Dead Reckoning (8 page)

Ramon thought he must be the only one in Guajolote to remember that Sister Petra was, after all, an Anglo. Yes, she spoke Spanish perfectly, but she had green eyes, for heaven's sake. Why was this crazy Anglo to be taken so seriously? She was not going to save Guajolote. The Anglos were going to get it, and people were going to be thrown out of their homes. Why was he the only one who could see that?

Sister Petra's claim had thrown Guajolote into turmoil, and no one had gotten more excited than Ramon's father. “I will send Ramon with you to find the cross on the mountain!” he had blurted. “Ramon is going to be a priest, you know. He will be your disciple, Sister Petra! You can use my burro!”

Now he was farther from home than he had ever been—a day's walk north, approaching the village of Chacon. Sister Petra had interpreted her dream to mean that she was to go to one of the hills on which the
penitentes
held their mock crucifixions every Easter. The nearest
penitente
chapter was in Chacon, and so that was where Sister Petra had decided to begin her search.

As he got his first glimpse of the village, Ramon simply could not take the pace any longer. “Sister Petra,” he said. “Can we slow down now? We are almost there.”

She was several steps ahead of Ramon and the burro, and she stopped to let them catch up, glaring at him with those green Anglo eyes. “You have been complaining since the moment we started yesterday,” she snapped.

“But I have a cramp right here,” he said, putting a hand over his stomach.

“You shouldn't have eaten so much breakfast this morning. You knew we were going to have to walk.”

“We haven't been walking. We've been trotting like coyotes.”

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“I am more than twice your age. You should be able to keep up with me.”

“I can keep up with you. I just don't want to.”

Petra put her hands on her hips and scowled. “You don't believe in what I'm doing, do you?”

“No. What do you think you're going to find when you get to this cross on this mountain?”

“I don't know. I just know that God has instructed me to find it.”

Ramon scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“If you prefer, I can send you back to Guajolote right now,” Petra warned. “You've only been slowing me down.”

The thought of returning in ridicule quickly sobered Ramon. His father would not be happy, and his friends would heckle him for days. It was better to let the excitement die down and return in a week or so. “All right, I'm sorry,” he said.

“Throw that
disciplina
away,” Petra ordered. “Juan will think you have it to make fun of him.”

They proceeded into the village, Petra going directly to the shop of Juan Hidalgo, the carpenter in Chacon, and the
hermano mayor
of the
penitentes
there.

“Hello, Brother Juan,” she said, finding him around the back of his shop.

Juan stopped sawing the cottonwood beam he was fashioning into an axle for his
carreta
and looked over his shoulder. “Sister Petra!” he said, his eyebrows gathering droplets of sweat into the creases of his forehead. He lay his saw down and came forward to take Petra's hand in his. Sawdust clung to his hands and his sleeves, and he dropped to one knee and bowed before the sister. “What brings you to Chacon?” he asked.

“I have prayed a novena to save our village,” Petra said, “and God spoke to me.”

Juan gasped and seemed so excited that he didn't even notice young Ramon del Bosque leading the burro around the corner of the adobe. “What did God say to you?”

“He said, ‘The cross awaits you on the mountainside.'”

Juan touched the points of the cross on his forehead and body. “Do you think the cross on the mountain means our
Calvario
where we stand the cross during Holy Week?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I am just beginning my search.”

Juan nodded, smiling at the boy with the burro. “Who is this young fellow with you?”

Petra fought the urge to tell Juan that this young fellow was a pain in the neck sent by God to test her. “This is Ramon. His father sent him to help me search.”

The carpenter put his hand on the boy's shoulder. “You should be proud. Not every young boy like you gets to go on such an adventure. I only wish I could go with you, but I have the people to take care of here.”

Ramon drew away uncertainly from the carpenter. In Guajolote there were no
penitentes,
and he only knew what he had heard. He knew it was true that during most of the year, the brotherhoods accomplished charity works in their villages, helping those in need, counseling those who suffered. They lived normal lives, doing Christian works.

