Valley of Fire (16 page)

Since Corbin had probably just stopped Fenn from killing me and Geneviève, I decided that I liked that fellow, and would regret when it come time to kill the bastard. His words somehow quieted Fenn's anger.

Once his revolver was holstered, Fenn hauled Geneviève away, and Corbin and The Pockmarked Man dragged me off to another room where Corbin stitched up my head, and wrapped a fairly clean bandanna around it.

Then he said, “Get cleaned up.”

I saw an enamel bowl, a shaving kit, even a mirror.

Gingerly, I moved over to the mirrored wall. Wasn't no ceiling. No floor. Just more rock walls. After picking up the razor, I eyed Corbin. “Y'all trust me with this?”

“Don't cut your throat,” he said, which wasn't my meaning.

There was even some soap. I washed my face, and, sake's alive, did that feel glorious. Scrubbed it good, though I left my bandaged forehead alone, and it was like I was in the fanciest hotel in Denver because The Pockmarked Man passed me another towel—not really a towel, now that I think on it, but a bandanna that wasn't sweaty and dirty. After drying off, I found the brush in the tin, began working up a lather.

Wasn't till I saw my reflection that I dropped both tin and brush.

Now I knowed what had shocked Sean Fenn so much when he laid eyes on Geneviève and me.

A cadaver looked better than me, and it wasn't on account of the bandage, some blood already soaking through the faded yellow silk. Wasn't because of the bruises and scratches. Slowly, I recollected how Geneviève looked now, comparing that vision to how I recalled them memories from her arrival in the Las Vegas jail . . . and the hotel room . . . and even in that boxcar.

My eyes was sunk way back in my head, and despite the stubble of beard I'd planned on shaving off, I could see how hollow my cheeks was. Carefully, I reached over and felt my right arm, staring at that bony thing, seeing the puckered mark Sean Fenn's cigarette had left. I lifted up my shirt, past the green stocking bandage, saw them ribs that brung to mind skeletons. Lastly, I slipped my hand inside my trousers, made a fist, pushed against the fabric. Criminy, if it hadn't been for suspenders, I would've been dragging them britches at my ankles.

Felt my Adam's apple bob, and had to wait till my hands stopped shaking before I could pick up the tin and the razor.

“You best hurry,” Corbin said. “Fenn lacks patience, and we'd like to get moving out of this”—he seemed to shudder—“evil place.”

Studied him through the mirror, I did. Big Tim Pruett once told me that you needed to know the fellow you was going up against. 'Course, he was talking about boxing and poker, but I figured that it would come in handy, too, when your life and soul depended on it. Corbin didn't seem to be the kind of gent to spook easily, but I recollected how de la Cruz—or had it been Blanco?—had mentioned that Gran Quivira was haunted.

“How long have y'all been camped here?” I spoke real casual, so they wouldn't suspicion my motives, fetching razor and cup, opening the blade and wiping it on my trousers.

“Too damned long,” he said.

The Pockmarked Man shifted his legs, leaned against the rocky wall, and the Mexican come into the room, scraping his boot on a rock. Even better. I had all three's attention.

“They say many, many Indians were murdered here.” I started stropping the razor against a piece of leather hanging on the wall—like this place was a regular barber shop on the plaza.

The Mexican stopped scraping the manure off his boot.

“And their bodies were sealed”—I tapped the rocks and mortar—“inside these walls.”

The Pockmarked Man straightened, moved a couple steps away from the wall that had been holding him up. He started to look back, but couldn't.

“A place like this,” I said, and tested the razor, “is . . . well. . . .” I shuddered. Honest. Didn't pretend to, neither. It was like somebody had just stepped on my grave. Might have been the Mexican, which would explain how come he had manure all over the bottom of his boot.

“Stop with the ghost stories, Bishop,” Corbin said. “And focus on making yourself presentable.”

That got my curiosity up. “Presentable? For who?”

He didn't answer. Just pointed at the razor.

 

 

Don't reckon I filled that “presentable” bill, even though I hadn't nicked me once with that razor, and it wasn't that sharp and the water was only lukewarm. I mean, my face was bruised, and a scab was beginning to form on my forehead underneath that bandage.

