Ghost Canoe

by Will Hobbs

  Nathan crept his way back up to the first summit. It was almost as if he didn’t have a choice anymore. Looking all around, he satisfied himself that he was alone, and he started to breathe easier. Quiet as a cat, he dropped into the saddle between the summits and then picked his way up the second one, more confident now and making not even the slightest sound.

  From the second mountain he could see emerald green, fortresslike Tatoosh encircled by its gray cliffs. He could see the lighthouse and all the little white buildings with their red roofs. He could see the surf surging over Jones Rock in the gap between the tip of the Cape and Tatoosh. The image of the square-rigger under full sail appearing there in the fog came suddenly to mind. He imagined the fright of the sailors at finding themselves under the looming walls of Tatoosh. As if he’d been aboard the Burnaby himself, he heard the sickening crunch when the ship struck the Chibahdehl Rocks. He saw the sea pouring in on them….

  All of a sudden, he realized he didn’t even know if he’d been remembering to keep low and walk soundlessly. He’d lost his concentration walking down the slope in the direction of Tatoosh and had gotten slightly off course from the route he’d walked that day when he’d followed the sound of the foghorn toward the sea.

  He spun around and looked behind him. Nothing. He froze. Nothing. Nothing but the swaying and creaking of the giant cedars and the spruces on the windward side of the mountain.

  Here was the huge nurse log he’d seen that day: the decomposing cedar with the young cedars all straight in a row growing from the top of the log where they had taken root. A little more to the right…a little more to the right, and up…He kept looking for a familiar pattern, a jigsaw puzzle pattern to all the shapes of each individual tree and branch that would match the one in his memory.

  There, through that gap in the trees, there it was, just as he’d left it. The ghost canoe.

  20

  Too Much Gold

  He was so close. There was the ghost canoe, exactly as he’d left it, aloft in the fork of the spruce with its prow pointed toward the sea.

  Nathan doubted that Kane and Dolla Bill could have been here—the forest litter on the floor of the clearing surrounding the tree showed not even the slightest trace of disturbance. They might have found other ghost canoes, but they hadn’t found this one.

  Suddenly he felt completely exposed. His heart was hammering again. He had the eerie sensation that he was being watched from the undergrowth. He couldn’t see them, but they could see him. The salal bushes, and the berry bushes, and the fronds of giant ferns were all in motion with the wind. It made him dizzy trying to peer through the foliage to detect a face. He listened for a minute. He could hear nothing but his own heart beating. Still he seemed surrounded by the presence of evil.

  Act quickly or leave now!

  Nathan glanced above at the moss-covered canoe in the tree. He couldn’t bear to leave. This would have been a perfect place, he thought, for the Spanish commander to hold in his memory, so close to the summit nearest the tip of Cape Flattery. If he was right, if he didn’t panic, he could keep the map from Kane.

  Act quickly!

  He found the same small hemlock he had used for a ladder before, and dragged it over to the big spruce. With a grunt, he boosted it up into position and rocked it until it locked against the spruce’s lowest branch.

  Then he climbed.

  When he walked out onto the branch alongside the decaying canoe, he found everything the same: the Makah chief’s empty, greenish eye sockets, looking forever toward the sea, his mossy paddle close to his right hand. The coil of rope, the sealing club, and the whaling harpoon Nathan had thought was a spear lay in exactly the positions they had before. The small cedar box was wedged behind the skeleton and under the rudder seat exactly where Nathan had left it.

  Carefully, holding his breath, Nathan reached behind the skeleton and grasped the box. He brought it out carefully so as not to touch the bones of the hyas tyee. He pried it open as carefully and as quickly as he could.

  The sla hal pieces were still inside: one banded with black string around its middle, the other unmarked. He could see fine joints on the unmarked one that he hadn’t noticed the first time. This time he also noticed that it wasn’t as yellowed as the other, not as ancient perhaps. Maybe they weren’t a matched pair. Perhaps the Spanish commander had replaced the original unmarked piece with this one.

  Nathan slid both of the bone cylinders into his pocket and replaced the cedar box behind the skeleton. He climbed down out of the tree, and he looked around. No one.

