Summer of the Dragon, page 5
Before I could spot any more interesting characters, Hank came loping over to greet me.
“Hi, there. No problems?”
I hesitated, wondering what he meant. Then I realized this must be his conventional way of greeting people. I had a feeling that if you told him there was a problem, he would do something about it.
“No problems,” I said.
“Good. Come and have a drink.”
The person at the bar was presumably a houseman.
Dressed in a neat white jacket and a black string tie, he might have been Debbie’s brother. He had the same round brown face and cheerful smile.
Hank hovered till I got my hands on the glass and then took my elbow.
“Come and meet some people. You’ll have a lot in common. Er—do you prefer Ms., or Miss?”
“Just make it D.J.,” I said, hoping we wouldn’t have to go through one of those agonizing explanations as to why I preferred initials. I might have Summer of the Dragon / 55
known Hank wouldn’t care. He’d have introduced me as Muhammad Ali if I had requested him to.
I saw two faces I recognized as we crossed the room.
One was that of a young quarterback who had led his team to the Super Bowl the previous January. The other was the pug-nosed profile of a well-known Italian coloratura. Hank paid no attention to either; instead, he led me up to a tall, gray-haired man who looked like a French diplomat.
“This is Marcus Featherstonehaugh,” he said, adding proudly, “Dr. Featherstonehaugh, that is. Marcus, meet D.J. Abbott, the anthropologist.”
I cannot keep typing that name over and over, so I will refer to the gentleman as Marcus, though I certainly did not ever learn to think of him in such friendly terms. He eyed me as warily as I eyed him, and I couldn’t entirely blame him. The anthropologist, indeed! There were others.
A woman swathed in flowing chiffon tugged at Hank’s elbow, shrieking unintelligible demands, and he turned away. Over his shoulder he said, “You two will have a lot to talk about. The Mayans…Atlantis….”
“Oh, no,” I said involuntarily.
Marcus’s well-bred, bony face stiffened. In a fairly good imitation of an English accent he said coldly, “We need not talk at all, young woman, if your attitude is that of the majority of scholars. I 56 / Elizabeth Peters
am only too familiar with the criminal narrow-mindedness of the anthropological profession. I have suffered from it all my life.”
“Ah, the common denominator,” I said. “Delusions of persecution.”
Marcus passed over the implicit insult and pounded unerringly on the key word.
“Persecution is not too exaggerated a term. When I submitted my last paper—”
“Never mind,” I interrupted. “What is it you believe, Doc—I mean, Marcus?”
It was the same old stuff Le Plongeon and his co-horts had been pushing—the idea that the brilliant, advanced citizens of Atlantis seeded the ancient civilizations of both hemispheres before their country sank under the sea. Marcus had jazzed it up a little by making the Atlanteans visitors from another galaxy.
He wasn’t specific about which galaxy. Even that touch wasn’t new. None of the crazy theories are.
The thing was, he really believed it. As he talked, spots of febrile color flared up on his thin cheeks, and his eyes shone with a wild light. Somehow I hadn’t really accepted that before—that the crackpots honestly believed their own theories. Now I realized that if I wanted to straighten Hank out, I would have to combat not only the professional con men, but the honest fanatics as well. I had a feeling the latter group would be the hardest to fight.
Despite what some people have claimed, I am Summer of the Dragon / 57
not an argumentative person. Fighting, physical or verbal, is hard work. I only expend energy when there’s something to be gained by it, and there was no point in debating with Marcus; better men (I use the word “men” in the generic sense) than I had undoubtedly tried. That’s a point the screwballs never acknow-ledge—that they do get a fair hearing. Even Spike Bancroft, who is not one of the nicest people in the world, spends hours listening patiently to idiots who wander into his office.
Marcus was in the middle of a long explanation of how he had deciphered the Mayan hieroglyphs when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
“May I interrupt?” he asked, giving me a big white smile.
“You certainly may,” I said.
