Chapter 1
VIOLA BARTELL WAS STANDING IN ABOUT FOUR feet of water. It came just up to her breasts, the slight waves created by the slow but steady current teasing her nipples. She was completely nude.
Jud sat on the bank, shaded by the thick branches of a willow tree. The grass beneath him was thickly matted, soft and green. It was hard to believe that just a few miles down the mountain was a virtual desert.
"You can come in, Jud," Viola teased. She lifted her arms, beckoning, and the gesture raised her breasts completely out of the water. They were firm and full, the nipples rigid, pink in color.
Jud could hear the rhythmic crack of the hand ax as Sam cleared away a tree that conflicted with what he thought should be the camp site. Sam was stubborn like that. He'd roll over, knock down anything or anybody who got in the way of something he wanted. Jud wondered what he'd think if he knew his wife was standing here naked, with her bare titties above the water line.
"Come on, Jud. Are you chicken?"
She stood on tiptoe, revealing even more of her creamy flesh. Then she bounced on her toes, making her breasts jiggle vibrantly.
"I think it would cause friction on the team," he laughed. How vividly this reflected a situation they'd been in years before, he mused.
Viola laughed, lowering herself back into the water.
"You said that once before, didn't you?" she asked.
"I may have."
"You always were a prude, Jud. A good little boy."
She splashed water toward him, then turned and swam toward the other side, where there was a high bank. Jud watched her body glide along the top of the green water. Her buttocks were firm and inviting, each motion of her thighs as she swam seemingly calculated to ferment his desire.
She reached the far side, where the water was deep, and rested there, holding for support to a bare root that extended out from the bank.
The sound of the ax ceased. Jud tensed, ready to disappear into the willows. Then it resumed again. There was no telling what Sam was chopping down now.
"You know, Jud," Viola called across, "I do sincerely regret that you and I didn't get together back when we had the chance. Just once, anyway. As much as I love Sam, I do wish we could have made it once."
She loosed a burst of musical laughter. Jud didn't know for sure what the meaning of it was, the laughter, but something in it sounded more like open invitation than anything else she'd said or done.
And he regretted it too, now that things had turned out the way they had. It was ironic that he'd passed up the chance he'd had for the good of the team. God, he was a kid in those days! But he was the quarterback and Sam was fullback, and if things had turned out right, they could both have been All-American. And Viola was a blossoming college freshman, wearing Sam's fraternity pin, but making the rounds of the team behind his back. And Jud had passed her up. He didn't like her then. As far as that went, he didn't like her now; but he wanted her. He still wanted her.
"I left my clothes upstream on the bank," Viola called. "Will you get them?"
She gave another little burst of laughter, the laughter that seemed to mock everything except the craving Jud felt for her. Then she turned loose of the root, disappeared under the water. The only sign of her was a slight disturbance at the surface, moving slowly toward him. Then, about midway across the pool, she broke surface again. She treaded water a moment, then dog-paddled on until her feet touched.
"Will you bring my clothes, Jud? Be an angel, huh?"
He stood up, smiling. He started down the steep bank, ducking to keep the willow branches from hitting him in the face or obstructing his vision. She was walking toward him; each step let the water conceal less of her voluptuous body from him. He watched her breasts emerge, jiggling with each step. She smiled, very conscious of his eyes on her. Across the little wooded ridge he could still hear the unceasing pounding of the ax.
Now her torso was bare down to her navel. Her skin glistened with the moisture in the late afternoon sun. Her bosom heaved with her breathing. The smile on her face was wanton, daring him. Jud reached the edge of the water and stood looking at her, considering the pros and cons.
"It's so nice up here," Viola said gaily. "And just down at the foot of the mountain there's nothing but sand and cactus. Why do you think that is, Jud?"
His eyes drifted up and down her body. He tried to fathom the murky water with his vision. He almost could, but what he could see of that part of her anatomy was hazy and dream-like.
"It's probably because there's snow during the winter just a ways up," he said.
She gave out another burst of the laughter, and he realized with a little embarrassment that she was putting him on. She didn't care why it was nice and green here and desert just down the mountain; she just wanted to see how long he could stand there and ignore her naked invitation.
And he was having a hard time ignoring it. But he didn't want to mix pleasure with business; and this was business. At least it had seemed like business when Sam stumbled onto him two nights ago in a bar in Ciudad Juarez and told him the story of an old man who was supposed to be sitting on twenty thousand dollars in Spanish bullion up in the mountains north of El Paso.
At first, Jud hadn't believed him. There are a million stories like that in the Southwest-stories of treasure left by Coronado and the conquistadors. But Sam said there was something to this one, and he had a Spanish coin he'd got off an Indian girl in Las Cruces to prove it. It was the first time Jud had seen Sam in nearly ten years, but he could remember a half-dozen other hair-brained schemes Sam had back in college days; though none were quite as wild as this one. But then, there weren't many schemes with twenty-thousand-dollar payoffs, either. And the more tequila Sam poured down him, the better that Spanish bullion had looked to Jud. Then Sam had told him Viola was with him-married to him. That had been what turned the trick and convinced Jud he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
"Baby, are you going to get my clothes, or are you coming in with me?" Viola asked with impatience.
She took another step, and the water line dropped down her belly another three inches. She played her body off against that water line the way a belly dancer did with veils.
The ax stopped. "He's finished," Jud said.
"Baby, how long does it take you to learn? Sam trusts you. He always did. Remember?"
Jud remembered. Sam had once left them alone together for a whole night. That was when he'd have made it with her, if he'd had any sense.
"Yeah, I remember," he said. "I'll get your clothes."
