Zachary's Gold (33 page)

“Risk! Yup, everything's risky for me. I got this problem, partner. I've already been on the wrong side of the bars once or twice, you see, and every time I go back there, they seem to like me better. They want to keep me around a little longer. Money is money and all that, but I try to be pretty careful these days.”

My big coat pockets were full of surprises that day. I drew out a canvas pouch with a bulge in it the size of a crabapple and dropped it in front of him with a resounding thud.

“As near as I can guess there's about a pound of Barkerville gold there, my friend, and I don't want to buy your ranch; I just want you to wear my coat and hat, take my horse, and ride down towards Fort Hope making enough noise along the way so that the news gets around that Zachary Beddoes has gone south through the canyon.”

I passed him the bottle. His eyes kept returning to the pouch of gold, but the clever part of his mind wouldn't let him touch it until he had made a decision.

“I gather you aren't all that popular with the law, then, Mr. Beddoes.”

“Yes sir, putting it mildly. There's been some nasty stories go around about me, I must admit. Rumours, lies, and such.”

He took another drink.

“And the risk of this thing—it's like I might get a hole shot in my back or something, I suppose.”

“The idea, of course, is to make the deception last as long as possible, but I would expect you to tell the truth of the situation, loud and long to anyone necessary before any shooting started. I just need a head start. Yours is a small risk, in my opinion.”

When he laughed, he jerked about like a puppet gone out of control.

“They say an opinion is only just a lie that ain't been proved yet.”

I laughed along with him. Between the effects of the whisky and the gold, I was pretty sure I had Blasted Jack under control. He said nothing directly, though, just ambled outside into the sunshine. After a moment, I followed.

He stood with hands on hips, head bent back, looking straight up into the sky. I couldn't help but follow his gaze, but there was nothing but blue and grey above us. I handed him the bottle, which he took without looking at me, and stood beside him surveying the countryside around his homestead.

“Once you're gone, I'll start off in a different direction, keeping my head down, so to speak,” I said. “Maybe I should even take a different route right from here. What is there out behind your place, Jack? Can I get to a road going that way?”

He looked at me for a minute, stroking his cheek pensively, then walked briskly back to the cabin, handing me the bottle as he passed. He didn't go inside, just grabbed the broom that was leaned next to the door, and began to sweep an area of bare red dirt next to the corral. I didn't know what he was doing, but I already knew the man well enough not to be surprised at his actions. When a space about ten feet square was cleared to his satisfaction, he turned the broom around, and used the other end to draw a one-foot circle in the middle of the space.

“Ranch,” he said.

Next, he scratched a long, winding line beside the edge of the corral, with an irregular shape attached to the end of it.

“That's what I call Frog Lake, and this here's the crick that comes out of it.” At this point, I realized he was drawing a map. He trotted all the way over to my horse and kicked at the dirt, frowning in concentration. “Now, town would be about here.” From there, he walked twenty feet to where I stood, dragging his toe in the dust. “This'd be where the road goes,” he pronounced. I nodded agreement, and we both drank some whisky.

When he recommenced his discourse, he spoke in a low but expressive voice, pacing his way around the cleared area, scratching with the broomstick and occasionally pointing to the horizon beyond his house.

“If you head down here, or over here, or even through here, you get the miserablest gullies and gulches. Take you forever, and you still get nowhere. This here is swamp. You can't get too far west here. This is a dry creek bed, leads up to Frog Lake, but you don't go all the way. Maybe halfway, maybe a mile, and then you go up over the ridge, down to here somewhere, then you look for . . . Damn! Where's the road? Oughta be somewhere right here, and I got it way over there.” He looked to me, apologetic and mystified, and I handed him the bottle. “Maybe if you got some paper, I could try drawing this a little smaller.”

“No need, Jack. I'll just wait a while after you're gone, then go out the way I came.”

“You sure? I'm good with maps normally, you know. I just got this one too big, and I now can't see it quite right.”