One thing about Hank—he collected good-looking young men. This one was on the short side, stockily built, with arms and shoulders that bulged with muscle.
Like Tom, he was dark as a Spaniard; unlike Tom, he was clean-shaven and pleasant looking. His smile wasn’t a contortion of the lips; it showed all his teeth and warmed his brown eyes. They were nice eyes, and there was nothing wrong with the rest of him, either.
“My name is Jesse Franklin,” he said.
“D.J. Abbott. Call me D.J.”
“Gladly. Hello, Marcus; do go on with what you were saying.”
“No one was listening anyhow,” Marcus said 58 / Elizabeth Peters
bitterly. He turned and marched away, straight toward the bar.
“I figured you might need rescuing,” Jesse said.
“I cannot tell a lie,” I said, wondering if he wore his shirt sleeves rolled up clear to the shoulder on purpose to display his muscles. Whatever his reason, it was an excellent idea. “I don’t need rescuing from people like that. I could have walked away clean anytime. I was just trying to get the flavor of the meeting.”
“If that’s what you were after, Marcus is a represent-ative sample.”
“I was warned that Hank is afflicted with screwballs.”
“Right.” He flashed me another wide white smile.
“Since we’re being honest with one another, I may as well admit that I’m one of the screwballs.”
I didn’t say “oh, no” out loud this time, but I thought it. With some trepidation I asked, “What’s your bag?”
“Well, I like to think I’m not quite as crazy as some of the others. I’m a buried treasure freak.”
“That’s a new one to me,” I said. “Uh—you don’t believe in Martian buried treasure, do you, or in—”
“The lost crown jewels of Atlantis?” He laughed.
“No. What I’m after is a good deal more recent, and more real. You’ve heard of the Lost Dutchman Mine, haven’t you?”
“The name sounds familiar.”
Summer of the Dragon / 59
“It all started with Coronado, of course. When the Spaniards first explored this area, they were looking for gold. They hoped to find another Mexican empire, rich with treasure, and they were lured on by the legends of the Seven Cities of Cibola. They never found any empires, only Indian villages. But they did find gold. According to Coronado’s Apache informants, one of the richest of all lodes, a vein of almost pure gold, was located in the slopes of the mountain where their Thunder God lived. They told Coronado about it, but such was their fear of the god that not even torture could force them to lead him to the spot.
Coronado had to give up. He called the peak Superstition Mountain because of the Indians’ terror of it.”
He spoke with the fluency of someone who has repeated the story over and over, to himself as well as to others. His brown eyes had gone all soft and dreamy. I thought what a pity it was he didn’t look at me that way.
“It’s a good yarn,” I said. “But if you are looking for gold on the basis of evidence like that—”
“Wait, that’s just the beginning. I told you I wasn’t as crazy as Hank’s other associates, didn’t I? Why do you suppose it’s called the Lost Dutchman Mine?”
“I don’t know, but I expect you are going to tell me.
No, please do. It’s interesting.”
“I need very little urging. Okay; the next act of the play begins three hundred years later, in 1845, 60 / Elizabeth Peters
when a Mexican rancher named Don Miguel Peralta found gold on Superstition Mountain. Yes, my little skeptic, he really did! In succeeding years he shipped millions of pesos’ worth of gold concentrate back to Mexico from the mine he had called Sombrero Mine, after a peculiarly shaped mountain nearby. But to the Apaches the mountain was still the abode of the Thunder God, and they were determined to wipe out the man who had defiled his sanctuary. The name Cochise may be vaguely familiar to you too. Cochise and his fellow chieftain Coloradas led the Apache forces that ambushed the Mexican column as it was heading home with burros loaded with gold. The place where it happened is known as Massacre Ground.
“Peralta had received warning of the Apache plan, and he took as many precautions as he could. One was to conceal the location of the mine, to prevent other people from working it before he could return, as he hoped to do. Not only did he hide the entrance, but he moved his men and equipment to a camp some distance away. He never did return. He and all his men were killed.
