Dutchman and the Devil : The Lost Story (9781456612887) (14 page)

Waltz rode into their campsite with his pistol in his right hand, prepared to catch his partner in the act of stealing their gold.

But Weiser was nowhere to be seen, and his horse was peacefully grazing on a small patch of grass. Where the hell was he?

Surprised and confused, Waltz dropped his reins and dismounted, keeping his pistol ready to fire.

A blue-crested camp jay squawked resentment of Waltz’s arrival, but otherwise the forest was still.

A small grey cloud blocked the early afternoon sun briefly. Waltz looked up and saw more clouds gathering.

Waltz took his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. “What the hell’s going on here?” he asked himself. “It ain’t like Weiser to miss a chance to steal my gold.”

But there was no sign of Weiser moving on — not that he had much left to move on with. The collars and cuffs on the highfaluting shirts Weiser’d bought in San Francisco were a vanity of the past, and even his plain-Jane work shirts from Whiskey Flat were worn practically to rags.

Waltz looked more closely at the campfire. A column of ants was carting off the remnants of Weiser’s breakfast, but that was not unusual.

He walked the short distance to their shaft, although it was not deep enough yet for a hiding place, and checked their mining tools. Weiser’s spade was missing, along with his pan, and that was unusual.

The only thing that could keep Weiser here was if he stumbled on more gold. But it had to be easy to get at, like a cluster of nuggets washed down the creek in a summer storm. Treading as cautiously as a man his size could, Waltz descended toward the creek and saw Weiser at its edge. As he watched, Weiser swirled the water in his pan, stirred it a bit with his fingers, and peered intently into it.

Weiser’s smile disappeared as he heard Waltz’s heavy tread approaching. He dumped the gold into his pan and stuffed the pouch back in his pocket, bending his head over the pan and peering intently at its contents as he gently sifted the mixture of gravel and gold through his fingers.

Too surprised to suspect skullduggery, Waltz strode over to Weiser and snatched the pan from his hands. Gold flakes glistened brightly among the pebbles and gravel.

The sight of this gold made Waltz oblivious to Weiser’s cautious movement beside him. Waltz never knew what hit him as Weiser grabbed his spade and blindsided him, knocking him face-down into the creek.

One more good whack to the back of his head probably killed Waltz, but Weiser wasn’t taking any chances. He crouched down, put his hands on the back of Waltz’s head, and held it underwater until no more air bubbles came to the surface.

A few scattered raindrops fell as Weiser led Waltz’s horse down to the creek. Using muscles he’d developed as Waltz’s lackey, Weiser improvised a rope harness, attached it to Waltz’s saddle, and dragged Waltz’s body out of the water and up the slope.

Just as they reached the campsite, the heavens opened up and sent down a driving rain, forcing Weiser to huddle under a piece of canvas and wait. And plan. He’d bury the body in their mine — it didn’t appear to have any gold worth taking out, and he had enough for now in the lockbox. As soon as the rain let up, Weiser hung his sopping canvas on a tree branch, picked up the horse’s reins, and finished dragging Waltz’s body to the small pit that was their mine. Undoing the rope harness, he pulled Waltz’s vest open, took his wallet, and put it on his own belt.

While he was doing this, the sun came out and caught a gleam of gold on the far side of the pit.

Ignoring the puddle in the bottom, Weiser lowered himself into the pit and began rubbing the gold, gently wiping away dirt that had been hard-packed on top of it. He’d been with other prospectors long enough to recognize this vein was as good as any he’d ever seen. Maybe better!

How big was this vein? With renewed energy, Weiser got his pick and cleared away a foot more. The vein became wider. “My God,” he thought, “I just found the mother of all gold veins!” Laughing hysterically, Weiser climbed out of his mine, extended both his arms with palms open wide to the radiant sky, and shouted, “I finally got what I deserve!”

