Read Online The Ancient Breed by David Brookover - Free Book Online Page A

he suggested, sniffing the corked opening. “Let’s have a taste. This shit must be hundreds of years old, and you know what they say about aged wine.”
    Jay grabbed the bladder from his hand. “You fool, why would anyone go to all the trouble of sticking some lousy wine into a gold chest? Whatever’s inside must be pretty fucking valuable.”
    Lonny moved back and sulked.
    “Maybe whatever’s in that envelope will tell us what’s inside that prehistoric thermos,” Jose offered.
    Jay handed him the bladder for safekeeping. “Don’t drop it,” he warned Jose and opened one end of the envelope. He carefully withdrew a thick folded sheet of parchment that was yellowed and brittle from age. Blossom insisted that she be the one to unfold the paper, and Jay agreed. After ten minutes of painstaking caution, the parchment lay unfolded and undamaged atop the table. Jay whistled his amazement.
    “It looks like a goddammed treasure map!” Jose exclaimed. “And it’s written in some kind of Indian-Spanish bastard language. Let me take a crack at it.”
    Jay blocked his view of the map. “I’ll read it.”
    Jose shrugged his shoulders in disappointment and backed off.
    After a half hour and a lot of assistance from Blossom, Jay stepped back from the table and lit a cigarette. For a few moments, he and Blossom were speechless from their discovery. Finally Jay glanced her way. “This is unbelievable, baby.”
    She merely nodded.
    He snapped his fingers. “Hey, I just got a great idea.”
    “What do you mean?” Lonny asked. “What’s in that bladder thing anyway?”
    “Later. I have to make a few calls. This stuff could give us more leverage with the feds than what we originally planned.”
    “Can’t you give us a hint?” Jose asked impatiently.
    “Later I said!” Jay barked. He took the bladder from Jose, pulled Blossom into the small kitchen where they were out of earshot of his companions and shut the door.
    “You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked Blossom.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “This bladder must be filled with water from the famous fountain of youth.”
    “If it is, then I don’t understand why Ponce de Leon never mentioned his discovery in any of his documents. I mean, finding the fountain of youth would’ve made de Leon the toast of the world,” she commented pensively. “Add that to the fact that he spent so much of his life searching for it, it would seem to me and probably every other historian ever born that de Leon would’ve welcomed the fame that went with this monumental discovery. Not to mention that he would’ve used the water’s regenerative properties to regain and maintain his youth. He was in his early fifties when he died.”
    “For once we agree, baby. The whole damned scenario makes no sense at all.”
    “Unless . . .” She let the word hang in the silence.
    “Unless what?” he prodded eagerly.
    “Unless the fountain was a fake.”
    “Then why save the water?”
    Blossom frowned. “Yeah, you’ve got a point there.”
    “And what about his men? Wouldn’t they have talked to somebody about the discovery?”
    Blossom sighed. “You scored again. So if we’re right about this being the famous water, the questions remain: why didn’t de Leon announce his discovery, and why did he go to all the trouble of sealing the fountain water and map into a gold water tight chest and just drop it in the gulf?”
    “How about another question? If I’m de Leon, I wouldn’t go to all that trouble. I’d simply empty the bladder into the ocean. With so much water in the gulf, I mean, you’d think that the fountain water would be way too diluted to do any harm,” Jay proposed.
    “Unless . . .”
    “Dammit, I hate that word.”
    “ Unless he was afraid that it might somehow poison the gulf.”
    Jay regarded the bladder. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “Not if he’d witnessed its effects and was badly frightened.”
    “Yeah, well this is all merely conjecture, you know?”