TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) (3 page)

Randy stopped in front of a bike leaning against the back wall. “C’mere,” he said to Goat without looking at him. Goat walk over and looked at the bike in front of Randy. It was a beat up old mid-nineties model Suzuki 500.

“Guy come in here about a year ago,” Randy started, “had this bike he said he needed to sell. It looked like a piece of crap back then, just like now. I told him I’d give him fifty bucks, and he took it. It has sat here against this back wall since then. Don’t know if it even runs. If you can get it going, I’ll let you have it for seventy-five bucks plus any parts you need to use. We’ll figure up the total when you get it running, and I’ll deduct it from your pay. That ought to get you to work. Plus it’ll give me an idea of what kind of mechanic you are.”

Goat got the Suzuki running by the end of the day. By the end of that week he’d earned two hundred forty-seven dollars. Red Randy held back twenty-five, and put Goat on a pay plan of twenty-five a week, rounding what Goat owed him up to a hundred even for parts and interest. He also reminded Goat of the consequences of skipping out on him.

Goat didn’t skip out the next four weeks. He stayed on at Red Randy’s, and even managed to work out kind of a peaceful co-existence with Threebuck. But not before coming to blows with him.

The fight started over an argument on who’d last used a 7/16
^th
socket, which had come up missing. When Threebuck shoved Goat and called him a stupid bastard, Goat returned the shove spewing a profane name back at Threebuck. Randy stopped his work on a big hog, walked over and grabbed both men by the scruff. “Take this crap outside!” he commanded, and then shoved them both tumbling through the bay door before returning to his work.

The two proceeded with punches and kicks and bites and swearing and name-calling. Red Randy made a mental note to deduct this fight time from each of his employee’s pay. He then noticed the missing socket amongst his own collection of tools. But this thing had been brewing for some time, so he decided to let those two work it out.

The fight continued for forty minutes, working its way up and down the bulldozed red rock mounds to the sides and back of the shop, and eventually tumbling all the way around the building. Both men became so exhausted they could no longer stand. They lay propped up on the side of the building next to each other, bleeding from various wounds, and breathing so hard they could no longer swear at, or call each other names. Ten minutes into their recovery, Randy came around the corner.

“If you idiots are through, you need to get your butts back to work. I ain’t paying you for this,” he said, and returned to the shop. Later, without saying a word about it, Randy tossed Threebuck the missing socket. Threebuck examined it, then laid it aside, and wordlessly continued his own work. After that, Threebuck and Goat more or less got along. At least they didn’t come to blows again.

Goat stayed on, got a room at the Y, and even managed a reconciliation of sorts with Sunny. She would invite him over for dinner at least once a week. She never felt complete trust in her biological father, but as the weeks and months went by, she began to share with Goat about her growing up years with her foster parents—Lorene and Buck Buchanan.

Sunny still kept in touch with Lorene and Buck, and eventually let them know about Goat, his release from prison and their subsequent reunion. In late February of 2003, Lorene wrote back that she was glad Sunny and her father had made amends, and invited Sunny and her father to come home for a visit that coming Easter. Sunny replied that she didn’t think that was a good idea, but Lorene insisted. So over a home cooked dinner, Goat—tattoos, ponytail and all—met Buck and Lorene Buchanan for the first time.

Halfway through the meal Lorene asked Goat, for the third time, “What kind of work are you in, Mr. Griggs?”

“I’m, uh...” Goat looked at Sunny, who shrugged back at him.

“Lorene, darlin’,” Buck said with a smile. “Mister Griggs already told us he works as a motorcycle mechanic. Remember?” He turned to Goat. “You’ll have to excuse Lorene. She’s kind of forgetful lately.”

Chapter 2

Buck Tells a Tale

As it turned out, Buck had fatal flaws. The things that made him such a well-loved man proved to be his ruin.

Buck believed everybody had good in them, and he always looked for it. With such a gregarious nature, he found it hard mistrusting or being suspicious of anyone. That even held true for strangers with snake and spider tattoos who had dealt in illegal drugs, and spent almost two decades in prison. “We all make mistakes,” Buck liked to say.

Buck also liked to talk, and had a hard time keeping secrets. He liked to tell stories, especially stories about his ancestors and the land they’d occupied.

“Your folks from Oklahoma?” Buck asked Goat. He and Goat had moved from the dining room into the living room after the meal, while the women cleared the table that Easter Sunday in 2003, and Buck wanted to get a conversation going.

