reward you as you deserve. I shall give you—” she was about to say the mule with the whole pack on its back, but she recovered in time from this exaggerated generosity and continued: “I shall give you the right pack of that mule over there, and the Indians of your troop shall divide among themselves the left pack of that same mule. Those damned robbers, those funking mestizos, if they behave well from now on, shall each receive a bonus of one fourth of what the faithful Indians shall have. Of course, don Ruego, the horse you are riding, and the pistol and the rifle you carry, shall be yours as a token from me; and the Indians shall have their ponies and their pistols.”
“Muchas gracias, dona Maria, I kiss your feet,” Ruego said, kissing her hand, and then added: “May I, with your very kind permission, now go to look after the work?”
“You are handsome, Ruego. Do you know that? I never noticed that before.” She said this with a true feminine smile, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “Yes, you are handsome and very strong. Strange that I never noted you before, Ruego.” She gave him another smile. “Let’s talk this over, Ruego, when we are in the capital. You know this is no time nor place to talk of such things.”
Ruego snaked his body from his feet up as if he wished to wind himself into the form of a corkscrew; had he been covered with feathers one might have thought him a turkey at coupling-time.
“Look after the men and see that they are doing their work properly, don Ruego. You are now the mayordomo here and in charge of everything, the only man I can perfectly rely on.”
“Yes, dona Maria, por la SantIsima you can, by the Holiest Virgin you surely can, and once more, mil gracias for your kindness.”
Dona Maria turned round and went to her little tent. “What brains a man has!” she said to herself.
9
The mutiny was quashed. There was no other similar incident the rest of the way. Ruego did his part as dona Maria expected him to. Any new uneasiness among the men could now, with the help of Ruego, be quelled at its first sign.
Dona Maria had, in fact, never thought of any sort of rebellion in her own camp. There were other problems which she had taken into account. The nearer she came to more populated regions of the country, the less safe became the roads. Hordes of bandits, footpads, deserters from the army and from ships, escaped convicts, were practically everywhere. The power of the Spanish rule in Latin-America was inevitably breaking to pieces. Since this rule had been nothing short of dictatorship and tyranny, conditions were as they always and everywhere are when a dictatorship is nearing its inglorious end. Dictatorships do not and cannot allow people to think politically or economically for themselves, and so when a dictatorship is tumbling, people are in no way prepared to meet the changed conditions, and chaos is the result. Here authorities were so hard pressed from all sides and from all quarters that they no longer could cope with the growing unrest all over the country.
Day and night dona Maria lived in constant fear of being attacked, robbed, and murdered. Every mule and every pack on the backs of the animals had to be guarded. There were days when the whole train made hardly ten miles, and even these ten miles under difficulties which seemed impossible to overcome.
During this journey dona Maria lived through a period still more trying than that at the mine. There she could not remember any day when she had felt happy and safe. She had never felt sure of her treasures. Always in fear, always worrying, and at night plagued by nightmares and terrible dreams. She could not recall a night of sound and refreshing sleep. And during the daytime she was hunted by worries and fears even worse.
What had kept her spirits up during these years was the thought of the future. In imagination she could see herself walking by the side of her duke to the throne of the king and there curtsying and having the honor of kissing the heavy ring on the finger of His Most Holy Majesty.
10
The great moment finally arrived. The transport reached Mexico City without a single bar of the precious metal lost.
Hardly had she reached her destination when the fame of her riches spread all over the city. The news of the arrival of the richest woman in the Spanish empire came even to the ears of the viceroy, the most powerful person in New Spain. Dona Maria was honored with an invitation to a private audience with the viceroy which lasted, as the whole city noted with amazement, more than an hour.
Her gratitude knew no limits when this high personage promised that her treasures would be well taken care of in the vaults of the king’s own treasury, the safest place in New Spain, safer than the vaults of the Bank of England in those times. Guarded by the whole Spanish colonial army garrisoned in the city and under the personal guarantee of the viceroy himself. In these vaults her treasures could rest until they were transported under the vigilance of special troops of the king to the port of Veracruz to be shipped from there to Spain. Dona Maria, overwhelmed by such generosity, promised the viceroy a gift in cash which even a viceroy of New Spain could verily call most princely.
Dona Maria paid off her men in full, giving them even more than she had promised for faithful service, and discharged them honorably. This done, she went to the best hotel in the city to take up quarters fit for a queen.
Now, at last, she could sit down to a decent meal for the first time in many years. After so many hardships and sorrows she could at last eat peacefully and with gusto.
Then, after a most enjoyable supper, she lay down in the finest and softest bed to the sweetest slumber she had had in long, dreary years. Upon awakening she could think of finer, sweeter, more womanly things, and of a handsome duke, perhaps a marquis.
But now something happened that dona Maria in all her calculations had never foreseen.
Her treasures did not disappear, they were not stolen from the vaults of the king’s treasury. Something else disappeared and was never seen again or heard of.
And this was: dona Maria herself. She lay down in her queenly bed, but since she did so, no one has ever seen her or heard of her. She disappeared mysteriously, and nobody knew what had become of her.
But while no one knew anything about dona Maria, everyone in New Spain knew that the riches of dona Maria had not disappeared, but were safely in the possession of one supposed to know better what to do with them than a foolish woman who thought that nobility stands for honesty.
11
When Howard had ended his story, he added: “I wanted to tell you this tale to show you that to find gold and lift it out of the earth is not the whole thing. The gold has to be shipped. And shipping it is more precarious than digging and washing it. You may have a heap of it right before you and still not know if you can buy a cup of coffee and a hamburger.”
“Isn’t there any chance to find out where the mine was?” Curtin asked. “That woman surely didn’t take out all that was in it.”
“No, she didn’t.” Howard made a face at Curtin. “There is much left, even today, only you are late as always, Curty. The mine is worked by an American company, and it has yielded ten times more than dona Maria ever succeeded in taking out of it. You can easily find the mine, and it seems to be inexhaustible. Its name is the Dona Maria Mine, and it is located near Huacal. If you wish, you may go up and ask for a job. Maybe you can land one. If you are lucky, they may pay you forty a week. Just try.”
12
For a good while the men sat in silence by the fire. Then they stood up, stretched their legs, yawned, and made ready to check in.
“That story is more than a hundred years old.” Lacaud suddenly broke the silence.
“Has anybody around here said it isn’t?” Dobbs sneered.
“Certainly not,” Lacaud answered. “But I know a good story about a rich gold mine which is only two years old, and just as good or better.”
