Preacher's Fortune Read online

  Esteban nodded. “That sounds like it might be true. There were many such land grants, and they covered much of the territory in Nuevo Mexico.”

  “That’s what I was thinkin’.”

  Juanita asked, “What if those men ask to see the papers pertaining to such a land grant?”

  “Why would they?” Esteban replied. “They have no interest in that. Nor would they have any right to make such a demand. We could reasonably refuse it.”

  Preacher said, “It ain’t likely to come to that. As long as we stay out of their way, I reckon they’ll stay out of ours. That professor may talk your ears off, but that’s the biggest danger.”

  “Very well, then,” Esteban said. “Let us go.”

  They got the wagons moving again. By the time they reached the ruins, Preacher saw that Powers and Worthy had a campfire going, well away from the tumbled-down buildings themselves. They didn’t want to run into any more rattlesnakes, and Preacher couldn’t blame them for that.

  “We’ll set up our own camp over there,” he said, pointing to another spot about a hundred yards away from the ruins of the old mission. There were some trees there to give them a little shade and form a windbreak of sorts.

  While the Yaquis pulled the wagons up to the place Preacher had selected as their campsite, Preacher and Esteban rode over to Professor Chambers’s camp. The professor had set up a tent for himself. He came out of it when he heard the horses and raised a hand in greeting to Preacher and Esteban.

  Preacher performed the introductions. “Professor, this is Don Esteban Alvarez of Mexico City. Don Esteban, Professor Rufus Chambers of Harvard University.”

  Esteban dismounted and shook hands with Chambers. “It is an honor to meet you, Professor,” he said. “I have heard of your great university Harvard. I myself attended the University of Mexico.”

  “Also known as the Royal and Pontifical University,” Chambers said. “The oldest institution of higher learning in the New World.”

  “You know much about Mexico?” Esteban asked.

  “I’ve studied your country quite extensively, Don Esteban, from the first Spanish colonies to the overthrowing of Spanish rule and the establishment of a sovereign Mexican government less than ten years ago. You come from a fascinating land.”

  “Gracias. I am afraid I know little by comparison about your United States of America.”

  Chambers waved a hand. “We’re upstarts compared to the Spanish. Our country has been in existence a mere fifty years or so.” He looked past Preacher and Esteban at the wagons and said, “My word! You have a lady with you. A very beautiful lady, at that.”

  “My sister,” Esteban said, his voice hardening a little. “Doña Juanita.”

  “Please accept my apologies. I meant no offense. I was just startled to see such a lovely flower out here in the middle of this wilderness.”

  “I will introduce you to her later,” Esteban said. “And to our other traveling companion, Father Hortensio.”

  “I would be most appreciative. I’m especially interested in discussing historical topics regarding the Church’s development in Mexico with the good father.”

  Preacher pointed at the wagons with his thumb. “We best go see about gettin’ camp set up.”

  “Of course.” Chambers gave them a toothy grin. “So nice to meet you, Don Esteban.”

  Esteban just nodded and walked back to the wagons with Preacher. Both of them led their horses. Under his breath, Esteban said, “The professor is a strange man.”

  “He’s a fish out o’ water, that’s for sure,” Preacher agreed.

  The Yaquis were doing their usual efficient job of setting up camp. Juanita and Father Hortensio were waiting for Preacher and Esteban. “Did they ask questions about why we are here?” Juanita wanted to know.

  Esteban shook his head. “No, the professor did not even seem concerned about that. He is very interested in talking to Father Hortensio about the Church, however.”

  The priest folded his arms across his chest. “I have nothing to say to him.”

  “You might want to be friendly,” Preacher suggested. “That’ll keep ’em from wondering about us, maybe.”

  “There will be no time for such conversation. We will be spending our days searching for the lost treasure.”

  “Well, now,” Preacher said, “I was thinkin’ that maybe you and the señorita and them Yaquis might stay here whilst Esteban and I do the searchin’.”

  Father Hortensio shook his head. “No, I have already said that this is unacceptable. I must be there when the treasure is found.”