“Naw,” Goat responded. “I grew up in Texas. My old man died when I was about thirteen.”

“What about your mother? She still with us?”

“She re-married a couple of years after Dad checked-out. Married a mean sumbitch. I left home when I was sixteen. I ain’t seen my mom since.”

Buck shook his head, and gave Goat a sad look, “Too bad,” he said.

“What about your folks?” Goat asked.

“Me and Lorene have lived here in Tsalagee all our lives. My family goes back several generations in these parts.” Buck got up from his chair and walked over to the fireplace. He grabbed an ornate frame sitting on the mantel which held a yellowed black and white photograph. It showed a fuzzy group of five men of indeterminate age standing and sitting in front of a large iron-wheeled vehicle. The machine had a smoke stack at the nose and a belted iron wheel on the side which had large spokes. Buck handed the frame to Goat.

“This picher was taken in 1908 not long after Oklahoma statehood. These here men was some of the founders of the town. That fella there,” Buck pointed the stem of his pipe at a man sitting on a small crate, slightly in front and to the right of the rest of the group. “...was my grampa; my mom’s daddy. He was a Cherokee by the name of Ned Starr. He was a nephew to Sam Starr, the man who married a widow by the name of Belle Reed, who became better known as Belle Starr.”

“You’re related to Belle Starr?” Goat asked. That seemed to impress him.

“Only by marriage. She wasn’t well regarded in the Starr clan.” Buck paused to fire up his pipe before continuing his history lesson. “This here guy,” Buck pointed to a man leaning on the big rear wheel of the old steam engine, “...was Belle Starr’s son Ed Reed. Him and my granddaddy was said to be real good friends.

“There was talk back then that Ed’s the one who killed Belle. Shot her in the back down around Eufaula. But they never found out who done it for sure. I guess in her case there was a long list of possible suspects.”

“But her own kid?” Goat asked still looking at the picture.

“Aw, old Belle... well, I guess I shouldn’t call her ‘old.’ She wasn’t even forty-one when she died. But in Belle’s line of work, she didn’t make a lot of friends. It’s said she horsewhipped the boy more than a time or two. I guess there wasn’t much love lost between ’em. Course, no one in that crowd back then was what you’d call nice people. The reason Ed shot her, so the story goes, was to get some of her loot. Jim Reed—that was Ed’s daddy—and two other guys came up into the Indian Territory from Texas to rob a rich Choctaw farmer named Watt Grayson. It was said that Grayson had a big stash of gold coins, which apparently he did, as Reed and his gang made away with about $30,000 worth of them.

“Belle was accused of being a part of that robbery, but couldn’t nobody prove it. Anyways, Belle was said to still have a sizeable part of them gold coins when she was murdered, and that Ed took ’em, along with some of the other booty she had from train robberies and such. Ed lit out from down there, and settled up here. Didn’t seem to be anyone much interested in chasing down Belle Starr’s killer, so no one came after him. Strangely enough, a few years later he hired on as a deputy U.S. marshal, and was shot dead in a barroom brawl up at Wagoner. Don’t think it was long after this picture was took.”

“What happened to all the loot” Goat asked.

“Good question,” Buck said. He whacked out his pipe ashes in a big ashtray on the table by his chair. “Ed is said to have hid it in a cave somewhere around here.”

“I guess people have looked for it.”

“They’ve dang sure done that,” Buck said with a wheezing laugh. “People looked for that gold for a lot of years.” He opened his tobacco pouch to refill the pipe. “And that stash kept getting bigger every year. Lotsa gold, lotsa jewelry. A regular pirate’s treasure, if you believed the talk.”

“You’d think someone would’ve found it by now,” Goat said.

“Well, I don’t know. Lots of caves between here and Eufaula. Could be anywhere. Over the years, folks just gave up looking or lost interest. Nowadays the story’s mostly forgot about. Don’t hear much talk on it anymore. Outside of a few obscure books, I think I’m the only living soul that knows anything about it.

“Funny thing, though.” Buck struck his butane lighter and put the flame to the top of the fresh tobacco in the pipe bowl, then sucked, sending out thick blue-white clouds of smoke with every puff. He continued. “A lot of hunters for Belle’s lost treasure came to a disastrous end of one kind or another.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they turned up dead. Some at the bottom of a cliff, some drowned in the river. Some just went out looking for that treasure and weren’t never heard from again, just disappeared.

