Primrose grinned. He liked Cortez’s thinking, which is how come he’d be dead, too, within a matter of days.
Sighing, Sister Rocío stopped her telling of the story to inform us, “I should have spoken out. I should have warned the five young nuns that they should have stayed in Socorro, followed El Camino Real to El Paso.” Her head dropped, and she crossed herself and fell to silent prayer.
Fenn got impatient, waiting for her to talk some more, but he didn’t say nothing. He just tossed another piece of wood on the fire The Pockmarked Man had started.
Back to the Sister’s story.
Right before they lit a shuck for El Paso, a norther blew in, dropping the temperature into the teens. It was a veritable blue norther—wet, mean, ugly.
They bundled up, the nuns sang songs, and they journeyed south through the Pinatosa, where there ain’t nothing to block the wind. By the time they reached the Malpais on the edge of the Valley of Fire, ice covered them badlands.
That was where the bandits hit.
“Because one cannot keep such fortune a secret,” Rocío said to us. “One of the guides must have let a friend know.”
Once Rocío, Primrose, Cortez, them nuns and all was pinned down, bandits sent word that they would let everyone go if they left the gold. Nobody believed them. Cortez asked if they would at least spare the lives of the six nuns. The bandits said they would consider it, which meant, no. Primrose asked if they would spare him. Rocío slammed her fist into the back of his head; she had two good hands back in them days.
They didn’t give up, and everybody tried to prepare for the long night ahead of ’em.
Night turned even more bitter. A priest had already been killed with a bullet through his temple, and two burros were lying in the ice, frozen stiff, shot full of holes. The nuns prayed for deliverance. Sister Rocío decided that the gold should go to the Indians, not to the Mexicans, not to the Smithsonian, but especially not to bandits. The menfolk decided to stay behind, sacrifice themselves, and send the nuns and the gold south with one man. Cortez drew the short straw, which meant he’d leave with the nuns—and the gold.
All of the men built up a big fire that night, made a show of their camp, then, with the wind howling and clouds blacking out the moon, Cortez and Rocío led the five other nuns, the burros, and the gold into the Valley of Fire.
A country full of lava rocks ain’t easy to cross in daylight. But in bitter cold? With ice coating the ground? Being pursued by bandits with murderous intent?
It was a miracle they made it as far as they’d done.
As dawn broke, Sister Rocío couldn’t feel her fingers no more. Hurt so bad, she couldn’t even rub her rosary.
Dawn brung light, but no heat. A freezing fog swept across the rugged trail, coating giant lava boulders, turning the grass—what little there was—into fingers of icicles. Even the packs, the harness, the hides of her burro got frosted. She figured the other nuns and their burros ahead of her was suffering just as bad.
That’s a crazy thing. Freezing fog. You wouldn’t expect to find it in country like this, but it happened. Once, Big Tim Pruett and I was in eastern Colorado, and the fog got so thick, the two of us was lost for a whole day. It wasn’t freezing, of course, on account that it was early August, but I imagine it could’ve been that White Death—that’s what the Indians called freezing fog—had we been out in February.
Sister Rocío flexed her fingers, then began rubbing them furiously against her woolen habit. That, too, was coated with ice. So was a bandanna she’d tried to turn into a muffler.
Ahead of her, a burro snorted. She could barely see it through the thick fog.
Her own burro shook its head, sending particles of ice everywhere. At least they was moving, Rocío thought. Stop, and they’d all die.
As if God heard her thoughts, Cortez called out something far ahead of her in that killing fog. The mules stopped.
Instantly, she felt colder.
She removed the bandanna just long enough to shake out the ice, formed on the outside by the fog and on the inside by her freezing breath. After she had rubbed her cheeks, Sister Rocío checked her fingertips. No frostbite. Not yet.
It hurt to breathe. She had no idea how cold it was. Ten below zero? Colder?
Hard to believe it could get that cold in Hades.
I watched Sister Rocío flex her fingers as if she was still on that burro in the freezing fog. She took a deep breath, rubbed her cheeks, and looked down at the fingertips on her one hand. This here is more of her story.