“The Apaches weren’t interested in the gold. They dumped the ore-laden saddlebags out on the ground and ate the burros, which they considered great delic-acies. But some of the burros got away during the fight.
Still loaded with incredible Summer of the Dragon / 61
wealth, they wandered the arroyos and canyons till they died of accident or starvation or old age.”
I felt like the Wedding Guest in the hypnotic spell of the Ancient Mariner. Well, it was a good story. Even the most skeptical of us is susceptible to the lure of buried treasure.
“Is it really true?” I asked eagerly.
“It is really true. A few years after the massacre, a U.S. Army troop came on the scene and buried the remains of the bodies. They never found Peralta’s.
Possibly the Indians carried it off as a trophy. Anyhow, in the early 1850’s a couple of Irish prospectors found the skeleton of a burro and a rotting packsaddle filled with gold ore. They knew the Peralta story; everybody in the area did. They searched for more burro car-casses, and found them. When they finally carried their find back to California, they had almost forty thousand dollars’ worth of gold. The word spread, naturally, and everybody rushed out to look for burro skeletons.
Pickings got leaner and more dangerous; men like that thought nothing of shooting a buddy in the back in order to steal his loot. The last person to find one of Peralta’s burros was named Silverlocke—appropriately enough. In 1914 he appeared in Phoenix with some scraps of rotted leather and eighteen thousand dollars’
worth of gold concentrate.”
“You still haven’t gotten to the Dutchman,” I said.
62 / Elizabeth Peters
“He wasn’t Dutch; he was German, as in ‘Pennsylvania Dutch.’ His name was Jacob Walz.
“During the period when people were looking for Peralta’s burros, they were also searching for the mine.
The only ones who knew the location were the Apaches, who guarded the knowledge as a sacred secret. Walz had an Apache girlfriend to whom he was devoted. Her name was Ken-tee, which means ‘Sunshine.’ She told him where the mine was. Her own people killed her, horribly, for betraying the secret—or so the story goes. It doesn’t explain why they didn’t kill Walz, but they may have tried; he was a tough character, over six feet tall, built like a wrestler, and after his sweetheart’s death he barricaded his house till it resembled a fort.”
“Maybe they didn’t feel he was as guilty as she,” I suggested. “She had betrayed the tribe.”
Jesse patted my hand. “It gets you, doesn’t it? Wait till you hear the rest.
“In the years between 1879 and 1885 the Philadel-phia Mint paid out over $245,000 to Walz for gold ore. Naturally people tried to follow him when he visited the mine, but no one succeeded. The terrain around the mountain is a wilderness of rocky canyons, bristling with cactus and dry as a bone. Walz was a crack shot, and if he caught anyone on his trail he didn’t stop to ask why they were there. He died without passing the secret on, an embittered, lonely old man.
“That isn’t the end of the story. Other people Summer of the Dragon / 63
have found gold on Superstition Mountain. Some of them believed they had actually found Peralta’s mine.
Others believe it is still there. The search has never stopped.”
“Wow.” I sighed. “I love it. Want some help looking?”
“I’m not looking for the Dutchman mine,” Jesse said coolly. “I just told you that story because it’s the best-known treasure yarn of the Southwest. But there are dozens more. Arizona teems with such tales.”
“That’s not all it teems with,” said a familiar voice.
I turned. There he was, leaning against a sofa, his mustache quivering with contempt. “She’s very gullible,” he went on, addressing Jesse. “Shame on you for taking advantage of her.”
“Ah, Tom,” Jesse said. “You two have met?”
“He picked me up at the airport,” I said. “But he doesn’t know whether I am gullible or not. He has every reason to suppose I am not.”
“You should have seen your face,” De Karsky said.
“Hypnotized. If I had handed you a fake Spanish map and a shovel, you’d have rushed out into the night and started digging.”
“Is there something wrong with your spine?” I inquired. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stand without support.”
“I hope you are not under the delusion that I sought you out of my own free will,” De Karsky said. “Hank told me to introduce you to some of 64 / Elizabeth Peters
the others. He was afraid Jesse might be monopolizing you.”
