Hunt at The Well Of Eternity

Chapter 22

The general extended his hand. “Mr. Hunt,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir, although I wish it had been under better circumstances.”

“So do I, General,” Gabriel said as he gripped Fargo’s hand.

“Excuse me,” Cierra said. “You’re really…General Fargo…fromthe U.S. Civil War?”

A gentle smile appeared on Fargo’s weathered face. “That was a long time ago, my dear. I’d like to think I’ll be remembered more for what I’ve done in the fourteen decades since. But yes—I am that man, and yes, I once fought that war. And you are…?”

“Dr. Cierra Almanzar. Director of the Museum of the Americas in Mexico City.”

Fargo took her hand, and for a second Gabriel thought he was going to bend over it and kiss it. Most Confederate cavalry officers had fancied themselves cavaliers in the old-fashioned sense of the word, he recalled reading, and that would be a very cavalier-like thing to do.

Instead, Fargo merely shook Cierra’s hand and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you as well, Dr. Almanzar. I have heard of you. I believe your museum houses one of my battle flags, the one I left with my father-in-law.”

“It used to,” Gabriel said. “Not anymore.” He began unbuttoning his shirt. “I have it here, along with the one you drew the map on.”

“My standard?” Fargo murmured in surprise. “You brought it with you? I was hoping that your brother had it by now, along with the sample of water I sent with Mariella.”

“The sample was…destroyed, Granville.” Mariella’s voice caught a little as she broke the news to him. “It was lost before I ever got the chance to tell Señor Hunt about it.”

Gabriel stopped unbuttoning his shirt. After the news that Mariella had just broken to the general, the flags didn’t seem so important anymore.

A pained look appeared on Fargo’s face. He expelled a long, disappointed breath.

“I’m dismayed to hear that. Not so much for myself, but for all my friends and loved ones here in Cuchatlán who are now doomed.”

“Doomed?” Mariella repeated as she clutched at her husband’s arm. “Granville, what are you talking about?”

Fargo turned to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I didn’t tell you the full extent of your errand, dearest. My hope was that Michael Hunt and the scientists he could hire would be able to find out what gives the waters of the Well their special power.”

“I know that,” Mariella said with a nod. “You told me to tell Señor Hunt that he should have the water analyzed and find out everything that’s in it.”

“But I didn’t tell you why. It wasn’t simply in the hope that the water’s special ingredients could somehow be duplicated. It was because the water here…the water from the Well…”

Fargo couldn’t bring himself to go on. He looked stricken now, and his hands tightened on Mariella’s shoulders.

Gabriel finished the sentence for the general as everything fell into place. “The water from the Well of Eternity is losing its power,” he said.

Fargo turned to look at him and slowly nodded. “I’m afraid that is correct, Mr. Hunt. I first noticed a few years ago among the older citizens of Cuchatlán. After the Ritual of the Well, they didn’t recover their vitality as quickly as they used to. Their muscles regained less elasticity. Their skin remained lined, their energy depleted. I felt it myself.”

“Granville, no,” Mariella cried. “The water of the Well still works—it must! It always has!”

Fargo shook his head. “Look around you, my dear. Look inside yourself.” He turned to Gabriel and Cierra. “The last ritual was a month ago, not long before I sent Mariella to you. I knew then that time was short, because I could tell that there was only a small effect when our people drank from the Well. Its power is almost gone. If there was to be any chance of ever fathoming its secrets, I had to act.”

Mariella put her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. “You should have told me,” she said, her voice muffled by the embrace. “If our time was running out, we should have spent all of it we had left together.”

“I wanted to,” Fargo told her. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to. But I thought…if there was still a chance of helping our people…”

Mariella nodded her head against his chest. “I understand. You’ve always looked out for those who followed you.”

“It’s ironic,” Gabriel said. “Esparza has come all this way, wreaked so much havoc and killed so many people, and what he’s after doesn’t even work anymore.”

Fargo stroked the back of his wife’s head. “It would have been worth the greatest fortune in the world at one time. But no longer.”

“Wait a minute,” Cierra said. “Let’s think about this. Assuming the water ever had any power, the fact that its power has diminished wouldn’t mean there’s nothing of value here at all. You could still analyze it, figure out what produces the life-extending effect. Once the cause were isolated, a well-equipped lab working on the problem might be able to find a way to enhance its activity. And even if they couldn’t, if the water still has any effect at all…wouldn’t men still kill for even a less potent elixir?”

“Why, Cierra,” Gabriel said, “you sound like a believer suddenly.”

“I am a scientist. I believe in evidence. The only other explanation for what we see here is that all these people are delusional and suffering from mass hysteria.”

“We’re quite sane, doctor, I assure you,” Fargo said with a sad smile.

