The Ghost of St. Elmo

by L. Parks Sanford

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  GOLD! LOTS OF GOLD

  I opened my eyes, jumped up and looked around. The fire was still blazing, but there was a strange smell of meat cooking that was floating through the entire cave. I walked over to the fire and stared in disbelief. My heart began to beat wildly, and my body began to shake. There in front of me cooking on the fire was what looked to be rabbit, and there was a basket of fish, berries of some nature and a canteen of something lying next to them. I couldn’t speak; I was in total shock. I reached for the large canteen and carefully smelled and then tasted the contents. Water! It was fresh, cold water. I sat down on the floor, scratched my head and looked in amazement. Who, what, how, why?.... Every question possible flooded my mind. I slowly stood up and walked around our campsite. There were no footprints to be seen anywhere. Cold chills ran up and down my spine, and I felt as though the cave around me was spinning. I began to feel weaker and fell on my knees onto the dirt floor.

  Suddenly, I heard a sound and looked in the direction it was coming from. High atop the steps leading upward, I saw a lone figure standing on a ledge of rock jutting out over the camp we had built. With his head pointing downward and looking directly at me, he extended his arm out and pointed his hand upward. Just as suddenly as he had appeared, he seemed to vanish into thin air. This time there was no disputing what I had seen. I had distinctly seen the yellow moccasins he was wearing. His ghostly figure was eerily lit by our campfire reflecting off the walls of the musty darkness that had us in its clutch. My fear was quickly disappearing. I realized now that he meant us no harm, but that he was our protector and had been watching over us from the very beginning. I heard Zack moan and glanced his way as he was rolling over to get more comfortable. Do I wake him? I didn’t have any idea how to explain what I had just experienced, nor did I think he would believe me.

  I turned and looked at the ledge above where the vision had appeared to me, when suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jerked around and screamed. “No!” My voice, reaching an intense crescendo gasped, “Help!” “Help!” The shrill sound of my intense fear was echoing throughout the cave. The face I was staring wide-eyed at was Zack’s. He fell backward into the darkness and stared at me, not saying a word. Katie had also jumped up upon hearing my shrieking voice and stood staring at me in shock, not knowing what to do. I gathered my composure and slowly moved toward my friends. “I’m sorry, you guys,” I timidly and somewhat embarrassingly offered. “I guess I was just startled at Zack coming up behind me. Besides that, boy, do I have a lot to tell you two.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Katie asked with a concerned look on her face.

  “I’m fine, but I’m sorry I scared you both,” I assured them.

  “Hey, look! Where’d all this stuff come from?” Zack exclaimed. “Berries, meat cooking on the fire and where did this canteen come from?” Katie walked in the direction of the fire pit and stared at our newly found bounty.

  “Ian, where did you get this stuff?”

  “Boy, this is an old canteen. Look it says 3rd Cavalry,” Zack exclaimed. I walked in his direction and held it in my hands. Sure enough, at the very bottom of the canteen were the words 3rd Cavalry scratched into the metal. This reinforced my feelings that I would have trouble breaking my news to them, and I knew that my story was going to sound unbelievable. There was no way that I could relate this saga other than the unbelievable way it had occurred.

  “I think that you both better sit down and prepare yourselves for what you’re going to hear,” I suggested. Katie and Zack just turned, wrinkled their brows, stared at each other and slowly took their seats.

  “While you’re talking, we’ll eat this food. We wouldn’t want it to burn or go to waste,” Zack quipped.

  “That’s my buddy, always thinking about his stomach,” I smiled. “Maybe you’ll need something to take your mind off my story. That may be a good idea.” Katie and Zack looked at each other, with great concern etched on their faces. “This food and the canteen, my friends,” I continued, “is all courtesy of our Indian friend with the yellow moccasins.” Zack’s jaw dropped, and his food fell from his hands. Katie screamed with fear.

  “I want to go home! Now!” She started running for the steps leading upward, and I quickly ran after her. I caught her and put my hands tightly around her waist as she wildly kicked her legs in the air while flailing her arms. “Let me go! I want to go home!” she screamed.

