Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  Had I been inducted into the colonel’s regiment? Was he going to rent me out to his friends?

  I felt as if I should have saluted before I left his study.

  He gave me a final command before I stepped out of the room.

  “There are fine weapons in my gun room that you can use tomorrow. As you know, an indio isn’t allowed to own personal firearms.”

  The stable turned out to be an improvement over the inn. The rooms above the stable were occupied by servants, and I was given a room next to the colonel’s gun room. The small room had a lamp and cot, but more important it had an excellent supply of weapons, gun tools, and spare parts for pistols and muskets. And a supply of fine powder made by Felix Baroja, no less. I recognized the spare firing mechanisms, too. The best ones had been made by my own hand.

  I went to work immediately improving the pistols I’d purchased in Veracruz. The unrifled barrels would never have the accuracy of the fine pistolas I once possessed, but they would be serviceable.

  Iturbide’s selection of weapons was good, but I suspected his finest pieces were kept in the house. The ones in the gun room were all unrifled, but the criollos would be more impressed with hitting a target with an unrifled barrel than a rifled one.

  I selected a pistol and a musket for the shooting demonstration and improved their performance.

  The next morning before it was time to leave for the hunt with the colonel, I sought out the stableman, Raymundo, who had brought the message for me to come to the house last night. I wanted to define the time period so the ink wouldn’t be shipped to Taxco before I left for the city.

  “I have an amigo who is in the printing business. He’s waiting for a shipment of ink to arrive at the royal warehouse. He needs to find out if the shipment is in from Veracruz.”

  I gave him a silver coin.

  HUNDRED ONE

  AS ITURBIDE WENT to the side door that led to the stable where Juan and the mounts were waiting, his majordomo, a gray-haired servant brought from Spain by Iturbide forty years ago, told him of “Joaquin’s” request to Raymundo.

  “Raymundo thought it was strange that a peon would be asking about printer’s ink. And have a friend who’s a printer.”

  Iturbide nodded and stroked his chin. “Very strange. You go personally to the warehouse. Tell the manager I want to know if he has word of anything unusual in the works concerning printer’s ink.”

  HUNDRED TWO

  THE GROUP OF hunters gathered in a clearing an hour’s ride from the city. Iturbide told me on the way over that deer and fowl were brought in to sweeten the hunt. We had stopped to give me an opportunity to get used to firing the weapons I’d selected from his gun room.

  I paid no attention to the carriage arriving behind me because I was busy checking muskets thrust at me by hunters who wanted to be told either that their weapon was the finest money could buy—and every weapon was certainly expensive—or that the reason they were a poor shot was because the sights were off, the barrel was off, the powder was bad … anything but that their aim was bad.

  When I became cognizant of the carriage, the occupant had already stepped down. He now limped toward me. I had a hard time keeping my composure.

  Iturbide stepped forward to greet the new arrival.

  “Colonel Madero, this is the sharpshooter I told you about.”

  Still clad in black, still cracking his silver peg leg with his riding crop, the head of the viceroy’s secret police gave me a searing look. Not a glance, but a look that took in everything from my head to foot and chilled me to my soul.

  “As I told you, Joaquin brought down two rebels with two shots while charging in a full gallop.”

  I gave the secret police chief a small bow, “Señor, Colonel,” and knelt down and buried myself in examining a fowl musket that was misfiring. I wished I could crawl down the barrel and hide. Scar, gunsmith, sharpshooter. Only the name was different. And the geography—I was a long ways from Lake Chapala.

  Madero limped around me on the infamous silver peg leg he’d used to stomp prisoners to death.

  “Are you indio or mestizo?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, señor. I was an orphan. My parents were not known.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Guanajuato,” I said. I was familiar with the city because of the many trips I made there to deliver powder to the mines.

  “Ha, a beautiful city. And so rich, with its beautiful churches. My favorite is La Valenciana with its sacred image of the Virgin.”

