The Turbulence of Butterflies (Max Howard Series Book 6) Read online

  I didn’t remember that from Catholic School.

  Ava continued, “That’s just an aside. The Black Robes or Jesuits were formed by the Catholic Church in Rome to deal with Protestant heresy. The Jesuits became the non-military enforcement arm of the Roman Catholic Church and influential throughout Spain, France, and Portugal. They were different than a Military Order like the Templars, which is a whole other thread to Jesuit history. This was during the time the secularist Enlightenment Movement began to take hold across Europe and many European rulers rejected any papal influence in their countries. To the secularists, the Jesuits were seeking a new world order for the Pope after the French Inquisition got rid of the Knights Templar. In the end, the Jesuit Order became a convenient scapegoat for both the rulers of the countries the Jesuits operated in, as well as Papal Rome itself. Spain and France brought increasing pressure on Rome and the Pope to get rid of them. It finally ended for the Jesuits in Spanish America in 1767 when the Spanish army escorted every Jesuit out of Mexico. They marched them to the port of Veracruz and those that didn’t die along the way were shipped back to Europe. Spain confiscated all of their missions and land holdings in the Americas and auctioned off everything they could find to strip the Jesuits of their wealth. Much of the accumulated wealth of the Society of Jesus was in gold and all of it didn’t make it back to Spain. It was hidden in the Americas. There are documented entries from diaries of men who were on mule trains that had twenty or thirty animals carrying gold before and up until the time the missions were seized.”

  “I’d never heard that,” I said. “But it would explain the Journal.”

  “Neither did, I,” Hannah said.

  “You have a journal?” Ava asked incredulously. “My God, Max, why didn’t you tell me? I have to see it?”

  “I was going to tell you about it. I was waiting for the right time.”

  “When we agreed to move back down here,” Bryan said.

  I ignored him.

  “Well don’t get all excited about finding any gold. I doubt there is gold buried in the cistern. If the capstone has a map, it will likely only point to another map. That’s the way they hid their wealth. And you need the cipher for each cache.”

  “The what?” Shane asked.

  “The cipher. It’s a topographical reference. Maybe it gives you physical distances or notes a geographical feature. For example, if you have four bars between prominent squiggles that represents a body of water and the spot marked ‘X’ you need to know what the distance is of each marker. Does it mean four feet or eighty feet or four kilometers? How many feet does each bar represent? They didn’t make it easy. In some cases, you would need to have the previous map to unlock the current map you’re looking at.”

  My daughter-in-law never ceased to amaze me. Maybe I had been too critical in my thinking of her old man and his new age ranching. She had to get those genes from somewhere. “Let’s go see what we can find. I’ll call you as soon as we have something,” I said. I felt my heart rate go up now that I had something to do while Sunny was gone.

  “What do you think, Max?” Shane asked as we loaded into the truck for the return trip to the Pape Ranch.

  “I kinda think along the lines of what Ava said about a map pointing to another map.”

  “Then what? I mean, would you pursue it? Look for the next map?”

  “Truth is, I’d rather see what we have in the way of a cavern below the cistern to attract tourists than chase a map. I’ve only got a few more years to make sure that the Pape Ranch is financially secure. Maybe I’ll set that map aside until we finish our work and then you and Hannah can go pursue it.”

  We stopped off at the barn and I went looking in the tool shed for what Hannah needed. I knew I’d had a putty knife at one time, but there was no telling what Clete had done with my tools. I suspected he wasn’t the type of man to get rid of a tool just because it was old, and I was right. I found a small nail puller with a flat edge, a chisel, and a tap hammer, and with the putty knife we were all set.

  When we piled back into the truck, I had a feeling come over me not at all unlike I had when I realized the young Mayan girl, Angelina, was not all that she seemed to be. I won’t say it was a bad feeling, more like I needed to tread carefully with this new unknown. She had challenged my belief system and eventually opened my eyes to the possibilities I didn’t know shit about what really went on in this world.