“Let's not bother,” I said. “I always seem to get mixed up trying to follow maps anyway.”

He shrugged, tried briefly once more to resolve the discrepancies in his scratches and circles, then came and sat next to me. He leaned against the front wall of the shack, basking in the sunshine, and when I glanced at him a minute later, he was asleep.

The whisky sat in the sunshine, and it was as warm as afternoon tea when I took another mouthful. I considered waking him up, but it didn't seem worth the effort. He might as well sleep it off. I realized that I had made a mistake in bringing a full bottle along. I should have made do with just enough for a friendly bracer, an introductory social lubricant.

Checking my watch, I found it was eleven-thirty. “If I hadn't started out travelling today, I would be having a tasty luncheon of boiled carrots with my friends,” I thought.

The world was beginning to feel like a rather unsteady place. I sank down onto a patch of wild grass, closed my eyes, and tried to decide whether one day's delay would seriously decrease my chances of success.

Suddenly, I found I was being shaken into consciousness by a tall, balding blond stranger with a jaw like Gibraltar. It took me several seconds to recognize Jack Evans and to remember our plan.

“If we don't get started right quick like,” he was saying, “we'll have blowed our whole day, you know!”

It was almost one o'clock. My head was spinning, and I wondered how Evans had managed so quickly to be awake and sober.

“You get a move on now, Zach, if you're serious about this stunt. I've got to look to my cows before I do anything.”

As he stumbled away I perceived that while he may have been awake, he was still some distance from sobriety.

Jack brought water to the animals' trough from a well behind the house, and I had him pour one bucket over my head, which helped my concentration a good deal. Leaving him to complete his farm chores, I stumbled over to the horses and unloaded Farrell's brown horse.

“I'll leave the white one saddled. You'll ride him,” I shouted.

“I can take my own horse if you want.”

“No, Jack. I've been seen riding that big white, and I want everyone to recognize me—that is, recognize you and think it's me. Anyway, I'm afraid part of the deal is a trade of horses. I bought that white fellow and this brown mare fair and square, by the way. I need one to ride and one to pack, so I'll need to take yours with me.”

At this he hesitated, but it was hardly a moment until he shrugged. “Oh well, Nathaniel will get you to Fort Hope safe enough; don't you worry, Zach. You've got a good horse there! Been with me a long time, you know.”

Evans finished his work and buttoned up his shirt.

“I'm not actually going down the canyon,” I said. “I'll go over to Fort Kamloops, then south from there.”

He half smiled and nodded sagely.

“Don't you worry, Zach. Half the country will hear how you're ripping down the canyon, I'll make sure of that. You pay me an honest dollar, and I do the job good and proper, you know.”

“That gold poke is still inside on the floor. You take it and hide it someplace good while my back is turned here,” I suggested. “You want that waiting for you when you come back north. Take a bit with you now in a twist of paper if you want, just for expenses.”

He tottered away while I saddled his horse, and ten minutes later we were ready to go, Evans on the white horse wearing my hat and long, green coat, with the whisky bottle protruding from one pocket.

“I'll ride with you as far as that main valley. Then I'm coming back here for the night. I want you to get a head start on me.” I was telling the truth when I said this, but I also wanted to be sure he was on his way before he started drinking. I only hoped that if he passed out, the horse would continue to head south, rather than return to the Farrell ranch. I don't know whether Jack guessed my ulterior motive or not, but he spoke at some length about how confident I should be. He could be relied on to execute his part of our plan, whatever the obstacles.

“Yessir,” he said, with a philosopher's distant gaze, “I'm mostly a loner these days, because of the ranch and all, but I know good and well what's involved in taking on a partnership. I had myself some good partners in my time. Phil Prescott and me was together for better'n two years when I first come north. Helped me build the house right at the start, but he had the consumption, and went south and died. Joe Willis was a good man, too. We had a claim together up on Meagre Creek, but he died too. Drowned. Good man, though. I been lucky with the partners I took on.”