Still donned the miserable clothes I'd had on my back since Las Vegas. I stank to high heaven, could only imagine that I smelled worser downwind of my person. I had the ugliest green bandage on my side, my shirt was torn and ripped, my boots had holes in the bottoms and a couple in the tops, and one boot top had a three-inch slash along the seam.

When I'd made myself as pretty as I reckon the boys figured I could ever get, Corbin pointed through the opening, and I followed The Pockmarked Man and Benigno, with Corbin keeping a safe and respectable distance behind me.

We walked into another building, or part of the one they'd held me in, then ducked through a small door way—the Indians who'd lived here must have been real tiny individuals—and wandered through a regular maze. I figured a body could get lost in here and die of starvation or thirst before he ever found his way out. At last, we reached a three-cornered room, with three small, square windows in one side. The tops of two walls was pretty much rounded, and the floor was dirt and grass and plenty of rocks. Through the windows was green shrubbery and a cloudless sky. Looking up, I spied a couple-three ravens flying around in the wind. The sky was so blue, so beautiful. Wished I could have been flying up there with them big, black birds.

What I noticed most about the room was the smokeless fire—they was smart enough to use dry wood—and a coffeepot resting on a rock, a bunch of cups next to the stone ring.

Well, that ain't altogether true, neither. What I noticed most was Geneviève. She sat in the corner under one of the square windows, the one with a bunch of loose rocks on the bottom. She looked real thin, too, and she'd always appeared to be a small, delicate woman. The bruises was showing on her face, too, now that she'd washed up, but I didn't know how many of them purple spots come from Sean Fenn, and how many come from The Voice, or maybe just from all that hard traveling we'd done across the desert.

“Help yourself to some coffee, Bishop.” Fenn spoke before I seen him. He come around the empty spot where a wall stood two centuries earlier.

Bending with my leg, and head, and ribs, didn't seem such a promising venture, but Fenn was in a friendly mood for the time. He must've realized the pain I was in, so he squatted to pour me a cup. I taken it and quickly sipped some.

“Good coffee,” I said. Meant it, too.

“Thank you, kindly,” Corbin said.

Yep, I wouldn't enjoy killing him.

Fenn decided that was enough social talk. “What do you know about the gold?”

“Probably no more than you do.”

He motioned for me to sit on a rocky ledge, and I done so, mainly because Big Tim Pruett had always said that coffee tastes better when you're sitting or squatting, not standing.

“Where's his crutch?” Geneviève asked.

“Walking's good for him,” Fenn said. “A man like Micah Bishop would likely use a crutch as a weapon. Isn't that right, Bishop?”

“Can't deny that.” I taken another sip.

“The gold?” Fenn said.

“Folks have been looking for gold since them Spanish con . . . conster . . . conquis . . . since them explorers was first here.”

“You know the gold I mean.” Fenn's voice lost that friendly tone.

“Well, what I knows goes something like this. In olden times, Spanish explorers found a gold mine way up in Mora. Mine played out about the time of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The Spanish tried to make it to Mexico, hauling plunder with them. The Indians they'd enslaved helped carry their riches. Made it here, and killed the Indians.” I tapped the wall behind. “Buried them in these walls.”

Sneaked me a look-see at the Mexican and The Pockmarked Man, but they didn't seem scared. Not yet. But I figured their nerves wasn't as strong as they made out.

“There the gold sat, buried, till some scientists come here in 1848. There was a small party. They tried to make it out with all the gold, using mules to carry it. They made it to the Valley of Fire.”

“Fires.”

I craned my neck to see the Mexican. “Beg your pardon,” I said.

He spoke in rapid Spanish, then told me, and the rest of our merry group, that the proper name was the Valley of Fires.

“What's the difference?” I said.

“Singular and plural,” Corbin answered, him being smarter than most gunmen.

“The map the fellow in Socorro showed me had it ‘Fire,'” The Pockmarked Man said. “I can show you. It's in my war bag.”

“A gringo,” Benigno said. “
Norteamericano. Imbecíl
.” He waved his hand. “I know this country. It is my homeland. It is the Valley of Fires.”

“I've heard tell of a Valley of Fire in Nevada,” The Pockmarked Man said.

“And if you combine the one in Nevada to the one south of here you'd have two,” Corbin said lightly.

“Making them the Valley of Fires.” The Pockmarked Man nodded his head as if that was the final word on the subject.

It wasn't.