He turned away quickly and walked back up along the edge of the creek. He passed under a thick growth of willows along a shallow, narrow place in the stream, then emerged on another green, sloping bank. Her clothes were lying in a neat pile at the edge of the water. Jud glanced back downstream. There was a gradual bend, and from here he couldn't see the pool where she was, nor the bank where he'd been lounging, enjoying a few moments' rest in the shade after the day's hike.
Then an idea hit him. He made his way up the slope, halfway to the top of the ridge, and looked back down in the direction he'd come from. He nodded to himself, now understanding completely: From here he could clearly see where he'd been. Viola had seen him from here; then she'd gone down to the water, undressed and swum down, pretending to be surprised when she looked up and saw him watching her. Pretty damn cagey, he thought. And pretty obvious, too.
Jud picked up her clothes and made his way back through the willows to where she waited in the hip-deep water.
"You're a dear, Jud," she said brightly.
She arched her shoulders, accenting the full firmness of her breasts. He glanced nervously up the ridge. If Sam were to appear now . . . that's all he'd need. That would blow everything.
He put the clothes down as neatly as he could on the bank, and looked back at her. He grinned.
"You know," he said; "if you were my wife and I thought you were fooling around like this, I'd take my belt to you and skin your ass alive."
She smiled, her emerald eyes radiating lust. "I might like that."
Still grinning, Jud shook his head. "Viola, you're a real bitch."
He turned quickly and started up the slope. He was thinking about the time before when he'd said the same thing to her-that night when Sam had gone horny and left the two of them to stay the night in his apartment. Not, Jud realized now, because he'd trusted Jud, and not because he trusted Viola. It was more that he trusted himself. Sam just couldn't imagine a woman cheating on him. That was another aspect of him; it went along with his stubborness. And all the time, Viola was bouncing from the back seat of one car to another every time Sam turned his back-making it with as many guys as she could, and keeping count as if it were some great achievement. Maybe that was why Jud had turned her down that night-looked at her standing in front of Sam's bed with nothing on but a pair of nearly transparent pants, and shook his head and walked out. Maybe he hadn't wanted to be just another name on her list. But now he regretted it, as much as he still disliked her.
"Jud!" she called after him.
He stopped and turned slowly around. She was standing on the bank now. Her clothes were still piled at her feet. Her creamy skin glistened, accenting the head-to-toe perfection of her nakedness.
"Do you think we'll ever make it, Jud?"
He looked at her for a long time, studying the beauty of her body. Then he nodded his head. "Yeah, Viola, we'll make it. But I'll pick the time."
Before she could answer, he turned and walked on up to the ridge.
Sam was busy with the tent, having a little trouble getting it up by himself. "Where the hell you been?" he roared, then laughed in his good-natured way.
"Just scoutin' around," Jud said.
Shortly after that, Viola came back. Jud and Sam had pitched the tent. They'd gathered kindling, and used it to start a fire with wood from the tree Sam had so doggedly cut to make room for the tent where he thought it should. Viola cooked them a big meal from the supplies they'd brought-cooked too much, actually, because if they continued to eat like they did that first night on the trail, they'd be completely dependent on the mythical mountaineer they were seeking, not only to lead them to the treasure, but for their very subsistence. Jud mentioned this, but Sam told him to relax; things would take care of themselves.
They talked for a while, filling each other in on the details of their lives since they'd been suspended for violation of athletic restrictions. Of course they'd been through all this two nights ago in Ciudad Juarez, but there were still details to be filled in. And Jud noted that there was a striking similarity between their lives. They'd both been football heroes first during their college days-everything else was secondary. When the football bubble had burst, during an illegal recruiting scandal which had set West Coast college football back to the stone age, both of them had been left with nothing to hang onto, and both had dropped out of school fairly quickly. They'd both become drifters, moving purposelessly from one job to another. The outstanding difference was that Sam had married Viola, thus clinging to at least a remnant of his old glory days.
Talk of shiftlessness and irresponsibility, of moving without direction around the country, eventually led them back to the present purpose, the treasure. And though he'd heard the details already, Jud wanted to hear them again-as much for the sake of conversation as anything else.
Sam had first heard rumors of the treasure in Las Cruces. He hadn't taken them seriously until he'd come up to Baja Montana on a hunting trip. An Indian girl in a tourist shop had accidentally given him a strange-looking coin in change when he bought Viola a gift. He'd asked where she got the coin, and she told him her cousin had given it to her. She wanted it back, but on an impulse Sam had persuaded her to sell it to him for five dollars. Late that night, the girl had come to his motel room, and asked him to give the coin back. She said selling it to him had been a mistake, and her cousin would be furious. Sam lied that he'd given the coin to a friend, but would get it back the next day. Then he left.
His curiosity stirred, he'd stopped at the library in Las Cruces and done some research on Spanish exploration, learning that Coronado's expedition had passed through this area and might well have buried gold somewhere on the mountain. Then he checked on treasure hunting in the area, and learned that an old man and an Indian girl had gone up the mountain a few months earlier and hadn't returned. He took the coin to a dealer in El Paso, not wanting to arouse curiosity in Las Cruces. The dealer authenticated the coin as Spanish bullion of the Coronado era, and was very interested in learning where it was found.
That night, Sam had run into Jud in the bar in Ciudad Juarez. He'd known the minute he saw Jud-not believing his eyes, he said-that Jud was meant to go with him. In fact, that was the first time Sam had really been convinced that there was something of substance to the treasure story. He'd needed a man he could trust, and miraculously, Jud had appeared.
Through the whole night, Viola was an angel. She spoke at all the right times, said all the right things. Sam could suspect nothing. But at equally correct times, she let go a calculated burst of that distant, musical, mocking laughter. And each time, Jud heard in it the sound of fresh invitation.