Dead Reckoning (23 page)

They had crossed some narrow streaks of snow already, but the one now in their path stretched almost a hundred yards and covered an old rock slide. Petra went first, wading into the field of white, crunching through its dirty surface.

“Be sure to feel for every step,” Ramon warned. “You might fall into a hole or something.”

“Yes,” she said. “I will be careful.”

After several steps, they sank waist deep into the drift, and snow was falling into the tops of Ramon's short boots, packing hard around his ankles. He said nothing of it, only wanting to reach the other side.

He paused to look around him. He had seen many new things on this journey, but this was something he had to remember. Here it seemed that some blight had lain waste to the whole warm world of trees and grass. Everything he saw was rock and snow, from the slick boulder under his heels to the distant ranges a hundred miles away. If there was still greenery below, he would never have known it from this vantage.

Coming finally out of the snowfield, Petra stomped the ice crystals from her legs and Ramon sat down to dump the packed snow from his boots. The nun happened to look at a chunk of ice Ramon cast aside and saw a crimson hue to it. “Are you bleeding?” she said.

The boy shrugged. “The snow packed in my boot and scraped me a little. It's nothing.” He stood and looked up the slope. They seemed very near the top of the divide, but he had thought that many times today. “Let's look over this ridge.”

He started slowly, letting Petra pull ahead of him. He almost dreaded peering over the crest. What if they found another, higher ridge a mile away? How long could they keep going? They could not get caught here by darkness. Soon they would have to go below.

What was he doing here, anyway? The reason was so old and far away that he almost couldn't bring it to mind. The Snowy Cross—that was it. Why? To save Guajolote. How? How was any of this going to help? Does gold lie scattered atop this range in the thousands of dollars?

“Ramon?”

He looked up and saw Petra standing straight and rigid on the crest above eye level. A fresh wind was trailing her hair behind her, and she looked like some kind of conquering princess. She didn't look down at him, but her hand waved for him to join her.

Already his heart was pounding, for he knew what he would find when he scrambled up the last of the incline. Then his heart stopped as the vision struck him. It was like brilliant light shining through a cross-carved door into a darkened room. He felt Petra's arms around him, his own around her, as a power surged between them whose force was greater than the sum of anything they could have mustered apart. Then she sank to her knees, and Ramon was left alone.

For a long moment he stared at the Mount of the Snowy Cross, marveling at his arrival here. Then, suddenly, he thought of home. Guajolote, where warm adobe soaked in sunlight and spring water laughed from miniature cascades. And for a moment, he felt a glimmer of faith strong enough to cause him to look around—around his feet first, as if he would find gold coin stacked there waiting for him. His eyes pulled to the right, following the ridge that rose to the summit of Notch Mountain. There was rough rock and patches of coarse snow—and something that glowed with the luster of time-smoothed leather.

He blinked hard and looked again at the object standing not fifty yards away on the ridge. A pair of leather saddlebags perched on the crest as if some hand had just deposited them there. He thought about the American photographer, Señor Jackson, whom he and Petra had met in Del Norte. The photographic party must have left this thing behind.

He left Petra and climbed an easy slope to the saddlebags. Stooping, he lifted the bags, finding them heavier than he had imagined. He dropped them and heard a chink of metal. What he was thinking wasn't possible, of course, but it made his stomach flutter nonetheless. He glanced at the Snowy Cross, looming across the high basin through a cloud-haze that was beginning to form. He looked at Petra, the quintessence of devotion there on her knees in this unlikely place. Was her faith alone sufficient?

He knelt and unfastened the buckle on one of the pouches. Slowly he lifted the flap and peered inside. For a splinter of a moment he knew what it felt like to have been brushed by the wake of angels passing nearby. He tried to call Petra's name, but couldn't speak. Ramon del Bosque was never again to know the careless indifference of boyhood.

Twenty-nine

They came to the place where Clarence and Elder Hopewell had thrown the stones into the void, and they paused there to look again across the uninviting mountainscape. They could see the dark forest from here, and Clarence longed to be back in its shadow, back where tall things grew. But it was impossible to pass this place without stopping to look over.

