The lieutenant scowled, his face coloring in earnest. “Yes, the lies he spreads …”
“The rurales don’t have much support in this neck of the woods?”
Cameron asked it like it was a serious question, but he knew they didn’t. The rurales were corrupt, occupying villages and helping themselves to homes, food, livestock, and women. They helped fuel the ubiquitous fires of revolution just as much as the fat politicians in Mexico City did.
Cameron could tell the man wanted nothing to do with Bachelard and Montana, but then again, if he was able to kill or capture the pair, it would be quite a feather in his hat. And it was best to try and track them down before they could ride to the village and attack on their own terms.
Besides, the villagers could and probably would side with the revolutionaries …
“You say he is north and east?”
Cameron gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “Somewhere out that way.”
“Could you take me to him?”
“I guess I could if I had to.”
“You have to.” The lieutenant said something in Spanish to the corporal standing slightly behind Cameron. “Si, si, Teniente,” the man said, and left in a hurry.
“Go get the boy and your horse,” the lieutenant said to Cameron, a kind of fearful resolve in his eyes. “You will take us to Bachelard. If you try to escape, we will hunt you down and shoot you.”
Cameron shrugged. “Well, okay, if you say so, Teniente.”
He turned and strode casually to the door, making brief eye contact with the mayor. The man turned away glumly and sucked on his cigar. Cameron tugged on his hat brim and grinned. Then he headed up the street, past the fountain, toward the prefect’s house, suppressing a smile.
If everything went as planned, he’d avoid a Mexican jail and get himself and Jimmy back on the trail toward Adrian Clark, Tokente, and Marina—with a police escort. He doubted the Apaches would attack a fully armed contingent of rurales, even given the rurales’ reputation for ineptitude and cowardice. But even if they were attacked, Cameron and Jimmy would have a better chance with the rurales than without them.
When they were beyond the Indians, Cameron and Jimmy would find some way to evade the Mexicans, then head for the others. He didn’t think it would take much to lose the rurales in the mountains. They weren’t known for their tracking abilities, or much else besides drinking and plundering their own villages.
Cameron knocked on the pueblo’s door. The door was opened by the prefect’s wife. The prefect was sitting at the table eating breakfast. Across from him sat Jimmy Bronco, shoveling in food as fast as he could get it on his fork. Cameron grinned with relief to see the kid looking well on the road to recovery.
“I had to report your presence, señor,” the prefect said defensively, standing and turning to Cameron.
“And I thank you mighty kindly, señor,” Cameron said.
CHAPTER 28
ALFRED GOING, ADRIAN Clark, and Marina had waited for Cameron the rest of the day he went after Hotchkiss and Jimmy. They had camped on a ledge over a gorge, with a cliff protecting their flank.
Before nightfall Going had considered going after Cameron, then reconsidered. He did not want to leave Clark and the woman alone. If Cameron was in trouble, tracking him would probably only bring trouble for Going and the others, as well. If Cameron, Hotchkiss, and the kid could not handle whatever distress they had run into, chances were that Going wouldn’t be able to help much.
No, it was best to wait. And wait he and the Clarks did, watching the sun go down and listening for horses, waking in the morning and listening for horses while they gathered wood, then settling in for the afternoon, peering off across the brassy-yellow waste below, and listening for horses.
Going rolled one cigarette after another, building a supply. Clark paced, got drunk, hacked up blood, passed out, then woke up an hour later and started tipping back the bottle some more.
Marina walked around the grassy ledge, pacing much like her husband did when he wasn’t comatose. Every twenty minutes or so, she walked down the trail to where the horses were picketed at a spring-fed pool in the rocks. Going wasn’t sure what she did down there, but she stayed there for quite a white—too long for comfort; he didn’t want her wandering off and getting nabbed by Indians.
Going knew she was nervous and agitated about Cameron and didn’t want her husband to know. She had it bad, that Marina. He guessed she didn’t know that Cameron had it just as bad for her. Did the husband know? How could he not? Going just hoped he wasn’t around when the sparks flew. When it came to women like that one there, and men like Cameron and Clark, you could always count on sparks, and if not sparks, then lead.
