No Job for a Lady (30 page)

“I’m not sure. They acted like he was a joke to them. But he wasn’t a joke to someone. And then there’s the mask the person who attacked him wore. It was like the ones those street performers use and that the witch’s thugs wore tonight. I believe someone was being clever and wanted to rob the man of the map in a way that he wouldn’t be identified.”

“Or frighten it out of him,” Roger says. “The prospector seemed to be constantly boozed up and believed he was being stalked. Maybe he wasn’t imagining it. Somebody could have been wearing a jaguar mask to frighten him into giving up the map.”

Roger’s theory rings true to me. “What I find most interesting about the jaguar mask I saw on the train is that it was so crude, so much an obvious costume. If I had gotten a good look at it, instead of in the dark through a dirty window, I’m sure I would have thought of it as a clownish mask. And that’s another reason La Bruja didn’t impress me. The men holding the torches looked like nervous farmers, and the two guards were wearing the crude masks I’ve seen street entertainers wear in the city.”

He shrugs. “What did you expect? Real were-jaguars?”

“Yes.”

We stop in front of his tent and I speak so that my words won’t carry.

“I saw something in the bushes outside the train that time the train stopped to let Traven load cargo.”

I tell him about the thing—creature—I saw in the bushes.

“You think you saw a real were-jaguar?”

“I don’t know what I saw, but it was very different from the simple masks that street performers use. It was really creepy.” I rub the goose bumps on my arms.

“That is creepy,” he says while tapping the stem of his pipe against his teeth. He pulls a face and shakes his head. “You have been a very busy young woman since you crossed the border.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“There’s another person who’s also been very busy. The prospector, the
indio
porter, the attack tonight. Have you thought about the fact that someone is keeping close track of your movements?”

Licking my dry lips, I give him a forced smile. “Oh yes. That thought has occurred to me.”

“They must think you know something about the map. Do you?”

I shake both my fists in frustration. “No, no, no. And I wish I did. I have run every drunken word Howard spoke to me over and over in my mind, looking for something I might have missed. I can’t make anything significant out of it. For sure, he never spoke of Teo, a giant golden disk, or anything else that would even be a link to the treasure.”

I don’t say it aloud, but I am also plagued by whether I missed an important clue from the prospector because his drunkenness reminded me of my stepfather’s booze talk. I was just trying to be free of him. I didn’t care and wasn’t listening to what he was saying. It wasn’t important to me—then.

“Well, one thing is for certain,” Roger says. “Somebody thinks you know more than you do and thinks that you’re just not willing to tell or planning to grab the treasure yourself. They want to know whatever they think you were told by the prospector, and it’s a pretty narrow field. It has to be one of your intimates.”

“What do you mean?”

“The harassment has followed you from the train to the city and now to Teo. La Bruja didn’t invite you here. She wouldn’t even know who you are if someone you knew from the train hadn’t told her.”

“I got invitations to visit Teo from just about everyone.”

“Except me.”

I hadn’t thought of it, but he’s right.

“You’ve gotten a confession from me,” I tell him, “but you haven’t told me how it happens you were out there.”

He turns to go into his tent as he answers. “I was taking my evening constitutional when I saw a dog or cat—”

“No you don’t!” I grab his arm to jerk him back to face me.

He spins around, grabs me, and pulls me against him, his lips very close to mine.

I freeze up and then instantly melt, pressing against him, my lips melting with his as they had once before.

He lets go and I step back, flushed.

“If you hear any strange noises tonight,” he says, “just pull the blankets up over your head.”

As I turn to go to my tent, I find Gertrude standing in the entrance.

She gives a smile full of tease. “Just a platonic relationship…”

“Oh, be quiet.”

52

“Isn’t the ancient city a marvel?” Gertrude says the next morning.

“Marvelous,” I agree. Having made a few more observations about the place that frightened both me and the terrifying Aztecs, I restrain my tongue rather than opening the gates for a barrage of questions.

We are waiting outside Lily’s big tent for the grand lady of stage and gossip columns to appear and accompany us to Traven’s dig. We have already resolved to look like ugly ducklings with a graceful swan when the three of us walk up the boulevard together.

