by Tim Champlin
Now she had him. But, like the fella said, while noodling in muddy water under a cutbank: “I’ve latched onto something big and strong and slippery, but I ain’t too sure what it is.”
That act she’d put on, making out to be a scatterbrain, wouldn’t have fooled a ten-year-old, but it was enough to hook the former Mountie. She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake now that he’d agreed to work for her. She was taking an awful chance, because she really knew nothing about him. She’d found out quickly how little she knew him this morning when they were boarding the train in Detroit, after taking the ferry over.
They were shuffling through the crowd on the depot platform, filing toward their coach. Rasmussen had his saddlebags slung over one broad shoulder and her traveling bag hooked by a strap on the other. She clutched the handle of her small bag of cash, not willing to let it out of her grasp for a minute.
Glancing forward along the string of coaches, she gasped and froze. Two cars ahead, she’d glimpsed a man making for the train, favoring one leg with a distinctive limp. She’d seen that limp enough to know the man immediately.
“What’s wrong?” Rasmussen asked, following her stare.
“I saw him…there…just for a second or two.”
“Who?” Rasmussen was suddenly alert, tensed like a mountain lion ready to spring.
“The man who’s stalking me. Johnny Clayton.”
“You sure?”
“I’d know him anywhere. He’s a gimp. Carries a hunk of lead in his leg where my uncle shot him eight years ago.”
“Come on!” He grabbed her hand and forced his way through the surging crowd. What was he doing? “You see him now?” he rasped over his shoulder as he dragged her along.
She could see nothing around his broad frame. Pulling free of his hand, she stumbled to one side and scanned the thinning crowd. He was gone.
“No.”
They stopped and let the passengers and porters flow around them.
“’Boooaardd!” came the cry from the conductor behind them.
“Looked like Johnny was heading for one of these two coaches,” she said, now none too sure of herself.
“Let’s go.”
She followed him up the coach steps and into the end door. The passengers were taking their seats, and he came close to her, leaning to whisper in her ear: “Walk ahead of me up and down this aisle. If you see him, reach back and touch my hand.”
She nodded, her throat dry. What had she turned loose here? If they spotted Johnny, what would Rasmussen do? Throw him bodily off the train? Grab him and make a citizen’s arrest? On what charge? She moved ahead along the aisle, feeling his hand in the small of her back, guiding her, letting her know he was right there. But, much to her relief, Johnny was not in that car. The train lurched into motion and they steadied themselves while it began to roll out of the station. There were three daycoaches, a diner, and a Pullman on this train and they searched all of them without seeing Clayton.
She was breathing easier by the time they found their compartment in the Pullman just forward of the caboose, and Rasmussen stashed their luggage in the overhead rack.
“I might have been mistaken,” she said by way of apology for the false alarm.
“You seemed pretty sure,” Rasmussen replied. “He could still be aboard, somewhere. We might’ve missed him. Not likely he’ll stay in plain sight all the time.”
She nodded, trying to recreate the moving image of the man with the limp. She was all too sure it was Johnny. “What’ll you do if we find him?” she asked when her nervousness abated.
“I’ll put a good scare into him, if nothing else. In this kind of situation, it’s better to be offensive than defensive.”
With Rasmussen, she’d gotten even more than she’d bargained for. When he took a job, he meant to do it right—not just sit back and collect his $1,000 pay. She wondered what he’d do if he knew she had enough cash in her small bag to support him for the rest of his life? Probably nothing. A girl has to put her trust in something, or somebody, and her trust was in her judgment of men. They were generally easier to read than women. And she felt sure this man was as simple and straightforward as he appeared. She was banking on the hope that he had a highly developed sense of duty.
The train picked up speed, clacking over the rails westward out of Detroit through the flat, wooded Michigan landscape toward Ann Arbor.
Two hours later they ate in the diner. Rasmussen said he wasn’t hungry, but came along, anyway, to keep her in sight. And she reminded him the Pullman tickets they bought included all meals.
