Mexican Desert
The year was 1959, and Trail’s End was the rodeo circuit’s Bucking Horse of the Year. Fidel Castro had just come to power in Cuba, and Tibet was cruelly occupied by the Chinese Communists. At least 33,000 Buddhist monks and nuns were tortured and slaughtered. If 1959 was not a time for the world to turn to the hope of peace, when would it be?
Sunlight quivered off the seething desert beneath the feet of two men who were running like fools. Sweat flew from their faces in the hundred-and eleven-degree heat. Sage Dalton panted and puffed as he raced after Jaime Santos, an aging little rat of a man who was crossing chunks of an eroded sandstone wall, which rose out of the Mexican wasteland like irregular teeth jutting from a hippo’s jaw. Both contenders were winded, especially Santos, who, incredibly, was wearing a dark navy suit. Sage was nearly on him. “Darn it, Santos!” He panted. “Why are you doing this? I’m not trying to hurt you. I only need to look at it for a second.
Santos ripped off his stylish suit jacket and flung it back towards Dalton.
As Sage ran, he unbuttoned his long-sleeved, gray and black Pendleton wool shirt. He remembered a dear Navajo elder telling him it was better to cover one’s skin to keep it from burning. Wool allowed sweat to dissipate. Against his left leg, he felt the tips of the braided roping rein, which he doubled up and strung through his pant loops like a belt. A gray, smoke-tanned pouch flopped from the belt along his right thigh, and a stained hat partially kept the sun off his head.
Sage was dismayed to see Santos flat-out sprinting again as they climbed the lower edge of the jumbled rimrock. He could see the outcrop would eventually rise to become an escarpment, and then a full-blown cliff further on. “Stop running, will ya?”
“I… I stole it. Santos puffed. “It’s… mine!” Then he stopped unexpectedly, bending over, dripping sweat, and wheezing for air.
“No, it’s not, Sage growled as he pulled up to the trembling man and stood gasping beside him, while leaving him some space. He looked at Jaime’s face and realized his own features must also be flushed a dark red from heat and exertion. His eyes watched Santos intently to see if he had any surprises up his sleeves. “C’mon, Jaime, less than a minute. I’m looking for a certain statue Mueller may, or may not have taken from a museum patron. That’s all. I swear.”
“You’ll take it. It’s mine,” Santos wheezed.
Sage continued to watch him from the corner of his eye, but then Sage caught a glimpse of something moving in the sky. A solitary bird in the shimmery distance. It seemed to be heading north toward Dalton’s and Santos’s vehicles, an older green sedan with a flat tire, and a maroon Willy’s Jeep, which Sage himself had recently parked on the pebbly jeep track in the sea of dun-colored sand.
He looked back at Santos for a moment. The older man put his thin fingers on his knees to make breathing easier. His hands were trembling, and Sage knew he desperately needed rest. Sage took a step toward him. The black book he sought was only three feet away, clenched in the older man’s bony hand. Dalton’s fingers twitched; he could have grabbed for it, but he didn’t want to frighten the fragile fellow.
Santos caught his movement and jerked it out of Sage’s reach. “I worked years to find this,” gasped Santos on the point of collapse. “It’s mine!”
“Okay, okay. Just rest. That thing isn’t worth losing your life.”
Sage’s eyes were drawn back to the sky. The bird he’d noticed before had turned into an old biplane buzzing the rimrock ahead of them. “The guys in that plane probably don’t agree with you,” Sage puffed. “Look, either the sun is going to kill us, Santos…” Sage gasped and then pointed to the sky, “Or… we are going to die from air conditioning.”
As if on cue, the acrobatic plane, an old 1941 Stearman N2S-3, droned as it popped up over the rim, accompanied by the whine of ricocheting bullets. A gun jockey began taking potshots with a chain gun pointed at both men.
Sage hollered, “Run! That’s Johan Schliestag’s plane. That means Wilhelm Blitzer must be the gunner. Look at him. That crazy criminal is excited. He’s pointing right at us and rubbing his hand through his windblown hair.”
“He knows he’s got us. Such a total jerk.” Santos shouted as he raced ahead, needing no encouragement. Sage also ran, even though there wasn’t sufficient cover for them anywhere in sight. After a few more yards, Jaime croaked, “Hasta luego, Dalton!” Then the exhausted man dropped over the edge of the cliff and out of sight.
“Don’t be a fool!” Sage ran to the edge, expecting the worst. His eyes searched the valley below, with its little creek and a few spindly bushes. Nothing. Instead, he saw Santos working his way into a slim crack in one of the tight clefts, which had eroded like pleats into the rim wall. Giving chase, Sage jammed down into the hole following Santos. “Wait up!”
