The Hickory Staff

by Rob Scott

  ‘Stevie?’ the bank manager called again, and Steven moved into the lobby to greet his boss.

  ‘Good morning, Howard. How are you?’

  ‘Never mind that. I’m fine, thanks, but never mind that,’ Griffin often thought faster than he could speak. ‘Myrna called last night and can’t be in today. She’s sick or something. So I’ve had to come and cover. How’s the audit coming?’

  ‘It’s fine. I have all the active accounts pulled. There are thousands of them, by the way. I’ll get through many of the oldest today, because most of those haven’t had much in the way of transactions since they were opened. They’ve made enough interest to cover the monthly fees, so the cash just sits there.’

  ‘Great. Stay on it. I’ll work the window and we can check in over lunch later. How’s Owen’s for you?’

  ‘That’ll be fine, Howard. I’ll appreciate the break.’ Steven returned to his office, retrieved the keys to the basement and braced himself for a long, tedious morning.

  ‘Take a look at these.’ Steven had brought several pages of notes to lunch. ‘We have twenty-nine accounts that haven’t had a single transaction in the past twenty-five years. Most of them are forgotten accounts, people who have died. Thankfully, I have information on next of kin from the original applications. But eight of them appear to be accounts for single men killed in the Second World War, and, get this, five accounts date back to the late 1800s – one of which had one deposit and no additional transactions.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Griffin said between long draws on an enormous draught beer. ‘It was probably some miner who went back to work and got himself killed, got his claim jumped or something. It was a rough time back then. But those assets are among the reasons this bank survived the depression – those and the molybdenum mines.’

  ‘That’s not the worst of it, Howard,’ Steven interrupted. ‘This account had only one deposit, but it was a deposit of more than $17,000. That was nine hundred pounds of refined silver. The bank made a bundle on the silver sale alone, because they screwed the guy for over ten cents an ounce off the market price.’ Steven paused to take a bite of a thick Reuben sandwich. Continuing with his mouth full, he added, ‘This is the part that doesn’t make sense. What mining company sends a guy in with nine hundred pounds of silver, lets him take a loss of ten cents an ounce, and then never comes back for the cash? To top it off, he wasn’t even from the Springs. This guy was from Oro City. I don’t even know where that is.’

  ‘Was, Stevie, was. Oro City was Leadville, but they changed the name in 1877. You’re right, though, something’s crooked. There were banks in Oro City then, so what was this guy doing over here?’ Griffin finished his beer and motioned for Gerry, the bartender, to draw him another. ‘You want one more?’

  ‘Jeez, no, Howard. It’s only 12.20; I have to go back to work.’

  ‘Well, I often question my own behaviour, but I’m still having one more before we go. Anyway, this account, what’s the big deal? Some miner hits it big – huge – drops off most of his haul at the bank, takes a handful of silver with him to the pub, flashes it around, drinks too much hooch and gets himself killed. It happened all the time, I would guess.’ Griffin rubbed a French fry around his plate, sopping up hamburger grease.

  ‘The big deal, Howard, is that a $17,000 deposit made in our bank in October of 1870 is now worth more than 6.3 million dollars. It’s just sitting there, and the guy didn’t list any family or next of kin. So I can’t call anyone to say their ship has just come in and docked here in the Rocky Mountain foothills.’ He was about to continue when he was distracted for a moment by an attractive young woman who entered the pub and joined a group of friends in a booth near the back. He shook his head wryly and turned back to his boss. ‘Anyway, the thing I have to ask you is that this guy, this William Higgins, well, he—’

  As Steven lost track of his question, Griffin interrupted, ‘Go say something to her. You don’t get out enough. She’s a pretty girl and you aren’t getting any younger. How old are you now, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? Soon you’ll be old and ugly like me, and I’ll be fried and eaten before I see you get old and ugly like me.’

  ‘No, maybe another time.’ Steven paused. He hadn’t been seriously involved with a woman since university. He dated from time to time, but had never found anyone he felt was the right match for him. He grinned at his boss. ‘Well, anyway, this guy had a safe deposit box, number 17C, in the old safe. I was thinking, if we looked in his drawer, we might find some clue as to who his family is or was and we could let them know this account exists.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Why not? It may be the only way to get this resolved.’