  He had to know if he was right.

  He sat cross-legged at the base of the tree, satisfied himself again that he was alone, then studied the joints on the unmarked bone. With a pull from opposite ends, and a twist, it came open.

  A small piece of folded and rolled parchment was sticking out of one of the halves.

  Even though he had been looking for such a paper, he was astonished. His heart beat faster still, and he looked around. No one. He unfolded the parchment; it crinkled noisily.

  He looked up again, and then his eyes returned quickly to the paper. It was the simplest of maps, not really a map at all. Barely in from the frayed margins of the paper, a large square had been drawn. The four sides of the square had been labeled with the four directions of the compass. Inside the square, in the southwest corner, a small X had been drawn. That was all.

  Setting the map down, he fitted the two parts of the bone piece back together and put it into his pocket with the other.

  As he was doing so, a quick hand from around the side of the tree snatched the map.

  Springing to his feet, Nathan was grabbed from behind. The grasp felt like hoops of iron. “We fool you!” a voice cackled.

  His captor’s voice was unmistakable. It was Dolla Bill.

  A second man appeared from behind the tree. It was Kane, with a smug smile on his face and the map in his hand. “Young MacAllister isn’t nearly so clever as he thinks he is,” Kane said contemptuously. “Thank you for leading us here. I guessed you would, and I guessed right. You know, we walked within thirty yards of this canoe two days ago and never saw it.”

  Nathan struggled to get a breath.

  “I don’t want to have to chase him,” Kane snarled at Dolla Bill.

  Kane walked away to the far side of the clearing. Taking a second map from inside his jacket, he knelt, oriented the maps one against the other, then held them up so the sun would shine through them. Even from a distance, Nathan could tell that Kane’s map was drawn with great detail and appeared to be a map of Cape Flattery’s coastline and Tatoosh Island.

  Kane laughed a vicious, mocking laugh. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart, MacAllister. X indeed marks the spot.”

  “Where is all the gold?” Dolla Bill blurted. “Where do we find it?”

  “It’s been right under our noses the whole time! It’s on the Cape itself. Not on Fuca’s Pillar, not on Tatoosh. We can get it and leave before anyone knows we’re gone.”

  “Thousand-Dolla Bill!” the outcast cheered.

  “I still have a canoe hidden close to here, paddles and all. That fool of a marshal never saw it. No need to go back to Neah Bay for anything. We’ll do a disappearing act right from here!”

  “How do we get down to the canoe?”

  “We’ll use the easy route—some old stairs through a crack in the cliffs. MacAllister knows all about them, don’t you, MacAllister?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Nathan protested.

  With uncanny quickness, Dolla Bill released his bear hug, yet held Nathan by one wrist. His grip was strong as a vise. “What do we do with Tenas Mac?” asked Dolla Bill. “Let’s take his shoes, okay? Slow him down.”

  Nathan began to hope that Kane would let him go. But a sneer appeared on Kane’s face, and Nathan knew better.

  “You seem to know everything,” Kane snarled, “or you wouldn’t be here now. You should have accepted my offer of friendship
. You made a grave mistake, MacAllister.”

  Soundlessly, another man stepped into the clearing—a Makah. It was Lighthouse George.

  “Let Tenas Mac go,” George said to Dolla Bill.

  Kane folded the small maps calmly, methodically, keeping his eye on George, and put them in an inside pocket of his jacket.

  Dolla Bill did as George had asked him to. Nathan went to George’s side. “How did you…?”

  “Three days now, I can see you have troubles. I saw those two following you.”

  “We won’t say anything,” Nathan assured Kane.

  Kane laughed.

  Lighthouse George looked aloft at the ghost canoe, and back at Kane. “What do you want?”

  Nathan said to George, “We don’t have to find out what he wants, really. If he just leaves…”

  Kane said, “MacAllister seems to know exactly what I’m looking for, though he pretends he doesn’t.”

  Kane closed the distance between himself and the other three by half. The sneer was back on his face. He drew a pistol hidden under his broad leather belt and pointed it at George’s chest. “Both of them are going to have to die,” he said to Dolla Bill.

