by Alan Monroe
“Not long afterwards, the big one just walked in and took Dr. Rhoades. My nine millimeter didn’t even phase it; the bullets must have felt like bee stings. He broke her neck before he even left the cave. About a half hour later, we heard your gunshot, but it was obviously too far away for us come looking for you with the Doc’s leg in such bad shape.”
“We were scared to leave the cave all day until we heard you shoot the little one. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for coming up here so fast to help us.”
Just as Roundtree finished speaking, Jared walked up holding a rotten smelling pile of gauze. “Sheriff, that man’s in pretty bad shape. Compound fracture and the beginnings of blood poisoning. I gave him a heavy dose of antibiotics that should halt the blood poisoning. But I’ll have to set the leg and splint it.”
“How soon can we move him?” said Davis.
Clint shook his head. ”Doesn’t matter, it’s going to pour down rain any time now. There is no way we need to travel with a wounded man through the woods in the rain.”
Roundtree said, “He’s right. It’s not just going to rain. This is going to be a monsoon.”
“How many bad options can there be?” Huge asked. “We either kill the Doc getting him off the mountain tonight, or we stay out here with Bigfoot.”
Davis rubbed his chin. “All right. We’ll spend the night in the cave. Tomorrow we…”
The sheriff’s body surged into the cave lifting his feet of the ground carrying him forward to land face down on the rocky floor of the cave. Davis gasped for air. Hugh and Clint pointed their weapons at the trees on the far side of the clearing; the roar seared their eardrums. Tom and Jared drug Davis deeper into the cave and helped him out of his backpack. Tom returned to the cave’s mouth with Davis’s double rifle in hand. The roar’s pitch did not waver; the deep rumble force Rachael to cover her ears.
“Sound mad,” Hugh said.
“What knocked the sheriff down?” Tom asked.
Clint kicked a basketball sized rock with his foot. “That thing hit him square in the backpack; lucky it wasn’t his head.”
More rocks launched out of the trees as if a Roman Legion stood in the distance firing multiple catapults; the three armed men backed into the cave until their backs were against the stone. The rocks landed in the mouth of the cave and rolled several feet along the ground, but they could no longer strike anyone with significant force.
Davis finally began to catch his breath, but his came out in a wheeze. “Tom, check the phone.”
Clint kept his rifle trained on the cave opening. “You o.k., Sheriff?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m lucky it hit me square in the backpack; otherwise I would have a few broken ribs. Just knocked the wind out of me. How’s the phone, Tom?”
The answer to the question was written on Tom’s face. “It’s busted. No way we can fix it.”
They all looked toward the entrance to the cave at the sound of a thunderclap followed by an eerie howl. The rain began to pour.
“By the way Sheriff,” Tom said. “Wallace took some of the gold too.”
“The what?”
Wednesday, May 15 2:15 p.m.
Wallace’s left toe caught a thick tree root for the fourth time sense the rain began; his hands failed to break the fall for the third time. After he finally sat up, he placed a finger to the right side of his nose in order to blow the mud out of his left nostril; the same procedure served to clear the right nostril as well. Rain pounded his skin until every exposed piece of flesh glowed red from the impacts; water fountained from the eyelets in his boots every time he took a step. Rivers of water poured out of his thick hair into his eyes and down his long face.
His body sank down into the wet ground allowing water and mud to spill over his belt into the back of his pants. He placed the butt of his rifle and the ground and began to rise to his feet; lines of pain spread across his face while veins popped out of his neck. Stitches connecting the backpack to its shoulder straps started to pop causing Wallace to slow his painful assent more. Once his legs straightened, he picked up the lever action rifle and walked down the slope into the old growth forest again.
Five steps later he leaned his body against a tree tried to draw several deep breaths. The muscles in his lower back screamed with every step down the hill, and the straps of his backpack had dug deep raw trenches in his shoulders hours ago. Two steps later his right foot stepped on another patch of mud and shot out from underneath his body. Wallace twisted his torso to grab a branch, and his eyes grew wide at the sound of fabric ripping apart. A sudden weight slammed into the back of his calf driving his leg into the wet undergrowth; he turned in time to see the gold nugget bouncing down the steep grade.
With his extra weight removed, he bounded down the hill after the tumbling object, but the rocks and mud flew from under his feet again sending him into a cartwheel down the mountainside. The trees spun in front of his eyes for an eternity while the rifle flew from his grasp, and the tattered remnants of the backpack tore away on a limb along with most of his shirt. The slope leveled out after what seemed like an hour allowing a bleeding and battered Wallace to finally roll to a stop in the mud.
For some incomprehensible reason, consciousness did not leave his mind, but it took almost five minutes for him to roll over onto his hands and knees. He crawled through muck and mire covering the forest floor searching for a glimmer of yellow. Lighting crashed as the rain pounded his bare back, and he continued to crawl. He meandered back and forth at the base of the grade moving leaves and branches; tears formed in his eyes and mixed with the rain and blood from scratches on his face.