If Cameron returned, that was. By three in the afternoon, nearly twenty-four hours since Cameron had left, things weren’t looking good.
“This is ridiculous,” Clark said, standing before Going, holding his bottle by the neck.
“You better go easy on that stuff, señor,” Going suggested, eyeing the bottle.
“Let’s go. We can’t wait any longer. Cameron and the others are dead.”
Marina appeared behind Clark, coming up from the horses. She stopped, her eyes growing dark as she stared at her husband, wanting to object but unable to find the words.
She couldn’t imagine Jack Cameron dead. How could one so capable, so confident—one who made her feel like she had never felt before, who filled her with so much yearning and hope—how could he be dead?
In the last few hours she’d trained herself not to think about it. She’d convinced herself that he would return and all would be well, that they would only have to wait a few minutes more and then they would see his dust trail out in the desert and see his spurs and guns winking in the sun. Then they would hear the clomp of hooves and she would once again be able to look upon his rugged, handsome face, and her heart would grow light and once again all would be right with the world.
If only they could have met in a different life, a different world …
“No,” she couldn’t help saying now.
“‘No,’ what?” Clark exclaimed, swinging around. Marina hesitated, dropping her eyes. “I think we should wait for him,” she said tentatively. “He would do as much for us.”
“Ha! That’s a joke! Cameron would do whatever he thought was in his goddamned best interest.”
“You are wrong, señor,” Going said. “He would do the sensible thing.” He switched his eyes to Marina. “The sensible thing, señorita, is to continue after the gold. If Cameron returns, he will track us.”
“If he’s able to track us,” Marina said, ignoring the probing stare of her husband.
“Yes, if he is able,” Going allowed, pulling deeply on his quirley and tossing the dregs of his coffee in the small fire they had tended. “If he returns and he is not able, he will understand why we left. Cameron knows how the game is played.”
Yes, but it is not my game, Marina thought. Staring at her, sneering cruelly, her husband brought the bottle to his lips and drank. His behavior told her he knew very well how she felt about Cameron. He was hurt by it, as any man would be, and wanted to hurt her just as badly.
She did not blame him. Just the same, she could not love him—just as he could not love her. She wanted to be with Cameron. If she ever saw him alive again, she would tell him so, her arrangement with Clark be damned. Clark could have her share of the gold—all, that is, but what she’d need to regain Marlena.
Clark corked the bottle, ran the back of his hand across his mouth, and headed down to the horses.
Going was kicking sand on the fire. “Do not worry, señorita. Cameron will find us.” He looked at her and smiled reassuringly.
“Do you really think so, señor?”
“If I told you once, I told you twice—my name is Alfred, or Tokente, if you wish—and yes … I am sure.”
He touched her gently on the shoulder, winked, and turned and followed her husband to the horses.
GASTON BACHELARD, LITTLE Juanita, Miguel Montana, and ten men—five from Bachelard’s faction and five from Montana’s —followed their guide, the diminutive Xavier Llamas, through twisting canyons and over pine-studded passes, until the days blended together in a surreal mosaic of disconnected images.
The second day out from the hacienda, they had had a mild skirmish with six Apaches who had apparently been returning from a hunting trip. Packing two mountain goats and several mule deer, the Indians had not been prepared for a hostile encounter, and Bachelard’s and Montana’s men shot them down like wild dogs and appropriated the meat.
It was good meat, and it saved them time they otherwise would have had to spend hunting.
They did not lose any men in the skirmish with the Apaches, but later they sustained a casualty when one of the men was bit by a rattlesnake while sleeping. He probably would have recovered, given time, but they had no time to spare. Miguel Montana simply stuck his revolver in the sick man’s mouth and pulled the trigger. The man sagged backwards, dead.
