The crowd of prisoners parted to let a tall man through. As he stepped forward, Mariella cried, “Granville!” and rushed into his arms.
He held her tightly and trembled with emotion. “That..that scoundrel who calls himself Esparza said that you would soon be his captive, but I was praying that it wasn’t so! Oh, my dear, I wish you had never come back to Cuchatlán.”
“I would have come back no matter what,” she whispered. “I could never be away from you for long, my love.”
The man kissed her, hugged her, stroked her hair. Then he looked past her shoulder at the other newcomers and asked in a voice that still held a soft Southern drawl, “Who are these people?”
Gabriel hadn’t gotten a good look at the man yet, but as Mariella turned and led him forward into one of the slender shafts of light, Gabriel saw him clearly. The man was tall and lean, with deep-set eyes and a closely trimmed beard. The beard was completely white, as was the shock of hair on his head. Deep trenches were etched in his cheeks. He looked a lot older than he had in the picture Gabriel had seen in the book at Olustee, but that made sense considering that this man was probably more than a hundred and seventy years old. Gabriel’s heart thudded hard in his chest as that realization sunk in. He didn’t doubt Mariella’s story anymore, not at all.
“Gabriel Hunt,” Mariella said, “I would like for you to meet my husband, General Granville Fordham Fargo.”
Chapter 22
The general extended his hand. “Mr. Hunt,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir, although I wish it had been under better circumstances.”
“So do I, General,” Gabriel said as he gripped Fargo’s hand.
“Excuse me,” Cierra said. “You’re really…General Fargo…fromthe U.S. Civil War?”
A gentle smile appeared on Fargo’s weathered face. “That was a long time ago, my dear. I’d like to think I’ll be remembered more for what I’ve done in the fourteen decades since. But yes—I am that man, and yes, I once fought that war. And you are…?”
“Dr. Cierra Almanzar. Director of the Museum of the Americas in Mexico City.”
Fargo took her hand, and for a second Gabriel thought he was going to bend over it and kiss it. Most Confederate cavalry officers had fancied themselves cavaliers in the old-fashioned sense of the word, he recalled reading, and that would be a very cavalier-like thing to do.
Instead, Fargo merely shook Cierra’s hand and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you as well, Dr. Almanzar. I have heard of you. I believe your museum houses one of my battle flags, the one I left with my father-in-law.”
“It used to,” Gabriel said. “Not anymore.” He began unbuttoning his shirt. “I have it here, along with the one you drew the map on.”
“My standard?” Fargo murmured in surprise. “You brought it with you? I was hoping that your brother had it by now, along with the sample of water I sent with Mariella.”
“The sample was…destroyed, Granville.” Mariella’s voice caught a little as she broke the news to him. “It was lost before I ever got the chance to tell Señor Hunt about it.”
Gabriel stopped unbuttoning his shirt. After the news that Mariella had just broken to the general, the flags didn’t seem so important anymore.
A pained look appeared on Fargo’s face. He expelled a long, disappointed breath.
“I’m dismayed to hear that. Not so much for myself, but for all my friends and loved ones here in Cuchatlán who are now doomed.”
“Doomed?” Mariella repeated as she clutched at her husband’s arm. “Granville, what are you talking about?”
Fargo turned to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I didn’t tell you the full extent of your errand, dearest. My hope was that Michael Hunt and the scientists he could hire would be able to find out what gives the waters of the Well their special power.”
“I know that,” Mariella said with a nod. “You told me to tell Señor Hunt that he should have the water analyzed and find out everything that’s in it.”
“But I didn’t tell you why. It wasn’t simply in the hope that the water’s special ingredients could somehow be duplicated. It was because the water here…the water from the Well…”
Fargo couldn’t bring himself to go on. He looked stricken now, and his hands tightened on Mariella’s shoulders.
Gabriel finished the sentence for the general as everything fell into place. “The water from the Well of Eternity is losing its power,” he said.
Fargo turned to look at him and slowly nodded. “I’m afraid that is correct, Mr. Hunt. I first noticed a few years ago among the older citizens of Cuchatlán. After the Ritual of the Well, they didn’t recover their vitality as quickly as they used to. Their muscles regained less elasticity. Their skin remained lined, their energy depleted. I felt it myself.”
“Granville, no,” Mariella cried. “The water of the Well still works—it must! It always has!”
Fargo shook his head. “Look around you, my dear. Look inside yourself.” He turned to Gabriel and Cierra. “The last ritual was a month ago, not long before I sent Mariella to you. I knew then that time was short, because I could tell that there was only a small effect when our people drank from the Well. Its power is almost gone. If there was to be any chance of ever fathoming its secrets, I had to act.”
Mariella put her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. “You should have told me,” she said, her voice muffled by the embrace. “If our time was running out, we should have spent all of it we had left together.”
“I wanted to,” Fargo told her. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to. But I thought…if there was still a chance of helping our people…”
Mariella nodded her head against his chest. “I understand. You’ve always looked out for those who followed you.”
“It’s ironic,” Gabriel said. “Esparza has come all this way, wreaked so much havoc and killed so many people, and what he’s after doesn’t even work anymore.”
Fargo stroked the back of his wife’s head. “It would have been worth the greatest fortune in the world at one time. But no longer.”
“Wait a minute,” Cierra said. “Let’s think about this. Assuming the water ever had any power, the fact that its power has diminished wouldn’t mean there’s nothing of value here at all. You could still analyze it, figure out what produces the life-extending effect. Once the cause were isolated, a well-equipped lab working on the problem might be able to find a way to enhance its activity. And even if they couldn’t, if the water still has any effect at all…wouldn’t men still kill for even a less potent elixir?”
“Why, Cierra,” Gabriel said, “you sound like a believer suddenly.”
“I am a scientist. I believe in evidence. The only other explanation for what we see here is that all these people are delusional and suffering from mass hysteria.”
“We’re quite sane, doctor, I assure you,” Fargo said with a sad smile.
“Well, then, the power of the water must come from somewhere, from something. Some mineral deposit buried deep in the mountains, something the water passes through or over before it emerges here. Over enough centuries, even the most massive mineral deposit will eventually be eroded to nothing. That’s one hypothesis that might account for the diminished potency. In that case it wouldn’t be the water itself that has the life-extending effect, it’s whatever the water picks up as it flows underground. And if we could learn what that is—”
“That’s what I hoped the Hunt Foundation could do,” Fargo said to Gabriel
“That’s Michael’s area, not mine,” Gabriel said. “He’s no chemist himself, for that matter. But he’s got access to some of the finest minds in the world.”