  “What do you reckon Esteban and me are gonna do, run off with it?” Preacher felt himself getting angry, even though he tried to rein in his temper.

  Esteban moved between the mountain man and the priest. “Father,” he said quietly, “I think Preacher is right. It will be safer if you and Juanita stay here. We cannot forget that we were attacked. The men responsible for that may still be after us. This place will be easier to defend than if we were caught out in the open.”

  “That’s right,” Preacher said. “You could fort up in that old mission. You’d just have to be careful and watch out for snakes.”

  Father Hortensio sniffed and said, “Sometimes the most treacherous serpents are those who go on two legs rather than on their bellies.”

  For once, Preacher couldn’t argue with him.

  They were sitting around the remains of their campfire that night when Professor Chambers and his two guides walked over from the other camp. “Hello, there!” Chambers called. “That’s the accepted protocol, isn’t it? One should always sing out when approaching another man’s camp?”

  “If you don’t want to get shot, it’s the smart thing to do,” Preacher agreed. He was on his feet, having stood up when he heard the three men coming. His right hand rested lightly on the butt of a pistol.

  Esteban stood up, too, and waved toward the log they were using for a bench. “Join us, Señores,” he said graciously.

  Chambers stopped in front of Juanita and swept off his hat. He bent low in a bow. “Señorita,” he said respectfully. “It is my great honor to make your acquaintance.”

  “My sister,” Esteban said. “Doña Juanita Olivera Alvarez. Juanita, this is Professor Rufus Chambers.”

  “Good evening, Professor,” Juanita said as Chambers straightened from his bow. “We did not expect to encounter a man of culture and learning out here so far from civilization.”

  “Nor did I think to encounter such a charming, lovely young woman.”

  “You are bold, sir,” she said sharply.

  “My apologies, Doña Juanita. I mean no offense. We Americans are plain-spoken, though. We say what’s on our minds.”

  Esteban stepped in, saying, “And this is Father Hortensio.”

  That distracted Chambers away from Juanita. He turned to the priest and said, “A great pleasure to meet you, Father. I have many questions about the Church.”

  Father Hortensio grunted and said with ill grace, “I will try to answer your questions, Señor.”

  Worthy and Powers had sat down at the other end of the log, not making a pretense of being sociable. They had taken out pipes and were filling them from their tobacco pouches. Preacher sauntered over to join them while Chambers kept chatting with Esteban, Juanita, and Father Hortensio.

  Preacher sat down on the log, leaving a gap between him and Worthy. He took out his own pipe and pouch, and as he pushed tobacco into the pipe’s bowl, he said quietly, “You boys are a long way from home.”

  “How do you know where we come from?” Powers asked.

  “I don’t, but I figure it ain’t Nuevo Mexico. We’re all gringos here, the three of us.”

  “I’m from Missouri,” Worthy said. He seemed to be the slightly friendlier of the two. “Hardy here is from Louisiana.”

  “Louisiana, eh?” Preacher said. “I been there. I was part o’ that dustup Andy Jackson had with the British down yonder at New Orlea
ns, back in ’14.”

  That got Powers’s interest. “You was at the Battle of New Orleans?”

  “Sure enough.”

  “You must not’ve been very old.”

  “Old enough to pull a trigger,” Preacher said. “Never will forget it. We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’, but after a while there wasn’t nigh as many of ’em as there was when they started out. After a while they turned tail and run off through the briars and the brambles.” Preacher shook his head at the memory. “Hell, them redcoats was so spooked they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn’t go! We chased ’em all the way down the Mississipp’ to the Gulf, and they ain’t come back since.”

  “Yeah, it was a good fight,” Powers said. “I was there, too. We give them bloody British what for.”

  Worthy leaned closer and said, “We heard o’ you, Preacher. You’ve got quite a rep.”

  Preacher just shrugged.

  Powers asked, “How’d you come to be wanderin’ around Nuevo Mexico with a couple o’ fancy greasers and a padre?”