I declined comment on the sort of luck his partners seemed to have had, but allowed that, indeed, good fortune was sometimes more important than good judgment in choosing one's companions.

“Well, I always had to depend on luck, myself,” Jack observed, “because I never had much in the line of good judgment.” We both had a good laugh at that. Then he said, “You're pretty much of a loner yourself then, are you?”

“Pretty much,” I agreed, then added, “I've been working with a partner or two lately, though.”

“And now you divided up and went your own ways, I guess?”

“Probably. It's always hard to say, of course.”

“Well, I'm glad you asked me to sign on. We'll do this job up right and proper, you and me.”

As the sun reached its zenith behind us, we rode together across the meadow to the mouth of the ravine that led down into the long horseshoe-shaped box canyon.

I had chosen Farrell's white horse purely because it would be easily noticed and remembered when people saw Evans ride past doing his imitation of Zachary Beddoes, but it was in fact proving to be a good horse. It showed no signs of tiring or protesting as Evans started it out on a new leg of the journey. His horse, on the other hand—the one I rode—sensed something unusual afoot and kept bumping up against her former owner's leg as if for reassurance. It took most of my concentration to handle her, for I was not a great horseman to begin with, and I still felt a trifle tipsy.

Once we reached the dry creek bed, the canyon narrowed so that we had to travel single file. Then, for the last few hundred yards of the southernmost end, the baked clay hills opened out a little, and we rode side by side up to the place where I had planned to leave my new companion, but as we turned the final corner we were confronted with a frightening surprise.

Our horses strolled into the open valley at a patient walk, but as soon as we looked across the half mile of desert prairie to the opposite hillside, we pulled hard on the reins and had the animals fairly dancing on their hind hooves back into cover. Out of sight, we quickly tethered the horses to the most convenient bit of brush, scurried back up the rise on foot, and peered over. Crouched together behind a great sandstone boulder, we looked across to the place a quarter-mile distant where I had said goodbye to May Sang. There were five men there—three mounted, two on foot beside them, examining the ground.

I muttered something unpleasant under my breath, regretting that I had wasted so much time using a bottle to introduce myself. I had never once guessed that such a remote, widely scattered community could organize and mobilize a rescue committee so quickly. Now it appeared that Evans was going to have to figure a way to manoeuvre himself in front of those characters, for this group had surely been sent out on my trail. They spent a long time there, examining the tracks and talking amongst themselves. The possibility now presented itself that they might choose to follow the lesser trail, and come straight towards us.

We both held our breath, so to speak, as we squatted, watched and waited, but I remained confident that they would ride away, would follow the route taken by May Sang and showing the larger number of hoofprints. No one had seen Evans and I when we blundered into their view. The surprising thing to me was that they were taking so long to come to a decision.

So intent was I on this observation that it startled me when Evans uttered a loud profanity. Turning to look at the animals, I saw that they had shaken themselves loose from the brittle sagebrush branches to which they were tethered, and while the dark one had evidently started for home, the white had strolled out from concealment and was foraging for dry grass in plain view of all and sundry.

Evans leaped from the hillock where we were stationed, skidded down the slope on his backside, and trotted out to retrieve the animal, but by then it was too late. As I watched, one man pointed towards us, then all turned their attention.

A moment later five men on horseback trotted down the valley, trapping us within the narrow walls of the dry creek's gorge without any route of escape.

By the time Evans came back with one horse, I had control of the other. Without speaking and without haste, we mounted and headed back in the direction of his homestead. We were each trying our best to come up with a plan, but it now seemed clear to me that my good fortune had been used up. We reined in at a sort of bottleneck twist in the canyon, and Evans jumped down, holding his rifle in one hand, the whisky bottle in the other.

“Let's take our own horses back, Jack,” I suggested. “You go on to your ranch, hide my stuff wherever you can. You can have it all. Chase that other horse of Farrell's down in this direction and try to hide any evidence that I've ever stopped up there. I'll handle things from here. I guess they've caught me, but I don't want these beggars getting any of my gold. Go on, Jack.”