Valley of Fire (22 page)

The bullet clipped a sprig off a juniper as I grabbed Geneviève's arm and pulled her down on top of me. Another bullet left a white mark across a chunk of lava. Rolling off me, Geneviève screamed out Rocío's name, and when I sat up, clawing to get the Dean and Adams out of my waistband, I seen the blind nun just standing there, a yucca on one side of her and a long drop to the ground on the other.

“Geneviève, Micah!” the old woman called out. “What is going on!”

“Get—!” Stopped myself. I was gonna tell her to get down, but if she went into the yucca, she'd get sliced to ribbons. If she went the other way, she'd likely break her neck. Had to be an eighteen-foot drop down to nothing but more black rocks. So hero that I was, I was off and running, telling Geneviève, “Cover me,” and hearing her say, “What?”

I heard two, three more shots, but nothing hit me. No bullet whined off rocks. Old Rocío stood fingering her rosary, opening her mouth to ask another question when I grabbed her by the waist and brought her down, twisting my body so she landed on my stomach, and liked to have broke my backbone. I think she did crack a couple ribs.

“Micah!”

I groaned.

“What is going on?”

I made myself sit halfway up, turning to peer down the edge of the ridge we was on. Them boys was shooting uphill, so it'd take a might fine shot to plug one of us. Didn't see no smoke from carbines or rifles, but I heard some cussing, the voices bouncing off the rocks so there was no chance to tell where they was hiding.

“Micah,” Rocío said again.

“Jesus Christ!” I snapped. “Are you deaf, too? Didn't you hear them gunshots?”

“There is no call to take the Lord's name in vain, Micah Bishop.”

“There ain't no call in me getting my head shot off, neither, trying to keep you alive.” I wasn't in a forgiving mood. “Next time you hear a gunshot, you duck. Something goes ka-boom, just fall to your belly no matter what. You savvy?”

For once, she didn't try to brain me with her knuckles, or give me some penance. She merely nodded.

There was another shot, this one high, but Rocío ducked. Just flattened herself on the rock.

“Good girl,” I told her. But to them boys doing the shooting, I wasn't so polite. “You damned miserable sons of bitches!” I yelled, and heard my profanity echo across the Valley of Fire. “That's an eighty-year-old blind nun you're shooting at, Fenn!”

A few more shots, and when the last bullet whined off a boulder higher up the hill, Rocío pointed out, “Micah, I am not eighty years old.”

Damn a woman's vanity. Even a blind nun's.

Then a voice spoke. “I have learned not to trust nuns, amigo. At least, I do not trust nuns that travel with the likes of you,
cabrón
.”

Son of a bitch. I'd almost forgotten all about Felipe Hernandez.

“What the hell!” I said, more to myself. Had Hernandez been waiting all this time for me to turn up in the Valley of Fire, miles from nowhere?

Actually, checking the copy of the
Las Vegas Daily Optic
that I ain't used for privy paper yet, I read that the “Roving Territorial Reporter” learned that Hernandez followed a cold trail from Las Vegas to Anton Chico to Puerto de Luna to Fort Sumner to White Oaks and finally to Carrizozo where he had spent some time in a house of ill repute before giving up and deciding to follow the trail from Carrizozo to San Antonio (New Mexico Territory's town, not the Alamo burg in Texas). According to a
chica de la noche
whose charms Hernandez had admired, the son of a bitch had given up on ever seeing me, Micah Bishop, dead. He and the two cousins who hadn't given up on what they considered a forlorn chase, happened upon me, Micah Bishop, by pure, accidental luck.

'Course, none of that I knowed certain-sure till my trial and conviction. All I knowed then was that I was in a peck of trouble.

Geneviève come crawling on hands and knees through a natural depression, bringing the sacks with her. As long as she kept her head down, she was pretty much safe. For now.

“I tell you what, amigo!” Hernandez called up to us again. “I will let the nun go free. On my word as a gentleman, I guarantee that she will not be harmed.”