The small bag she carried everywhere was no regular satchel. It was the old-style that passengers used to carry on stagecoaches, shaped like a stiff leather cylinder, two feet long and about eight inches in diameter. It had a reinforced clasp on top that was secured with a small padlock. She kept the key in a locket around her neck.
“You don’t eat much,” she observed. The former Mountie was seated across the table from her, staring out at the green pastureland sliding past.
“Habit,” he replied. “On long marches and campaigns, we had only what we could carry on a pack mule or in our saddlebags…hardtack, bacon, pemmican. Trained myself to do without,” he said. “Curbing the appetite is ingrained now. If I start eating full, luxurious meals and sleeping in the comfortable beds of Pullmans, I’ll get soft in no time.”
“Well, I surely wouldn’t want that.”
It was the first time she’d seen a smile cross his face. It was a pleasant sight and she resolved to encourage more of it, and do what she could to put him at ease without causing him to lose his edge. He was here to do a job and she couldn’t distract him from his natural vigilance. When he wasn’t talking, his eyes were constantly roving, taking in everything—passengers, train crew, the changing view outside, but especially the other passengers.
He lapsed into silence while she continued eating the delicious roast beef and sipping red wine. How much should she tell this taciturn man about her mission to retrieve this money and return to Missouri? To her, he was a hired hand, alien to the intrigue and hatreds that had enmeshed her life and the lives of the families back home. No need to get him involved. But as they rose to leave the dining car, something happened to change her mind.
He pulled a handful of coins from his pocket to tip the white-coated waiter. Opening his hand, he selected a silver half dollar. Her eyes went wide. There, resting in his broad palm among a few coins, was an irregular shaped copper piece she recognized immediately. It was a U.S. large cent, a penny of the type that hadn’t been minted since 1857. The head of Liberty had been neatly excised from the rest of the coin. The piece was well worn, but she knew it for what it was and had to swallow a couple of times before she could speak.
By then, he was moving out of the car and the time to speak was past. She followed with her bag.
When they were again seated, facing each other in their Pullman compartment, she said: “I saw what you had in your pocket.”
“What was that?”
“Pull out your change again.”
He obliged, holding out the contents of his pocket to her. She picked up the copper piece and turned it over. Something—probably a pin—had once been soldered to the reverse side. “Where’d you get this?”
“Belonged to my dad. He was a Copperhead during the war. I just carry it as a good luck piece. About the only thing I have to remember him by.”
Apparently the Copperheads, to this man, were only a group that belonged to history. She knew similar organizations still flourished in her part of the country.
“The Copperheads were Northerners in sympathy with the Southern cause,” she stated as if he were ignorant of their purpose. “They did what they could to oppose Lincoln, sabotage the Union, and end the war.”
“I know. I recall him wearing this when I was a kid, pinned to his coat when he went to their meetings. My dad was always something of a maverick. He couldn’t stand to go along with the crowd on
anything. He gee’d when everyone else hawed.” He gave a rueful smile. “Guess that’s why he left on that Mormon train to Utah. He was converted by one of their missionaries, and you’d have thought he’d seen the heavenly light just over the horizon. Wanted to take my mom, sister, and me with him, but Mom was having none of it. Looking back on it, I’m sure that business of having more than one wife really set her back on her haunches. Anyway, he left, and we haven’t seen him in years.”
She was suddenly sorry for him. “Mister Rasmussen…Sergeant, I.…”
“It’s Kent…and Nellie…as long as I’m on this job,” he said.
This was the most personal conversation she’d gotten from him at one time, and she decided on the spot to reveal the entire purpose of her trip, even though he’d not pressed her to do so. Knowing him only one full day, she still instinctively felt he was worthy of her confidence. Revealing all the details might even help him do a better job protecting her. He would still not be drawn into her web, because she planned to pay him off and say good-bye when they reached Springfield.
She drew a deep breath and said: “Now listen, and I’ll tell you my story.”
