Holland Suggestions by John Dunning Page B

said.
    “What?”
    “Blood of Christ—that’s what it means. These are the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.”
    “Have you been here before?”
    “Sure. I told you I’m from Denver; that’s only about three hours from here. Anyway, I took Spanish in college. Sangre means blood. Sangre de Cristo, get it?”
    I got it all right, more than she could know. But I swallowed my surprise and said, “Why are the mountains called that?”
    “I think the Spanish named them hundreds of years ago. They say the morning sun gives a red tint to the whole range, so the Spanish called them ‘Blood of Christ.’ ”
    “You seem to know a lot about it.”
    Her answer to that was impatient, not quite sharp but getting there: “Oh, hell; look, I read it all somewhere once and it just stuck. Anyway, I told you I’ve been here.”
    “Well, have you ever heard of a Route 12 that branches off from this highway?”
    She reached for the map.
    “It’s not there,” I said.
    “Then I guess there isn’t any. If there was, it would be here, wouldn’t it?”
    She turned away from me again; I wrote it off as bitchiness and my inability to understand it and make it right. The mountains loomed ahead of us; I knew that these were the real vanguards of the Rockies, and all before them had been mere foothills. From the last of the foothills the road ran across the valley to the mountain base in a slow arc. There were a couple of towns at the bottom, and I stopped for gas and, I hoped, directions to Road 12. Nobody at the gas station had ever heard of it, and Amy took in my repeated queries without a word. I pushed on north, passing a few dirt roads and giving them all the same careful scrutiny. In the end, I thought, I would have to go to the end of 96, then come back slowly and explore each side road. Then I came to one road that was different from the rest. It wasn’t quite a physical difference; just a tantalizing familiarity that had been missing from all the others. There were mailboxes and indications that the road had recently been snowplowed. I did not react well; even as I was passing it by, I jerked the wheel and turned in. The sudden movement startled Amy; she sank back against the seat and glared at me.
    The road ran concurrently with the highway for a short distance, then turned west toward the mountain range. Just around that first bend we saw the sign; very old and hand-painted, it said: GOLD CREEK, 12 mi. I was so elated that I shouted, “This is it!” Amy only sat, stony-faced. Not until the silence between us became strained did she force herself to speak.
    “What on earth are you talking about?”
    The temptation was very strong to throw it all up to her, all the inconsistencies of her sudden appearance and subsequent behavior, with a few tough questions of my own. But that might do more harm than good. Amy wasn’t stupid; she would know, if she was involved, that she was under some suspicion, so I had lost any element of surprise I might once have had. Anyway, it was hardly likely that she would lose her cool under any circumstances and blurt out all she knew. So I continued in my role of blind dupe, at least for a while longer; I said, “I’m just glad to be alive, Amy,” and started to let it go at that. But that sounded as phony as it was, so I filled in the gaps with some back-home ramblings. I talked about how there wasn’t much country like this, even in western Virginia, but she showed no interest or emotion and my voice trailed off in a half-finished sentence. I checked my odometer reading and pushed ahead. There were still patches of snow on the road, and where the snow had melted off it was washboard. I took it slowly and kept both hands on the wheel. As the road rolled up into the mountains there was more snow, and I could see by the tracks that at least one car had been through here either today or yesterday. The tracks were small and close together, indicating recent use by one of those foreign economy cars,