A Serpent In Turquoise

Chapter 5

R aine drifted up from sleep to the fragrance of honeysuckle, the murmur of bees outside the open window beside her bed. She lay blinking at a rough plaster ceiling, tinged gold by the rich slant of light. Must be morning, she realized, stretching full-length. A soft tap on the door brought her up to one elbow. “Come in!” she called, assuming it would be McCord.

Last night he’d practically carried her into the Casa de los Picaflores, the House of the Hummingbirds, home and guesthouse of Dr. Sergio Luna. The aftereffects of adrenaline, followed by the car’s vibrations on the long, rumbling descent into the canyon, had wiped her out. She dimly remembered McCord’s arm around her waist as he helped her up the crude stone stairs of a winding path. Moonflowers and honeysuckle twining around the cedar pillars of a long porch. A flood of lamplight as a massive door opened.

Then the embrace of a big leather chair and a deeper-than-deep voice behind a moving candle flame, asking her to follow the light. A soft aside to McCord in Spanish noted that her pupils reacted to light, that he could see nothing to cause a man worry.

“At least, not that kind of worry,” McCord drawled in the same language.

The doctor gave her a warm potion, bitter with herbs, laced with wild honey. It must have contained a painkiller, because when he stitched the gash at her hairline, it didn’t hurt. After that she remembered McCord’s arms again, easing her down a long hall. But beyond that? Some time later she’d stumbled into the adjoining bathroom, once by starlight, then once again by daylight, and now…Raine blinked. Was this morning, or—

The door creaked and a tiny, elderly woman nudged it open with the tray she held. With a timid smile she shuffled across the room to set it on a bedside table.

“Buenas días,” Raine said, adding a fervent “gracias” as the smell of coffee tickled her nose. There was bread with slices of papaya on a plate; it must be morning. “Puede decirme, señora—could you tell me—” She paused as the woman’s brown, wrinkled face produced a smile of shy confusion.

The woman murmured soft apologetic sounds in a language that wasn’t Spanish, ducked her scarfed head, then retreated and shut the door.

A Tarahumara, Raine guessed, as she hitched up against the headboard to pour herself a cup of coffee flavored with cinnamon and chocolate. Her questions would have to wait, which was fine by her stomach. It awoke with a lurch and practically leaped at her fingers as she tore off chunks of pan dulce, a bread of melting sweetness, to feed the ravening beast.

Once her first pangs had been quelled, Raine yawned, then rolled out to meet the day. Wrapping her naked body in a lighter blanket from the foot of the bed—and just who had undressed her?—she drifted over to sit on the wide sill. “Whoa!” she murmured aloud. Below the house, the hillside fell away in broad terraces till it vanished in purple, plunging shadows. A mile beyond the abyss rose sheer cliffs, crowned by a forest of toothpick-size trees.

So the House of the Hummingbirds wasn’t at the bottom of the gorge, but perched on a bench carved by the river she’d yet to see. A rambling one-story adobe, it followed the contours of the hillside like a train of sugar cubes. Its walls were painted pink by the rising sun, which had just cleared the far side of the canyon.

“Wait a minute.” Raine straightened with a frown. The track where she’d come to grief had descended from the eastern rim. Had McCord driven her clear across the canyon last night, and she was looking back the way they’d come? No, she’d dozed off through much of the journey, but still, surely she’d have noticed a river crossing. Which meant she must be looking west and the sun was setting! “I slept through a whole darn day?”

To her left, someone stepped out from behind a vine-covered pillar and started down the steps of the porch. A man, but not McCord. This one was short and almost portly. Supported by a cane, he moved with an awkward limping lurch. The doctor? She’d been too befuddled last night to note more than his voice and his suturing skills.

He paused where the first run of steps opened out onto a stone ledge, and swept off the Panama hat that had hidden his face. The gesture revealed ruddy, sun-weathered skin, a bold hawk’s nose on a man of middle years. Plucking a crimson trumpet flower from the buttonhole of his white tropical suit, he called in a loud voice, “Venga, bellezza!” Come, beauty! He placed the stem of the flower between his teeth, spread his arms wide and tipped back his dark head.

He had to be the doctor, Raine told herself, with that voice deep as a canyon, but what on earth was he doing?

If she’d blinked at that moment she’d have missed it; a shimmering ruby-and-emerald colored hummingbird arrowed in to the prize. It hovered before the man’s face, sipped—and flashed away. With a laugh, the doctor drew the plundered blossom from his lips, kissed it lightly and tossed it to the molten air. Donning his hat, he limped toward the next flight of stairs.

“The House of the Hummingbirds,” Raine mused, smiling to herself.

He couldn’t have heard her, yet, he turned, swept his hat off again with a flourish as their eyes met. “Señorita Ashaway, buenas tardes! I trust you slept well?”