  By the time we were back out on the highway I had dismissed the strange feeling I had and set my mind on discovering what lay below the old cistern.

  Chapter 6

  “The left vertical edge is 28 centimeters. The top horizontal edge is 43 centimeters. The stone is about six centimeters thick. As you can see, there is nothing inscribed on the bottom of the stone,” she said and tilted the capstone up to film the bottom side. “Wait, maybe there is. I need to brush it out and inspect it in a better light. The stone looks to be limestone,” Hannah continued from inside the cistern. She was speaking more for the camera in Shane’s iPhone than us. Shane and I looked at one another and then back down into the cistern at Hannah. I think we both wished we were the one down there instead of Hannah.

  “Okay, I’ve got it. There is a carved lip on the inside of the chamber below the capstone that is maybe two centimeters. The chamber below the capstone is 61 centimeters deep. Holy shit!”

  We heard her grunting and watched her lift the capstone and lean it against the side of the cistern. It was no easy feat considering the small space she was working in and having to straddle the chamber vault beneath the capstone.

  When she was finished filming it she looked up at Shane and me. “Are you ready?” she asked. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  I had secretly imagined finding a cache of gold coins below the capstone. I might have been graced, but I just wasn’t that lucky, I told myself. Even though we were disappointed that there was nothing in the chamber vault, there was something on the bottom of the capstone that Hannah saw and it sustained our hope of treasure even if it was somewhere else.

  I hadn’t wanted to risk injury to Hannah by hauling the capstone up while she was still below in the cistern, so she was bringing it up with her in her backpack that she had switched to her chest.

  It took both Shane and I to haul her up with the capstone and when she was at the top of the cistern, Shane gave her a hand up and out while I held the rope. There was a sense of excitement in all three of us and it kind of reminded me of the start of hunting season when a man was susceptible to buck fever. Even though the initial rush of gold fever and finding a treasure beneath the capstone had been dashed, it had been replaced with the anticipation of seeing a piece of history. Well, at least for me, it was; I wasn’t so sure about Shane.

  Hannah removed the capstone from her backpack and held it for us to look at in the sunlight. There were two etched symbols of some sort and a squiggly line beneath the carvings. The line looked like nothing more than a crack in the limestone to me, but then she pointed to the symbol, which looked to be a small cross.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s Mayan script. I can’t believe it. The glyphs are part of the Maya writing system.” She traced the squiggly line with her finger, but without touching the stone. “I think this is a river.”

  “Maybe it’s a map, like Ava said,” I offered.

  “Could be. I’m just blown away, Max. This is a major find. Did you know that Maya writing was in used in Mesoamerica from third Century BCE until they were conquered by the Spanish?”

  “What do you think the map is for?” Shane asked.

  “Let’s get a better look at it,” Hannah said and handed the capstone to Shane. She took out a large green bandana from her backpack and spread it on the ground. Then she removed a small brush and a squeeze bulb with a brass nozzle on it. She set the tools down on the bandana and then took the capstone from Shane.

  After about ten minutes of slow brushing and blowing out the etch
ings in the limestone, she held it up for us to inspect again. She turned the stone so that the etched cross mark was at the top of the stone.

  “It could be the Guadalupe River that’s off to the west of here,” I said.

  “Maybe a trail to a treasure or the next map,” Shane said. “What do you think, Hannah?”

  “I have no idea. But I do need to get a better shot of the etchings, before we put it back.”

  Hannah proceeded to film it and then take a few still shots with her ruler on the capstone. She asked Shane to hold the stone up straight and perpendicular to her, and then she placed the ruler against the edge of the camera lens and the stone to measure the depth of field. She took several close-up pictures.

  We debated for a few more minutes about what we should do next. I decided we should leave the site like we found it, as Ava had suggested. A few minutes later we lowered Hannah back into the cistern. After she was situated on the cistern floor, where she could retrieve the capstone from the backpack, we heard a tapping sound. I looked over the edge. Shane walked the rope over to where I stood, keeping it taut, and looked over.