He was answered by cries of, “kree-eee-ar,” “kree-eee-ar,” “kree-eee-ar,” slurring downward like the cry of a steam whistle as a flock of half-a-dozen turkey vultures flew into view. They circled his camp three times, the white undersides of their dark wings spread wide. In flight they were beautiful.

But as they settled like sentinels of death on nearby tree branches, Weiser could see their hideous red heads and sharp predator’s beaks, and shuddered with distaste.

Trying to ignore his uninvited visitors, Weiser went back to Waltz’s body and noticed the face was turning purple. He grabbed the body by its boots, dragged it to the hole’s edge, and tipped it in. It had already begun to stiffen, causing its legs to stick out of the shaft, but Weiser was able to fold the body into a fetal curl and cover it with his soggy canvas.

Growing impatient, the vultures moved to lower limbs. Waltz’s horse nickered softly, and shifted his feet. Weiser looked over at the horse and decided he’d be a good decoy to lure the vultures to another site. He didn’t really need him anyway.

Moving quickly, Weiser saddled his own horse and led Waltz’s mare to the middle of a meadow a mile away before shooting her and leaving her bloody carcass for vulture bait.

They were circling the dead horse as Weiser left the meadow. When he reached his camp, Weiser was too tired to do any more than open a can of beans, wolf it down without bothering to heat it, and settle into his bedroll.

Every other night, Weiser was out like a light as soon as he closed his eyes, but on this night he heard every sound, from wind sighing in the trees to an owl asking, “Whooooooo?” And his hide that had been toughened in the wilderness felt every lump and rock beneath him.

At first, he didn’t mind his wakefulness as he thought about his new strike. And he was satisfied by how easily he had gotten rid of his partner, but as the hours passed and the temperature dropped, he had a chill unlike any he’d felt before. He wanted warmth, but not badly enough to leave his blankets and build a fire. It was nearly dawn before he fell into a fitful doze.

Weiser awoke to wind in the pines crying his name: “Weiiiiiiser, Weiiiiiiser....” The cries rose to a shriek, then faded, leaving him to sink into a deep sleep and not awaken until the sun was high overhead.

Groggy from his restless night and unaccustomed daytime sleep, Weiser stretched his arms high over his head, ran his tongue over his lips, and reached for the jug of water next to his bedroll, only to discover the jug was empty.

Sitting up, he pulled on his socks and boots, got to his feet slowly, and walked down to the creek, knelt at its edge, splashed ice-cold water on his face, and drank deeply. As the water calmed, he bent to take a closer look at his reflection, and saw a man on the far side of fifty. Surprised and confused, he blinked a few times and looked again. His reflection told him that the young lion he’d been, the young man ready to take San Francisco by storm, had been replaced by a man who had passed his prime — not yet a geezer, but by no means the highfalutin’ gentleman he had imagined himself.

Unwilling to accept the truth, Weiser sat back on his heels and listened to the gurgling current. And he looked up at the towering pine trees and the soft, blue, cloudless sky. But he could not bring himself to look again at the water and his reflected face. After too many months of servitude, he’d taken care of his erstwhile partner for good.

This was a day to celebrate moving on! He began with a fresh pot of coffee; a plateful of bacon, biscuits, and molasses; and a Cuban cigar. A camp jay who’d been watching and hoping for a handout opened his beak and squawked.

The bird’s “awr-awr-awrrrr” startled Weiser and brought him to his senses. If his new gold vein was as rich as he hoped, he’d have to get a good sample, conceal his digging, and get out of here.

The last thing he needed was another prospector to find it!

As he grabbed a shovel and lowered himself into the pit, he heard vultures approaching. In his excitement, he’d overlooked the growing stench of Waltz’s decay.

Annoyed at the delay, Weiser buried Waltz’s body in the side of the pit opposite the gold, before chipping out enough ore to fill an empty Calumet Baking Powder tin.

That done, Weiser spent the rest of the day restoring the area to its original appearance, finishing it off with small clumps of grass and an artful scattering of twigs and fallen leaves.