Holding a protective hand over little Juanita’s eyes, Bachelard smiled at the Mexican’s cool efficiency, glad that the man Montana had shot was one of his own. It would be one less man Bachelard and his men would have to shoot when they discovered the gold. Wealth would be theirs, and so, too, all of Texas and northern Mexico. They would tell the peasants and the rest of Montana’s men that Montana had been slain by federalistas or rurales. Miguel Montana would be anointed a martyr and the loyalty of the northern Mexicans would transfer to Gaston Bachelard and his Texas revolutionaries.
Vive le Bachelard!
At the end of the second week, Xavier Llamas brought the procession to a halt on a ridge high up in the Sierra Madre. The breeze blowing through the swaying, creaking pines was tainted with a winterlike chill, so that for several hours all the men had been wearing wool serapes under their bandoliers.
Xavier Llamas sat up straight in the saddle and stared out over the ridge, his small, leathery nose working like a dog’s beneath the curled brim of his straw sombrero. The hat was decorated with a pair of crow’s feet, snake rattles, and other talismans.
He turned to Bachelard and Montana, riding to his left. There was a twinkle in his cobalt eyes.
“I think we are close, los capitánes.”
Bachelard squinted as he studied the patchwork of lowdesert watercourses, canyons, valleys, rimrocks, and low, isolated ranges that stretched out beneath them. “I don’t see any arrow-shaped ridge,” he said.
“No,” said Xavier, “but that ridge there tells me the other is there”—he pointed to the right, indicating a hill covered with rocks and pines—“beyond that hill.”
Bachelard and Montana looked at each other skeptically. Xavier noticed and dismounted his mule. “I show you, los capitánes. Follow me.” He handed his reins to one of the other Mexicans and started climbing the hill, his old bowed legs moving with boyish agility.
Bachelard shrugged and dismounted, careful not to unseat the stoic Juanita perched behind the saddle on a blanket. He’d intended to leave her at the hacienda, but when he’d seen how the other girls there were treated, he’d decided it would be safer to take her with him. He would watch over her himself, and when she started to bleed he would marry her.
Bachelard handed his reins to one of his men and started following Xavier up the incline.
“Wait for me,” Montana said, following.
The first part of the hill was steepest and hardest, but the old man was negotiating it like a true mountaineer, hardly breaking a sweat. When he reached the summit, he waited for Bachelard and Montana, who came up breathing hoarsely, bent over with their hands on their thighs.
“What is your secret, old one?” Miguel said, gasping for air.
“I limit my tequila to only one liter a day and I fornicate as often as possible,” Xavier said with a snaggle-toothed grin, eyes bright with delight.
“Come …” he added, jogging off down the other, gentler slope of the hill and stopping on a ledge. Again, Bachelard and Montana followed.
On the ledge, Bachelard sat on a rock to catch his breath and give his aching legs a rest. He gazed out across the desert yawning three or four thousand feet below, a great, watersculpted, wind-ravaged, sun-baked badlands, home to only the hardiest of creatures. From this vista the centerpiece of it all was a spire of andesite that was capped with an arrow-shaped boulder pointing southeast.
“When we arrive at the spire, we will find the turtles etched in the rock,” Xavier said.
“Are you sure, old one?” Montana asked him. He was standing to the old man’s right, gazing into the distance.
“I am very sure, el capitán. I would bet my life on it, in fact.”
“Oh, no need to do that, Xavier,” Bachelard said.
Casually, almost as though he were raising his boot for a shine, Bachelard lifted his foot, planted it firmly against the old man’s backside, and shoved. The man dropped over the edge with a sudden, brief yell, and was gone.
Montana, who had turned away briefly, turned back at the sound and saw the old man plummeting down the thousandfoot drop to a sandy slide. Xavier hit the slide without a sound and rolled like a doll, arms flying, tumbling over and over for what seemed forever, finally coming to rest in a brushy crevice.
Montana shouted, “¡Dios mío! What have you done?”
Bachelard shrugged, gazing down at the old man’s antsized body with dispassion. “He’s shown us the way. He is of no more use.”
