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CHAPTER 6

      CONSUELO KNEW her husband had been killed when she heard Tonio's screams. Nothing else could make him cry out like that.

      Then, when she heard the gunshot and Tonio's screams stopped, she thought she had lost him, too. Even when Tonio came running to their hiding place and she saw he was alive, her grief was not slackened. As they hid in a mesquite-screened space among the rocks, it lay like a cold stone in her heart.

      Somewhere in the darkness, the men waited for a sound or movement, but Consuelo and Tonio were hidden from view from all directions. The cloud cover drifted on in the early hours of the morning but the thin moon put out little light. An hour after sunrise, they could see the men return to the cabin and search and destroy their possessions.

      Tonio let out a low groan and burst into tears as he saw Petrie kill the dog. It released the grief his anger had bottled up about his father, and he cried soundlessly while Consuelo, her own eyes streaming, tried to comfort him.

      After a time the men went away, but Consuelo and Tonio stayed hidden, in case the three were waiting for them. They remained there as the sun climbed in the blue New Mexico sky and it was almost midday.

      When they were sure the men had gone, they left their hiding place, and walked back to the pile of ashes that had been the cabin. The burro was nowhere to be seen. The cars were heaps of ruined metal and ashes.

      They ran to Ramirez's body by the stream and cut it down, then dug a grave with a shovel that had half its handle burned away. They placed him in the grave with his hands crossed on his chest and his shirt covering his face and poor ruined neck to protect it from the falling dirt. They piled stones on top of the mound so the coyotes wouldn't get him. Tonio knocked apart the mesquite branches and ocotillo that formed the corral and made a cross by fastening two of the branches together with barbed wire. He placed it over the grave and piled more rocks around it. By then it was late afternoon.

      When they were finished, Consuelo wiped her tears away with her forearm and held Tonio tightly against her.

      "Why did they kill him?" Tonio asked.

      "You will see."

      She led him back to the burned cabin, and in one corner, under the woodstove, she raked the still smoldering ashes away and began digging. Under two feet of earth she uncovered a large flat piece of sandstone. She lifted it up and Tonio saw the box his father had brought home in the new car. He had been sitting in the car, admiring its beauty, while they buried the box.

      "Help me," Consuelo said, and Tonio worked his fingers under the rope and with some effort they lifted it out. It was about a foot wide and a foot deep and about one and a half feet long.

      "It's very heavy," Tonio said.

      "All the better," she answered. She untied the rope and pushed the broken padlock out of the hasp which had secured the box, and opened it.

      Tonio stared. The box held bars of gold, each small brick weighing several kilos. There must have been forty of them in the box. Each was stamped with a symbol that looked like a crescent moon.

      "Where did this come from?" Tonio asked.

      "Your father took it from the men who stole it from the man with the white beard. I don't know where that one stole it," she answered.

      "It is gold?"

      "It is undoubtedly gold."

      "Then we are rich!"

      She shook her head. "Not until we can find a way to sell it, without somebody stealing it from us. Think how the rich ones prey on poor people like us."

      "What will we do?"

      She had been thinking about it on and off all night while they hid. She had thought the men who had killed her husband would somehow find the gold and she and Tonio would be destitute, but she had also planned what to do if they didn't find it. Now, seeing the gleaming metal bars, she felt better.

      "We will go to Mexico to my brother. He will know what to do, and he will be honest with us."

      They were startled by a sound among the trees, and they froze, but it was only the burro coming home, walking hesitantly toward them.

      "Well, that will make it easier," Consuelo said, as she began tying up the box again.

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