As he put his tools aside, he discovered he was ravenously hungry. Opening three tins of canned meat, he wolfed them down, rolled up in his blanket, and slept like a rock.

He awoke with the first light of day and realized the previous day’s exertions had lent new aches and pains to his no longer youthful body. But his discomfort paled into insignificance as he remembered his richly deserved new wealth.

In a hurry now, Weiser stuck some sticks of jerky in his pocket, packed up his remaining food and gear, and secured it to the sawbuck saddle on his mule. Satisfied he had disguised the site sufficiently, he tied the mule’s lead to the pommel of his saddle, climbed into his saddle, and rode south.

The rising sun sparkled on dew-drenched leaves as Weiser made his way east out of the Bradshaw Mountains. Mid morning, he stopped to water his horse and mule. As he studied his reflection in the stream, signs of middle age no longer bothered him. They suited the seasoned and successful man he’d become. In fact, he thought, they gave dignity to the wealthy man he’d become. He imagined Wells and Fargo begging him to take a seat on their board of directors, and winked at his mirrored self.

But as he rode, prudence told him his move to San Francisco had better wait until he was reasonably certain Waltz’s murder wasn’t going to be found out. The world of prospecting was small enough to ask where his long-time partner was if he showed up in San Francisco alone, with a boatload of gold from an unknown source.

“So what am I going to do?” Weiser asked himself. And the obvious answer was to hide out in nearby Phoenix, a one-horse town where he could pretend to be Waltz until it was safe to move on. It would be far easier to play the part of Waltz than to defend his own highly suspicious actions and predicament.

Phoenix was little more than a hick town on the banks of the Salt River when Weiser arrived. And it was easy to find plots of land available to homestead. He’d known Waltz so long, it was easy to start thinking and behaving like he would have. Accordingly, Weiser chose a plot at the edge of town, with a nice grove of acacia trees and enough land to raise a few chickens and sell their eggs. And it had the advantage of being on the river.

Two weeks after he’d pitched his tent on his new property, Weiser decided it was time to get his new gold assayed.

Tom McCormick’s general store had most of what he needed. And as Weiser’d expected, McCormick examined his small nugget with a jeweler’s loupe and plunked it on a scale.

Hoping to get a clue to the location of Weiser’s strike, McCormick put aside his loupe, peered keenly at Weiser, and said, “I been assaying a lot of years, mister, an’ I ain’t never seen any nugget like this one in these parts.”

Weiser met McCormick’s gaze with a grin and said, “I guess you’d like me to tell you where I found it, Mr. McCormick, but I sure as hell ain’t going to.”

“You can’t blame a fellow for trying,” McCormick said. “Especially since your nugget is the richest I ever seen, Mr. ...?”

“Waltz,” Weiser replied, without hesitating. “Jacob Waltz.”

Six months later, Weiser had a small adobe house on his property and enough chickens to pay for his other groceries. He also had a cache of gold from his new strike buried beneath his hearth.

One lazy afternoon, he was awakened from his afternoon siesta by a couple of Mexicans poking around near his house. He knew who they were all right; they’d come along the day before and put up a canvas tent between his house and the river, ruining his view. “Goddamn Mexicans must be after my gold,” his paranoia whispered.

He’d left his shotgun loaded with buckshot resting against the wall just inside his door. Getting to his feet, Weiser picked up his shotgun, threw open his door, and shot one of the intruders with both barrels. Blood rushed from the man’s chest and he fell, mortally wounded.

The second Mexican turned and ran away before Weiser could reload.

It wasn’t long before word of the shooting made its way to the sheriff. Weiser was ready when the sheriff came out to investigate. Looking the sheriff straight in the eye, he swore he had nothing to do with the shooting. “I heard them Mexicans arguing,” he said. “They woke me up from my nap. Right after that, I heard my door open, two shots, an’ footsteps runnin’ away. I didn’t want to get shot, so I stayed in my house until you got here, Sir.”

