TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) (27 page)

When Hayward reached down to pet Little Wolf, the dog rolled over on its back and peed on his hand.

“Dammit, dog!” Hayward said. He pulled his handkerchief out of a hip pocket and dried his hands. “Why does he always do that?” he asked Soc.

“Don’t know,” Soc answered. “Why do you keep trying to pet him?”

Little Wolf rolled back to a sitting position and looked up at Hayward, panting happily. Hayward could swear the dog was laughing.

They sat on Soc’s favorite bench in Veteran’s Park, enjoying the brilliant October morning. Soc had arrived earlier to let Little Wolf do his run about, and Hayward came to join his old friend. He wanted to discuss what they needed to do now that Plan A, i.e., to get the two bikers arrested, hadn’t worked out as they intended. He’d already apprised Soc that the two of them were suspected terrorists in some parts of town, and that Bobby John had given up The Envelope without much of a fight.

“Federal agents, huh?” Soc said.

“That’s what they told Bobby John and Mary Ruth, but I don’t think Mary Ruth bought into it,”

“Wouldn’t take a brilliant mind to discount the truth in that,” said Soc.

“My point exactly, which is why Bobby John did believe it. I convinced Mary Ruth to go along with us, saying I wanted to play a joke on Bobby John. She liked that idea, so I don’t think either of them will interfere until we can figure out what else to do.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” Soc asked.

“Bobby John won’t because he thinks he’s going to get a reward if he keeps his mouth shut, and Mary Ruth because she wants to see her boss make a fool of himself.”

“So what
are
we going to do?” Soc asked.

“Well, them two fellas are smarter than they look... at least the big one is.”

Little Wolf continued looking up at Hayward and panting intently. When Hayward looked back at him, the dog gave him one sharp “Raff!” lunging forward about six inches.

“Yeah, you wish, dog,” Hayward answered. “I’m smarter than I look, too.”

“Looks ain’t ever thing,” Soc offered. Little Wolf barked again, as if agreeing with his master, and then spotted a gray squirrel on the ground fifty yards off. He sprung toward it, in a growling rush.

Both seniors watched Little Wolf’s futile pursuit, then Hayward continued. “The thing that makes me nervous is that Nan’s page said a lot of stupid stuff about the treasure clues being in Sunny’s barn, and then you brought up that deerskin thing at Arlene’s that day. I’m just afraid them two are going to ferret out where she lives and go out there. It don’t appear they know where that is, but I figure it’s only a matter of time ’til they find out. I figure if she wanted to see ’em, she would’ve done it by now.”

“Makes sense,” Soc said.

“I’m convinced them two’re dangerous, so we need to come up with some way to keep them from going out to Sunny’s before this thing gets out of hand,” Hayward said. “It’s already spinning off in a direction I don’t like.”

“You got any ideas?” Soc asked.

“Nope,” Hayward answered. “You?”

Both men sat quietly watching Little Wolf. The dog gave up on the treed squirrel, picking up the scent of something else that intrigued him. He darted around in an erratic pattern, his nose pointed to the ground, chasing the trail.

“There might be something I could do,” Soc said at last.

“What’s that?”

“I could give them boys the answers to the clues in the Ed Reed letter.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I know what the clues mean.”

Hayward looked astounded at his old friend. “You mean you know where the Belle Starr Treasure is?”

“I mean I know the meaning of the clues in the letter, and where they could lead them.”

“What?! How long have you known this?”

“Most my life, I reckon; since I was a small boy.”

Hayward scratched the back of his head, and gave out a wheezing chuckle. “Well, I’ll be go to hell,” he said. “Now Buck showed us that Ed Reed letter almost fifty years ago, and you mean to say you’ve known what it meant all along?”

Soc nodded and looked out where Little Wolf had disappeared into the woods. He whistled, and the dog re-appeared heading back toward them at a trot.

“Well, why didn’t you tell me this before now?” Hayward asked.

“You ain’t never asked,” Soc replied.

“Oh, tarnation, Soc,” Hayward said, clearly exasperated. “We’ve been friends for over seventy-five years, and we’re talking about one of the most famous legends in these parts. So I’m asking you now. How is it you know the meaning of the Ed Reed letter?

Soc looked at his old friend without saying a word, his face deadpan, his black eyes fathomless. Finally, he spoke. “My grandfather, Ezra Ninekiller, and Ned Starr were second cousins, although my grandfather was quite a few years older than Ned. When my father was a boy of about ten, his ma died—my grandmother. Grandfather Ezra went sort of crazy with grief, so he sent his children to live with his dead wife’s family, and he went off in the woods to live alone. He became a hermit, rarely leaving his small farm.

