AS THEY RODE with the afternoon sun lathering their horses and painting broad sweat stains down the backs of their shirts, Clark considered one of the many stories he’d heard about Jack Cameron.
It was the year after the war, when the Union soldiers were returning to Arizona and the Yankee settlers were rebuilding what the Apaches had destroyed in their absence. Cameron had bought a ranch in the Dragoon Mountains east of Benson and been engaged to Ivy Kitchen, the pretty blonde daughter of Lester Kitchen, who also ranched in the area.
One morning the Apaches stormed off the trail from Benson, lead by Mangus Colorado himself, and laid waste to four ranches. Cameron and his partner, Rudy Poliner, managed to escape into the mountains. Two days later they walked back out and found the Kitchen ranch little more than a pile of white ashes smoldering in the desert sun.
Lester and his two boys, Ray and Steve, lay in the ranchyard pincushioned with arrows. The women—Mrs. Kitchen and her two daughters, Rachel and Ivy—lay in the scrub around the root cellar, where they’d apparently tried to hide. They were all naked. They’d obviously all been raped. And they’d all had their throats cut. Cameron tracked the raiding party and managed to kill three before his horse gave out. Knowing
the formidable Cameron was on his trail, Mangus Colorado hightailed it to his stronghold in the Sierra Madre. Enlisting the help of several ranchers and their men, Cameron made three attempts to locate the hideout. All he located, however, was a handful of bushwacking Indians and death for more than half his men before he finally gave up and resigned himself to the fact he’d never be able to avenge his lover’s death.
Now Cameron turned his horse off the faint Indian hunting trail they were following through the foothills of the Whetstone Mountains. “We’d better stop and let the horses have a blow,” he told Hotchkiss.
Clark slid off the back of Cameron’s buckskin, stepped into the shade offered by a mesquite bush, and sat down. The pain in his head had abated, but he still felt disoriented. He pressed his hand to the bandanna over the wound and it came away dry, a good sign.
Cameron tethered the buckskin in the shade of another mesquite, then filled his hat with water from the canteen and offered it to the horse. The animal dipped its snout and drank noisily.
Clark glanced around at the others: the men watering their mounts and checking the horses’ shoes for loose nails, Marina sitting beside him staring off across the desert. He thought he should probably comfort her, but he wasn’t in the mood. He’d suffered as badly as she. It was probably silly, her being here in the first place, but Clark hadn’t left her in Tucson out of fear she’d fall for some card sharp or get raped by a drunk cowboy. How could he have known she’d be worse off out here?
Besides, she’d wanted to come. She had her own reasons for being here, and Clark thought she probably didn’t trust him to get the job done on his own.
He removed his hat, wiped sweat from the band, and scrutinized
the Indian, who sat in the shade of a boulder, shackled wrists over his knees. The man stared off across the desert with much the same expression as Marina’s.
Clark turned to Cameron. “So who’s the Indian?”
Cameron was filing his mustang’s right rear hoof. “People around here call him Perro Loco de Desierto—‘Mad Dog of the Desert.’ He’s been torturing and killing settlers, shooting up villages, and killing livestock off and on for about three years now. Most of the other Coyotero Apaches went to the reservation, but not him and about a dozen others.”
Cameron stopped what he was doing and glanced at the Indian, who gazed off expressionlessly. Cameron chuckled ruefully, bent over the hoof, and went back to work with a sigh.
“I’ve been after him off and on for the past sixteen months. My compadres and me decided if we were gonna keep ranching we were going to have to exterminate ol’ Perro Loco like the mad wolf he is. Well, we got word he was in a little village called Summerville about fifteen miles from my place, so we rode over and found him in the back room of a cantina, drunker ’n snot and diddling a Mexican whore.”
Cameron wagged his head, dropped the hoof, and returned the file to his saddlebags. He ran his hand absently down the mane of his buckskin, and glanced at Marina. Apparently satisfied she wasn’t listening, he returned his eyes to Clark, jerking a thumb at the Indian. “He had his pants down around his ankles and was givin’ it to her with a vengeance. All we had to do was walk in and snug our rifles up against his back—and that was it. We had Perro Loco in the bag. He was so drunk we had to lift him onto his horse.” He chuckled and turned again to the stony-faced Indian.
