Treasure Trail

Chapter 2: First Day Back to Work-1

Chapter 2: First Day Back to WorkFrom 1870 to 1890, a brief replay of Alfie’s twenty years flashed before his eyes as he stared down the barrel of the money runner’s still smoking shotgun. The most recent days were the ones he focused on most, like how he’d noticed the contrast of his and Gustavo’s skin right away.

They’d met in a church in the center of relatively newly formed frontier town, just five or six wooden buildings almost blending into the sand upon which they sat. Alfie would hardly call it a town at all. Gustavo had grabbed Alfie’s wrist as Alfie was just about to snatch a coin from the collection basket.

“What’s yer name, boy?”

“Alfred…Alfie. And I ain’t no boy.”

“I’m Gustavo. You greedy or hungry, Alfie?”

He couldn’t look Gustavo in the eye. “Hungry.”

The ride from town seemed endless. Everything looked the same. Desert and nothingness. Was there even a destination in mind, Alfie wondered. No invitation was extended, not really, but when Gustavo left the church, mounted his horse and took off, Alfie got on his and followed. He complained the whole way.

“I thought we were going to eat.”

Gustavo ignored him.

Once they finally stopped, Alfie was immediately taken with the stunning mesa that rose seemingly out of nowhere from the orange desert floor. “It’s…magical…” A northerner, he’d never seen anything like it. “The whole place sure is something beautiful.”

Gustavo started a fire at the mesa’s base. “Ya ever et rattlesnake, boy?”

Alfie thought he might vomit. “If I did, I didn’t know I was.”

“A hungry man is often surprised at what tastes good.”

“These rocks remind me of you.” A couple hours into what was supposed to be a quiet rest after wolfing down lunch and wishing there was more, Alfie was still chatting as he picked up a large piece of brown quartz.

“You ain’t knowed me but part-a one day, and ya already callin’ me hardheaded?”

“No.” Alfie felt himself blush clear down to his chest, as he and Gustavo lay flat out on their backs, shirts unbuttoned, facing the afternoon sun but protected by the shade of the landmass beside them and the brims of their Stetson’s. “It’s the color. It’s pretty.”

“Ain’t many people think that.”

“Think what?”

“That brown done be purty. If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times, how I’m a ugly, dirty brown Mexican.”

“That’s just dumb,” Alfie said. “My mother says God don’t make ugly. I think brown’s one of his favorite colors.”

Gustavo turned and adjusted his hat. “God’s?”

“Yeah. Sure, dirt’s brown, but dirt’s pretty, and we get food from it and flowers and people go there to rest in God’s graces when they’re dead. He made dirt to make the whole world, like this…what’d you call it?”

“Mesa.”

“Yeah. This mesa. God made lots of nature brown. Pretty things, like this rock, the bark of a tree, a buffalo, a singing sparrow, acorns…Lots of nuts, and lots of spices, and seeds that make food and flowers. Nearly every flower starts off as brown, so don’t you forget that.”

Gustavo lay back down. “I won’t.”

“You ever really look at a cow’s eyes, Gustavo? They’re brown and so full of beauty and soul it’s like there’s no bad at all in there. God likes brown. Your horse’s eyes, too, and mine. I almost bought one that was all brown, but he cost the most, because he was just about the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

“Alright, boy! Daggum!” Gustavo shook his head. “Maybe I believe God likes brown.”

“Only thing I can think of the same color as me is the underbelly of a snake and the rear end of a cat. Lots of animals great and small. You’re the color of a horse’s eye, I’m the color of the part where s**t comes out. Which would a smart person rather be?” Alfie huffed when he heard a chuckle. “You laughing at me?”

“Nah. That there’s just some kinda thinkin’, boy. Rather than mention the color of horseshit, maybe I’ll just consider the lesson and accept it ain’t just color that makes somethin’ ugly or beautiful just ta git ya ta shut up.”

“I ain’t no boy.” Alfie pouted. “And everyone should think that way. Them who talk bad about you, seems to me they don’t think much at all.”

“Don’t go getting’ yer feelin’s all hurt.” Gustavo turned again. “Speaking of purty things, when Miss Rose’s ladies git a gander at your purty gringo face, everyone in the whole place is gonna fall in love.”

“Hmm.” Alfie huffed, still upset.

“So, what about the stripes in yer rock?” Gustavo poked him gently in the ribs, which turned Alfie’s scowl to a smile. “You tellin’ me I have stripes like some old barn cat?”

Alfie chuckled, but he looked away, down at the rock, fidgeting a little. “Different parts of you are different colors.” He said it quietly, then sat up and slid closer, leaving an impression of his butt in the sand and good deal of sand on his britches. “Your chest.” Alfie looked there and licked his lips. “See that.” He pointed to one of Gustavo’s n*****s. “That’s darker than the rest. And if that ain’t a stripe…” Emboldened by some part of his body that wanted what it wanted, he touched flesh where Gustavo’s shirt was open. Hair upon flesh. A narrow trail he followed with one finger, stopping just before the hairiness spread wildly, easily seen the way Gustavo’s pants rode low. “I don’t know what is.”

“You sure see things a certain way, boy.” Gustavo was breathing hard, too. “Alfie, I mean. Like you got a lot-a learnin’.”

“Some.”

Gustavo sat up and moved so his back was to the mesa. “You also sound like ya ain’t from here.”