  Preacher’s voice was cool as he said, “It’s a long story. And that boy and his sister are fine folks, even if they are, what you call ’em, aristocrats.”

  “No offense, Preacher,” Worthy said quickly. “You got to admit, though, it’s a mite odd, a fella like you throwin’ in with the likes o’ them.”

  “No more odd than a couple of ol’ boys like you two takin’ on the job of guidin’ somebody like the professor.”

  Worthy chuckled. “Yeah, he is a funny duck, ain’t he? Pays good, though. I reckon that explains it all right there.”

  “I reckon so,” Preacher agreed.

  “So, are them Mexes payin’ you?”

  Preacher hesitated. Worthy and Powers were being a mite more curious than frontier etiquette deemed acceptable. They were pumping him for some reason. Maybe they were just genuinely curious . . . or maybe they had some other motive for their questions.

  “We just happened to be goin’ the same direction and fell in together,” he said. “They seem like good youngsters, and they could use a hand gettin’ around.”

  “What are they after up here?”

  Preacher shook his head. “You’d have to ask them. They ain’t said, and I ain’t asked.”

  “Well, it’s none of our business,” Worthy declared.

  “We’ve got our hands full just lookin’ after the professor,” Powers added.

  “Yeah, it would’ve been bad if he’d got hisself bit by them rattlers this afternoon.” Worthy gave Preacher a friendly nod. “We’re obliged to you for takin’ a hand. It’s a good thing you come along when you did.”

  Powers chuckled. “Otherwise we might never have got the rest o’ the money he owes us.”

  “Glad I could help,” Preacher said. He fetched a still-glowing stick from the fire and used it to light his pipe, then passed it along to Worthy and Powers. The three frontiersmen sat there and smoked in silence. They had already talked more than men of their ilk were accustomed to. The vast, empty distances of the frontier made a man get used to being quiet.

  It was a companionable silence the three of them shared, but that was deceptive, Preacher thought. He wasn’t sure how Powers and Worthy felt about him. . . .

  But he knew that he didn’t trust them worth a lick.

  ELEVEN

  When Chambers, Powers, and Worthy had gone back to their camp, Esteban called Preacher into the tent that he shared with Father Hortensio. The priest was still outside, talking to Juanita.

  “They will say their prayers together before Juanita retires to the wagon for the night,” Esteban explained as he lit a candle that sat on a folding table. “Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see this.”

  He took a wooden box from under his cot. It was old; Preacher could tell that with just one look. The dark wood had a sheen to it that no amount of polishing could achieve. The look came from decades of being handled. The corners were reinforced with brass caps, and a brass strap ran around the center of the box. A brass clasp held it closed. The box was fairly large, a little bigger than the dimensions of a family Bible, and Esteban handled it like it was heavy.

  He set the box on the table and reached for an old brass key on a rawhide thong that hung around his neck. He lifted the thong over his head and then bent down to use the key to unlock the clasp. Then he replaced the thong and the key around his neck.

  Preacher had a pretty good idea what he was about to see, so he wasn’t surprised when Esteban lifted the box’s lid and revealed a stack of old paper. “Don Francisco never had the pages bound into a book,” the young man said, “although he could have. Perhaps he thought that would be too vain a gesture. He left them as they were, a manuscript of his life.”

  The pages were thick vellum, heavily yellowed with age and densely covered with scrawled words in Spanish. Preacher leaned over to take a closer look. The ink had faded since Don Francisco had used it to tell his story more than a hundred years earlier. Preacher could make out some of the words, but some were too dim for him to read.

  “There’s so many pages, they can’t all be about that loot he stashed up in the mountains.”

  Esteban shook his head. “Of course not. These are memoirs that cover Don Francisco’s entire life up to the point when he wrote them. The pages about Father Alberto and the treasure of Santo Domingo are only a small section of the manuscript. In fact, it would be easy to overlook them. The only reason I found them is because I was trying to read the entire manuscript.”

  “Why’d you do that?” Preacher asked.

