Cape Hell Read Free Page B

I’d said that turned out to be truer than I knew; and something I’d have torn out along with my tongue when I got the truth of it.
    â€œIs there a settlement where I’m headed? The Sierras cover a lot of ground.”
    He hauled an atlas the size of a dining table from the slots where he kept his ledgers and made room to spread it on the desk.
    â€œThe map is centuries out of date. We have the pillaging Spaniards to thank for its existence at all; but nothing’s come along to supplant it, and I doubt little has changed there since the death of Columbus. It’s the last wild place in North America.”
    He ran a finger down the coast to a ragged hangnail sticking into the Gulf of California across from the mountain range.
    â€œâ€˜Cabo Falso,’” I read.
    â€œâ€˜The Cape of Lies.’ It’s home to an anonymous fishing village, the only source of communication with the outside world for a hundred miles. Even a traitor needs a conduit: That’s where his alleged weaponry would have landed. If you should need to get in touch with this court, it’s two weeks in the saddle from his base of operations. There’s no railway spur. The only line crawls through the foothills of the Sierras; the blankest space on the map this side of darkest Africa, all craggy peaks, deep abyss, and dense jungle, teeming with mosquitoes, venomous snakes, and leeches the size of trout in Montana. I exaggerate, possibly; but better that than to underestimate the hazards. It’s a pity our modern cartographers have grown too sophisticated to make allowances for dragons. If the mystical beasts were to thrive anywhere, that would be the place.”
    â€œWhat about women?”
    â€œSavages, who’d mate with you and cut your throat in the moment of ecstasy; so I’m told.” He flushed a little, although over the bloodshed or the carnal implication, I couldn’t tell.
    â€œI could get the same at Chicago Joe’s, and save the expense of travel. Why Cape of Lies?”
    Here he was on more comfortable ground.
    â€œLegend says Cortes promised to deliver Montezuma to the natives who were rebelling against him, in return for directions to all the gold mines in the region. They delivered, he didn’t. You won’t find its other name on any map: Cabo Infierno; lyrical, don’t you agree?”
    â€œCape Hell. It’s practically a sonnet.”
    â€œIn 1519, the disgruntled Aztecs captured several Conquistadors there and put them to death by pouring molten gold down their throats. Clearly, the concept of irony is as indigenous to the New World as the potato.”
    â€œLet’s hope it hasn’t survived as well. I can’t swallow even a jalapeno without regret.”
    â€œI rather think Captain Childress is at least partially responsible for the endurance of the name. The Pinkerton’s report cites rumors of soldiers beheaded for desertion and their bodies turned over to cannibals.”
    â€œHe got into the tequila. Indians aren’t man-eaters.”
    â€œI suspect Childress circulated the stories himself. He’s established in the local cane sugar trade—that’s public record—and when it comes to discouraging competition there’s nothing quite as effective as tales of massacre.”
    â€œPlanting sugar for profit makes sense, if he is raising an army. The kind of men he needs don’t fight for love of country.”
    â€œThat isn’t all,” he said, helping himself to an unprecedented third helping of spirits; his Presbyterian leanings counseled against them, and he wasn’t a hypocrite in practice. “The federales say he grows poppies between the rows.”
    â€œOpium.”
    â€œThe climate is ideal.”
    I emptied my glass a second time. “The Civil War’s starting to be the least interesting part of his biography.”

 
    FOUR
    The cashier in the Miner’s Bank read the