He settled back in his seat and regarded her with steady blue eyes.
“First of all, I’m taking you smack into the middle of a feud. The Newburns and Claytons have been at each other’s throats for at least a generation or two…since ’way before I was born.”
“What about?”
“It’s a long story, and I couldn’t tell you how it actually got started. The basic difference was the Claytons were Free-Staters and tradesmen…storekeepers, blacksmiths, saloon owners, wheelwrights…mostly village and townspeople. My family, the Newburns, had more formal education and were farmers and slaveholders, and fairly well off. My people didn’t want to give up their way of life, but knew if war came, it would disrupt everything.
“My grandfather, father, and uncles were all ruined by the war, lost their slaves, and had to sell the land they couldn’t work, slaveless, for a profit. Ozark land, except for some of the coves and hollows, is forested, hilly, and rocky. The Newburns were reduced to taking menial jobs, some of them even working for the Claytons, who never let them forget how low they’d fallen. There’s a lot of arrogance on both sides.…”
“Why didn’t the Newburns go West after the war, like a lot of others did?” Rasmussen interrupted. “Plenty of good, cheap farmland in the plains. The government even opened up the Oklahoma Territory for settlement last year.”
“I know. Stubborn, I guess. Would’ve solved lots of problems. But there was a reason why they stayed, and I didn’t learn what it was until I was thirteen.” She stopped to gather her thoughts. “There is a cache of gold and silver coins…actually several caches…buried in secret locations in the South and Southwest. I’ve seen two of these small stashes my uncles unearthed. One was in a teapot, and one in a glass jar. Amounted to about two thousand dollars in gold and silver coins. Rumor has it that these stores of money have been added to over the years since the war, much of it donated by raiders and outlaw bands, like Jesse James and the Youngers. The small caches are spread around and hidden according to elaborate maps and secret symbols to avoid being looted. But the story goes there is one large mother lode hidden in a remote location in New Mexico. Presently only two men know the exact location of this hoard, and one of them is my grandfather, who is head of his castle.…”
“Castle?”
“The term used to describe a cell of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The second man is my cousin, Darrel Weaver. A third man, Walter Clayton, patriarch of the Clayton family, knows only that the cache is somewhere in New Mexico Territory.”
“I think I see where this is going. It sounds like a bunch of boys playing at secret clubs and competing for treasure.”
“I’m sure it does…with all the knights playing dress-up in hooded capes, the secret handshakes to signify membership, the oaths, the hocus-pocus. But I can assure you, these grown men take it very seriously.”
Kent leaned back in his seat with a half-mocking smile on his face. “The Knights of the Golden Circle, The Sons of Liberty, the Copperheads…they’re all defunct. Have been for years. This is Eighteen Ninety, for God’s sake!”
“Even though I’ve been excluded as a younger female, I know the knights borrowed a lot of their ritual from the Masons, who took it centuries ago from the Knights Templar. All this goes back a long way,” she said, ignoring his derision.
Kent said nothing as he waited for her to continue.
“Getting back to the money, the purpose for collecting this hoard, which makes the stash in my bag look like small change, was to finance the establishment of a new country, consisting of a couple of Southern states, several Caribbean islands, and Mexico. At this moment, diplomats from the Knights of the Golden Circle are calling on the heads of state in Mexico, and leading politicians in South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi.”
“We fought a war to preserve the Union,” Rasmussen said. “Do they want to do it all over again? Pardon me for saying so, but you seem entirely too sensible to believe that rubbish.”
“I don’t. But if you lived among my people for a few months, you’d find yourself being convinced it was an attractive possibility…no, even a definite probability.” She looked at his amused, ridiculing expression. How to make him understand? “In the space of one generation, my family went from wealthy, slave-holding planters to dirt-poor farmers and laborers.”
“What about the Claytons?”
