Novel 1987 - The Haunted Mesa (v5.0) (25 page)

It was a long drive to Tamarron. He stopped briefly at the motel and at the café.

No messages. No sign of either Gallagher or Volkmeer.

He told the waitress that if Gallagher came in, to tell him Mike Raglan had gone to Tamarron, and would be back the following day.

He saw no one on the road, and was not followed. It was like entering another world. He drove first to the lodge to pick up his mail, then to his condo. It was a beautiful sunlit day, and people in bright costumes were playing golf on what must be, he thought, one of the most beautiful courses in the world.

Once inside he glanced around but nothing had been disturbed. All appeared to be as he had left it. The mail needed only a matter of minutes. A check for an article recently completed, a note from a friend about a ruin recently discovered in Colombia, a letter about some mummies found near Arica, in Chile, that seemed to be five thousand years older than any discovered in Egypt. A couple of bills, and a brief note from a girl he had known in Rio, and when was he returning to Brazil?

He changed shirts and, while buttoning his shirt, looked out the window. The snow where he had seen the tracks was gone. It had been the last of the season, and in just the few days that had passed, everything had changed. Of course, he was a thousand feet higher in altitude than on the mesa of the ruin. These were the San Juan Mountains; down there he had been in semi-desert.

The Navajo reservation had once lain just to the south of him, covering an area larger than the combined size of Belgium and the Netherlands, half the size of England.

Turning away from the window, he looked around again. This was real. This was
his
. His living quarters in his world. A comfortable, easy place to be, a world of pleasant reality with people coming and going, enjoying themselves or working, a place he understood and liked. And out there?

He shied from the thought. He would be going into something he neither knew nor understood, and there was a chance he might not return.

What if he opened one of those doors that could close behind him, lock him in forever? With nothing around him but blank stone walls, impossibly thick, and on the floor the bones of unfortunates who had preceded him?

He need not go. He could stay here, then catch a plane and fly back to New York or to Los Angeles. Erik might make it on his own.

Slipping into his coat, Mike Raglan knew he was arguing with himself to no purpose, for he was going back. He was not even sure if he was making a free choice. It might be that all his years of becoming what he was were dictating the issue.

How much choice did a man have, after all? Are we not all conditioned to certain expressions of life? Do we have a choice, whether we run or fight? He slipped a notepad into his pocket and went out to the car.

He was hungry. That was reality, and an issue he could confront here and now.

As he turned up the road, he drove over a spot where a couple of years ago he had seen a weasel cross the road with a gopher in his mouth.

Was he to be the weasel or the gopher? The predator or the prey?

What the hell, he told himself. They've grabbed Erik, they burned the café, they tried to get me. They laid out the course they wished to travel. If they wanted it that way, they could have it.

Magic. He had been a magician, but would that help? The chances were that they would be better at it than he. After all, most of the basic illusions were known to many people, including witch doctors in Central Africa or in the jungles of Brazil.

When he was seated at a table in the San Juan Room and had ordered, he glanced around the room. It was at least two-thirds full, a bright, interested looking bunch of people. As he considered it, a tall old man, quite heavy, got up from a nearby table and crossed over to him.

The man was well dressed in a casual, western fashion, had rumpled gray hair and a pleasant smile. “Mr. Raglan? May I join you?”

“Please do.”

He ordered coffee and looked at Raglan. “Been wanting to talk to you, Raglan. We know some of the same people, Gallagher, for instance.”

“He's a good man.”

“He is that. One of the best.” The old man paused, his eyes wandering about the room. “My name's Weston, Artemus Weston. Used to be a banker, one time. Retired a few years back. Been a lot of things in my time. Punched cows when I was a youngster, mostly over Utah way. Had a head for figures, an' my boss seen it. Saw it. He took me into the office to handle his books. Done that for a few years an' then the boss went into bankin' and took me along. When he passed on, I kept on at the bank, settled his estate.”

Weston took up his cup and sipped coffee thoughtfully. “S'pose you're wonderin' what I'm gettin' at. Just stay in the saddle an' listen.

