Treasure of the Sun (46 page)

With a defensive edge in her voice, Vietta told Katherine, "I couldn't have him identify me in his death throes. I had to cut his throat."

Sickened, Damian asked, "Could he have identified you?" "Oh, yes." She sounded as delighted as a girl with her first· posy as she slipped the knife in her belt and patted it fondly. "He ripped the scarf 01£ my face. I'll never forget that look on his face when he realized who it was." Confiding to Katherine, she said, "He never liked me, you know."

Turning his back on her with insulting deliberation, Damian scrubbed at his face with his hands. Right now, he understood the ancients' custom of tearing their clothes in the event of a death. Hearing this, he'd lost Tobias once more, and his soul wallowed in guilt. He'd argued with Tobias about this woman, refusing to see her evil, and Tobias was dead because of his wilful blindness.

He'd lost Vietta, too, his memories of her destroyed forever.

With her, he'd lost a piece of his youth, his trust-and he'd almost lost his Catriona. "Why would you have repeated your crime with Katherine? She knew nothing. She was a victim of Tobias's curiosity."

Vietta's voice lost her nostalgia and gained a defensive edge.

"She was never in any danger. It's not that easy to kill someone with a knife to the throat, but I knew she'd be terrified after losing Tobias. It was just the best way to find out what I wanted to know."

Katherine stared, her eyes round.

"Oh, Katherine, would you stop holding your throat and whimpering like that?" Vietta said in disgust. "I told you, you weta\'t in danger. I could have cut on your throat for a long time before I killed you. Just stop whining. I never even would have killed Tobias if he hadn't taunted me."

Damian jumped, whirling around. "What?"

"Oh, Damian." Never removing her gaze from him, Vietta slid over to a boulder and perched on it. "Tobias knew what I wanted. He was no fool. Tobias showed an interest in the treasure, and he interested you in it, also. That's when I discovered my girlhood affection for you renewed. I knew if I just kept close to both of you, the gold would be mine."

'''The treasure of the padres is nothing but a legend." He corrected himself. "We thought it was nothing but a legend."

"I always enjoyed reading."

Unable to follow her garbled logic and not caring, he knelt at Katherine's feet. Reaching for the rope the vaqueros had tied to bind her, he tugged and frowned. Looking down, he gave the knots his fullest attention, intent on loosening Katherine.

"Didn't I always enjoy reading?" Vietta insisted.

He nodded absently. Katherine had to be free, to run if possible, to flee this situation.

"My family's been in California longer than yours, and one of my ancestors left a diary. She had actually seen a chunk of the gold. She wondered what happened to it. She deduced its importance."

"Someone else saw the gold?" Katherine whispered.

Vietta's attention abruptly switched to Katherine. "You've seen the gold?"

Damian closed his eyes in brief exasperation. Katherine had given away information. Right now, he wanted to keep Vietta starved for information.

"You have," Vietta breathed. "How wonderful for you. No matter how carefully I've researched, no matter how thoroughly I've pursued my findings, I've never seen the gold at all. Was it beautiful?"  

Katherine shook her head. "No."

"Did you find it in Tobias's possessions? Well, of course you did. You must have. Yet I searched his room, his trunk."

Unable to maintain eye contact, Katherine dropped her gaze, and Vietta crowed. "It was in his trunk! Now where-it wasn't one of those chunks of rock was it? It was, wasn't it? One of those rocks contained gold, didn't it?" Her laughter rang with a sleuth's excitement. "I held it in my hand and never realized .... "

"What would you have done if you realized?" Damian asked. "There was nothing more I could have done. I couldn't find a clue as to the treasure's whereabouts, but I knew Tobias had been in these mountains. I followed him, you know, until he lost me. So after I killed him and Katherine disappeared, I came up here to search. That's when I fell. That's when I hurt my leg." Vietta's voice still rang with its deep, pleasant tone. No bitterness, no unhappiness tainted her voice; it seemed that for her, the gold was worth any sacrifice. "I would have been back for Katherine sooner, only the fall from the cliff hurt me badly." She rubbed her thigh in remembered pain, and the pistol sagged.

Damian leaped for her, and the pistol went off in Katherine's direction. Unable to help himself, he flung himself back at Katherine, seeking to give her his belated protection. In the tree trunk above her head, a hole smoked. He grabbed up his' wife, holding her with his body between her and the gun.

Vietta held a pistol in each hand now. Her pistol had been discharged; Damian's shone clean and bright and deadly. "I'm not going to kill her. Do you think I'm a fool? I know you, Damian, better than you know yourself. You'll do anything to protect that woman."

"Why don't you let Katherine stay behind? She can hardly walk." Damian assisted his wife over stony ground, through the fog that defied the sun.

"Keeping your beloved Catriona in my gun sights is a guarantee for your good behavior." Vietta followed them, keeping her horse well back from Damian's grasping hands. Her pistol remained in a holster by her horse's neck. "I like guarantees."

Katherine stumbled, and he put his arm around her waist.

She murmured, "Thank you," but he didn't dare look at her.

She must hate him. He was the patron. He should know best, make the correct decisions, see the most clearly, and he'd gotten them into this damnable mess.

Now he wondered how he could have doubted the ferocity of the cultured California lady he grew up with. What an idiot he'd been. Driven by a curiosity he couldn't contain, he asked, “Was your love for me ever genuine?"

Katherine glanced at him, startled, but Vietta mocked him.

"Are you talking to me, my hero? Your poor, lonely, scorned friend?"

"That is an answer in itself," he answered. She chuckled. The sound was so comforting, he couldn't believe her menace, yet she'd trained the pistol at Katherine.