Juan was waiting outside our tent this morning to “escort” us to the dig—and collect his fee for yesterday and another for today. His disappearing act of yesterday was not mentioned.

“I should add bandido to his job description of street hustler and ragamuffin,” I complained to Gertrude after we paid him.

Gertrude is talkative, and I pay only half attention to her. I’m quiet because my head is full of my close encounter with La Bruja and her Jaguar Knights. Last night, I tossed and turned, waking up repeatedly. The realization that I could have been murdered didn’t really hit me until I was in bed and tried to sleep.

Howard, the prospector, didn’t do me any favors by sharing his drunken mumbo jumbo with me. It sicced a crazy Mexican witch onto me—and who else? That’s the question filling my head as Gertrude talks about how exciting it is to be in a city built a couple thousand years ago.

“Marvelous,” I repeat again.

Everybody wanted me in Teo; Roger and I had discussed that last night. I exclude Gertrude from the “everybody” category because she is too young and too remotely connected to Mexico to be part of a conspiracy of tomb robbers or whatever.

The best reason I can conjure up for anyone’s wanting my presence in Teo is that someone—or maybe a bunch of somebodies—thinks I know more than I do. And it appears that Teo is the place where the treasure hunt is meant to end.

Murder has been on the table since the train, so it’s pretty clear that whoever wants me to fess up to knowing the location of the treasure is willing to flay me alive, like that nasty witch would have done, to get a chunk of gold big enough to buy a small country.

An unfortunate part of the human spirit that divides us from the lower beasts is that we all have a miserly desire to gain and hoard wealth. And not even sex or fame fires our souls with the hot passion that a pot of gold does.

And if it means murder and other high crimes and misdemeanors to get it, so be it.

“You are in dreamland,” Gertrude says.

“Sorry. I was listening.”

“No, you weren’t. If you had been, when I mentioned Roger, you would have perked up.”

“All right, you win. What about Roger?”

“Not really about Roger, but an observation about the educational system in the colonies.” She grins. “That’s what my friends at Oxford call your country.”

“I won’t tell you what my friends in Pittsburgh call Oxford.” I rather suspect people in Pittsburgh know almost nothing about Oxford, except maybe that it has a university.

She laughs at my attempt to be witty. “Yesterday, Roger and I spoke briefly when we met at that hub of society here in our tent city, the water barrel. I had a question about the Louisiana Purchase, which added so much territory to your United States. I was surprised that he knew only the basics any schoolboy would know. Frankly, I expect a person planning to teach history at university level would be a lot more knowledgeable about one of the most important events in your country’s history.”

“Hmm” is the best I can manage. Roger is on my list of favorite persons for saving me last night, but, unfortunately, he is also one of the suspects.

Like Gertrude, I’ve concluded that there’s something unscholarly about him. Most scholars have such an interest in their field of study, they are more than willing, even eager, to talk about it. Not Roger. Plus, those magazines and books he always has his head stuck in—they are not scholarly tomes, but popular pulp. He just doesn’t fit the bill. Who is he really? Why is he here? And why is a scholar carrying a gun?

Lily comes out of the tent as bright as another sun in the sky.

Gertrude and I are both dressed sensibly for a trek up the dusty Avenue of the Dead and a climb around Traven’s archaeological dig. Lily looks as if she is on her way to high tea with the queen. Her dress is a radiant white cotton one, slim and formfitting, with delicate lace covering her neck. Even though the lace adds an elegant touch to the dress, I would imagine it will be stifling in this heat.

The back of the dress has tiny satin buttons, which must have taken a lifetime to fasten—they go from the bottom of her neck down to almost her bum. The dress stops inches above her ankles, and she is wearing dainty satin green shoes with three-inch heels, which amazes me. How does she plan on climbing steps and maybe even some rubble? Doesn’t she realize the dirt will destroy the delicate shoes?

Maybe she doesn’t care … or maybe dirt parts for her like the Red Sea did for Moses.