“I started up north. Boston. Been on my own a long time, though. Since I was twelve, really, and my father threw me out of the house when he caught me kissing a…someone he didn’t like me kissing. My oldest cousin, Jurgen, and his wife took care of me a little while. She died when she was younger than I am now. I struck out on my own after schooling was done to see how the rest of the country is about stuff.”

“You got money fer a horse, how come you stealin’ from the church fer food?”

“Had money when I ran off and bought the horse figuring I’d find work fast and make more.” Alfie moved to Gustavo’s side once again. “All the learning I did didn’t really teach me how to do much in this part of the country, I guess. I got here the wrong time of year for logging and building. The wrong time to be a farmhand for sure. Too late to plant, too early to harvest. More men than work, anyhow. The mines are still running. Maybe I can get on a crew there.”

“That there’s dangerous work, with men who claim to be lawful when they’re shiftier than bandits.”

“Yeah?”

“‘At’s why I became the bandit.”

Alfie’s eyes got wide. “Really?”

There wasn’t time for Alfie to relive all of that in detail, in pictures and words. Every moment he’d spent with Gustavo from the very day they’d met until the one here and now that could be their last was present in a feeling, though. Right in Alfie’s gut. Right in his heart as they faced off with the money runner and his gun.

“Shootin’ at the clouds is a waste of good bullets, old man.” Even with Gustavo’s bandanna in place, Alfie could tell he was smirking behind it, despite the danger.

“Next one stops your heart.” The stagecoach driver’s eyes became angry slits.

“You could git another off. It might hit me. I might drop,” Gustavo said. “Seems ta me, yer fortune ain’t great today, though, what with ya plantin’ two feet one on each side of a rattler’s den openin’.”

The driver glanced down.

“Uno, dos, très…I think I hear six. Make it seven. Right at yer ankles just waitin’ for the slightest move.”

Alfie looked for the hole in the ground between the little man’s feet. Gustavo had warned him a dozen times or more how anything more than the slightest shrug would trigger a deadly snake.

“Another bang, they’ll be hoppin’ out like jackrabbits.”

“You’re bullshitting, Mexican.” There was movement, though, the driver’s eyes darting up and down and sideways. “Expecting me to drop my guard and step back. “

“You and me go down together, my partner’s still standin’, and he gits the gold. I can live with that…even if I’s dead.”

Alfie’s heart was in his throat.

“Seein’s how your delivery’s f****d, I guess it’s just down ta who lives and who dies.” Gustavo seemed cool as a cucumber. “So…”

For eight, ten, twenty-some seconds, no one spoke.

No one moved.

No one blinked.

It was a game of chicken, and the stagecoach driver clucked first. The moment the little man lowered his head, Alfie, in one swift move, grabbed hold of the shotgun and hurled it into the brush.

“That’s my gringo!” Gustavo had the sack of gold in hand. No plan, not a single word necessary.

“Son of a b***h!” In the three or four seconds it took the stagecoach driver to spit out the cussing kind, the bandito and his partner were up on their horses.

“Yah! Pleasure doin’ business with ya,” Gustavo called back, as he and Alfie took off at full gallop.

* * * *

Close to two hours later by the movement of the sun, Gustavo and Alfie arrived at the dance hall. Liquor, cigar smoke, and floral perfume fought to dominate the air in the well-lit foyer decorated in red and black velvet wallpaper and what looked like miles of matching draperies. Just beyond, shadowy candlelight hid discreet goings on, though raised voices and other sounds, despite Alfie’s drunkenness, alerted him to ribald indiscretions as well.

“Give us your finest room, Miss Rose.”

“You got it, Gus.” She accepted his kiss to the back of her hand then led them around another corner where even the bang of piano keys and the chatter of a couple dozen patrons wasn’t enough to mask raucous f*****g on the next floor up that rattled a chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

“You think you can get his drunk ass up those stairs?” Rose asked. At least eighty steps wound around and around. Maybe forty. Alfie had been seeing double a while. Gustavo had purchased a bottle of whiskey a few miles back in that little town with the church where they’d first met.

“A church and liquor,” Gustavo had said. “What more’s a man need?”

Alfie took maybe three swigs. Not used to whiskey, it hit him quick and hard.

As he started to climb the stairs, he thought back again to the first night he and Gustavo had spent together nearly three months earlier.

“I ain’t sure yer cut out for bandito life,” Gustavo had decided almost right away. “Big strappin’ boy like you, Miss Rose could probly use ya fer somethin’ at her establishment.”

“And some woman might fall in love with me there?”

“Real easy like, even if ya do talk too much.”

“What kind of place is this Miss Rose’s?”

Gustavo’s laugh came right from his belly. “You’ll see, kid. One-a these days, you’ll see.”

Alfie knew all about Miss Rose’s now, and there they were, presumably about to partake in the type of hospitality she offered.

If Alfie could make it up the stairs.

“Yer taking more steps sideways than forward, gringo.”

Alfie already liked the top of the mesa better, the place he and Gustavo usually slept. The climb up there wasn’t easy the first time, either.

“You gonna make it, boy?” he recalled Gustavo asking.

There wasn’t much to grip or put one’s feet on, but Gustavo could scurry right up. For Alfie, a root or a rock, both often proved falsely secure with the slightest bit of weight. Though always hungry of late, he knew he was still the heavier of the two.

“It’s too hot when the sun’s out.” Gustavo liked to peer over the mesa’s edge just after sunset. “But it’s nice at night.”

“Hmm.”

“Take my hand.”

Alfie did, and with one last bit of effort and a hearty groan, he threw himself forward, landing horizontally, not on flat earth but on top of Gustavo.