Dutchman and the Devil : The Lost Story (9781456612887) (9 page)

Again, there was no reply. He lit a candle and went a few steps into the tunnel. He had never been here alone, and wasn’t sure of his way.

The silence was unnerving. He began to sweat, in spite of the coolness of the damp earth. It wasn’t like Waltz to play tricks. He called out, “Waltz! Where the hell are you?”

No reply.

Weiser took another couple of steps and called again, but there was still no response. Weiser asked himself, “How deep is this tunnel? And why didn’t Waltz tell me he was the one who found this gold? He should of told me,” Weiser thought. His guilty mind wondered if Waltz had other secrets. “Is he part of Webber’s gang? And is he down there ready to kill me and get my share of the gold?”

Now Weiser’s curiosity overcame his unease. He started down the gentle slope that was their mine, sliding his feet cautiously in search of firm footing. In the dim light of his candle, the surrounding tunnel was pitch-black.

The tunnel followed their gold vein, weaving slightly as it burrowed into the hillside. Stout timbers supporting the shaft creaked ominously.

He considered turning back, but wondered why Waltz didn’t answer. What if he was really in trouble? And if he was, how was Weiser going to get enough gold to go to San Francisco? Moving cautiously forward and down, Weiser felt his way along the slimy wall with his right hand and held the candle in his left.

Ahead and partly concealed by a beam that was oddly out of line, a dark shape shifted ever so slightly.

Weiser inched his way forward and realized the darker shape was Waltz, trapped by the rebellious timber and hip-deep in floodwater. Water lapped at Waltz’s partially submerged body.

Weiser’s first thought was for his own safety. He held his candle high and saw no signs of impending cave-in. But the rising water was a sure-fire sign their mine itself was in deadly danger. Flooding was the kiss of death for any mining claim.

Waltz moved a little, groaned, opened his eyes, and saw Weiser’s face in the flickering light of his candle. Summoning his diminishing strength, Waltz tried to shout, “Help me,” but his shout was no more than a whimper.

Weiser looked down at his helpless partner and was tempted to leave him and get out with all their gold. No one saw me come up here, he thought, they’re all in the saloon. I won’t have to lift a finger — I can just leave Waltz here an’ let rising water take care of him for good. Everyone’ll think his death was just another unfortunate mining accident.

Weiser turned and started to leave.

Summoning the last of his resources, Waltz begged, “Don’t go, Weiser. For God’s sake, help me!”

Weiser looked down at Waltz and came to his senses. Even if he took off with all the gold they had now, it was only half of what he really needed. He met Waltz’s eyes and said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to get help. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

As darkness returned, Waltz felt fear in his belly. Weiser wasn’t coming back, he knew it. For the first time since he was a child, Waltz was powerless to help himself. He clung to the timber that was his jailer and gradually became aware it was also his only friend, without whose support he would sink and drown.

The belligerent water continued its relentless rise.

To hold off the panic that nibbled at the edge of his self-control, Waltz turned his mind back to Germany and the time when he first knew Weiser. “He was my friend and partner. Without his encouragement, I’d still be hungry and struggling to make ends meet. He’s the man who got me into the world of boxing and paid me prize money that put food on mother’s table. And he’s the man who got me to America and talked me into coming to California.”

Waltz desperately wanted to believe Weiser would bring help, but his heart whispered, “Weiser should be back by now.” And it said, more boldly now, “If you die, Weiser will have your gold.”

While Waltz clung to his timber, Weiser clung to the clammy walls of the pitch-black pit and picked his way back to safety, mindful a misstep would leave him as helpless as Waltz. It was an eternity before he saw daylight at the tunnel’s end.

The brightness hurt his eyes, made them water. Weiser stood unsteadily in the tunnel’s entrance, squinting down the hill, and saw Roberts approaching. “Thank God you’re here,” Weiser called out. “Waltz is trapped in the mine an’ the water’s rising fast!”