“Wonderfully, thank you.” And where was McCord? Still snoozing somewhere down the hall?

“As you can see, I’m off to visit my clínica. Evening rounds. But when I return, I hope you’ll dine with me.” He aimed his cane at a sliver of crescent moon, chasing the sun. “About the hour that she sets, shall we say?”

“With pleasure!” Then, as Raine ducked back into the room, she realized she had nothing but a blanket to wear. Or no, wait—there was her duffel bag and her pack, on the floor beyond the bureau. “Bless you!” she said to the absent McCord. She’d feared it would take a jaws of life to rescue her gear.

Best of all, he’d salvaged her parasol; it lay propped across her bag. Opening it, she sighted along the length of its lead-dipped, aluminum shaft, which didn’t seem unusually thick, unless you really scrutinized it. “Not bent,” she muttered gratefully. A blowgun didn’t work worth a darn with a kink in it.

If anyone did look twice at her parasol—say, a customs agent—the design on its top served to divert his or her attention. An orange Chinese tiger painted in elegant brushstrokes on silk, the cat sat grinning through his whiskers against a sky-blue background. Raine twirled him and smiled. She’d been born in the Year of the Tiger, which meant, according to every place mat she’d ever read in a Chinese restaurant, that she should have been a race car driver. “Next life, maybe.” Raine set it aside and dove into her bag. Since the doctor was a dude, she’d wear something dressy for supper. How about a midnight-blue tank top of heavy satin, plus her calf-length rainbow-hued skirt, with its broomstick pleats that defied every wrinkle? And her opals, of course.

Her hands paused as it hit her. Where was her leather shoulder bag, with her passport, her wallet…and the mug?

“Professor McCord isn’t joining us tonight?” Raine asked, as soon as she decently could. Clearly he was not. There’d been only two places set at the long table before the crackling fire when she came in to supper. She’d made small talk with Dr. Luna while the same elderly servant poured apple cider into green crystal goblets, then brought them a first course of goat cheese with a delectable peasant bread. So far she’d learned about the doctor’s free clinic down the hill. This was a service he provided gladly for the locals, the only medical care available for all this southern region of the canyons. He also ventured out to the surrounding ranchitos, when his patients were too sick to make the journey here.

To his own amiable prodding, Raine had replied simply that she was here on vacation, and that she was a fossil hunter back in the States. Too late to lie now, since she hadn’t a clue what McCord might have told him. Besides which, there was something about this man’s dark gaze that commanded confidences.

“Ah, no, I’m sorry to say. The professor has gone to Creel. Had some arrangements to make, I believe, concerning his next group.”

“His group? I’m afraid he and I didn’t have much time to chat.”

“So I would think! Professor McCord hosts digs for…how shall I say this? For rich amateurs; Americans who would play at archaeology. He teaches them the techniques of excavation, and they help him in his work for a week or two. With many a break for exploration and swimming, when the work grows hot and boring, I understand.” He made an impish face. “But how can I condemn? The professor employs my nephew, Antonio, as his cook and assistant in this enterprise. And I also profit, when these same Americans stop here at my inn, coming and going.”

“I see.” Raine turned her glass in the dancing light cast by a silver candelabra. How could she say that, of course, she meant to pay for his hospitality, without offending the man?

He chuckled and shook his finger playfully as she opened her mouth to try. “Do not even think it, Raine! You are my honored guest, a delight at my table. The only payment I’ll accept is that you listen to an old man’s tales, and that, perhaps you join me later in a game of chess?”

Raine laughed. “Of course, if you like. My father’s been trouncing me all my life at chess, so I’ve got lots of practice in losing.”

“Somehow I doubt that. I smell a—how do you Americans call it? A setup.”

Should she warn him that her father could have been a Grand Master, but he’d preferred to chase dinosaurs around the world?

They paused as the servant returned with bowls of dark, spicy stew—venison cooked with onions, peppers and pozole, the doctor explained. He said something to the woman, and she replied in her soft, oddly clicking speech, then departed.

“She’s a Tarahumara?” Raine asked, once she’d gone.

“She’s a Raramuri,” Luna corrected, the warmth fading from his voice. “Tarahumara is the name the Conquistadores imposed on the tribe, in their arrogance and ignorance. They misheard the word, or they couldn’t pronounce it, or they did not care. Raramuri means the People who run.”

“They run?”

“They’re renowned throughout the world for their endurance. Men and women both. We sent runners to your state of Colorado a while back, for a footrace of one hundred miles through the mountains, at a town called Leadville. The Raramuri raced in their sandals soled with worn-out truck tires, against young professional athletes wearing their fine running shoes. All the same, the Raramuri placed first, second and fifth. The winner was fifty-five years old.”