“Sister Rocío.” Out of the fog, Cortez appeared. Ice coated his clothes, his mustache and beard. Speaking in Spanish, he asked if she was all right.
Somehow, her fingers fashioned a knot on the bandanna, and she pulled it over her throbbing nose. “Sí,” she answered. Even that hurt.
“We should not be here,” Cortez said. “This is the errand of a fool.”
Cold had muddled his memory, too, I reckon. It was his idea.
“How much farther?” she asked. Her teeth ached.
“¡Qué chinga!” Cortez railed. “Forgive me, Sister. I do not even know. In this whiteness, I am not even sure where we are.”
Sister Rocío pointed south. Ahead of her, the nuns begun singing, anything to stay warmer, but they stopped when they heard a muffled report, echoing off the lava, the canyons, the mountains off to the east. Another shot. Then a cannonade, sounding like rolling thunder in the distance.
Sister Rocío lifted her head, her fingers brushing against her rosary again, then her crucifix, and she turned to look down the trail toward the sound of the gunshots.
“Those pigs!” Cortez spat. “They have resumed their assault.” He fell silent again, listening.
“Sí.” Again, Rocío made the sign of the cross.
“Primrose was a fool,” Cortez said, “but the priests, my amigos, they were good men.”
Cortez got mighty forgetful. Primrose had stayed behind, dying for them freezing nuns.
“God will welcome them all with open arms.”
Behind Rocío, burros had their whiskers frozen, their ears coated white, and their breath like smoke. Icicles hung from their harnesses and packs, too. The animals looked as miserable, as near death, as Rocío imagined that she must appear.
Cortez spat at his feet. The saliva froze before it reached the icy ground.
“We must hurry,” Rocío told him. “Before they come after us. After the gold.”
“I should gladly let them have the gold. And you, as well, Sister. They might let me live.”
Their eyes held. She said nothing.
Cortez grinned. “That much gold. It is enough to tempt even a priest. Or a nun. Even six nuns.”
“You must do what your heart tells you to do.”
“¡Maldita sea!” Cortez shook his head, checking the rope, harnesses, and packs as he made his way forward, speaking to the young nuns.
The rope connecting her mule to the one in front of her grew taut, and the leather creaked, icicles broke, and they was moving again. She looked behind her at the miserable beasts following. Beyond that was just the fog’s icy whiteness. Wasn’t no gunfire no more.
Turning to look ahead, she prayed. Not for herself. Not for Cortez. Not for the gold, or for her mission. She prayed for the souls of Primrose and them others, all dead. Or about to be murdered. She prayed for the dead Indians them Spaniards had murdered at Gran Quivira.
Despite the rising sun, the White Death, that freezing fog, showed no signs of burning off. The mule train followed the trail, or what might pass for a trail. Soon, it turned even colder. Every breath burned her nostrils, her throat, her lungs. She shoved her aching fingers inside the coarse wool habit.
They climbed a rocky slope higher. The trail got narrower, and she glanced down the steep side. Frozen rocks stretched down. It looked like they was in the ocean way up north, and the sea was filled with icebergs.
Breathing that cold air almost doubled her over in
agony.
Ahead of her, Cortez swore bitterly. Behind her, a burro snorted.
Slowly, painfully, she brought numb fingers toward her face, to work on the knot to her bandanna. Ice crumpled as the cloth loosened. Somehow, she managed to shake it as the burros plodded along.
A shadow in the fog moved wildly, toppling over the edge of the trail, landing on the jagged slope. A nun’s piercing cry followed. Almost immediately, another shadow fell over the edge. Then one from behind. And another.
More cries.
“Sister Rocío!”
She could just hear Cortez’s voice over screaming burros and young nuns.
“Jump, Sister. Jump!”
Her own burro was braying, and suddenly she could see, could understand.
Slipping on a patch of ice, a burro had plummeted over the edge. Roped together, it had pulled the animal ahead of it over, and the one behind it, as well. Like dominos, one after another, the burros, their packs, their riders, were jerked into the abyss, into eternity.
