Part 3
tee hee "You were going to go slow." Their eyes were locked through the looking glass.
"Yeah, but the truck didn’t have any brakes. That was quite a ride down that narrow mountain road."
"Not as bad as the car ride into the ditch." She turned her head, smiling directly into his eyes, and raised a hand to capture his.
. . .
(Las Palomas) The American couple sat in the shade of a huge cacti to regroup and get their act together. Heat waves rose from the hood of the flatbed truck. Betty had pulled the Dodge as far into the shade as she dared. She had been using air-conditioning and was fresh as a desert flower after a shower.
Bill could feel grit between his teeth and took a hit of water from the canteen. He worried, "I guess I’m paranoid. I just don’t trust all this paperwork."
"We could stash the stuff here until we test how well the papers work?"
"You mean, just our stuff? . . . Not a bad idea. I’d feel better about it."
It took them an hour to cover the treasure with caliche soil and build a rock pyramid, as a marker, well away from the actual site. Driving into Las Palomas, they chose parking just off the main street. It was also near the border crossing — everything in Palomas is close to every other feature, being only eight blocks long.
"The revenuer has to spot us, because we don’t know what he looks like," Betty decided, "but our truck is easy to see."
"I’d like to get a city cop, or somebody, to watch it for us while we eat and look around, like we did in Ciudad Chihuahua." Addressing a man on the street, "¿Perdone, Señor, donde es el police?"
"¡Monde que!" the fellow looked confused.
"Me pesa. ¿Donde es la policía, por favor?" They were directed to the policeman, having his lunch in a nearby cafe. With the help of a waitress, their situation was explained and the papers displayed. The gendarme would be paid extra for his trouble and was happy to comply. He sent for a buddy so that they could watch one another, watching the exotic cargo.
The couple was in the middle of tortillas and beans when a clean-cut fellow came to smile down on them. Bill choked on a bean and coughed into a napkin. According to their instructions, he asked, "May we see your assignment order? Can’t be too careful." The name thereon was the same as he had introduced himself, Frank Armandérez.
"The truck’s on the side street over there." Betty pointed. As they called for their check, the man left to examine the cargo. She hissed at Bill, "He ain’t James Bond."
"I noticed. Glad you didn’t call it to his attention. He is, in reality, Madison Avenue man, henchman of the dreaded Goldfinger." Bill was thoughtful, "I’m afraid not to turn over the truck to him."
"I know it. Let’s just hand over the stuff and get out of here."
"Do you want to live forever?"
"Darn straight . . . but he’s over there talking to those cops. They could surely take care of him if we blew the whistle on him."
"Okay, I won’t confront him. I’ll talk directly to the cops."
The tourists walked casually across the street, not yet ready to alarm anyone. A pair of outrageously costumed prostitutes judged the lovely gringa and rejected Bill as a prospect. Betty went to the Dodge and unlocked a door.
Bill strode up to a policeman, the one with best English. "Señor policeman, this man is an evil criminal. He is not, as he claims to be, a federal . . ." and the man suddenly shoved Bill into the cop, nearly knocking them over. Bill turned to see that the bad person had them covered with a pistol.
"So, you simple gringo, you are not so clever. Give me the keys to this truck, now !" The gringo and two uniformed Mexican officers stood helpless, gaping past their captor at Betty as she crept to within three feet of the gangster. She was manipulating levers on the automatic rifle. fiddle fiddle
"Come on, you Anglo garbage, hand over the keys." he gestured with his weapon. Betty gave up, remembering which lever was what, and grasped the operating handle to manually operate the action. The thing was locked, because of one of the levers. yank yank She tried to free it.
"I don’t have all day." He cocked the hammer for emphasis and pointed his gun between Bill’s eyes.
Betty checked if the magazine was seated. push push She thought maybe her rifle would work anyway. She pointed it between the guy’s shoulder blades and pulled the trigger. pull pull Nothing happened.
"You are dead, buddy." He took careful aim, "I can search your body just as well." Betty grasped the useless piece of military junk by the heat guard and swung it like a ball bat as hard as she could.
All hell broke loose. The outlaw’s pistol went off, drilling a hole in the brim of Bill’s hillbilly hat. Betty’s club fired a three-round burst into left field. Two policemen dove for the ground, fumbling for their service revolvers. The bad guy crumpled to the ground with his head slightly crooked.
"Wish I had my Ruger." Betty complained as she walked away to replace the weapon in the car.
Bill retrieved the pistol, "Gee, I always wanted a Beretta but couldn’t afford one."
The couple hung around for two days while the gears of two governments produced a new James Bond. The original was never found. In such a small town, Betty and Bill were awarded immediate notoriety, she as La Heroína, and Bill as hombre hole-in-the-hat. They ferried their private contraband across the border under the smiling, appreciative protection of the border authorities.