“Several times, when I was a boy, my father would go out to visit my Grandfather Ezra, and he’d take me with him. The old man was strange, a little spooky and wild-like, but he seemed to take to me. Although I never entirely got rid of my fear of him, it got to where I liked going to see him. He taught me to speak
Tsalagi
, the Cherokee language. He would tell me wonderful and frightful stories about the old days. One of the stories he told me was about a creature in the woods The People called Hill Man Who Screams at Night. He said, he knew the creature personally. Judging by the way Grandfather looked and lived, I didn’t have any reason to doubt him.”

Soc reached down and picked a stick off the ground. Little Wolf danced excitedly, his eyes on the stick. When Soc threw it, the dog chased after it at top speed. Soc continued.

“Grandfather Ezra told me he’d met up with the creature many times in the woods, and that, while they hadn’t exactly become friends, they did seem to have a silent understanding—if Grandfather left the Hill Man alone; the creature would leave him alone. My grandfather said he felt the two of them were sort of kinsmen in spirit, the way they both chose to live alone in the woods. And he told me he knew the whereabouts of one of the creature’s dwellings. One day, the old man showed it to me.

“The place is a cave located high on a cliff above the Illinois River. Large rocks obscure the cave entrance, and to reach it you have to follow a narrow and treacherous path that winds down along the cliff face. Looking up from the banks of the river, the cave entrance and the pathway ledge leading to it seem invisible. You have to know where the path starts at the top of the cliff to get down to the cave. Even then, it’s difficult to find. So the Old People left a marker.”

Little Wolf returned with the stick, and laid it at the feet of the two men. Hayward was starting to see the direction of Soc’s narrative. Little Wolf waited for another stick toss. Hayward picked up the stick and threw it. He asked Soc, “If that’s where the Hill Man lived, why would anyone want to go to the trouble of getting there? Seems to me they’d be content with staying away, or not knowing about it in the first place.”

“Yes, that does seem logical,” Soc responded. “But my people have always considered the Hill Man as sacred, a spirit force, a demon. The marker was put in place to warn the people away, not to lead them to it. Better that they knew exactly where the demon dwelled, than to stumble upon it accidentally. At the time Grandfather Ezra showed me this place, he told me it was a secret among our clans, knowing this location; and that it should never be revealed once it was known, except to others in the clans. I expect there’re only a handful of us still living who know this. Now you know it.”

“If this is such a deep, dark secret among your people, why’re you telling me? Ain’t you betraying that confidence?”

Soc sighed and looked out to where Little Wolf scampered. “I’ve known you so long it’s hard to consider you as anything but Cherokee,” he said.

“So Ned Starr knew where that cave was?”

“Yep,” Soc said.

“And Ed?”

“I don’t think Ed was told its location. Even though they were good friends, Ned would never tell Ed where the cave was. The clans held that as a sacred trust, and Ed wasn’t a Cherokee. I think Ed just found it by chance. He put his treasure map in the cave, ignorant of its tenant, then wrote up all those elaborate clues for Ned in that letter. Ned didn’t need but that one clue—the cave marked with the animal picture. Then he knew the exact location of the map. I think once he knew that, he didn’t want to go there for the reasons I’ve already talked about. My people have a healthy respect for spirits and demons.”

“Ah. So the marker was a depiction of the Hill Man? What do they call it... like them other old Indian cave markings, one of them... petroglyphs, that’s it.

“You guessed it. It was created generations ago, so even a hundred years ago it was pretty weather-worn and faded; even more so today. Hard to see, unless you know where to look for it.”

“What about the other clues in the letter,” Hayward asked.

“The initials in the letter were the first letters of English spellings for Cherokee words—W.S for
Wehali Stewayi
, which translates to Eagle Branch. S.T. is for S
onela Tihi
; that translates to Ninekiller, meaning ‘Old Ezra Ninekiller.’ The hills are on my grandfather’s old land. With that knowledge, and knowing about the Hill Man marker, you could go right to that cave.”

Hayward gave the stick one more toss for Little Wolf, but halfway to where it landed the dog became distracted by another smell on the ground, and zigzagged off in pursuit.

Hayward sat watching the dog, his arms folded across his chest. “So the long and short of this is you want to give Butch and Sundance the pieces of the puzzle, and let them go get the long lost treasure map?”

