CAMERON’S GROUP FOLLOWED a faint wagon trail into a canyon where cedars and cottonwoods grew along an arroyo and where a sprawling dead oak was peppered with crows. The crows lifted, cawing raucously, when the party neared the tree.
Cameron was trailing his mule beside Clark. Hotchkiss and Marina were riding drag. Jimmy Bronco rode point, scanning the rims around them where Indians could be hiding. Cameron didn’t like the way Jimmy kept his hand on the butt of one of his six-shooters, as if ready to draw at any moment.
He knew the kid was just being vigilant, but he might be a little too vigilant. If one of the others cleared his throat too loudly he was liable to get shot.
“Who is this man whose ranch we’re heading for?” Clark asked Cameron.
“Alfred Going. He’s about my age, a little older—a Mex from a little village in Chihuahua, but he was raised by Apaches that kidnapped him when he was just a tyke. He and I scouted together one summer, up near Apache Pass, the first time the Army tried to haze the Chiricahuas to San Carlos. We tracked some renegades that separated from the pack and lit out for Mexico.”
Cameron shook his head. “That was one bloody summer. We led up a troop from Camp Grant—most of ‘em, other
than the chief trumpeter and the sergeant-major, greener ’n spring peas. One mornin’, me and Alfred scouted up a watershed east of where we’d bivouacked. I told the sergeant-major to stay put till we got back. We were afraid that if the group we were after wasn’t east, they’d be north, and he’d run right into ’em in bad country.
“Well, my horse got gutted by a mountain lion, so Alfred and I were late getting back to the bivouac, and guess what? The sergeant-major got itchy feet and went on ahead. Three miles out, he got ambushed at Soogan Creek. The Apaches were waitin’ in the rimrocks—had ’em completely surrounded. Alfred and I could hear the guns and the Apache war cries, the horses and men screamin’, from a long ways away. By the time we got there, it was all over. Half the detail was lying in the water, and the Apaches had disappeared like they hadn’t even been there.”
“And the sergeant?”
Cameron shook his head. “Didn’t make it. He was a good man. He just got itchy feet. It happens.”
“Is that what I have, Cameron? Itchy feet?” Clark asked, with a trace of humor.
“No, you got gold fever. But it amounts to the same thing in Apache country: death.”
“I didn’t think there were that many Apaches left out here.”
“There aren’t, but it doesn’t take that many. Besides, you have the rurales, the federalistas, and the revolutionaries to worry about. Not to mention the sheer remoteness of the place, and the treacherous trails. If one doesn’t kill you, another will.”
Clark smiled confidently. “For as much gold as we’re going to find, Jack—you mind if I call you Jack?—it’s worth the risk.”
Cameron steered his horse off the trail to let Clark and his
mule pass through a narrowing between the arroyo and a mound of dry river wash. Then he caught up to him again.
“You see any action?” Cameron asked him.
“No,” Clark said, a little defensively.
Cameron had already figured as much. Men like Clark often bought their way out of battle. If he’d fought, he wouldn’t have been as eager to tear off with an attractive woman like his wife into Apache- and revolution-ravaged Mexico. He’d have a deeper appreciation for life. He’d know how much even the mother lode was really worth.
But Cameron was glad Clark hadn’t fought, because Clark’s lack of fear and good horse sense was going to lead Cameron to Bachelard. Hell, it might even lead him to gold he wouldn’t otherwise have gone after.
“Stop right there or we blow your heads off!” a man’s voice sounded from somewhere ahead.
“Jimmy, keep it holstered!” Cameron yelled at the boy, whose right pistol was half out of its holster. The boy froze and looked at Cameron, his face flushed with alarm.
Cameron had recognized the voice. Apparently Hotchkiss had, as well; he gave a high-pitched laugh as he reined his horse to a halt. Cameron stopped his own horse and waved an arm, looking around for a face in the rimrocks ahead on both sides of the canyon.
“Alfred! It’s Jack Cameron.”
The man yelled something, in what sounded to Cameron like Apache and Papago mixed with English. Then, as he moved, Cameron spotted him, on the rimrock on the right side of the canyon. The man waved a hand and yelled lazily, “Hey, Jack—what brings you way out here, amigo?”