  I froze. The famous image of the Virgin was in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guanajuato. The wooden image of the city’s patron was a gift from the king of Spain. La Valenciana, built by a silver baron, instead was famous for its opulent use of silver. But I was in a difficult spot. Madero was testing me to see if I knew the city—and I had to correct him. But I had to do it carefully. Were I to simply rebut the colonel’s knowledge, he might very well lash me to a tree and flog the flesh off my back.

  “La Valenciana was not my church, señor, so I am not familiar with the sacred image though I’ve heard that the church has much silver inside. I attended the Basilica of Our Lady of Guanajuato. We also had a very old image of the Virgin there—said to have been given to our church by the king himself.”

  To my eternal gratitude, Iturbide terminated the discussion.

  “Amigos,” Iturbide said, “gather around. Joaquin will give a shooting demonstration.”

  I was relieved to avoid the police commander’s gaze. I didn’t like the way the man looked at me. His manner was superficially polite, but he’d spent a lifetime in intelligence-gathering. His eyes saw through appearances and lies.

  Moreover, Madero was notoriously meticulous, and if his reputation for thoroughness was as accurate as I had heard, he would know a lot about Juan Rios, including his marksmanship. I wasn’t in a position to deny that I was a good shot, but as I prepared my weapons, I pondered how to present myself. Do I miss an occasional shot, making me a better-than-most marksman? Or do I really impress them as the expert sharpshooter Iturbide has told them I will be?

  My instinct was to dazzle them. Anyone could be a good shot—including the fugitive Juan Rios. To be an expert sharpshooter was rare—had that bastardo Rios been one, the whole world would have known about it—and it was a secret I kept to myself.

  That was my intention, and Iturbide corroborated that feeling, when he took me aside and forced my hand to shoot to win: “Don Carlos considers himself the best shot in the city. His guns are rifled and were made in Eibar by the best craftsmen. I bet him a hundred reales that you would beat him.” He grinned. “If you lose, the money will come out of your hide.”

  Ayyo …

  Colonel Madero limped over and took the pistol I had in my hand from me. He turned it to see the name engraved. “I see you’re using Don Agustin’s guns. Do you have a weapon of your own?”

  “Sí, señor.” I padded my hip. “My knife.”

  “What kind of work did you say you did in Guanajuato?”

  “Worked for Miguel Balistra, a ranchero. He taught me to shoot the coyotes that came after his cattle.”

  I didn’t claim that I belonged to a hacienda because Madero might know many of the major hacienda owners in the area—but there were hundreds of rancheros in the region.

  “What were you doing on the Veracruz road?”

  “Returning.” I gave him the same story I gave Iturbide—that I had accompanied a merchant who died of the vomito. And added that my ranchero employer had hired out both myself and a span of mules to the late merchant.

  I was sure I was sweating. I had decided on the story already, but my mouth was full of cotton as I spoke the words.

  “Ever been to Lake Chapala?”

  I shook my head. “No, señor.”

  Walking to the firing point, I thought about how complicated my life had become. I had literally been roped into service by a wealthy criollo … and the most ruthless gachupine in th
e colony had me in his gun sights.

  Bastardos, all of them. It was time to show them what an “Aztec” could do when competing with them at one of their favorite pastimes.

  “I am ready, señor, when you are,” I told Don Carlos.

  HUNDRED THREE

  COULD THERE BE two Aztec marksmen? Colonel Madero mulled over the question and more as his carriage carried him back into the city.

  Possibly, he thought. He had never shared his own fellow Spaniards’ contempt for the indio. More than the average gachupine, he was a student of history. He knew that the Aztecs, Mayans, and other indio nations had a high culture and brave warriors.

  And for both to have facial scars? Highly unlikely. Other words like improbable, impossible, unbelievable also came to mind.

  He had been a policeman too long to believe in extraordinary coincidences. He had no doubt that the indio sharpshooter calling himself Joaquin Ramirez was Juan Rios, the rebel gun-maker from Lake Chapala.

