns I have taught them. Using the materials which abound in the area, we created a cradle for the gold, much like the manger that cherished the baby Jesus at His birth Then the difficult work began.
I live with the Lord’s assurance of the women’s safety, and of Fray Lucio’s. I shall ask for no more, nor expect it.
—from the diary of Fray Juan Estévan de Bautista
Chapter 21
Damian used his boot to scuff loose dirt over the clock face.
“What are you doing?” Vietta’s shrill voice betrayed her worry and the end of her patience. “Let me see.”
Shrugging, he stepped back. She saw only the hole, not the faint remains of Tobias’s scratching. That was enough; her mouth dropped.
“Go in.” She stood back from them, but for the first time today, the hand that held the gun shook.
“Then dig it out. Tobias fit. You will, too. There’s gold in there.”
“Yes. Gold.” He caressed the word.
Damian and Vietta moved with jerky anticipation. They trembled; they spoke too rapidly. The Spaniards’ greed made them shine with a kind of light, and Katherine turned her eyes away. Watching them was like watching a starving man eat, and knowing that with incentive, she could be like them.
“I don’t want to go in,” she murmured.
“You’re not going in,” Vietta retorted.
Damian swung on her. “Of course Katherine’s going in.”
Vietta backed to the saddlebags that lay beside her horse. She opened the clasp, pulled a spade from a leather loop and tossed it to Damian.
He kicked at it with contempt as it skittered through the dirt beside him. “You came prepared for everything, didn’t you? But Katherine must go in with me.”
The revolver leveled on Katherine’s chest. “No.”
“Katherine and I belong together.”
Vietta pursed her lips and shook her head. “I don’t believe there’s any way to escape from the cave, but you’ll try to find one if I send the two of you in. This way, Damian, you’ll look for the treasure and hurry about it.”
“Let me go in,” Katherine urged. “Don Damian can stay out here with you.”
“No!” Vietta and Damian said simultaneously.
Startled to find themselves in accord, they glanced at each other.
Damian shook his head. “No, Catriona. According to the legends, there are traps inside set by the good fathers.”
“Is that supposed to dissuade me?” Katherine asked.
“Remember this?” Vietta waggled the pistol. “This will dissuade you. I want you out here. Damian adores you, God knows why, and I can control him with the threat of your death. I don’t know if you care enough about him not to escape if offered the chance.”
Katherine sank down on a stump, feeling as if the breath had been knocked out of her. “I beg your pardon. What kind of person do you think I am?”
“You’re an Americana.” Vietta condemned her with the title.
Damian stripped off his jacket and picked up the shovel.
“Be careful not to stumble into the traps. Find the gold first.” Like a draft of winter wind, a faint, chilly smile swept Vietta’s face. “Don’t come out without the treasure, or I’ll shoot her.”
Bending his back to the task, he enlarged the hole into the mountain.
“Don Damian,” Katherine protested, but he didn’t turn around. “You don’t believe I’d leave you to your death.”
“Of course not. You’re too valiant for that. You’d come out fighting like a cougar.” He glanced over his shoulder and smiled kindly at her. “This is easy digging. Someone has filled it in not long ago.”
Katherine didn’t like the way he dismissed her.
“How recently?” Vietta asked in alarm. “Within the week or so?”
Bits of stone fell, slowing his progress, but he steadily outstripped the miniature landslide. “I shouldn’t think so. I imagine it was Tobias. But perhaps the gold has already been removed by some other treasure seeker.”
She gripped the pistol tighter. “That would be too bad for you and for your lady.”
Katherine clenched her teeth, frightened by the dangerous game they all played. “Don Damian, she has to kill us. If we find the gold, if we don’t find the gold. She can’t let us live to spread this tale around California.”
He didn’t turn around. “I know that.”
“Then why are you doing what she says?” Desperation brought her hands together in a prayerful attitude.
“What’s the alternative? Have her shoot you? Jump off the cliff?” He tossed the shovel aside. “I have to try to live, no matter how the odds run against me. The hole’s big enough. Before I go in, Vietta, I want to kiss my wife.”
“No.” Vietta’s voice rang flat and plain. “If your love is so undying and you believe in heaven, you’ll meet there sooner or later. You can kiss then.”
Leaning against the cliff, he looked at Katherine as if he would memorize her. “I hoped for something more physical, at least one more time.”
“When you come out,” Vietta promised.
He scowled. “If I still have all my parts after a brush with the good fathers.”
Katherine thought he’d never looked more like a god or a young Caesar. The bandage on his head contrasted starkly with his tanned face, his midnight hair, the growth of beard on his face. His shirt had been white and crisp; now it was smeared with dirt and the brown stains of wine and blood. Buttons dangled; his hands were bruised. His breeches and boots showed the strength of their construction, enclosing him, clasping him as she longed to.
He had never looked better to her.