Just north of Columbus, New Mexico, at an abandoned airport, they buried their stash under a 1915-vintage JN4, Jenny airplane. They returned to Las Palomas to await their government contact.
Betty had just refused a third helping of tamales. "We need a place to stay tonight." she raised her voice to overcome a Mexican Muzak.
"What say?" Bill shouted over the ghetto blaster, pumping out mucho watts per channel.
The attentive cafe owner had heard, "Pardon, Señora, we have one bed in the back. One bed okay?" he seemed hopeful to please her.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, the couple agreed, "Si, Señor, gracias muchas." The man happily refused payment. Bill placed a couple dollars on the table, assuring the owner that it was for the young woman who works so hard as waitress.
The woman lay in the dark as Bill entered their tiny one-room house. He could barely see but could tell she wore her long, teddy bear T-shirt. That is the garment she preferred when she didn’t mind being seduced.
"This is a nice bed." Betty patted the clean mattress tick, "Crawl in beside me."
He eyed the bed suspiciously, "You mean, lie on top of you. There isn’t room beside you."
. . .
Betty was the first to awake. She found herself in fetal position with her face touching Bill’s shoulder. (My good old man.) With some effort, she threw her feet to the floor. (Already a good day.) She looked fondly over her shoulder and muttered, so not to awake him, "I love you, hombre hole-in-the-hat." She was good at flipping her tongue at the hard palate for the -r in hombre.
"I heard that." he mumbled in reply. grurf yawn He tried to arise and failed. Crawling in her direction, he sat alongside. His arm went around her, and he looked down at her smiling face. "Hey, this is my seventieth birthday — you have to do anything I want today."
There was nothing to say, so she lolled her head against his shoulder. Bill stroked her hair. He stood, stretched, and grimaced from a back pain. "My back hurts just like it did the morning we left Las Palomas for Guerréro."
. . .
(Guerréro) Betty and Bill had cleaned all contraband out of the car except the cross hanging from the mirror. The disguise was so effective that, when they had decided to leave the plaster of paris Madonna in the Dodge, they neglected the crucifix it was intended to mask.
It would not have mattered if they were on their way home, but half way to Guerréro, continuing their vacation, Betty ominously exclaimed, "Uh-oh. Guess what we forgot."
"Nothing that matters." Bill was relaxed with all his cares behind him.
"The cross." she touched it to indicate that, sure enough, it hung right where it had for two weeks. "Do you want to go back?"
"Hmm, you can sure get used to something quick. Heck, let’s live dangerously."
The couple found lodging in Guerréro. As they were leaving the next morning, two women were worshiping the Dodge Omni. One was ringing her hands and staring through the windshield while an older woman knelt and prayed. They were timid toward the tourists but conveyed a sense of urgency about the cross, hanging inside the car. "What do they mean?" Betty wondered.
"Can’t make it out, something about the crucifix. Glad they aren’t police. Stay with them until I bring the hotel lady out to interpret." The women knew Juanita, of course, but refused to talk to her, or to leave. Finally, they settled for an interpreter of their own choosing — Uncle Renaldo spoke fair English. The Americans were invited in and treated graciously, but the older woman insisted on guarding the car.
Renaldo did his best, "Mister Franker, the crucifix of your car is part of a secret añejo de familia . . . family . . . family secret."
"Añejo — old . . . an old family secret?"
"Si . . . yes." and Renaldo went on to explain their own family treasure, which seemed to be the twin of the one in the Dodge. They stumbled over the Spanish "leyenda" but the handy-dandy dictionary came to their aid: "legend" or "myth".
Two identical pieces were commissioned in Veracruz in 1592 for a mother and daughter when the family had land and was wealthy. The tradition was established that they would be passed from mother to granddaughter. In the third generation, sometime in the seventeenth century, one of them was lost. A woman saw her own daughter slain and the cross taken from her. She swore a curse that the thief, and each thief thereafter, would die miserably, until the item returned to its rightful owner.
"If the story is true, I am triste . . . sad for you, Señor, that you have it." Renaldo’s sentiment gave the American couple a feeling of guilt, laced with superstitious fear. The artifact was not theirs, except by the law of finder’s, keepers.
"Are we sure it is the twin?" Betty suggested, "Let’s compare them." Renaldo didn’t know where their piece was kept, and the girl didn’t want to produce it. She went outside to consult her mother.
Renaldo explained that, after the revolution, it was illegal to own such things. That is when the family lost their land and became poor. "It is legal now but . . . who will wear it? To be seen and stolen? Among poor people? It could sell, mucho pesos, but the women will not. It is a family thing."
"It’s an heirloom." Bill decided.