  One and the same.

  Under ordinary circumstances, he would have had the man arrested on the spot … waiting for the hunters to enjoy their sport first, of course. He hadn’t done it because he was unsure of his actions—it didn’t take much evidence to arrest an indio or even hang one. He didn’t arrest the man because of Iturbide.

  Madero was a cynic and realist about the virtues of his fellow Spanish notables—criollo and gachupine. Men of wealth and power were not generous, especially when it came to the two things closest to a Spaniard’s heart—guns and his horses—with women a distant third. Iturbide would be unlikely to advertise the indio’s merits and expose his newfound gem to other grandees who would bribe him away.

  No, he hadn’t arranged the shooting demonstration to simply show off the indio’s skills. There had been an ulterior motive.

  Something was in the air with the criollo.

  Nor had his invitation to Madero to attend the shooting exhibition been an accident.

  They were not friends nor did they socialize. They moved in entirely different circles. A bachelor, Madero preferred the elite company of gachupine military and police officials rather than the capital’s flamboyant social life, which revolved around effete costume balls and degenerate gambling.

  Iturbide had a reason for inviting him to the hunt—for flaunting the indio’s skills before him. Something beyond socializing.

  Iturbide must know the identity of the indio. The criollo was a high-ranking militia officer. While the viceroy had kept the escape of the pamphleteer and indio gun-maker a secret, it was a “secret” well known to ranking members of the militia, the police, and the viceroy’s staff. Madero had no doubt Colonel Iturbide, the leading criollo military officer in the colony, had been privy to it.

  So what was the criollo up to?

  What game was he playing?

  Iturbide had had a setback when accusations of corruption had ended his military governorship of Guanajuato. But he had returned to the service and had been offered the most important military command in the colony, the Army of the South.

  He knew most gachupines had begged off command of the army confronting the insurrectionist Guerrero. And Madero wondered about the viceroy’s wisdom in offering it to an ambitious criollo.

  True, Iturbide had been a loyal defender of the Crown and the Faith. Steadfastly loyal to the royal cause, he had declined offers of command from the rebel priest Hidalgo and other insurrectionists. Instead, he had continually proved his loyalty not only on the battlefield but by the number of rebels—often only suspected rebels—he had summarily executed. But he was still a criollo with blood and roots in the colony, not in Spain.

  José de San Martin and Simón Bolivar, the traitors leading the revolutions against Spain in South America, had been loyal criollos before they took up arms when the winds of politics shifted. And the news coming from Spain was more depressing every day. The liberals in Madrid had usurped power, putting into jeopardy the power and privileges that men like Madero—and Iturbide—relied upon.

  Madero would not have been surprised to learn Iturbide was flirting with the rebels. The viceroy had a list of younger, ambitious criollos who he wanted kept a diligent eye on—and Iturbide had headed the list.

  But why had he involved me? Madero asked himself for the tenth time.

  Madero had had to restrain himself from striking the indio with his whip as the man lied about his background; then restrain himself as the indio made a fool out of Don Carlos by shooting circles around him.

  The escape of the indio gun-maker and the female pamphleteer two years ago were blots on his record. Ones he wanted to remove.

  He decided to send a messenger to Lake Chapala to have the gunsmith Felix Baroja brought to the capital.

  Madero wasn’t a gambler, but a man who counted cards.

  The criollo had played a card.

  He needed a trump card to play.

  HUNDRED FOUR

  I WAS SLEEPING in the stable’s gun room when the servant Raymundo awoke me.

  “The señor wants you.”

  Earlier the man had told me he had been unable to obtain any information about ink shipments. He was not a good liar. I realized I had been foolish to even attempt to get information that way.

  “Get out, I need to splash water on my face,” I told him.

  After he left, I put on my shoulder pistol and strapped on my leg gun. It was the middle of the night, at least to me. A request at this hour put me on guard. I heard Iturbide’s carriage arrive back from a party and his voice and that of his wife a while ago, so perhaps it was not that late to these people of leisure.

