“Right. And I don’t see any jaguar bones.”

“Do you recognize the gun?”

“It looks like a Colt Single Action Army, which would date it—and him—at 1873 or later.”

She said, “His skull is crushed on the left side.”

“That was one of the details I was going to mention after we were outside in the daylight.”

“This man was clubbed to death,” she said. “He was murdered.” She got up, and they both walked into the inner chamber. Inside was a low bier made of cut stone. On it lay a skeleton adorned with a gold breastplate, a strip of gold with carved jade stones for a headpiece, jade ear plugs. There was an obsidian knife, a club, and a large number of carved-jade and beaten-gold objects.

“The tomb is intact,” said Remi. “How can it possibly be intact? Whoever killed that guy out there must have known there was gold in here.”

Sam and Remi both heard a shuffling sound and then another. They stepped to the doorway. Gathered in the outer chamber were a half dozen people from the nearby town—Señora Velasquez; Pepe, the mechanic; Señor Alvarez, the restaurant owner, his son, and two others they didn’t know. Three of them were holding guns of some description, the others knives, and all of them looked furious.

Sam said, “Hello, ladies and gentlemen.”

Señora Velasquez said, “Come out of there very slowly and carefully.”

“We meant no harm,” Remi said. “We just saw that—”

“Quiet or you’ll be as dead as he is.”

Sam and Remi walked past the armed townspeople into the sunlight. Waiting in a large circle around them were about fifty other residents of Santa Maria de los Montañas. Some of them held machetes, others axes or hatchets. There were a couple of baseball bats. A few people held hunting rifles or shotguns, and there were pistols nearly as old as the one beside the man in the tomb.

The menace was palpable. The rifles and shotguns were aimed at Sam and Remi. There were two men with ropes, which seemed even more ominous than the weapons.

A man they had not seen before stepped out of the crowd. He had the sun-darkened face and sinewy arms of a farmer. He looked at Sam and Remi with eyes as hard as obsidian. “I’ll volunteer to dig graves. We can throw the bodies down from here and bury them where they fall. Who will help me?”

Chapter 27

SANTA MARIA DE LOS MONTAÑAS

“I’ll help dig graves.” A second man stepped forward and joined the first on the outside of the circle. After that, a couple of others just waved hands and joined the burial crew.

Pepe the mechanic stepped into the circle. “Remember, we have no reason to make these people suffer. Someone shoot them in the head with a hunting rifle and make it fast.”