He finally stood and staggered through the trees until a flicker of yellow caught his eye from under a fallen snag. Wallace lunged forward and dove under the log finding a mouth full of mud in the process. After wedging his arms and chest under the log, only his fingertips reached the bright rough surface. A strong exhale pushed every ounce of air out of his lungs, and he slipped in far enough to grip the heavy nugget.
Wallace continued to squirm under the snag until he embraced the nugget like a parent hugging a child; he laid his head on the nugget. Water raced around his body until he finally began to back out of the cavity under the fallen tree. He stood and looked around the empty forest to get his bearings, and he finally cleared his head enough to tell downhill form uphill. He picked up a small tarp and a short length of rope thrown from his torn pack; but when he tried to dead lift the nugget off the ground, a sharp explosion in his upper thigh sent him back to the ground.
The large lump in his groin pounded his body with pain at every heartbeat; Wallace rolled over onto his side and gripped the hernia with both hands. A thick tree branch sprawled through the air twelve feet above his his head, and he rolled to his knees and eyed the tree's trunk from its base to the branch. The tarp still remained within arm’s reach; Wallace wrapped it around the nugget before he looped the rope through the eyelets. One quick toss draped the rope over the branch.
Bare hands gripped the deep ridges on the tree trunk as Wallace pulled himself to his feet. He dug the sides of his boots into trunk and reached high with arms straining to draw himself upward a few inches. A short bend of the knees drew them up the trunk about a foot; Wallace ground the boots into the bark again pushing his body to its full height. Hot pokers rammed into his shoulders every time he drew his torso upwqrd with his arms.
Twelve feet and fifteen minutes later, he managed to wrap one of his arms around the lowest branch of the tree. He worked his legs around the limb and quickly pulled his body around it until he seated himself on the thick branch with his back against the tree. A deep groove in the limb formed a perfect seat against the trunk making it nearly impossible for him to fall. He leaned forward taking the yellow nylon rope in his hands; the weight of the gold quickly resisted his pull. Nylon dug into his palms, and blood began to taint the bright yellow rope. The tarp held the gold until it slid over the edge of the limb and into his
lap.
Wallace pulled the tarp from arond the gold and draped it over his body from head to toe. He carefully picked the mud and dirt from the rough surface of the gold nugget. Iron and other trace minerals ran along the surface, but the wieght of the nugget indicated the purity of its heart. Wallace laid his hand over the top of the gold drawing in tight against his body. He closed his eyes and laid his head against the tree.
Wednesday, May 15 3:00 p.m.
Davis rubbed his broad jaw with his right hand; the sound of rain pounding the mountainside rang in his ears. He set the stock of the double role on the ground at his feet while still holding the barrel in his hands.
“Tom,” Davis said slowly. “What did you just say to me?”
“I said that Wallace took some of the the gold with him when he left?”
“The gold?”
“Yes, Sheriff, Wallace took the gold with him when he left.”
“All right Tom, I've seen enough over the past few days to believe just about anything. But you're going to have to tell me what in the world you are talking about now.”
Tom smiled. “I finally surprised you. How about that?”
Davis frowned. “Just tell me about the gold shorty.”
“It’s not really much of a story. After we got inside the cave, we finally had a chance to stop and breathe for what seemed like the first time in days. Once it looked like the Sasquatch was going to leave alone for a little while, I started checking out the cave. While I was in the very back, I kicked a rock over on its side. The thing was so heavy it actually hurt my foot. I bent over to take a closer look at it, and I noticed the shiny color. The longer I knocked dirt off of it, the better it started to look. I knew it had to be gold. I called everyone over to look at it. When I told them what it was, Wallace pushed his way towards the front. He seemed pretty mad; it was almost like he was angry that I found it. Looking back on it, it was almost like he expected to find the gold. Rachael noticed a shine on the cave wall, and then we were all able to see the vein of gold running through the wall of the cave. Half the rocks on the floor have gold in them, but Wallace took the biggest. We started looking around the floor of the cave and we found an old pick ax and miners helmet.”
“You mean this used to be a mine?” Hugh asked.
Jared spoke up for the first time in a while. “No way this was a mine; at least not the entire thing. I've done enough caving to recognize a natural formation when I see one. And the vast majority of this cave is completely natural.”
“What about back here where the vein of gold is?” asked Davis.
Jared took a close look at the cave wall. “I do see a lot of tool marks on the wall here. But my guess is that this vein of gold was exposed naturally. Somebody found it and started to mine it.”
“Recently?” Hugh asked.
“No way,” Tom said. “This pick ax and helmet are serious antiques.”
Hugh touched the vein of gold with his hand. “Gold has never been mined in this area of the state. How could somebody walk off and leave this hardly touched.”
Jared agreed. “There must be millions of dollars that are unmined here.”
Clint spoke from the mouth of the cave where he stood with his 30-06. “I can think of several big, tall, furry reasons somebody would abandon this mine and never come back.”
