He paused again, running his fingers through his gray hair. “I rode some with Volkmeer. Knew him well. Cagey man. Never talked much. He taken a stab at minin’, too, like most of us.”
“I pulled him out of a cave-in once.”
“Heard about that. Fact is, I heard the story when it happened. Volkmeer did pretty well. First thing you know he’s buyin’ himself property. Bought him a ranch, paid for it in cash money. Then he put in a bid on some land adjoining what he had. This was maybe a year later, and the folks that wanted to sell had to close a deal right away. I mean quick. Something tied up with a dead man’s will. Several people wanted that ranch and we just told ’em the first man who could come in there with cash money could have it.
“Volkmeer got it.”
“He paid cash?” Raglan asked.
“Sort of. He come into the bank, ridin’ ahead of some others who wanted that land, too, and he paid for it in gold.”
There was silence. The people in the room were disappearing, off to the mountains or to Durango. Slowly, Mike finished eating. Weston was trying to tell him something, but what was it? Gold was not uncommon in those years. Men often cached gold coins until they had quite a stake. Many deals were made in which gold was the only money exchanged. After all, there were a lot of mines.
“I heard he had done well,” Raglan commented. “I was surprised, as he didn’t look it when he came to see me and I figured I was about to hire an old cowboy to stand by me. I had no idea he’d become so successful.”
“He was in an almighty hurry. He wanted that property the worst way, so he paid in gold. Taken it right out of his saddlebags.”
“So?”
“Seemed odd, to me. The shape of it, I mean. The gold he paid me was in discs. Round discs thicker in the center, tapering off to the edges.”
Inside, Raglan was suddenly cold, chilled. He stared out of the window at the cliffs topped with forest. In his memory he was hearing a voice, the voice of another old man, that one in Flagstaff, long ago.
” ‘Ree-fined gold, boy. Discs, like. Size of a saucer.”
XXVII
Mike Raglan looked across the table at Artemus Weston. He looked more like a cattleman than a banker, but that was apt to be the case in these western towns.
“You’re retired now?”
Weston nodded, without turning to face him. He was staring off across the room, but what he was seeing was probably in his memory. “Ain’t got long now.” He turned his eyes toward Raglan. “Too many years behind me and my health’s not what it was. Figured a young man like you, you ought to know.”
“Why did you think it important?”
“I’d guess you know why, or you’d surmise. That there was the only time I ever saw gold like that, but livin’ in a place as long as I have, a man hears talk. Volkmeer got himself rich all of a sudden, seems like. Might have found himself a cache somewheres.”
He took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. “A man in bankin’, even an old cow-chaser like me, he thinks about money. Money’s what he deals with, money an’ people. Out here in the West it wasn’t our way to ask questions, but that can’t stop a man from wonderin’, and I done some wonderin’ about where that gold come from.
“Wasn’t all this worry about income tax, those days. A man didn’t have to explain where money come from. Volkmeer got rich mighty fast. Bought other property, here and there, and it seemed to me either he’d found a cache or somebody who had was paying him for something.”
Weston got to his feet. “Talked enough. Time I was headed home. Get tired easy these days. Ain’t like it was when I could ride forty hours at a stretch an’ done it, many’s the time, with cows or the like.”
He looked down at Raglan. “Used to have a lot of friends among the Injuns. Spoke Navajo since I was a youngster. Some of the old men used to come in for loans now and again. Never had one welsh on me. Always paid up when they got around to it.
“Now and again we’d just set an’ talk, an’ I heard some tales make your hair curl. You be careful, boy. You just be careful. You’re ridin’ bareback into some rough country.”
Raglan watched the old man walk away, weaving a path among the tables. Artemus Weston must indeed have been disturbed to have come here to see him. The old man must have made considerable effort just to get there.
Volkmeer? With gold such as the old cowboy in Flagstaff had found? How had he come by it? And whose side was he on, anyway? Volkmeer, a hard, tough old man, and a rich one now. Was he an ally or an enemy? Suppose it was the latter? Suppose the man he had selected to back him up could not be trusted? He dared not take the risk, but how to be rid of him now that he had enlisted his aid?
It was time he drove out to see Eden Foster, and then made his move. Of course, she might have been able to intercede for Erik, but Raglan doubted it. From the little he knew, The Hand was all-powerful.
He started to rise, then sat down abruptly. The Lords of Shibalba! Why had he not remembered before this? Several years before, investigating the discovery of a Jaguar-throne in Central America, he had occasion to read the Popol Vuh, a sacred book of the Quiche Maya, and if he was not mistaken there was a reference to the Lords of Shibalba!
A waiter came to the table. “Were you leaving?”
“No, bring me another cup of coffee. I’ll be here for a while.”
He got out his notebook and started to jot down what he remembered.
Shibalba … an underground world inhabited by evil people who were tormentors of men, a place of dread and horror. The Cakchiquels had believed Shibalba to be a place of great power and magnificence, but a place well known to them.
Hence, in the past there must have been some connection, some exchanges between the two worlds.
One thought prompted another, and he began to jot down every word he could recall, hoping each would stir some vagrant memory. He had used the method often and it always helped. Just seeing the words brought back other words seen in conjunction with them. For a half hour longer he worked, thinking, remembering.
So then, the connection between the Maya and the Anasazi extended to more than trade? Perhaps. In dealing with bygone peoples it was always perhaps. One had to learn, surmise, and then learn more, often proving the original theory mistaken.
Prevailing opinion often affected theory. In an age when peace was much to be desired, there was a reluctance to think of the Anasazi as warlike. The Maya had been deemed peaceful until the numbers of their human sacrifices became obvious. Many reasons other than defense were advanced for the retreat of the Anasazi from the mesa tops to cliff houses. It should have been immediately obvious that no sensible people, no matter how desirable cliff houses might seem in some respects, would endure the drudgery of climbing steep ladders day after day with food, water, and fuel for any reason but sheer necessity.
Memory can throw a golden aura over bygone years until only the pleasures are remembered. So it must have been for the Anasazi of the Four Corners region. Each day they must have had to go farther and farther afield to find fuel or building timbers, suffering from drought and stalked by fierce nomadic Indians. The world abandoned so long ago might suddenly become very inviting. Perhaps, also, the old evils might have vanished in the interim.
Mike Raglan signed his check, returning to his condo to write a few letters and pick up a few essentials, including emergency food packs he used when mountain-climbing. Now to see Eden Foster! He glanced around, saw nothing suspicious, and got into his car. Deep within him he was hoping, desperately hoping, that Eden would tell him Erik was released, or about to be released.
No man goes willingly to his death; each believes he will survive somehow. Each of us is not only a participant but an observer. The world we see around us exists only for us and in our own mind, so when we die, that world dissolves, although it may exist in other minds in other forms.
Mike Raglan was thinking that as he drove westward. These mountains, forests, and deserts were his for the time in which he observed them, and it was hard to imagine a world in which he was not. He knew that now he went toward a destination he did not want, a way he had not chosen. Each of us, he reflected, is to some extent a child of our conditioning. We grow to believe certain things, to accept certain things as true and right. Loyalty and honesty, for example. Even a thief who steals, cheats, or defrauds is furious if he is robbed, cheated, or betrayed. And he, Mike Raglan, was trapped by a sense of loyalty, of what was perceived as honor.