Zachary's Gold (25 page)

With my revolver clasped in both fists, I nosed forward through the last screen of bushes, trying to see in three directions at once. Straight ahead of me, the old grey horse munched at the tall grass on the far side of the clearing. To my left, Rosh knelt beside the mule, who was tethered to a pine tree. To my right, the path headed back to the main road. I couldn't see the other villain anywhere.

I slid up behind Squealer, grabbed the back of his collar, poked the gun barrel into the vicinity of his kidneys, and pulled him close.

“Where's the other fella?” I demanded. My captive made a noise like someone stepping on a frog, but Rosh stood up and pointed down the trail. His easy smile told me that we were alone, at least for the present, and I gave Squealer enough of a push to land him on his stomach in the dirt.

My partner was happy to see me, of course, but he looked a little the worse for wear. His first steps forward betrayed a bit of a limp, and a cut along one cheek had swollen his eye half shut.

I looked at our captive, face down now on the ground before me.

“Where's your pal?” I asked him, and when he hesitated a second before replying, I kicked him in the ribs about as hard as I could without losing my own balance.

When I looked at Rosh it was hard to read his expression, his face was so badly puffed up. I guessed that it had taken him some time to convince the two bushwhackers that he spoke no English.

Squealer was all twisted up, gasping for breath, but when I repeated my question, he managed to blurt out an answer very quickly, before I had a chance to use my boot again.

“Bill's gone after Percy,” he choked. “Looking for you and Percy.”

I presumed that I knew who Percy was and that Bill would be disappointed when he eventually found him.

“When's Bill supposed to be back?”

The little hoodlum was resting on his hands and knees now, with his head down.

“I don't know,” he grumbled.

That may have been the truth, but I knocked him over with another kick in the ribs, and turned to Rosh.

I pulled my pocket watch out and let it dangle by the chain against my leg, then pointed in the direction that Bill had gone and asked whether it was a short time or a long time. He responded by holding his hands a fair distance apart and nodding. The other crook had been gone for a fair while. I was lucky I hadn't run into him on the way.

Looking closer at the Chinaman's face, I saw that the cut was more ugly than serious. The eye was not endangered. I reached out and touched his left side, and he winced and drew back, but in answer to my gesture of concern, he shook his head and waved one hand in dismissal.

“We're all right then,” I said, but I knew that the statement was a bit of an oversimplification. I spoke again to our captive—“You're a lucky fellow,” I stated. “You're a snivelling skunk, but you're alive, and if you play your cards right you have a decent chance of staying that way.”

He cursed under his breath, but since it was a general sort of curse and not specifically directed at me, I let it go. Finally he rolled into a seated position and looked up at me.

“What'd you do with Percy?” he asked.

“He's waiting for you at the gates of hell, and it's all the same to me if you want to join him now and keep him company until Bill's ready for the trip, but I'm going to give you a chance to hang around here for a few more years, if you act nice for us.”

The scruffy little man put his head between his knees and rocked and moaned. I had the impression that his sadness was at least partially on behalf of the departed Percy. It appeared that these characters held some concern for each other, if for no one else.

Particularly in this modern age, when steam trains roar across the prairie faster than the fastest horse, and messages fly through wires, connecting town to town almost instantaneously, there is a strata of mankind that does not even pause to consider their sins as they pursue a life of greed and violence. Neither fearsome threats nor sweet persuasion can teach this sort of person the meaning of compassion, and I regret to say that they exist everywhere I have ever been. Most especially they congregate where money is loose and liquid.

Percy, Bill, and Squealer were good examples, but there was at least a shadow of empathy between them, which was a good thing, for it was possible we would need to use Squealer as a hostage later on, if Bill didn't fall too easily into our hands. I wasn't sure exactly what we would end up doing, but I hoped that we could avoid killing the two in cold blood, so to speak. The sense of having killed someone—even a murdering scoundrel—is a foul thing to have at the back of your mind.

The first step was to capture Bill, and I thought I should begin the watch for him right away. The little cliffs behind us could be climbed fairly easily by a roundabout route, and they looked like they would give a good view in the direction of the wagon road.

Firstly, I went to the mule and got a length of rope from the packs. While doing so, I released the rest of the ropes, dropped the baggage to the ground and relieved the poor pack animal. I used the rope to tie our prisoner's hands, then looped it over a high limb so that he was standing rather uncomfortably, with his arms above him. He commented unfavourably on the position with his usual tasteless colloquy, but, as I informed him, his comfort was not my concern.

I motioned Rosh to sit on a nearby log, cocked the .45 revolver, and handed it to him. I explained to him both verbally and in signs, partly for Squealer's benefit, that if the prisoner made noise or talked too much, he should be shot dead.

The Winchester was gone from our baggage, possibly now in the possession of the third robber, so I took the big Sharp's buffalo rifle and moved down the ravine to the steep slope at the edge of the cliff. I scrambled up there like a giant prairie dog, sending showers of gravel and rocks into the trees below, stopping to rest every dozen yards or so. The fatigue of the day was beginning to catch up with me.

Finally I reached the level of the cliff top and scrambled over until I was next to a single stunted pine tree on a little patch of ground overlooking the ravine. I leaned the rifle against one great grey rock and sat down on another. I would be inconspicuous enough up there, I thought, but I could see the far half of the clearing beneath me, including both animals, and more or less the entirety of the trail to the wagon road.

I knew that Bill might return from his scouting expedition at any time. If I climbed up the little pine tree, I might be able to see all the way down to the last turn of the wagon road, which would give me enough advance warning to return to the clearing and meet the fellow on level ground.

While I was still considering this, I heard the sound of gunfire.