Roberts heard Weiser and ran to help. As they made their way down the tunnel, Weiser thought uneasily, “Will Roberts or Waltz suspect I tried to leave Waltz to die?”

When they reached Waltz, the water had risen to his shoulders, but his stubborn German nature had not let him give in. At the sight of Roberts, Waltz knew he would be all right and allowed himself to sink into merciful oblivion.

As they set to work freeing Waltz, Weiser’s concern was no longer a sham. Even though it disgusted him, Weiser ducked into the dark and dirty water to pry Waltz’s leg from the grip of the timber while Roberts supported Waltz and kept his head above water. And he used strength he didn’t know he possessed to help Roberts drag Waltz up the tunnel to safety.

When they reached the tunnel’s mouth, Roberts ran down to their camp for blankets and help carrying Waltz. And Weiser, who had worked as if his own life depended on saving Waltz, made sure that the first thing Waltz saw as he regained consciousness was his solicitous face.

Nevertheless, regardless of what he pretended, Waltz had glimpsed murder in Weiser’s eyes. Nothing Weiser could ever say or do would change that.

The evening after his narrow escape from death, Waltz sat by the campfire with Roberts, warming his hands around a cup of coffee laced with whiskey. Waltz was too tough to have suffered more than a badly bruised leg and a bad case of the sniffles from his ordeal in the mine shaft. He groaned softly as he shifted his injured leg. Wind in the pines sighed as if in sympathy. He set his coffee cup down and said softly, “Where’s Weiser?”

“Up at Caldwell’s,” Roberts replied in a similar tone.

“And the others?” Waltz asked, looking around.

“In the saloon, drowning their sorrows over our bad luck,” Roberts replied.

A log shifted, sending up a shower of sparks. In the glow, Waltz met Roberts’ unemotional brown eyes and asked, “What do you think really happened down in the mine?”

“Don’t you know?” Roberts asked evasively, leaning forward and poking at the fire.

“I’d like to hear it from you,” Waltz said.

“All right, then,” Roberts said. “I was coming toward the mine when Weiser ran out waving his arms, shouting you were stuck in the shaft and water was coming in. We lit fresh candles and started down. We found you up to your neck in rising water, hanging onto a broken timber and about to go under. I held your head above water while Weiser went under and freed your leg. I was a little surprised he was willing to do that, the way he’s so fussy about his comfort, but he really did save your life down there.”

Waltz and Roberts sat quietly, each man absorbed in his own thoughts until another log shifted and broke the silence. Then Waltz sighed heavily and said, “I can’t prove it, but Weiser meant for me to die down there. If you hadn’t come along, my death would have passed for a mining accident. He would of took my gold an’ skedaddled. But after you showed up, he had to start acting like a hero.”

Roberts nodded and said, “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing, at least for now. Weiser’s too lazy to start trouble. He just takes his opportunities when they come along. From now on, I’ll be watching him like a hawk, that’s for sure. If he makes one false move, I’ll break every bone in his cheating body.”

As they talked, Weiser came out of Caldwell’s and saw them with their heads together. Curious how much they knew, or suspected, about his leaving Waltz to die, Weiser left the porch and moved carefully toward the campfire, but their voices were too low to make out what they were saying. Besides, it was uncomfortably cold. He gave up for the time being and went back to Caldwell’s.

The next evening, Weiser saw Roberts at the campfire by himself. In spite of the cold, Weiser felt his forehead start to perspire. “He’s stayed away from me all day,” Weiser thought. “He thinks I’m guilty, but of what? It’s not like he saw me standing over Waltz with a bloody bludgeon. I didn’t actually do anything, but I’d sure as hell like to know what he thinks.”

Acting nonchalant, Weiser approached the fire, rubbed his hands briskly, and said, “Fire feels good tonight, don’t it?”

Roberts examined the grounds in his coffee mug and said nothing. He didn’t give a damn what Weiser felt. Without looking up, he said curtly, “What do you want?”