“My grandfather, Silas Newburn, is seventy-eight years old. When he was much younger, he helped encode the secret map that holds the location of the mother lode. Walter Clayton, the seventy-six-year-old patriarch of the Clayton clan, knows only the approximate location. He didn’t help establish this secret stash at the beginning of the war, and surely didn’t approve of stolen money being added to it over the years. I’ve been told that the handful of knights who hid the original treasure are dead.”
She paused to collect her thoughts. “Here’s the problem. Before Grandpa Silas dies, he wants to see the machinery in motion for the creation of this new nation, wants his legacy to be remembered by history as one of the founding fathers. His former friend, Walter Clayton, on the other hand, wants this treasure stash so he can enrich his own family and endow his descendents with considerable wealth.”
“Has either of these old men made a move to get this cache?”
“Yes. Three years ago, Grandpa Silas secretly sent two of my uncles and a couple of cousins, including my first cousin, Darrel Weaver, to New Mexico.”
“And…?”
“Darrel, who’s my age, made it home weeks later, wounded, and told of being ambushed in a remote cañon. The other three Newburns died. Less than a month later, Andy Clayton, a braggart and bully, was found in the woods with ten bullet holes in him. None of these murders has been solved. Local sheriff shrugs it off as part of the feud.”
“So your cousin, Darrel Weaver, who survived the ambush, knows the location of the treasure?”
She nodded. “I don’t know how much Grandpa told him, or showed him on a map, but it must have been enough to find it.”
“So that’s at least three men still living who know the location.”
“Two,” she corrected him. “Grandpa and Darrel. Old man Clayton knows it’s somewhere in New Mexico, but that’s all he knows. I’ve never discussed it with Darrel. And he doesn’t talk about it. He still has a slug near his spine, and hate in his heart. Never misses a chance to take a swipe at the Claytons, short of murder.”
“How do you and this bag of greenbacks figure into it?” She had his full attention now.
“During the war, a lot of Confederate money was squirreled away in Canadian banks for safekeeping.…”
“Confederate paper money became worthless,” he interrupted. “It was eventually called shinplasters.”
“Confederate gold wasn’t worthless. That’s what was deposited
in Windsor before the larger treasure stash was taken and hidden out West. This cash I have has been in a foreign account, drawing interest for twenty-seven years. After the knights met in formal conclave, the ruling council appointed me as the most likely person to go north, withdraw the money, and close the account. I was chosen since I had nothing to do with any of this, and wasn’t born until Eighteen Sixty-Two. I would be the least suspected of anyone in the family. My cover story was that I was going to visit an elderly aunt on my mother’s side in Windsor. But apparently word somehow leaked to the Claytons, and Johnny was put on my trail.”
“Why did you take the money in cash, instead of a bank draft?”
“Grandpa Silas doesn’t trust banks. Wanted it in gold, but that’s too heavy for me to carry and would draw too much attention. It will be converted to coin later, since gold talks in international circles and the state houses.”
“I see.”
She hesitated before continuing. “There’s another, personal, reason I was sent. I’d done something to disgrace the Newburn family name. If I successfully complete this mission, I’ll be forgiven and welcomed back by all…except maybe a few of the backbiting women.”
“Should I know what it is?”
She shook her head slowly, feeling her cheeks growing warmer. “It’s a personal matter…irrelevant.”
“Is it possible this Johnny Clayton was sent to watch and make sure you didn’t abscond with the money?”
“Sent by whom? Not my family. He’s a Clayton, and they want the money for themselves. I know Johnny. He wants the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in this bag for himself.”
“Do you think he’d actually harm you to get it?”
“He wouldn’t hesitate to squash me like a tick,” she said with more feeling than she intended.
Rasmussen looked at her curiously, but she made no further explanation. How could she tell him that handsome Johnny Clayton and she had outraged both their families eight years earlier by eloping? During their wild flight, Johnny had been shot in the knee. Ever after, he blamed this wound for ending his career as a lumberjack, the only occupation he knew. For consolation, he’d taken to drink and, later, became so abusive, she left him. With no skills and unable to support herself, she’d returned home, to the scorn of her kin.