“Hank’s word is my command,” I said wittily. “I’ve enjoyed this, Jesse.”
“So have I. We’ll talk another time.”
He raised his glass in a graceful salute and sauntered off. I turned to De Karsky.
“I’m supposed to ask you if you want another drink,”
he said.
I looked at my glass in mild surprise. Sure enough, it was empty.
“Well….”
“You’ll need it if you’re going to talk to the other nuts.”
“Is that how you classify Jesse?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But that story was fact. Names, dates, places….”
“Oh, the story is true—most of it. This is a melodramatic part of the world; no fictitious story is more un-believable than some of the things that really happened out here. But Jesse’s treasure-hunting theories are almost as impractical as Marcus’s delusions of Atlantis.
They’ll never come to anything.”
“There is a categorical difference and you know it,”
I said.
Tom handed my empty glass to the bartender and gave me a full one.
“Anyway,” I said, “who are you to cast stones?”
Summer of the Dragon / 65
“I’ll throw stones at anyone I like. Save your ser-mons; you’ll find them useful as we proceed.”
So I was introduced to the lady in the turban, Madame Karenina, who told me about Hank’s previous existence as a prince of lost Atlantis, and offered to find out who I had been; to Professor Ryan, who told me how America had been populated by the Lost Tribes of Israel; to Sam and Dee Ballou, who had spent three days with little green men from Arcturus in their flying saucer; and to a character named Horbiger who believed, if I understood him correctly, that the cata-strophes of ancient times, such as the Flood and the plagues of Moses, were all caused by an old moon falling into the Pacific Ocean, or by a new moon rising up out of the Pacific Ocean. I know it doesn’t make sense. Neither did Horbiger.
He was the only one of the group whom I could confidently classify as an out-and-out con man. He had tried to dress like a European professor, and he had a thick, affected accent, but the masquerade didn’t quite come off. His gray eyes, magnified by thick glasses, were the coldest eyes I had ever seen.
I had my suspicions about the Ballous, too, at least about her. He was one of those blank-faced, smiling little men who is not quite with it. If she had told him she had been kidnapped by Martians or hundred-legged worms, he’d have said, “Yes, dear.” She was twice his size, a massive,
66 / Elizabeth Peters
faded blonde with arms the size of a strong man’s thighs. It’s not true that fat people are jolly. I remember seeing a picture of a nursemaid who had killed half a dozen children before they caught up with her. She looked a lot like Mrs. Ballou.
Ordinarily I do not drink much, but I needed something to dull the pain of talking to those people.
I had finished my second drink and was halfway through my third when I started to feel funny. At first I thought it was mental nausea. Before long, however, the nausea became specific. I excused myself in the middle of a long spiel by “Professor” Ryan, describing the Semitic profiles of the ancient Mayans, and headed for the door.
Long before I got there I knew I wasn’t going to make it up to my room. Instinct, and a draft of cool evening air, sent me blundering toward the French doors. There was a flagstoned terrace outside, fringed with shrubs. Like a sick animal I headed into the darkness, away from the lighted windows. When I tripped over an indistinguishable object I didn’t bother rising; I stayed on my hands and knees and let it all come up.
It wasn’t just my stomach. My eyes were fogged and my head was spinning like a flying saucer. I was so far gone I didn’t realize I was no longer alone until an arm looped around me, supporting my heaving diaphragm, and a hand cupped my fevered brow. I knew who it was—I
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can’t tell you how I knew, but I did—and I didn’t care.
Not at first, anyway.
“Is that it?” he asked, after the spasm had passed.
“For the moment,” I mumbled.
I was as limp as a rag doll. My arms flopped help-lessly as he tipped me back against his chest and held me with one arm while he wiped my face with his handkerchief. He was as efficient and impersonal as a doctor, but the warmth of his body felt wonderful; I was shaking with chill and the sweat on my face felt clammy in the night air.