Miguel gestured with his hand. “He was a wise old man, very respected …”
“The fewer who know about the treasure, the better, wouldn’t you say, Miguel? If there’s as much treasure as Xavier claimed, then it will take several trips to bring it all out. In the meantime, we don’t want anyone going in ahead of us, and that could be anyone who knows the way.”
“That means we will have to kill all the men in our party!” Montana said, red-faced with disbelief.
Bachelard shrugged. “Yes, they will have to be executed upon our return to the hacienda. To appease the others in our armies, we’ll say they were conspiring to steal.”
Montana’s left eye twitched as he pondered this, turning his thoughtful gaze back to the old man, food now for the scavengers. “Yes, I suppose that much gold might lead a few to thoughts of betrayal …”
“Exactly,” Bachelard said, slapping the smaller Montana on the back. “Shall we?” He gestured to the grade over which they had come.
“No … after you,” Montana said with a wary smile, not trusting the mad Cajun.
“No, after you,” Bachelard insisted.
“Well, together, then,” Montana replied.
Each with a nod and a brittle grin, they started back up the grade, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder, masking their scheming ruminations with smiles.
CHAPTER 29
CAMERON WAS RIDING beside the rurale lieutenant, whose name he had learned was Premierio Gomez. “Maybe we should have left the cannon,” he suggested, glancing over his shoulder at the column of gray-clad rurales trailed by a Gatling gun that was mounted on a two-wheeled cart normally used by peasants for hauling hay.
The mule hauling the cart kept wanting to stop to graze along the road, and whenever the cart foundered in sand or alkali dust, the mule wanted to stop rather than push on through. The young soidier who was driving whipped the animal and screamed.
“It’s not the gun, it’s the mule,” Gomez said.
“I think you should have left them both,” Cameron said. “And the kid driving the cart.”
“If we run into Apaches, we’re going to want the Gatling gun. The same is true if we find Montana and Bachelard. If we encounter them, my friend, you are going to thank me for bringing the ‘cannon’ as you call it.”
Cameron peered ahead at the floury white trail twisting over hogbacks as it climbed ever higher into the mountains hovering darkly in the east. “How’re you going to get it through the m
ountains, for chrissakes?”
“You gringos are all alike,” Gomez said acidly. “You think you know it all. If you know so damn much, Mr. Cameron, why are you here in this godforsaken place hunting Apache scalps for seven pesos a head?”
Cameron sighed. “You got me there, Lieutenant.”
“Unless you were not hunting scalps,” Gomez suggested, giving Cameron a sidelong look.
“What else would I be doing?”
“You tell me, amigo.”
“Okay, I’m looking for the Lost Treasure of San Bernardo.”
Gomez looked at Cameron again and smiled. The smile widened until the lieutenant threw his head back and laughed. “That … That’s a good one, señor,” he said as his laughter settled to a head-shaking chuckle.
“You’ve heard of it?” Cameron asked.
“Yes, I have heard of it,” Gomez said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Who in northern Mejico has not heard of it? Who in northern Mejico has not tried to find it, and died trying? Fools, all.”
“I take it you haven’t.”
“I am not a fool, gringo, and don’t you forget it.”
That ended the conversation. After about fifteen minutes, Cameron slowed his mount, and Jimmy Bronco, who’d been several places back in the column, caught up to him.
“How ya feelin’, kid?”
“Tired, Jack,” Jimmy said.
His face was drawn and swollen from the beating he’d taken from the Apaches. The prefect’s wife had bandaged most of the cuts, but the bruise over his right eye was a garish purple that covered a good quarter of his face. He was wearing clothes the prefect’s wife had rounded up for him—an illfitting pair of old denim jeans with holes in the knees, a rope belt, and a cotton poncho with rawhide ties at the neck. Cameron had also bought him a felt poncho and a hat from an old peasant drinking beer in one of the village cantinas. With Jimmy’s face badly burned and bruised, he needed as much protection as possible.
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