Those Spanish men had done a sight of exploring, and much of it was only a matter of record away over in Spain. How many expeditions had gone exploring, nobody rightly knew, and this might have been the tag end of one of them.
The trail I’d been hunting as I rode south was one Pa had told me about, and of which I heard more from miners in Montana. Spanish men had used that trail for trading expeditions to the Ute country. Traders had traveled that route to the north before Father Escalante, even before Captain John Smith sighted the Virginia shore, but they left little record. Rivera had scouted through here in 1765, but he was a late-comer.
Studying around in the little time I had before it got dark, I figured that no more than three or four men had reached this valley, and two of them had never left it, because I found their graves. One of them had a stone marker, and the date of death was 1544.
Maybe I was the first to see that grave in three hundred years.
That shelter might have slept four in a pinch, certainly no more. Yet at least one man had to get out of here to leave the trail I’d found, and I had a hunch it was two men. The only puzzle was how they had come upon this valley in the first place.
On the wall, half concealed by aspen leaves, was carved a Spanish word: Oro. Beside it an arrow pointed up the valley.
Oro is a word that most men recognize, even those who know no other Spanish. Serving in the army with a couple of men who spoke the Spanish tongue, I’d learned a bit of the language, and much more while in Texas.
The shadows were long now, but there was still light, and I had that word to lead me on. Stepping into the saddle, I walked my horses up the valley. Sure enough, a half-mile up I found a. tunnel dug into the side of the hill, and broken rock around it.
Picking up a chunk from a pile stacked against the wall of the tunnel, I found it heavy—heavy with gold. It was real gen-u-ine high-grade, the kind a body hears tell of, but rarely sees.
Those Spanish men had found gold all right. No matter how they came to be here, they had found it, and now it was mine.
All I had to do was get it out.
III.
So there I was, up to my ears in a strange country, with gold on my hands.
We Sacketts never had much. Mostly we wanted land that we could crop and graze, land where we could rear a family. We set store by kinfolk, and when trouble showed we usually stood against it as a family.
The Higgins feud, which had cost our family lives, had ended while I was away. Tyrel ended that feud on the day when Orrin was facing up to marriage. Long Higgins had come laying for Orrin, figuring Orrin’s mind would be all upset with marrying. Long Higgins missed Orrin when his bride pushed Orrin out of the way, but she took the lead meant for a Sackett.
Trouble was, Long never figured on Tyrel, and you always had to figure on Tyrel.
He was a man who could look right along the barrel of your gun at you just like you’d look across a plate of supper. He would look right down your gun barrel and shoot you dead. Only Tyrel never hunted trouble.
We were nip and tuck with a pistol. Maybe I was a shade better with a rifle, but it was always a question.
Right now the question was one of gold. Pa, he always advised us boys to take time to contemplate. I taken it now.
First off, I had to figure what to do. The gold was here, but it had to be kept secret until I could get it laid claim to officially, and get it out.
Gold is never a simple thing. Many a man has wished he had gold, but once he has it he finds trouble. Gold causes folks to lose their right thinking and their common sense. It had been lied for and killed for, and I was in a lawless land.
Gold has weight, and when a body carries it, it is hard to hide. Gold seems almost to have an odor. Folks can smell it out even faster than gossip.
Finding the gold had been one thing, but getting it out was another. I’d no tools, and nothing in which to carry it but my saddlebags. Nearly all my money had gone to buy grub and gear for this trip south. I wanted to take enough gold out now to buy a mining outfit.
Seemed to be a sight of gold here, near as I could judge, as much as a body could want, but mostly I wanted enough for cattle and a place of my own, and enough to buy time for a little book learning.
It ain’t right for a man to be ignorant, but in the hills we had school only one year out of three, and the time might not last over two, three months. When I got all squared away with a pencil I could write my name … Pa and Tyrel could read it, too. Only one of my officers in the army could read it, but he told me not to worry. “A man who can shoot like you can,” he said, “isn’t likely to have anybody question the way he signs his name.”
But even if a man pays no mind to himself, he has to think of his youngsters, when and if. We Sacketts were healthy breeders, running long on tall boys. Counting ourselves, we had forty-nine brothers and cousins. Pa had two sisters and five brothers living. Starting a feud with us didn’t make any kind of sense. If we couldn’t outshoot them we could outbreed them.
A man who expects to sire children doesn’t want to appear the fool in front of them. We Sacketts believed young folks should respect their elders, but their elders had to deserve respect. Finding the gold could mean all the difference to me.
While I was contemplating, I was unsaddling my horses and settling down for the night. The season was well into spring and fetching up to summer. The snow was almost off the mountains although in this kind of country it never seemed to leave entirely, and there was no telling when it might snow again.
If I went out, got an outfit and came back, it would be a close thing to get out some gold and leave before snow fell. High up as I was, snow could be expected nine months out of the year. And when snow fell, that valley up above would fill up and the stream would freeze over. Anybody caught in this valley would be stuck for the winter.
Yet a heavy rain could make that narrow chute impassable for days. Allowing for rain spells and snow, there were probably not over fifty or sixty days a year when a man could get in or out of the valley. … Unless there was another way in.
It left me with a worried, uneasy feeling to think I was in a jug that might be stoppered at any time.
Making coffee over my fire, I studied about my situation. Those Bigelows now, the brothers of the man I’d had to shoot . . . they might think I had run from them, and they might try to follow me.
During that ride south I’d taken no more than usual precautions with my trail, and it fretted me to think that they might follow me south, and bother Orrin and Tyrel. Our family had had enough of feuding, and I’d no right to bring trouble to their door.
That the Bigelows would follow me to this place I did not expect. From my first discovery of the strange trail, I had taken care to cover my tracks and leave nothing for anybody to find.
A wind scurried my fire, just a mite of wind, and my eyes strayed to that old breastplate against the wall. Did the ghosts of men really prowl in the night? Never a man to believe in ha’nts, I was willing to believe that if a place was to be ha’nted, this was a likely one.
Empty as this valley seemed, I had the feeling of somebody looking over my shoulder, and the horses were restless too. Come sleeping time, I brought them in off the grass where they had been picketed and kept them closer to the fire. A horse makes the best sentinel in many cases, and I had no other. However, I was a light sleeper.
At daylight I shagged it down to the stream and baited a hook for trout. They snagged onto my hook and put up a fight like they were sired by bulldogs, but I hauled them in, fried them out, and made a tasty breakfast.