“Or the Valleys of Fire,” Corbin said.

“Gringo,” Benigno said. “
Norteamericano. Imbecíl.
I tell you, it is Fires.”

“Who gives a damn!” Sean Fenn had the last word on the matter. He gestured angrily at me. “What happened in the Valley of Fire?”

I shot Geneviève a glance. See, all this story I'd heard from her, but then Blanco and that big farmer from along the Pecos River had come upon us, and she hadn't finished the story, but I made me a good guess. “It was buried there.”

Had to be. They seemed to think I knowed where it was, but I didn't know nothing. Excepting what Geneviève had told me, and she hadn't finished that tale.

“Where?” Fenn demanded.

“In the Valley of Fire.”

“Fires!” Benigno said, determined to prove his case.

Fenn shot the Mexican the meanest look I'd ever seen him give, and Benigno promptly decided that it didn't matter one way or the other what anybody called it.

“Where in the Valley of Fire?” Fenn asked me.

“How the hell should I know?” I decided to make them do some talking, instead of me.

“Here's why.” Fenn jumped to his feet, his face reddening once again.

That man needed to do something about that temper. He was liable to have his whole head just blow up from all that blood rushing to it.

“I'm in Santa Fe, minding my own business, when some damned Mex named Felipe Hernandez barges into the saloon, yelling that he is going to hang Micah Bishop the day after tomorrow, and everyone is invited to see the killer of his cousin—I forgot the dead man's name—swing. I laugh, even consider taking the northbound up to Vegas to watch you jerk. But almost immediately, I start hearing stories about this nun. This old crone of a nun with one arm and blind as a bat. The stories that reach me at the faro layouts are that she must save Micah Bishop.

“Now, I could care less, but then there's another story making its way in Santa Fe. That burg has more gossips than a Baptist church. I start hearing crazy things. About a fortune in ancient ingots. Buried in the Valley of Fire.” He glared at the Mexican, just daring him to say something, just give him a reason to blow his fool head off. Benigno kept quiet.

“So . . .”

I finished for Fenn. “So you sent her . . .” I tilted my head toward Geneviève. “. . . to the Sisters of Charity orphanage. Had her make a quick friendship with an old blind nun. Get the story from the nun herself, find out if I was really worth saving. Something like that, Sean?”

“You aren't as stupid as I remembered,” Fenn said.

I kept looking at Geneviève, waited till she raised her head to look at me. “How'd you manage to fool the Mother Superior, get inside, find Sister Rocío?”

Geneviève lowered her gaze, wrapped her arms around her knees, begun rocking back and forth, staring at the dirt.

“They were expecting a nun to join their cult,” Fenn said. “Figured Gen could play that part for a day. Got her all dandied up, sent her on her way.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but the Mother Superior—”

“She was almost a nun.” Fenn cut me off. “Almost. Till she met me. Ain't that right, Gen?” He spoke vindictively.

“Don't call her that,” I said.

“What? Gen?”

“Yeah.”

He laughed. “Pardon me all to hell.” He laughed at Geneviève, still rocking, not saying nothing, not crying, just rocking.

I drawed a deep breath, let it out, and shrugged. “Well, I don't know what Sister Rocío told you. Don't know how I can help you fellows. You should ask the nun herself.”

“An excellent idea!” Fenn laughed.

Geneviève stopped rocking, and looked at him with the most hatred I'd ever seen in a pretty woman's eyes.

“You brought her here?” Geneviève came to her feet, shaking with rage. “You pathetic bastard! You brought a seventy-year-old nun, blind and frail with a bad heart and dying of carcinoma?”

That hit me like a .45 slug in the chest. My breath come up short. Sister Rocío was . . . dying?

“Well, it wasn't quite as romantic as your little excursion here,” Fenn said, all snug, all snide. “We took the train from Santa Fe to Socorro and rented some horses. The old biddy said she'd only ride a burro, but I am always one to please. We compromised on a mule. A small mule.”

“And brought her here?” Geneviève's arm swept across the crumbling rock walls.

“Yes, damn it.” Fenn wasn't so snug no more. He was angry. “But you two are to blame. When the train pulled into Santa Fe, you two weren't on it. You'd flown the coop. I didn't know where or how. Didn't know if you were dead or alive. And three-quarters of a million dollars worth of gold ingots . . . well . . . what did you expect me to do?”