“I don’t think so,” Hugh said. “The kind of people that would come up here prospecting for gold wouldn’t let Bigfoot get in the way. They would come back up here with a private army.”
“McKlintock,” Davis said.
“What are you talking about?” Hugh asked.
Davis shook his head. “You all know the legend of McKlintock’s Gold Mine. He went up into the mountains and discovered gold, but he died before he could get back to his mine. He refused to tell anyone where the mine was even on his death bed.”
“So you think this is McKlintock’s Gold Mine?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know, but it does seem to fit, and Hugh is right. The only way a prospector would abandon a mine was if they were dead.”
“You could be right sheriff,” Jared said.
“There is one more thing that makes me think this is McKlintock’s place,” Davis said.
"Spit it out boss," Hugh said.
“McKlintock said that anybody wanting to get to his mine would have to get by monsters first. So this place fits the bill to say the least.”
Wrinkles spread over Hugh’s forehead. “Are you saying that those things are guarding this gold?”
Davis laughed. “No way; that’s crazy. I’m betting that McKlintock found the gold by sheer dumb luck, and he got chased off by the Sasquatch.”
“So why aren’t they just chasing us off?” Tom asked.
“Good question,” Hugh said. “These things are trying to kill us instead of just chasing us off.”
Davis shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. McKlintock was up here a long time ago. Maybe their opinion of people has gone downhill since then.”
Wednesday, May 15 5:20
The three story brick building had been constructed almost one hundred years ago. Brick arches roofed the exterior doors and windows, and the name, Okanogan Times, had been spelled in white bricks between the second and third floor windows. Two sets of stairs leading up to the offices and down to the basements flanked the front desk. Behind the front desk, a thick wall attempted to drown out the sound of the printing press older than anyone in the county.
Thomas walked right past the front desk up to third floor and into an office with editor written on its door. Photos and newspaper headlines covered the walls except for a few family photos one yellowed black and white photo of a tall, thin man carrying a notepad and a very young, but still bald, Howard Thomas. The tall, thin man with white hair behind the desk stood up and shook Thomas’ hand.
“Good to see you Dale,” Thomas said.
“Same to you Howard. It’s been too long. You should come by more often.”
Thomas sat down across from his old friend. “Well, we have been pretty busy lately.”
“Yea, I bet you have. But right now you don’t have that same old and tired look that you usually have on your ugly face. This is worse; you have a look that says something bad is going on.”
“Well, you hit the nail on the head. I need help.”
“Spill it.”
“You know theirs a Bigfoot search up around Nighthawk, right?”
Dale shrugged. “Heard about it. We don’t even pay attention to them anymore.”
“This one has Tom Roundtree as a member.”
Dale allowed a thin smile. “Surprised Davis let one of his best go on a goofy monster hunt.”
“He probably regrets it now. A few days ago, we got a crazy call on a sat phone from them, and the sheriff took a rescue party up the firebreak on Little Chopaka Mountain.”
“This is getting newsworthy.”
“Well it gets more newsworthy. The sheriff has been checking in on a sat phone, and several people have died.”
Dale sat up straight, and his eyes grew wide. “How did they die?”
Thomas hesitated a moment. “Looks like some type of animal attack.”
Dale got up and closed the door before turning and speaking to his friend again. “Are you trying to tell be that there is a Sasquatch up on that mountain that is killing people?”
“Yea.”
“Does Davis believe this?"
“He’s the one that told me it was a Bigfoot, Dale.”
Dale went back to his seat. “Has he lost his mind? This could ruin his career.”
“He's more concerned with finding the rest of Tom’s expedition than his career. Besides, based on what he has told me I believe it to.”
Dale paused before speaking again. “I know you didn’t come in here just to give me a scoop. We’re the only paper in the county.”
“I told you I needed help.”
“Name it.”
“I went to the publi
c library to try to do some research on the history of the area around Nighthawk, but they didn’t have anything worth using.”
“I could have told you that. You should have come here first."
“I just want to look at your old papers, Dale. We've got to know more about that area. My gut tells me this is not the first time these things have killed people.”
“I’ll do better than give you access to the archives; I’ll help you go through them.”
Thomas stood and shook his friend’s hand again. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Dale.”
Dale unknotted his tie. “Don’t mention it. Davis is one of the few honest elected officials I know of. I can’t let him be eaten by a legend.”
Dale picked up the phone from its cradle. “Irene,” Dale said. “Howard and I are going down in the pit. We’ll need your help.”
Thomas grabbed his friends arm. “There’s one more thing. Davis missed a check in time an hour ago. I bet I've called him ten times in the past hour.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Dale asked while he walked out of his office door.
Wednesday, May 15 8:00 p.m.
From inside the cavern, the heavy rain looked like a curtain drawn across the mouth of the cave, but it also forced the temperature down by twenty degrees. Large caves maintained a constant temperature most of the year regardless of the outside temperature, but the small cave in the side of Little Chopaka Mountain stood open to the whims of the weather. Fortuneately, the water drained away from the mouth of the cave rather than into it.