sat in a soft chair. I'm much obliged.' He ducked into the car, sank into the rear seat, and sighed with pleasure.
'We only have a can of sardines, but we'd be happy to share it with you,' offered Giordino with a gracious generosity seldom witnessed by Pitt.
'Nope, dinner's on me. I've got plenty of concentrated food packs. Be more than pleased to split them with you. How's beef stew sound?'
Pitt smiled. 'You don't know how happy we are to be your guests. Sardines aren't exactly our idea of a taste treat in the wild.'
'We can down the stew with our soft drinks,' Giordino suggested.
'You got soda pop? How you fellas fixed for water?'
'Enough for a few days,' answered Giordino.
'If you're running short I can point you coward a well about 10 miles to the north.'
'We're thankful for any help,' said Pitt.
'More than you know,' added Giordino.
The sun had fallen below the horizon and twilight still lit the sky. With the approach of evening the air became breathable again. After hobbling Mr. Periwinkle, who found and began happily chomping on several clumps of coarse grass growing out of a small dune, the Kid added water to the concentrated beef stew and, to the relief of Pitt, cooked it over a small Coleman stove along with biscuits. If Kazim had sent aircraft to hunt them by night, a small fire, no matter how shielded by the walls of the gorge, would have been a dead giveaway. The old prospector also provided tin plates and eating utensils.
As Pitt soaked the final remains of his stew with a biscuit, he pronounced it as the most magnificent meal he'd ever eaten. He thought it amazing how a small measure of food could rejuvenate his optimism again. After they finished, the Kid produced a half-full bottle of Old Overholt straight rye whiskey and passed it around.
'Well now, if you've a mind to, why don't you boys tell me why you're drivin' around the worst part of the Sahara in a car that looks as old as I am.'
'We're searching for a source of toxic contamination that's polluting the Niger and being carried down to the sea,' answered Pitt directly.
'That's a new one. Where's the stuff supposed to come from?'
'Either a chemical plant or a waste disposal facility.'
The Kid shook his head. 'Ain't nothin' like that in these parts.'
'Any heavy construction around this section of the Sahara?' asked Giordino.
'Can't think of any, except maybe Fort Foureau a ways to the northwest.'
'The solar detoxification plant run by the French?'
The Kid nodded. 'A real big spread. Mr. Periwinkle and me tramped past it about six months ago. Got chased off. Guards everywhere. You'd have thought they were secretly buildin' nuclear bombs.'
Pitt took a swallow of the rye, taking pleasure as it burned all the way down his throat to his stomach. He passed the bottle to Giordino. 'Fort Foureau is too far from the Niger to pollute its water.'
The Kid sat silent a moment. Finally, he stared at Pitt with a curious twinkle in his eyes. 'It might if the plant sat over the Oued Zarit.'
Pitt leaned forward and repeated, 'Oued Zarit?'
'A legendary river that ran through Mali until a hundred and thirty years ago when it began sinkin' into the sands. The local nomads, myself included, think the Oued Zarit still flows underground and empties into the Niger.'
'Like an aquifer.'
'A what?'
'A geological stratum that allows water to penetrate through pores and openings,' Pitt answered. 'Usually through porous gravel or limestone caverns.'
'All I know is that if you dig deep enough, you'll strike water in the old river channel.'
'I never heard of a river disappearing yet continuing its course deep in the earth,' said Giordino.
'Nothin's unusual in that,' explained the Kid. 'Most of the flow of the Mojave River runs under the Mojave Desert of California before emptyin' in a lake. There's one tale of a prospector finding a cave leading hundreds of feet down to the underground stream. So his story goes, he found tons of placer gold along the water.'
Pitt turned and looked steadily at Giordino. 'What do you think?'
'Sounds to me like Fort Foureau might be the only game in town,' Giordino replied soberly.
'A long shot. But an underground stream running from the toxic waste plant to the Niger could be our contamination carrier.'
The Kid waved a hand up the gorge. 'I guess you boys know this gulch runs into the old riverbed.'
'We know,' Pitt assured him. 'We've been following it from the bank of the Niger most of last night. We holed up in this ravine during the heat of the day to keep from being seen by Malian search parties.'
'Looks like you fooled them so far.'
'What's your story?' Giordino asked the Kid, handing him the rye bottle. 'You prospecting for gold?'
The Kid studied the label on the bottle for a moment as if trying to make up his mind to reveal the reason behind his presence. Then he shrugged and shook his head. 'Lookin' for gold, yes. Prospectin', no. I guess it won't hurt me none to tell you boys. The truth is I'm lookin' for a shipwreck.'
Pitt studied him with bleak suspicion. 'A shipwreck. . . a shipwreck here in the middle of the Sahara Desert?'
'A Confederate ironclad to be exact.'
Pitt and Giordino sat there in dazed incomprehension with the growing tentative wish there was a straitjacket in the Voisin's tool box. They both stared at the Kid in a very peculiar way. It was almost dark now, but they could still see the earnest expression in his eyes.
'Without the risk of sounding stupid,' said Pitt skeptically, 'would you mind telling us how a warship from the war between the states got here?'
The Kid took a long swallow from the rye bottle and wiped his mouth. Then he unrolled a blanket on the sand and stretched out, propping the back of his head with his hands. 'It was back in April of 1865, the week before Lee surrendered to Grant. A few miles below Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate ironclad Texas was loaded with the records of the dyin' Confederate government. At leastways they said it was documents and records, but it was really gold.'
'Are you sure it wasn't a myth like so many other treasure tales?' said Pitt.
'President Jefferson Davis himself, before he died, claimed the gold from the Confederate States treasury was loaded in the dead of night on board the Texas. He and his cabinet hoped to smuggle it through the Union navy blockade into another country so they could form a new government in exile and continue fightin' the war.'
'But Davis was captured and imprisoned,' Pitt said.
The Kid nodded. 'The Confederacy died, never to be reborn.'
'And the Texas?'
'The ship fought one hell of a battle as it steamed down the James River past half the Union navy and the forts at Hampton Roads before gainin' Chesapeake Bay and escapin' into the Atlantic. The last anybody saw the ship and any of its crew on this side of the ocean was when it vanished in a fog bank.'
'And you think the Texas sailed across the sea and entered the Niger River?' Pitt ventured.
'I do,' the Kid replied firmly. 'I've traced contemporary sightin's by French colonials and natives who passed down stories of the monster without sails that floated by their villages on the river. Descriptions of the warship and the dates it was observed satisfy me that it was the Texas. '
'How could a warship the size and tonnage of an ironclad steam this far into the Sahara without stranding?' asked Giordino.
'That was in the days before the century of drought. This part of the desert had rain then, and the Niger ran much deeper than it does now. One of its tributaries was the Oued Zarit. At that time the Oued Zarit flowed from the Ahaggar Mountains northeast of here 600 miles to the Niger. Journals of French explorers and military expeditions say it was deep enough to afford passage for large boats. My guess is the Texas turned up the Oued Zarit from the Niger then grounded and became trapped when the water level began to drop with the approach of the summer heat.'