Cameron cupped his hands around his mouth and replied, “Your cooking, you old heel squatter.”
There was movement to his left. Cameron saw someone else in the rocks—a short, round figure with a rifle, on what
appeared to be a burro. This had to be the person Alfred had yelled to in the strange mix of languages. Then Alfred and the other were both gone, disappeared behind the butte.
“Let’s go,” Cameron said to the others. “Jimmy, keep your hands off your guns.”
Fifteen minutes later they came around a bend in the trail and saw the headquarters of the rancho. The adobe cabin, with a brush roof, two cactus corrals, and a mud barn, stood before a high limestone rock that loomed like a giant tongue frozen mid-lick, the tip of the tongue hanging about a thousand feet over the cabin.
The wind blew down the canyon, slapping the door of the ramshackle outhouse sitting by a gully that fell away to the right of the headquarters. On a small island of brush in the gully, several goats grazed. They turned their heads when they caught the scent of strangers on the wind, and bleated warily.
Cameron led his group toward the corral, where Alfred Going and an Indian woman were turning loose the horse and burro.
“Dichosos los ojos que te ven una vez mas, Jack,” Going said, grinning broadly and moving away from the corral to greet the visitors. “Ah, how happy the eyes that gaze upon you once again.”
He was a stocky, barrel-chested man with a double chin, a large round head with kind brown eyes, and a handlebar mustache that had gotten away from him. His hair was still black but his sideburns and mustache were going gray. He wore homespun clothes and a high-topped hat with a narrow crown and feathers in the band.
Smiling, Cameron dismounted and shook the man’s hand. “Nice to see you, too, Toke. Been a while.” Tokente was the man’s Apache name—Toke, for short.
“When’s the last time …? Oh, I know, two summers ago you passed through here after you sold some mustangs in Mexico. Remember? You spent a day helping me bury cholla
cactus around my chicken coop to keep the coyotes from digging in.”
“How’s that workin’ out, anyway?”
“Pretty good. I ain’t lost many chickens, but I seen some coyotes with some pretty sore snoots.” Going smiled broadly, hunching up his shoulders, grinning with practically his whole body. His laughter was a soft, steady “heeeee.”
“Looks like you got yourself a partner,” Cameron told him, nodding at the woman forking hay into the corral. She was round as a barrel, and just over five feet tall, with straight black hair falling in a braid to her buttocks. She wore deerskin leggings and a deerskin poncho painted and decorated with porcupine quills. A necklace of wolf claws hung about her neck.
Going grinned again. “That’s my wife, She-Bear. She’s really something, Jack.”
“She-Bear?”
“That’s what I call her because I can’t pronounce her Papago name—she’s Papago, from over west—but it’s fitting if you ask me. If ever a woman looked like a she-bear, it’s She-Bear!”
Going smiled broadly and gave a self-satisfied “hee.” Turning to the Indian woman, he said something in the strange mix of languages he’d used before. The woman dropped another forkful of hay over the corral, stood the fork against it, and started for the house with a lumbering gait.
Cameron could tell from her profile that whatever Going had rattled off to her had pleased her. A faint smile pulled at her cheeks and Cameron thought he could see some color there, as well. No doubt that was as much emotion as the obviously shy woman ever showed to strangers.
“She has a scar on her nose,” Going said. “She was fighting another woman over me—a Puma at the trading post—and she almost got it bitten off!”
“Over you?”
“Hee.” Going shrugged. “I appeal to women; another man would not understand.”
“You can say that again, brother!” Hotchkiss said, coming up trailing his horse and shaking Going’s hand. “How you been, Toke?”
“Me? How are you, you old gray-muzzled lobo!” Cameron introduced Jimmy Bronco and the Clarks, Going nodding graciously and smiling and welcoming everyone to his humble casa. Then Going turned to Cameron. “Where you folks going, anyway?”
“Mejico,” Cameron said.
Going frowned curiously, as if to ask what all these gringos were doing heading for Mexico.
“It’s a long story. We’ll tell you over supper—if you don’t mind us inviting ourselves, that is.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, brother,” Going said. Gesturing to the tank beneath the windmill just beyond the corral, he added, “Help yourselves to a wash, then come inside and light a spell.”