I glance down at my clodhoppers. Dirt seems to improve their looks. And they are comfortable and fit for climbing. Gertrude has ones almost the same style as mine, only I’m sure they are one pair of many she brought for her trip. For me, it’s my only pair.

Lily’s gorgeous hair is up in a bun, I suspect, because she’s wearing a big floppy white hat that has a big satin green ribbon around the bottom that matches the color of her shoes.

What I admire most is her skin; it’s so white and soft, all she has on is a light pinkish blush and cherry red lipstick, which emphasize her porcelain skin and full lips. All I do is put cream on my face and petroleum jelly on my lips to keep them from chapping.

“Where did you get your parasol?” Gertrude asks Lily. “And your hat? They are both stunning!”

Besides the hat, Lily carries a white parasol—I guess for added protection for her delicate skin—while we are wearing baggy hats that make us look like we are on our way to milk cows.

Lily laughs. “These old things? Paris, I think.”

A handsome carriage pulls up and Gertrude and I exchange quick glances. I’m sure she feels the same way I do: We are the ugly stepsisters who are graciously getting a ride to the ruins in Cinderella’s carriage.

Oh, well, it’s not Lily’s fault. It’s just the luck of the draw, as the boys in the newsroom would say. Lily got a royal flush, while I was dealt a pair of deuces.

Juan adapts quickly to the presence of the coach. He jumps on the back to ride standing up as a footman.

The ride is short, and once we get there, the boy jumps down and races up a few steps and addresses us after we pile out of the carriage.

“The Temple of the Feathered Serpent”—a swing of his arm encompasses the entire temple ruins—“the mightiest and most bloodthirsty of all the gods.” He points at the ferocious figures mounted on the temple wall: large stone heads of a feathered snake with jaws that would scare the skin off a shark.

Then he points up at the sky. “He travels across the sky as Venus, the flaming star.”

“Venus is a planet, but they call it the evening star; I guess that’s close enough,” Gertrude tells me as we clap to show our appreciation.

As we climb the steep steps, Juan repeats pretty much what he told us yesterday about a river of blood flowing down temple stairs during sacrifices while the crowds looked on with glee.

“Similar to what they were doing at the arenas in Rome during the same period of history,” Gertrude whispers to us so as not to steal Juan’s thunder, “only they had wild animals ripping people apart.”

Traven is supervising workers hoisting a large block with ropes. He is coated with as much sweat and dust as his workers. He tells the workers to take a break and brushes himself off as he greets us.

“A dig is a dirty job. And a hard one, but not as difficult as what the original builders suffered. The stone block you see eight men straining to lift with great difficulty is a hundred times smaller than most of the stones that went into building the two great pyramids here at Teo.”

He goes on to explain that the ancient Mesoamerican
indios
would have used the same techniques the Egyptians did in transporting stone blocks weighing many tons great distances and hoisting them up to create towering edifices.

“No one knows for certain how it was done, but for sure the
indios
didn’t have any beasts of burden to aid them, because there were none in the New World until Europeans began shipping horses, mules, and cattle over.”

Moving heavy stones is brutally labor-intensive, he tells us, and he shows how he avoids damaging artifacts by carefully removing them from the places they had rested for perhaps a couple thousand years.

“Things get buried under rubble or so many feet of dirt and sand that it’s a major physical task to uncover them. And just as the Egyptians were secretive and careful about hiding their valuables, the ancient
indios
of the New World devised many secret places to hide their treasures from thieves and invaders, making it all the harder to find and recover them intact.”

Traven points out that bellows and brushes made from straw are used to carefully remove the dirt on and around an object. “We rarely use a pick or shovel once we have opened a site. We often spend hours blowing off a foot of dirt with a bellows rather than taking it off with a shovel.”

He gestures at Juan. “I’m sure your tour guide has told you all about the more gruesome aspects of the city, but you should also be aware that just as it took incredible engineering knowledge to build these pyramids, the city itself is a marvel of skilled contrivance on the scale of how a modern engineer would construct a city. The fact that the ancient and medieval
indios
practiced human sacrifice in no way diminishes the credit due them for the amazing feats of engineering it took to build this great city.”