Treasure of the Sun (25 page)

"Why did they want to take the soldiers?" she asked, confused.

"Oh, the padres didn't want to take them. The governor ordered the soldiers to protect the brothers, but the soldiers were nothing but convicts expelled from Mexico."

"That, at least, hasn't changed," she observed acidly. "Mexico always sends us her best." His sarcasm spoke volumes about the soldiers. "Nevertheless, the governor insisted that the padres wouldn't be safe without protection, so off they marched. The padres went from place to place, ringing their bell. When the natives gathered, the brothers would speak to them of Jesus Christ, and so their conversion was begun. The Franciscans had a hard year, but eventually a mission was built and the natives came for baptism. Crops were planted. The people were clothed. And one of the women brought a present. She brought them gold."

"Gold?" She pulled a skeptical face.

"Chunks of gold, nuggets of gold." He showed her with his hands how big the fabled gold must have been. "A pure gold, easily worked into primitive bracelets and necklaces. The natives discovered the padres liked the gold, and it meant nothing to the Indians. It was just the sun rock, plentiful in the streams of the valley."

"You sound like you believe this."

"No. . . ." He dragged his hand over his face. "Only I've heard it so many times, it's almost a history."

"That can't be all of the story," she observed, when it seemed he would say no more.

"No, that's not all. The soldiers saw the gold, and they wanted more. The padres couldn't restrain them. The soldiers behaved like savages, and the savages responded like soldiers. The Indians burned the mission and killed as many of the padres as they could find. They caught all the soldiers and roasted them over the coals of the mission until their skin bubbled and their extremities made little bonfires on their bodies."

Katherine made a noise of protest, and Damian collected himself.

"It was a horrible justice," he said solemnly. "Some of the padres escaped. One legend says five, one legend says four, but all legends say they carried with them chests loaded with gold. They fled into the mountains. The Indians chased after them. One by one the padres died there, but not before they sequestered the gold in a marked spot."

Sensitive to the inconsistencies of the tale, she insisted, "If they all died in the mountains, then who told the tale for the first time?"

"Ah, therein lies the difficulty. They say that Fray Serra welcomed the one surviving padre back to one of the missions."

"Fray Juan Estevan?"

He shrugged, his palms out flat. "The tale doesn't say, but it does say there is a record of the treasure and its hiding place."

"If that's true, then why isn't everyone combing the mission libraries for clues as to the location? Why isn't everyone tramping the mountains looking for this gold?" she demanded.

"Because men have searched for the gold down through the years. They return maimed and afraid, if they return at all."

"Tobias returned."

"You're assuming that Tobias went looking for this treasure," he pointed out.

He was right. However ludicrous the story, she believed Tobias had been interested enough to follow it to the end of the trail. "All right," she conceded. "Let's speculate that Tobias found something that told him where the gold was hidden. Where did he find this thing?"

"He went somewhere, discovered something, and returned to Monterey. He never stayed away long, so where could he have gone?" Warming to his subject, he answered his own question. "To the mission at San Juan Bautista, where I never went with him. What did he find there?"

Absorbed against her better judgment, she sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. "It has to be something that was previously hidden. Perhaps it was a puzzle he solved, or a code he deciphered. That would interest Tobias as much as a treasure. "

"That would have kept him alive, too."

She lifted her brows, startled by his somber reflection. "What do you mean?"

"No one believes in the treasure, but there are stories about its hiding place. They say there are traps set everywhere."

"If there are traps, they're only for thieves. The Franciscan brothers would know how to retrieve the treasure without injury, and so would any person who had access to the records of the rightful owners."

"Not ... necessarily. There's another part of the tale that keeps a lot of the potential treasure hunters at bay."

"For someone who denies the truth of these tales so stoutly, you know an incredible amount about them." She smiled, entertained by the incongruity.

He didn't smile back; his pensive aspect sobered her. "I was only one of the youths who listened as the vaqueros told their ghost tales, but I alone stayed when the fire died. When the other children were asleep, when the moon had set and the cool air crept around and only red embers remained, I was there. There was one old man-dear God, he was old. No teeth, only one leg, hands crumpled with pain, but everyone treated Jaime with respect."

"Because. . . ."

"Because when he was a young man, he saw the padre who returned from the Sacramento Valley."

She blinked. "Did you believe him? r d love to meet this Jaime."

"Unfortunately, my skeptical one, he's been dead these ten years." He crossed himself. "May he rest in peace."

"It would have been interesting to speak to him." Her eyes were thoughtful. "If nothing else, it would have been like talking to an oracle."

"Interesting is not the word I would apply. Marvelous. Terrifying. Mesmerizing. You see, he was one of an expedition of Indian renegades who slipped away from the mission and tried to retrieve the treasure."

"Chasing after a legend," she said, a bite in her voice. "What an adventure."

"An adventure that scarred his whole life, changed him from a strong young man to a cowed old one. He prayed constantly and feared death as no one should."

Puzzled, frowning, she asked, "What happened to the renegades?"

"You must understand that in those days the padres held much power. Once converted, the Indians weren't allowed to leave the missions. If they escaped they were beaten, mutilated, perhaps hanged."

