The Savage Curse

by Jory Sherman

  She sniffled and took another sip of brandy. She looked out at the soft evening forming as the shadows darkened and seeped into the room, bending away from the oil lamp.

  “John,” she said, “how do you plan to take down Hobart, knowing what you now know?”

  She switched the topic so suddenly, John was caught by surprise.

  He had a plan in mind now and the brandy had worked in him so that it blossomed in his mind like a garden of spring flowers.

  “I might need your help,” he said. “I do have a plan to draw Hobart out in the open. You won’t be at any risk, and I think Juan’s sister will be safe.”

  “I hope that head of yours is more than just something to hang a hat on,” she said. “But, sure, if I can help, I’m ready, willing, and able. Just what did you have in mind?”

  “Gold,” John said. “Hobart lusts after gold and I think I know a way to make him come to me, just like he did back in Colorado.”

  Gale looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. So did Ben.

  “Gold,” John said again, “and salt. That’s what I aim to do.”

  “Salt?” Ben said.

  “Did you say salt?” Gale asked.

  John smiled at both of them.

  The flame in the lamp flickered with a sudden waft of breeze through the windows and the shadows outside darkened into night and settled a deep hush over the land in that strange alchemy of transformation when known things changed into unknown shapes and all landmarks disappeared.

  It was a perfect time to speak of his bold plan, a time when dreams could take on form and substance and seem attainable.

  “I’m going to need an old mine,” John said, “somewhere close to Tucson. An abandoned mine, if you know of one. Any old abandoned mine will do.”

  Ben and Gale both drew in breaths and stared at John with pitying looks usually reserved for the very feeble-minded, or the insane.

  13

  TO A RAPT AUDIENCE OF TWO, BEN AND GALE, JOHN SAVAGE LAID out the rudiments of his plan.

  “If we can find an old abandoned mine shaft,” he said, “somewhere in the mountains around Tucson, I can set it up real quick. We salt the mine, haul some rock into the assay office in Tucson. The rock will have enough gold in it to start the gossip. Gold, to humans, is nectar to bees.”

  “Where you goin’ to get all this gold?” Gale asked.

  “Won’t take much. And we have some we can lay our hands on. Ollie will get the word.”

  “That ain’t goin’ to work, John,” Ben said.

  “Why not?”

  “Ollie ain’t a hard-rock miner. He steals the gold.”

  “I know. That’s where Gale can help us, if she will.”

  “You’ll have to explain,” she said.

  “We’ll need a little shack put up near the mine, with a clear field of fire. We’ll let the assay office know that we’re using cyanide. We’ll buy some in town, other equipment, and tell them we’re handling the ore ourselves, turning it into gold, keeping it to ourselves.”

  “Hmm,” Gale said. “It’s getting more interesting. Go on.”

  “We’ll have a smokestack, burn oil and wood in it during the day, so people can see it. We’ll get the word out that we’ve struck a huge vein, the mother lode, maybe. Ollie won’t be able to resist. He’ll come after that gold he thinks is there.”

  “It’ll take some time to set up, do all that you want to do,” she said.

  “A month or so, maybe.”

  “Hell, John, Ollie will see you go in to town, know it was you at the assayer’s. He’ll smell the fish.”

  “It won’t be me,” John said.

  “Then, who?”

  “I’m hoping Gale will be the one to take the raw ore in that we salted. She’s known hereabouts. People probably trust her. They’ll think she’s been prospecting all these years and fall for it.”

  Ben let out a low whistle.

  “Might work at that.”

  “If I agree to do that for you,” Gale said.

  “I’m hoping you will.”

  “How soon,” she said.

  “As soon as we find that old mine and buy it or stake claim to it.”

  “There are a few old mines around Tucson, up in the hills, the mountains. Silver, mostly, that petered out. But some that were blasted for gold. They could be bought cheap or claimed, as you say. I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Would you?” John said.

  “Consider it done. I’ll do some checking in town. About time I rode in and got some supplies anyway.”