One nun. They'd seen Rocío, but not Geneviève. who had just reached us.

I helped her out of the little ditch, handed her Benigno's Remington, and told her to make sure Rocío didn't draw no fire from them boys down below.

“Are those gentlemen after the gold ingots, too?” Rocío asked.

“They're after my arse,” I said, not loud enough for even old elephant ears to hear. “They don't know a thing about the gold, Sister.”

I then repeated it to myself, out loud, just to make sure that I understood what I'd just said. “They don't know a thing about the gold.”

My eyes met Geneviève's, held for a moment, then I turned back to look down the slope.

“You can't trust them,” Geneviève said.

“I know that.”

“They'll kill you just as soon as they can.”

“Most likely. But I don't think they'll shoot Rocío.” I met her eyes again. “Can't say the same about you. You did club the jailer when you busted me out, and Felipe Hernandez's reputation stinks like a week-dead coyot'.”

I taken me another deep breath, studied things over some in my mind, and finally decided to strike up a conversation with the boys down below with guns. “Felipe!” I called out. “How did you know it was me up here?”

“I didn't,
cabrón
! Until you told me.”

“So you just fired on a nun?”

“I'd fire upon my own mother to see you swing. Gomez was my favorite uncle's son.”

I wet my lips. Rubbed my chin. Bit my bottom lip. Finally decided to take a risk. You gotta do that when you're playing cards. Sometimes that risk will prompt the guy with the winning hand to fold.

“Felipe!” I shouted. “What if I told you that I knew the general whereabouts to a fortune in gold?”

“I would say,” Hernandez said, and he said it.

I had no idea what he was saying because of all the echoes and the fact that my Spanish wasn't that good. “Speak English!”

“Then I would say that I cannot trust this Micah Bishop. And that I own a hotel, an emporium, I have real estate and investments in the train depot, two hotels, a grain mill, a gambling parlor, the local mortuary, a sawmill and a farm and a rancho in the county. And much, much more. I would say that I do not need to go chasing a dollar or two in gold at every drop of the hat.”

So I yelled back down to him that $750,000 ain't quite the same as chasing a dollar. I looked on the ridge we'd clumb up. It was sandstone, and it ran a few hundred yards, then dropped below the black lava, but I could see that it was something like an arroyo. It would make a pretty good trail for mules and horses, maybe even a wagon.

There was some talking among the cousins and Felipe Hernandez. Finally, Hernandez yelled that he would never, ever trust the likes of me, and that I should say my prayers and send my confession to one of the nuns, because he was done talking and was ready to avenge Gomez's death.

“Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in ancient Spanish ingots!” I yelled. “Buried not more 'n a mile from here! Ingots made for King Richard III.”

“Philip IV,” Geneviève corrected.

“It don't matter.” To them killers below, I hollered, “Remember the story of the lost gold mine in Mora? This is where most of the ingots will be found.” So I give them the story as best I could.

“I do not want gold,” Felipe Hernandez snapped once more. “I just want you, Micah Bishop, and I want you dead.”

There was more cussing echoing across the rocks, and then there was a gunshot, and it didn't bounce off the country so good on account that it had been muffled. As if it had been fired at a target fairly close.

“Señor!” a new voice said. “I have killed my cousin Felipe. My cousin Carlos and I never cared much for him anyway. If we come up with our guns holstered, will you talk to us more about this gold?”

I lifted my head up a ways, wet my bottom lip, and wiped my palms on my pants legs. “Step out in the open. But remember, I've got a Sharps Big Fifty, and ain't never missed with it.” Because I'd never shot a big buffalo rifle. Didn't have it with me on this little expedition as I hadn't never owned one.

They stood above some boulders, probably sixty yards down the ridge, one in a black, wide-brimmed hat, the other wearing a tan bowler. They kept their hands out from their sides, palms facing me, and started walking toward us.

