Zachary's Gold (32 page)

Farrell returned his gaze to me.

“And now you're here to prey on a poor old man and his wife, are you? Well, well. That's just fine, Mr. Beddoes. What do you want? I have no money. Horses, I suppose. Take whichever you like. Someone will bring it back to me when they've hanged you. Yes, indeed. Don't expect to get far, though. There's a good group of men not far behind you. You might do well to turn yourself in before you get yourself in any deeper. Plead for mercy. There's a magistrate or two that might show you some, if you gave up of your own free will.”

But I had begun to feel considerably more cocky once he admitted that he and his wife were alone there.

“Thanks for the advice. Now I know what you will do if you're ever in my situation,” I chirped. The old man showed neither amusement nor anger at my derisive comment, and I immediately began to feel slightly embarrassed at my own coarseness. I am not, I think, as hard a man as some things in my past might lead a person to believe, and I found it difficult over the next few minutes to maintain a cold-blooded facade, especially to order May Sang about rudely enough to keep up the image of her as my hostage. “Get over there, woman. Get those ropes,” I snarled. “You, Farrell—move the horses outside. All of them!” I kept one revolver pointed at each of them, stabbing directions with the barrels. “Put the rope there. Now come back and get that bag of oats. Farrell, tie the oats on the back of that one there.”

With a mixture of obedience and inner defiance, he followed my orders. When all the horses were properly lined up on their rope leads and the girl and I were mounted, I asked the old farmer for one more thing.

“Whisky. I want a full bottle—unopened.”

He shook his head.

“No such thing. Don't drink the stuff.”

Momentarily I was worried that May Sang had misinformed me. I would need that liquor soon.

“Whisky or gin,” I insisted. “Either you go down to the house and get it, or I go inside looking for it. Maybe I'll have to talk your wife into getting it for me.”

I had struck the right chord, and he walked beside us down to the house, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed. When he went indoors I kept the rifle and one revolver pointed very deliberately at my supposed hostage and watched every window and corner of the building for a surprise attack. All I saw was a brief glimpse of a middle-aged woman—pleasant looking but very fat—as she peeked past a curtain.

Farrell returned in less than a minute and passed me a full bottle of spirits, the paper seal unbroken.

Without a word, May Sang and I rode across the field towards a double-rutted track that led to the road.

We followed the horse path down to the main road, then doubled back to where we had left our own pack animals in the shelter of the trees. There we quickly transferred all the baggage onto one of Farrell's horses, then rode out of the trees, across the road and due south over the open desert hills. With five horses and a mule, we left a trail that a blind idiot could follow, but such was our intention. I knew that I would be pursued sooner or later, but if my followers travelled along the route I laid out for them, and if they did not catch me up too soon, I might still survive the week.

I felt badly about the way I had treated the old couple, for I knew that their life's task of trying to raise a few cattle and vegetables on a barren hinterland was difficult enough as it was, without the intrusion of malicious strangers. Gold seekers and gold robbers will come and go, but if a country is to be made fit for humanity, it will be up to folks like the Farrells to make it so. The loss of the horses must have been a great inconvenience to them, although I had left behind a glass jar with enough gold in it to buy the four best animals in the colony. I had left it sitting on a fence post, for the old man wouldn't deign to touch it in my presence.

I was not in high spirits as we rode, the encounter with the Farrells having left me feeling dirty and depressed. I suppose May Sang must have sensed this, for she proceeded to thank me at great length for bringing her husband safely back to her from the wild Cariboo regions, and to compliment me repeatedly for the kindness and generosity I had exhibited in dividing up the gold. Like any other man, I admire the observant wisdom of anyone who wishes to compliment me, and I listened carefully to her speech.

Unfortunately, May Sang did not stop talking once I had lost my gloomy demeanour, but went on and on, telling how the gold I had deposited with her and Rosh would benefit each individual friend and family member both at home and abroad. She was indeed a strange sort of conversationalist, alternating between wistful silence and unrestrained ramblings.

Finally I interrupted, as much to stop the monologue of genealogies as to ask a question.

“This Evans fellow—how do you come to know him, if he lives so far into the back and beyond?”

