Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3)

WELLSPRING

BY ALLAN LEVERONE

For
Craig: never stop fighting

First Kindle edition
 
© 2013 by Allan Leverone

Cover design by Scott Carpenter

Special thanks to J. Carson Black
for helping brainstorm the perfect title.

All
rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of
this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the
written permission of the author, except where permitted by law, or in the case
of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents, some of which
may be based in part on actual names, characters, places and incidents, either
are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is
unintended and entirely coincidental.

First eBook edition: 2013

PART I

1

May 10,
1856

Southeastern
Peru

The three outlaws crouched in the
scrub brush, hot and uncomfortable in the midday South American sun. They had
discovered shortly after sunrise that trying to stay cool out here in the God-forsaken
Peruvian wilderness was damned near impossible.

Jackson
Healy wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one grimy hand and
asked the young native guide, “How much longer?” The words came out a scratchy,
low-pitched growl.

The
kid—his name was Juan and he claimed to be twelve, although Jackson
thought that might be a bit of an exaggeration, not that he cared—stared
back uncomprehendingly, then seemed to decipher the gist of the question and
smiled brightly. “Soon,” he said in his heavily accented English.

“I
goddamn well hope so,” Jackson grumbled. “It’s hotter’n Satan’s kitchen out
here.” The bizarre-looking group of three adults and the child had taken up
their position hours ago, disappearing from sight—they hoped—in the
folds of a gigantic natural rock formation located less than a hundred feet from
what appeared to be a door carved into one smooth, sheer side of a massive
boulder.

On
their approach, hours earlier, all three Americans had gaped, slack-jawed, at
the enormity of the door. Well over twenty feet high and nearly as wide, it
featured a smaller alcove carved directly into its center. The alcove itself was
perhaps six feet high, roughly the size of a normal door.

Except
it wasn’t a normal door.

It
wasn’t a door at all.

It was
a door-like shape carved into a solid rock wall disappearing into the side of a
jagged, rocky hill in the middle of nowhere in Peru, miles away from
civilization, or anything remotely resembling it.

And it
was haunted, or so claimed the local legend.

The rock
face was known as Puerta de Hayu Marka by the locals, the English translation
being “Gate of the Gods,” and it had been here for centuries; for as long as
anyone could remember. No one could say how it had been carved, or when, or by
whom.

But South
American legend had it that on rare occasions, the door could be opened, only
by shaman priests, and only through an elaborate ritual utilizing a sacred
golden disk as key, inserted into the center of the carved door. Once the
portal was opened, the legend said that the gods were free to pass through it,
crossing between their worlds and ours.

All of
this Jackson had learned over the course of many weeks buying drinks –
and friends – in a tiny cantina in the dusty Peruvian village of Puno.

Jackson
and his two fellow outlaws, Wesley and Amos Krupp, had headed south into Mexico
through Brownsville, Texas, following a dispute over accusations of cheating
during a poker game. The accusations—all accurate, as if that
mattered—had resulted in a gun battle, which had in turn resulted in two
dead cattle ranchers and a posse of Texas Rangers hot on their trail.

Mexico
had seemed a little too close to Texas for Jackson’s taste. He had had run-ins
with the Rangers in the past, and felt certain the minor complication of an international
border crossing would not deter their pursuers for long, if at all. So he led
his fellow outlaws farther south, putting more distance between themselves and
the long arm of the Texas law, eventually holing up in Puno, Peru, where the
plan had been to drink away a few months, romance a few senoritas, and
eventually slip back across the border into the States once the heat died down.

But
within a few weeks, after the trio had ingratiated themselves with the locals
through a liberal whiskey-sharing policy, Jackson had begun hearing the
stories.

The
mysterious door carved into the sheer rock wall.

The
elaborate rituals.

The
golden disk.

The
portal to other worlds.

The
more Jackson Healy heard of the Puerta de Hayu Marka legends, whispered
fearfully in dark corners of the Puno cantina, the more intrigued he became.

The
legends themselves were all superstitious South American bullshit, of course. Gate
of the Gods, indeed. The notion of a magical doorway carved into a rock wall,
accessible only via a golden disk, was beyond believable. But the disk itself
wasn’t bullshit. This disk, supposedly the key used to open Puerta de Hayu
Marka, was said to be large, hefty, and solid gold, through and through.

Getting
his greedy hands on a disk constructed of solid gold was the sort of thing no
self-respecting outlaw could be expected to pass up. Jackson had no idea how
much money such a golden disk might fetch on the open market, but he knew it
had to be a lot. And it wasn’t like the Healy-Krupp gang was exactly rolling in
dough. The cash they had scored from their most recent bank jobs, combined with
the money they had taken off the dead ranchers in the ill-fated Texas poker
game, amounted to just enough to bankroll this South American vacation.

A solid
gold disk could solve a lot of problems.

So,
three nights ago, when one of their loose-lipped Peruvian drinking buddies had
let slip the secret that one of the rare Gate of the Gods ceremonial rituals
was to take place at Puerta de Hayu Marka tonight, a plan had begun forming in Jackson
Healy’s devious mind.

