House of the Rising Sun: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

and crates of Mauser rifles and ammunition. The woman was watching him from the gallery, the wind flattening her long dress against her legs. He closed the door on the hearse and walked up to the veranda.
    “I’m fixing to light it up. The bullets will be popping in the heat, but they’re not going anywhere. I’d keep the girls inside nevertheless.”
    “Beckman considers that his property. You’re going to burn it?”
    “The Huns are arming the Mexicans to stir up trouble so we keep our mind off Europe. I don’t want my boy dying from a gun that’s in that hearse.”
    “There is no end of problems with you.”
    “Tell Mr. Beckman I’m sorry I missed him. If he wants to come looking for me, I’ll get directions to him.”
    This time she had nothing to say. He was discovering that her silence had a greater effect on him than her insults, and he found that thought deeply troubling. He took off his hat, even though hail was still dancing in a white haze on the ground. “For whatever reason, you took mercy on me, Miss Beatrice. I hope the Mexicans don’t hold you accountable for the men I had to kill or the ordnance I’m fixing to set afire. You’re a beautiful woman.” He turned and walked toward the hearse.
    “Stop,” she said. She approached him, her hair flecked with ice crystals, her face sharpened by the wind. “Beckman is the most evil man I’ve ever known.”
    “All the bad ones seem that way until you punch their ticket.”
    “You’ll always be welcome here,” she said, and went back into the house.
    If that woman doesn’t know how to set the hook, he thought.
    F ROM A GULCH he snaked tangles of broken tree limbs that were as hard and smooth and pointy as deer antlers. He crushed them under his boot and stuffed them beneath the hearse, then ripped the curtains and the felt headliner from the interior and packed them inside the branches. He searched under the driver’s seat for a flint striker or the matches needed to light the carriage lamps, and found a box of lucifers. As an afterthought, he decided to make use of a grease-smeared blanket he had seen wedged between a crate of rifles and the side of the hearse. When he tried to lift it, he realized it contained objects that were heavy and metallic and probably ill-suited for carrying in a makeshift sack.
    He squatted down and unfolded the blanket and spread it on the ground. Inside it were seven brass candlestick holders and two candelabras and a leather bag of low-denomination Mexican coins and a hinged rosewood box. He opened the box and stared mutely. An artifact lay pressed into a hard cushion of green silk; it resembled a chalice, perhaps one stolen from a church. The impression, however, was illusory. The chalice was actually two goblets that looked made from onyx, both inverted, each base fused to the other. They were encased by a framework of gold bands encrusted with jewels that could have been glass or emeralds and sapphire. The shades of color in the goblets were the strangest he had ever seen in a mineral: dark brown with tinges of black and a subdued yellow luminosity that seemed to have no source. The top goblet was inset with a gold cup.
    He picked up the artifact and turned it over in his hands but could see no markings that indicated its origins. He replaced it in the deep pocket that had been formed in the silk cushion and closed the top. On the bottom of the box, someone had carved a small cross and the word “Leon.”
    He knew the Mausers in the crates would be coated in packing grease and in need of thorough cleaning before being fired, so he set down the rosewood box and returned to the canyon and picked up a Mauser dropped by one of the dead Mexicans; he also stripped the bandoliers from the body. In the saddlebags of the junior officer he found a spyglass and a bowie knife in a beaded deerskin scabbard and photographs of women in corsets and bloomers, their hair piled on their heads. He found a clutch of letters