  “Katie, Katie,” I implored. “Calm down. Please calm down.” She slumped to the ground and put her head in her hands and sobbed. I sat down beside her and tried to assure her that everything would be fine. Zack also did his best to let her know that she would be all right. After a few minutes of collecting herself and getting her emotions under control, we all moved back to the fire. Once again, they took their seats and looked at me to begin my story. I stared at them, moving my eyes from one to the other as I laid out the entire scenario of what had happened. I could see the disbelief in their eyes, and the fear that consumed them. I continued for another few minutes and then waited for their responses. There was nothing but silence as they sat quietly and thought about what I had said.

  Finally, Zack volunteered his opinion as to what he had heard. “Well, if I hadn’t seen this food, I would have thought you were just tired and were hallucinating. But, I also know how honest you are and what we’ve been through together. I believe you, Ian. I don’t know how or why, but I believe you really did see something.”

  “It wasn’t something!” I shot back. “It was the Indian in the yellow moccasins. He’s a ghost! I know he’s a ghost! Come here. Look at this,” I said pointing at the bare ground.

  “Look at what?” Zack questioned.

  “That’s exactly the problem!” I shot back excitedly. “Do you see any foot prints? Anywhere! Look all around. There’s absolutely nothing.” Katie and Zack both walked slowly around our camping area staring intensely at the ground.

  ”Nothing! There’s nothing at all. Not a sign of anything or anyone,” Katie said, obviously surprised. We continued on our search scanning every square inch of ground. There was nothing. I bent over and splashed the warm water from the lake on my face to clear my head. Zack and Katie followed closely behind me and did the same thing. We sat silently, staring out at the smelly lake in front of us. No one could think of anything to say. We all lay on our backs, resting and thinking about what our next move should be. “Look at that light,” Katie suddenly shouted excitedly. “Look how bright it is.”

  We all jumped up and stared at the bright, narrow beam of light that was piercing the interior of the cave. It seemed to emanate from the very top of the ceiling above the falls. As minutes flew by, the beam grew wider and brighter. We turned, and our eyes were drawn to where the light was shining on the cave’s walls. It stayed on one area and lit it up very brightly. I walked along the path of the light and arrived at the spot illuminated on the wall. My eyes lit up, and I shouted to the others to join me.

  “Come here! Quick! Look at this!” They ran to me as fast as they could and stared in disbelief at what they saw. You could see the faint outlines of carvings in the side of the wall. As we stood there the light began to move lower down the wall until it stopped at one area. ”Zack, get your shirt wet so I can wash some of this crud off the wall and see what this says” I shouted. “Come on, hurry up!” Shortly, Zack returned with his wet shirt in hand and handed it to me. I carefully rubbed it over the lit up area and the dirt dissolved and ran down the walls, uncovering mysterious writings.

  “Is that an ‘M’?” Katie asked. “Yes! That’s an ‘M’ and another ‘M’,” she said rubbing furiously at the wall. I kept washing the wall as I followed the light downward. By now, Katie and Zack were heaving with excitement and had forgotten about the dilemma at hand.

  “Those are arrows!” Zack shouted. “Look, they’re going all the way to the ground.” It was obvious that he was correct, and now our excitement was fil
ling the cave with our shouting. Soon we had completed cleaning the wall and stood studying what was in front of us.

  “’M’, ‘M’ and arrows pointing downward,” Katie stood repeating to herself. “‘M,’ ‘M’ with arrows pointing downward.”

  “This has to be something big,” Zack exclaimed. “The light, the letters, the arrows….someone’s trying to tell us something. I’ve got a feeling this is something really big.”

  “Oh! My goodness,” Katie muttered quietly. “This has something to do with the Mary Murphy mine. Sure, ‘M’ ‘M’…Mary Murphy.”

  “Who’s Mary Murphy?” Zack asked unaware that Katie had explained the legend of French Pete and the Mary Murphy Mine to me earlier.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I answered. “Right now, let’s solve this mystery first.”