But during Holy Week, the
penitentes
would allow a
sangrador
to cut slashes across their backs with a knife. They would whip themselves with the
disciplina
made of yucca fibers, causing blood to flow from the knife wounds. On Good Friday, some of them would carry huge wooden crosses to the
Calvario.
And, every year, one would be chosen to crucify. His brothers would tie him to a cross and raise it into place, leaving him there until he lost consciousness. Ramon had even heard that some of the
penitente
chapters used real nails instead of rope, and that some men had died on the cross.

He looked at the hand on his shoulder and didn't see any nail scars through the sawdust but still felt uneasy enough to pull away.

“Which is the hill that your
morada
uses as its
Calvario
?” Sister Petra asked. She was anxious to see her quest through, to save her village, and to please her god.

Juan turned on Ramon and glared at him. “I will take you to it, but you—young man—you must promise never to tell anyone which hill we use. It is getting harder for us to keep outsiders away. They want to come and watch us perform the penance—especially the
Americanos.
They think we are some sort of
locos.
”

“He won't tell anybody,” Sister Petra promised. “I will make sure of that.”

Ramon resented Petra's speaking for him, and he smirked at her. “I won't tell,” he said to the carpenter.

They tied the burro at a water trough made of a hollowed-out log and followed a well-worn trail into the foothills. Sister Petra seemed excited, walking faster than ever. The carpenter matched her pace, and Ramon lagged only a few strides behind. He might have stayed in Chacon with the burro, but he was curious about the
Calvario,
where men hung from crosses. Perhaps the story of it would silence the jeers of his friends for a while when he got back to Guajolote.

“This is the place,” Juan Hidalgo said, gesturing to the hill.

Petra paused at the bottom to catch her breath, then scrambled up the trail to the summit. When Ramon reached the top of the little mountain, he found the nun on her knees. He turned away from her and looked back toward Chacon. He couldn't see the village. The
Calvario
was secluded, so that the ritual might remain hidden from outsiders.

Mopping his sleeve across his brow, he searched the ground for signs of blood, maybe a nail or a crown of thorns or something. He felt the carpenter looking at him and met the pleasant gaze of Juan Hidalgo. The
penitente
motioned toward a small piñon tree near the summit, and Ramon joined him in its shadow, sitting side by side on the shaded rocks. They waited in silence only a couple of minutes, then heard Petra shuffling through the gravel.

“This is not the place,” the nun said.

Juan rose from the shade of the scrubby tree, obviously disappointed. “Are you sure? If you want, I will build a cross and get the brothers to help me raise it here. Didn't the voice of God tell you to seek the cross?”

“It wouldn't do any good,” Petra said. She sighed and looked northward. “This is not the place.”

Juan felt deeply disappointed. “Where will you go now?”

“To the north,” Petra said. “I feel that is the way to go. I feel the mountain is higher. I will search among the brotherhoods farther north, and higher up. I think that is what God wants me to do.”

Ramon scrambled to his feet and stared at the nun. “But how far are you going?” he asked. “How long is this going to take?”

She shrugged. “Who can say? You can go back home if you want to, Ramon. But I am going to take your father's burro with me.” She walked past the carpenter and tramped down the trail back toward the village.

Juan chuckled. “You should go with her, Ramon. She is going to go high up into the mountains where it will be cool. I bet you are going to see a lot of new things you have never seen before. It will be an adventure to shape the rest of your life.”

Ramon shook his head and looked up at the rising flanks of the Sangre de Cristos. “She thinks she is going to keep the Ojo de los Brazos grant from being sold,” he said. “I don't know what she expects to find up there.”

“God speaks to her. I believe it. She might need you, Ramon. Are you going to go with her?”

Ramon shrugged, his shoulders pushing out a sigh as they fell. “I guess so. A little farther, anyway.”

The carpenter slapped the boy on the back. “You are going to see something wonderful, Ramon. Now hurry up before she leaves without you.”