“Man like me, doesn't talk a lot, listens mostly, he picks up things. Hears things. I done some surmisin', too. A body does, you know. Never had much book-learning but I could put two an' two together. There at the bank the boss moved me into the loan division. I had a head for business, did well with the loan part of it, but I handled property the bank owned, too.

“Don't get me wrong. This was a two-by-four western town bank where all the business we done in a month a city bank would do in a day, maybe. Thing we had to do to survive was to know the folks.

“People we did business with. We had to know them. Did they pay their bills? Did they put in the hours or were they shiftless? Who was their family? Was somebody sponging off them? Did their ranches have good grass an' water? Things like that. We had to know, and mostly we did. We knew things about folks they'd have been embarrassed to tell. We never talked about it, but one way to be successful in the small-town bankin' business is just to know folks, to know what goes on in their heads.

“Few days ago I was talkin' to Gallagher. He speaks well of you, an' I've got a granddaughter back East who reads what you write. Swears by you.

“Gallagher says you got a friend missin' out thataway?”

“I have.”

“Rough country. Easy for a man to get lost out there.” He paused again to taste his coffee. “Easy to get lost but not easy to disappear. Dry country. Has a way of preserving whatever it gets. Dries 'em out, but keeps 'em. A body now? It doesn't fall apart like in wetter country, so if a man dies out there, they usually find his remains.

“Found a couple of them myself. Dead cows, too, an' horses. Takes years to do away with a body. So if you miss somebody there's got to be a reason.

“Now you take that country? Wide, beautiful, and mostly dry as all get-out. I love it. Could ride forever in it, only I don't ride anymore. Too old to break any bones, an' even the best of horses can fall. That's rough out there.

“Strange country. Looks all wide-open to the eyes, but you an' me, we know different. The Navajo knew different and the Hopis knew. So did the Paiutes.

“More of them around when I was punchin' cows, and some of them were a bad lot, like that bunch that run with Posey. Steal a horse right from under your saddle while you're sittin' on it. But there was places they wouldn't go. Other places they did go but they were careful.”

He let the waiter refill his cup. “S'pose you wonder what I'm gettin' at?”

“No, I'm enjoying it.”

Weston chuckled suddenly. “I'm an old fool! Buttinsky. Got no call to come worryin' you with my talk. No call at all, 'cept I like what Gallagher had to say an' I got to worryin' some.

“I rode that country quite a few years, as cowboy an' as a banker checkin' on things. Rode it a lot just for the pleasure. Some of it I fought shy of.”

He waited awhile, looking around the room, and Raglan waited with him, his curiosity excited. “Mostly we had to know if a man was good for a loan, an' one time or another, most of them came to us. Most of 'em, but not Volkmeer.”

Startled, Raglan looked up, but the old man's eyes were wandering—his eyes, but not his attention. “Volkmeer punched cows, branded a few heads here an' there. Don't recall he ever had any breeding stock, there at first, but he registered a brand and bought a few head, mostly steers.

“Those steers, now? Good stock. Never knowed any steers that were good for breedin'. Ain't in their nature, but nonetheless, here an' there one sees such a herd gatherin' size. Somebody with a wide loop, y' know? Well, first thing y' know, Volkmeer's runnin' a couple of hundred head. Then he rode off up into the Oregon country and bought several hundred head of white-faces.”

“He was always a shrewd man, Weston.” Raglan spoke carefully. “As for the wide loop, you and I both know that many a big rancher got his start with a running-iron. There were always cattle in those old days that ran wild in the breaks and folks got around to branding them when they had time. Unless somebody got there first.”

“Sure. Man, the stories I could tell you! I've seen some herds grow mighty fast, like every cow-critter was havin' four or five calves a year!”

He paused again, running his fingers through his gray hair. “I rode some with Volkmeer. Knew him well. Cagey man. Never talked much. He taken a stab at minin', too, like most of us.”

“I pulled him out of a cave-in once.”

“Heard about that. Fact is, I heard the story when it happened.

