Aztec Blood - Jennings Gary (книги онлайн бесплатно серия .txt) 📗
"Am I to go into the mint and investigate?" My eyes were lit up envisioning stacks of gold and silver, some of it finding its way into my pockets.
"That would be putting a fox in to watch the chickens. No, your work will be on the outside, on the street as is the custom. Besides the mint director, who is above suspicion, there is only one man who has access to the list. You are to watch him for any suspicious contacts he makes. A new list is prepared weekly, and the suspect has access to it. He's the one who prepares the individual lists for the mines and gives them to the north country messenger. After that, he must pass it almost immediately to a conspirator who carries it north to the bandit gang. He may do it on his way home from the mint, sometime during the night, or even on his way to work in the morning. After that, it will be too late to have it in the hands of the bandits. I expect you to watch the man at the mint to see who he passes the information to."
He turned to Mateo. "You are to relieve Cristo during his watches. And have horses ready for both of you when it is time to follow the person carrying the stolen information north."
We told him we would start watching the mint official immediately. I said, "You look tired, Don Julio. More than tired. You must get away from the tunnel and rest."
"I will rest in the grave soon. The rains are falling heavily. Each day the water level for the city rises."
"The tunnel?"
"My plans were not followed. I have tried to patch it in a dozen places, but after I patch it in one place, the old water-logged adobe bricks permit it to cave in elsewhere. The earthquake a few days ago undid a year's work of clearing the tunnel. Have you heard that we have a prophet who says the tunnel will fail because a Jew built it? He doesn't even call me a converso."
I knew of the man, a Franciscan fray who had ran afoul of his holy order and no doubt had lost his mind. He became a wanderer in the streets, living off the charity of those who fear madmen. Earthquakes always frighten people because they are so severe in the valley. After the big earthquake, the monk preached in the plaza mayor, telling people that the city was Sodom and God was going to destroy it. Numerous small quakes followed the big one, and people panicked, crowding into churches.
Our surveillance of the mint employee did not reveal who he passed the silver trains list to. Yet the list had been passed, because robberies erupted again by a bandit gang that knew exactly what mule trains were carrying silver.
The more we observed the employee, the more we doubted that he was the culprit—yet he was the only one with the information. The messenger who delivered the lists to the mines was given sealed pouches by the employee. Had the messenger opened the pouches, the recipients would have known it.
The employee lived alone in a modest house with just one servant. Between the two of us, Mateo and I kept a close eye on him and his servant. There was never any opportunity for him to pass the information on.
Mateo let his beard grow, and I stopped trimming mine. Neither of us were anxious to be identified as the autors of the closed plays that were the talk of the town.
A visit to a goldsmith's shop finally revealed to me who the mint employee was passing the information on to. Don Julio had sent me to the goldsmith to pick up a gold chain and medallion he had purchased for Isabella's birthday. While I waited inside the shop, a man came in and ordered a gold ring for his wife, a very expensive ring. The purchaser was the messenger who carried the lists to the northern mines.
The only way the messenger could get his hands on the complete list was if the mint employee gave it to him. It struck me as to how the deed was done. The mint employee we watched was conspiring with the northern rider, giving him not just the individual lists to deliver to the mine owners, but a separate copy of the complete list for delivery to the bandits. We never saw the lists passed because the illicit transaction took place inside the mint when the rider was given the sealed pouches he was to legally carry.
When a new list was issued, Mateo and I followed the rider to the north. We had a copy of the man's schedule—all except for the rendezvous with the robbers.
We rode north toward Zacatecas, following the mint rider. It was a well-traveled road and we blended in with the merchants, mule trains, and officials on their way to the northern mines. Leaving the Valley of Mexico, the area the Aztecs called Anahuac, Land by the Water, we rode into a more arid land. Not the great northern deserts that stretched endlessly, the vast sands of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and the fabled Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, but a land that was neither as wet as the valley nor as dry as the deserts.
Indios still ran wild in the territory surrounding Zacatecas, but they were naked and afoot, and it was rare that they would attack two well-armed men on horseback.
The indios of the region were called Chichimeca, a name the Spanish applied to many barbaric, nomadic tribes who still ate raw meat—some of it human. When thousands of miners invaded their territory, a fierce war had been fought with the indios. The battles had gone on for decades. Even after the viceroy's troops put down the last large-scale resistance, the fighting never stopped. The indios continued to live and war in small packs, claiming scalps, weapons, and women as their trophies.
"They are as naked as sin," Mateo told me. "The frays can't get them to put on clothes, much less live in houses and plant maize. But they are great fighters, masters with bows, fearless in an attack. No indios in New Spain are as fierce."
All of the attacks by bandits on the mule trains carrying silver had been in the Zacatecas area, and we were confident that the list would not leave the rider's hands until we reached the city called the Silver Capital of the World.
Zacatecas had the reputation of being the wildest place in New Spain, where fortunes were won and lost with the turn of a card, and men died just as quickly. A paradise for Mateo, but I was surprised that he was not excited about visiting the town.
"It lays claim to being a great city, but it has no spirit. Barcelona, Seville, Roma, Mexico, these are cities that survive the ages. As the don says, Zacatecas is a barrel of silver fish. When the fish are all caught, no more Zacatecas. Besides, there are a hundred men to every woman. What place can call itself a city in which men must find love in the palm of their own hand? There is no love or honor in the city."
I should have known that women would be behind his feelings for the city. To live for love and honor, or to die defending it, was the way of the chivalric knights.
Zacatecas was built in a basin of hills, at an altitude even higher than the Mexico valley. The hills were places of scrub brush and stunted trees. The entire mining region was an arid wilderness with few rivers and little cultivation of maize and other crops. The town was laid out with a plaza in the center where a church stood along with the alcalde palace. The better houses, and some were palaces, spread out from the central plaza. Beyond the heart of the city were an indio barrio and a barrio of freedmen and mulattos.
We had not kept close to the rider during the journey but now that we had arrived at a place where we believed the list would be passed, we closed the distance to keep him in sight. He went to an inn near the central plaza and we followed. We were taking our packs from the back of the horses to release the beasts to the care of the stable when we heard a loud, shrill laugh that had an abrasive, but familiar, ring to it.