When they got closer, I could tell that they was both older men, maybe in their fifties, with silver hair, one sporting a goatee, the other a gold tooth. The stopped at the edge of the ridge.

“Can you trust them?” Geneviève asked.

I give her a look of contempt. I mean, I loved her, and she'd saved my hide, and she didn't have to be a nun—that was all well and good with me—but she had just asked one damned fool question.

“They just shot their cousin dead.” I let it go at that.

“Señor!” Cousin Bowler called out.

I answered.

He said, “We cannot climb up to you with our hands like this.”

With a grin, I told them, “We're a peaceable bunch. Just shuck off shell belts and revolvers. Leave them on the ground. Then climb on up. And welcome.”

By grab, they actually shucked their hardware and started climbing.

Well, I considered shooting them both in their heads as they picked their path up the ridge. Probably would have done it had Geneviève and Rocío not been with me. They would have done the same to me. The two Hernandez cousins, I mean. Not Rocío and Geneviève. Instead of killing them, I helped Cousin Bowler up, even brushed off the bottoms of them fancy buckskin trousers he wore.

They removed their hats as they stood there, taking me in, stepping back from Rocío, and eyes practically bulging out of their skulls when they looked at Geneviève.

“Don't y'all want to know where that gold is?” I had to interrupt that love gathering. Made me all jealous.

“Where is it?” Bowler Cousin asked.

I give them one more look over. “Any of you birds know how to get to Crockett's Cave?”

They didn't look at me. Stared at each other. Then Black Hat Cousin repeated, “Crockett's Cave?”

“That's where the gold is. All of it.”

That, I figured, was a lie worthy of ten Hail Marys to start off with.

“Señor,” Cousin Black Hat finally said, “I live in San Miguel County, and my cousin here”—he gestured toward Cousin Bowler—“is from Chama, just below the border of Colorado. We are not familiar with this country at all.”

Figured. But it was worth a shot.

Then Sister Rocío said, “I know where it is, Micah. I can feel it. It is this way.”

Geneviève grabbed her arm before she stepped off and fell.

“It is this way,” the blind woman said. “I feel it.”

We basically followed a blind woman like she was a divining rod.

I kept that Dean and Adams in my hand at all times and kept them eyes of mine on Cousin Bowler and Cousin Black Hat. Geneviève never let go of the Remington, never let them man-killing cousins get too close to her or Rocío. We went down, and the temperature dropped considerable as we'd climbed into the shadows out of the sun. 'Course, it wasn't freezing. Not in July. Not in the Valley of Fire.

Dark clouds kept approaching, and my nerves got tighter than a miser gripping a three-cent piece. Sister Rocío was humming. The two cousins wasn't saying nothing. We climbed over a sandstone ridge, went back down in the lava, and kept walking south and west, then west and south. Geneviève held that big .44 in one hand, and the other gripped Rocío's arm, the blind nun acting like it was a Sunday stroll to church in the city of Rome.

Thunder rolled across the sky and lighting slashed to earth.

“Monsoon,” one of the cousins said, pointing at the dark line beneath the cloud that told us it was pouring rain a few miles ahead.

“Micah,” Geneviève called out. “Those clouds are moving fast.”

“I know.” I done a quick look behind me, then turned back to make sure the cousins weren't up to something no good. They wasn't. Then I realized what I had just seen, and slowly, almost forgetting about Cousin Black Hat and Cousin Bowler, I turned and stared again, and quickly faced front.

“There's no place to hide back there,” I said, though that ain't what I'd been looking for. “Let's try to find the cave.”

A hundred yards later, I smelled rain on the horizon, and it had turned downright chilly. Didn't want to catch my death in some thunderstorm, but I didn't think there was much I could do about it.

Off to the right, I saw Cousin Bowler waving his hat over his head frantically, and we all hurried over to that big old boy, who was pointing at an opening in the ground.

“Crockett's Cave?” Cousin Bowler asked.