  Conversation on the way home from the shooting demonstration had been minimal. Iturbide had given me ten reales as a reward for winning him a hundred. Don Carlos had been a good marksman, but I had been angry and had imagined Spanish faces with each shot. They all went true. Besides, I could tell that rifling marks in Don Carlos’s barrel needed to be bored. They were filled with residue of gunpowder and lead balls.

  Back in the city, I put down a good quantity of the criollo’s supply of wine I found in another part of the stable. The wine was not in a cellar because there were no basements in the capital. Digging down more than a foot or two brought a flow of water—the city was built on reclaimed territory that had been lakes. I heard the only basements in the city were secret dungeons of the viceroy and Inquisition.

  I had planned to head out for Taxco at first light. Now I regretted not having left sooner—as soon as I heard Raymundo lie to me. Besides, leaving the city at night was not a good idea. Few people left after the sunset and their departure would attract attention of the guards and bandidos.

  Nothing was going to stop me from leaving however. I had to get to Taxco before the printing ink shipment.

  Iturbide was seated in his library drinking brandy before a roaring fire. I picked up a slight movement behind tall curtains. I had an idea who might be hiding there. And why.

  A large book was open facedown on the table beside him. He poured a goblet of brandy and gestured at it.

  “Take a seat, Juan. This is good brandy, I have it brought from the best vineyard in Jerez.”

  “Thank you, señor.”

  “My friends were suitably impressed with your marksmanship. You even aroused Colonel Madero’s interest.”

  The remark was a threat.

  “What did you think of the men on the hunt?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Typical wealthy criollos. Too much food, too much brandy, too full of themselves. They wear the finest boots, with the sharpest spurs, while their workers go barefoot.”

  He chuckled. “You don’t like us Spanish, do you?”

  There was no use to keep up the pretense. “That’s not true. It’s not the Spanish I dislike, I have met many Spaniards I admire. The common people of Spain are little different than the common people in the colony. What I don’t like are gachupines who come to the colony to get rich off the sweat and blood of peons or crioll
os born to riches and laziness who won’t share the power or wealth of the colony. I am told my father was Spanish. He was a great man, full of compassion for all. Before you hanged him.”

  Ayyo … it had not gotten past me that he had called me “Juan.”

  He tensed and stared at me. A slight movement of his right hand told me that he had a pistol under the small table in front of him.

  He nodded. “Yes, I see it now. From the first moment I saw you, I had a sense that there was something familiar about you. Not the scar, I cut your face but never saw it healed into a scar. I knew that a gunsmith and marksman named Juan Rios, a man with a scar, had evaded the viceroy’s police a couple years ago.

  “I didn’t put the boy I’d struck and shipped off to the mines together with the notorious gunsmith. It’s been what, six, eight years?”

  “Nearly ten.”

  “Yes, soon after the fall of Hidalgo. It was Tula, wasn’t it? The boy with the priest and the Aztec. You bear the mark I gave you. You know, of course, I did it to save your life. I don’t know why, I suppose God was directing my hand that day. He apparently had plans for both of us. Of course, had I not given you some punishment, my men would not have respected me. How did you go from a boy being shipped off to the mines to a gunsmith’s profession at Chapala?”

  “God isn’t always on the side of you Spanish. I knew how to make black powder and work with guns.”

  “Since we met along the Veracruz road, I assume you had been in contact with Guadalupe Victoria.”

  “No. I was returning from a trip abroad. I haven’t been in the colony for two years.”

  “But you’re still involved with the rebellion.”

  He was referring to my attempt to get information about the ink. “I’m trying to find an old friend.”

  He nodded. “Yes, of course. The pamphleteer you rescued from Madero, an attractive woman, I’m told. You escaped together, now you want to find her. And she’s with Guerrero. Waiting for printer’s ink?”

  “I don’t know where she is. I inquired about the ink on the chance she might buy it herself.”