“Why, nothing, sir,” Weiser replied in an injured tone. “I just came over to thank you for helping save my partner.”

“I didn’t do anything special,” Roberts said, still without looking at Weiser. “I just happened to come by when Waltz needed help.”

“So that’s the way you want to play it,” Weiser thought, “just acting like you don’t suspect I was trying to leave Waltz in the mine. Well, that’s fine with me, because I sure as hell ain’t going to admit anything.” Aloud, he said, “Thank you anyway, sir,” and continued to Caldwell’s.

As he walked, Weiser said to himself, “Roberts’ cold-shoulder treatment tells me all I need to know. It ain’t just Webber who’s against me, it’s every damn one of this group. An’ I have no choice but to get rid of them, one by one.”

The next day, Gideon Roberts and Abraham Peeples rode over to Marysville, intending to purchase a pump to save their mine. They returned with no pump. “Did you order a pump?” Waltz asked.

“No,” Roberts replied grimly. “Some big bankers are buying up the small claims in Grass Valley, and they intend to have the only mine. They told the storekeepers not to sell pumps to anyone else.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Weiser asked, inwardly wishing he was one of those bankers. He’d drive a hard bargain, that was for sure.

“Sell them our claims,” Peeples said.

“How much will they pay? I wouldn’t mind selling if the price is right,” Young said.

“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” Roberts replied. “And they had the nerve to tell me it’s the best offer we’ll get.”

The men exploded with anger: “That’s less money than I make in a month!” “They have to be joking!” “It just ain’t fair!”

“Maybe it ain’t fair,” Roberts said, “but it’s the hard truth of doing business. They have us between a rock and a hard place. We have a mine that’s full of water, and even if we could buy a pump, there’s no guarantee it would get the mine dry enough to work it.”

The men sold their claims. Adam Peeples took his share and went to Cairo, Illinois. The rest of the men stowed their sacks of ore in saddlebags and rode southeast along the Sierra Nevada foothills. Overhead, puffy banks of white clouds skittered across a brilliant cobalt-blue sky. Beside the trail, tiny pink manzanita flowers sparkled with drops of moisture. Roberts led the way, and Waltz brought up the rear where he could keep an eye on Weiser.

Jake Weiser hated the wilderness, and he blamed Waltz for keeping him there. His stomach rumbled, rebelling against their diet of hardtack, beans, and molasses. If Waltz had found another strike like he should have, Weiser thought, I’d be in San Francisco eating caviar and sipping champagne. Miserable from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, he jammed his no-longer-stylish hat low on his forehead, pulled his collar up, and buried his chin in a scratchy wool scarf. He was a million miles from the cashmere comfort he had known as a boy and it was Waltz’s fault. The emotions of a spoiled child churned in his chest. “I’ll fix him and the rest of these fools as soon as I get the chance,” he thought. Mirroring Weiser’s vindictive mood, the white clouds disappeared and driving rain soaked his rough clothing.

Roberts decided they’d gone far enough for one day and stopped to camp beside a river. As they dismounted, Waltz saw Weiser turn and give him a malevolent look that was enough to sour pickles. “What’s eating him?” Waltz said to himself. “He sure ain’t the man who I trusted enough to be my partner an’ come to America. These days, I have to think twice before turning my back on him.”

The next morning, the men built a sluice box from fallen timber and settled down to harvest this river’s gold. By now, Waltz was determined to make Weiser do his share of the work, and, although it was a little like inviting a fox to tend the hen house, he gave Weiser the tedious task of sorting ore after it settled in the sluice box riffles.

This wilderness was Weiser’s enemy, a hostile place full of stinging, biting insects and innocent-appearing plants that made his fair skin covered with fiercely itching red blotches. Furthermore, he was out of Cuban cigars, the nights were goddamn cold, and his golden future was beginning to seem like a self-deluding fantasy. Bored to tears one afternoon, he noticed that the meadow above their sluice box was dotted with bushes bearing berries. What he didn’t see was a mother grizzly bear and her two fat cubs.

