Quivira, Lost City of Gold!
Prairie Death Tales: V. 2: The Salt Fork Murders — Chapter 7
Easter had come and gone; crisp rainy April had given way to mild and fragrant May, and the dark prairie bloomed with yellow wood sorrel, blue prairie flax, and the drooping stems of creamy wild indigo. As the first summer heat set in, the spectacular pink blossoms of the red buds faded and a carpet of white petals formed below the Bradford Pears, dogwood trees and spirea hedges.
At Government Springs Park, fountains of water rise from the small lake, their spray drifting in the breeze. The springs themselves, source of the original Chisholm Trail watering hole, now trickle into the lake. Blocked by sediment and debris for years, they have recently been cleared and rejuvenated by park volunteers. These same volunteers have restored the sunken memorial gardens, now dazzling with a host of exotic garden flora.
At one end of the garden stands a new bronze sculpture, the life size “Holding The Claim,” depicting a land-rush Boomer, kneeling beside his horse as he fixes his homestead claim stake. There was some shock and amusement when the statue was unveiled before an audience of Dine City dignitaries. The anatomically correct equine was seen to be wearing a condom. Though accused by many of this prank, John J. Waters, Proprietor of the Between the Lines Bookstore, swore he’d had no part in it, despite his ardent public support for safe sex.
It seemed to most Dine Citians that virtually overnight, spring had turned to summer. The day after Water’s Summer Blues party, the hot south winds began to blow, carrying coarse dusty grit to sting the eyes and dry the nostrils. At the People of the Word Compound, the wind carried just a hint of the nearby salt fields, and altogether a most unpleasant day seemed in store.
Behind the small array of buildings, the big crooked alloy blades of the Compound’s new wind turbine, still unfettered, began slowly to turn, pickup speed, spitting a current of electricity into the newly installed row of storage batteries, and from there into the adjacent buildings. Lights glowed and computers hummed, powered by the almost ceaseless flow of the Oklahoma wind.
Seated on a tall, swiveling architect’s chair in the detached workshop behind his house, George Salt sat surveying the device mounted on the wall before him. Turkey season was over; there was nothing to shoot until September when quail season started. He might as well get back to work on the fail-safe mechanism for Zaanzibar Murphy’s windmill and water turbine combo.
At the moment, Salt wasn’t really worried about turbine safety. Although there was no doubt that, at the moment, an incautious person could get killed by those turning blades, as soon as Salt’s work was complete, the turbine would be (as his Scottish grannie used to say) “as safe as houses”.
Dr. Jeffrey McLaren sat at a small table in the entrance to Waldenbooks at the Dine City Mall, looking up with bleary eyes at the woman in front of him.
‘Who shall I make this out to?” he asked with just a touch of boredom showing in his eyes and impatience sounding in his voice.
He needed a break, and there were still at least fifteen people standing in line to have him autograph his new book, Quivira — Lost City of Gold Rediscovered! He must have already signed a hundred copies since opening, and the stupid, repetitive questions and comments of these morons were boring him silly. He felt like screaming. Every single one of the buyers had told him they’d seen him on “Unsolved Mysteries,” and more than he could count had asked if it were true that there might be more golden cities in the area.
The TV show, he now thought, though it was fabulous publicity and would boost book sales hugely, might have been a mistake. Robert Stack had introduced him as a “real life Indiana Jones,” and the whole thing had just been less scientific and professional — tackier — than he had hoped. Still, local interest was most encouraging.
Dr. McLaren heaved a long sigh, scribbled some inane message in the woman’s book, and thanked her in a, perfunctory manner. When she moved aside, he found himself caught up in thought in relation to the night of J. J.’s party . . . Suddenly the voice of the next person in line impinged on his consciousness:
“ . . . and so, it was so, so, so exciting for me and Donald to hear that your “dig” had turned up actual gold, when every year for 12 years Don and I have been “digging” at Salt Plains and all we ever came up with was selenite crystals! We’re thinking of getting into the archaeology business. . . . ”
Quivira had in fact proved a local sensation beyond McLaren’s wildest dreams. The revelation of a fabled lost city, possibly rich in gold and certainly yielding a number of significant archaeological finds, had galvanized the whole area. Over centuries of speculation, the seemingly mythical city been located, first, in New Mexico, then, definitively, in Central Kansas, and now perhaps finally in Oklahoma — on the banks of the Salt Fork River, just northwest of the Great Salt Plains Reservoir forty-odd miles north of Dine City.
Only a week after the publication of the book, there was already a mad scramble for prospecting sites and digging rights among the farm land adjacent to Zaanzibar Murphy’s acreage. A landowners’ coalition was being established; farmers were searching their own creek beds and pastures — at least one report was confirmed of shots fired at a trespasser. It resembled nothing so much as one of the great 1920’s oil booms, as intense in its fever for easy fortune as the frantic donnybrook of the great Garber or Seminole oil fields.
A mile outside the town of Pib, at the back of a red-dirt parking lot paved with a million rusty bottle caps, stand two identical concrete buildings. The one on the left has a sign that says “BEER” and the other bears a sign reading “EAT,” these simple designations being sufficient, says the owner, to direct any customer “with half a brain.”
On Tuesday night, Fergus Flowers III walked into BEER carrying a .410 shotgun. “Where’s that fuckin’ beaner?” he said. Manny Ortega had seen him coming and run out the back, disappearing into the cottonwoods behind EAT. Fergus sat down and peacefully drank three Coors Lights before the county deputy arrived. He surrendered quietly.
Manny had poisoned his dog, Flowers said in county court a few days later. Not so, Ortega testified: Flowers’ dog had gotten tangled up in Manny’s new electric fence, which he’d built to keep Fergus from trespassing on his land to search for “Aztec gold.” He’d thrown the mutt’s carcass on Flowers’ porch as a neighborly courtesy. Fergus paid a fine and served twelve days in county jail for disturbing the peace.
He was not happy.
That autumn, a young Ortega cousin and his “transsexual” girlfriend had been forced off the road,the car riddled with hunting rifle rounds. Tire tracks, the only evidence, proved useless. Not long after, Old man Flowers, Fergus II, was ambushed while he locked up the Highway Holiness Church late one Wednesday night. Slugs shattered his right arm and nicked his liver, but he survived. The Ortega clan was questioned, inconclusively. Over the next two years, dogs were in fact poisoned, fires set, drive-by shootings occurred and Dennis Ortega came out on the wrong end of a knife fight with a Flowers’ uncle visiting from Kentucky.
The Flowers — Ortega feud finally ended, at least so far as public violence is concerned, on May 10, 1991. Trish Ortega grabbed a heavy brass unicorn off her counter, ran into the street and bashed out the brains of “Mamaw” Sally Flowers in front of the Pib town post office.
But what happened a few months later had the community scratching their heads and discussing karma. Manny Ortega choked to death on a Junior’s Double Chili Cheeseburger at the EAT cafe.
And that, everyone felt, pretty much settled that.
Next chapter!
Miss the first chapters?
Prairie Death Tales is a compendium of fictitious crime narratives, long and short, written by Courtland Wade, the collective pen name of Court Atchinson and Wade Chambers.
“Smart, darkly comic, edgy, (*****) stories of life, love and violent death in the not entirely fictional Dine City, Oklahoma. Set in the 80’s and 90’s, the plot line might today be described as ‘gender fluid’”.
If the locale and some of the characters interest you, you might like having a go at the first volume of Prairie Death Tales:
