A Serpent In Turquoise

I stuck around as long as I could, then gave up and went on errands. Back tomorrow or the next, then my wheels are yours to command. Meantime, I looked for your mug and found a heap of shards in a bandanna. But here’s a thought: check out the doc’s carving of a cielito lizard. Five’ll get you ten that’s the critter on your mug. Till you see me, kick back and stay put, okay? The canyons are no place to snoop around without a guide.

Yours,

McCord.

PS. Don’t play chess with the doc if you like to win.

Second man in two days—no, blast it, make that three—who wanted to be her guide. Raine turned the lizard till it faced her head-on, tipped her head and frowned. Could this be what the potter had been thinking of when he’d glazed her mug? “No neck-frill,” she murmured.

“Your pardon?” The doctor had returned to the chessboard and sat, contemplating his fate.

“Oh, just thinking. It’s a lovely lizard. Now, where were we?”

“Your move.”

“Yes.” Might as well put him out of his misery, so she could straggle off to bed. Raine lifted her knight again—and blinked. That pawn there, last time she’d looked, had been sitting on the f4 square.

Yet now it rested demurely on g5, blocking her attack. She glanced up through her lashes to find the doctor smiling benevolently into the distance, his hands crossed on his rounded vest.

Well, that changed everything.

Chapter 6

T hough the view from this overlook was no more spectacular than the previous ten they’d passed this morning, something about it grabbed the burro. Pausing on an outcrop above a sheer two-hundred foot drop to the green river, the jenny braced her stubby legs, lowered her grizzled neck and let loose with a truly astonishing, “Haw, hee-hawng, hee-hawng.”

As the echoes bounced, then died, Raine took her fingers from her ears. “Well, if they didn’t know we were coming before, they know it now.” She set off, tugging on the burro’s lead. “You wouldn’t consider going any faster, would you?”

Apparently not. This was a beast that believed in mañana, if not next week. They’d covered perhaps twenty miles yesterday, Raine estimated, after leaving the Casa de los Picaflores in the early afternoon. She’d waited for McCord to return, but finally she’d lost patience.

She’d asked the doctor for directions to the ranchito of Lagarto, home of the potter who’d made her mug. When he couldn’t persuade her to wait another day, he’d insisted she take his spare burro, Poquita, to carry her backpack.

She’d have made much better time without her. But while the vegetation changed from temperate to near tropical as they switchbacked deeper and deeper into the canyons, the temperature climbed to the low eighties. And somewhere in the next twenty miles or so, the doctor had advised that she’d come to a point where nothing on four legs could handle the trail. Might as well spare her own back, while she could.

The doctor had assured her that she’d recognize this point when she came to it. Then Raine should remove Poquita’s lead so she wouldn’t trip on it, turn her around and shoo her on her way. “I’ll send a boy to meet her and hurry her home, but in truth, it is not necessary. She knows where to find her oats.”

Without stopping, Raine reached high up the wall of rock on her left, to pick a clump of dry grass. She offered the burro one blade to munch, tucked the rest of the bribe in the hip pocket of her khaki pants, where it wagged enticingly. That gained them maybe a tenth of a mile per hour. At this rate they hadn’t a prayer of reaching Lagarto by nightfall, and the doctor had warned that she should not attempt the trails in the dark.

“Besides the danger of falling, there are rattlesnakes and…” He’d paused, then added in a regretful whisper, “worse things!”

“Bats, scorpions, what are we talking here?” she’d teased.

He’d shrugged good-naturedly. “That depends on who you ask. The Raramuri have legends of werewolves and ghosts and witches.”

She’d met none of that crew last night, when she and Poquita had camped in a lush little meadow. In fact, she’d felt more comfortable alone out under the stars than she had at the Casa de los Picaflores. The doctor was a sweetie, but still, there was something about him. She had an odd sense of unplumbed depths…Something moving below that playful surface. Anyway, she was glad to be on her own again. At least, till she met up with McCord.

If they met up again.

“If McCord goes sniffing after la rubia, instead of searching for the treasure, this is no good! Time flows like water through our fingers. I say she should fall from a high place. It could be easily done.”