  ‘No. It’s bank policy. They put it in there. They pay the rent on the drawer. We leave it alone until they get back.’

  ‘Yeah, I understand, but think about this for a minute. What do you put into a safe deposit box?’ Steven asked rhetorically. ‘Something you expect to retrieve in your lifetime. You certainly don’t put anything in there that you don’t plan on your grandchildren or even your great-grandchildren ever having. This guy meant to come back for this stuff, whatever it is. Anything we don’t plan on retrieving for a hundred and thirty-five years, we throw in the trash. We don’t ensure its safety in a bank.’

  ‘No way. They put it in there in good faith. We take the $12.95 a month from his account. The drawer stays locked in good faith. It’s good business practice, Stevie. Our customers have to trust us.’

  ‘Trust us? This guy is deader than disco, and if he has any family they might want to know that they’re worth a fortune in accumulated interest.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Griffin finished the last of his beer, a light foam moustache outlining his upper lip. ‘I don’t write the policies,’ he said wryly, ‘but I will buy lunch.’

  Dusk came early to Idaho Springs as the sun disappeared behind the mountain peaks lining the west end of Clear Creek Canyon. It was 5.15 p.m., and already Steven could see its last rays shining in tapered rectangles across the floor. He switched on his desk lamp and took one last look through William Higgins’s account ledger. Monthly deductions for rent of the safe deposit box were the only noted transactions since the day Higgins opened the account in October, 1870. Although fees for the deposit box had increased over time, the compounded interest was more than enough to cover the cost. It was a forgotten account, the fees deducted as a matter of course without anyone checking to see if Higgins or his heirs had ever done business with the bank again. Steven looked up from his desk. A doorway led through to Griffin’s office and beyond that to the bank lobby. On the far wall, a collection of safe deposit keys, more museum artefacts than tools, hung on a small rack. There were three rows of twenty drawers in the old safe, though only forty-seven keys remained. Thirteen had been lost in the years since Lawrence Chapman brought the Bowles and Michaelson safe from Washington, D.C. in the 1860s, and twelve of those drawers now sat empty.

  The safe had come from an English steamship that had piled up on a muddy shoal several miles downriver from Chapman’s Alexandria home. Chapman, ever the entrepreneur, had bought salvage rights, stripped the ship to the beam supports and sold much of her rigging to a local shipwright. He hadn’t been able to part with the old safe, however, so he arranged to bring it along as he worked his way west to open the first Bank of Idaho Springs.

  As Steven stood examining the remaining keys he wondered about William Higgins. Had he met Lawrence Chapman that day in 1870? Had Chapman been the one to convince the miner to deposit his silver rather than taking it to the assay office? And what was in that safe deposit box? Steven, angry at Griffin’s intransigence, was certain it held information that would lead to Higgins’s family; he was determined to see it opened.

  An empty hook hung from the rack under 17C. Steven thought for a moment about picking the lock – it surely couldn’t be that difficult – but he would have to do it quickly, because Griffin would see him disappear into the safe on the securit
y screens in his office. He could claim to be cleaning the inside of the safe, dusting or sweeping it out. Yes, that was it; that was his ticket in. He would just have to find time to study the locking device first. He could stay late one night, slip in, open the drawer and be out before Griffin was any wiser. It would work. He just needed a bit of time to—

  Steven caught himself. ‘My God, Steven, what are you thinking?’ He ran a hand across his brow and felt beads of perspiration emerging from above his hairline. ‘Let this go. You’re going to be the only overqualified, maths-loving MBA ever to get fired from an assistant manager’s position at a small town bank.’

  He pursed his lips, reached out and turned the hook marked 17C one hundred and eighty degrees and said, ‘There, now nothing would hang from it, anyway.’ Steven donned his jacket, grabbed his briefcase and left the bank thinking about telephones and calculators. William Higgins’s account was safe, and his deposit box would remain locked in good faith.