  “Come on!” Katie urged. “Let’s dig where the arrows point and see if we find anything.”

  “Great idea, Katie! Come on, Zack. Let’s get started. Grab a piece of wood and start digging.” Starting at the base of the wall we started digging in an ever widening circle to about three feet deep. But, there was nothing. We were all sweating and frustrated after our long fruitless attempt at solving our mystery. Disappointed, we sat back against the cold wall to cool ourselves.

  “Something has to be down there. There has to be something,” Katie insisted. She ran her fingers over the wall, studying every inch of its surface. Minutes had passed, and Zack and I had gotten our energy back. “That’s it! I’m sure that’s it!” Katie cried out. “Come here! Hurry!” Not sure if Katie had really figured anything out, we quickly did as she had directed. “Look here, guys. What do you see?” she asked.

  “Two letters and some arrows pointing downward,” Zack answered.

  “What do you see, Ian?” she asked me. “Two letters and some arrows; the same thing Zack sees,” I repeated.

  “You’re both correct,” she taunted us. “But, how many arrows do you see? That’s the question,” she continued. Zack and I counted in silence and arrived at the same number.

  “There are five arrows pointing downward!” Zack volunteered.

  “You’re exactly correct,” she smiled. “My guess is that every arrow stands for one foot in depth,” she continued. “And if I’m correct, you have about another two feet to dig, so let’s get going boys,” she coyly suggested. We both began to dig furiously at our existing hole, and soon we came upon something hard. We couldn’t get our sticks into the ground any further. Frantically, we removed the remaining soil with our hands. Within minutes we had uncovered our find and could go no further.

  “Quick! Bring me a torch!” I yelled to Katie. Zack and I stared at each other and then stared down into the darkness at the bottom of our hole. We had definitely found something. Katie returned with a homemade torch and handed it to me. I grabbed it and shoved it toward the bottom. My eyes became wide, and my mouth dropped open. There in the bottom lay beautiful, bright nuggets of shiny gold. They were stored in rotting burlap sacks that were shredded from years in the ground. Katie started jumping up and down and yelling with excitement. Most of the gold was large pieces, probably at least a pound. We kept moving the nuggets aside to see if anything was beneath. We stopped digging and could only stare in disbelief at what we were seeing. There was a large four foot by four foot chest in the ground underneath us. We pulled the top cover off easily because the wood was obviously old and rotten. All three of us stood in silence and stared. Lying in front of us was a chest full of gold bars stored tightly against each other.

  “We’re rich!” Zack yelled. “We’re all going to be rich!”

  “French Pete,” Katie kept muttering. “The legend of the Mary Murphy Mine and French Pete was true after all.”

  “Here, help me get this stuff out of here,” Zack ordered. Soon we had an assembly line going, passing gold bars to each other and stacking them on the ground above. They were small bars, but their weight was extremely heavy. Katie could hardly lift them, and we told her to count them as we stacked our treasure. It seemed like hours, but soon our hard labor had ended. Zack and I climbed out of the hole and rushed to sit next to our bounty.

  “How many?” I asked Katie.

  “Just a second, I’m almost finished,” she responded. “I had to count them twice.” In the meantime, Zack decided to gather the nuggets and bring them over to our stack of bars. “52 gold bars,” she proudly announced. “That has to be millions of dollars in gold.” We heard what she said, but our minds wouldn’t allow us to believe it. The three of us sat, taking in the beautiful sight of all those bars stacked in a large pyramid.

  Now, what do we do next? We still had the problem of Slim and his gang, and we knew they wanted us dead. Turning my head toward the hole, I noticed the beam of light no longer was coming through into our cave, and we were once again in total darkness, other than our fire. We jumped up and rushed to throw wood onto what was left and got it roaring, once again. “Pow! Pow! Pow!” Gunshots rang out throughout the cave and shattered the silence we had been enjoying. We could hear the bullets ricocheting off the walls, and we headed for cover. But, there was nowhere to go. “Hurry! Into the water,” I yelled to Zack and Katie.