  “I believe I was destined to do so,” Esteban answered solemnly. “I wanted to learn about my ancestor. I learned more than I ever expected.”

  Carefully, he took the stack of pages out of the box and extracted several of them. Sitting down on a folding stool that went with the table, he went on. “I will copy those pages now, and then I want to give the copies to you, Preacher, for safekeeping.”

  “I ain’t so sure that’s a good idea,” Preacher said with a frown. “Them pages are mighty important to you. Maybe you’d best hang onto the copies.”

  “No, in case of trouble, you would be more likely to be able to preserve them than I would be. No matter what happens, in the long run the treasure must be located and returned to the Church.”

  “Seems like that means a lot to you.”

  Esteban nodded. “It does. At one time I studied for the priesthood myself. The Church was going to be my life. Eventually, I realized that no matter what I hoped, I simply did not have the calling. But still I am devoted to the Holy Mother Church. Those relics must go back where they belong.” He waved a hand in the direction of the ruins. “If their place is in a restored Mission Santo Domingo, I would gladly give my life to bring that about.”

  “Let’s hope it don’t come to that,” Preacher said.

  Esteban took sheets of paper, a pen, and an inkwell from an unlocked box that was also underneath his cot. He put them on the table and spent several minutes copying one of the pages from Don Francisco’s manuscript. Preacher watched him, noting the intent, serious look on the young man’s face and the care with which he inscribed the words on the fresh sheet of paper.

  “I’m curious about one thing,” Preacher said.

  Esteban looked up from his task. “What is that, mi amigo?”

  “How come you decided to trust me with all this? I mean, sure I came along yesterday and gave you a hand when those polecats bushwhacked you, but how’d you know I wouldn’t double-cross you and go after the treasure myself once you let me in on the secret?”

  Esteban smiled. “Why, that is the simplest question of all to answer, Preacher. I knew you would never betray us because I can see the goodness in you. It shines like a beacon in your eyes.”

  “I got goodness shinin’ in my eyes?” Preacher grunted in surprise. “Ain’t nobody ever accused me o’ that before.”

  Just as on the previous night, the Yaquis
took turns standing guard. Preacher spread his robes under a tree, and several times during the night he got up and prowled around, just to make sure no enemies were lurking. The night passed quietly, and when he awoke the next morning it was to the smell of breakfast cooking.

  After he had checked on Horse, Juanita welcomed him to the fire with a smile. “Buenos dias, Señor Preacher,” she said as she offered him a plate of tortillas and beans and a cup of coffee laced with strong chocolate. Preacher sat down on the log and dug in heartily.

  He didn’t see Esteban or Father Hortensio. “Where’s your brother and the padre?” he asked Juanita.

  “Esteban is still asleep. He worked long into the night copying the pages from Don Francisco’s manuscript. Father Hortensio has gone over to the mission to pray.”

  Preacher frowned. “He knows to keep an eye out for snakes, don’t he? Them rattlers are liable to be stirrin’ around at this time o’ day.”

  “He said that God would protect him from the serpents.”

  Preacher’s frown deepened. Faith was a mighty fine thing, but it was no substitute for being careful. There was an old saying about how God helped those who helped themselves. Preacher would have added that God watched over those who weren’t damn fools to start with.

  Some folks were funny about snakes and religion, though. When he was a boy, he had heard about people who handled snakes as part of their worshippin’. Never had made much sense to him. As far as he could see, wrappin’ a rattlesnake around your arm didn’t prove your faith in God; it just proved you were askin’ to get bit. He believed that folks had a right to worship however they saw fit . . . as long as they didn’t expect him to cuddle up to no rattlers.

  He looked over at the other camp, which was located about seventy-five yards away, and didn’t see anybody stirring around it. “Any sign o’ the professor and his pards this mornin’?”

  “I have not seen them,” Juanita said. “Perhaps they are still asleep, too.”

  Preacher nodded and went back to eating breakfast. Not everybody was used to getting up as early in the morning as he did.