Peggy Nicholson - A Serpent In Turquoise

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.

Nothing but slurps and a belch in reply.

“Better not,” Raine decided. Stop now, and in all conscience she’d have to unsaddle the jenny. By the time they got moving again, they’d have lost hours, and she was determined to reach Lagarto on the morrow. “Maybe this evening we’ll find a swimming hole.”

Preferably some spot more private than this. The paths through the canyons were the roads of the Raramuri, the doctor had told her. And this time of year the People were on the move.

Most Raramuri had two seasonal homes, he’d explained. A little cabin on the cool heights, safe from the torrid summer floods. Then another cabin—or frequently a cave—in the warm depths of the canyons, when the winter snows fell above. Some families were more nomadic—with a third shelter near good grazing for their animals, perhaps a fourth where they’d planted beans and corn.

So far Raine had been overtaken by three bands of Raramuri. First would come the men, striding on ahead; they carried massive loads on their backs, supported by the tumplines across their brown foreheads. Behind them trotted the boys, bearing burdens according to their size. The women brought up the rear. With babies tucked in their shawls, they herded the goats, a few cows if this was a prosperous family.

The black eyes of the men would slant sideways at Raine as they passed, then flick away. If they understood her greetings in Spanish they didn’t deign to respond. The boys were gleefully fascinated; they elbowed each other and whispered. The women were shy, but not austere like their husbands. They’d steal glances, then cover their mouths and giggle, ducking their scarved heads as they hurried past.

Raine was used to being a source of amusement in foreign lands. If her pale-blond, ripply hair didn’t strike the locals as bizarre enough, there was always her height. At five foot eight, she was taller than most Raramuri men, nearly a foot higher than their women. She must look like a big gawky white bird, blown down from the north. “As long as you leave ’em laughing, you’re doing fine,” her father had always advised. “It’s the ones who can’t take a joke you have to look out for.”

An hour’s walk brought them to the end of the floodplain. The canyon boxed in on both sides to rise a thousand feet straight up from the water, while the path climbed the left wall—and narrowed. “We meet any oncoming traffic here and somebody’ll have to back up,” Raine told the burro. Or dive into the river, which now tumbled over toothy rapids, some fifty feet below.

She must have sensed something subconsciously. A minute later, she could hear it clearly, the drumbeat of overtaking footfalls. Her pulse quickened to match their padding rhythm. In her experience, a runner sometimes brought bad news, even danger.