The Gorgon Field by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t you see that it’s unimportant now?” asked Tony.
    “Haven’t I provided for you and your sister?”
    “We all know you’ve been more than generous. No one disputes that.”
    “And you would turn the valley into—what did you call it, a corporate resort? Knowing I detest the idea, you would do that.”
    “Not right away,” his son said with a trace of impatience. “Places like this are vanishing faster all the time. You can hardly find a secluded spot even today. I’m talking about twenty years from now, fifteen at least.”
    Don Carlos shook his head. “The business will be yours. I have provided a trust for Deborah. Ramón can have the valley. Do you want to pursue this in court?” His face might have been carved from the granite of the cliffs. His eyes were narrowed; they caught the light and gleamed.
    He would welcome a fight, Constance realized, watching him. And he would win. Tony flinched away finally and stood up. He had learned well from his father; nothing of his defeat showed in his face or was detectable in his voice when he said, “As you wish, Father. You know I would not willingly do anything to hurt you.”
    When he walked from the room, Deborah jumped up and ran after him. Now Charlie rose lazily from his chair, grinning. “Is he really finished?” he asked.
    Don Carlos was looking at the door thoughtfully; he swung around as if surprised to find anyone still in the room. “He isn’t done yet,” he admitted. “Not quite yet.”
    “Congratulations,” Charlie said, still grinning. “A masterful job of creating a new heir. I would not like to be your adversary.”
    The old man studied him, then said in a quiet voice, “Are you exceedingly brave, or simply not very smart? I wonder. You are on my land, where I have numerous servants who are, I sometimes think, too fanatically loyal.”
    Constance was looking from one to the other in bewilderment.
    “Let me tell a different story,” Charlie said. “A group of people arrives at the top of the cliff, where the stream starts to tumble down into the valley. Two Mexican men, two Mexican women, a child, a white man, and an Indian guide. They can’t take horses down that cut, not safely, so they hobble them up there and go down on foot. Looking for gold? A holy place? What? Never mind. A fight breaks out and the white man and child survive, but when he climbs back out, the horses are gone, and from that bit of thievery, he gets the idea for the whole story he’ll tell about bandits. It works; people accept his story. And now his only problem is that he can’t find the valley again. He dies without locating it again. Why didn’t he kill the child, Carlos?”
    Don Carlos sighed. “Please sit down. I want a drink. I seldom do anymore, but right now that’s what I want.”
    Ramón mixed drinks for all of them, and then he sat down for the first time since the meeting had started.
    Don Carlos drank straight bourbon, followed by water. “Have you told Deborah any of this?”
    “No.”
    “It was as you guessed,” Don Carlos said finally. “I was back in the formations and didn’t even hear the shots. I came out and he was the only one; the others were lying in blood. He raised the gun and aimed at me, and then he put it down again and started to dig graves. I don’t know why he didn’t shoot. He said from then on, I was to be his son and if I ever told anyone, he would shoot me too. I believed him. I was five.”
    “He killed your mother,” Constance said, horrified, “and your father.”
    “Yes.”
    “How terrible for you. But I don’t understand what that has to do with the present.”
    Don Carlos shrugged. “How much more have you guessed, or learned?” he asked Charlie.
    “He couldn’t find the valley again, but you did. I suspect there was gold and that it’s under the lake today.” Don Carlos nodded slightly. “Yes. You took away enough to get your start, and later you bought the valley, and the first thing you