Hard Gold (19 page)
Authors: Avi
The artists who drew this put in all kinds of ways of getting at the gold. Panning, sluicing, using long toms, and digging.
“Early, let me tell you, you eat miserable food—whatever grub you might have at hand—sleep on the hard ground, and come the dawn, guess what you do?”
“Can’t,” I said, feeling miserable.
“You start all over again. Is it hard? Oh, it is. Will it make you rich? Probably not. But then again …” he added almost wistfully, “for some … But, Early, I
did
get enough. Enough to pay that debt. To make that farm ours. Or at least Adam’s. To pay back Fuslin for his … loan. But…” Jesse’s voice trailed away to nothing.
After a moment of silence, he said, “Someone stole it. I guess I wrote you that, too, didn’t I?”
I nodded.
He hesitated. “You … you hear the rest?”
“You shot the thief. First you robbed the bank, then you killed a man. For gold.”
“Early,” he said with sudden anger, “it’s not like back home. Nothing like. No law out here. None.”
“They put you in prison.”
“Thieves put me in prison!” he cried. “Considered great sport to hold a hanging, especially in the winter when there’s nothing else to do. I wasn’t going to wait for that. No, sir! Got away and came up here,” he said. “No one really cares who you are up here. Or what you did. I go by the name of Adam. Don’t that make you laugh?” He broke into his smile. “And guess what?”
“What?”
“I’ve made enough gold—again, Early—to clear the debt. The folks—even old Adam—don’t have to worry. I can give it to you right now.”
“But, Jesse,” I cried, my heart feeling as if it were breaking, “why did you have to do what’s wrong!”
“Early, I’d have thought it would make you glad I got enough gold. Worked hard for it. Twice! Ain’t that worth something more than you snapping at me? You should be thanking me. The whole family should be thanking me. Adam, most of all.” He had stopped smiling.
“Jesse,” I said, tears coming down my cheeks, “I came here to help you. To tell you there’s a man who has stalked you all the way from Iowa. Here, now, in Gold Hill. Judge Fuslin sent him. If he gets to you he’ll take you back—or kill you.”
He glared at me. “How did he know I was here?”
“He … he followed me,” I said, full of agony.
Jesse looked at me, and in that look I saw such hateful fury—something I’d never seen before in him. It tore my insides as if it were a knife.
He turned to Lizzy, then back to me again. “Early, that true? You
brought
him here?”
“Honest.”
“You always so stupid honest?” he spat out.
Jesse …
“Hey, Early, we ain’t little kids no more. Start living what’s real!” His scorn hurt me so.
“Jesse,” I cried, “Fuslin’s man tried to kill me. I think he wants your gold for himself.”
Jesse gazed at me, then turned abruptly and went to the far corner of his little house, knelt, and dug at the dirt floor like a dog digging up a bone. The earth gave way with ease. In moments, he had worked out a hole, reached into it, and pulled up a wooden box maybe six inches square. He hefted it and then held it out to me.
“Here,” he said, standing up. “It’s everything I got. Take it and get on back home. It should be enough.”
“What is it?”
“What do you think? Gold! Got it fair, Early!” He was shouting at me. “All honest work. No stealing. No killing.”
When I held back, he spoke softer, almost pleading, “Look here, little brother, I did it for you. And for my sister and your Pa. Not for Adam, though I guess he’ll keep the farm with it, won’t he? You just make sure and tell him I’ve taken on his name. That’ll make him wince,” he said with a grin.
When I still didn’t move, Lizzy took the box. From the way she held it, I could see it was heavy. She knelt and put it in her sack.
“What are you going to do?” I asked Jesse.
“If what you say is true, if you brought this man out here to—”
“I didn’t mean … He’s still down below,” I said.
“Then don’t you think I’d best get moving? Somewhere. Maybe to the Gregory diggings. Don’t matter. Out here, people don’t ask much. Unless,” he added, his face close to mine, “it’s their little brother.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“I suspect you’d be too preachy on me,” said Jesse. “All that honesty.” He was hastily gathering up his pot and pan, putting them into the flour sack. Took up his rifle, too. “Anyway I need you to take that gold back. They’ll love you for that.”
I stood there, angry, wretched, bewildered, not knowing what to say.
He pushed past me to the door. “Look here, Early. I’m sorry for what I did. Truly am. Maybe it’ll all work out. And I’m glad you came. We still best of friends, little brother?” He held out a hand. “Yes? No? You going to forgive me? Only got a minute.”
I stood there for a moment, then leaped forward and hugged him. “I just wanted to help you!” I cried.