  Nathan knew he had only moments to live. “I’m sorry,” he said to Lighthouse George. “This man killed the captain of that ship, the Burnaby.”

  Nathan could see he’d surprised Kane, that he knew even about the murder. Nathan could see understanding begin to come to Lighthouse George’s face.

  Kane only laughed his contemptuous laugh.

  George was taking a long, questioning look at Dolla Bill.

  “Dolla Bill hasn’t hurt anybody,” Nathan explained to George. “Dolla Bill wasn’t on that ship. He didn’t know Kane back then.”

  From no more than ten feet away, Kane cocked his pistol and pointed it directly at Lighthouse George’s heart. Kane said, “Now that he’s had his history lesson…”

  It was only the briefest impression, but from the corner of his eye Nathan saw a protective look come over Dolla Bill’s pocked and bruised face.

  Dolla Bill sprang as the gun was fired; it was impossible to tell which had happened first. The outcast lunged with the speed and the agility of an acrobat. His momentum threw Kane to the ground.

  It happened too fast for Nathan to tell what had become of the shot he’d heard—only that George didn’t seem to have been hit. Dolla Bill tore the pistol from Kane’s hand and, with a strangled cry, heaved it far into the underbrush. Then Dolla Bill fell back, and Nathan could see a bullet hole in his chest. The outcast was dead.

  Kane glanced in the direction his pistol had been thrown, as he quickly drew out the big knife with the clipper ship design. Then he turned and ran down the mountainside with huge bounding leaps, like an animal.

  “He’s got a canoe down there,” Nathan explained.

  “Let him go,” George said. “We got lotsa canoes.”

  Nathan found out how fast the barefoot, stocky Makah could run. Lighthouse George led the way, and they ran like deer all the way to Neah Bay.

  Word went around the village in minutes, to the beach, and even offshore, where the fishermen were bringing in the salmon. The Makahs remembered how to go to war. They brought out weapons Nathan didn’t even know they had—spears, shields, war clubs made of whalebone, stones the shape of cannonballs for sinking canoes.

  Six of the whaling canoes had gone out earlier, when Nathan had joined them on the whale hunt, but eight of them, each crewed by eight men, went out now in pursuit of Kane. It was apparent that the Makahs no longer considered Kane none of their business. He had murdered Dolla Bill, who seemed to have become a Makah at last with the bravery of his final act.

  The war canoes rounded Koitlah Point with the paddlers chanting and tapping their paddles on the gunwales between strokes. Through the flying sea spray, Nathan kept his eyes on the channel ahead between the mainland and Tatoosh. With so many men pulling in unison, the streamlined, thin-hulled canoes of lightweight cedar shot through the waters of the Strait around the Chibahdehl Rocks, past the Hole in the Wall and its colonies of screaming seabirds, and around the tip of Cape Flattery.

  Kane could have been hiding in any of the Cape’s sea caves, but the Makahs sensed he’d be trying to escape down the coast. As the canoes rounded Fuca’s Pillar, Nathan hoped to glimpse a lone canoe to the south, but he was disappointed. Kane might be as much as four hours ahead, Nathan realized, depending on how long it had taken him to find the treasure. The gold must have been hidden in a niche in one of the many sea caves around the tip of the Cape. In Kane’s haste to get away, had he been able to locate it?

  It was going to be a race against the daylight as well as against Kane, Nathan realized. There were only a few hours of light left, maybe three hours including twilight. By cover of night, Kane was sure to escape.

  The Makahs loved to race, and their powerful upper bodies supplied them with seemingly endless strength and stamina. Nathan was tiring, but the Makahs showed no sign of tiring. Instead, they were inspired by the chase and continued to skim past the beaches, cliffs, rocks, and reefs of the Cape’s southern coast.

  The canoes crossed Makah Bay, putting its long spits and beaches behind them, and rounded a head of land to the south of it. Still no canoe came into sight. “What if he’s behind us?” Nathan fretted to George, who was behind him with the broad steering paddle.

