A Serpent In Turquoise

“Probably not, but I can’t leave you sitting in the road, and I don’t think you’d care to be dropped off at Magdalena’s Cantina. Might get more help than you need.”

“God, no. That’s where all my troubles started!” She told him about the lumberjacks. “I guess their truck was too wide for this track. That must be why they stopped chasing. But what I’m wondering is why they hassled me in the first place. Maybe Magdalena sicced them on me?”

He swore as the car bounced through a pothole, then landed with a sickening slither on the gravel. “Why would she do that?”

“I was trying to connect with a guy, a Professor McCord, who picks up his mail at the cantina. She seems to think she owns him.”

“Huh.” He drove in silence for a while, then muttered, “I suppose Magdalena figures she’s got a lease on every man who walks through her door.”

“She’s welcome to ’em. I’ve no intention of jumping her claim. My interest is strictly professional.”

“Hmmm. You’re a…travel writer?”

“Nope.” She winced as she realized she’d just blown her cover.

“Ah, a mountain climber. You’re lookin’ to hire a camp manager.”

“Not me. But McCord does that?” She shifted to look at him, then winced as it hit her again; there were three overlapping images where there ought to be one.

“When he’s trying to scrape some cash together, he’s been known to do that. And worse things,” he added under his breath as the car slid again and he shifted to low. “You with the ATF? The DEA?”

“McCord runs guns? Or dope?”

“Not if he wants to live. That’s strictly a local franchise, no gringos welcome. But the damn feds—and the federales—are always shopping for snitches down here. No, McCord keeps his nose clean and he keeps to himself.”

“Sounds like you know him pretty well.”

“Too well.”

“So maybe I could get an introduction?”

“’Fraid we’re way past that. I’m McCord, and who the heck are you? Tell me please I didn’t kiss an agent of the IRS, hell-bent on an audit. I’d have to shoot myself. You’re Lorraine who?”

“Not Lorraine—Raine. As in Raine Ashaway. You wrote me about the temple at Teotihuacan, and yes, the Feathered Serpent looks like a dinosaur.”

Just then the car slid again, and this time what remained of his left headlight clipped the mountainside.

“So you thought so, too—that it looks like a dinosaur?” he asked after he regained control of the car.

“Given a bit of artistic license on the part of the carver, yes. Something like a Styracosaurus, with that spiked neck-frill.”

“Bless you! But what about my other question—the biggie. Do you know of any place in the world—preferably around here—where such a beast might’ve been found?”

“It’s not a known species, so I haven’t a clue. Though, actually—” She remembered her mug, which by now must be bits of ceramic sand at the bottom of the canyon.

“What?”

At his tone, she turned toward him—and blinked. At the center of her vision, all his shuffling images had steadied to one silhouetted profile, led by a nose like the bow of a distant icebreaker.

“What?” He stopped the car in the middle of the road to poke her in the shoulder. “Come on, Ashaway, give! You thought of a clue? Where to look?”

“What’s…” Enchanted by the miracle of sight—functional sight—Raine found it hard to heed mere words. He had wonderfully carved lips when she moved her focus, though she should know that already. The man was a natural-born kisser, if she’d ever met one. “What’s your angle on this?”

“Aw, jeez, you’re going to hold out on me, after I risked my neck to rescue you?”

“No. I never said that.” But the reflex had been ingrained from childhood: Guard your information. Bone hunting was the Ashaways’ livelihood; you shared your finds with the family and the firm, but never with strangers.

“So say it! ‘McCord, I owe you my sorry life. If I know where to find a dino, it’s yours with a bow on it.’ Or would you rather I turn around and hang you back in the tree where I found you?”

She smiled in spite of herself at this show of temper; he didn’t mean it. “I owe you my life and I swear I don’t know where to find this dino—if it even exists. I was thinking about a ceramic mug I lost. It was in my luggage.”

“Oh.” He drove in silence for a minute, then growled, “I’ll see about salvaging what’s left of your gear in the morning. But as for a tacky tourist mug, it’ll be busted to smithereens.”

And, but for you, I would have been down there with it. She touched his arm and confessed, “The mug had a design on it. Exactly like the photo you sent me.”

Chapter 5

R aine drifted up from sleep to the fragrance of honeysuckle, the murmur of bees outside the open window beside her bed. She lay blinking at a rough plaster ceiling, tinged gold by the rich slant of light. Must be morning, she realized, stretching full-length. A soft tap on the door brought her up to one elbow. “Come in!” she called, assuming it would be McCord.