He dropped his stuff and hugged me back. “Hey, Little Brother, you saved me from a hanging, here or home. You can’t be more loving than that, can you?” He broke away and turned to Lizzy. “He’s the good one,” he said. “The best.” Then he gathered up his sack and rifle, turned, and rushed out.
I ran to the door. “Jesse! Will you ever come back?” I called. “Jesse!” But he was running so he didn’t answer.
Lizzy was at my side. We watched Jesse rip up the path, saw him make a turn heading higher, then disappear among the trees. Automatically we both looked the other way, and that’s when we saw Mr. Mawr and three other men coming toward the cabin. They had rifles in their hands.
“L
IZZY, ” I cried. “It’s Mawr.”
She ran back into Jesse’s cabin and the next moment returned with the pepperbox pistol in both hands. Red hair streaming, green eyes fierce, she lifted that pistol, aimed high in the direction of the approaching men, and pulled the trigger six times.
Six explosions, one after the other. The loudest sounds I ever did hear.
The men, taken by surprise, came to a quick halt, turned, gawped, and fled back down the hill.
Lizzy snapped back her hair and said, “Mr. Early, I can’t hit anything with this stupid thing.” That said, she flung the pistol among the trees.
Oh, my Lizzy was a beauty then!
I dove back into the cabin, grabbed up the sack with the gold, and bolted out. “Come on!” I yelled.
We scrambled off the path, into the woods, running some twenty yards or so before squatting down behind some trees.
I peeked out. Mr. Mawr and the other men were creeping back, but very carefully. They were skulking behind trees, supposing that whoever shot at them was still in Jesse’s place. I don’t think they ever saw us.
“Come on!” I hissed to Lizzy.
We backed off quiet and fast as possible, moving downhill. When we got to the edge of Gold Hill, we skirted around it, then went around the valley. Anytime we thought we’d run into people, we went another way, until we came around to the trail by which we had come from Boulder.
And let me tell you, that gold was heavy.
Constantly looking behind, we made our way until it was too dark to go any farther.
In all that time we hardly talked. It was only when night had truly come—as if, perhaps, Lizzy didn’t want to see my face—that she asked, “Early, did you always know that Jesse robbed the bank?”
“I thought it, but didn’t want to.”
“Starting when?”
“Back home.”
“Why?”
“The night the bank was robbed, I knew he’d gone out of the house. He told me he was on the porch all night. But someone saw him in town. I’ll give him this: he never actually said he didn’t do it. Then he paid his way out here. There was only one way he could have gotten money to do that. I just thought if I got to him, there’d be some way to help him.”
“What do you think will happen to him now?”
I thought for a bit, started to speak, changed my mind, and said only, “I don’t know.”
She gazed at me but asked no more.
In the morning, by first light, we opened the bag, took out that box, and looked inside. It was what Jesse had said it was: gold. Even a few nuggets. It looked much like what you think it would look like: beautiful, glittering stuff, the stuff you dream about.
What a shame the dreams it brought were so hard.
I
T’S NOT really worth the telling about our getting back to Cherry Creek. We got there same as we came, walking. Once we returned to that settlement, the one called Boulder, we kept heading east, traveling mostly by night but always carrying that heavy load. Took us two days to get to Gold Hill. Took us five to get back to Cherry Creek.
We went right to Mr. Bunderly and told him what had happened. Showed him the gold.
“Dear children,” he said, “I don’t know whether to be aghast or amazed!” But with a sigh, he allowed himself to touch it gingerly.
“Mr. Early,” said Mr. Bunderly, “what do you do now?”
“I need to go back to Iowa,” I said. “Bring my folks the gold.”
Lizzy said, “I keep telling him to take the new stagecoach. It costs. But he’s got enough. And it’s faster. Safer.”
“Mr. Early,” said Mr. Bunderly, “I have learned in good times and bad that Miss Eliza is wise beyond words.”
The stagecoach going back East was much faster than coming west!
“I suspect you’re right,” I said.
So that’s what I did. Since we had first started out from Iowa so long ago, a stagecoach company—the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express Company—had begun service from Cherry Creek to the Kansas border. I took a brand-new, red-and-yellow Concord stage east, squeezing into the fifteen-inch-wide spot my ticket bought me. How long had it taken us to come out west? Months! How long did it take me to go back home? Nineteen days to the Missouri River. Truly amazing. Why, I slept in post house beds (three to a bed) each night.
But first there had to be my good-byes to Lizzy. I promised her I’d come back.
“Mr. Early,” she said, with that toss of her hair, “I will wait for you for exactly one year.”
“I’ll come,” I said. “I really will.”