The other men were busy with their work and didn’t notice Weiser leave his post. But Waltz saw Weiser and the bears. And without conscious effort, he imagined how easy it would be to shoot Weiser and claim he’d been trying to save him.

Weiser ambled into the meadow, picked and ate a handful of berries from a small bush, and continued toward the bears’ bigger bush. The mother bear stopped eating, raised her head, and sniffed the distinctive new scent approaching.

Intent on berries, Weiser failed to see her.

Curious, the mother bear stood up on her hind legs, swaying and sniffing.

Waltz raised his rifle and focused it on the bear. Her silver-tipped, dark brown fur gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. On her hind legs, she was taller than Weiser.

Waltz lowered his rifle and aimed it at Weiser.

Unaware of the bears or Waltz, Weiser stooped and picked another handful of berries.

The mother bear swayed slightly, trying to decide if the man on the other side of the bushes was a threat to her cubs.

Tired of bending over picking berries, Weiser suddenly stood up.

Alarmed, the mother bear dropped to all fours and started toward Weiser.

Startled, Weiser turned to run and stumbled, momentarily losing his balance, long enough for Waltz to shoot.

The bear stumbled, but didn’t fall.

Waltz lowered his rifle, released the bolt to eject the spent bullet, slid the bolt forward, locked it, and fired again.

This time, the bear went down.

With the first frost, the dogwood trees turned a rich, deep red; bigleaf maples shone cadmium-yellow; black oak trees dropped plump acorns from brilliant, golden branches; and their stream was pretty well picked over. It was time to move on.

The first settlement they came to was Mariposa, a cluster of small cabins nestled around a stockade. The handful of men who lived there were happy enough to see visitors who would listen to them brag about their exploits chasing Indians. They had succeeded, or so they thought, in pushing Chief Tenaya and his band of renegade Indians back into the Yosemite Valley, but an old-timer knew better. He took Waltz and Roberts aside and warned them, “Them Indians won’t stay bottled up in that valley! White men murdered Chief Tenaya’s first-born son, an’ he’ll come looking for revenge. If you’re smart, you’ll take a different road for the next hundred miles.”

Weiser and Coho Young stopped to listen. Weiser whispered something to Young.

Hearing them, the old man paused, but Young grinned and said, “Don’t stop now, Grandpa. Your redskin story has me shaking in my boots.”

The old man frowned and said, “Chief Tenaya is no joke, young man. There’s murder in his heathen heart. If you follow him into the woods, you won’t get out alive.”

Weiser laughed out loud.

Outraged by this rudeness, Waltz grabbed Weiser’s arm, spun him around, and snapped, “You apologize to this man!”

“Why should I?” Weiser said. “This old man’s story is too absurd to take seriously.”

Waltz’s angry eyes narrowed as he said, “Don’t argue with me, Weiser. Say you’re sorry and do it now!”

For an instant, Weiser met Waltz’s glare, but Young backed away, taking Weiser’s boldness with him. Left to stand alone, Weiser faltered. Swallowing his pride, at least for the moment, he said, “I apologize, sir, if I was rude. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

Seeing Weiser chastised in front of the group, Webber laughed out loud. Weiser’s only visible reaction was his jaw tightening as he renewed his vow to kill Webber — and all the others, one by one.

The old-timer squinted briefly at Weiser and said, “I warn you, Chief Tenaya will invite you to his camp, but there is great danger. His camp is deep in the Sacred Mountains, a land of tall trees, tumbling waters, and deep canyons from which white men do not return.”

When the old-timer was out of earshot, Roberts turned to Waltz and said, “What do you think? Should we change our route?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Waltz said. “If we keep our eyes open and stay close together, we’ll be all right.” It was an opinion he came to regret.

Ten miles out of Mariposa, patches of early snow showed white at the edge of the forest. The trail began to climb and a chill wind came up, gathering speed as the sun dropped toward the horizon. A raven left his perch in a towering ponderosa pine and rose to the darkening sky, his ebony wings sparkling ominously as he circled and soared above them in figure-eight swoops.

