and I had just killed me an elk, when this dog showed up.
“He stretched out with his head on his paws, like, and I figured him for a bear,
so I slung him a chunk of meat. After that he sort of stayed with me.”
“In Shalako, too? Why, he’d stampede every horse in the valley!”
“He don’t stampede Jacob. Jacob an’ him, they get along.”
Jacob, I took it, was the mule.
“Well,” I got up. “Those boys yonder will think I went to get a drink and the
hogs et me. I’d better start back, but you come down and see us. We’ll be around
for a day or two … and you keep an eye open for those men I spoke of. They
ain’t pleasant folks. Nobody you’d invite to a quiltin’ or a box social, like.”
By the time I got back to the fire everybody was settin’ about. They’d eaten and
we’re drinking coffee and listening for trouble. I made no effort to be quiet,
and, when I was within distance, I hailed the fire, as a gentleman should. The
ungentlemanly often ended up with a bellyful of buckshot.
A man who shoots when you don’t call out doesn’t have too many friends, but his
enemies are surely all dead.
“What took you so long?” Orrin asked
The Tinker was looking at me kind of wise and so was Judas Priest.
“I was keepin’ comp’ny,” I said. “I was settin out with a gal.”
“Up here?” Orrin scoffed.
“I think he’s telling the truth,” the Tinker said “He doesn’t act like he’d been
out among the bears.”
So I explained to them about Nell Trelawney and about old Jack Ben Trelawney
down at Shalako waiting for his daughter to pan out enough gold to get them out
of hock.
Orrin shook his head. “That’s hard work for a man,” he grumbled, “and no woman
should be doing it.”
“Jack Ben’s all crippled up,” I said. “What would you have her do? Set still
while they starve?”
“All the Treawney girls could cook,” he suggested “and the food isn’t all that
good in these mining towns.”
“That needs cash money to lay out for flour and the like. You got to have a
place.”
“I agree with Mr. Orrin,” Judas said positively. “It is no task for a woman.”
We had our own problems, and that night I got out the daybook again I gave it to
Orrin to read to us.
I have been writing in secret, but it is far from easy. I think Pettigrew
suspects what I am doing, but he is a secretive man and merely smiles that sly
smile and says nothing.
Somebody has found gold! This morning Pierre found a small hole, dug near a tree
and hastily filled in. The marks near the tree were of Pettigrew’s boots.
Later, alone with Pierre, I told him the tracks were faked to implicate
Pettigrew. He scoffed at me and didn’t believe it. I told him they wanted to
eliminate anyone who might be on his side and they would probably try to raise
suspicion about me next, and if that didn’t work, there would be another Indian
attack. He was angry and demanded to know what I meant by that. I told him there
had been no Indians, I had found no tracks. Had there been Indians, they would
have returned to destroy us.
He was listening by then, and he asked who would fake such an attack and why. I
told him I thought it was Andre and Swan. He was annoyed because I accused his
brother-in-law. I said it seemed clear that Andre didn’t mind killing and
neither did he seem to mind Swan’s brutality to Angus.
Pierre did not like it, but he listened. “You think gold has been found and held
out?” he said. I told him that was exactly what I believed.
I took to sleeping away from the others, on a pretense of watching for Indians,
and I made my bed among leaves and branches that could not be walked over
without noise.
Moreover I watched my back.
We read on Pa had apparently been doing some scouting around and he had come up
with a camp location—two locations, in fact. He argued with Pierre Bontemps that
there had been friction within the detachment. The story was that the Utes had
attacked them, killed many, and that some had died of starvation later. Only a
few men were supposed to have escaped. For several reasons, the story did not
make a lot of sense, for this hadn’t been a patrol, but a large body of
men—perhaps as many as three hundred. Pa believed there were less.
He figured there had been difficulties in the camp and they had separated. Under
such primitive conditions animosities could develop, and something had obviously
happened there. Pa found two camps, both with stone walls roughly put together,
and he found pestholes—the posts were rotted away but the holes could be cleaned
out. Rough shelters—he found a button or two, and a broken knife.
Pa was shot at twice in the woods, but merely commented it must be Indians.
Meanwhile he stopped telling anyone his conclusions. From bones he dug up and
other signs, he decided one camp was doing a lot better than the other. The men
in that part of the French military detachment were eating better, living better
… must be an Indian or a mountain man in that outfit.
May 24: On the run. Wounded. We found the gold, or some of it. Andre and Swan
acted at once. Luckily I’d spread my bed as usual, then being uneasy I moved
back into the aspen. Had a devil of a time finding a place to stretch out, so
close they were. Suddenly I awakened and heard movement, then a roar of rifles.
They’d slipped up and shot into my bedding. Unable to get close, they stood back
and fired. They must have poured a dozen rounds into the place where my bedding
was.
I heard Andre say, “Now for Pettigrew. Move quickly, man. Tell him it’s Indians
and when you get close …” Swan asked him what to do about Pierre, and Baston
said, “Leave ‘im to me.”
I couldn’t get to both of them in time, but I ran toward Pierre, moving silently
as could be.
We didn’t need no pictures to tell us what was happening there atop the
mountain. Baston and Swan had turned to murder as soon as night came, wanting
the gold for themselves. They’d tried to kill pa first, and they believed the
job was done. Only it didn’t work out the way they planned. When Swan got to
Nativity Pettigrew’s bed, the man was gone. It wasn’t until later that they
discovered a horse was also gone.
Getting out of the aspen was a job, and pa had to find his way back to the camp
in the darkness, expecting a shot any minute, having only a single-shot rifle
and a pistol.
He was coming up on them when he heard Baston.
“… no use reaching for that gun. I took the powder from it last evening,
Pierre. Sackett is dead, and soon you will be.” There was a shot, then Baston
laughed, a mean laugh it was, too. “That was one leg, Pierre.” Another shot.
“The other leg. I never liked you, you know. I knew someday I’d do this, planned
it, thought about it. I just wish I could stay and watch you die.”
Swan ran up, and there was talk. I guess they’d found Pettigrew was gone. I
heard swearing, and I moved in for a shot.
Eager to get a shot, and unable to see in the dark I lifted my rifle, stepped
forward for a better shot, and stepped into an unexpected hole. My body crashed
into a bush. My rifle went off, and bullets cut leaves near my head. Another
shot was fired, and I felt the shock of a bullet. I went down, falling on my
pistol. If I moved they’d hear me. I drew my knife and waited.
They did not find me, and neither was of a mind to come hunting me in the dark.
I heard Baston talking to Pierre, saying, “You’re dead. I will leave you here to
die. You’ve lost blood, both knees are broken, and you’ll never be found. We
didn’t find as much gold as I’d hoped, but we can always come back. We’ll be the
only ones who know where it is now.”
“Pettigrew got away. He’ll tell them,” Pierre said.
And Andre answered, “Him? We’ll catch him before he gets off the mountain. And
when we do, we’ll kill him.”
CHAPTER XVI
When Orrin put down the daybook, too sleepy to read further, I was of no mind to
take it up. Mayhap I was fearful of what I’d find, or just too tired, but the