Raine whistled her appreciation. “And you, sir? Are you one of the People who run?” He’d said “we,” but should she dared to have asked? In some parts of class-conscious Mexico, the word indio was still a term of contempt, connoting poverty and backwardness. In spite of his urbane manners, clearly Luna wasn’t Castilian Spanish, but if he cared to maintain that fiction? Bad move, she told herself as the silence stretched.

“One can only wonder,” he said at last, with cool obscurity. “There were other people here, long before the coming of the Raramuri. The Raramuri retreated to the Barrancas del Cobre in the early 1600’s, fleeing west before the Spanish soldiers and the Jesuits, who would tame them to their missions.”

So you’re not a Raramuri? With his beaked nose and his deep-set eyes below a broad craggy brow, Luna’s features did seem harsher and more rugged than his servant’s. But that might be simply individual variation. Whatever, she’d gotten too personal. “So…if Professor McCord left this morning for Creel, he won’t be back tonight?” And what made her think he’d return at all?

“He left yesterday, not this morning. But I suspect you have truth. He’ll stay in Creel till his business is accomplished.”

Her fork froze halfway to her rounding mouth. “He left yesterday? But that means—”

The doctor smiled. “It means you were very tired after your mishap.”

Tired enough to lose a whole precious day and a half? She’d never done that before!

“What’s wrong, Raine? The stew does not please you?”

“Oh, no. It’s…delicious.”

After supper, the doctor led her to his library. While Raine paced its book-lined walls, scanning medical tomes, histories of Mexico and Central America, firsthand accounts of the conquests, Machiavelli and Sun Tzu’s military strategies, Luna brought out a chessboard from a side table. Its pieces were warriors carved of green onyx and white. “But you’re in the midst of a game,” she protested.

“Yes. The professor is beaten, though he won’t yet admit it.”

“And now he won’t have to,” she said, as the doctor returned the chessmen to their original ranks.

“Ah, but he will. I’ll set the pieces as they were, once we’re done.”

Meaning he could remember the position of two dozen pieces? In that case, this might be a very short game. The doctor excused himself for a moment, and Raine returned to his books. One floor-to-ceiling case was devoted to birds, everything from Petersen’s field guides to an Audubon facsimile. “Why hummingbirds?” she wondered aloud, when he limped up behind her.

“Well, herons won’t stop here so far above water.”

As good a non sequitur as any. She laughed and sat down to the board.

“That’s how I met your friend McCord,” the doctor recalled, waiting for white’s first move. “He heard that I’m an authority, hereabouts, on birds. He stopped by for a visit, asked me if I knew anything about herons, if they nest around here.”

“Herons?” She had the oddest feeling that he was holding his breath for her response. “Why herons?”

Luna shrugged, smiled; if she hadn’t imagined the tension, it faded to self-deprecating charm. “I wrote a book about the migrations of wading birds, once, back when I was young and foolish enough to think I had time for hobbies.”

But why would McCord want to know?

“Your move, señorita.”

He was too sharp for her to throw him the game discreetly, Raine told herself a half hour later as she sat, her knight poised in midair, considering. Jump it there, and she’d checkmate him in four moves. Land it beside his bishop, and she could prolong the game, perhaps sparing his ego.

“That reminds me.” The doctor stood abruptly, lurched across the room to open a cabinet and pulled out her shoulder bag.

“Why, there it is! I figured McCord couldn’t find it—that it’d fallen out of my Jeep. Or he’d kept it.” And since you had it all along, why wait till now to hand it over?

“And the professor left this note for you, along with a request that I show you this.” The doctor limped over to another shelf, chose a small carving from among several. He handed her a blue lizard, shaped from wood, painted in patches that looked like stylized scales.

“It’s charming.” Puzzled, she turned it in her hands, then opened the folded note.

Hey, sleepyhead!

I stuck around as long as I could, then gave up and went on errands. Back tomorrow or the next, then my wheels are yours to command. Meantime, I looked for your mug and found a heap of shards in a bandanna. But here’s a thought: check out the doc’s carving of a cielito lizard. Five’ll get you ten that’s the critter on your mug. Till you see me, kick back and stay put, okay? The canyons are no place to snoop around without a guide.

Yours,

McCord.

PS. Don’t play chess with the doc if you like to win.

Second man in two days—no, blast it, make that three—who wanted to be her guide. Raine turned the lizard till it faced her head-on, tipped her head and frowned. Could this be what the potter had been thinking of when he’d glazed her mug? “No neck-frill,” she murmured.

“Your pardon?” The doctor had returned to the chessboard and sat, contemplating his fate.

“Oh, just thinking. It’s a lovely lizard. Now, where were we?”

“Your move.”

“Yes.” Might as well put him out of his misery, so she could straggle off to bed. Raine lifted her knight again—and blinked. That pawn there, last time she’d looked, had been sitting on the f4 square.