  THE FORBIDDEN FOREST

  Last Twinmoon

  Garec Haile stalked the deer from downwind. He had tethered his mare, Renna, near a pool in the Estrad River, two hundred paces south of the meadow. Despite the thickness of the underbrush, he made little sound and the deer continued feeding peacefully among the tall grasses growing along the edge of the field. He had already nocked an arrow, but his chances of making a shot from this position were slim. He needed to get closer without spooking the animal: another ten or fifteen paces would be enough. Garec was lean and tall, and had to work to stay low enough, avoiding the sharp brambles. His strong legs and lower back, toughened by Twinmoons of hard riding, helped him hug the ground as he noiselessly approached his unsuspecting target.

  The morning sunlight illuminated most of the meadow, but Garec’s copse remained dark. A few moments more and he would have a clear shot. He was still some forty paces from the edge of the meadow, but that range meant a certain kill for the skilled bowman. He practised often, far more than Sallax or even Versen: that’s how he had earned his nickname, the Bringer of Death – with avens and avens of practice. Few bowmen in Eldarn could match the young archer for speed and accuracy. A breeze blew from behind the deer and he was reminded the southern Twinmoon was coming soon. Far in the distance he imagined he could hear the sound of huge waves crashing into the Ronan coast.

  Garec grinned, despite his efforts to remain still. He was in his element: Sallax would eat his words tonight when Garec served up fresh venison tenderloin. Sallax was convinced no hunter could penetrate the forbidden forest south of the river and actually bring out a deer without being captured by Malagon’s forces, but Garec had been crossing into the forest for much of his life: he knew he could.

  He had considered everything as he planned for this morning’s hunt, even memorising the patrol schedule along the north bank of the river. He was sure the Malakasian soldiers knew Ronan locals regularly made their way into the forbidden region; periodically they hanged a poacher as an example, but a lot of the occupation officers frequently looked the other way. This morning’s problem was not getting into the forest, but getting out with a large deer strapped across Renna’s back. Garec reckoned if he could cross below the cliffs at Danae’s Eddy, he could be back at the tavern by the midday aven. He stretched out long under a low-hanging branch and for a moment lost sight of the deer. As he rose on the other side, he found his quarry and took aim along the shaft of the arrow. He drew a slow, shallow breath and steadied for the kill. He could not afford to be tracking a wounded deer all over the forbidden forest; this had to be a clean shot.

  The attack was sudden, and came from three sides. Grettans! Garec gasped and dropped face-first onto the ground in the thicket. Grettans this far south, that was impossible! He fought the urge to turn and run back the way he had come, and silently promised himself he would never again approach any quarry except from downwind. The closest grettan had been crouching in the underbrush just a few paces away: if Garec had approached from the southern side of the field, he would be dead already. Now he had to get back to Renna – he prayed to all the gods of the Northern Forest she was still alive. There was no way he could outrun a grettan, even over the few hundred paces back to his horse.

  Garec stole a quick look towards the meadow where several of the beasts were tearing into the deer’s corpse. As large as farm horses, grettans had powerful legs, enormous paws spiked with deadly claws and huge mouths with razor-sharp fangs, perfect for gripping their prey while they tore away strips of flesh with their forelegs. Their dense fur was black. Small ears jutted from their large heads, and their broad faces had horse-like nostrils and small black eyes set wide apart. Grettans rippled with thick muscle: they had few predators in the wild.

  Garec counted eight of the beasts in and around the meadow, the largest of which was a bull looming over the deer carcase. The unfortunate animal was stripped clean in a matter of moments; bloody, steaming entrails had been cast about the thicket.

  How could he possibly have missed grettan tracks – had he been too busy planning his escape from the forest? Forcing the questions from his mind, Garec focused on the problem at hand. He had to remain calm while he made his way, as silently as possible, back to Renna. She was fast: they had a good chance of escape if he could actually get to her.

  He painstakingly backed out of the thicket, careful not to break any dry branches or rustle the early autumn leaves already strewn beneath his feet. He was sweating hard despite the cool morning breeze and the stinging sweat irritated his eyes. His legs and lower back tightened, near to cramping, and he was forced to stop for several moments, awkwardly tucked beneath the branches of a wild raspberry bush, while he waited for his muscles to relax. It was fear. He knew it. He took several deep breaths and willed his heart to stop pounding and to fall back into place somewhere beneath his throat. Rutting whores: grettans here? What in all demonpissing nightmares were they doing here?