“Well, then, the power of the water must come from somewhere, from something. Some mineral deposit buried deep in the mountains, something the water passes through or over before it emerges here. Over enough centuries, even the most massive mineral deposit will eventually be eroded to nothing. That’s one hypothesis that might account for the diminished potency. In that case it wouldn’t be the water itself that has the life-extending effect, it’s whatever the water picks up as it flows underground. And if we could learn what that is—”

“That’s what I hoped the Hunt Foundation could do,” Fargo said to Gabriel

“That’s Michael’s area, not mine,” Gabriel said. “He’s no chemist himself, for that matter. But he’s got access to some of the finest minds in the world.”

Fargo nodded. “I wanted to get those men to work on our problem. Not necessarily to save all of us, mind you, because I fear it’s too late for that. But for the sake of all the good it could do in the world. And if I could at least save Mariella, well…”

She shook her head. “You old fool,” she said softly. “Do you think I would want to live without you? It was only being with you that made all these years worth-while in the first place.”

Fargo sighed. “No matter. Now it’s too late for us all. Those…those barbarians with their Gatling guns—” He waved a hand. “I know, they’re not Gatling guns. They’re something even worse. I never wanted the artifacts of warfare to pollute this valley.”

“That’s an unusual attitude for a man who was a warrior,” Gabriel pointed out.

“That was a very short period in a very long life, Mr. Hunt. I was a professor first. And when I got here, I discovered more than just this—I discovered that I’d had my fill of war. I couldn’t stomach it anymore. And I came to understand that some of the things I’d fought for…just weren’t worth fighting for.” Fargo held out his hand. “Can I see those flags you brought with you?”

Gabriel untied the strips that held the folded flags to his torso. “I’m afraid they have more blood and sweat on them than they started out with,” he said as he handed them to the general.

“A good man’s blood and sweat are worthy stains, sir,” Fargo said.

A couple of men stepped forward from the crowd of other prisoners. “Gen’ral?” one of them said. “The fellas would sure admire to see those colors again.”

“Of course, Boone,” Fargo replied. He handed the flags to the men, who unfolded them and held them up for the other prisoners to see. The men of the Fifth Georgia looked on them with silent reverence.

“I hate to tell you, General, but a hundred forty years later, those flags aren’t exactly a popular sight where I come from,” Gabriel said.

“They weren’t always popular even back then, Mr. Hunt,” Fargo said. “We lost the war, I’ll remind you. But my men still rode below those colors. Don’t begrudge them a moment of remembrance.”

“They can have all the moments they want,” Gabriel said. “At least till Esparza comes back.”

“I wish,” Fargo said after a moment, and then paused. “I almost wish…” His voice choked, he couldn’t go on. But Gabriel got the gist of what he was trying to say.

“You wish that, if you have to go, you could go out fighting?”

“Now that we have something that really is worth fighting for? More than you know, Mr. Hunt. More than you can know.”

“Well, why can’t you? It’s better than lying down and dying.” Gabriel put an arm around the general’s shoulders. “Let’s see if we can figure something out.”

“Hey!” Gabriel yelled as he put his mouth close to the crack at the edge of the door. “Hey, out there! Open up! I’ve got something your boss wants!”

“By God, sir!” General Fargo bellowed. “Give me back those flags!”

“Stand back,” Gabriel shouted “or I’ll break your damn neck. Those flags are my ticket out of here. Guards! Tell Esparza I have the general’s secret!”

“Damn your eyes,” Fargo yelled, “I’ll never let you do it!”

Gabriel heard the guards talking in low, urgent voices on the other side of the door and gave the general a silent thumbs-up. Fargo looked puzzled by the gesture and by the A-OK gesture Gabriel replaced it with. What gesture had they used back in Civil War days? Gabriel settled for nodding and this, at least, the general seemed to grasp.

“Back off in there!” one of the guards called a moment later. “We’ll cut you all down if you try anything.”

With a low rumble of stone against stone, the door began to swing inward.

Cierra had her ear pressed to the wall near one side of the door. She glanced at Gabriel and nodded, then stepped back away from the wall as the door opened the rest of the way. Gabriel and Fargo had backed away from it as well. Gabriel held both battle flags.

One guard came into the chamber while the other two remained outside, their automatic weapons leveled.

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded. “What was all the yelling about?”

Gabriel showed him the flags. “Take me to Señor Esparza,” he said. “He’ll want these.”

One of the other guards said, “I remember Podnem’vitch saying something about flags. Maybe these are the ones.”

“Give me those,” the first guard snapped, reaching out for the flags.

Gabriel stepped back, but the other two guards pointed their guns at him. He stopped, grimaced, and then finally handed over the flags.

“All right. But you be sure and tell Esparza that I gave them to you. They’re very important.”

The flags meant nothing now, of course. But Esparza’s men didn’t know that.

“And tell him there’s a hidden message on them. I can tell him how to read it.”

“Don’t do it, Hunt,” Fargo growled. “You’ll burn in hell for it.” He was laying it on a bit thick, Gabriel thought, but the guards showed no signs of doubting his sincerity.

