Dead Reckoning (12 page)

Ramon looked away, feeling ashamed now for some reason.

“Do something for me if you will,” Petra said.

“What, Sister?”

“Tonight, pray for direction. God hears all voices. If you pray, you will know what to do.”

Ramon made a furrow in the dusty floor with his toe. It was not so much to ask for. Petra's style was to influence by example, not by directive. If she was coming right out and asking him to say a prayer, she must want him badly to do it. It wouldn't hurt anything.

“All right,” he said. “I will.”

Fourteen

Petra woke when she sensed the morning light struggling through the parchment and animal-skin window coverings. She hadn't slept past dawn the whole trip, and she felt more than a little indolent for letting it happen today.

As she put on her shoes, she thought about waking Ramon and having him pack their things on the burro. But she had nowhere to go just yet. Perhaps it was better to let the boy sleep a while this morning. Maybe she could borrow some eggs or cheese and make Ramon a big breakfast.

She closed the pine door quietly behind her as she stepped out into the gray light of early morning. The sun had not yet risen over the Sangre de Cristos, far across the valley. She stepped around the corner of the adobe to take in the view of the basin and her eyes pulled northward.

The first ray of sun suddenly streaked through a faraway mountain pass and fell on a patch of whiteness above the village. It seemed to flare, like the burning bush on the mountainside. A body of motion took form around it, and Petra made out a rider on a white mule leading a party of men toward the village.

Something made her shiver, and she took a step toward the travelers. She counted them as they came nearer. There were seven men, each riding a horse or mule. A pack train of four mules walked among them. A couple of the beasts carried large black boxes such as Petra had never seen. She met the party beyond the outskirts of the town, and the riders pulled up their mounts to converse.

“Buenos dias,”
the bearded man on the white mule said. He looked wise for his years, gentlemanly. His accent was terrible.

“Buenos dias,”
Petra answered.

“Do you speak English?” the rider asked, his eyebrows rising hopefully.

“I ought to,” Petra said. “I grew up in Kentucky.”

The man smiled, swung down from the handsome white mule, and held his hand out to Petra. “Forgive me. I mistook you for one of the locals.”

“I'm just a visitor here,” Petra said, taking his hand.

“This is the village of Del Norte, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“I'm William Henry Jackson, chief photographer of the U.S. Geological Survey. This is the photographic party.” He gestured toward his men.

Petra nodded at the riders, who tipped their hats. “I'm Sister Petra, of the Loretto convent in Santa Fe.”

Jackson's eyes widened. “You're a nun?”

“Yes.”

“What brings you here from Santa Fe?”

“I'm searching for a cross on a mountain.”

Jackson smiled, his eyes twinkling. “You've seen my photograph.”

“Pardon?” Petra said.

“I'm the one who made the photograph of the cross. It was on last year's expedition.”

Petra felt her heart flutter. “You know of a cross on a mountain?” she asked.

The photographer wilted. “You haven't seen the photograph?”

“No.”

“But you've heard of the mountain?”

“I've been told to seek the cross on the mountain. Could you tell me how to get to it?”

Jackson scratched the back of his head, tipping his hat down over his forehead. “Well, sure, but … What do you want to go there for? Some sort of pilgrimage?”

Petra's breath was coming in anxious gasps, but she was trying to appear calm. “I've been sent there.”

“By whom?”

“God.”

Jackson stifled a smirk when he read the conviction in the nun's eyes. “It's not an easy climb, Sister. It's in rough country, and you can only see the cross by climbing above the timberline.”

“Who put it there?” Petra asked, trying to envision a cross on the high, barren slopes.

“
Put
it there?” Jackson shifted his eyes to his men around him.

“Yes. How did they get it so high up on the mountain?”

The photographer folded his arms across his chest and cocked one hip, as if posing for one of his own cameras. “Sister, what do you know about this cross?”

“Only what God has told me: that it awaits me on the mountainside.” Her patience was teetering, but she paced herself.