Weiser thought he had successfully put the matter to rest with his quick thinking. But the Arizona Gazette ran an article based on his story and the sheriff posted a reward for the missing Mexican. In spite of the $100 reward, the Mexican stayed missing. But Weiser’s assumed identity was now recorded for posterity.

After this incident, rumors of Weiser’s — or, as he was now known, Waltz’s — gold spread like wildfire, making him more famous than he would have liked. And although he’d shed his accent years earlier, his assumed name of Waltz led people to refer to him as “the Dutchman.” And now he had an even bigger problem: with so much publicity for “Waltz,” he could never hope to explain the real Waltz’s disappearance. Moreover, if he went to see Wells and Fargo, he would be in a world of trouble when people started adding up all the clues and coming up with murder.

The bottom line, for the foreseeable future, was he was stuck in Phoenix, and stuck as Waltz.

A decade passed in the blink of an eye, during which Weiser led dozens of prospectors to follow him with deadly results. In his eyes, these men were thieves who deserved to die. He had no qualms as he maliciously misled them away from the beautiful Bradshaw Mountains and into the labyrinthine hellhole of the wretched Superstition Mountains wilderness. When these would-be thieves were weakened by heat, thirst, and exhaustion, he whacked them with his trusty shovel, took their food and water, and left their bodies for the buzzards. And only then did he circle back to his real mine in the heavenly cool Bradshaws.

One warm night, as he tossed restlessly in his bed, Weiser thought he heard Waltz’s voice. Opening his eyes, he saw the shadow of a man Waltz’s height at the foot of his bed.

“Who are you?” Weiser whispered.

The specter swayed silently and breathed a sigh of unbearable suffering.

“Could this be Waltz?” he asked himself, then quickly declared, “No, that’s impossible. I don’t believe in ghosts!” Nonetheless, Weiser repeated, “Who are you? Why don’t you answer me,” as he surreptitiously picked up a stout stick he kept beside his bed.

Just then a gust of wind blew in through his open window, sending a sudden and powerful feeling of fear through Weiser’s body.

As the curtains fluttered, the specter seemed to sway.

Weiser inched forward.

But as the breeze abated, the ghostly figure stopped swaying.

Weiser began to relax, and slipped back into sleep, until another gust of wind swept in and tickled his damp skin.

The only thing that moved was his eyes, as Weiser stared at the shadowy figure just beyond the foot of his bed.

And one final gust of wind made him take a firm hold of his stick, rise to his knees, and strike viciously.

His momentum carried him over the foot of his bed and he landed in a heap on the floor.

Spent by his effort, Weiser passed into a stupor and lay there until his rooster crowed and brought him back to reality.

Getting up from the floor, he saw the pile of his clothing in a heap beside him. With bravery born of daylight, he looked at the pile of clothing and said to himself, “This is ridiculous. I’m getting so’s I’m scared of my own shadow.” He stood up straighter and continued, “I’ve got to get out more, maybe get back to playing poker.” He grinned, picturing himself raking in the chips. After all, a man can never have too much money.

Humming to himself, Weiser made himself a pot of coffee and sat down to read the latest issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, which he subscribed to through Walt Johnson’s General Store.

The year after Weiser bought his farm, Julia Thomas and her husband Emil arrived in Phoenix. Julia’s grandmother had come to New Orleans on a slave ship, chained to nine other black girls, and had been sold to a lecherous plantation owner who made her pregnant with Julia’s mother and, fifteen years later, repeated his acts with Julia’s mother to beget Julia herself.

Emil Thomas had won Julia in a poker game in a backstreet saloon. She was a beautiful mulatto woman, adept at pleasing men, but had never felt pleasure for herself until Charlie Smith came to town and swept her off her feet. Poor Julia was devastated when Charlie moved on and forgot her before he got to Tucson.