“No, I’m going to let them know how to get to where the clues lead. Those boys won’t get the map.”

“Wull,” Hayward scratched the side of his head before continuing. “If they ain’t going to get the map, like you say, does that mean it’s already been got? Maybe by you, or Ned Starr, or some other Cherokee brother?”

“No,” Soc said.

“No? Well, what would stop any of you?”

“No sane man would ever go into the den of the Forest Demon. I aim to see to it that the Ross clansman and his partner find out just why that is.”

“And how’re you going to do that?” asked Hayward.

“If you’re with me at the time, you’ll see,” the old Cherokee said.

“So what’re you going to do, walk up to them boys and say, ‘Here’s what the clues in the Ed Reed letter mean’?”

“Something like that,” Soc said. “I ain’t really figured that part out yet.”

Hayward shook his head in amused disbelief. Little Wolf had returned from his search and sat panting at the two men’s feet. “This should be good,” Hayward said. He reached down to pat the dog on his head, and Little Wolf rolled over and peed on Hayward’s hand.

* * *

“Are you sure it was her?” Red Randy asked.

“Pretty durn sure,” Threebuck responded.

Randy stretched out on the bed with his hands interlaced behind his head, looking at the ceiling. Threebuck had told him he’d spotted the Griggs woman leaving a supermarket, but lost her in traffic when he tried to follow her.

“We need to find that place so we can get out there and see if any of that stuff supposedly located in her barn is there and can lead us to the treasure,” Randy said. “I figure that woman knows some things about all this treasure stuff, too. Once we get her to tell us what she knows, we’ll get rid of her like we planned. Don’t want to leave any loose ends.”

* * *

Hayward looked worried. “I been thinking about what you said yesterday, Soc, and here’s what I figure we can do without raising any suspicion or getting anyone kilt. That thing about the deerskin you yapped about in Arlene’s might could work to our advantage now. I got an old buckskin coat I could cut the back out of and you could write some stuff on it like you talked about—the meaning of those clues in the Ed Reed letter. Hell, it don’t have to be accurate, just make it sound authentic. We just want something that they think they’re looking for. We’ll stick it in a corner of Buck’s old hay wagon in Sunny’s barn. Cover it up with a tarp or something, like it’s been hid a long time.”

The two old friends had re-convened at Arlene’s the morning after their meeting in the park. “How’d you come up with that brilliant plan?” Soc asked.

“Well, I re-read Nan’s minutes page and that’s kind of where the ‘clues’ go. I thought it would be best to let this thing play out, with some added ingredients, so them guys won’t realize they’re being played.”

“A few things you forgot,” Soc said.

“What’s that?” asked Hayward. He opened and poured two creamer cups into his coffee.

“As far as I know, those boys ain’t figured out where Sunny lives. And once they do find out, we need to make sure we’re out there with some law, or something, to make sure no harm comes to Sunny. So my question is, how’re we going to let those fellers know where Buck’s barn is, and how’re we going to know when they’ll go for the bait? You planning on setting up camp somewhere out there? Also, how’re we going to plant your deerskin without Sunny knowing?”

“Well, first off,” Hayward answered. “...that ain’t
A
question, it’s more like four, but they
are
dang good ones. Let’s think about this.”

Jo Lynn set cinnamon rolls on the counter in front to the two men. Hayward waited until Jo Lynn walked away before he continued. Soc sawed a two inch square piece off the side of his roll and stuffed it in his mouth.

“Punch told me they had some kind of cock ’n bull story about owing Sunny’s old man some money and they wanted to give it to her. It seems obvious to me they was trying to get Punch to tell them where she lived.”

Soc nodded and chewed, then forked another bite into his mouth.

“All we got to do is to get Punch to tell them Sunny wants that money, then he can tell them how to get to her place. We’ll also have him say she’s going to be gone on a certain night, so they can’t take her the money then. I figure they’ll go out there on the night she’s allegedly gone to go through her barn looking for the deerskin which we’ll plant. That afternoon, you and me will pull up in her driveway in my RV and ask her if she’d mind if we set up in her field for the night while we did some ’coon hunting. She told me she’s been having some trouble lately with something raiding her hens’ nests. I told her it was probably raccoons, and that I’d be glad to come over some time and set a trap for them. I figure she’ll be happy at the prospect of us hunting the varmints...as long as we promise her we won’t kill ’em.