I was too startled to be sure of the exact order, but there were several shots, some from a rifle, and more than one from the Colt handgun. My mind went into a spin, and I couldn't decide what to do, not knowing what had happened. If Squealer had somehow escaped, I should go back down by a different route, or he would be waiting for me at the cliff base. Then again, by the time I made it down to the clearing, would everyone have disappeared, just as at the last ambush?

During the short time I was thinking this and peering down from my perch, the shooting stopped and two men ran across the clearing into my field of vision. Bill hadn't come down the path, but he was back. He ran directly for the horse and mule, while Squealer, still trailing rope from one wrist, dodged over to pick up his rifle where it lay on the ground. He scooped it up, worked the bolt, and turned around to where I had left Rosh. He hadn't time to finish aiming before I pulled the trigger on the buffalo gun and knocked him a full six feet backwards.

In the time it took me to realize that a second shot at Squealer wasn't necessary, Bill had decided that it was no use for him to try to help the man, and he danced past the frightened mule and into the trees. I fired one more shot at his shadow as he hurried through the bushes, but there wasn't much chance at a clear angle through the timber.

I watched him all the way back to the main road, where he made the mistake of stopping and peering back like Lot's wife. Maybe he wanted to see if he were being pursued, or maybe he was having a hard time leaving all that gold behind. It should have been a mortal mistake, for the Sharp's rifle is engineered to kill at distances up to a mile. I had no practice with the thing, though, and merely kicked up a good handful of dust a few paces from his feet. My only satisfaction was to see him disappear like a scared rabbit. He looked like a man who was heading for home, not simply running for cover.

It was just beginning to get dark. The sky was still clear, but the wind was building into strong, chill gusts.

When I made it down to the clearing, I found I was shivering, although I was not really cold. All my movements seemed stiff, and my mind likewise would not move swiftly or willingly.

Rosh lay half under a scrub alder bush, against the log where he had been seated when I left him. Blood flowed from his left side and his hip. He was in great pain and obviously frightened, but he was alive.

MY PARTNER'S INJURIES EFFECTIVELY DESTROYED
all my plans just as I had begun to relax in the belief that they might actually be successful. My plans were ruined beyond retrieval; I could only hope that the same was not true of my partner. I was no doctor and could not even measure his chance for survival, but his condition was definitely serious. I managed to stop the bleeding from his wound, and once I had made his bed as comfortable as possible, his breathing steadied and he lapsed into a deep sleep.

Whether he lived or died, he would not be ready to carry a burden before winter, and I certainly could not manage transporting him as well as the gold. I had recovered completely from my shoulder wound and my bout with fever, but one man can manage only so much. For that matter, even though we were far from Barkerville and could relax our secrecy to some extent, carrying such a huge quantity of precious goods made it necessary to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

Watching Rosh sleeping at the edge of the campfire light, these ideas settled on me like blizzarding snow, and my mood sank steadily. I knew I should keep a better watch, for Bill the Badman might yet return under cover of darkness, but I didn't have the energy to try to out-think him. I merely hoped that he had either given up on the project entirely or that it would take him some time to round up new accomplices.

Like a child escaping from unpleasant reality by hiding in fantasy, I spent much of that sleepless night dreaming of what I might do with the small mountain of raw gold sitting behind me in the dark.

I would buy myself a steamship, I thought, big enough to carry a profitable cargo up and down the coast of California to Mexico. It would have staterooms enough for a couple of dozen affluent guests, and a fine restaurant with room for them to dance in the sea breeze under the warm stars. I would busy myself with the details of international trade, and perhaps meet some elegant young lady who was accompanying her father on a cruise. There would be much to occupy my time, but no danger.

I roused Rosh when he began to squirm in his sleep, and gave him the last of our water to drink. I would have given him some whisky as well, but the bushwhackers had finished that off before I caught up to them. When it appeared that Rosh had returned to a restful unconsciousness, I left him there and found my way in the moonlight over the half mile of path and roadway to the big creek, where I refilled our water containers. The night hours in that desert place were absolutely majestic, and my mood changed from bleak depression to a sort of melancholy.

It was a state of mind that had its own dangers. As I walked I thought, for instance, how unusual it was that during that entire afternoon and the course of my confrontation with our ambushers, not a soul had come within sight or hearing. In my sad and fatalistic atmosphere of thought, I half wished that some congregation of onlookers had arrived to bring my long struggle to a halt.

In the small hours of the morning, in the heaviness of predawn, my patient awoke. He was in great pain, for which I could do nothing, but I did have two bowls of warm liquid prepared—the oriental medicines that had done so much good for me. I presumed that such medicaments would do roughly the same good for gunshot wounds as they had for gangrenous fever. Since I was not overly anxious to undertake the removal of his bandages to clean his wounds, I began by giving him the bowl of the other brew to drink. At first he refused it, and I let him know that I would not allow him to deny me the pleasure of administering the atrocious stuff. Eventually he made it clear that I was giving him the wrong potion to be taken internally, which brought about a lengthy disagreement. The two elixirs had equally nauseating but quite distinct odours, and I felt certain that the one he chose to drink was the one that he had regularly used to cleanse my infected shoulder. I didn't want to worsen his condition with a prolonged argument, however, so I allowed him to gulp down his chosen bowlful while I gingerly removed the strips of torn shirt that sufficed for bandages and bathed the entry and exit wounds the bullet had gouged in his lower left abdomen. Not much new blood flowed, and after rinsing the dressings in warm water, I reapplied them as well as I could. I lectured the man severely, telling him that I knew very well by sense of taste that he had just convinced me to wash him with oral medication, but he was by that time asleep.