Like Charlie, Emil had a roving eye. He bought a bakery in the center of Phoenix and put Julia to work baking and selling pastries while he flirted with their female customers. Julia’s hard work made Emil’s bakery the busiest in Phoenix, and he had no trouble borrowing more money.

But this money was not for the bakery. It was for dumping Julia and leaving her with a drawerful of overdue bank loans.

The morning after Emil ran off with a white woman, Julia sat alone at a small table in her bakery, trying to get hold of her new situation. She’d gotten as far as figuring out that what she needed was a good man with deep pockets when Weiser walked in the door.

“I’ve brought you fresh eggs,” Weiser began, then paused and looked more closely at Julia. In her snug bodice and flowing skirts, she was the picture of feminine frailty.

Julia knew most men were suckers for women’s tears, and gently dabbed at her moist eyes with a lace hanky. Looking at her voluptuous body, Weiser felt his groin tingle. He wanted to take her in his arms to console her — and maybe more, if he played his cards right.

Weiser put his eggs on another table and turned back to Julia. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Thomas?” he asked softly.

“Emil’s gone off with one of the dancing girls from Matt’s Saloon,” Julia sobbed, daintily wiping her tears with a lace hanky before looking up at Waltz. “An’ he ain’t coming back. How will I ever manage all by myself?”

Weiser knelt down on one knee beside her chair and eased his arm around her gently shaking shoulders. As he hoped, Julia responded by snuggling closer. Weiser moved his hand to the coils of her curly black hair and rubbed the back of her neck gently as he whispered, “Emil will come back.”

“No,” Julia replied, her soft lips trembling, “he won’t. He took all our money. He ain’t coming back.”

As Julia sobbed softly in his arms, Weiser looked around the tidy little bakery, thinking it was a nice little business that he could use a piece of — diversify his assets, so to speak, while enjoying the dividends of this woman’s gratitude. “Maybe I can help you,” he said, moving his hand from her neck and gently raising her chin until her soft brown eyes met his cool grey ones.

Julia had heard rumors of this Dutchman’s gold. Were they true? “Perhaps they were,” she thought. It couldn’t hurt to try and find out. This man wasn’t young, but she’d noticed the burgeoning bulge in his trousers and knew what to do with it. Rising and taking Weiser’s hand, she put a “closed” sign in the bakery window and led him upstairs to her bed.

The next day, Weiser returned with a baking powder can filled with gold nuggets. With a courtly bow, he handed it to her and said, “This should help you get back on your feet, my dear.”

Julia smiled and put her “closed” sign in the window again. “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him through thick black eyelashes. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.” Her full lips curved upward. “Do you have time to come upstairs?”

Weiser replied by sliding the bolt shut on the bakery door and covering her lips with his.

Julia bought a horse with some of Weiser’s gold. She ordered a small buggy, too, but Weiser frowned disapprovingly when she mentioned it. Not wanting him to think she was frivolous, Julia cancelled the order.

Of course, she knew Weiser had intended his gold to be a loan, but that could change. And she certainly wasn’t about to bring up the subject. If Weiser started hinting, Julia changed the direction of the conversation by taking his hand and leading him upstairs.

Moreover, on Sundays she filled picnic baskets with mouthwatering fried chicken, and they spent the afternoon in a secluded grove of cottonwood trees down by the river.

The day came when she began to gently question him about his gold. To satisfy her curiosity, Weiser spun a yarn that captured her fascinated attention as he began, “I used to have a partner, Jake Weiser, who came with me from Germany. We were dirt poor but we believed we could get rich in America.”

Julia’s dark eyes filled with admiration as she looked up at Weiser and said, “You were awfully brave to do that, Jacob.”

Weiser smiled modestly and said, “We weren’t thinking about being brave, we just did what we had to, chasing after one gold strike after another. Eventually, we ended up in Mexico, at a Cantina where a poker game was in progress.”