Damnation Road (13 page)

Authors: Max Mccoy

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Apache Indians, #Western Stories, #Westerns, #Treasure Troves, #Large Type Books, #Cultural Heritage

BOOK: Damnation Road

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S
IXTEEN

“Lieutenant, what are your plans?”

“Simple,” Gamble said, holding up his whiskey glass to catch the candlelight. “I'm going to finish this glass of bourbon, then ask for another.”

Anise laughed.

“You know what my uncle meant,” she said, smoothing her napkin. Their table was in the shadows in a far corner of the dining room, and she had removed her veil. “We want to know what kind of professional plans you might have for the next few weeks, if we may be so bold.”

“I am between assignments at the moment.”

The table was littered with the remains of their mealâplates with oyster shells, steak bones, slivers of asparagus, and half-eaten rolls. The restaurant was on the ground floor of the Texas House, the best hotel in Amarillo, where the Rock Island had insisted on putting up the trio. Gamble planned on being long gone by sunup.

“Then your services are for hire?” Weathers asked.

Gamble took another sip of whiskey. He was still wearing the smoke-colored glasses and, since the sun had set while they were eating and no daylight was now coming in from the window, Weathers was just a shadow on the other side of the table.

“Your skill with firearms and your calm in an anxious situation recommend you for a rather unusual assignment,” Weathers said.

“I'll pass,” Gamble said.

“Just like that?” Anise asked. “Without a hearing?”

“No disrespect,” Gamble said. “But whenever somebody talks me into something, I end up regretting it. Usually, I end up losing a little skin in the process.”

“Every time?” she asked.

Gamble finished the whiskey and signaled for the waiter to bring him another. Anise, however, held up her hand and called for the man to hold the order.

“Let's try something special,” she told Gamble in a conspiratorial tone. “Do you think Amarillo might be continental enough to serve absinthe? Let us find out.” Then, to the waiter: “Absinthe,
s'il vous plaÃ®t?”

“Of course,” the waiter said.

“Three glasses, and make sure there is plenty of ice.”

“Two glasses,” her uncle said.

“Two, then.”

The waiter nodded and went to the bar.

“Bourbon suits me just fine.”

“Have you ever had absinthe?”

“Never felt that poetic.”

“Indulge me,” Anise said.

Gamble removed the smoke-colored glasses and fished the leather patch from his pants pocket, threw the strap over his head, and tugged it into place.

“Better,” he said.

Anise was resting her chin on her hands.

“At least hear us out,” she said.

Gamble waved her off.

The waiter brought a tray with a pair of glasses, two flat spoons, some sugar cubes, a thin dark bottle, and a pitcher of ice water.

“Would you like me to bring forth the spirit?”

“I'd prefer to do it myself, thank you,” Anise said.

She placed a glass in front of Gamble, poured about an ounce of green liquid from the bottle, then put a sugar cube on the spoon and rested it on the rim of the glass.

“This is an art,” Anise said as she tilted the pitcher of ice water with a steady hand, wetting the sugar cube. “The trick is to place just the right amount of water on the sugarâthus. Now, watch the
louche.”

As the sugary water dripped from the spoon into the green liquid, opalescent pearls formed and swirled. Soon, the entire glass was a milky white.

“There,” Anise said.

Gamble picked up the glass and held it to the light.

“Isn't this made with a kind of poison? Wormwood?”

“It is a plant from the Holy Lands.”

“And in the Book of Revelation, a star which falls and poisons a third part of the waters,” Gamble said. “Or maybe an angel. I don't remember which.”

He brought the glass to his lips and sipped.

“Bitter,” he said. “Like licorice.”

“Of course,” she said, preparing her own drink. “It's flavored with anise.”

Weathers took a leather case from his jacket, flipped open the top, and offered him a cigar. Gamble took it, cut the end with his pocket knife, stuck the cigar in his teeth, then leaned forward toward the candle flame.

“Good smoke,” Gamble said, puffing. He took another sip of absinthe. “All right, I'm comfortable. Talk if you want.”

“This must remain strictly between us,” Weathers said.

“I'm a man of discretion.”

“Uncle!” Anise said. “Get on with it.”

“Of course,” Weathers said. He glanced around, to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear, and then leaned forward conspiratorially. “What we told you before is trueâwe are on our way to New Mexico Territory, but not to Skeleton Canyon. Simply put, we are on our way to recover a fortune in Confederate money that lies in the Apache treasure cave somewhere along the
Jornada del Muerte.”

“The
Jornada?”
Gamble asked.

“You know it?”

“It's a hundred-mile stretch of hell on earth,” Gamble said. “The conquistadores named it, and they named it wellââthe Journey of Death.' It was the roughest part of the old royal road from Mexico City to Santa Fe, it's still so rough and so remote that it's like heading back to the middle of the seventeenth century.”

“I understand the difficulties,” Weathers said.

“Do you?” Gamble asked. “Have you been there?”

“No,” Anise said softly. “My uncle has not. But I have.”

Gamble puffed on the cigar.

“After I was sold to the Apaches,” she said, “I was with Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua during the final years of the fighting, around the Southern Four Corners areaâwhere Arizona, New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Sonora meet.”

“You said as much before.”

