“What’s that get her?”
“Search me. Maybe a share in the profits, if there are any. Maybe she’s just working on commission, kind of like I was with her.” He took a swallow of bourbon. “You find him? The young man you were looking for?”
“I found the Lulabelle. If he was there, he’s gone now. Tell me, how’d you come to know Peter?”
“While I was scouting the lapsed claims for Marian, I stumbled across him squatting in one of the old diggings up in the Coronados. He’d made himself quite a home there. Nothing new in that. A lot of hippies did the same thing back in the day. Got to talking to him and over time, well, he grew on me. He told me he was interested in the old excavations. He wasn’t the prospector type and it wasn’t hard to figure out what he was up to. He was looking for places to give those poor folks coming across the border some shelter on their way to whatever they hoped might be a new life. You don’t meet a lot of people like him, who are doing what they’re doing just because they believe it’s the right thing.”
“So you quit working for Marian and started helping Peter?”
“Least I could do. A lot of wildcat mining went on in most of the mountains down here. No legal claim ever filed. No way to know where they are, unless you understand this country and have spent a good deal of time wandering the mountains and hills here.”
“Like you have.”
“I gave him some leads. He filed the claims.”
“So he was competing with Marian in a way.”
“She rules the roost around here. Made her hopping mad.”
“The Lulabelle, was that a wildcat operation?”
“Yep.”
“You told me there were a couple of other old diggings near the Lulabelle. No official claim filed on those?”
“That’s right.”
“Did Peter know about them?”
“I might have mentioned it.”
“I’m thinking that if he decided the Lulabelle wasn’t safe for some reason, he may have gone looking for one of those others.”
“Reasonable speculation.”
“Did he know where they are?”
“Not sure anyone knows exactly where they are.”
“Not even you?”
“It was a long time ago I worked the Lulabelle. I knew about the other diggings only in general. The men who worked them were pretty secretive. Near as I could tell, one of them was somewhere south of the Lulabelle, maybe seven miles or so. The other was north a few miles. Back when I was a young buck, I did some drinking with the man worked that particular dig. We were both operating out of Ark.”
“Ark?”
“Arivaca. Little town way to the west. When he was two sheets to the wind once, he told me he called his diggings the Jesus Lode. Told me it was because there’s this big rock formation above the mine looks just like Jesus wearing a robe.”
“What about the one to the south?”
“I got nothing.” He looked at me, focused. “You know anything about hunting?”
“I’ve stalked deer all my life.”
“If I was you, I’d go back to the Lulabelle and do like the Border Patrol. Cut sign. Maybe you can track him.”
Which seemed to me an excellent idea.
He finally noticed my face. “You look like you tangled with a wildcat. What happened?”
“Some people asked me about that young man we’ve been discussing. Asked if I knew where he is.”
“Didn’t ask very politely. And I’m guessing they’re still in the dark. Any idea who they were?”
“They blindfolded me, so I only heard voices. But I’ve been going over it again and again in my mind. I just confirmed that one was Marian Brown, your mayor. That expensive perfume she wears was a dead giveaway. And if I were a betting man, I’d lay down good money that your town cop Mike Sanchez was another.”
Sylvester capped the bourbon bottle and threw it on the straw. “Shoulda guessed.”
“Don’t quote me until I confirm it,” I said. “Look, I’ll be happy to give you a hand here, if you need it.”
He shook his head. “My responsibility. You go see to yours.”
CHAPTER 25
* * *
Something strange was going on with the sky to the east, black clouds piling up along the horizon. If I’d been in Minnesota, I’d’ve sworn there was a storm brewing. But this was Arizona in July, the desert in the middle of a blazing summer. Did rain ever come to this country, and did it ever come in summer?
On my way to the Lulabelle, I’d hit an outdoor store at the edge of Tucson and had bought a good topo map of southern Arizona and a handheld GPS. Because I didn’t know how long I might be searching the Santa Margaritas, I also picked up a hydration pack and two gallons of water, a thermal blanket, a pair of field glasses, a hunting knife, a Maglite, a ton of jerky, and some protein bars. I had plenty of ammo for the Winchester.
I was driving the same road Mondragón had followed the night before. I was thinking about the ambush that morning, going over in my mind how Rodriguez’s men had known about the place and that we would be there. I didn’t believe Sylvester was the leak. If Mondragón followed up with his own men and was able to vouch for them, that left two possibilities. One was Jocko. I hated to think that I’d misread the man. I couldn’t imagine what might have motivated him to be working with people like Rodriguez. I considered the other possibility—the Border Patrol helicopter that had been hovering over the desert when Jocko and I spotted the mirror flashes from the Lulabelle. Was it possible someone in Border Patrol, Agent Jamie Sprangers maybe, had struck a deal with the devil? The Border Patrol had been tracking me. How, I wasn’t sure. I’d gone over the pickup once more and hadn’t found a transmitter. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one, so well placed or so sophisticated that I couldn’t see it. I figured that when I reached the Santa Margaritas, Sprangers probably wouldn’t be far behind. So I had to do whatever I did quickly and carefully. If that was possible.
As soon as I turned south onto the Magdalena Road, I came to the checkpoint we’d hit the night before. The barricades had been pulled off to the shoulder, where a couple of BP agents leaned against a parked truck. As I drove up, they glanced my way. One of them raised his arm and, with a couple fingers, waved me on. I was a middle-aged white guy. No visible threat. If Mondragón or Rainy had been with me, I probably wouldn’t have been given such an easy pass. I understood that. What other criteria would you use to enforce such racially motivated fears? I’d seen it in Minnesota all my life. If you looked Native, if you looked like Rainy, you caught the eye of white people, and many, many white people thought things about you that were absolutely untrue. Often, the laws that white people ignored without a second thought were the ones that got flashing lights and a siren on the ass of someone of color.