The place they headed to, Depredation Gulch, was hot and dry, even in January. The day’s wintry shadows shrunk away from Juan and Willy as though they had a grudge against the place.
Of course, this mine was not near the border, Juan said. There was very little chance that someone bringing up drugs would stumble upon them. This was mostly good. When Willy said something about how lonely the place was Juan explained. “Pollo,” said Juan, “if this mine had been nearer the border a coyote or narco guy would have found the gold by now.”
“True, but we are really going to the back of beyond,” said Willy.
“Okay, don’t let it worry you, homeboy,” said Juan, grinning.
Willy didn’t want to start another argument about Anglos being afraid of danger, so he let things stand as they were, but he was feeling a bit strange about going out so far from people without telling anyone. He had told his brother that he was camping in the Whetstone Mountains, which was nowhere near where they actually were. Juan said it would throw off anyone who would try to follow them if they gave out the camping story.
When they got to Depredation Gulch, they were in the foothills of the Massacre Mountains and around them were hundreds of old tailings. The tailing mountains had all sorts of colors on them, like rainbows. Some had gray at the top, then green, then reddish pink, then a broad stroke of bright greenish turquoise at the base. Others were purple and then mustard colored and ended with a big splash of blue. They had dribble lines down them but the crust on the outside was tough. Willy stopped the truck at one point so Juan could find a tool in the back of the truck that was capable of breaking the tailing crust. The biggest pick they had brought barely scratched the surface. Nothing much grew on them, either.
“None of the really big nuggets will be in these hard tailings,” Juan said after his back seemed to have loosened up in dangerous manner from swinging the pick over his head and jamming the shovel into the brick-hard soil.
Around four o’clock that first day, they reached a hill where there was a wall, an old pile of rocks with some trees coming out of it and that must have been a smelter a long time ago. To Willy it was kind of spooky being in that long lost mine alone with Juan and both of them disliked the hot wind that blew on their necks. They noticed that the shiny sharp black slag lumps piled up here and there made it look like the devil himself had sat down on the wall and clipped his ugly toenails. At one place the slag was shining right out on a ledge. The ground was hot from the black surface even at four in the afternoon in the winter. Leading up to the hill there were more piles of tailings of every color.
“Hey,” Willy said when the truck rounded one large tailings pile, “Is that a big old lake? Or is it a mirage?”
“I don’t know, man,” said Juan, who was driving. He parked the truck in front of the pond. “It ain’t a mirage,” he said.
Magenta sand edged one portion of the pond and in another spot an oily froth lapped up on a crust of turquoise. Something went plop and Willy got out of the truck and walked to the edge of the pond in time to see a three-legged frog plopping around in some mucky moss. What a freak! Then there were skeletons of a deer and a couple squirrels which they thought were dead cholla cactus, until they looked closely at them. Actually no plants were growing near the water which was a clue that the pond was dangerous. A clue which they missed. Sure-Locked Homes and What’s Son, they weren’t.
“Look at the bubbles on that thing,” Willy said, speaking of the tailings pond.
“That’s gas, Wilhelmo,” Juan explained. “Fuchi! Que mal huele!”
“Phewy. Gas, huh?”
“Comes out of the underground mines. Bubbles up through the water. Changos, I’ve seen it plenty.”
“Maybe it’s dangerous. Maybe we should leave.”
“Okay.” Juan was smiling as they headed back to the cab of their truck.
“Why are you smiling?” Willy asked as Juan drove them away from the pond.
“There you go, running away again, Anglo.”
“Oh, man,” said Willy. Juan braked at the crest of the hill and Willy looked back at the big pond. “You sure those aren’t fish, pollo?”
“They ain’t no fish. That is gas.”
There seemed to be something, though, as Willy looked back over his shoulder, something swarming around in that big old pond. Something that was surely alive.