“Absolutely,” I said, though I didn't know for certain-sure. When I was hiding from them fellows from White Oaks, I must've come in through the other entrance, off to the west. Bowler went in first. Then Geneviève. Followed by me and Rocío, and I turned to make sure Cousin Black Hat followed, which he done. Moments later, we could hear the rain drenching the earth, but we was safe in Crockett's Cave.

A match flared. Cousin Bowler frowned. “Where's the gold?”

I pointed. They turned, saw something, and headed over.

The match went out, and darkness enveloped us again. The rain sounded odd, almost like it was echoing. Cousin Bowler spoke to Cousin Black Hat, and their voices bounced around the dark dungeon we'd come into.

A voice whispered right next to my ear, and I liked to have soiled my britches it scared me so much 'cause I wasn't expecting it. I calmed down because it was Geneviève.

“What are we doing here?” she said.

I could tell she was seething, but I answered her. “Well, it beats waiting out in the rain.”

Another match flared. I heard Cousin Black Hat say, “What is that rabbit doing hanging upside down like that?”

The match moved, then got flicked rapidly out, or got dropped. All I know was that it was dark again.

In the darkness, Sister Rocío said, “It is not a rabbit, señor, but a Townsend's big-eared bat.

“Señor,” Cousin Bowler called out, and his voice danced around the cave. “I see no gold.”

“Of course not,” I said, and started walking over to him. I reminded myself that I'd never done much planning, and most of the plans I'd come up with never had worked. This here time down in Crockett's Cave was pretty much a prime example of why Big Tim Pruett never trusted me to do more than saddle his horse or take his weighted dice and slip him a fair pair because I was good at slight of hand and he didn't want to get run out of town on a rail.

Crockett's Cave, I read in
The Nation
while in the privy waiting to be hanged, ain't what one would call small. It was part gypsum, part limestone, with one big passage and a few shorter ones along the sides. The big room was about a hundred feet by three hundred. It smelled like dust.

About that time, I'd come up amongst Cousin Black Hat and Cousin Bowler, who struck his lucifer. The light made me back up, but then I seen the glint of something in Cousin Black Hat's hand, and I knowed it was a gun. Even if I hadn't noticed it right then, Cousin Bowler was telling me, “Do not speak loudly, señor, but talk in an easy voice. We do not wish to alarm the nun and the young—”

“She's a nun, too,” I lied, and didn't feel no urge to say a Hail Mary or Our Father over that fib.

“Very well. My cousin has a Remington over-and-under .41-caliber derringer in his hand. I think he can see you long enough to put a bullet in your belly.”

“Most likely,” I said, but them boys didn't know how fast I can move when somebody's about to shoot me in the stomach.

Nasty way to die. A bullet in the gut. I wonder if hanging's a better way to go.

“I see no treasure here, señor,” Cousin Black Hat said. “Do you?”

“Of course you don't,” I said, thinking to myself
because it ain't here, you damned fools
, but saying, “Because you don't leave a fortune in gold just sitting out in the open, even in a cave. You bury it.”

Slowly but surely, I stepped between the cousins. The match went out, and I was in darkness, though I could still see light seeping through the opening to the cave. I was kneeling and saying, “You got to dig,” when a new lucifer flared into life.

That give me a clear target, and I taken it. My hands scooped up all they could hold, and I flung guano into the eyes of Cousin Black Hat, you know, the one holding the derringer.

He used an English cuss word, which was good and accurate since that's exactly what I'd throwed into his nose and eyes and mouth. The match went out, and then there was this terrible scream, one of uncontrollable rage, and not close, but from the entrance to the cave.

It was complete darkness until I pulled the trigger on the Dean and Adams. The flash about blinded me, and the noise liked to have deafened me. Up ahead, near where I'd left Rocío and Geneviève, come cussing and a click that even where I was working the trigger on that .436 again I recognized as a Colt being cocked.

Then come more flashes, which sent pain through my eyeballs.