Her own mount, braying and trying to use its hoofs as brakes, was being pulled over the edge.
Sister Rocío sucked in a deep breath. She didn’t hear Cortez no more, heard only screams—her own—and an avalanche of lava rocks below. Her burro was yanked into the carnage, and she barely cleared the harness.
But she was too late.
She found herself in frigid air, as if frozen in time, then saw the white rocks rush up to greet her, felt the sharp stones slam into her side and legs and arms, and she was tumbling, rolling, screaming, bouncing, swallowing icy dust, while more burros got jerked and crushed.
She molded into the avalanche of harnesses, and ropes, and rocks, and burros alive and dead and dying, and packs, and a crucifix, and a rosary, and the hood of her habit.
Rolling downhill, sliding, tumbling out of the White Death.
And into Hell itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“I do not know how long I lay there, unconscious,” Rocío told us. “Hours perhaps. ¿Quién sabe? When my eyes opened, Cortez was gone. I was alone. The other young Sisters . . .” She crossed herself and bowed her head.
“All of them?” Geneviève asked softly. “Dead?”
“Sí. So young. So innocent.” Rocío’s gnarled finger rose to brush a tear before it fell into one of the crevasses of her ancient face.”
“The mules?” Fenn asked. “They were dead, too?”
“Not mules, my son,” Sister Rocío corrected. “Burros. But, sí, they had died, too. Except one, whose front legs were broken. He was braying in terrible pain and would die before nightfall.”
“Cortez?” That was what interested Fenn right then. “How many mules did he manage to save? How many didn’t fall into that gorge?”
“Only three. I did not see this, for I was busy falling and being knocked unconscious, but it is my belief that our guide managed to slice the rope that bound our burros together at the last second, thus saving the three with which he fled.”
“He didn’t try to save you?” Geneviève asked angrily. “He didn’t even check on you or the others? He just left?”
“Likely,” Rocío answered, “he thought we were all dead, or soon would be, and he had much fear. He thought the banditos would come soon.”
“Three burros.” Fenn done some ciphering hisself, trying to figure out how much weight they could’ve taken in gold.
Rocío grinned because she knowed exactly what he was doing. “One of the burros carried water,” she told him. “Not gold. Another carried food. Only one burro was loaded with the weight of the devil.”
Fenn spit. It sizzled in the fire. “You expect me to believe that this Cortez just left all that gold down there?”
“It was freezing. It was terribly windy. And there were two dozen banditos behind us. I think it was prudent for him to do as he did, but he should have kept going south for El Paso. Alas, he was found frozen to death in the Capitan Mountains. He must have turned east, unsure of where he should go. Perhaps he was lost. It was very white, very foggy, terribly cold.”
“What about the gold with him?”
She laughed. “I have always imagined this burro, wandering around in the Capitan Mountains, chewing on grass in the spring, drinking from the bubbling rivers, just packing ingots with him, oblivious to the fortune he carried. It is a good vision, is it not?”
“It is very good.” Geneviève reached over to pat Sister Rocío’s thigh.
The Pockmarked Man refilled everybody’s coffee cups. Sean Fenn went back to ciphering how much gold was left behind. Corbin brought up the question about those two dozen banditos. “You were the only one left alive—”
“Except for the poor burro with the two broken legs,” Sister Rocío interrupted him with a correction.
Smiling, nodding, Corbin said, “Except for the poor burro with the two broken legs.”
“But he was dead soon,” Rocío said, and crossed herself.
“Yes. I’m sure he was.” Corbin sipped some coffee. “But there were bandits coming your way. And they would find you, the dead mules, the dead nuns.”
“That is what I thought,” Rocío said. “It is what I feared.”
“So you moved the gold.” Fenn had figured it all out.
Rocío let a sly grin crease her face.
“All of it?” The Pockmarked Man didn’t seem to believe it. I mean, he was looking at Rocío as a seventy-three-year-old blind woman, forgetting that this had happened back in 1848.