“So that’s really Perro Loco …” Clark said, staring at the Indian with awe. The Apache was even more notorious than Cameron in the Southwest Territories. Since Clark had arrived
here after the war, he’d read several newspaper articles devoted to the renegade.
“In the flesh.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“He’s seen better days,” Bud Hotchkiss said. Sitting near the Indian, he’d just taken a long pull from his canteen. He handed it now to the boy, Jimmy Bronco, and continued, “Not too happy about how we captured him. Shamed him pretty good, which makes him all the more dangerous. He’d like nothing better than to get his medicine back. You’ll want to keep your distance.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Clark said gravely.
There was a pause filled with the sounds of cicadas and horses. Clark leaned back on his elbows and said thoughtfully, “How hard do you men think it would be to find a guide in Contention City?”
His gazed shuttled from one man to the next. Only the boy returned it, cocking his head and squinting his eyes curiously.
“Depends on what kind of guide you’re lookin’ for,” Cameron said after a while. His back was to Clark, and he was adjusting the leather thongs holding his bedroll behind his saddle.
“I’m looking for a man to guide my wife and me into Mexico,” Clark said. “I’d arranged for Reese McCormick, but I understand he’s dead. He was supposed to meet us in Tucson. When he didn’t show I decided to start looking for him … or for someone else who could do the same job.”
“I heard about Reese,” the Mexican Pas Varas said in Spanish-accented English. He stood by his horse, holding the reins in one hand, his rifle in the other. “Too bad. He would have been a good guide. It will be hard to find another to take his place in Contention City—one that will not take your money and then cut your throat, that is.” Varas shook his
head. “You better go back to Tucson, maybe.”
Clark lowered his eyes, sucking a tooth, then lifted them again. He gazed at Cameron. “How ’bout one of you?”
As though he hadn’t heard, Cameron poured more water into his hat, and returned the hat to the ground before his horse. He took a drink from the canteen as he walked to the mesquite shrub. He sat down next to Clark and offered the canteen. Clark waved it off.
“Where you headed in Mexico?” Cameron asked, setting the canteen aside and fishing in his shirt pocket for a small sack of tobacco and papers.
“The Sierra Madre,” Clark said. “The northwest side.”
Cameron nodded and offered the makings pouch. “Smoke?”
“No thanks.”
Cameron took out a paper and sprinkled tobacco on it. Deftly, he shaped it with his fingers, licked it and twisted it closed. “What’s in the Sierra Madre?” he asked, scratching a lucifer to life on his thumbnail and lighting the quirley.
Clark bit his lip. He didn’t like the idea of sharing his plan with these strangers, but they looked honest enough, and they’d saved his and Marina’s lives, after all. “I have a treasure map.”
Cameron exhaled smoke, watching his horse thoughtfully and nodding, then shared an inscrutable glance with Varas and Hotchkiss. When Cameron said nothing, Clark said, “I need someone to help us follow it.”
Cameron pulled on the quirley. “Well, good luck,” Cameron said, exhaling smoke.
“You won’t consider it?”
“Sorry.”
“We need someone who knows the country and knows Apaches.”
“Yes, you do.”
“There’s gold at the end of the trail, Mr. Cameron. You’ll be well paid. Richer than your wildest dreams, as a matter of fact.”
Cameron smiled and studied the coal of his cigarette. “Where have I heard that before?”
“It’s Jesuit treasure.”
“How do you know?”
Clark pulled up his pants leg and produced a rolled-up sheet of heavy parchment from his boot. “I have this, a plat drawn by the man who found it, and … well, I had a silver cross forged by the Jesuits who ran the church. There was an inscription on the back.”
“‘Had’?” Hotchkiss asked, cocking his head. The boy had gone off to relieve himself behind a rock.
“Bachelard took it.”