  Garec was soon free of the thicket and forced himself to walk, not run, through the forest towards the river. Ahead he could see Renna still tethered near the shallow pool, her nostrils flaring: she sensed the grettans nearby. Impatient with Garec’s tediously slow return, she pawed nervously at the ground.

  ‘Easy girl, easy,’ Garec soothed. ‘We’re going to be fine.’ He was less than twenty paces from her when Renna let out a sharp whinny. The young hunter felt his blood freeze. A demon scream echoed from the meadow, followed by the sound of the grettan pack crashing through the underbrush.

  ‘Rutting dogs,’ he yelled, sprinting the last few paces and leaping into the saddle, ‘let’s go, Rennie, let’s get out of here.’

  Danae’s Eddy was a short distance east, near a lazy bend in the Estrad River. The cliffs there might provide an escape, if only Renna could outrun the grettan pack for a few moments.

  Garec had only seen grettans once before, on a hunting trip to northern Falkan; he’d never tried to outrun one. He knew they were fast: there were stories of the largest grettans easily chasing down horses on the Falkan plains. Renna was galloping flat out now, and it took all Garec’s concentration to help guide her along the riverbank. The sun was fully out, but the heavy morning dew had yet to dry from ferns and tree limbs along the trail and Garec’s boots and leggings were soaking wet. Looking down at his soggy legs, Garec suddenly had an idea – if they could make it to Danae’s Eddy before Renna was hamstrung.

  The fastest grettans were close on her heels now; Garec could hear their hungry snarling behind the thud of the mare’s hooves. Praying Renna could keep up her pace without his guiding hand, he turned halfway in the saddle and fired an arrow at a large bull that was snapping viciously at her flanks. It struck the beast in the neck, but didn’t appear to slow him at all. Garec nocked and fired again, and again pierced the large bull’s throat – but even with two arrows in its neck, the enormous creature was still making up ground against the tiring horse.

  It was a heroic flight as Renna pounded through the brush, but Garec co
uld feel her slowing beneath him. A smaller grettan came up fast and, leaping, managed to get a paw onto Renna’s hindquarter. The horse screamed a desperate whinny but maintained her stride, though blood was flowing from her torn hide. Garec briefly felt rage eclipse his terror. He looked ahead, hoping to spot any low-hanging branches, but, seeing none, he stood in the stirrups, turned nearly all the way around and fired at the smaller grettan. The arrow took the snarling monster in the head just above one eye. Garec spared a moment to thank the gods he had brought his longbow rather than the smaller forest bow, otherwise he’d never have got through the animal’s thick skull. The arrow sank deep in the grettan’s head and stopped it dead in mid-stride. Four of the slower grettans abruptly gave up the pursuit when they saw one of their own collapse; the coterie of fangs and claws fell upon the still-twitching corpse and began tearing away large pieces of its flesh. Scratching and clawing at one another with blood-soaked paws, the cannibal beasts vied for position over the mangled carcase of their fallen brother.

  There were still two grettans continuing the pursuit, and Garec began to despair of reaching the cliffs.

  Then he saw them through the trees, perhaps two hundred paces out.

  The mossy rocks would still be wet with morning dew, and there was a razor-thin dirt trail leading across the expansive outcropping that narrowed into thin switchbacks leading down to the deepest part of the river. The huge bull with the arrows in its throat swiped at Renna and managed to tear one of Garec’s saddlebags from the mare’s back. Two rabbits and a ring-necked pheasant fell to the trail and the last of the smaller grettans stopped to enjoy a less animated meal, but the injured bull continued after the fleeing mare.

  When Renna burst from the treeline atop the cliffs, the grettan was running astride her, timing its leap onto the horse’s neck. Garec pulled a hunting knife from his belt, hoping to ram it as far into the animal’s chest as possible when the inevitable attack came. Seeing the trail at last, he focused his concentration on guiding Renna along it while the grettan paced them on the damp rocks.