Finding
a guide to lead them to the mystical location deep in the Peruvian wilderness
was a simple task. Puno was a poor village, and the three gringos had learned quickly
that the U.S. dollar was king in South America. That fact, combined with the
natural curiosity of young boys everywhere, easily outweighed any superstitious
fears about gods and shamans and imaginary doorways carved into rock
formations.

The son
of a local goat farmer had enthusiastically agreed to lead the three Americans
by burro to the “Valley of the Spirits,” as the area containing Puerta de Hayu
Marka was known locally. The strange group—three grown American men
sporting scraggly beards and dirty clothes following a tiny brown child with a
massive smile creasing his face—had left town before daybreak, Jackson’s
reasoning being that the team needed to be in-place and invisible well before
the shaman priests began preparing for their ritual. Word around the cantina
was that preparation would begin sometime in early afternoon.

The
trip had taken hours, and while the three Americans started out raucous and
lively, joking, swearing and sipping whiskey, as the morning had passed they
grew more and more restrained. The heat grew stifling as the sun rose higher
and higher into the sky. The terrain was alien and forbidding, flat grassy
plains erupting occasionally into massive rock formations resembling animals,
strange beings, and alien-looking structures.

Jackson’s
outlaw partners, Amos and Wesley Krupp, just as devious and bloodthirsty as
Jackson if not quite as intelligent, became pale and withdrawn and even began
to appear a little afraid as the men journeyed farther and farther from the
semi-civilization of Puno.

Jackson
would never have admitted it to his partners, but a worm of unease had begun
crawling through his belly as well. The farther they rode, the more…
off
…things seemed to become. There was
nothing specific he could put his finger on. Rather, it was a vibration, a sensation
of encroaching alien-ness. It was as if the South American air was becoming
saturated with some weird electrical charge, a pulse unseen but real, altering
their perceptions in a slight but noticeable – and frightening –
manner.

He
shook his head, embarrassed at his schoolgirl fears, thankful Amos and Wesley
could not read his mind. As an educated man—he had completed eight years
of schooling in Kansas City before moving to the Texas plains with his parents
as a child—Jackson Healy was the acknowledged leader of the Healy-Krupp
gang and not one to suffer superstitious fears or crises of confidence.

He
glanced at their young Peruvian guide and felt even sillier. Juan was clearly
unaffected by whatever was causing Jackson’s jumpiness. His grin, which seemed
permanently glued onto his face, was just as bright now as it had been in the
predawn darkness this morning.

After
what felt like an endless journey, their guide began gesturing wildly at what
looked to Jackson like just another rock formation looming above the flat
surface of the plain, far off in the distance. It appeared as alien and
forbidding as all the others they had ridden past, but this one, the young boy
informed them in broken English, was the one they were looking for.

Puerta
de Hayu Marka.

As they
approached, even from a distance of at least a quarter-mile, Jackson could see
the outline of the gigantic door, the sides of the carving thrust upward toward
the sky like long arms.

As they
moved closer, the smaller carved alcove appeared, exactly in the middle of the
much larger door. Six feet high and sunk into the flat surface, the alcove was
bathed in shadows, and the sight of it reignited in Jackson his previous
irrational fears, which seemed suddenly not so irrational at all. He glanced at
his partners and could see without speaking that they felt the same way.

The
tension that had been blanketing the adults in the small group—the boy
seemed impervious to anything other than wide-eyed, innocent joy—ratcheted
up even higher. The reason for the stress was unspoken between the three
outlaws but clear: if the shaman priests who were to conduct tonight’s sacred
ritual were already on site, a bloodbath was likely about to begin. The
consensus among the superstitious locals populating the Puno cantina had been that
the priests would not arrive until late afternoon, but none of the men had ever
actually attended one of the ceremonies, and they freely admitted all of their
information regarding Puerta de Hayu Marka was second or even third-hand.

When
the outlaws reached a point several hundred yards away, Jackson called their
small caravan to a halt and sent the Peruvian guide ahead to scout the rock
formation. The kid was gone less than thirty minutes, and when he returned,
smile still plastered onto his face, he announced that the area was deserted.
Only then did the group ride the rest of the way.

They
examined the curious carving before scouting out a hiding place among the nooks
and crannies in the massive formation. The alcove did, indeed, resemble a
doorway. It featured a perfectly circular depression at approximately waist
height, located precisely in the middle. This depression was close to a foot in
circumference, and Jackson thought that if the sacred golden disk he had heard
so much about was supposed to fit into that depression, he would be one very
rich man before the day was out.

The
feeling of unease and paranoia that had been building among the men all morning
did not disappear, however, and in fact grew much stronger now that they had
arrived at their destination. Jackson had no difficulty understanding why the
South American natives feared and revered this place. He didn’t give a damn
about any of their superstitious mumbo-jumbo, but he had to admit, if only to
himself, that something was off-kilter about the place.

After a
few minutes’ examination of the carving, and sick of listening to the Krupp
brothers’ endless grumbling about the intensity of the midday heat, Jackson
decided it was time to make camp and await the arrival of the shaman priests.

The
group moved into the jumble of reddish-brown boulders, climbing steadily
upward. Jackson knew that to successfully accomplish their mission tonight, two
things were essential: the element of surprise, and occupation of the high
ground. It was critical he be able to see everything happening at Puerta de
Hayu Marka.