  “We can’t stay in there forever,” Katie shouted back.

  “Just follow me, both of you,” I ordered. Running into the water, we dove deep, as we could hear the bullets penetrating the water around us. We swam as fast as we could, and I remembered that there was an area behind the waterfalls. I knew we couldn’t come up until we reached safety, and I hoped that Katie could swim well. I knew Zack could. He was our city champion. I began to feel the pressure of the falling water above us as it pushed us deeper. I swam harder and knew we had to surface. I had no more air, and I knew they were probably feeling the same effects. I shot upward out of the water and found myself safely behind the falling water and out of view of our enemies. In seconds both Katie and Zack surfaced beside me, gasping for air and not saying a word. For now, we were safe.

  We used every ounce of strength we had left after our fighting the torrential waters, pulled ourselves up on the bank and fell onto our stomachs, completely exhausted. We remained absolutely still, not saying a word to each other. That was too close for comfort. My pulse had quickened, and my heart felt as though it was going to burst through my chest. I rolled over in Katie’s direction and saw her quietly sobbing with her face buried in her arms. I could hear the faint voices of our attackers through the falling water as they made their way down the winding steps from above. Slowly I got to my knees and carefully crawled in the direction of an opening I could see along the edge of the rocks lining the shore underneath the roaring water. Using every bit of caution and nerve I could muster, I raised my head above the rocks just enough to see who had shot at us. To no great surprise, I saw Slim and Jeb and the rest of their gang coming down the steps from above. They must have come across our tracks in the snow and followed them to the hole I had fallen through.

  By now, Zack and Katie had, crawled over and were looking in the same direction. “Now, what do we do?” Katie whispered. “There’s no way out of here. They’re going to kill us for sure.” I could feel the fear in her voice and tried to assure her that we would figure a way out of our watery prison. Warily, we pulled back from our position and proceeded further into the interior of the cavernous room we were now surrounded by. It was almost pitch black other than some reflecting light from the torches our enemies had lit. The light seemed to bounce off the walls and periodically penetrated the waterfall in front of us.

  “Hey! Slim. Come here!” We could here some yelling and quickly moved back to our spy positions. We silently peered through mist and watched their movement as they explored the camp we had just fled.

  “Holy cow! Is that what I think it is? A stack of gold bars just waiting for us. And look at all these gold nuggets.” We could see Slim rushing down the stairs as he pushed his way past the other gang members.


  “Get outta my way you bunch of bums. Move it!” he growled. “Don’t no one touch that gold. Do ya understand me? The first one that does will get a bullet from me.” We could see the rest of the gang back up and give Slim plenty of room. Jeb slowly walked in Slim’s direction, silently turned, looked at the gold and violently whirled around hitting Slim on his jaw. Slim flew backward and fell to the ground, holding his jaw as he looked up at Jeb. “Just remember who’s boss here!” he snapped. “You may be my brother, but you do as I say” he shouted. We could see Slim through the flickering fire as he stayed sitting on the ground, not saying a word.

  “Did you hear that?” Katie whispered. “They’re brothers. I can’t believe it. I know Daddy doesn’t know that for sure.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Zack said, tugging on my pants’ leg. “These guys mean business. They would have killed us, and they still will if they find us.” I silently motioned to Zack and Katie to follow me deeper into the interior behind us. We couldn’t take a chance on being heard because the only way out was up those stairs, and they were out of the question, now. Just as we turned and headed into the darkness, a small flash of light seemed to appear ahead of us. “Did you see that?” Zack asked, stopping abruptly in his tracks. There was no mistaking that he wasn’t seeing things. Katie and I both agreed that we had also seen it. We stood quietly in the cold darkness waiting to see if the light would reappear. We didn’t have to wait long. We decided to move to the rocks to the side of us and seek cover until we knew what was ahead. Our mystery light was slowly and eerily moving in our direction. Katie squeezed my arm and leaned against me breathing heavily into my neck. I could feel her heart pounding wildly.