He jabbed a finger at me. “She, that damned old, blind nun, she said you were the only one who could find it.” Fenn had to stop, put his hand on the rocks.

I was praying that he might drop dead of apoplexy right then and there, but, no luck.

When he looked up, when his mouth started moving, he wasn't shouting no more, but speaking evenly, softly. “What I did know was that here, Gran Quivira, was the starting point. If you were somehow still alive, you would get here with Bishop.” He was grinning, a mean-spirited smile. “Or maybe, I thought, just maybe, you might decide that Bishop was a better pard than ol' Sean Fenn. Maybe you might decide that all you needed was Micah Bishop to lead you to all them riches.

“I guess that's about what happened.”

She spit in the dirt. I shook my head.

“Either way, I figured you and him. . . .” His gesture at me wasn't so gentle. Fenn had to catch his breath again, steady himself, get some control back. “You and him would have to start here, too.”

“Why here?” I asked.

“Don't play me for a damned fool, Bishop!” He spoke with such forcefulness, I spilled what was left of that coffee on my shirt, even slid back some.

Son of a bitch was crazy.

“You know why. That nun said we had to start here. So you'll guide us to that fortune, Bishop. Or I bury you and your lovely concubine here.”

“And the old nun?” Geneviève asked.

“Well, that's why I brought her here.” Fenn smiled. “In case you were dead, or caught, or lost. I thought maybe I could persuade the nun to let me find that fortune.” He clapped his hands. “But let's go ask her. Shall we?”

 

 

The first Spanish mission went up at Gran Quivira in 1629. At least, that's what the
Santa Fe New Mexican
reported after I was back in the Las Vegas jail. They let me read newspapers while I waited to see if any judge would allow my lawyer's appeal, which, of course, as you already know, didn't happen.

The second church, the real big one, they begun to build in 1659 when the new priest, Father Diego de Santander decided to put up a bigger one. 'Course, they never finished this one. It was all over by 1670, ten years before the big Indian revolt. They just stopped building the church and left Gran Quivira.

Read that in the
New Mexican
, too.

We wandered back through the maze, me and Geneviève following Benigno and The Pockmarked Man, Corbin and Fenn dragging behind. We crossed more rocks on the slope and come to the unfinished, but mighty impressive, walls of the second church. The sun made these walls look almost white, like the biggest tombstone ever made, and I was glad to step through the opening and into the shade.

My heart skipped some, because there she was, sitting on the massive rock windowsill, her one arm resting on what must have been left of an old viga from the roof, staring at the blowing tan grass, the cholla, the juniper trees, and across the emptiness, and on toward the mesa. That country looked real pretty from there, and not as Geneviève and me had seen it up close and dying of thirst.

'Course, the sad part about it all was that I knowed that Sister Rocío couldn't see a thing.

“Sister,” Sean Fenn called out, all polite and respectful and charming and as deadly as a sidewinder, “that gallant nobleman Micah Bishop has finally arrived.” He pushed me toward her. “And Sister Geneviève is here with him.”

I heard Geneviève walking behind me.

The old nun turned. She wore her habit, same as Geneviève had been wearing when I'd first seen her. Her eyes were dark, empty, as I remembered them, but she held out her hand, and smiled. She had no teeth, but I remembered that she'd only had two or three–and one of them was black—back when I'd been a kid.

“Micah,” she said, her voice old, fading, but just as I remembered from them times at the Sisters of Charity orphanage. She muttered something in Spanish, crossed herself, and asked almost hopeful, “Is it you, my son?”

I gripped her hand, worn and rugged as old leather, squeezed it, and sat on the ledge beside her.

“What's left of me,” I told her.

Then I couldn't help myself. I embraced her in a deep, strong hug, and she give me a good squeeze herself with that one arm of hers.

When we separated, I had to dab at my own eyes, cussing the dust and the wind.

Softly, she said, “Your voice has changed, Micah.”

“It's been a hell of a bad week,” I said.

The fingers unfolded and she slapped my face, which got the tooth Sean Fenn had loosened to aching and the gums bleeding again. Sternly, she chastised me. “Watch your mouth, Señor Bishop. Ten Our Fathers—
muy pronto.
”

What, fifteen, sixteen years had passed, but she moved real quick, still packed a wallop, and didn't need no eyes to find my face.