  Even from where we were, we could hear the hollowness below the bottom of the carved vault. Hannah looked up at us and smiled. “It could be a false bottom. What do you want to do?”

  I figured she was just trying to humor me to lift my spirits.

  “Go for it,” Shane said.

  “Max?” Hannah asked.

  I could tell she was hesitant. “What do you think?” I answered her, right back.

  “The treasure hunter in me says find out what’s below, but all my training says we should go slow and do any exploration for a cavern far away from the cistern. Even if there is a treasure below, this structure has historical significance.”

  “You’re the expert, so I’ll go with your advice. Reseat the capstone and come on up. We’ll go talk to Ava about what we’ve found and then decide what to do next.”

  . . .

  As we drove back to my ranch, I realized why I had hired Shane Wagnor a few years ago. We were birds of a feather, him and me. He wanted down in that cavern as bad as I did, I could tell. The only logical and calm person in the truck was Hannah. I couldn’t speak for Shane, but the further we got from the Pape Ranch the more I worried someone would find the cistern while we were gone and steal all the gold I imagined was hidden below the bottom of the vault. I imagined a limestone cavern filled with chests of gold coins.

  “Do you think it’s gold?” Shane said and eyed me instead of the road.

  “You heard what Ava said. They hauled it out in mule trains. And the Journal that was found on the ranch confirms it.” My palms were still sweating at the prospect of getting at what was down there.

  Hannah shook her head at the both of us. “On my first dig in Guatemala, I was one hundred percent sure that where we were excavating I would find a stela that would explain what happened to the Mayan civilization to make them disappear so quickly and I would be the most famous archeologist in history.”

  “Did you find it?” Shane asked her.

  “No. I found plenty of pottery shards, though.”

  “I think she’s telling us not to get excited, Max,” Shane said.

  She was right. Thinking about the gold wasn’t good for my blood pressure. “You know, Hannah, Ava was into the Maya, too. In fact, that was her area of study at UT before she left Texas for Montana. Her interest in the Maya was one of the reasons she tried to help me with Angelina and her pet.”

  “I wonder why she gave it up.”

  “His name was Bryan. The story of their wedding is still a sore subject with everyone but me; and, our family doesn’t talk about it much anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, really. I’ve thought about it a lot since the incident, but it all seems like a dream now. Those kinds of things just don’t happen in real life.”

  “Tell me. I’ll believe you,” Hannah assured me.

  “Ava was the same way. When I told her about the spotted jaguar that showed up on the ranch, she believed me, and she tried to help with Buster. That’s the name my daughter Emily gave the jaguar. His real name….the young boy in him was called Chilam. Ava had arranged to get Buster back to the Guatemalan jungle near a place called Tikal, until her parents and Barbin intervened and stopped her. Evidently they thought a woman had no business living her life the way she wanted to live it after she was married.”

  “Please, please, tell me about the jaguar,” Hannah pleaded as if she were a young girl and not the doctoral student she was.

  “I heard about him when we were working on your ranch, before you hired me away from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Those Mexican day laborers that TPWD hired to clear the brush were scared to death to be up in those cedar trees where they couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction.”

  “I didn’t know that. I wonder how they heard about Buster,” I said, but I knew. It was Juan Fuentes, my foreman. Juan’s wife had family in town and he was the type of man‒like Clete‒who could spin a good yarn when he was around other people. Probably half of New Haven knew about the jaguar, despite me telling him to keep the presence of the jaguar on the ranch quiet.

  “Okay, be that way. I’ll just ask Ava,” Hannah said pouting like a little girl and then she smiled at me to let me know she was messing with me. “She can help me decipher the glyphs.”

  “Clete knows about the jaguar. He told me about it, too. You can tell us,” Shane said.