“Don’t mind if we do,” Cameron said.
He let the others go ahead. Going came up beside him and whispered conspiratorially, “That Señor Clark’s wife, she is a good-looking woman, but much too skinny. You leave her here a couple days and let She-Bear put some tallow on her bones!”
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Cameron chuckled. “Hell, those women would get in one scrap after another over you.”
“Ah …” Going said with a thoughtful nod. “Good thinking.”
THERE WAS NO room for seven people to eat comfortably in the cabin, so Cameron and Alfred Going set up a makeshift
table of split logs and food barrels in the yard. She-Bear roasted three plump hens on a spit she built near the table, using mesquite deadfall she gathered in the gully.
While the chickens roasted, juices sizzling as they dribbled into the fire, Going and his visitors sat around the table, drinking wine and talking. When the sun went down, Going lit hung lanterns from the trees. The air freshened and cooled as the sky paled.
As the first stars winked to life in the east, She-Bear served the meat, along with roasted corn. The group dug in with their fingers, as the amenities did not include silverware—She-Bear could barely come up with enough plates and cups. The Indian woman spoke only to Going, when she spoke at all, and while she appeared sullen, Cameron knew it was only because she was shy and awkward among strangers, as were most Indian women he had known. She would not have prepared this kind of meal for unwelcome guests.
Cameron instinctively liked the woman and thought Going had chosen a good wife, but he could not help stealing glances at the poor woman’s nose, which bore distinct marks of teeth across the bridge and down the sides of both nostrils. If not for the scar, she would be pretty. Cameron wondered if she had indeed received the bite in a fight over Going, but doubted he’d ever really know. Going was a master jokester, and you never knew when he was serious.
When Cameron was not sneaking looks at She-Bear’s nose, or busy listening to another of Going’s stories about people he’d known, renegades he’d tracked, horses he’d ridden, women he’d loved, and the money he’d made in the mines, his gaze strayed to Marina. She smiled at Going and Hotchkiss’s verbal sparring, throwing her hair back as she ate.
Once, as she tore meat from a bone with her thumb and index finger, looking down and frowning with the effort and against the pain of the hot meat, Cameron indulged in a study
of her face. Marina lifted her head to drop a chunk of chicken into her mouth, and as she simultaneously chewed and sucked in air to cool the meat, she caught him staring.
She flushed and smiled. Before she looked away, Cameron felt her penetrating gaze as a sudden flash of fire, all the way to his bones.
When everyone had finished the main meal, She-Bear served queso de tuna, a traditional Mexican sweetmeat made from the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, and rich black coffee with goat’s milk. Cameron savored every bite of the dessert, knowing it would probably be his last for several weeks, maybe a couple of months. It was a long way into the Sierra Madre, and a long way out again, with hidden perils all along the trail.
When the meal was finally finished, Going poured another round of wine for his guests while She-Bear cleared the table. Marina started to get up and help but was quickly pushed back into her chair by the grumbling She-Bear.
“Please, you can’t do all this work alone,” Marina objected in Spanish.
She-Bear turned away with an armload of plates. Going put his hand on Marina’s wrist, grinning knowingly and wagging his head. Nothing would have embarrassed the Indian woman more, Cameron knew, than having a young lady of obvious aristocratic breeding help her with such menial chores as supper dishes.
“Clark, why don’t you show Alfred your plat?” Cameron said.
Clark flushed in the lantern light playing across his face, and regarded Cameron gravely.
“It’s all right,” Cameron assured him. “He won’t steal it from you.”
Cameron had studied the map their first night on the trail, but as he’d expected, he hadn’t recognized any of the crudely
drawn landmarks. He’d journeyed into the Sierra Madre after Apaches, but he’d been too busy looking for Indian sign to notice much else. His own prospecting, years ago, had taken him farther west, into the Mojave Desert of California. He knew that if Clark had a chance of finding the X marked on the map, he’d have to have help from someone who knew the country and recognized at least one or two of the plat’s represented landmarks. Cameron hoped his old friend Going would be that person.