Yet now it rested demurely on g5, blocking her attack. She glanced up through her lashes to find the doctor smiling benevolently into the distance, his hands crossed on his rounded vest.

Well, that changed everything.

Chapter 6

T hough the view from this overlook was no more spectacular than the previous ten they’d passed this morning, something about it grabbed the burro. Pausing on an outcrop above a sheer two-hundred foot drop to the green river, the jenny braced her stubby legs, lowered her grizzled neck and let loose with a truly astonishing, “Haw, hee-hawng, hee-hawng.”

As the echoes bounced, then died, Raine took her fingers from her ears. “Well, if they didn’t know we were coming before, they know it now.” She set off, tugging on the burro’s lead. “You wouldn’t consider going any faster, would you?”

Apparently not. This was a beast that believed in mañana, if not next week. They’d covered perhaps twenty miles yesterday, Raine estimated, after leaving the Casa de los Picaflores in the early afternoon. She’d waited for McCord to return, but finally she’d lost patience.

She’d asked the doctor for directions to the ranchito of Lagarto, home of the potter who’d made her mug. When he couldn’t persuade her to wait another day, he’d insisted she take his spare burro, Poquita, to carry her backpack.

She’d have made much better time without her. But while the vegetation changed from temperate to near tropical as they switchbacked deeper and deeper into the canyons, the temperature climbed to the low eighties. And somewhere in the next twenty miles or so, the doctor had advised that she’d come to a point where nothing on four legs could handle the trail. Might as well spare her own back, while she could.

The doctor had assured her that she’d recognize this point when she came to it. Then Raine should remove Poquita’s lead so she wouldn’t trip on it, turn her around and shoo her on her way. “I’ll send a boy to meet her and hurry her home, but in truth, it is not necessary. She knows where to find her oats.”

Without stopping, Raine reached high up the wall of rock on her left, to pick a clump of dry grass. She offered the burro one blade to munch, tucked the rest of the bribe in the hip pocket of her khaki pants, where it wagged enticingly. That gained them maybe a tenth of a mile per hour. At this rate they hadn’t a prayer of reaching Lagarto by nightfall, and the doctor had warned that she should not attempt the trails in the dark.

“Besides the danger of falling, there are rattlesnakes and…” He’d paused, then added in a regretful whisper, “worse things!”

“Bats, scorpions, what are we talking here?” she’d teased.

He’d shrugged good-naturedly. “That depends on who you ask. The Raramuri have legends of werewolves and ghosts and witches.”

She’d met none of that crew last night, when she and Poquita had camped in a lush little meadow. In fact, she’d felt more comfortable alone out under the stars than she had at the Casa de los Picaflores. The doctor was a sweetie, but still, there was something about him. She had an odd sense of unplumbed depths…Something moving below that playful surface. Anyway, she was glad to be on her own again. At least, till she met up with McCord.

If they met up again.

“If McCord goes sniffing after la rubia, instead of searching for the treasure, this is no good! Time flows like water through our fingers. I say she should fall from a high place. It could be easily done.”

“A man should trample flowers only when he finds no stones to run upon.” The doctor chose an apple from the basket beside his chair on the veranda, then drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket. While he polished the fruit, he gazed dreamily across the canyon. “No, do nothing till I have considered this.”

“But, my uncle—”

“Ssszt! You begin to argue like a gringo. And speak your own language, lest you forget it.”

“If I do,” Antonio growled in Raramuri, “it’s because you sent me to live with a gringo. To wash his pots and pans! To carry his pickax and shovels like a pack mule!”

“To be my eyes and my ears, Antonio. To be the raven that perches in the pine and sees all.”

“And does nothing!”

“When the time comes, then may you swoop.” The doctor crunched through the apple’s rosy skin. “While we speak of doing, what have you done since the night you came here to tell me of the mug you saw at Magdalena’s—only to find I had its blond owner already in my hands?”

“I’ve done no more than you directed.” The young man dropped down on the steps beside his uncle’s feet, to gaze glumly into the distance. “I went to Creel. Looked in all the tourist shops for more such mugs and found nada.”

“That is good news. If the design on this mug looked like the Quetzalcoatl as you say, then it could attract attention, draw interest, should a person of learning chance to see it. We need no more seekers after treasure here in the canyons. McCord is hard enough to control.” The doctor took another bite, munched thoughtfully. “And so, you went to Creel. It must have taken you all of an afternoon to search the shops. But since then, my brother’s son? What have you been doing? Perhaps you have a sweetheart in Creel. Young men like to keep such matters secret. And provided she’s of the Blood, in this I see no harm.”

“Maybe I do.” Antonio twitched his wiry shoulders.

“Or perhaps there was a—How do you say this? An Internet café where you wasted your hard-earned money?”