and passed it at times to Orrin.
There had been growing animosity in the camp on the mountain
Nat Pettigrew is a prying man, forever peering, listening, and poking about. He
is able, does his share and more. He’s a good man on a horse and handy with a
rifle, but I do not trust him. Yet he is all for himself, and not for them.
May 20: This morning there was trouble. Swan struck Angus, knocking him down.
Pierre was on his feet at once and for a moment I was sure they would come to
blows. I noticed also that Andre stood to one side making no effort to stop
Swan, who is his man. Andre just stood there with a little smile on his face. I
believe Andre hates his brother-in-law, and I wish I was free of them, and far
away.
Angus, the black slave, is a powerful man, loyal to Pierre, and a fair woodsman.
I believe he’d do even better in the swamps of Louisiana than here, yet I doubt
if he has long to live.
There was a gap here, looked like a couple of lost pages, then some words were
smeared.
… suddenly there was an outburst of firing. Somebody yelled “Indians!” and we
all fell into defensive positions. For awhile there was no sound, then a single
shot. For some time there was no sound and when we took stock, Angus was
dead—shot in the back of the head. When I talked with Pettigrew later, he
admitted to having seen no Indians, nor had Pierre. Swan had seen one, Andre
thought he had seen them. Andre showed a scar on the bark of a tree made by a
bullet, and of course, Angus was dead.
Well, now Judas knew what happened to his brother. I looked at him in the
firelight and thought I saw tears in his eyes. There seemed nothing to say to
him. He stood and walked away from the fire.
“What do you think?” I asked Orrin. We were on the banks of the Rio Grande with
Del Norte Peak looming to the soutwest. Orrin shook his head.
The Rio Grande headed up in those mountains in the direction we were riding, and
it gave me an odd feeling to think this water. I looked at was headed down
toward El Paso and then Laredo, and finally to enter the Gulf below Brownsville.
It was a far, far stretch.
“Orrin,” I said, “I wished pa had just up and rode off. He guided them there,
and he owed them nothing.”
“He was in for a piece of it,” said Orrin. “He wanted it for ma, and for an
education for us boys.”
“I wished he’d pulled out.”
“You know what I think?” Orrin held up the papers and the book to me. “I think
somebody in that outfit’s found gold.”
“You mean somebody knows where the stuff is and is holding it for himself?”
“Look at it, Tell. It needn’t have been the big caches. There were supposed to
be three, weren’t there? All right. You know what soldiers are. Some individual
soldiers may have had their own pokes stuffed with gold, and they may have hid
them. I think somebody found some gold, and I think Angus was killed to take
help from Pierre. I think he’s next.”
“Or pa,” I said.
Setting late by the fire, I pondered it. Pa was up there in May. Unless it was
unusually warm for the year, there’d still be snow up there where he was, and it
would be almighty cold. But there couldn’t have been too much snow left, or
they’d have found no landmarks at all.
Of course, there were some slopes where the wind could sweep away the snow, but
there was risk of a bad storm at any time.
Judas suddenly came in out of the darkness. “Suh? We are followed, suh.”
“You’re surely right. How far back are they?”
“They are gaining, suh And there are more than we believed.”
“More?” the Tinker said.
“They have two fires,” Judas said. “I would imagine there are at least ten men,
perhaps twice that many.”
At daybreak our camp was an hour behind us, and we were climbing steadily.
There’d been no chance to get back to pa’s daybook. Me an’ Orrin … well, it
had felt almost like we were talkin’ to pa, yet he was shorter of word than
usual in this writin’ of his. Mostly pa was a man with a dry humor, a quick man
to see things, and he always had a comment. He knew most tricks a body could
play, was slick with cards when he needed to be, and had seen a lot of the
world, time to time.
We came up to the forks of the Rio Grande and it was the South Fork pointed the
way up Wolf Creek Pass. Pa had come this way, and the fact that he was keepin’ a
daybook showed he had something to tell us—who else but us? Pa was a considering
man, and I’d no doubt he figured somehow to get that daybook to us. Maybe he’d
trusted Nativity Pettigrew to bring it to us, or mail it. If so, his gamble
failed.
If he had planned to get it to us, he must have been wishful to get some
particular word to us. We’d likely have to read careful so we’d miss nothing.
Orrin dropped back from the point. “Tell, is there any other way to that
mountain? I mean other than right up the pass?”
“Well, I reckon.” I pointed. “That there’s Cattle Mountain, with Demijohn right
behind it. I never followed that trail, but Cap Rountree told me of it one
time.”
“Let’s worry them a little,” Orrin suggested, so I went up to ride point.
Watching carefully, I turned off and took a dim trail leading up the east side
of Grouse Mountain. We followed that up a switchback trail and over the saddle
on Cattle Mountain then down the trail west of the Demijohn and onto the Ribbon
Mesa trail.
It was narrow, twisty, and rough. Several times we heard the warning whistles of
marmots looking like balls of brown fur as they scattered into the rocks. We
skirted a meadow where mountain lupine, Indian paintbrush, and heartleaf arnica
added their blue, red, and gold to the scene. It was very quiet except for the
murmur of the waters of the creek. We twisted, doubled, rode back over our
tracks, and did everything possible to confuse our trail. The way was rocky,
torn by slides. Leaving Park Creek, I cut over the pass back of Fox Mountain
down Middle Creek about a mile and then took a dimmer trail that led us right
over the mountain.
We rode through aspens, skirted groves of them, and then we rode across high
mountain meadows, leaving as little sign as we could. If Andre Baston had a
dozen men with him he probably had some mountain-riding men, but if he caught up
with us I was figuring to make him earn it.
Of course, they might have taken the easy way right up Wolf Creek Pass. Indians
and mountain-men had used it for years, along with occasional prospectors. More
than likely the French soldiers who’d buried that gold had come down Wolf Creek.
We had come down the slope into the canyon of Silver Creek with the San Juan
just ahead and below. On our west was the mountain of the treasure, and a whole
lot of mountain it was, too.
Orrin pointed out a cove in the mountainside, and we skirted a tight grove of
aspen and moved into a small meadow with a plunging stream alongside it. We
pulled up under the trees and stepped down, and, believe me, I was tired.
We stripped the gear from our horses, and, after I’d rubbed my horse and one of
the packhorses a mite, I wandered off down to the stream, hunting wood. I picked
up some good dead branches, heavy stuff, and then tasted the water. It was
fresh, cold, and clear. As I started to rise I heard a faint chink of metal. It
sounded from upstream. Well, I shucked my gun and kind of eased back under the
bank.
After finding the wood, I’d kind of explored along the riverbank, so camp was a
good hundred yards back of me now. Crouching near some cottonwood roots that ran
down into the earth under the water, I waited, listening. The stream chuckled
along over the stones, and upstream I could hear a bird singing. After that I
heard only the stream.
Ahead of me, the stream took a little bend, curving around some rocks and thick
brush—dogwood, willow, and the like. Searching the ground between me and that
brush, I saw nothing to worry me, so I started forward, walking mighty easy to
make no sound.