The words bubbled to lips before she thought. “Tobias will tell you if there’s a trap.”
Vietta asked snidely, “Oh, is he communicating with you now.”
Damian glanced down at the spot where the clock face had been, then back at Katherine. “Perhaps he is.” He saluted her. “You are indeed everything I ever wanted in a wife.” With a lopsided smile just for her, he disappeared into the hole in the wall.
Katherine stared after him, but he was gone. She checked her watch for the time. Five past twelve. She waited, checked it again. Five past twelve. She glanced overhead. That wasn’t right; it was long past noon. She wound the clock mechanism, shook it, put it close to her ear and listened to it. The clear, steady ticking had stopped.
Frantically, she wound the music. The tinkling bells were silent. Tobias’s watch was dead. Death was everywhere. Death lurked inside the cave; death lurked in the barrel of Vietta’s gun.
Yet birds rustled in their nests, ignorant of the drama. Squirrels scurried in the underbrush. Fog clung close to the ground, parting only on the occasional command of the wind to reveal a flash of sunshine.
Hunched over like an old woman, she kept the watch in her hand, warming it with her body heat as if she could revive it. She treated it like some lucky charm that would shield her from harm. Perhaps it could be cleaned; perhaps it would run when the dirt and the sweat that clogged its works were removed. Perhaps.
The silence around her strengthened. Vietta said nothing, moving restlessly back to the edge of the path like a person expecting an ambush. Katherine watched her, saw the occasional fearful glance. At first she thought Vietta worried about Damian leaping out of the cave, but no; Vietta’s fear was directed at the cliff that twisted away from the cave entrance and plunged straight down from their feet.
Katherine asked, “Is this the cliff you fell off?”
Vietta jumped and the gun barrel wavered. “No. No, this isn’t it.”
“You mean you never got this close to the cave before?”
“No,” she said, a clipped edge to her voice.
Standing, Katherine stretched and wandered with fake interest to the edge of the cliff. “Whoa, it’s a long way down.”
“Get away from there.”
Katherine shrugged. “Maybe I’ll fall off and you won’t have to worry about pointing that gun at someone.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” Vietta muttered.
“I suppose I qualify.” Katherine scuffed her foot, kicked pebbles over the edge. “There’s quite a view.” She pointed off into the distance. “See? There’s another cliff right across from here. Is that the cliff you fell off?”
“I don’t know.” With a rush of ferocity, Vietta said, “You don’t know what it’s like. Falling through the air, screaming all the way. The bushes slap you, the ground rushes up, one big stone waits to stab you.”
Her voice thickened, quivered with intensity until Katherine could imagine the terror. She mocked that terror when she said lightly, “Look straight down there! Why, those rocks look like the inside of a cat’s mouth
.”
“I’m not watching you.”
Katherine checked. Vietta wasn’t. She had her gaze fixed on a tree not far away, as if she could keep Katherine in her peripheral vision and that would be enough. Katherine moved a step closer to the cave. “Those rocks look like sharp, jagged teeth. Imagine how much that would hurt if you fell on them.” She took another step.
“You’d better stop that,” Vietta said in a fierce decree.
“What? I’m just telling you about the view, since you’re too cowardly to look yourself.”
“I can see you moving toward the cave.”
“Were you wearing petticoats when you went over the edge?” Katherine chatted. “I bet if you hadn’t been wearing petticoats, you would have been broken up even more. Were there a lot of broken bones?” Katherine saw the way Vietta was sweating in the cool of the shifting fog currents, the way she shuddered in periodic tremors.
Vietta’s belligerence grew as her authority shrunk. “I’m going to kill you. I want to kill you. I hate you, with your golden hair and your green eyes and your funny accent. It’s going to be fun to kill you. It was fun just cutting your throat a little and seeing you faint like I’d really hurt you.”
“Vietta, there’s something behind you.”
Laughing harshly, Vietta took a step forward. “How foolish do you think I am? You think you can scare me with your talk of falling and cliffs. Yet, when I talk about slitting your throat—”
“Vietta.” Something moved over Vietta’s shoulder. Katherine squinted, trying to identify it through the restless fog and the shadowy trees. When she saw him, her gasp of horror warned Vietta, but too late.
Vietta swung the pistol as Smith’s fist descended.
With a yip of fear, Katherine dove for the cave. “Don Damian,” she shouted. Waterfalls of dirt cascaded onto her as she wiggled through the compact opening. Standing, she smacked her head on the rocky wall between her and the outside world, then she stumbled forward to maintain her balance. Her knees met a higher level of the floor; she pitched forward, catching herself with her hands and knees. “Don Damian,” she whispered, her voice disappearing as the dust worked on her throat. She wiped at her face with her arm and ground sand into her eyes. She trembled in fear: afraid, alone, tears of pain trickling from under her lids. Where was Don Damian?
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