Betty fetched hers from the car. The Mexican woman brought her own cross and presented it to Renaldo to show the travelers. In spite of the gaudy application of poster paint on one of them, the shape, size, and topaz settings seemed identical. The clincher was the glyph of the artisan on the back and the date, 1592. Bill was overcome and tried to apologize for the cheap way they had treated it. "What do you say, Betty? Can we return it?"
"We don’t want to end up like that guy in the cave." When they agreed the Mexicans should have it, the older woman fell to her knees weeping. Renaldo handed it to her without fanfare, she gave it to her daughter, and the women left the room to hide the twin artifacts.
Mother returned with an ancient parchment, purported to be the remains of family wealth. Renaldo was familiar with the map and, tracing his finger over the Spanish script in one corner, read to the Americans. The cache was supposedly in the form of gold bars. He gave his opinion, "Long time to still be there. Or never there. You can not use gold in Mexico. Can you sell in Estados Unidos?"
"I don’t know . . . we have a way to find out. Do you want us to try?"
The woman said something to Renaldo who said, "They no want it. It is yours." and he handed the map to Bill.
"No, no, what if it is true? What if there is gold? We make a bargain —" Bill was beginning to speak Pidgin English as Renaldo did, "if gold and if sell, you get share. Okay?" It didn’t matter to Renaldo because he didn’t believe it ever existed.
The Americans were on their way again. As they drove south, Betty looked for identifiable features or names on the map, "Not many clues. It’s near to mountains but not in them. All the watercourses are marked . . . the prominent features are these ‘cascados’ and a landmark . . . maybe a ruin. Renaldo said this note, here, says five kilometers." she shoved the map in Bill’s face, "How far is that in miles?"
"Three miles." Bill pursued another clue, "Renaldo told us something else too. He said the women’s lineage had always lived in this area, give or take a thousand square miles."
"There are no rivers around Guerréro, but by this time, they might have dried up."
"Not likely for mountain streams. We’re pretty close to our old swimming hole. All that water comes from the mountains and we never traced it out."
"You don’t suppose . . ." Betty held up a road-atlas map of Mexico to compare it to the old one. "If this road comes out where it’s supposed to . . . I know a good place to look. It would be easy to test."
"How?"
"We were figuring to take a left fork down to the main highway. If we turn right instead, we get into the country behind, west of, our swimming hole. Now as we drive along, we come to a crick, and follow it downstream, and come to a cascade, and . . . and . . ."
"Nothing like a good treasure hunt."
"Looks like we ain’t ever going to get to Sinaloa or Nayarit."
"We’ll know the state of Chihuahua like the back of our hand. That might be the fork up there."
After some backcountry exploring, "Sure glad we didn’t walk all that way. The poor Omni — this trail ain’t fit for a Mexican bus. Well, that is probably the ruins of a ruin," he referred to a raised, rectangular outline in the grass, "and this is on a line to the cliff. That little note there says, cinquenta pesos — that’s 50 measures to you, gringa."
"Whatever a measure is . . . my guess is a pace. Here I go . . . no, you do it, my knees are killing me."
He stepped off the distance, "Well, this is about it. Is that a natural heap over there, or man-made?"
"It looks like a pile of rocks grown up with grass. Let’s dig into it. Darn, we ain’t got anything to dig with."
"Maybe we can kick it down." He tried to loosen a stone with his hands and was successful.
"Let’s drive the car over here and pitch camp."
Bill bowed to her fatigue, "I’ll bring it. You stand guard. Don’t let anybody run away with any of those rocks."
As the sun sat, its last rays fell upon the first exposed gold. Betty’s eyes blazed yellow in the reflected light, "We are rich, old man." chuckle "Wealth and power beyond dreams." cackle "Anybody call me a hillbilly grandma again, I’ll have them assassinated."
"Dig it up and let’s see."
"It’s loose, I can budge it, but its too heavy for me. There is more either side of it." He helped her pry one out and guessed the seven inch-long ingot weighed 20 pounds.
It was too dark to see and the pair was tired. Bill had enough energy to gather firewood so they could save precious stove fuel. "Damn, I feel dirty and we are too far from the creek to take a swim this late." He pushed his nose into her blouse and took a sniff, "How do you stay so fresh?"
"Clean living. Rich folks don’t have to get dirty."
"Would you make love to a man as dirty as I am?" Bill had no intention of such a thing but liked to shock her, once in a while, with his language versatility. He was only kidding, honest.
"Bill, you . . ." she faked embarrassment and swatted him. "Rich ladies can do that . . ." (He’s tricking me into admitting it.) "They can just do anything that strikes their fancy."
"If they give something to the church to make up for it."
Her mind wandered away for a moment, "That would be nice. We can afford to give more now."