by Sharon Rowse
The crack of a rifle broke the stillness.
He pushed a hand between Trent’s shoulder blades, propelling both of them to the ground.
“I thought they wanted us alive,” Trent said, spitting out a mouthful of snow.
“So did I. Maybe they’re shooting only to wound.”
“Shot is shot.”
The boy had that right. And they were too exposed here, their clothing dark against the snow. “Deeper into the trees. Hurry.”
Trent had grabbed the mule’s bridles and was in motion almost before he’d finished speaking.
Granville followed him, diving behind a large cedar trunk just as another bullet whined over his head. “I think there’s only one shooter.”
“Yeah,” Trent said. “I can’t get a bead on him, though. Can you see him?”
“No, the angle’s wrong.”
Two bullets whined in quick succession, just to their left.
“He’s trying to herd us,” Trent said in his ear. “Like we’re wild pigs or something.”
Another bullet whined by, this one slightly above them. The boy was right.
“So where does he want us to go?” he said as they returned fire, then eased their way into deeper cover.
“Does it matter?”
“It might. Scott’s told me he tries to think like whatever animal he’s hunting. Do you do the same?” Granville said in an undertone.
“Yeah. You’re thinking he wants us to run for the cave where we stashed the gold?” Trent whispered.
“I’d say it’s a good guess,” he said, ducking lower as another bullet whined overhead.
He returned fire. “We need to do something he won’t be expecting.”
Trent’s eyes darted from their flimsy cover to the shooter’s well-concealed spot and he smiled broadly.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Cover me,” and he began wriggling his way through the underbrush, pulling the reluctant mules after him.
Granville’s instinctive protest died unvoiced.
The boy was gone.
He aimed, shot, aimed again.
Trent knew these mountains better than he did. He just hoped the boy wasn’t being foolhardy. And that he could keep the shooter focused on him.
He fired again, waited.
The shooter returned fire.
He missed him, but not by much.
Granville dug a little deeper into the brush, then fired back.
Again his shot was returned.
Good.
Then a loud bray a short distance uphill from where he lay had him flinching.
Cursed mule. Would it be enough to give Trent’s location away?
He fired again, hoping to distract the shooter.
His fire was returned, then—nothing.
He lay listening hard. Fired several more times.
No response.
Where was Trent?
The wind shushed through the trees. Granville’s belly was freezing where he lay pressed against the snow. He couldn’t hear Trent or the shooter, not even the mules.
No shots, no crashing of brush, no braying, not even a snapping twig.
Easing himself up to his knees, he absently brushed off the snow, still listening hard, and reloaded the Winchester.
Forty-seven very tense minutes later, Trent crawled back to where Granville crouched behind an outcropping of granite.
“It’s done.”
“I hope the man tracking us looks worse than you do,” he said, eyeing Trent’s scraped and grimy face. “You look as if you were breaking trail with your face.”
“I slipped,” Trent said, looking remarkably pleased with himself despite the scratches.
“And the mules?”
“I set the gray mule loose, hid the other. I think our shooter’s following John the Mule.”
“How do you hide a mule?”
“It ain’t easy. Let’s get out of here before he figures out he’s been fooled.”
“As long as you don’t expect to get out of explaining how you lost him.”
Trent’s grin and look of pride nearly had Granville grinning back.
With an effort he maintained the irritated expression he’d adopted. It didn’t seem to worry Trent, who just smiled more broadly. “Follow me,” he said, as he slithered under the snow-covered branches of a cedar and was gone.
He didn’t know how the boy had done it, but Trent seemed to have lost their pursuer, at least for the moment.
Listening hard, all he could hear was the soft rustle of the wind in the upper branches of the pines and the occasional plop as a tree released its load of snow. He could hear nothing of the shooter, nor of the mules.
What had Trent done with the ornery creatures, anyway?
As they climbed steadily uphill, keeping Trent in sight didn’t get any easier. The boy seemed to disdain anything resembling a path, slipping between close growing trees and through thick underbrush without sound. Granville found himself hard pressed to keep up.
Scott would roar with laughter if he could see him now, he thought ruefully as he ducked the back swing of yet another pliant branch. It was all too reminiscent of their Klondike days, and the long slog of trekking the creeks, looking for any sign of color. In their early days, Scott had called him The London Swell, and mocked his ineptitude in the reality of the Alaskan wilderness, so different from anything he’d seen before.
That had changed when he’d saved Scott from drowning when their badly built boat had failed to navigate the rapids at Five Fingers. Still, he had been a London swell, like so many others completely unprepared for the realities of the Yukon wilderness.
His lips quirked at the likely reaction of some of his London friends, if they could see him now. They’d simply not believe their eyes. Even the hunting-mad ones would never stoop to crawling through actual bush; that was for the hounds in pursuit of the fox; the huntsmen were well mounted and stayed that way, thank you very much.
“We’ll get the mule now,” Trent said, appearing at his elbow.