Hopewell and Mary Whitepath stood to his left, Hassard slightly downhill to his right, anxious to move on. Then Clarence saw Mary Whitepath's arm raise toward him, her finger pointing back down the trail toward Tigiwon. Clarence looked, and he saw climbers just above the timberline.

“By golly, that's May,” he said, astonished. “Who the devil is that with her?”

Dee Hassard took one look and felt panic whir in his brain. How could that be Carrol Moncrief? He had underestimated the big circuit rider, but that didn't matter now.

Clarence saw Hassard begin to turn. He thought about Charlie Holt's pistol, strapped now around his hips under his jacket. He tried to get at it, but the jacket was buttoned. Hassard had come around to face him now, a hand inside his coat. Clarence tried to lift the bottom of his jacket over the gun grip, but the gold coins stacked on edge in the fabric slowed the attempt. It was too late now, anyway. He was looking down the barrel of Hassard's Colt. He saw the orange flare and the smoke, but he never heard the report, never felt the slug.

Hassard watched, satisfied to see the Vermonter fly backward over the cliff. He trained his muzzle on Hopewell, then Mary Whitepath. No need. Neither could harm him.

“Don't follow!” he shouted, glaring wildly into their stares of horror and astonishment.

Dee Hassard shoved the Colt back into Frank Moncrief's holster and sprinted up the mountain. It was a footrace now, and one that he could not afford to lose.

It seemed to take him only a few minutes to reach the divide, but when he got there, his lungs were ready to rip. He scrambled around the peak of rubble and slid to a standstill, almost swallowing his tongue in his surprise. A small, pretty, dark-haired woman and a black-haired boy were hunkered over the money, counting, calculating. Pilgrims? No, he didn't recognize them from the congregation. What in the name of …

Dee Hassard fought for oxygen as he glanced back down toward Moncrief. He drew his Colt, the boy and the woman shrinking away from its muzzle. “Put it back in the bags!” he managed.

Sister Petra felt a calm come over her. The Snowy Cross was out of her sight over her left shoulder, but she felt its solid presence. She obeyed the stranger, methodically placing the cold specie, the paper notes, and the pouches of gold dust back into the saddlebag openings.

“Who the hell are you?” Hassard demanded, annoyed. Maybe it was a good thing he had been driven back up here, or these thieves would have gotten his earnings.

“I am Petra, and this is Ramon.”

Hassard snorted and shook his head. This was too much to take in, and he really didn't care. The woman had finished replacing the money, and now she stood with the saddlebags draped over her right forearm. She stepped in front of the boy.

“Give them to me!” Hassard ordered.

“I cannot,” she said. “This does not belong to you.” It was so clear and simple that she didn't have to think about it. It was so obviously right that she didn't have to fear.

Hassard felt Moncrief too close behind. There was no time for this. He reached for the bag, grabbed a leather strap. The woman would not turn it loose. She possessed some grip, and Dee Hassard was tired. Could he wrestle her? What about that Mexican boy? Mexicans carried knives, didn't they?

Ramon had stepped to Petra's right, trying to see some sense in all this. What were they saying in that damned numb-tongued English? He was afraid of this orange-haired stranger, but Petra seemed perfectly at ease holding on to her prayers answered. He was about to tell her to let the stranger have the money when the gun fired and Petra crumpled backward onto the sharp rocks. The muzzle swung toward him, but he ignored it, falling on top of the good sister.

Hassard panted hard. The boy was no threat. He had to run now. Moncrief was too close behind him. He threw the winnings over his shoulder and smiled as he angled southward down the slope. Damn, what a couple of close ones!

*   *   *

Arriving at the bluff with May, Carrol found Elder Hopewell and Mary Whitepath lying on their stomachs, looking over the precipice.

“Don't move!” the gangling black man was shouting. “Clarence. Don't move!”

May screamed and threw herself between them, looking over the edge. She saw Clarence lying on his back some thirty feet below, his chest heaving. He rested on a narrow gravelly ledge that sloped dangerously downward. One arm and one leg hung over the edge. Below lay a series of ledges, each too slim to stand upon. If the Vermonter slid one inch, he would fall hundreds of feet, bouncing off hard rock ledges all the way down.