“Lousy luck,” Varas said. It was hard to tell if he meant it or if he was just being sarcastic. Mexicans were funny that way.
Clark felt his frustration building. These men were not taking him seriously. They were patronizing him, as though he were a tinhorn.
“He wanted the plat,” Clark said to Varas, as if Bachelard’s wanting it somehow validated it.
Hotchkiss said, “Then he’s as crazy as you are, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, hombre.”
“How did he know about the plat?” Cameron asked Clark.
“He found the man who gave it to Marina,” Clark said darkly.
“Your wife?”
“Yes. The plat is actually hers.”
A faint light of interest grew in Cameron’s eyes as he turned to Marina. Obviously he’d been struck by her beauty, as was nearly everyone who ever saw her. The information that the map to a lost treasure belonged to a beautiful young
Spanish woman somehow made the story more credible; in the very least, it made it more compelling. Realizing this, somewhat abated the resentment Clark felt at seeing the effect his wife’s beauty had on the frontiersman.
“Marina grew up on a big rancho by the Rio Concho,” Clark explained. “One of her father’s men, an old cowboy named Julio Mendez, stumbled upon a plat to an old Spanish church in the Sierra Madre. These churches were said to be decorated with gold the padres mined. Well, after about ten years of searching, Julio found it. It’s in a canyon, near some ancient ruins. There was no gold inside, however. It had been stripped clean.”
“Looted,” Cameron said.
“That’s what old Julio thought at first. Then he got to thinking. He had heard that when the Jesuits were kicked out of Mexico, they hid their treasures from the Franciscans who were sent to replace them. So he started exploring the canyons behind the mission, and guess what he found?”
“El Dorado,” Cameron said wryly.
“A deep pit filled with gold and silver.” Clark looked at Cameron, small fires burning brightly in his gray eyes.
“Why didn’t he excavate it?”
“Indians scared him off before he could return with the supplies he needed. Then he had a heart attack. He gave the plat to Marina.”
Cameron looked at Marina again. “Why?”
Clark shrugged and sighed.
Marina’s gaze dropped from the distance. She cleared her throat. “He never said why he gave it to me,” she said, her voice thin with wonder. She held her blowing hair back from her face with her right hand. “He just gave it to me … with the cross. He was old. There was no family, I think. I suspect he no longer cared for such things as gold.” She shrugged and ground her heel in the sand, staring at it.
“There you have it,” Clark said to Cameron, hiking an eyebrow.
Cameron’s eyes stayed with Marina. “Where’s your family?”
She was still watching her foot, absently excavating a little hole in the sand. “Dead,” she said, softly.
Cameron nodded thoughtfully. He took a final drag off his cigarette, glanced again at his companions, mashed the quirley in the sand, stood, and walked over to his horse. Picking up his hat and pouring out what little water remained, he said, “Hell of a story.”
“Hell of a true story, Mr. Cameron.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but there’s no treasure.” Cameron untethered his horse from the mesquite and turned to the Southerner and his wife with a serious look. “And I strongly advise you not to go after it. If you follow through with your plan, you and your wife are gonna end up dead. I can almost guarantee you that. I’ve been through that country. I know.”
“What about the story?”
“Sounds like two dozen others I’ve heard.”
“Let me show you the plat.”
Cameron shook his head. “We’d better get a move on.” He and Hotchkiss mounted while Varas kicked the Indian and gestured to the man’s horse, indicating it was time to ride. The Indian obeyed stiffly, with the dolor typical of captured Apaches.
Meanwhile Clark climbed to his feet, a little unsteady, and brushed off his pants. He held out a hand to Marina. She took it, standing, gazing at Cameron wonderingly. Apparently she, too, knew that he was the right man for the job, and was frustrated he wouldn’t take it.
“It’s all right, my dear,” Clark said with a sigh, when he’d helped his wife onto Hotchkiss’s skewbald. “There are plenty
of men in the desert who wouldn’t mind finding the mother lode of Jesuit bullion.”
Cameron gave Clark a hand up on his own horse, and put the metal to the buckskin’s ribs. “Yes, there are,” he said.