“The cross I'm talking about was put there by God, Sister. It stands a good thousand feet tall. It's made of snow packed into crevices in the mountainside. I wish I had a print of my photograph to show you, but I gave the last one away in Fairplay.”

Petra had raised her palms to her cheeks and was staring with her mouth open. This was better than the time Bishop Lamy told her the meaning of
Sangre de Cristo.
She said nothing for a moment, wanting to taste the glory. Her heart was thumping in her chest, causing her to tremble. “How do I get there?” she finally asked.

Jackson pointed over his shoulder. “Well, you go north from here, up the San Luis, and over Poncha Pass. Drop into the Arkansas Valley and go upstream to Tennessee Pass. Now, there's an old Indian trail leading from Tennessee Pass to the base of Notch Mountain. Climb to the Notch Mountain Divide just south of the summit. You go above the timberline, and when you get to the top of the divide, you see the cross. That is, if it's not too cloudy up there.”

Petra smiled, her eyes glistening. “How far is it from here?”

“If you came from Sante Fe, I'd say you're about halfway there. But it won't be easy, Sister. You'd better think twice about it. No white woman has ever been there. No woman at all, as far as I know. We had a devil of a time climbing there last year. Two helpers and I had to carry forty-pound packs to get the photographic equipment to the divide. It was too rough for the mules.”

Petra waved his warnings away with a brush of her hand. “If you can make it with forty pounds on your back, I can surely succeed. I go with the strength of God. Now”—she clasped her hands before her and smiled at the messenger—“tell me the way again. Tell me what the cross looks like.”

*   *   *

Ramon stepped from the dusty earthen house and rubbed his eyes. What was the nun up to this morning? Why hadn't she wakened him? He squinted as he searched the winding dirt streets, the cottonwoods along the river. His eyes swept across the San Luis Valley, past the glare of the rising sun, and northward, where they locked in on a group of men and beasts.

There she was! Who were those men she was with? She was listening intently to one of them, her hands folded before her as if in prayer.

The man in front of her wore a beard, neatly trimmed, and gestured with his hands a great deal. He was describing something big—as big as a mountainside. His palms swept the morning air like the brushes of a reckless painter. Now he made fists, flung them open like bursting shells. Facing the nun, he put his feet together and leaned as far back as he could without falling. His arms rose at his side, straight and stiff as timbers. They leveled out, made a perfect cross of his body, then kept lifting, slowly, until his palms had risen just above his shoulders.

Sister Petra bounced on her toes like a little girl, lunged at the man, and hugged him under his uplifted arms.

Fifteen

The drunker he stayed, the meaner he felt, and Charlie Holt liked the way the anger seethed. He knew that if he sobered up he might lose his resolve, quit the search for his runaway wife, go back to Kansas to be laughed at.

But if he stayed primed, he would have purpose. Maybe he would find her with another man. What would he do then? He had a notion. Maybe he would do some killing and turn outlaw. The thought appealed to him here in the saloon across from the shoe store. He saw it in hazy glimpses, like chapters of a dime novel he might have read once. There were gunshots, dead bodies, lawmen coming after him. Women who courted danger would open their doors. Men would stare in fear at his poster. Yes, Charlie Holt would have his own poster.

It had been easy to trail May this far. She was the kind of woman who caused the gazes of men to linger over her as she walked away. She had been remembered by the stage driver who gave her a ride into town in the middle of the night, the ticket agent who sold her the fare to Denver, the conductor who saw her enter the wagon yard near the depot.

Charlie had arrived in Denver yesterday, found the wagon yard she had stayed in a couple of nights. The man seemed nervous talking about her but said she had worked at a shoe shop a few blocks away the last he heard.

Charlie had been sober this morning when he found the shoe shop. Sober and weak of will; unsure of his ability to handle an unpredictable woman. He had sat in the saloon across the street for three hours now, watching the shoe store through the grimy glass. He was ready. Whiskey had stoked a fire in his belly. To hell with that farm. This could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

He remembered something his father had told him: “The true mark of a man lies in his ability to profit from his misfortunes.” That was before his father died and his mother married that mean bastard with the hog farm.