  “Ben and I will have to lay low until we find such a mine,” John said.

  “You can stay here long as you like.”

  “I’ll pay your men for the work they do.”

  “Oh, we can get men to do the job if you pay them. Won’t take much probably.”

  “I’ll pay them well,” John said.

  The three of them talked long into the night, going over every inch of John’s plan.

  “I like your idea, John. It so happens that my husband was once a hard-rock miner. What’s more, we still own the mine. He took silver out of it and was sure there was gold somewhere in the mountain. But before he could blast deeper into his tunnel, the cave collapsed and killed two men. He couldn’t go on, and he never got over it.”

  “Close to Tucson?”

  “Very close,” she said.

  “We can make it work, maybe.”

  “What’s more, John,” and there was a flicker of a smile on her lips, “we had a laboratory on the property. Everything is still there, just as it was. A little cleaning, some dusting, and you’ll have a lab that will smelt silver, separate gold from ore. There should still be cyanide in there.”

  “Your husband must have found some gold, then,” John said.

  “He did. Just beyond a vein of silver, he knocked out a chunk of rock that was laced with gold. He thought there might be a mother lode somewhere under that mountain.”

  Ben slapped his knee.

  “By golly, it just might work, Johnny. You got a mine, a lab, and we got the gold to salt it with.”

  “What happened to that chunk of rock your husband dug out?” John asked. “He ever get it assayed?”

  “No. He didn’t have the heart. I still have it, in fact. It’s in my bedroom. Kind of a nest egg for a rainy day, I guess.”

  “That’s a start,” John said, “if you’ll let me use it. That’ll get the ball rolling.”

  “It’s yours,” she said. “I really hope this works. I want to see Hobart pay for what he did to your family and get that girl back unharmed.”

  “Can you take us to the old mine tomorrow?” John asked.

  “Bright and early.”

  John and Gale shook hands and said good night. Ben talked all the way to the bunkhouse, as excited as a kid with a new toy. John kept silent, going over his plans in his mind, anxious to set a trap for Hobart, bring him to his gun sights, and end, finally, the long bloody hunt. By the time Ben and John got to the bunkhouse, it was after midnight and the coyotes were singing, the sheepdogs barking.

  John slept fitfully that night, awakening several times in the middle of disturbing dreams, dreams that made sense while he was dreaming, but flew away in confusion when he opened his eyes to the darkness. He dreamed of defective pistols that would not load, would not shoot. He dreamed of young mahogany women in dim-lit saloons, with shadowy figures looming over them. He dreamed of dogs chasing him across a desolate landscape and stars raining silver and gold into a burning lake where he was flailing in the flames, unable to swim, his throat parched so raw he was unable to scream.

  One of the Mexican sheepherders in the bunkhouse shook him awake very early.

  “Es la madrugada,” the man said.

  It was dawn, but the sun was not yet up and, outside, the sky was a pale ember in the east, golden and pink along the horizon. Far off, he heard the bleating of sheep as he wiped grit from his eyes and shivered against the chill. He
woke up Ben and they both smelled coffee on the currents that threaded the still air, errant tendrils of tiny zephyrs that blew off the mountains and died in the caverns of their nostrils.

  Lamps glowed inside Gale’s home, orange and yellow light pouring feebly through the windows, signs of life in a land of shadows. Ben sniffed as they walked to the pump next to a watering trough behind the house.

  “Smells like breakfast,” he said. “My belly has done heard the call.”

  “Your belly always hears the call,” John said.

  In the distance, some few hundred yards from the house, they saw an open fire, and behind it, a chuck wagon. The sheep bells tinkled beyond their vision and the land seemed to slowly slide into motion as herders tramped toward the chuck wagon to the tune of yapping dogs.

  A door opened in the house. Gale stuck her head out.

  “Grub’s on the table,” she said and disappeared.

  Moments later, Ben and John were sitting at the breakfast table, buttering biscuits, slabbing on honey, drinking coffee, and cutting up boiled mutton and green beans.