“After you tell me how you lost our pursuers.”
Trent grinned at him. “Nope,” he said, and vanished between two trees.
The brown mule was tied in the lee of a cliff, strips of cloth snugged around his jaw. His were flattened back and his eyes were wild.
Granville eyed the mule. “You do know he’ll make us pay the moment you release him?”
Trent dug into his pack. “It’s why I brought these,” he said, pulling out two scrawny carrots and a wrinkled apple.
Fresh produce. Granville’s mouth watered. “Where’d you get those?”
“I’ve dealt with mules before. I brought them with me from the markets in town.”
“They’re wasted on the mule.”
“Not if it keeps him from braying and giving us away.”
The boy made sense.
He watched with interest as Trent held the carrot where the mule could smell it, then dangled it just out of his reach. The mule’s ears came forward and he focused intently on the proffered treat. Trent slowly released the cloth binding his mouth, and the mule flicked his tail, then without a sound reached for the apple.
“See?”
Granville kept a wary eye on the mule, which seemed to know his good behavior was being held hostage for the sake of a carrot. Only the movement of ears and tail expressed feelings that the day before had been accompanied by repeated, carrying braying.
He shook his head in amazement. “I can’t believe it’s working, but it is. Will it hold while we move the gold?”
“Should do,” Trent said.
“Good enough. Though I’d still like to know how they had someone behind us so quickly.”
“They must’ve seen us leave Katzie.”
“Or we may have been followed from town.”
Trent let out a very low whistle. “He’d have to be good. I didn’t spot anyone the whole way.”
“Nor did I. Which could also mean that someone in to
wn wired this fellow to watch for us. Which is the more worrying possibility.”
“It is?”
Granville nodded. “Means they’re very organized, which we’d already suspected, but also they’re predicting where we’ll go next. And that worries me. The mind that can anticipate what we’re likely to do next is a very dangerous one.”
“Oh. Like Mr. Benton?”
“It’s a possibility. I still can’t see Benton giving that much of his attention to a potential gold mine.”
“Mr. Gipson?”
“Is underhanded and sneaky but doesn’t work this efficiently.”
“Then who?”
“Who, indeed?” Granville said.
TWENTY-FOUR
Sunday, January 14, 1900
Despite a long hard climb through thigh deep snow, the actual retrieval of the sacks holding the gold and Cole’s body was anticlimactic. They saw no one, and both gold and body were exactly where Trent and Scott had left them, hidden in a depression in the sidewall of a deep, narrow cave. Together Trent and Granville filled the mules’ empty saddlebags, then strapped the awkwardly frozen corpse of their late client on top, with Trent talking softly to the mule, whose ears flickered towards the sound.
Lifting the lantern higher, Granville hefted one of the eight sacks of gold that remained, then glanced around them. “We need to re-hide these, but not too far from here. Can you suggest somewhere?”
“Sure. But why? We could carry more now, and make two trips.”
“It’ll be safer not to bring it down all at once.”
Trent nodded and took a grip on one of the bags. “Follow me.”
Granville gripped two more and followed Trent toward the back of the cave, dragging the sacks behind him. In the flickering light, he couldn’t see a hiding place large enough, but Trent didn’t hesitate, moving directly towards the smooth rear wall. Suddenly the boy vanished.
Granville blinked, holding the lantern higher and staring at the unbroken line of rock. What had he missed?
“No-one’ll find it there,” Trent said cheerfully, popping back out, seemingly from nowhere.
“Why didn’t you hide the gold here before?” Granville asked, moving closer to examine the all but invisible seam in the cave wall. His eyes still had trouble finding it, but his fingers could feel the opening behind the rough rock.
“Not big enough for the body and the gold,” Trent said matter-of-factly. “And once they found the body, they’d have kept looking ‘till they found the gold. The best thing about putting the gold here now is that even if they find the cave, they’ll assume we took all the gold away. And there’s no draft here to give this away.”
“No draft?”
“If this seam opened out to fresh air somewhere further back, you’d feel an air flow. Makes it easier to find pockets like this. Only this doesn’t have one.”
“Good enough,” Granville said, passing first one then the other sack of gold to the boy and going back for the next load. “Well done, Trent.”
“We’ll come back in the spring?” Trent asked in a low voice as he backed out of the cave, sweeping all trace of their passage away with a fir branch he’d cut for the purpose.
“For the rest of the gold or the mine?”
“What’s the difference?”
“We’ll come back for the rest of the gold once we get back from Denver. The mine we’ll leave until after the ground’s thawed enough to stake a claim.”
“Up here, that mightn’t be ‘til June or even July. Why wait so long?” Trent gathered the leads for the burdened mule and turned back towards Katzie, avoiding the trail they’d made on the way up. There was still no sign of the shooter, but neither of them was taking any chances.
“Because we need to start working the claim within twenty days of staking it, which means the ground needs to have thawed.”
“Oh. What happens if we don’t work it right away?”