  “Then we get him later.”

  The canoes kept to the outside of a rock reef, then paddled the length of another long beach toward another point of land with seastacks standing offshore. The sea had carved its way through several of them and shaped them into arches.

  By the time the canoes reached the arches, the sea was swallowing the sun. Nathan thought they had lost. George called for more speed, and his paddlers responded, taking the lead from another canoe. George selected a channel through the arches and pointed the canoe toward even more rocks and another head of land a mile to the south.

  When they threaded their way through the rocks and rounded the head, a shout went up from the men in the front of the canoe. There he was, barely a half mile ahead of them underneath the tall cliffs: a lone man paddling a single canoe.

  In Makah, George called for more speed.

  From the war cries that went up behind him, Nathan knew the rest of the canoes were rounding the head now and paddling at full speed.

  Kane would have to go to land, that much was certain. If he stayed on the water, the Makahs would catch him.

  Kane was paddling as fast as he could. He was trying to reach the beach ahead at the end of the long line of cliffs.

  If Kane reached the beach, he could run, use the night, disappear.

  Lighthouse George called once more to his paddlers, and they responded. Nathan matched the Makahs stroke for stroke. In another few minutes, as the great canoe kept closing the gap, it became obvious that Kane was not going to be able to get away.

  Only a quarter of a mile ahead now, Kane’s canoe stopped suddenly. Nathan could make out the murderer leaning forward in the canoe, seizing something. Something extremely heavy, but barely bigger than his hands.

  Kane swung and dropped the object over the side. An ingot, Nathan realized. “That’s gold,” he cried. “Spanish gold!”

  George repeated the words in Makah. Word was passed among the canoes; all the Makahs were hushed and watching intently.

  Kane reached for a second bar. It went over the side of the canoe, as did a third and a fourth and a fifth. Kane was strong, and he was working as fast as he could.

  Under the cliffs and a hundred yards offshore, Nathan knew, it was all deep water, inconceivably deep. If Kane couldn’t have the treasure for himself, he was making sure no one else would.

  There was nothing to be done. It wasn’t possible to get close enough to stop him.

  Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.

  The Makahs, having rested for less than a minute, gave a shout and continued the chase. Nathan pulled and pu
lled with his paddle, his eyes riveted all the while on Kane. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

  The canoes were closing fast on Kane. Now he was paddling directly for shore, where the surging sea was exploding against rocky shelves along the base of the cliffs. Kane was aiming to land the canoe in the only possible break in the tumultuous shoreline, a tiny, sandy cove.

  The Makahs, all eight whaling canoes, chased Kane as close to the cliffs as they could. With skillful paddling, Kane succeeded in beaching his canoe in heavy surf. He was hemmed in against the cliffs, but the Makahs weren’t inclined to land and to chase him, not if they didn’t have to. They didn’t want to risk the loss of a single canoe.

  The canoes hovered several hundred feet offshore and watched. Nathan saw Kane look back at the Makahs all massed there, then look up at the tall cliff above him, perhaps two hundred feet high. He watched as Kane cut the canoe’s bowline loose. He used the line to tie three bars into a bundle—he’d kept three ingots! Kane took off his wide leather belt, secured the gold bars to the belt at its midpoint, then strapped the belt back around his waist.

  Kane scrambled away from the cove, along the wave-splashed rocks lining the shore, studying the cliff all the while. Kane was looking for the best route up the cliff. He intended to climb it.

  The fugitive chose his spot, and then he began to climb.

  Nathan and the Makahs watched Kane pick his way up the cliff, hand over hand, using tiny cracks for handholds. His progress was slow and tedious. He had a long way to go, and the twilight was dimming with every minute. The canoes were too far away for the men to hurl spears or rocks; there was nothing to do but watch.

  No one spoke. They watched Kane reach the halfway point. He paused often to rest. It didn’t seem humanly possible to do what Kane was doing, but Nathan knew this man had climbed Fuca’s Pillar. When he’d climbed the pillar, however, he hadn’t had three bars of gold tied at the small of his back. Was he strong enough to overcome the weight of the gold?