“You can see me in those famous photographs made by Fly during the surrender,” Anise said. “He took pictures of the captive white boy, Santiago McKinn, standing with a group of starving Chiricahua children in front of a falling down wickiup. Then he posed me on a blanket and took a lurid close-up of my faceâof the tattoos. It has been widely reproducedâon the front pages of all the Hearst papers and in the
Police Gazette
. Surely you've seen it.”

“Missed it,” Gamble said. “The treasure cave?”

“A month or so before the surrender, Geronimo's band raided a ranch house and made off with some household silver and a small quantity of Double Eagles the family had been saving. My sister and I were given pack mules and made, under guard, to haul the loot up the
Jornada
to about where Engle is now, and then west into the mountains to the treasure cave. Geronimo said he was born at the headwaters of the Gila River, that his Apache ancestors had come from those mountains, and the area was sacred to him.”

Gamble sipped some more absinthe. Strangely, he felt both drunk and keenly awake.

“The cave was terribly frightful,” Anise said. “Not only was the climb tortuous, but the narrow cave entrance was guarded by human skeletons, and in their rib cages were coiled the biggest rattlesnakes I had ever seen. One of our band, the warrior named Massai, was able to calm the snakes with a few words so that we could pass. Inside, there were the strangest objectsâmedicine objects. Relics, mainly. Armor from the time of the conquistadors, a Spanish bit, an old bowie knife, a mountain rifle. It was like an Apache museum and treasury, but the treasury was running low. There were little piles of gold ore and a few coins here and there, Double Eagles and old Spanish eight reales, mostly. A few bars of silver.”

“And the rebel money.”

“Yes, the Confederate money,” she said. “It was in a strongbox against the wall, and on the side of the box it said, âTerritory of Arizona, CSA.' I asked Massai about it, and he said the Apaches had taken it during a raid on Rebel soldiers when he was a boy. He said it was worthless because the gray coats lost.”

“The rebels did hold southern Arizona and New Mexico territories during 1861 and 1862,” Weathers said. “It ended when Sibley tried to capture northern New Mexicoâand the entry to the Colorado gold finds and the California portsâand was pushed back at Glorieta Pass. During those two years, the Apaches made constant war on the Rebelsâjust as they had on the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Yankees. It is not inconceivable that these native fighters managed to capture some of the funds used to mount the New Mexico Campaign.”

Gamble shook his head.

“Let's say for a moment that I believe your story,” he said. “This Massai fellow was right. By the end of the war, Confederate notes were shin plasterâless than worthless. Their primary use was to start the morning fire or to chink cracks in the walls. It's not worth braving the
Jornada
for a pile of moldering banknotes that amount to nothing more than a historical curiosity.”

“I didn't say they were banknotes.”

“You said Confederate money.”

“That's right.”

“Well, paper was the only kind of Confederate money there was. Oh, there were plans for all kinds of coinsâand Dixie had plenty of gold, early in the warâbut it was all in Yankee coins, which were mostly melted down into ingots.”

“Not all of it,” Anise said.

Gamble stared at her.

“You're saying that you saw a crate of Confederate gold coins.”

“I'm saying exactly that.”

“I am hesitant to call a woman a liar,” Gamble said, snubbing the cigar out in a saucer. “But what you saw fourteen or fifteen years ago could not have been Confederate gold coins. It must have been a dream, or some kind of waking fantasy. The Apaches were starving by the time of the surrender, and if Geronimo had access to any quantity of gold, he would have used it to buy food and guns. Especially guns.”

Anise smiled wickedly.

“You think I had the fantods, lieutenant?” she asked. “You think I was delirious and imagined the gold? You must think I invented this episode of my life from whole cloth. Oh, I am sorry to have wasted your time. But there is one thing.”

She opened a silk purse and removed a golden coin.

“How do you explain this?” she asked.

The coin gleamed in the candlelight.

“The Apaches considered the Rebel coins next to worthlessâthey even used a few to cast bullets for some of the older rifles. Because he considered them trash, Massai let me take this one.”

“You mind if I see it?”

She placed it in his palm. It was heavy, like a Double Eagle.

Gamble turned the coin to catch the light and tried to read the inscription, but found it was too close to focus on. He held it out at nearly arm's length, but it was too far to see any detail.

“Damn it,” Gamble said.

“I have the same problem with newspapers,” Weathers said as he removed a magnifying glass from a coat pocket. “Here, I find this helpful.”

Gamble took the magnifying glass.

On one side, the coin had an engraving of Liberty holding a shield emblazoned with the Rebel battle flag, and symbols of the southern economy around her, including stalks of corn and a bale of cotton. Arrayed around Liberty was CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, and at the bottom, 1861. The edge was fluted, just like a Double Eagle.

Gamble turned the coin over.

CSA
TWENTY DOLLARS
, it said in the center. Around this were thirteen stars, and around the stars was a chain with thirteen links. The links were named for the eleven seceded states and the two divided border states, Missouri and Kentucky.

“I'll be damned.”

“Possibly,” Anise said. “But we shan't worry about that now.”

“Are you sure it's real gold?”

“For God's sake, don't bite it,” she said. “Yes, we've weighed it and it's the same as one of your twenty dollar American coins.”

She held out her hand. Gamble placed the coin in her palm.

“There are other tests,” he said. “Specific gravity, for example. Acid.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, returning the coin to her purse. “We're quite satisfied. It's real gold.”

Gamble studied the reflected candlelight in her eyes.

“Do we have your interest, Lieutenant?” Weathers asked.