“Volkmeer did pretty well. First thing you know he's buyin' himself property. Bought him a ranch, paid for it in cash money. Then he put in a bid on some land adjoining what he had. This was maybe a year later, and the folks that wanted to sell had to close a deal right away. I mean quick. Something tied up with a dead man's will. Several people wanted that ranch and we just told 'em the first man who could come in there with cash money could have it.

“Volkmeer got it.”

“He paid cash?” Raglan asked.

“Sort of. He come into the bank, ridin' ahead of some others who wanted that land, too, and he paid for it in
gold
.”

There was silence. The people in the room were disappearing, off to the mountains or to Durango. Slowly, Mike finished eating. Weston was trying to tell him something, but what was it?

Gold was not uncommon in those years. Men often cached gold coins until they had quite a stake. Many deals were made in which gold was the only money exchanged. After all, there were a lot of mines.

“I heard he had done well,” Raglan commented. “I was surprised, as he didn't look it when he came to see me and I figured I was about to hire an old cowboy to stand by me. I had no idea he'd become so successful.”

“He was in an almighty hurry. He wanted that property the worst way, so he paid in gold. Taken it right out of his saddlebags.”

“So?”

“Seemed odd, to me. The shape of it, I mean. The gold he paid me was in
discs
. Round discs thicker in the center, tapering off to the edges.”

Inside, Raglan was suddenly cold, chilled. He stared out of the window at the cliffs topped with forest. In his memory he was hearing a voice, the voice of another old man, that one in Flagstaff, long ago.

“‘Ree-fined gold, boy. Discs, like. Size of a saucer.”

Chapter 27

M
IKE RAGLAN LOOKED across the table at Artemus Weston. He looked more like a cattleman than a banker, but that was apt to be the case in these western towns.

“You're retired now?”

Weston nodded, without turning to face him. He was staring off across the room, but what he was seeing was probably in his memory. “Ain't got long now.” He turned his eyes toward Raglan. “Too many years behind me and my health's not what it was. Figured a young man like you, you ought to know.”

“Why did you think it important?”

“I'd guess you know why, or you'd surmise. That there was the only time I ever saw gold like that, but livin' in a place as long as I have, a man hears talk. Volkmeer got himself rich all of a sudden, seems like. Might have found himself a cache somewheres.”

He took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. “A man in bankin', even an old cow-chaser like me, he thinks about money. Money's what he deals with, money an' people. Out here in the West it wasn't our way to ask questions, but that can't stop a man from wonderin', and I done some wonderin' about where that gold come from.

“Wasn't all this worry about income tax, those days. A man didn't have to explain where money come from. Volkmeer got rich mighty fast. Bought other property, here and there, and it seemed to me either he'd found a cache or somebody who had was paying him for something.”

Weston got to his feet. “Talked enough. Time I was headed home. Get tired easy these days. Ain't like it was when I could ride forty hours at a stretch an' done it, many's the time, with cows or the like.”

He looked down at Raglan. “Used to have a lot of friends among the Injuns. Spoke Navajo since I was a youngster. Some of the old men used to come in for loans now and again. Never had one welsh on me. Always paid up when they got around to it.

“Now and again we'd just set an' talk, an' I heard some tales make your hair curl. You be careful, boy. You just be careful. You're ridin' bareback into some rough country.”

Raglan watched the old man walk away, weaving a path among the tables. Artemus Weston must indeed have been disturbed to have come here to see him. The old man must have made considerable effort just to get there.

Volkmeer? With gold such as the old cowboy in Flagstaff had found? How had he come by it? And whose side was he on, anyway?

Volkmeer, a hard, tough old man, and a rich one now. Was he an ally or an enemy? Suppose it was the latter? Suppose the man he had selected to back him up could not be trusted? He dared not take the risk, but how to be rid of him now that he had enlisted his aid?

It was time he drove out to see Eden Foster, and then made his move. Of course, she might have been able to intercede for Erik, but Raglan doubted it. From the little he knew, The Hand was all-powerful.