“Then someone else can stake it, based on the information we’ll give when we register it.”
“So the map becomes useless the minute we stake the claim.”
“Exactly.”
“What if you stake a claim but don’t have time to work it?”
“You hire someone to do it for you and pay them by the day or with a percentage of the claim. If a claim’s rich enough, it works out fine.”
“But you’d have to know if a claim is worth anything before you could find someone to work it for you, wouldn’t you?”
Granville gestured towards the laden saddlebags. “I think we’ve proof enough.”
“Yeah.” They walked for a few moments in silence. “So we really need to find Mary fast. Before we register the claim, I mean.”
“Exactly. As the majority owner, she needs to be the one to register it.”
“Why? Can’t you register it then transfer it to her?”
“It gets complicated. The simplest thing is to find her before the thaw.”
“But once you bank this gold, won’t word get out you’ve found something? Then everyone’ll want to get hold of the map before you can register the claim.”
The boy didn’t miss much. “Yes. That’s why I’m planning to go through Benton rather than a bank. He’ll take his cut, but give us cash for gold.”
“And since he already knows you have the map, it shouldn’t make things worse for us.”
“That’s it.”
Trent nodded, and they continued on in silence.
As the Katzie village came into sight below them, Granville noted Trent’s expression changed to a look of worry. “All right, what is it now?” he asked.
“What about Mr. Moore? Is he going to arrest us?”
“Depends. Has he got a temper?”
Trent slanted a look at Granville. “He can’t arrest us just because he’s angry with us, can he?”
“Perhaps. Though I rather doubt he’d actually do it. He seems the methodical type.”
“Yeah.” Trent slanted a look at Granville. “I’ve been thinking about Mary. All we have is her photo and that letter fragment. So if finding her before the thaw is so important, how do we do it?”
Good question. “Through excellent investigation.”
“But aren’t we about to head for Denver?”
“Sometimes you have to set priorities. We’ve months yet before the thaw.” But it didn’t sit well with him.
Trent seemed content with his answer, though. “So how soon do we leave?”
“Scott will need a few more days.”
“I wonder if he’ll agree with you?”
“I’m ready to ride now,” Scott said, his voice nearly lost against the drumming and chanting that still filled the longhouse. In the center of the room, the Katzie matrons dipped and turned in stately circles.
“You’ll open up your wound again,” Granville said.
“Let me worry about that.”
“That’s easy for you to say. We’re the ones who’ll have to carry you.”
“Nobody’s carrying me anywhere.”
Recognizing the stubborn look in Scott’s eye, Granville gave up. “We can be ready in an hour.”
“I’m ready now.”
“I need to have another conversation with Pierre. Know where he is?”
Scott indicated a small knot of dark heads. “You might have to wait a bit. He looks a little busy. And Moore’s been looking for you.”
That figured. “Where is he?”
Scott pointed across the hall. “There. And I think he’s spotted you.”
“Right. I’ll want to chat with Arbuthnot, too,” Granville said, spotting the smaller man to one side of the group around Moore.
“I’ll come with you,” Trent volunteered.
“For this I don’t need your assistance. There’s no point giving Moore another target. You can help Scott pack.”
Trent’s face fell and Scott looked irritated. Granville grinned at both of them. “We need to travel light. And fast. And Scott needs t
o conserve his energy for the trip.”
Scott gave him a deadpan look. “Good thing we’re partners. I might have to shoot you otherwise.”
Granville was laughing as he wove his way across the crowded floor to where Peter Pierre stood.
“I cannot help you with the name you seek, I’m afraid,” Pierre said.
“I understand.”
“But perhaps I can describe the man. I have thought on it, and I think it must be one of two men. The old miner was often seen in company with one or the other in the last months.”
“You knew Cole?”
The shaman nodded. “He spent much time in these mountains, searching for gold. For many years he found nothing.”
“Until he got hold of that map from someone. Did either of these two men talk about the map?”
“No. And there are no new rumors of such a map.”
“And the old rumors?” Granville asked, curious.
“They have spread since the death of my uncle. Each year they grow more elaborate.”
“Right. Tell me about these two men, then.”
“Both men had perhaps ten more years than you have, but they were very different. One was very tall and thin. Quiet. He did not care for the warmth of the fire, that one. The other was about so,” and his hand measured to Granville’s shoulder, “well fed, and he smiled. He sought the company of others, told stories and listened too. The tall one would be harder to kill.”
“And their coloring?”
“Both were as you, with pale skin. Both had brown hair like the otter. The tall one had gray eyes, the shorter one brown.”
“You saw Cole with both men?”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever refer to one as his partner?”
Pierre shook his head.
“Was he more often with one than the other?”
“I am sorry, I did not see them often enough to be sure. But now I am afraid you must go.”
For a moment Granville thought he had somehow transgressed on the Indian’s hospitality and was being thrown out. Then he noted the light in Pierre’s eyes as the man gestured towards Moore, who was approaching them with a determined set to his jaw.