“A man should trample flowers only when he finds no stones to run upon.” The doctor chose an apple from the basket beside his chair on the veranda, then drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket. While he polished the fruit, he gazed dreamily across the canyon. “No, do nothing till I have considered this.”

“But, my uncle—”

“Ssszt! You begin to argue like a gringo. And speak your own language, lest you forget it.”

“If I do,” Antonio growled in Raramuri, “it’s because you sent me to live with a gringo. To wash his pots and pans! To carry his pickax and shovels like a pack mule!”

“To be my eyes and my ears, Antonio. To be the raven that perches in the pine and sees all.”

“And does nothing!”

“When the time comes, then may you swoop.” The doctor crunched through the apple’s rosy skin. “While we speak of doing, what have you done since the night you came here to tell me of the mug you saw at Magdalena’s—only to find I had its blond owner already in my hands?”

“I’ve done no more than you directed.” The young man dropped down on the steps beside his uncle’s feet, to gaze glumly into the distance. “I went to Creel. Looked in all the tourist shops for more such mugs and found nada.”

“That is good news. If the design on this mug looked like the Quetzalcoatl as you say, then it could attract attention, draw interest, should a person of learning chance to see it. We need no more seekers after treasure here in the canyons. McCord is hard enough to control.” The doctor took another bite, munched thoughtfully. “And so, you went to Creel. It must have taken you all of an afternoon to search the shops. But since then, my brother’s son? What have you been doing? Perhaps you have a sweetheart in Creel. Young men like to keep such matters secret. And provided she’s of the Blood, in this I see no harm.”

“Maybe I do.” Antonio twitched his wiry shoulders.

“Or perhaps there was a—How do you say this? An Internet café where you wasted your hard-earned money?”

Antonio jerked half around. “You—I—Who told you that?”

“A little bird.” The doctor showed his teeth in a lazy smile. “They hum all sorts of news in my ear. Of good things and bad. Like Internet cafés, where young men worship new gods. War games to rot their brains and harden their souls. Photos of naked gringas to steal their hearts. By the Sun God, Antonio, if you’re to be seduced, at least choose a warm, sighing woman, not a picture of one! You can’t lie with a computer.”

“I don’t look at photos of women,” Antonio protested. “I look at things. Places to travel. Like Hollywood. Or New York City.”

“Canyons filled with honking cars and choking smog instead of singing birds and a running river? Now there’s a bargain! A very fine trade.

“And do you know what those people in the city do? They look into their computers and dream of escape to a world of peace and beauty—a world such as this.” The doctor had risen to sweep his cane around the sun-drenched vastness. Now he limped to the closest pillar and buried his nose in the honeysuckle. With a gusty sigh he plucked a scarlet blossom, stooped to tuck it behind his nephew’s ear. “It’s a wise man who knows his luck while it perches on his hand, Antonio. A wiser one who refuses to let it fly away.”

“Yes, uncle.”

“So.” The doctor settled again into his chair and laced his fingers on his paunch. “I’ve had some news while you were gone. There’s a man in Batopilas, a man of the People. He works in one of the silver mines. He sent word that he can liberate us a case of dynamite, possibly two.”

“Excellent!” Antonio shot to his feet. “I’ll go at once.”

“Ah, but there’s no hurry, nephew. I doubt we’ll need it for a few weeks yet. Unless…” The doctor twiddled his fingers to some inner thought. “The big German…you said he, also, was at the cantina? Perhaps it is time to—Well, we’ll speak more of this once you’ve completed your task.”

“And what’s that?”

“Antonio, Antonio, I keep telling you, you must learn to think ahead. To see not just the path before your running feet, but the next canyon, the next season. Why, if a wise man listens carefully, he can hear the rumble of the coming flood months before it sweeps the fool away.”

“Sí, my uncle, I’m sure this is so. But what would you have me do?”

“Bueno. If an ignorant village potter makes a mug painted with the face of the Quetzalcoatl, then tell me: How did he know what the God looks like?”

They reached the river around noon. Poquita waded to her knees and drank deep of the chuckling current. “Think we should stop and have a swim?” Raine asked the burro.