His quarry had already disappeared inside. As soon as he entered, Sage was blinded by black darkness. His feet told him he was on a narrow ledge, and it turned a sharp corner to the right. He had to be careful. Barely skidding around the corner, he found that the ledge was composed of crumbling sandstone. Feeling insecure, he leaned as far back into the dirt wall as he could to keep his feet on the little ledge. His hands moved for balance as he edged to the right. When his eyes adjusted to the minimal light provided by the entrance, Dalton could barely see Jaime trembling below him. He must have fallen off the disintegrating shelf into the darkness.
“Santos, are you alright?”
Inching ahead, Sage came to the end of the shelf and nearly fell into a concealed pond of inky dark water himself. Jaime, now a fragile old man, was shivering in what looked like a chest-deep icy pool at the bottom of the small cavern. Sage saw him gasp three times with his eyes frozen wide open.
“It’s so cold. My… heart. Mi corazon.” Jaime was in dire trouble. It looked to Sage like the shocking chill of the water might have jolted his heart into a cardiac arrest. As a gesture of atonement, Santos slowly held the black book aloft. Sage didn’t hesitate. He’d already unsnapped his trusty roping rein belt and lashed it onto the proffered arm. Then, pulling with everything he had, he reeled the small man back towards the rocks at the base of the wall, clear of the frigid water. “Just a minute, I’ll come down.”
He carefully slid off the ledge and landed on the crumbled rocks of the shore beside the stricken man. Cradling his head in the crook of his arm, Sage said, “Sorry, Jaime.” Then he smirked. “Even you deserve better, you old rascal.” His smile faded as he realized Santos was unresponsive. Sage felt for a pulse, then drew in a deep breath and felt the life drain from his own face. “Never meant to hurt you, Santos.”
There wasn’t anything he could do. Sage quietly replaced his belt and pouch, and though Sage wasn’t a man who participated in mindless rituals and ceremonies, he believed in the power of prayer to affect the progress of the human soul.
He took the time to offer a few heartfelt words as Jaime Santos’s spirit passed beyond the impossible predicament his body could not survive. “¡Vaya con Dios, Jaime Santos! I hope you can detach from this black book and the other things of this world. Go with your Creator.”
He reached for the notebook and put it in his pouch. “Mitchell Braddock will thank you for this. We may not have found the statue he wanted, but for him, this notebook will make the entire trip worth the trouble and expense.” Sage turned toward the muffled sound of the droning plane overhead.
Instinctively, he slammed his back against the rotted sandstone wall of the lower chamber, seeking shelter from the strafing.
Suddenly alarmed with pain, Sage noticed a bullet must have ricocheted and found his outstretched left forearm. He pushed further into the sandstone behind him, and it gave way. Sage tumbled backward into a dark, dusty chamber. From the little light which entered through the crack in the wall, he could barely comprehend that he had landed on a wooden structure. He pulled a flashlight from his pouch, and even though the beam was weak in such paralyzing darkness, he could see that he had landed on a painted wooden sarcophagus, conical in shape, like a bullet tip, or a layered Russian Matryoshka doll.
The lid had caved in easily, somewhat softening the blow of Sage’s fall. He was stunned, and his mind was spinning. Panic rose. As he considered his circumstances, he tried to quiet his pounding heart. Was he trapped?
Sage tried to shake off his fall. As he slowly rose to step out of the rubble, he looked back at the disaster he had caused and checked to see if the wood splinters had impaled him anywhere. Once he was satisfied that he was mostly in one piece except for the arm wound, he noticed a faint glint of gold metal peeking through the fragments of the coffin.
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ABOUT BOOK THREE: “The Weeping God and The Book of Hope,” Rising Wind Series. . .
The Weeping God and the Book of Hope, part three in the Rising Wind series, is actually a prequel to the first two books, so it’s not necessary to have read those first. The lead characters, Sage Dalton and L.W., are the parents of the main character in the other Rising Wind books. Although the characters are different and the book is set in an earlier time period, the tone is very similar.
This time, they discover an ancient text in a Mexican desert tomb that leads Sage, L.W., and a group of fellow explorers to Tibet, where they find themselves in the middle of a war. Even with danger at every turn, they still manage to discover secret caves that lead them toward an elusive yet powerful Book of Hope. First, and foremost, her books have a superb cast of characters that readers can easily relate to. They care about each other, work together to achieve a common goal, laugh together, and cry together. Second, her stories revolve around rare ancient discoveries found all around the world.
Much like the great Indiana Jones films, each new discovery comes with an element of danger. The third common theme is an embracing of all world religions. Religion is somehow intertwined with each rare find that the characters make. I appreciate the way Ms. Olsen always characterizes the religious elements in her stories in a positive light, as the hope of mankind, rather than the way most works of fiction portray religion in a negative sense as mankind’s biggest problem.
“This is a fun read filled with colorful characters and lots of action. I recommend it for fans of character-driven adventure who like to learn about science, ancient civilizations, and world religions along the way. Scott Cahan for Readers’ Favorite“
Diane Olsen Award Winning Author 