“Or since we are speaking of quicksilver, solidify ’em,” Jack said.
“Very well, I want to take my share of the Plan, in the form of silver, or better yet gold, and strike out for the north with them.” He looked back over his shoulder at the crowd of red Xs shuffling along in their wake. “Lately these Spaniards have conquered a new territory up beyond the pissant ditch known as the Rio Grande, which they style New Mexico. It can’t possibly be worse than Old. Word has it that six hundred cavalry are garrisoned in that territory, and each one is paid five hundred pieces of eight a year, but most of that ends up in the coffers of the governor, who sells those soldiers food and other necessaries at outrageous prices. That is upwards of three hundred thousand pieces of eight a year! I am going to go up and sell them victuals at a fair price, and while I’m at it, I’m going to convert every Indian I see to Judaism.”
“Er, if half of what they say of those Comanches is true,” said Danny, “’tweren’t wise to go up to ’em and prate about religion.”
“Or any subject,” said Tomba.
“Truth be told, ’tweren’t wise to go up to ’em at all,” said Jimmy.
“That is enough!” Jack said. “Moseh has cashed out of one Plan to invest in another, and naturally the new one needs a little refinement…he’ll have plenty of time to make improvements on the ride north.”
AFTER A FEW DAYS they rode up out of the Valley and into mountains that were much less inhabited. Other than pockets of wretched Indians who’d been chased up out of the lowlands by the Spaniards, the only folk who lived up here were miners. The mines were old, deep, and famous, and surrounded by adobe houses and churches. Most of the workers were forced labor, and most were Indians. In many ways the landscape was like that of the Harz Mountains, with schlock-heaps all over the place, and large outdoor furnaces where the ore was refined, and mounds of earth in long rows where quicksilver was being used to extract silver from lower-grade ore. To Jack it was a toss-up as to whether the Harz with its icy wind and leaden skies was a bleaker landscape than this sunburnt place where nothing grew except cactus. Moseh’s ruminations were bleaker yet: “They’ve been turning the land inside out for almost two hundred years, and here are the bones and guts strewn about…I’m reminded of the Expulsion in 1492. Spanish Jews fled to Portugal. They rode down roads strewn with the bodies of the ones who’d gone before them—friends and relatives who’d been waylaid by bandits and eviscerated, on a rumor that they swallowed gold and diamonds to smuggle them out of the country. These Spaniards are giving a like treatment to this country, and getting the Indians who used to own it to do the dirty work for them.”
“The coca has worn off, I see—this might be a good time to think harder about your new Plan,” said Jack.
As they worked north into Guanajuato, the mines became newer, shallower, more slapdash—typically these were owned by individual prospectors. More and more, the workers were free men. But this country had been settled long enough that some towns had been built, churches erected, and families moved in. It was in one of those towns—which a generation earlier had marked the absolute northern boundary of civilization—that they paused for a day to make a grand reckoning.