“How long has it been, my child?” She was all quiet and kind, again.

I told her. She sighed. “It feels much longer.”

“I feel older,” I said, which weren't no lie. Felt about as old as she was.

She fell silent, thinking back all those years. After a long moment, she said. “If my memory has not failed me, you were not confirmed before you . . .” She had to pause again, thinking of the right word. “Before you . . .”

“Ran away.”

“Sí. That is what you did.” Her head shook, but I thought she was smiling.

“When was your last confession?”

I smiled back at her, though she couldn't see me. “Rocío,” I said. “I wasn't confirmed. Remember? I ain't Catholic. I'm pagan.”

The fist connected again. “Don't be disrespectful, Señor Bishop. I am
Sister
Rocío.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I tested my jaw.

“You say you have not been to confession?”

“No, ma'am, I haven't.”

“You have not repented? You are still as wild and as wicked as you were when you first arrived at the orphanage?”

“Probably even wilder.”

“So you are telling me, Sister Rocío, a dying woman who will not live to see many more sunrises, you are telling me that we shall not walk the Streets of Gold together?”

I wet my lips, hated to answer, but I didn't want to get knocked in the jaw again.

“Probably not, Sister.”

Another long, sad pause.

So long, it got to be awkward, so I broke it by saying, “I'm sorry.”

Her head bobbed. “It is probably for the better, my son. Who would want to be in Heaven with evildoers and whoremongers and gamblers and wicked, wicked men like you?”

I waited. The fist didn't strike.

At last, a grin made its way through the pits and crevasses of her deeply browned face. “It is a joke, Micah.” She patted my arm. “You may laugh.”

As I obliged her, she squeezed my arm.

“My son, you are nothing more than bones. Do you have the carcinoma as the doctors say I have?”

“I hope to hell—” I took a deep breath, rethought, and said, “I don't think so, Sister Rocío.”

“You are not ill?”

I shrugged, considered the bullet wound across my side, the stitches in my forehead, the rawness of my left calf and ankle, the bruises and scrapes and aches throughout the rest of my person. “Well . . . I've felt better, but I ain't sick or nothing.”

Those fingers turned into a wheelwright's vice, digging into my arm. “Must I correct your grammar?” Again, she fired off something toward God and Mary and the Holy Ghost in Spanish. “
¡Ay, caramba!
English is my second language, and I speak it better than this wayfarer.”

“I'm not sick,” I corrected myself so blood might flow to my hand and fingers once more. “Not sick or nothing.”

“Or
anything
.”

“I'm not sick or anything.”

“And Geneviève.” She turned, must have felt Geneviève's presence. Her hand left my arm—to my joy—and reached toward the Sister who wasn't a Sister. “Sister Geneviève, you are here as well?”

Geneviève took the old woman's hand in both of hers, squeezing. “I am here, Sister Rocío.” She sounded perfect French again.

“My new friend . . .” Rocío patted Geneviève's arm, causing the pretty young fraud to bite her lips because of all those bruises and scrapes on her person. But you couldn't fault the blind nun none, since she couldn't see how she was hurting Geneviève. And you had to respect that pretty girl, because she didn't let Rocío know no better.

“You found the prodigal son,” the old woman said. “I am much happy.”

“I am happy I found him, too.” Geneviève was looking at me when she said it.

“He is everything I told you he was?” Rocío asked.

Geneviève's smile seemed genuine. “Everything and more.”

That was all Sean Fenn could take. “Sister Rocío, I have brought Micah Bishop to you. You want to find the gold, and you say he's the only one who can do that. Well, he's here. You said we should start our journey here.”

“To pay our respects to the dead,” the nun said solemnly. “To pray for God's forgiveness.”

“Well,” Fenn said. “We probably should get a move on.”

The wind started picking up, and I checked the sky, but didn't see no rain clouds.

“Sister Rocío,” I said gently, putting my hand on her shoulder, giving it a nice squeeze. “You told these people that I could find the gold. But . . . well . . . I don't know anything about this.”

“Yes, my child, you do,” she said, and for a moment there, I thought she could see, blind as she was, I thought she could see not only me, but right through me. “And, yet, you don't.” She turned toward Fenn's voice, and told him, “It is not the gold I seek, but you may have what you find.”

She begun her story.