"However, think of this. If you go away now, without the treasure, how will you get back? There're a thousand stories of lost cities, lost temples, vast treasures. Why should anyone believe yours rather than any other? How many men will you find who'll go into Indian country with you?
"There's another thing. Suppose someone finds it while you're gone? We don't know if that old Indian was the only one who knew. That man who looks like your father... what does he know?" What I said was true and she knew it. Her chance of ever returning to this area was slight, yet she hesitated, twisting her fingers and thinking.
I could well understand how she felt. She was a young woman alone, far into a situation she had never expected or planned for, and even if she escaped from this wilderness, she faced abject poverty in a world without mercy.
She found herself among strangers, with a group of rough-seeming men with no allegiance to anybody or anything. That I was Irish she knew, and Davy Shanagan, too, but there were rogues enough among the Irish so that might count for nothing.
"I don't know what to do," she said helplessly. "I... I have no one. When I came to Santa Fe, I didn't expect this.
Mr. Conway was going to help, and Jorge. I trusted them." "And now you must trust us." She looked at me, her eyes imploring.
She must risk all or lose all. "You... you knew about the treasure?" "Yes. Such stories have always fascinated me, and this one had some peculiar aspects that we needn't go into now. It's actually two treasures, you know." "I didn't know." "It began in Malta. A renegade knight of Malta fled the island with a gold medallion, some silver buttons cut from a uniform, and a dozen precious gems. In Spain, fearing the knights of Malta whom he well knew would pursue him, he joined a force of Spanish soldiers who were going out to the Indies.
"His idea was to buy a plantation on one of the islands and settle down there. However, his pursuers arranged for him to be arrested by the Inquisition. He was tipped off, and selling one of the jewels, he smuggled himself aboard a caravel sailing for Mexico. There he took service under an assumed name and led several slave-capturing expeditions among the Indians.
On one of these, he came upon an abandoned church in a deserted village. It was one of those ill-fated attempts that came to nothing because of the fierceness of the Indians, and by the time our man came upon it, the place was forgotten.
"At about that time, an Indian trying to curry favor offered to tell him of a treasure if only the captain would release him from the group of Indians he was returning to slavery.
"Our captain listened, and the Indian told him that when Montezuma was taken by the Spanish, much gold had been hidden to keep it from them, and he knew where this gold was. He led our captain to it, the captain promptly killed him, then with the gems he already had and the treasure just taken, he made a cache in the ancient church and came away." "I didn't know how it happened," she said.
"How do you know all this?" "Most of it's a matter of record. Nothing is as secret as men imagine. The Indian who tried to buy his way out had talked to other Indians of what he hoped to do, and when their companion turned up missing, one of them told of it.
"One man likes the smell of gold as well as another, and where there is honey, the bees gather.
At headquarters they had inquiries about a certain renegade knight of Malta, so the captain was called in for questioning on both counts.
Unhappily for them, and for himself, he wasn't as tough a man as he imagined, and he didn't survive the questioning.
"All they succeeded in getting from him was that he knew nothing, had hidden nothing, and was being persecuted by the knights of Malta because he knew their secrets.
"The renegade died, but appended to the report on the case was information to the effect that he was believed to have hidden the gold in a church or mission chapel." "I knew none of this!" "It all happened long ago. I learned of it when I heard talk of it one night in France.
Several of us were discussing lost treasures and vanished cities, the way people will.
"One of the young men was from Madrid, and he knew the whole story. Later, from curiosity, we investigated a little." "But it was gone! My father learned somehow, or figured out, where the deserted church was, but the treasure was gone and even the few things he found were well hidden. Father believed the treasure had been taken out by night and the men taking it hadn't known they'd left anything." "Probably. But the story doesn't end there.
The two men who got it recruited a bunch of Indians and struck off to the north. That was very early... before Anza went to colonize New Mexico. The two men fled, and there far to the north one killed the other. Later he and several of his party were themselves killed by Indians." "And then?" "That's where you come in, if you know where the treasure is, and if it's still there." The wind stirred the flames, and they whipped angrily. I added a few sticks, listening for the others. Out in the night a wolf howled... a wild, lonely sound in the darkness.
"It's been two hundred years!" she whispered.
"A long time. But out here, time has little meaning.
Of course, it depends on where it's hidden. A riverbank now... that would be bad. Rivers change course, wash away their banks. Most other places it would be hard to find." I glanced at her. "He wasn't killed near here, you know.
It was away over east of here, near a great settlement of Indians." "I know. That's what they said." "It wasn't true?" "No. The story is that the two officers, Francisco de Leyva Bonilla and Antonio Gutierrez de Humana, started from Nuevo Vizcaya and went to a pueblo near San Ildefonso, or perhaps actually where that town now stands. Then they started east for the buffalo plains, intending to go north to the French settlements in Quebec. They had a fight and Humana stabbed Leyva to death. Humana was eventually killed at or near the Great Settlement, which was far out on the plains to the east, but he'd buried the treasure before the Indians took him east.
"They'd surrounded him, moved in on him, and although he wasn't actually a prisoner, he knew it amounted to that, so he buried what he had, intending to return for it. Of course, they killed him and he never returned." "Do you know where the treasure is? We have a map, but it's not complete. Purposely so, I believe." "We should reach the place any day now," she said evasively. But I thought she had answered my question... she knew!
We had talked long, and the others had been of no mind to disturb us. One of the men gathered leaves for a bed for Lucinda and she spread her blankets over them. I listened to the night, and I was not at ease. I remembered the face of the man I had seen... and it was not a good face.
CHAPTER 12
Dawn broke slowly under a lowering sky, heavy with clouds. Huddled over our fire, we cooked our food, left it to pack our horses and saddle up, all of us sour-faced and wary.
Trouble was upon us and our every instinct spoke of it.
The coffee tasted good, and under the warmth of it and the comfort of the blaze, our spirits rose. Solomon Talley suddenly got up. "Do you stay quiet," he said. "I want to look about." Shanagan threw his dregs on the ground.
"I'll ride along," he said.
I had told them we were getting close, and they were ready for it. Cusbe Ebitt, a silent man most of the time, stopped beside Lucinda. "Do you not worry, miss. We'll see you safely to the States or wherever you wish, and with whatever is yours." He glanced around. "I speak for all here." "You do, indeed," Degory Kemble said.