Treasure

Garza thought a moment. "The Rio Grande was more akin to the Nile."

"Nile?"

"The headwaters begin in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. During the spring flooding season, as the winter snows melted, the water swept down the lower reaches in huge surges. The ancient Indians, like the Egyptians, dug ditches so the high water ran to their crops. That's why the river you see now is a mere trickle of its former self. As the Spanish and Mexican settlers moved in, followed by the Texas Americans, new irrigation works were built. After the Civil War, railroads brought in more families and ranchers, who siphoned off more water. By 1894, shallow and dangerous shoals put an end to steamboating. If there had been no irrigation, the Rio Grande might have been the Mississippi River of Texas."

"Steamboats ran on the Rio Grande?" asked Lily.

for a short time traffic was quite heavy as trade developed upland down and on both sides of the river. Fleets of paddle steamers made regular runs from Brownsville to Laredo for over thirty years. Now, since they built the Falcon Dam, about the only craft you see on the lower river are outboard boats and i

Could sailing vessels have navigated as far as Roma?"

asked Pitt.

"With room to spare. The river was easily wide enough for tacking. All a ship with sails had to do was wait for easterly offshore breezes. One keelboat made it as far northwest as Santa Fe in 1850. "

They fell quiet for a few minutes as Mifflin followed the meandering turns of the river. A few low, rolling hills appeared. On the Mexican side, little towns first settled nearly three hundred years ago sat in dusty seclusion. Some houses were built of stone and adobe and topped by red tile, while the outskirts were dotted with small primitive huts having thatched roofs. The agricultural part of the valley, with its citrus groves and fields of vegetables and aloe vera, gave way to and plains of mesquite trees and white thistle. Pitt expected a muddy brown river, but the Rio Grande pleasantly surprised him by ru

"We're coming up on Roma now," a

Mifflin pulled up and soared over the international bridge, and then dropped low on the river again. On the Mexican side men and women were washing cars, mending fishing nets and swimming. Along the bank a few pigs wallowed in the silt. On the American side a yellowish sandstone bluff rose from the riverbank up to the main section of downtown Roma.

The buildings appeared to be quite old and some were rundown, but all seemed in sound condition. One or two were in stages of reconstruction.

"The buildings look very quaint," said Lily. "There must be a lot of history behind their walls."

"Roma was a busy port during the commercial and military boating era,"

Garza lectured. "Prosperous merchants hired architects to design some very interesting homes and business structures. And they've lasted quite well."

"any one more famous than the others?" asked Lily.

"Famous?" Garza laughed. "My pick would be a residence built in the middle 1800s that was used as 'Rosita's Cantina' when the movie Viva Zapata was filmed in Roma with Marlon Brando."

Sandecker gestured for Mifflin to circle the hills above the town. He turned to Garza. "Is Roma named after Rome because it's surrounded by seven hills?"

"Nobody really knows for sure," replied Garza. "You'd be hard-pressed to pick out seven distinctive hills. A couple have noticeable peaks, but mostly they just run into each other."

"What's the geology?" Pitt inquired as he stared downward.

"Cretaceous debris for the most part. This whole area was once under the sea. Fossil oyster shells are common. Some have been found that measure half a meter. There's a nearby gravel pit that, illustrates the various geological periods. I can give you a quick lecture if you care to have Joe set us down."

"Not just yet," said Pitt. "Are there any natural caves in the region?"

"None visible on the surface. But that doesn't mean they aren't down there. No way of knowing how many caves, formed by the ancient seas, are hidden under the upper layer. Go deep enough in the tight spot and you'll likely strike a good-size limestone deposit. Old Indian legends tell of spirits living underground."

"What sort of spirits?"

Garza shrugged. "Ghosts of the ancients who died in battle with evil gods."

Lily unconsciously clutched Pitts arm. "Have any artifacts been discovered near Roma?"

"A few arrow and spear flints, stone knives and boatstones. "

"What are boatstones?" asked Pitt.

"Hollow stones in the shape of boat hulls," answered Lily with mounting excitement. "Their exact on'gin or purpose is obscure. It's thought they were used as charms. They supposedly warded off evil, especially if an Indian feared a witch or power of a shaman. An effigy of the witch was tied to a boatstone and thrown into a lake or river, destroying the evil forever."

Pitt put another question to Garza. "any objects Turn up that confound the historic time scale?"

"Some, but they were considered to be fake."

Lily put on her best casual expression. "What sort of objects?"

"Swords, crosses, bits and pieces of armor, spear shafts, mostly made of iron. I also recall the story of an old stone anchor that was dug out of the bluff beside the river."

"Probably Spanish in origin," ventured Sandecker guardedly.

Garza shook his head. "Not Spanish, but Roman. State Museum officials were justifiably skeptical. They wrote them off as a nineteenth-century hoax."

Lily's hand bit deeper into Pitts arm. "any possibility of my having a look at them?" she asked in an anxious voice.

"Or have they been lost and forgotten, packed away in the dust of a state university basement?"

Garza pointed out the window toward the road ru

"As a matter of fact, the artifacts are right down there. They've been kept and collected by the man who found most of them. A good old Texan boy named Sam Trinity, or Crazy Sam as he's known by the locals. He's poked around this area for fifty years, swearing a Roman army camped here. Makes a living by ru

Pitt smiled slowly. "Can you set us down beside his place?"

he asked Mifflin. "I think we ought to have a talk with Sam."

The sign stretched nine meters in length behind the highway turnoft. The giant horizontal board was supported by sunbleached, weather-cracked mesquite posts that uniformly leaned backward at a drunken angle. Garish red letters on a faded silver background proclaimed SAM'S ROMAN CIRCUS

The gas pumps out front were shiny and new and advertised methanol-blended fuel for forty-eight cents a liter. The store was built from adobe and designed like the Indian mesa dwellings of Arizona with the roof poles protruding through the walls. The interior was clean and the shelves were neatly stacked with curios, groceries and soft drinks. It was an echo of a thousand other small, isolated oases that stood beside the nation's highways.

Sam, though, didn't match the decor.

No baseball cap advertising Caterpillar tractors. No scuffed cowboy boots or straw range hat or faded Levi's. Sam was attired in a bright green Polo shirt, yellow slacks and expensive custom lizard golf shoes complete with cleats. His evenly trimmed white hair lay flat beneath a sporty plaid cap.