Reluctantly Clark removed the pocket he’d sewn into his coat, undid the thong, and handed the map, copied on a large sheet of parchment, to Going, who accepted it soberly. Going shoved his cup and wine bottle aside and drew a lantern near, then unrolled the wrinkled paper on the table before him, weighting the ends with cups.
“Any of those figures mean anything to you, Toke?” Cameron asked after a while.
Going was studying the turtle in the bottom right corner. Furrows in the bridge of his nose deepened and his jaw loosened as he considered the curious mark.
“This figure here I recognize,” he said slowly. “I saw it drawn on some rocks not far from the village of San Cristóbal when I was digging for gold. Just some figures drawn by the ancients,” he added with a shrug.
“Have you seen it anywhere else?” Clark asked.
Going pursed his lips, thinking, and shrugged. “No … I don’t think so.”
Cameron sighed and pushed a fork around with his thumb. “There was a miner in the Mojave some years ago. He marked the way to his placer by chiseling little stick figures into the nearby rocks, sort of like Hansel and Gretel dropping crumbs to find their way in the forest. Each one was a little different, depending on how close they were to the mine. They were
his secret code, so he could find his way back to the place after shipping out a load of ore.”
“You think that’s what these are?” Going said, pressing an index finger to the turtle on the map.
“Could be,” Cameron said with a shrug. Clark was studying him thoughtfully, eyes bright with hope. “I still don’t believe there’s gold, you understand,” Cameron said to him. “But if there is gold, that mark might lead the way.”
Clark nodded slowly. “Of course.”
Marina’s eyes brightened as she studied the map before Going. “Sí,” she whispered. Turning slowly to Cameron, she said, “I have seen the turtle. When I was a child, my father would take me on his hunting trips to the mountains.” She shook her head, awestruck. “I had forgotten.”
“Were they near this village of San Cristóbal?” Cameron asked her.
She frowned and shook her head. “I remember a village, but I do not remember which one. I was too young.”
Clark turned to her sharply. “You must remember, Marina, please!”
“Was it in a valley closed off from the south by three sharp peaks?” Going asked her.
Marina was frowning and studying the table, trying to remember. “I … I think so … si,” she said, lifting her eyes to Going’s. They grew bright with recollection.
“You are looking for the Lost Church of San Bernardo,” Going said to Clark, a knowing smile growing on his lips. “Hee.”
“You know it?” Clark asked with some urgency.
Going spread his hands. “Who does not know the legend?”
“Have people tried to find it?”
“Of course, señor. But most people believed it was south of San Cristóbal, behind those three peaks. That was what the
Jesuit register said in Mexico City. But you know you can never trust the word of a monk. Hee.”
“You think there’s a possibility it’s really there … somewhere?” Cameron asked, unable to keep a growing touch of eagerness from his voice.
“You know me, Jack,” Going said. “I am just a superstitious old heathen with gold on the brain. I will believe anything until it is proven false.”
Marina looked at him urgently. “Please, Señor Going. Lead us to the turtles carved in the rocks. I would not remember the way.”
“Hee. That is Apache country. Not to mention that it is also the home of much revolutionary fighting. Hell, there are even scalp-hunters out there, and with a scalp like mine”—Going ran a big hand over his thick black hair—“they might mistake me for an Apache.”
“If there’s gold out there, we’ll find it ourselves,” Cameron said to Marina with a thin smile, sneaking a look at Going.
Predictably, the short, stout man jumped to his feet. “Not without me you won’t!”
“Wait a minute!” Clark objected, casting an angry look at Cameron.
“You know how big that country is?” Cameron said. “We could spend years scouring one small section of it and coming up with nothing but Apache arrows.”
“I don’t like the idea of splitting the gold up any more than I have to,” Clark said, nonplussed.
Going grinned and said slowly to Clark, in a hushed, reverent tone, “If there is as much gold at San Bernardo as the legend says there is, you could bring the whole Mexican army into the search and still make out a millionaire, señor.”
Clark studied the man for a long time, his expression softening.
Stifling a deep-throated cough, he poured more wine and threw it back.
Going smiled across the table at Cameron. “Hee,” he said.
“It’s settled, then,” said Marina, relieved, ignoring the look of irritation her husband shot her as he poured more wine.