“Yes. How did you know?”

Corrie didn’t answer the question, instead asking another. “What did the old man tell you about it?”

“He said that the Jornada del Muerto and all the surrounding land, all of WSMR, once belonged to the Apaches. Many centuries ago, he said, his ancestors encountered a group of friars hurrying down the Spanish trail with soldiers and mules. They attacked the pack train and pursued it into the foothills, where the Spanish fled, looking for a defensible site. They took refuge on a small peak. The Apaches surrounded them, but the Spanish soldiers kept them at bay while the mules were unloaded and their cargo placed in the mountain. The Spanish defended themselves for a while longer, but they had no water and eventually the Apaches prevailed and killed them all. A day later, the Apaches caught a boy from the pack train, carrying a letter down the Camino Real. He had escaped from the peak during the fight. The Apaches took the letter from him. The boy said it was terribly important and was written to the high chief of Spain himself. The Apaches kept the parchment, not knowing what it was but believing it to be of great significance to the Spanish. At some point many years later, one of the keepers of the parchment drew pictures on its back. Sacred pictures, he said, of a battle where Geronimo defeated his enemies. The pictures were to counteract the negative power of the written words on the other side.

“Taza went on to say that, through inheritance from his father, he became the keeper of the parchment. He was only seventeen, he said, and didn’t take it very seriously. He’d developed a youthful curiosity about the white man and his ways. He struck up a friendship with a man named James Gower, much older than he was, and the two of them spent a lot of time hunting for relics and treasure in the mountains and desert Taza knew so well. Taza had lost both his parents, and Gower became a kind of surrogate father. At some point, Taza showed Gower the document, and Gower immediately understood its significance.”

“Gower was able to read the letter?” Corrie asked.

“The language, it turns out, isn’t hard to translate. It’s the script that’s difficult. Gower apparently knew how to read that old script and was also fluent in Spanish. He may not have been educated, but he was clever.”

“Go on.”

“So the two decided to become partners and find the treasure described in the letter. As a way to seal the bond, they gave each other their most precious possessions. Taza gave Gower his medicine bundle, and Gower gave Taza his gold watch. And they cut the piece of parchment in half, each keeping a piece as a symbol of their partnership.

“Taza knew, deep down, that hunting for the treasure was wrong: the lands they scoured were sacred, and there was evil attached to the Spanish hoard. But the lure of gold was great. They established a camp at High Lonesome, obtained a mule, and began searching the Sierra Oscura for the hill mentioned in the document. They kept at it for a number of weeks … and then something unthinkable happened.

“They’d decided to split up temporarily, in order to cover more territory. When Taza returned to camp that night, Gower and the mule were still gone, searching in the foothills to the south. Then, just before dawn the next morning, Taza saw it—a sudden light brighter than the sun. There was no sound at first, he told me. The light expanded with unbelievable speed, until it was like a gigantic eye, and he described how it rose into the dark sky, shimmering with every color of the rainbow. And only then did the sound come. It was, he said, the roar of the devil—nothing else could have been so powerful, or so terrible. Moments later, a wind like a hurricane threw him to the ground. When he managed to struggle to his feet, he saw a dirty pillar rising to the heavens, spreading in all directions, dropping rain and flickering with lightning, while the mountains and deserts echoed and re-echoed with thunder.”

“Jesus,” said Corrie.

“Frightened almost out of his wits but unwilling to desert his friend, Taza waited at the camp for Gower to return. At sunset, he finally did. His skin was hanging from his body like rotten leather; he was injured, bleeding and scorched; his eyes were as red as blood. And he was raving mad. The mule, too, was half-crazed. Gower babbled about the devil, gold, and Armageddon. He lived only half an hour, Taza said, and then Taza buried him and shot the mule. He left that evil place, never to return, unfortunately overlooking the medicine bundle in his panic and haste to get away. And he never did return, or even speak of it again—until now.”

Nora stopped. The emotional toll of telling the story had drained any residual anger from her. And what she’d said clearly had the same effect on Corrie.

After a silence, Corrie said: “Can you show me the parchment?”

Nora took out her leather portfolio and removed a clear archival sleeve containing the parchment. She laid it on the desk.

For a moment, Corrie stared at it. Then she took the evidence packet from her briefcase and removed her own piece of parchment. She placed it on the table beside Nora’s. The two cut edges fit perfectly together.

Nora stared in disbelief. “My God. Where did you get that?”

“Up at the Gower kid’s place. Hidden in the henhouse.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No. I was hoping you could tell me.”

“It’s directions,” Nora told her. “Directions to the Victorio Peak treasure.”

51