He got up suddenly, pushing the chair out hard behind him. He slipped the half-full pint bottle into his breast pocket, slapped his dirty farmer's hat on, and strode for the door. The fire in his belly roared like a furnace. It was time for Charlie Holt to make some profit from the misfortune brought upon him by marriage to the faithless May Tremaine.

Stepping long across the street, Holt came to the door of the shoe shop and burst in, causing a cowbell on the transom to clang.

The cobbler glanced up as a customer counted coins and dropped them into his waiting palm. “Thanks,” the cobbler said, casting the coins into a cigar box, which he closed and placed under his sales counter. “What can I do for you?” he asked, turning to Holt.

Charlie waited until the customer had left, then stepped up to the counter. “I'm lookin' for May Holt—or May Tremaine—whatever she's callin' herself.”

The cobbler's smile dropped. “She don't work here no more.”

“Where'd she go?” Hold demanded.

“Now, look here,” the cobbler said. “Who are you to bust into my shop and start askin' questions?”

“Name's Charlie Holt. I'm her husband.”

The cobbler's eyes flashed once, then shifted nervously. “She never said she had no husband. I never heard nothin' ‘bout no husband.”

Holt sighed impatiently. Talking of May made all the men whose paths she had crossed turn nervous. He had his ideas as to why. “Just tell me where she went.”

“Didn't show up for work one day. Hell if I know why. Next day I seen her with them pilgrims when they come into town to sell their wagons.”

“Pilgrims?”

“Yeah, a bunch of fanatics called the Church of the Weeping Virgin. They put a pack string together and headed west toward Georgetown. Goin' over to the West Slope, I heard.”

Holt sneered, but felt empowered by the news. He touched his brim and started to turn away.

“You want her things?” the cobbler asked.

“What things?”

“She left a shawl and a hairbrush and some other things.”

Holt grabbed his lapels and glared. “She
stayed
here?”

The cobbler swallowed, sweat beading his brow. “Well, why not? Had to stay somewhere. I'll go get her things.”

When the shoe man stepped into the back room, Charlie Holt felt an impulse sweep him up and knew he had to act on it or lose it forever. He reached over the counter and felt for the cigar box. Finding it, he lifted it into view, placing it on the counter. He flipped the lid quietly, his heart thrilling. He took the paper money first, wadding it in his pants pocket. Then he plucked a few gold coins, wincing at a metallic chink they made in his palm. He heard footsteps, closed the box, slipped it back under the counter.

“Don't know why she didn't come back for it,” the cobbler said as he returned. He saw the man straighten and noticed the wild look in his eyes, mistaking it for anger.

Charlie closed his hand around the gold and crossed his arms, shoving both fists under his armpits. “Oh, hell, just keep that shit,” he said. “Like you say, if she didn't come back for it, that's her own damn fault.”

The cobbler felt awkward holding the handful of women's articles. He shoved them into his left hand and held his right over the counter. “Well, good luck findin' her,” he said.

Charlie Holt felt several gold pieces in his right fist. He curled his lip and hissed at the cobbler with disdain. “Hell with her. I'm goin' back to Kansas.” Turning toward the door, he pushed the fist into his pocket. It would be a good idea to get out of town about now.

Sixteen

Dee Hassard slung his blanket into the pine branches and tripped across a body in the dark. “Wake up!” he shouted.

A dream snapped in Clarence Philbrick's mind, and he sat up without thinking, his hand falling on the breech of his Remington.

“She came back!” Hassard was shouting. He stumbled shoulder-first into a bank of orange embers, rolling quickly away, regaining his feet. “Praise God, she spoke to me again!”

Elder Hopewell stirred with the pilgrims, annoyed at the disturbance of his much-needed rest. Yesterday they had crossed the Great Divide in a freezing rain by a mountain pass that stood above the timberline. His first look at the West Slope had been a frightening one, for he could see only bare rock below him in the storm. They had since descended into a deep valley of verdant grandeur, waterfalls plunging from rocky places in ribbons of froth. Hassard had pushed the party hard—too hard, Hopewell thought.