“One finds strength to do what others find impossible,” she said. “The Blessed Mother guided me.
“I dragged the bodies of my young, beautiful, gold-hearted nuns away from the rocks. I blessed them. I kissed their foreheads. Many ingots had fallen out of their packs. All I needed to do was pick them up, follow the canyon—”
“Over lava rocks?” Fenn asked.
“No. The lava had not flowed here. That is why there was a canyon. This was earth, though covered in great sheets of ice. I looked up. I saw Mount Ararat.”
“Ararat?” Fenn asked, interested again. “Where’s that?”
Even I remembered that much from all them Bible readings and talks and sermons at the orphanage. “In the Old Testament,” I told him.
“Sí,” Rocío said. “I saw the Ark. It was my beacon. I went down a canyon, then another. I found what passed for a cave. The cave, of course, was in the great bed of lava. The ingots could be placed there, into the darkness. I went back to the burros and the packs and those poor, dead, pitiful nuns. It was very sad.”
“Yeah,” Fenn said, who wasn’t grieving none of nuns dead and gone for thirty-eight years. “That had to take you a good long time.”
“Es verdad. I worked well into darkness. By then it was very cold. By then my fingers had . . . how is it said?”
“Frostbite,” I said.
“Sí.”
“But what about the bandits?” Fenn asked.
With a shrug, Rocío said, “Perhaps they never showed up. Anyway, I never saw them. Poor Cortez. Had he not fled when we were all pulled down from the trail, he could have helped me bury all the gold, and he could have returned to find it and dig it up and become very wealthy instead of very dead in the Capitan Mountains.”
“So once you got the last of the ingots in that cave,” Fenn said, “what happened next?”
“I had to seal the cave’s entrance. I did not think of it as burying a treasure, but sealing a tomb. Keeping those dear, grand nuns away from vultures, ravens, and coyotes.”
“Lava rocks are heavy,” Fenn pointed out.
“Not as heavy as gold. One was loose. I thought if I could pull it down, other stones would follow, and, if such was God’s will, return at some point. Find the nuns. Bring them home. They deserve a fitting burial. That is my wish now.”
“After forty years?” Fenn asked, getting all snide again.
“Thirty-eight,” Rocío corrected.
“We’ll come back to that point
,” Fenn said. “You sealed the cave with the gold and dead nuns in it.”
“And almost myself.”
She kept talking, this time without interruption for a long, long while. This here is more of what she told us.
The freezing fog was gone, but so was the sun, and no moon shone. With a bent but sharp machete from one of the burro’s packs, Sister Rocío worked on the loose boulder, and finally, it gave way. She tried to get out of the path, but the black and red rocks came pounding after her. She slipped on a patch of ice and landed between the brutal rocks. A boulder fell on her arm, pinning her there. A blinding flash of pain, bitter cold, and then she fell into blessed unconsciousness again.
When she awakened, she had to claw her way out of nine inches of snow. Dawn had broke, and it wasn’t so cold no more, but still freezing. Her arm remained pinned beneath a boulder. She couldn’t move.
By all rights, she should have been dead already, but, in case you ain’t figured it out for yourselves, Sister Rocío was a tough old bird, even back when she was thirty-five. But she couldn’t survive much longer. Another night would drop them temperatures, and she knowed she’d freeze to death. Wouldn’t be no snow to bury herself in, to keep herself warm enough to live. And them bandits . . . she still figured they’d come along and finish her off.
But they didn’t. Likely, they’d turned back when the freezing fog hit, went back to Gran Quivira, and then back to Socorro or wherever men of their ilk hid out in 1848.
By noon, she knowed what she had to do.
“Good God!” Corbin gasped. That was the first interruption.
“Sí,” Sister Rocío said. “God is good.”
“How did you do it?” Geneviève asked.
Sean Fenn was too dumb to figure out what it was that Sister Rocío knowed she had to do.
“The machete was nearby. God’s mercy is infinite.”
“But”—The Pockmarked Man’s lip trembled—“you just couldn’t hack it off.”
Valley of Fire Page 19
