Marco and the Devil's Bargain

by

Camel Press

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Seattle, WA 98127

For more information go to: www.Camelpress.com

www.carlakellyauthor.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover Photograph by Charles Dobbs, www.charlesdobbs.com

Cover design by Sabrina Sun

Map and brand by Nina Grover

Marco and the Devil's Bargain

Copyright © 2014 by Carla Kelly

ISBN: 978-1-60381-229-0 (Trade Paper)

ISBN: 978-1-60381-230-6 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014935357

Produced in the United States of America

* * *

T
o Nina Grover, 21st century friend and 18th century mapmaker.

* * *

Juez de campo

A
n official of the Spanish crown who inspects and registers all brands of cattle and sheep in his district, settles disputes, and keeps a watchful eye for livestock rustlers. In the absence of sufficient law enforcement on the frontier of 18
^th
century New Mexico, a royal colony, he also investigates petty crimes.

* * *

Te deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur

Te aeturnum Patrem omnis terra venerator

O God, we praise Thee, and acknowledge Thee to be the supreme lord,

Everlasting Father, all the earth worships thee.

—
A portion of a prayer of joy and thanksgiving,

circa 400 A.D.

* * *

C
ould he trust a dying man? Reason told Anthony yes. Why would a dying man lie? On the other hand, the man was a trader, and traders seldom told the whole truth about anything. Besides, even though Anthony had performed the most menial of tasks during their months of association, this particular trader had never been satisfied with his work.
You'd have thought he wanted me to bury his offal with formal ceremony
, Anthony thought, still angry with the man who lay dying in the eerie emptiness of the Staked Plains. The others were already dead. Now it was just the two of them.

As near death as he was, the trader had refused to lead Anthony Gill toward that hidden canyon in Comanchería that every trader wanted to exploit, providing it actually existed. Even a dying trader, covered with pox, oozing and rotting from the inside out, wouldn't be so small-minded as to send a fellow white man to his certain death among the Kwahadi, the Antelope Eaters.

On the other hand, who was to say the Kwahadi weren't all dead, too? Smallpox, always around, had struck with stunning ferocity. Praise God—if there was a god—he had been inoculated years ago.

Anthony sat beside this impromptu deathbed of Texas earth, staring ahead into the distance that looked exactly like every league they had traveled for weeks, and decided to trust the dying man's directions toward the colony of New Mexico. Anthony knew he was only with the traders on sufferance, never mind that he did have one useful skill.

“
You there, attend to me,” the man croaked. Even in his ultimate extremity, the trader was no more polite than he had ever been. With unexpected strength, he tugged at Anthony, forcing him to breathe deeply of the reek that constituted a man about to succumb to smallpox,
la viruela
, as the Spaniards called it. Viruela sounded more melodious than smallpox. Call it what you will, in this killing season of 1782 it devoured nearly everyone—young, old, poor, rich, good, bad, Comanche, trader, this trader.

“
But not Anthony Gill,” Anthony said in English to the wind that blew ceaselessly from the west and north.

When Anthony's ear almost touched the trader's mouth, the man had described the one landmark that would get him to Santa Maria, a garrison town perched on the edge of Comanchería. “Look for the tree,” he whispered. Anthony shuddered as pus flew out of the man's ruined mouth.

“
A tree?”

Wearily, the man nodded. “One tree, fool. Line up on it. You will see the slightest cut in the rocks ahead. Go that way. Go straight.”

He coughed again.
I hate this trader
, Anthony thought,
but by God, I have a duty
. He dipped his filthy handkerchief into his canteen. He wiped the man's ruined face, reminding himself that there wasn't anything he couldn't wash off his hands, providing there was enough water. He had almost no water left. He sighed.

Anthony poured a little more water on the disgusting scrap, the final handkerchief remaining to him that belonged to Mrs. Gill. He dribbled the water in the trader's open mouth, where it pooled and ran out the corners.
Ten minutes, no more
, Anthony thought.

“
In a day, you will find the river. Follow it north.”

“
I would rather you gave me directions to that secret canyon where the Kwahadi hole up in winter,” Anthony said. “You've been bragging that you know the way.”

“
Estúpido,” the man muttered. “I want to save your worthless hide.”

The trader was right; Anthony's hide was worthless. He couldn't even remember his last sensible plan. “Tree. Gap in the rock,” he said. “Supposing I actually get that far without being skewered, peeled, and probably unmanned by the Kwahadi, what then?”

“
Find Marco Mondragón,” the trader gasped, his time almost up.

“
Very well. Anything else, you stinking lump?” Anthony said in Spanish, not caring now if a man staring at death heard another's opinion of his faulty character.

“
Bury me deep, you fool,” the trader whispered, then died, kindly putting Anthony out of his personal misery, too.

Anthony didn't bury him; too much bother. He did scrape some of the trader's pox into a screw-on tin. Maybe this Marco Mondragón, if he found such a man, would be interested in inoculation. It was the one gift he could give, dubious at best, because some died from the cure, too. That was what had gotten Anthony Gill in trouble in the colony of Georgia.

He considered the matter. Perhaps his gift could also be a bargaining tool. He had lived too long on the hindquarters of ill fortune not to consider all the angles.

Anthony pocketed the disgusting sample, kicked the dead man for good measure, then stared down with a frown. “Why in God's name did I kick him?” he asked the wind. “What have I become?”

He expected no answer, no burning bush, no thundering from on high, and he was not disappointed. Anthony Gill mounted his horse that staggered under even so light a burden as he had become. He hoped he could spot that tree and line himself up with the stone gap in distant rocks. Finding little Pia Maria Gill might have to wait for a season; he needed Marco Mondragón more.

“
H
usband, if I didn't know you to be a dedicated and resourceful officer of the crown, I might think that you are putting off your visit to the garrison,” Paloma Vega said into her husband's bare shoulder. She softened her criticism, if such it was, with a delicate nip on that shoulder.

The dedicated and resourceful officer of the crown tightened his grip on his wife when she tried to ease to one side. Paloma stayed where she was, both arms around Marco Mondragón's neck and her fingers massaging his head. She knew how much he liked that. Amazing what a woman learned in fifteen months of marriage.

She kissed him, one of many similar kisses she had distributed here and there last night and just now, when the late dawn of early January lightened their room. “You're not stalling because you'll miss me, are you?” she asked into his neck. “You're coming to get me in three days.”

“
I will count the hours, Paloma,” he replied, his voice drowsy now. And no wonder—neither of them had slept much last night. It was going to be embarrassing enough to troop into the kitchen at the Double Cross so long after the hour of breakfast, and know that Sancha and Perla,
la cocinera
, would chuckle about them later in the morning. How was it going to look when she arrived at her sister-in-law's hacienda this afternoon and yawned through dinner? It wouldn't hurt to mention the matter to him now, since he was obviously mellow. “My love,” she started, then laughed. “Never mind. If I start to yawn, your sister will understand why.”

Marco kissed her shoulder again, and then her neck, and then she didn't really care how much she was going to yawn that afternoon, or what the servants or her sister-in-law thought.

A little later, she said, “Husband, explain to me again just what this is I have gotten myself into?”

Traitorous man, his eyes were starting to close again. January it might be, but a summons from the visiting lieutenant at the garrison in Santa Maria couldn't be ignored. “Marco, you have to go to Santa Maria and I have to leave, too.”