Carrol gritted his teeth as he looked over the edge. From below, he had looked up just in time to see the tall young man take Hassard's bullet in the chest. It was amazing that he had survived at all, but now he was almost surely doomed. Either he would have to climb back up to the ledge, or someone would have to climb down to put a rope on him. The young man's chances were slim, but Carrol did not feel good about leaving these two women and this old man to handle it.

Then he heard the shot—a single pistol blast from above. “Are there more of you up there?” he asked the black man.

“No,” Hopewell said.

May had sprung from the rocks to fetch the coil of rope Hopewell had thrown from his shoulders.

Carrol made a hard decision. His job was to get Hassard, bring him to justice for killing Frank. Bring him in or kill him. He was getting mad. May had told him about the death of Charlie Holt, and he had just seen Hassard shoot this young man in cold blood with his own eyes. The con man had turned murderer and left a virtual trail of dead bodies all over Colorado. These three would have to handle the young man on the ledge. He turned and sprinted up the mountain.

Coming to the divide, Carrol drew his pistol and came around a cone of timeworn boulders. He heard a scuffle of feet on the rock and found it quickly. The boy looked at him with tear-filled eyes. In his arms was a woman whose blood stained the front of her frock in a hue of crimson bright as a cardinal. Her eyes were blinking, but her body lay limp. Trying to lift her, the boy caught sight of Carrol and gasped.

Quickly the parson put his revolver in the holster and came toward the unlikely pair. “Put her down,” he said.

The boy replied in Spanish: “Help me. She wants to look at the cross.”

“La cruz?”
Carrol said, picking out the few words he recognized. He let his eyes focus for the first time on the distant mountain slope across the basin, and saw the lines of snow driven there. He put his arms under the woman, a slight creature whose green eyes glistened serenely at him. With help from the boy, he lifted her, turned her, carried her to the very brink of the divide and made her as comfortable as possible on the rocks.

Looking southward down the slope, Carrol thought of Hassard slipping away. If he reached the red mule he had left up the valley, he would likely go free. He sprang to his feet and ran a few yards along the divide. He could see no sign of the murderer. Trailing him would be slow, while Hassard would be running like a mountain goat, widening the gap between them.

He could think of just one way. Return to that town those lunatic pilgrims were building, borrow a mount, and try to ride Hassard down somewhere on the trail.

When he came back to the dying woman, the boy with her had dried his eyes and was listening to her. Carrol understood little, for she spoke only Spanish, though she didn't look Mexican—not with those green eyes.

“My life has been a glory,” Petra was saying, holding Ramon's hand, glancing away from the cross to him. “But I will not leave this place. Now it is up to you. You must save Guajolote.”

“But, Sister,” Ramon said. “The money is gone. That man took it away.”

She smiled. “Have faith. The Lord will provide. You must not go home until you know how to save your village.”

Thirty

He could hear May's voice echoing across the mountains somewhere, far away. “Grab the rope!” she was saying.

Clarence tried to make sense of it. His chest felt as if someone had driven a wagon over it. Sharp things poked him in the rear end. An arm and a leg dangled off something, feeling cold, and he was gasping for breath.

“Damn you, Clarence Philbrick! You grab ahold of that rope!”

What was she talking about? There was something flopping around on his stomach. It felt like a snake, but he knew somehow not to move. Slowly he opened his eyes and saw the rock rising above him to his right, felt the emptiness to his left. The rope was undulating above him. There was May's face, looking angrily down at him. Sister Mary Whitepath and Elder Hopewell were there beside her.

Now he remembered the loud blast from Hassard's pistol and gathered where he was. His chest hurt like hell, but he felt no blood warmth, no bleeding inside. The coins, lined in pairs up and down his jacket must have saved him. He had always heard stories like that—men surviving shoot-outs and pistol duels when bullets glanced off coins or whiskey flasks or pocket watches.

“Clarence!” May repeated. “Grab the rope. You're about to slide off!”