“I did love you once. Who doesn't love you, Damian? You've got everything. You're handsome, charming, competent. Everything I'm not." She chuckled again. "Oh, and you're rich. How could I forget that most important thing? You're very, very rich."

He glanced around at the encircling cloud, depressed by his stupidity and the continuous gloom. "Yes, I'm rich."

"Tactful, too. When I was so young and silly with love, you tactfully turned me away. You were so kind."

"I was always kind to you."

"Yes, you were. You were kind when no one else was, because I wasn't privileged like you. Do you know, you were my inspiration to find the treasure?"

He lifted one foot, put it in front of the other. His head throbbed; he wanted to shout at her, but old habits kept him sane. "How could I be your inspiration to do this?"

"Because if I'd been rich, it wouldn't have mattered that I was charmless, homely, unaccomplished. We would have been betrothed."

He stopped, turned, and looked at her.

She faced him from atop her surefooted mare and used every inch of her height to impress him. "I was a proper lady years ago, but I've lived in genteel poverty for too long. I've been on the edges of society, taking the crumbs tossed to me and pretending I was grateful. I've listened to my father moan about his bad luck at cards, about how we'd be living on the rancho if he hadn't lost it. I've heard my mother sigh like a martyr while she dresses in second-hand silks. I've heard them nag me, tell me if I would only flirt like an idiot, I could get a rich husband and lift them out of their ghastly destitution."

She stared at him with satisfaction as he stood in the middle of the trail. "You made a mistake when you refused to wed me because I was poor.”

Deliberately, he pushed Katherine out of the way. "I would never have wed you." He gazed at Vietta, telling her the truth with his proud rejection.

Her breathing grew strong; her chest rose and fell. The pistol leveled on him. She was angry, as he hoped.

He continued, "Had I expressed the desire, my father wouldn't have let me. He never liked you. He compared you to a creature found beneath a rock."

From one inhalation to the next, she grew in stature, and grew, and grew. If she had been a dragon, Damian thought, she would be breathing fire. Her hands tightened on the reins; he prepared to leap out of the way.

Regaining control, she denied him. "No, Damian. I can't run you over. It would make as much sense to shoe a goose. I'd gain nothing. No, as long as I've got your darling wife as hostage, we'll continue as we are."

He was laid to rest in the lower chancel,

Barbara Alien all in the higher;

There grew up a rose from Barbara Alien's breast,

And from his a briar.

And they grew and they grew to the very church-top,

Until they could grow no higher,

And twisted and twined in a true lover's knot …

Katherine held the watch in her hand, playing the wistful tune over and over. It comforted her and annoyed Vietta-a winning combination. Vietta had already ordered Katherine to stop it, but Katherine knew Vietta wouldn't shoot her for a song. The woman had proven herself greedy, not insane.

"I wish the fog would lift," Katherine said She sat on a fallen log, her riding boots on a stump beside her. Her skirt was hitched up almost to her knees, her bare feet wiggled in the creek that trickled down the mountainside. She didn't care about modesty or propriety; for the first time in hours of walking, the blisters on her heels were numb. Purple bruises laced her legs and arms; she hadn't had the nerve to remove the scarf and check the damage done to her throat. Her complaint was husky. "This gray is so gloomy."

As if responding to her words, the sun stabbed through the cloud with one beam. Katherine blinked in the sudden brightness; every pine needle, every leaf was delineated in the sharp mountain air. Above her she could see blue sky. Wisps of fog streamed past, then closed in once more.

"A valiant try," Damian said. He shook the pebbles out of his boots and sighed. "Look at the holes in these socks. Leocadia will have a fit."

"Your socks! Never mind your socks. We're lost," Vietta nagged, a peevish edge to her voice. "I wish you hadn't lost the map."

"You didn't even know there was a map until I told you," Damian snapped back.

Damian and Vietta had been arguing for the past hour, ever since they'd come to the end of the trail and found no pot of gold awaiting them. They'd argued through the meal of tortillas and cold beans Katherine had demanded. They were stuck in this perilous little spot, held by Vietta's gun and stubbornness.

Katherine shrugged away their quarrel. Vietta's menace had been diffused as the hours wore on. She seemed nothing more than a spinster, frazzled with the plans gone awry. Right now it was easy to forget the gun she held so firmly, the knife tucked into her belt.

"Damian didn't lose the map," Katherine pointed out. "He hid it under the saddle blanket of a very intelligent horse and when that horse sensed danger, he left. I wish Damian and I had been so clever."

From their expressions, it was obvious the others failed to appreciate her logic.

Their only possible route was down the way they'd come. On one side, the ground dropped away, falling straight down to some pointed rocks. On the other side, the trail died in a sheer cliff that rose before and around them. Looking like large slices of bread dropped by a giant, slabs of rock decorated the perimeter of the cliff. Scrubby bushes grew among them. The little stream fell straight down that cliff and nourished the lone climbing rose that struggled in the rocky soil. The rose twined across the stones and around a few random sticks thrust into the ground. Carried on a moist breeze, the first pink blooms of summer filled the air with fragrance.

Katherine liked this place. All through the long, wearisome day, she'd longed for a spot to sit and rest. Here she had cold water to drink, a babbling stream for her feet, a pleasant smell, and an unhappy Vietta. What else could one ask? Inspired, she wound the watch's mechanism once more. "I love this ballad," she said. "I'm glad Tobias built it into the watch." She sang, "He was laid to rest in the lower chancel, Barbara Allen all in the higher-"

"Are you sure this is where we're supposed to be?" Vietta waved the pistol around.