Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

The tunnel opened into a high narrow cavern, perhaps ten feet across and thirty feet high. Carson held the torch aloft, illuminating the mottled yellow surface of the rock face. He moved forward, then stopped abruptly. At his feet, the stream tumbled off a cliff, splashing down into a yawning pool of blackness. Holding the torch in front of him, Carson peered over the edge.

“See anything?” de Vaca asked,

“I can just barely see the bottom,” he said. “It must be fifty feet down, at least.”

There was a sliding sound and Carson instinctively drew back. A handful of small rocks crumbled off the lip of the cliff and bounced down into the darkness, echoing hollowly as they went.

Carson tested the ground in front of him. “All of this rock is loose and rotten,” he said, moving gingerly along the cliff face. Finding a more stable spot, he dropped to his knees and leaned over the edge again.

“There’s something down there,” de Vaca said from the far side of the cliff edge.

“I see it.”

“If you’ll hold the torch,” de Vaca said, “I’ll climb down. This way looks easier.”

“Let me do it,” Carson said. De Vaca flashed him a dark look.

“OK, OK,” he sighed.

Moving toward a spot where the cliff face had collapsed, de Vaca half climbed, half slid down the rubbled slope: Carson could barely see her moving down in the gloom.

“Throw the other torch down!” she called at last.

Shoving a book of matches between the sticks, Carson tossed down the second bundle. There was a moment of fumbling, then the sound of a match being struck, and suddenly the chasm below was illuminated by a flickering crimson light.

Peering farther over the edge, Carson could clearly see the outline of a desiccated mule. The animal’s pack was broken open and pieces of manta and leather were lying about. A number of large whitish lumps could be seen protruding through the ruined pack. Nearby lay the mummified body of a man.

In the lambent light of the brand, he could see de Vaca examine first the man, then the mule, then the ruined pack. She picked up several scattered objects, tying them into the loose ends of her shirt. Then she came scrabbling back up the talus slope.

“What did you find?” Carson muttered as she approached.

“I don’t know. Let’s get into the light.”

At the cave entrance, de Vaca untied the ends of her shirt. A small leather pouch, a sheathed dagger, and several of the whitish lumps tumbled onto the sand.

Carson picked up the dagger, carefully sliding it from its sheath. The metal was dull and rusted, but the hilt was intact, preserved beneath a mantle of dust. He wiped it against his sleeve and held it up to the sun. Chased in silver on the iron hilt were two ornate letters: D M.

“Diego de Mondragón,” he whispered.

As de Vaca tried to open the stiff leather bag, it broke in half and one small gold coin and three larger silver coins fell onto the sand. She picked them up and turned them over in her hands, marveling as they glinted in the light.

“Look at how fresh they are,” she said.

“What about the packs?” Carson asked.

“They were half-filled with white stones like these,” de Vaca said, pointing to the whitish lumps. “There were dozens of them. The saddlebags were full of it.”

Carson picked up one of the blocks and examined it curiously. It was cool and fine-grained, the color of ivory.

“What the hell is it?” he murmured.

De Vaca picked up the other piece, hefting it curiously. “It’s heavy,” she said.

Removing his arrowhead, Carson scratched at the lump. “But it’s fairly soft. Whatever it is, it’s not rock.”

De Vaca rubbed the surface with one palm. “Why would Mondragón have risked his life carrying this stuff, when he could have been carrying extra water and ...” She stopped abruptly. “I know what this is,” she announced. “It’s meerschaum.”

“Meerschaum?” Carson asked.

“Yup. Used for pipes, carvings, works of art. It was extremely valuable back in the seventeenth century. New Mexico exported large quantities of it to New Spain. I guess Mondragón’s ‘mine’ was a meerschaum deposit.” She looked at Carson and grinned.

A stricken look crossed Carson’s face. Then he slumped back in the sand, laughing to himself, “And all this time, Nye has been searching for Mondragón’s lost gold. It never occurred to him—it never occurred to anybody—that Mondragón might have been carrying some other kind of wealth. Something practically worthless today.”

De Vaca nodded. “But back then, the value of the meerschaum in that pack might easily have been worth its weight in gold. Look at how fine the grain is. Today, it might be worth four, maybe five hundred dollars.”

“What about the coins?”

“Mondragón’s bit of spending money. The dagger is probably the only thing of real value here.”

Carson shook his head, looking back into the cave. “I suppose the mule began to wander into the rear of the cave, and he chased after it. Their combined weight must have collapsed the edge of that cliff face.”

De Vaca shook her head. “When I was down there, I found something else. There was an arrow, lodged deep in Mondragón’s breastbone.”

Carson looked at her, surprised. “It must have been the servant. So the legend was wrong: They weren’t looking for water. They had found water. But the servant decided to take the treasure for himself.”

De Vaca nodded. “Maybe Mondragón was looking for a place to hide his treasure, and didn’t see the cliff edge in the darkness. There were loose pieces of lava lying on top of the body as well as around it. The mule was killed in the fall, and the servant decided there was no point in waiting around any longer.”

“You said the saddlebags were half-full, right? He probably put Mondragón out of his misery, took what he could carry, and started back south. He would have taken the doublet as protection from the sun. Only it wasn’t enough. He got as far as Mount Dragon.”

Carson continued to stare at the cave mouth as if waiting for it to tell them the story. “So that’s the end of the Mount Dragon legend,” he said at last.

“Perhaps,” de Vaca replied. “But legends don’t die all that easily.”

They stood silently in the bright afternoon sun, staring at the coins in de Vaca’s outstretched hand. At last, she placed them carefully in the pocket of her jeans.

“I think it’s time we saddled the horses,” Carson said, picking up the dagger and shoving it into his belt. “We need to get to Lava Gate before sunset.”

Nye sat in his perch high up among the rocks, feeling the late-afternoon sun on his hat and the waves of solar radiation rising off the surrounding lava, clasping him in their stifling embrace. He raised his rifle and, using the scope, carefully scanned the southern horizon. No sign of Carson and the woman. He raised the sight, scanning again. No sign of circling vultures, either.

“They’re probably holed up somewhere, snogging.” The boy threw a rock down the slope, clattering and bouncing. “That girl’s just dead common.”

Nye grimaced. Either they’d found themselves a spring, or they were dead. Most likely the latter. Perhaps it took a while for the rot to really set in and draw the buzzards. After all, the desert was large. The birds might have to follow the scent from quite a distance. How long in this heat would it take a body to really give off an odor: four, maybe five hours?

“Game of come-catch-a-blackbird?” the boy asked, shoving a grubby handful of lava pebbles at him. “We’ll use these instead of aggies.”