  “He wasn’t there when the jaguar arrived. He’s just heard about Buster, through his wife. She worked for the veterinarian that treated Buster’s wounds. He’s asked me a few times, but he’s more respectful of an old man’s wishes than you two cayuses are. He knows if I wanted to tell him anymore than he already knows, I would.”

  “Yeah, but he’s not as curious as Hannah is,” Shane said.

  I smiled at the two of them. I was going to be working with them and there was plenty of time to talk about Buster. I liked talking about him. I missed him and it made the experience all the more vivid in my mind when I shared my memories of him with other people. The only reason I didn’t talk about him anymore than I did was because I didn’t want to be carted off to a mental facility, which my family had threatened to do on more than one occasion. “Let’s stay focused on the cistern for now and I’ll tell you his story one day when I think you’re ready to believe me.”

  Ava was napping when we arrived home and Bryan didn’t want to wake her. Much to Barbin’s consternation, he asked his mother to watch the kids again and we went outside to the patio. I grabbed a few beers out of the refrigerator and joined them.

  “Did you find anything?” Bryan asked as I passed out the beers. It was Coors. I recognized the brand as Barbin’s. Well, actually her husband’s. I doubted she drank beer. Kent Vogel was a Bronco’s fan, despite living in Dallas, but I didn’t hold it against him. Bryan’s father was a good man. Many years ago, when Kent was working the rigs offshore, Barbin and her children, including Bryan, had lived with me on the ranch. As much as she could be a burr under my saddle now and then, she had allowed me the opportunity to be part of her children’s lives for a couple of years and I appreciated it.

  I kind of suspected that despite Ava’s desire to get away from Montana, Bryan wasn’t and he was the real reason they remained there. If I had to guess, I’d say he liked the distance between him and his mother, but I’d never offer that opinion out loud.

  “Yes, we did,” I said to answer Bryan’s question about finding anything. “Show him Shane.” Then the lack of sleep the night before hit me. My eyelids felt like they weighed a ton and I could barely keep them open. I was ready for my bed.

  Shane found the pictures on his phone and handed it to Bryan. Bryan looked at it for a moment.

  “Ava was right. We just need to figure the map out and then see what’s below the vault.” I looked at Shane and Hannah and they nodded their he
ads. Shane took his phone back and swiped left to look at the pictures of the capstone one more time. He handed the phone back to Bryan.

  “As much as I’d like to find a gold treasure, I think the cavern beneath the old cistern offers the best money-making opportunity to ensure economic sustainability for the ranch.” I couldn’t help myself and yawned.

  “What about the historical value of Spanish cistern itself?” Bryan said.

  “I don’t want to do anything to the cistern. As a historical monument, it’s secondary to making sure the ranch can sustain itself financially; otherwise, I have to sell the ranch. I’d like to see us develop a tourist stopover for people traveling between Austin and San Antonio. I could even see us developing a formal trail of cavern sites for tourists to visit through the Texas Hill Country. Having the Spanish cistern there next to the cavern entrance would enhance the attraction.”

  Bryan handed the phone back to Shane.

  “Suppose there’s something beneath the cistern; maybe hidden gold. Wouldn’t that help you?” Bryan said.

  “Possibly, but what I’m really looking at is economic sustainability through the next several decades. Would you be interested in moving back down here and helping me to manage the property as a Texas Hill Country Preserve and tourist destination? I want people to see the land the way it used to look. The caverns will draw the people in. If the cistern has any real historical value; all the better.”

  I could tell by the frown on Bryan’s brow that he wasn’t interested. That didn’t mean Ava wasn’t, but Bryan was my grandson first and I wasn’t going to try to talk him into something he didn’t want to do.

  “Ava and I have a contract, Grandpa. She’s going back to school to finish her doctorate when she and the children are ready. Until then, I’m learning the Collingsworth ranching business so I can support her while she’s in school. I’m sorry; I know you want us to move back to Texas, but we’re happy in Montana. What was it you used to tell me? ‘I have a plan, Stan,’” he said and smiled.