Last night he’d practically carried her into the Casa de los Picaflores, the House of the Hummingbirds, home and guesthouse of Dr. Sergio Luna. The aftereffects of adrenaline, followed by the car’s vibrations on the long, rumbling descent into the canyon, had wiped her out. She dimly remembered McCord’s arm around her waist as he helped her up the crude stone stairs of a winding path. Moonflowers and honeysuckle twining around the cedar pillars of a long porch. A flood of lamplight as a massive door opened.

Then the embrace of a big leather chair and a deeper-than-deep voice behind a moving candle flame, asking her to follow the light. A soft aside to McCord in Spanish noted that her pupils reacted to light, that he could see nothing to cause a man worry.

“At least, not that kind of worry,” McCord drawled in the same language.

The doctor gave her a warm potion, bitter with herbs, laced with wild honey. It must have contained a painkiller, because when he stitched the gash at her hairline, it didn’t hurt. After that she remembered McCord’s arms again, easing her down a long hall. But beyond that? Some time later she’d stumbled into the adjoining bathroom, once by starlight, then once again by daylight, and now…Raine blinked. Was this morning, or—

The door creaked and a tiny, elderly woman nudged it open with the tray she held. With a timid smile she shuffled across the room to set it on a bedside table.

“Buenas días,” Raine said, adding a fervent “gracias” as the smell of coffee tickled her nose. There was bread with slices of papaya on a plate; it must be morning. “Puede decirme, señora—could you tell me—” She paused as the woman’s brown, wrinkled face produced a smile of shy confusion.

The woman murmured soft apologetic sounds in a language that wasn’t Spanish, ducked her scarfed head, then retreated and shut the door.

A Tarahumara, Raine guessed, as she hitched up against the headboard to pour herself a cup of coffee flavored with cinnamon and chocolate. Her questions would have to wait, which was fine by her stomach. It awoke with a lurch and practically leaped at her fingers as she tore off chunks of pan dulce, a bread of melting sweetness, to feed the ravening beast.

Once her first pangs had been quelled, Raine yawned, then rolled out to meet the day. Wrapping her naked body in a lighter blanket from the foot of the bed—and just who had undressed her?—she drifted over to sit on the wide sill. “Whoa!” she murmured aloud. Below the house, the hillside fell away in broad terraces till it vanished in purple, plunging shadows. A mile beyond the abyss rose sheer cliffs, crowned by a forest of toothpick-size trees.

So the House of the Hummingbirds wasn’t at the bottom of the gorge, but perched on a bench carved by the river she’d yet to see. A rambling one-story adobe, it followed the contours of the hillside like a train of sugar cubes. Its walls were painted pink by the rising sun, which had just cleared the far side of the canyon.

“Wait a minute.” Raine straightened with a frown. The track where she’d come to grief had descended from the eastern rim. Had McCord driven her clear across the canyon last night, and she was looking back the way they’d come? No, she’d dozed off through much of the journey, but still, surely she’d have noticed a river crossing. Which meant she must be looking west and the sun was setting! “I slept through a whole darn day?”

To her left, someone stepped out from behind a vine-covered pillar and started down the steps of the porch. A man, but not McCord. This one was short and almost portly. Supported by a cane, he moved with an awkward limping lurch. The doctor? She’d been too befuddled last night to note more than his voice and his suturing skills.

He paused where the first run of steps opened out onto a stone ledge, and swept off the Panama hat that had hidden his face. The gesture revealed ruddy, sun-weathered skin, a bold hawk’s nose on a man of middle years. Plucking a crimson trumpet flower from the buttonhole of his white tropical suit, he called in a loud voice, “Venga, bellezza!” Come, beauty! He placed the stem of the flower between his teeth, spread his arms wide and tipped back his dark head.

He had to be the doctor, Raine told herself, with that voice deep as a canyon, but what on earth was he doing?

If she’d blinked at that moment she’d have missed it; a shimmering ruby-and-emerald colored hummingbird arrowed in to the prize. It hovered before the man’s face, sipped—and flashed away. With a laugh, the doctor drew the plundered blossom from his lips, kissed it lightly and tossed it to the molten air. Donning his hat, he limped toward the next flight of stairs.