Holding the flags in one hand and his gun in the other, the guard backed out of the chamber. As soon as the closing door cut off his view, Cierra darted forward and pressed her ear to the stone again, this time at a spot a bit lower on the wall.

“Well?” Gabriel said, once the door was fully shut.

She hurried over to Gabriel and said in a low voice, “No question, the mechanism is on that side, about four feet up. The stone must be hollow there—I could hear the mechanism working. If we can get to it, we might be able to trip it from in here.”

“And that would cause the door to open.”

“It should, exactly the same as pushing the lever from outside.”

Gabriel nodded. “The question now is whether or not we can loosen one of these blocks of stone enough to move it out.”

He took off his belt and began using the buckle to scrape away at the layer of crude mortar between the blocks. The passing centuries had weakened the mortar and made it crumble easily, but even so this would be a long, tedious job.

At least, it would have been for one man. Several other prisoners gathered around, including Fargo and Boone. They took off their belts and began scraping at the mortar as well.

As they worked, Boone said, “I heard you talkin’ to Miz Fargo, Gen’ral. Is it true what you said, about the water not keepin’ us young anymore?”

“I’m afraid so, Boone,” Fargo said.

“I thought I’d been feelin’ a mite puny lately. And Virginia, she’s got a whole heap more gray in her hair than she did even a week ago. All those years are gonna catch up to us in a hurry, ain’t they?”

“That looks to be the case.”

“Well, hell.” Boone shook his head. “Can’t complain too much, I reckon, after all the years we cheated death outa’. When we rode away after Gen’ral Lee surrendered, I don’t reckon any of us figured on livin’ another hundred and fifty years in the prettiest place on God’s green earth.” The sergeant smiled ruefully. “With some of the prettiest gals, too.”

“It’s been a good sojourn, hasn’t it?” Fargo said.

“It surely has, sir. It surely has.”

They kept working. The beams of light slanting down into the prison chamber moved as the day wore on and finally began to wane. It would be easier to move around Cuchatlán without being spotted after dark, but Gabriel didn’t know if Esparza would allow them that much time. Esparza didn’t really need to keep any of them alive anymore, unless he believed that story about a hidden message on the flags.

By the time the direct sunlight had faded entirely, leaving them in a sepulchral twilight gloom, the men had gouged out enough mortar around the stone that they could get their fingers into the gap all around it. They began heaving on it, trying to work it back and forth. At first the remaining mortar resisted their efforts, but finally, with tiny grating sounds and even tinier movements, the stone began to shift.

With each movement of millimeters, the block loosened a little more. The men began to tug on it. It didn’t want to budge, and for the longest time it didn’t—but then gradually it began to come free. The men hauled it out slowly and, straining under the weight, set it carefully on the floor.

“The walls of these temples and palaces often have double layers,” Cierra said, “with hollow spaces in between. That gives mechanisms like this one room to work.”

Gabriel peered into the black opening where the stone block had been. His Zippo was still in one of the buttoned-up pockets of his shirt. He fished it out, hoping that it would work after its immersion in the Black River.

The lighter only sparked the first couple of times he spun the wheel, but then the flame caught. He held it inside the hole in the wall and studied what he could see of the mechanism from this side. He couldn’t see where the lever attached to it.

“I’m going to have to crawl into this thing,” he said.

Boone held the lighter while Gabriel wedged his head and shoulders into the opening. They barely fit. His shoulders scraped against the rough stone on either side as he edged forward. He reached one hand back between his legs and felt the Zippo deposited in it. He brought the lighter forward, saw the play of the orange flame on the stone all around him.

Now he could see into the space where the apparatus was located. The lever on the outside of the chamber raised a stone rod that set off the movement of counterweights attached to either side of a delicate metal chain. Gabriel studied it until he had the whole set up committed to memory, then wriggled back out of the hole.

“We can do it,” he reported to the others.

General Fargo jerked his head in a curt nod. His spine was straight, and there was an air of command about him that hadn’t been there earlier. “Very well,” he said. He turned to Boone. “Sergeant, get the women and children back in the far corner of the chamber.”

“Not me,” Mariella said. “I’m staying with you, Granville.”

“I’m not going in any corner, either,” Cierra added.

“You can argue with them if you want to, General,” Gabriel said, “but you’d be wasting your time.”

“Very well,” Fargo said. “You two stay up here, but if there’s any shooting I expect you to get down and stay down.”

They didn’t agree to that, but they didn’t argue the point, either.

“When the door opens, the rest of you back off as well,” Gabriel said. “We want to get at least two of the guards in here.”

Fargo nodded. “Are you ready to proceed, Mr. Hunt?”

Gabriel looked around the room and saw that the shadows had thickened considerably. Not much light was left outside. The timing was good.

“Let’s do it,” he said.