  Just beyond us in the darkness came a vision that made us all shudder. Standing not twenty feet in front of us, holding a torch was our Indian with the yellow moccasins. He stopped, stood silently, and then motioned to us to follow him. The light from the torch shone off his face, illuminating his features and giving him a ghostly appearance. He had a dark patch over one eye, a large protruding hooked nose and a long ponytail of white hair hanging down to the middle of his back with a single feather lying to one side. “What is that?” Zack asked, not believing what he was looking at. “I’m getting out of here. I’ve had enough. Counterfeiters, murders and now an Indian that’s a ghost, and we’re following him. You’re all nuts.”

  “Get a hold of yourself,” I whispered to Zack, shaking him at the same time. “He’s saved our lives a few times already. “We have to trust him.”

  “You have to trust him,” he shot back. “I don’t!”

  “We’ll argue later,” I said trying to pacify him, “but right now we have to follow him. He’s our only hope.” Before we could end our argument, Katie had abruptly left our sides and headed down the dark, narrow tunnel toward the Indian. We immediately headed off trailing behind her as she trustingly followed the yellow moccasins. Shortly we came to a small, narrow area and could see the light disappearing ahead of us as we bent down to crawl on our knees to follow. It was obvious to us that there were curves in the tunnel and that we were ascending in some areas as we continued along the narrow, cobweb-filled passageway. Still following in the direction of the light, we passed through what seemed like a small creek area that must have been runoff from the mountain stream that fed the lake below. The stench of the sulfur water had disappeared, and we soon began to feel a cool breeze blowing across our faces. We seemed to crawl forever when suddenly we were stopped in our tracks by the vision of the Indian, once again. He was standing very erect in the tunnel ahead of us holding one hand up high in a sign of peace. We sat back, stared and as we did, he vanished into thin air.

  I quickly crawled up ahead of Katie and moved to where our Indian had been standing. There was nothing! No foot prints, no Indian, just the torch stuck in the crevice of a rock. Obviously, he had put it there. We finished our trek crawling on all fours and were finally able to stand up and stretch. “Where are we?” Katie asked. I looked around, somewhat confused myself, and searched for any signs of familiarity.

  “This is it!” Zack shouted. “I remember that carving on the wall. I know where we are.”

  “Where?” I asked him. I was just as excited as Zack was, but I told him to keep it down, or we would be getting the attention of Jeb’s men, again. Zack started quickly moving through the tunnel ahead of us, and we took off, trying to keep up with him. After minutes of maneuvering our way through the musty darkness, there we were. We all stood staring at our final destination. Sticking out of the hole I had fallen into was the tree trunk Zack and Katie had dropped in to make their way down to rescue me. We had come in a full circle. The cave and lake below had two separate entrances.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Zack said somewhat astounded and shouting with surprise.

  “Sh! Keep your voice down,” I admonished him once again. “They could be near by.” Zack nodded in agreement and became quiet.

  “Let’s get out of here and head back to the ranch,” Katie said excitedly. “We’ve got them exactly where we want them. They have to have left their horses up there. Let’s take them and ride back to the ranch.” Katie was exactly right, I thought. The whole gang we were going to set a trap for had trapped themselves. If we escaped through the hole above and removed the tree trunk and filled the hole over, they were stuck with no way out.

  “Let’s go!” I whispered. “We may not have that much time left before they can figure a way out.” Katie was the first one up the tree trunk we used for our ladder, and Zack was soon to follow. “Hurry up, Zack,” I urged. “They could come at any minute.” Soon I had made my way up and out of our prison and was standing in the blustery, cold winter day. The brightness was enough to almost blind us after our stay in the dark, cavernous dungeon below. We stood there momentarily getting our eyes adjusted to the bright sky and the reflection off the snow. What a beautiful sight it was. Freedom, at last! “Come on!” I ordered Zack and Katie. “Give me a hand.” I grabbed hold of the log we had climbed to escape and told them to do the same. The three of us held tight. “One, two, three, pull! One, two, three, pull!” The log began to move upward as we moved in unison. Finally, after a few minutes of yanking and grunting we had pulled it from the hole and on to the snowy ground above. “Let’s find some branches to cover the hole with. Make it heavy if you can. We’ll entomb them like the rats they are,” I yelled.