"By the Franciscans?" she asked, horrified.

"Indeed. The padres believed that, if the Indians were allowed to return to their wild state, they would slip into sin once more. The punishments were a way of saving their souls." His face lost all expression as he added, "There was the profitable consideration, too. If the Indians ran away, there was no one to work the fields and the cattle. The missions were lucrative organizations."

Interested and appalled, she asked, "So this vaquero, this Jaime, risked his life by leaving to pursue the treasure?"

"In more ways than one. Misfortune dogged the expatriates from their first steps into the Sierra de Gavilan. Injuries, missteps, wrong turnings; Jaime recounted them in a most dramatic way. At night, the wind kept them cowering in their blankets. It moaned like a man in pain. By day, the scream of the panther followed them. At least, they thought it was a panther, although they never saw it. The fog froze their bones as they groped their way up the mountain. It followed on Jaime's back as he crawled down."

Beneath the spell of Damian's deep voice, the bright morning dimmed and her incredulity failed her. It seemed as if the fog entered the bedroom windows and crept around them, and she could hear noises in the house-a creaking as the floor settled, a sigh as the breeze leaked through the narrow shutters. Trying to warm herself, she hugged her waist. "What happened to his companions?"

''They all died. They found the cave, and it was just a hole in the mountain. There was room for one man at a time to wiggle through, and their leader insisted on going in first. His accomplices waited outside, but he never returned. They feared he'd found another way out, and one by one they went in. Their leader was gone, as they suspected, yet the treasure remained gold and holy vessels from the mission. They snatched at it like boys at a stick of candy, and suffered for their greed."

"This is silly," she whispered to herself as she reached down and pulled the blankets up.

"One by one the Indians were struck down. One man was impaled, one man beheaded. Jaime was smashed, his leg caught beneath a boulder. He had to amputate his own foot to escape. To the end of his days, he remained convinced he had been spared so he could tell his story and warn off prospective treasure hunters. Such ghostly stories are nonsense, yet when night falls, nonsense becomes truth." He shook his head. "This assailant who attacked you in the night frightens me for more reasons than you can imagine."

Shaking off the spell of fear Damian had woven about her, she snapped, "I'm not pleased about it, myself."

"Do you understand what it means?" he insisted.

She could think of many things that it meant, but none, she suspected, such as he thought. She shook her head.

"It means I'm paying for my youthful fascination with the treasure. It means we'll have to seek it ourselves."

"What?" She bounced out of the blankets. "What do you mean? We don't want that treasure."

"No, but someone does. Until it's found or irrevocably proved to be a myth, our lives will be a misery."

"All the more reason for me to leave," she answered.

"Ah." Squinting one eye, he pulled a long face. "You'd abandon me here, facing a threat such as this?"

"No one would threaten 'YOU," she assured him. "You're a respected member in the community, and a man who ably demonstrated his physical abilities just last week during the fiesta. No one would-"

"Tobias had his throat slashed in the street."

Damian didn't add that a knife placed in his own back would be sufficiently disabling. He didn't need to.

Katherine transferred her attention out the window until his hand on her shoulder pushed her backward. She stiffened, but he only examined her bandage. Working with care, he peeled the soaked linen back and exposed the cut. "The edges have pulled together nicely. You'll hardly have a scar."

He left the bed to collect the ointment, and she watched him with helpless fascination. "Good."

He opened the jar. "When were you planning to go?"

"As soon as I had word from the captain that the ship was sailing." She glared at him and asked with poisonous sweetness, "When would that have been, Don Damian?"

Wiping the wound with a clean cloth, he murmured, "I beg your pardon?"

"How innocently you act. I know you bribed the captain to refrain from sailing until you could come to Monterey."

"Not I. That was my father. My wise-" his hand pressed firmly on her neck "-noble father who knew better than you the proper courtesy when leaving a sweetheart." Holding her hostage with his hand, he dared her to challenge his statement.

She found her courage failed her, so she folded her lips tightly together. Silent as he spread the ointment and bound it with fresh bandages, she resisted when he leaned close to kiss her.

"How can you think of leaving me?" he whispered.

She held her arm stiff against his neck, but that didn't stop his hands from kneading her shoulders or close her ears to his appeal. "I am not an exploiter of women, and together we are more than we are apart."

"This can't be love," she protested, ignoring the comfort he gave her; she concentrated only on maintaining the tension on her blocking arm.

"Perhaps not." His husky whisper seduced her. "Perhaps we're not perfect now, but we have something that deserves to be explored."

"It's nothing but trouble." But her contentiousness was weakening, as was her arm.

"You can't run away from trouble. It's not in your nature." His eyes glowed, and she knew he felt the undertow, too. If he was brave enough to let it pull him along, who was she to be faint of heart?

"No, it's not in my nature," she agreed. "Then you'll marry me?"

Absolutely not, she thought privately, but aloud she said, "I'll stay and see."

Chapter 12

Married!

She never should have loosened her arm and let him lie on top of her. She certainly never should have let him kiss her.

Married!

Those straight eyebrows of his were indicative of something.

They were indicative of the devil's own temptation, and she would have been wise to pay attention. If she'd paid attention, she'd be much happier today.