Leaving the road, they set up camp in a sycamore grove beside a small river. Green, Young, and Gideon Roberts took their fishing poles and cast their lines for trout while Peeples and Webber set the horses’ pickets, spacing them in the small grassy patches between trees. Roberts started a campfire, Waltz made coffee, and Weiser gathered wood at the edge of the forest.

Waltz was the first to see the small group of Indians. Two braves wearing weathered derby hats and denim shirts over buckskin trousers stood at the edge of the clearing. They wore small leather pouches hanging from a thong around their necks. Smiling, the braves stepped forward and raised their arms with palms open to signal peaceful intentions.

As Waltz walked slowly toward the Indians, Peeples and Webber left the horses and joined Green, Young, and Gideon Roberts, who had left their fishing lines near the river as they hurried to join Waltz. Weiser cowered in the background.

An old Indian, wearing a tall black hat with an eagle feather tucked in its ribbon as a mark of his importance, stepped in front of the braves and said, “I am Tenaya, Chief of the Ahwahneechee.” His tall frame was curved with age and his weather-beaten skin was as spotted as the ancient sycamore tree behind him. The smile on his lips was not reflected in his gimlet eyes. “I want to trade,” he said proudly, and gestured toward one of his braves. The brave stepped forward, lifted the pouch from his neck, and handed it to his chief. Tenaya stuck his hand into the pouch and took out a two-inch gold nugget.

The sight of the redskin’s gold made Weiser bolder. He slipped in front of Peeples and saw in Tenaya’s gnarled hands the means to achieve the power and luxury he deserved. But selling guns to Indians was against the law and he didn’t think Waltz would do it, no matter what the Indians offered. “I’ll make my own deal if I have to,” Weiser said to himself.

Roberts and Waltz exchanged a glance.

Tenaya looked at them intently and repeated, “I want to trade.”

Roberts stepped forward and extended his empty hands, palms up. Raising his shoulders slightly, he replied, “We have nothing to trade.”

Tenaya knew better. White men had guns and he wanted them. He smiled and said, “Yes you do. You have guns.”

Roberts had no intention of selling guns to Indians, but he thought perhaps they could get some gold here before moving on.

Even Waltz was tempted as he moved toward Tenaya and bent to inspect the nuggets. After looking at them closely, he said, “May I feel the weight of your gold?”

Tenaya’s inscrutable eyes narrowed, but he handed Waltz one large nugget, keeping his hand extended to show he wanted it back.

Waltz studied the piece of gold, then looked up at Tenaya and remembered the war-painted Comanche warriors filling the sky with flaming arrows. Even if the Indian’s gold was tempting, they were in danger and would have to be cautious. He handed the nugget back to Tenaya and said, “Does the Chief think we are fools? You do not have enough gold here for even one gun!”

The Chief had dealt with white men before. He smiled and said, “We have much more gold at our village. Tomorrow we will take you there.” With that, the Chief and his braves disappeared into the forest.

As soon as the Indians were out of earshot, Waltz said, “Let’s get out of here while we can.”

But Roberts had seen Waltz’s interest in Tenaya’s gold. “Those nuggets looked mighty good,” he said.

“Are you crazy?” Waltz responded quickly. “That old Indian has no intention of trading gold. He just wants to get us into the woods where his braves are waiting to kill us.”

“Maybe that’s true,” Roberts admitted, “but if those men from Mariposa could chase these redskins back into the mountains, we ought to be able to take care of ourselves.”

Waltz snorted and said, “Those men from Mariposa were soldiers, Roberts. We’re just a group of prospectors. We ought to get the hell out of here, if we know what’s good for us.”

“I ain’t so sure we should pass up a chance for some easy gold,” Roberts said calmly. “Especially if the redskin’s weapons are only hatchets and arrows.”