  We all separated and went in different directions but soon returned with the fallen branches we had found. We quietly started stacking our wood across the only way out, and it soon disappeared from sight. You would never realize there was a hole there unless you were aware of its location...and we were. There were six horses tied off to trees that surrounded us, and we each headed for one. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!” I yelled to Katie, sensing her anxiety. “We’ll take all the horses with us. That way, if they possibly escaped, they’d be stuck and would have to do it by foot. And in this weather that would be their death sentence.”

  “Follow me!” Katie shouted. “I’ll get us home in a hurry.” We could easily make out the outline of Mt. Columbia in the background, and I realized that was the same mountain I saw out my window every morning. Katie, Zack and I headed off through the deepening snow at a good gallop, and we ascended a long grade to the top of the valley we had just left. We stopped momentarily and stared at the wide prairie out before us and could see smoke rising in the distance. “There it is!” Katie screamed. “There’s the ranch!” Zack and I rode to her side and stared off into the distance in the direction she was pointing. Sure enough we could see the smoke rising from the ranch house stretched out far ahead of us. “They’re probably scared to death and didn’t sleep a wink,” she said sadly. “Come on, let’s get going. I can’t wait to see them and tell them we’re all right.” We set off at a wild pace pushing our horses as fast as they could run through the snow and as fast as the horses we were trailing with us would allow.

  Fin
ally, we had reached the ranch and could see the cowhands busily going about their business.

  “Miss Katie! Miss Katie! Where ya been,Miss Katie? Your Ma and Pa have been worried to death. We’re just getting the boys ready to form a posse to go lookin for ya.”

  “We’re OK, Jack,” Katie confidently answered. “But you just keep getting that posse ready because I’ve got something else you boys can go after. But first, let me get inside to see my mom and dad.” Katie jumped off her horse and flew up the long path to the ranch house. Zack and I handed the horses over to Jack and headed after her. When we reached the porch of the house, we could see the door wide open and Katie in the clutches of her mother and father. Katie and Mrs. Mac were holding each other tightly sobbing with their heads buried deep in each other’s arms. Mr. Mac turned and stared at us intensely. It was a look that we had never seen before from him.

  “Do you boys want to explain where you’ve been and what you did to my daughter?” he growled. “As far as I’m concerned, you boys will be leaving here today. Do you understand me?” he barked, pointing his finger directly in our faces.

  “Oh, Daddy, it’s not their fault. Please don’t yell at them! They saved our lives. It’s Jeb and Slim. They tried to kill us.”

  “Tried to kill you?” he asked with a look of disbelief coming over his face. “What do you mean they tried to kill you?” he repeated.

  “Oh! Daddy, they’re a counterfeiting ring, and we found their hideout where they make the money, and they caught us and tied us up, and the Indian with the yellow moccasins helped us get away, and then Ian fell into a hole, and we found a cave and….”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, just slow down, Katie,” he said holding her firmly by her shoulders; “Just slow down.”

  “Daddy, Jeb and Slim are killers, and they would have killed us, but we’ve got them trapped,” she said excitedly.

  “You’ve got who trapped?” came a booming voice from the front door. We turned to see the imposing figure of Sheriff Parks standing at the open door. ”I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude, but I saw the door wide open, and I wanted to make sure everything was OK,” he said, taking off his hat and knocking the snow from its brim.

  “That’s all right, Sheriff,” Mr. Mac said acknowledging his presence. “I think you’re just the man we want to see.”

  “Sounds to me like you’ve got a problem from what I heard. Maybe I can help you out,” he volunteered. “Maybe you can, Sheriff. Maybe you can,” said Mr. Mac.