  “That red stuff in the jar there is hot sauce,” Gale said. “What the Mexicans call salsa casera or salsa picante. We grow our own food here, including the chili peppers.”

  “I’ll have some of that,” Ben said and poured the sauce on his mutton.

  Moments later, his eyes watered and went wide from the sting of the sauce on his tongue, the burn in his throat.

  John and Gale laughed.

  “It’ll sure clean out your system,” Gale remarked.

  Gale’s horse was a stocky steeldust gray she called Moonbeam, and she led the way on an old trail that circled the grazing sheep.

  “All this was Navajo country,” she said, “until Kit Carson drove ’em all to reservations. Some said he wished, later, that he hadn’t done it, but if he hadn’t done it, none of this country would have ever been settled. They were a murderin’ bunch.”

  “Any problems now?” John asked.

  “No, the tribes are pretty well cut down and scattered. Biggest fear in them days was their habit of stealin’ sheep. My husband and I came here, prospectin’, but we found this place and started in raisin’ sheep. It’s been good to me, and to him while he was alive.”

  “You must miss him,” John said.

  “I do. But I keep him close by. In my heart.”

  They rode through the long shadows of morning, into rugged, mountainous country, filled with the green sentinels of saguaro, iron-laden rocks, and various kinds of cactus plants. Jackrabbits jumped and bounced on each side of them and quail piped from ocotillo outposts.

  A little past noon, they rounded a small mountain nudged by several smaller hills and a mesa that jutted out like the prow of a ship.

  Gale pointed to an object atop the mesa.

  “There’s the laboratory,” she said. “Just beyond that, in the face of the mountain, is the mine. Good road up there, if it hasn’t been washed out.”

  “Where’s Tucson?” John asked.

  “Ten miles north of here. See that wagon road yonder?”

  John and Ben looked. The road was still partially in shadow, but plainly visible. It stretched across a wide plain bordered by hills and jumbles of mountains and rocky spires. John felt his breath catch in his chest.

  “Pretty close,” Ben said.

  “It’s tempting,” John said, “to just keep riding and put the barrel of my pistol right in the center of Hobart’s forehead.”

  “And pull the trigger,” Ben said.

  “You’re both savages,” Gale said without mirth.

  “Naw, John’s the savage,” Ben said. “I’m a Russell.”

  They started up the wagon path to the mesa, butting between that outcropping and a small rocky hill.

  John wondered at the truth of Ben’s words. He did want to kill Hobart. The thought was like an iron fist in his brain. His hatred for the man threatened to consume him, blot out all else. Yet he knew he must wait, must bide his time. He had changed, he knew. Before his parents and sister had been murdered, before the slaughter at the mine, he had never thought about killing a man.

  Now he thought of little else.

  And that thought bothered him. Had he turned savage? Heartless?

  Maybe the name Savage fit more than he would like it to.

  Maybe, he thought, his name was his destiny.

  And the hunt for Hobart, his fate.

  14

  THE LABORATORY GLISTENED IN THE SUN WITH ITS BLEACHED dry lumber grayed by wind and rain and scorching sun, a clapboard relic from another time. Its old frame seemed solid enough when John rode around it, tapping on the odd-sized boards with his fist. The boards were all cut to different widths, from four inches to a dozen or so, and the tin roof was rusted to a nut-brown hue, held to the frame with sturdy bolts.

  “He built it fine,” John said as he dismounted. “You got a key for that lock on the door?”

  “Yes,” Gale said, climbing down from Moonbeam. She wore a leather bag slung over her shoulder and took out a large key. The lock was rusted, too, but the tumblers clicked into place and she was able to pull it open. She and John walked inside while Ben held the horses.

  Gale stepped inside, held the door wide for John. Light spears lanced through the large room from the grimy windows, cracks that had opened between the wall boards, from nail holes that had widened in the roof. The floor was packed earth. There were tables all about, sturdy work tables, and scales, cruets, bottles, cans. A large stove stood at the back wall, its chimney going straight out instead of straight up. The chimney was reinforced with tin and there was tin on the back wall behind the stove.

