PROLOGUE

            She woke before the sun and gathered her infant daughters to her. Condemned to a life of servitude, she could not bear that her children share the same fate, and resolved it would not be so. Born of her union with the Invincible One, hers were the first offspring of a mongrel breed who would no longer know their own gods. The fate of her people would be to cower before a new order of the sacred and the profane, and women under this cruel regime would have but one purpose, to conceive half-caste slaves for the conquerors’ rule. The young mother would not see the fruit of her womb so harshly used.

            This was the hour of soundest sleep for those pure of heart, and the little ones murmured their dreamy babble as she lifted them from their pallets and carried them, one in each arm from the shelter to the field, and then to the river.

            No tears were shed as tiny heads, eyes closed in complete and total trust, were held beneath the clear flowing waters, now diverted from their life-sustaining purpose. She loosed her grip and the small, sad figures drifted away. She begged their forgiveness.

            From her own gods she begged nothing. What perverse deities they were to send such a plague as these rapacious mortals who now defiled the land with their insane greed for gold, always gold. The gods had betrayed her. And it was the gods, she was certain, who had ordained that she would be forever branded as a traitor of her own people. As the river carried away her young, she heard the cries of children yet unborn, lamenting that this paradise on earth would never be known to them.

            She was the whore of the conquistador, her spirit doomed to wander for all eternity in atonement for those souls in wait; those souls denied their birthright. Her name...La Malinche.

CHAPTER ONE

            The air outside the adobe hut was hot enough to scorch one’s throat with a deep breath, but inside neither of the two men was sweating. One stood, wearing military fatigues, displaying the calm assurance of one used to controlling everything around him—including his own perspiration. The other was tied to a chair and looked too old to sweat. The man in fatigues wore the insignia of a colonel in the Mexican Army. His black hair was neatly combed. Deep set, dark eyes were hooded by thick eyebrows denoting his Andalusian ancestry, but his skin had the pallor of one who shunned the sun. His waxy complexion gave him the appearance of a department store mannequin and he exhibited as much emotion. Though not a tall man, he towered over the pitiful creature bound before him.

            “I did not order my men to tie you,” he said, and with a single slash of his knife cut loose the hemp that restrained the other. The old man rubbed his chaffed wrists.

            “What do you want from me?” he asked.

            “I want to know where the gold is,” the colonel said with a smile, knowing his words would shock, and enjoying the expression on the ancient face before him, “…our country’s gold.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “Yes, you do, Don Chuy. Yes, you do. It has been more than eight decades since Pancho Villa’s death. All this time you’ve kept your promise to a horse thief. Your loyalty is admirable, though misguided.”

            “How did you—” The old man stopped. His head drooped to his chest as if he lacked the strength to finish his sentence.

            The colonel pulled a weathered, leather-bound book from his back pocket and waved it before the old man. “Do you know what this is? This, my venerable friend, is the personal diary of General Alvaro Obregón, former President of the Republic of Mexico. You remember him, don’t you?”

            “He murdered Villa,” the old man muttered.

            “Possibly.” The colonel shrugged. “History is vague on that point. What this little book does disclose is the theft by your Pancho Villa of the nation’s treasury in gold and burying it here. Somewhere here.” The colonel looked around the ruin of the hut in which they stood as if it hid the treasure trove. “The few who knew where the gold was buried died before Obregón could get the truth out of them. All but one.” He thumbed the faded pages. “Right here, Obregón says that several of Villa’s men spoke of a lad from Jalisco known only as ‘Chuy.’” He paused and looked at the old man. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

            The colonel reached under the chin and lifted the ancient head. It was like holding a skull in his hand. “That’s you isn’t it, Don Chuy?”

            The eyes said it all. The old man’s eyes, which could now see little more than vague shadows, displayed weariness the colonel knew how to exploit. Interrogation was his specialty.  Colonel Márquez let the chin fall. He turned and paced, talking as he stared out the window of the one-room hut, slapping the side of the knife blade against his open palm.

            “You were honored on your one-hundredth birthday,” he said. “It made the newspapers in Mexico City. ‘The last man alive to ride with Pancho Villa,’ the article said. I might never have found you, but fate took a hand; at least,” he chuckled, “took my hand.”

            As the colonel spoke, the old man’s arm fell to the side of the wooden chair. His fingers formed around a splinter and broke it off. Hands were clasped behind his back as Colonel Márquez continued.

            “I intend to see that you are appropriately honored, Don Chuy, for the faith you have kept all these years. But it is long past time the gold was returned. It belongs to the country. It belongs to us all.”

            When Colonel Márquez turned around, the old man sat slumped over as if he had caved in on himself. Withered arms dangled at his sides. Blood from a severed wrist dripped onto the hard dirt floor. The colonel rushed to him and felt for a pulse. There was none.

            “Damn your soul to hell!”  Colonel Márquez roared and stomped out of the hut, ripping the door off its hinges and nearly colliding with a lieutenant pacing back and forth.

            “What is it?” he growled at his subordinate.

            “Sir, we think they found something,” Lieutenant Avila said, “in the mountains. We should hurry, sir.”

            The colonel looked back at the hut. “The old man’s dead. Bury him, lieutenant. No, wait. Take the body back to the pueblo. Tell them that’s how you found him.”

            “Yes sir, but we need to—”

            “I want to know who his friends were; who visited him, who he talked to. He must have told someone. He must have. We’ll conduct an enquiry into his death.”

            “Isn’t that a job for the local police, sir?”

            Colonel Márquez scowled. It was answer enough.

            “Colonel, if we don’t start now—”

            “Yes, yes. Where is this place?”

            The lieutenant pointed to the mountains. “There, sir. Up there.”

MEXICO’S HIDDEN GOLD  Copyright © 2006 by R. David Lyons
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Other names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed herein are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

E-Mail: rdlyons@rdlyons.com