Ten

Clarence could hear his father talking: “Good God, boy! If I'd have been as naive as you in California … irresponsible is what it is … most foolhardy thing I ever heard of…” The old forty-niner would have lectured for hours.

But as Clarence stared at the Denver and Rio Grande schedule posted in the depot, he knew he was not going to buy a ticket. He was not going to ride the rails south, toward New Mexico and the Ojo de los Brazos grant. He still intended to get there sooner or later, but it didn't feel right going just now. Not with May Tremaine taking a different trail west. And, anyway, Clarence's father wasn't looking over his shoulder here. He could do anything he wanted.

He had seen Deacon Dee Hassard and several of the men from the pilgrim camp hawking wagon loads of goods early this morning. They had sold everything, bought burros and pack saddles, and trailed out of town. They were taking the road into the mountains, pushing toward the mining camps, and ultimately into unsettled lands.

Clarence didn't care what his father would say. All he knew was that he had left May too hastily. Some people called them fanatics, after all. He was responsible for whatever happened to her while she was with them. He had to be sure.

He gripped the Remington rifle by the octagonal barrel, resting the breech across his shoulder. Stooping, he grabbed his traveling bag and marched out of the depot. He felt like he ought to run in order to catch up, but he settled for a fast walk. By the time he reached the edge of town, he was only slightly winded, and just getting his legs warmed up.

The grade started to pitch uphill along Clear Creek, but Clarence only strode longer. He stopped when he reached the former campground of the Church of the Weeping Virgin, took off his heavy coat, and put it in his bag.

Only ashes shifted where last night the pilgrims had sat mending and making things. The silence and emptiness made the Vermonter anxious to catch up, so he picked up his things and stepped briskly up the path.

The trail veered onto the Georgetown Road. Clarence could see footprints and burro tracks in the dirt. He figured he would catch them in camp at Golden. They wouldn't try to get too far the first day.

He climbed as the day warmed, stopping occasionally to look eastward, across the plains. He had hunted the Eastern mountains, taken in the scenery from various promontories. But this vista was unlike anything he had ever seen. The country was so big here, the view so long through the thin air. A body could see miles and miles of wide-open range, nothing like the shrinking pockets of dark forest wilderness back east.

Two days ago he had been a buffalo skinner in a treeless infinity of rolling grass. Now he was climbing ever higher among scattered pines and rocky passes. If he had known about this place, he would have come long ago, with or without his damned trust fund. The air here was so fine that a body could almost live on it like fuel.

When he approached Golden in the early afternoon, he sensed clouds gathering in the pass. By the time he reached the town, rain was falling in sheets. He took refuge in a wagon-yard barn and ate some grub he had packed for the day's hike.

“Goin' prospectin'?” the man in the barn asked, himself taking a break from the weather.

“No,” Clarence answered. “I'm trying to catch up to a party of pilgrims. I'm going to help guide them across the mountains.”

“They passed through town a couple of hours ago. Their guide traded mules with me. Said they was gonna try to get to Idaho Springs today.”

“How far is that?” Clarence asked, holding his tin cup in the rain to collect some water.

“Better part of twenty miles.”

Clarence's eyes bulged as he turned to the stable man. “That far?”

“That guide was hell-bent on coverin' some ground today.”

The Vermonter stood immediately, put on his hat, and buttoned the oilskin coat harboring his fortune. “I'd better cover some myself then.” He picked up his Remington and stepped toward the downpour cascading from the eaves of the barn. “You wouldn't have a ten-dollar horse for sale, would you?” he said, thinking of the miles that lay ahead.

“Got a three-year-old. Last year's bronc. He's gentled down right nice since we cut him. You won't get him for ten dollars, though.”

All Clarence could think of, as he rode his new twelve-dollar mount up the slippery road, was poor May's feet. How was she going to walk twenty miles today with those blisters? He only hoped they would let her ride a burro part of the way, otherwise she would be miserable. She didn't even have a slicker to turn the rain.