  “That’s a little smelter, I guess,” Gale said. There were rockers and sledges, hammers, chisels, a host of tools that could be used to break rock or pry raw gold loose from ore.

  John saw at least three anvils, ore buckets, some full of rock, others turned over on their sides, empty. There was a wheelbarrow, shovels, picks, a stack of firewood, at least four cords, stacked inches from one wall, candles, miners’ hats with candles, boxes of candles, matches, oil lamps, oil. There were boxes of dynamite and boxes of caps, fuses, gloves lying on tables and shelves, some short-handled mauls, a small cookstove, pots and pans, and plates complete with knives, forks, and spoons.

  “Looks like he had everything he needed,” John said, watching the golden dust motes dance in the spears of light.

  “Clarence was very thorough. There’s more stuff up in the mine. Probably just as he left it. Want to walk up?”

  “Yes. Should I bring a lantern or take a tin hat?”

  “Might be a good idea. I don’t know how far back the mine goes.”

  “I’ll take a couple of lanterns,” he said.

  Gale and John went back outside, carrying lanterns filled with coal oil and matches to light them.

  “Found a place for the horses,” Ben said. “Over yonder’s a hitchrail.” He pointed to some posts and rails near the cave entrance.

  “Meet you there,” John said.

  Ben rode Blaster to the railing, leading Moonbeam and Gent by their reins. Small puffy clouds floated beyond the mountain in a dazzling blue sky. Quail piped from the next hill and a hawk floated on an air current down to a small rocky canyon. The quiet was broken only by the crunch of John’s boots on gravel and the soft pad of Gale’s small boots on a sandy path.

  “How long has it been since you’ve been up here?” John asked her.

  “I came up here about a year ago, just to check on things. I don’t know why. Who would bother with an old abandoned mine?”

  “I guess mining’s pretty well over with in this country.”

  “No, there are a few mines here and there. Just not anywhere near here. I don’t know. Clarence may have been wrong about that mother lode. And he never did have that chunk of ore assayed. And I lost heart after he died.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Oddly enough, he was killed by a Navajo,
some throw-back who came through with a small band and tried to steal our sheep. He came up to the house, him and six or seven others, and offered to buy some sheep. But he had no money. He said his name was Mano Rojo, Red Hand, and he said he’d pay Clarence in a moon or two.”

  “He wanted credit.”

  She laughed.

  “He didn’t use that word. He said we were on sacred ground and owed him the sheep. When Clarence asked him how he was going to pay for the sheep, Mano said he would kill a white man and rob him.”

  “Pretty bold of him,” John said.

  “Clarence told him to go away. He would not sell him any sheep on those terms. Mano left, but he took thirty head of sheep with him. Clarence gave chase and Mano shot him dead. The Mexicans who were with Clarence said that Mano boasted to them that he had paid for the sheep just as he said he would.”

  “Did anyone ever catch Mano?” John asked.

  She shook her head.

  “No. He got clean away, the bastard.”

  “Ever see him again?”

  “No. The authorities in Tucson put native trackers out, but they came back empty-handed. Mano and the sheep disappeared into thin air, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He’ll turn up someday. The Navajos claimed a lot of territory in their day. They’re nomads. He’ll be back one day and I’ll be ready for him. He’s got blood on his hands and he’ll pay for what he did to my Clarence.”

  “Kind of the way I feel about Hobart,” John said.

  They spoke no more until they reached the mine adit. By then, Ben had tied up the three horses and was standing just outside the entrance, looking at something just inside the cave wall.

  “Ben, here’s a lantern. Light it up.”

  John handed one of the lanterns to Ben, but he didn’t even look at it. Instead, he pointed to something on the wall.

  “Looky here, John. Somebody’s done drawn some pictures on this here wall.”

  John and Gale stepped up and peered at the spot where Ben was pointing.