Something else I learned about Crockett's Cave. It's a big room, but when folks start shooting, it's hard on one's ears and eyes. Bullets ricocheted off the limestone, kicked up gypsum, and the roar of them guns proved terrible painful. A bullet burned my arm, right above the elbow. I had my finger on the trigger, but I couldn't see nothing to shoot at. But Geneviève was shooting, and somebody else had just entered the cave, and he was blasting away, too. Nobody could see nothing.

“During the gun battle in the depths of Hades, with thousands of bullets and arrows bouncing off the walls around him, The Bishop kept his nerves under absolute control. He knew to rush would rush him to death.”

That's what that Colonel-fellow wrote about me and my adventures in
Valley of Fire, Shadow of Death; Or, The Bishop and the Ingots
, which I read three nights ago in one sitting. It ain't accurate, but the colonel never asked me for no information, though I did like him calling me “The Bishop.”

Anyway, at that time, my nerves was cut open and sending panic through my body. I did have my finger on the trigger—that much, Colonel what's-his-name knowed what he was writing about—but there wasn't nothing to shoot at.

There was a scream off my left, but I was just seeing painful flashes of orange and red and white. Above the ringing in my ears and blood rushing to my brain, there was a voice. “You son of a bitch! I shall kill you, you son of a bitch. I shall give you exactly what you gave my favorite cousin.”

Felipe Hernandez. I should have knowed. Never trust nobody.

He and his cousins had come up with a plan. The cousins said they'd killed Felipe, then that sidewinder had trailed us to the cave. The vindictive son of a bitch figured he could find a fortune in gold and avenge poor cousin Gomez.

I heard footsteps. Kept waiting for Cousin Bowler or Cousin Black Hat to finish me off, but they couldn't, on account that they was both lying dead, though I didn't know that fact till later. Well, my vision cleared at last, and I figured it was God letting me see myself die.

Hernandez had a torch in his left hand, a Colt in his right.

He squeezed the trigger. The Colt roared. Almost immediately, something burned across my neck. I heard that ping—well, I thought I did, but it had to be my imagination—and I cringed, because I never really want to get shot by a ricochet again. Before Hernandez could pull the trigger again, or just swing the barrel of that gun and crack my skull, he muttered, “My God. I am killed.” And he was.

The torch dropped, and so did Felipe Hernandez, killed by a ricochet from his own gun.

The torch, still burning on the floor, give me enough light to know that the cousins wasn't worth my time no more. I didn't have much time left, because the rain had stopped, and the sun would soon sink. I wanted to get Geneviève and Rocío out of this cave, and find that gold, give then dead nuns a Christian burial, and get the hell out of the Valley of Fire.

“Come on!” I yelled, and headed for the opening, shining light, beautiful light, over me. “Let's go. Let's get out of here!” I was halfway out of the cave before I recollected that Sister Rocío couldn't see, so I come back down, helped them both up, telling them, “There's something I want y'all to see!”

Something glorious and wonderful and helpful.

Sister Rocío reminded me that she couldn't see. She went out first, while I had to wait for Geneviève, who eased back into the cave to fetch the bag of hardtack and jerky and Benigno's Remington .44.

“Let me have the gun,” I told her.

She pulled it out, give it to me butt first. “It's empty.”

I figured. So many shots had been bouncing around in the cave. I could feel the heat from the revolver, and shoved the Dean and Adams behind me. Thought I had two shots left in my .436.

“Did I . . . ?” Geneviève began. She swallowed. “Did I kill any of those men?”

“Ricochets got them all,” I said. 'Course, I wasn't certain of nothing about Cousin Bowler and Cousin Black Hat. They might have shot each other. Might have been ricochets. Might have been their dead cousin Felipe. Maybe I'd lucked out and killed one. Might have been God.

From outside the cave, Sister Rocío said, “Micah!”

I grabbed Geneviève's hand, and led her into the dusk, smelling the fresh rain, feeling real good till I saw three other gents standing there. What I seen wasn't glorious and wonderful and helpful.