“All this has led some people to believe the Lost Treasure of Belle Starr is cursed. Some say by the ghost of Ed Reed, some say Belle Starr’s ghost, and still others believe the treasure is protected by the Devil himself. The Cherokees and Choctaws talk about some kind of forest demon, but that legend was around long before Ed hid that treasure. That curse could be another reason folks quit hunting for it.”

“Have you ever looked for it?” Goat asked.

“Course I did, when I was younger. But I stopped.” Buck stopped talking and looked out the window.

“Well, why’d you stop?” Goat pressed.

Buck sighed, and then looked at Goat. “It’s a hard thing to explain, and it still gives me the shivers when I think about it.” He put his pipe back in his mouth, drew in some smoke and then went on. “Now I never put much stock in any of that ‘curse’ talk, but here’s what happened to me.

“One day I was out looking, as I did pretty regular back then. It was in November. A rainstorm had come through the night before and left it cold and damp. The woods dripped, and dark thick clouds still filled the day. Anyway, I was climbing up the side of this wooded hill. My feet kept slipping on the thick fall of wet leaves, and I had to grab saplings as I went so’s not to slide down the hill. All of a sudden, this feeling come over me that I was being watched, so I stopped and looked around. Didn’t see a thing. I then noticed how quiet it had got. Now in November in the woods around here you don’t hear a lot anyway, but this was beyond that. No birds, no wind, no nothing. It was down right spooky. And things just didn’t smell right.

“I tell ya, I’ve done a fair amount of hunting in these woods, and when a bear or a cougar or bobcat came around, I knew it; even came up on a small pack of wolves once. But this wasn’t like them times. Something in the woods was watching me that day, and I had no idea what. What I did know was that a little voice inside was yelling at me to skedaddle.

“So that’s what I did, and I ain’t gone back to look for that treasure since. Don’t really care about that sort of thing any longer, though. I figure I’ve got all I need right here. I wouldn’t know how to act if I’uz rich, anyway.”

“Interesting story.” Goat handed the framed picture back to Buck. “So whadda you think; that treasure really exist?”

“Oh, it’s out there, awright,” Buck said. He took a few sucks on his pipe, filling the air around them in billowing clouds of pungent smoke.

Goat shook his head and laughed. “You’d think in a hundred years, someone would’ve found it; if it was real,” he said.

Buck nodded. “Mebbe folks looking didn’t have the right information on its whereabouts.”

Goat scratched the side of his face, and smiled at Buck. “Are you saying there’s a map?”

Buck grinned around his pipe stem, and chuckled a bit. “Not exactly, but let me show you something else.”

Buck turned the picture frame over and started moving the four clips to the side. He removed the cardboard backing, and took out a yellowed piece of paper folded in fourths. Goat leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. Buck carefully unfolded the paper.

“Ed must’ve known he was skating on thin ice with his occupation and life-style, so he wrote this letter. My Gramma Starr said they found an envelope in amongst Ed’s things after he was killed which was addressed, ‘To Ned Starr on the event of my dying.’ It was sort of Ed’s last will and testament. My Gramma Starr kept it tucked behind this picture, and I left it there when this frame and picture was passed down to me.

“Let me read it to you.” Buck took his reading glasses out of his front shirt pocket and put them on. He cleared his throat.

Sept. 22, 1905

To my cosin Ned who is the only famly I care about and also my only frend.

If you are seeing this then I guess I am ded.

You will find that all them storys that are going around about the stuff I took from my ma and got hid are true. I am riting this becuse I want you to have it after I have done died. Ther is a map that I got hid that tells you wher my loot is hid but I aint givin that to you in this hear leter as I do not want it falling into the wrong hands.

I will tell you in a way I figger you will know what I am saying but wont no one else.

Out at W.S. go to the bent sicamor where we got drunk onest and almost drowned. Go in the directon to wher old S.T. lives and look for 2 hills. Walk to the hill on the left and go to its top. If you look east, there is a cliff about 3 mile off. Go to that cliff and look along it til you see some rocks that makes a picher like that animal you would not never hunt for. Just to the right of that is a cave door but it is hid by some rocks. It is about halfway up on the cliff. That is the cave where I put the map to ma’s loot. It is in a tin box at the back.