“Jack Evans? Well, he is a man of a most colourful reputation—very wild, you understand, and prone to drink and all sorts of foolish excess. Mr. Cox assures me that he is harmless, although he has been imprisoned for lawless behaviour more than once. There was a time, for instance, that he used blasting powder to explode the toilets behind the government agent's office, for no reason at all. I believe he simply enjoys the noise and the flying smoke. Very frightening to the government agent. For this reason Mr. Evans is often known as ‘Blasted Jack.' He comes to Ashcroft House about once a month for beans and coffee and such, and the rest of the time he's out at his ranch. He calls it a ranch, but I think he has three, or maybe four, cows.”

“He just goes down there for supplies?”

“And to drink.” She wrinkled her nose, as if she had detected a foul odour. “Drinking is definitely what Jack Evans does best, but he will suit your plans quite nicely. He is not as stupid as people think. Also he hates the sheriff and spits on Governor Douglas—very bitter and mean, and very sneaky. You and he should work well together.”

She carried on to tell me about how Evans had arrived in the area after being tricked into buying worthless land by a confidence man in New Westminster. The accepted story was that he was the youngest son in a wealthy family and that money was sent to him regularly by messenger, on the condition that he did not show his face among his relations.

I did not pay close attention to her narrative. I cared about the man only as far as he could assist me in my plan, and if he could ride a horse and hide when someone shot at him, then he was capable enough. Being thus deep in my own thoughts, I was surprised when May Sang informed me that it was time for us to part company.

“That is the way you must go,” she said. “Through that gap, and keep to your left where the trail is on the dry creek. When the trail separates from the creek, you follow the creek, not the trail. It will take you up a sort of canyon, maybe a half mile or perhaps a bit more. I was there only once with Mr. Cox when we took Jack home to sober up.”

She had said before that Evans' place was very remote, so it surprised me that we did not travel far that morning. In reality, of course, our starting place at the Farrell homestead was already ten miles from nowhere. We were a long way from any landmarks, but I thought I could follow her directions easily enough.

“I will follow this ridge down past those round hills,” she said “and ride back in a circle, so I come to Ashcroft from the south. The men chasing you will hear about me soon enough, and I will say you let me go when you reached the Fraser, some distance to the south. They should ride off and begin the chase down there. Goodbye, Mr. Beddoes.”

I was not prepared this time to say goodbye, and for a moment I just stared down at the leather horn of Mr. Farrell's best saddle. When I looked up, she had already started to ride away, leading two more horses and the mule.

“Goodbye,” I said to her back.

I watched her ride out of sight until my own horses started to get restless. They hadn't been fed or allowed to graze at all that day, but I didn't wish to stop until I found Blasted Jack Evans.

I couldn't find a good piece of ground to disguise my tracks when I turned north across the fields towards the gap May Sang had pointed out. I trusted that when the trackers reached that spot, they would follow the trail of four animals going southeast, rather than two going north.

An hour later, I reached the dry creek bed; another half hour brought me through sharp gullies and wind-blown clay cliffs to a depression like a giant's thumbprint in the hillside. A section of three-rail fence lay along one side of the meadow. Scattered, spindly pine and poplar formed the opposite boundary, and at the crest of the slope, like a discarded, empty plank box, stood Jack Evans' shack. Beside it was a small corral, where one horse and one cow stood shoulder to shoulder like old friends, watching me ride towards them. When I was still a fair ways away, the man of the house strolled around from behind the shack, and the three of them observed my approach in silence.

“Good day,” I said when we came face to face.

“Hello.” He said it as if it were a question.

“You're Jack Evans.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

He was maybe an inch or so taller than me, not so much skinny as bony. He looked as if he might rattle when he walked. His belt had to be cinched well up to keep his trousers above his hips, and he wore no shirt in the bright sunshine. Down the length of his left arm were the sort of crude tattoos that jailbirds draw with a pin or a sharpened bed spring. I pegged him for the sort of fellow who has been driven by drink to places where civilized men should never go.

I was eminently satisfied with him.

“I'm Zachary Beddoes,” I said, and paused, waiting to see if he recognized the name. He showed no such sign.

“This ain't the kind of place you run into by accident, you know. You don't mind me asking—who told you how to get here?”

His eyes showed a spark of intelligence, in spite of his bedraggled physical appearance.

I shook my head.

“Best if you don't hear the answer to that, Jack. If you don't know it, then nobody could ever make you tell. Easier to keep a secret you don't know, don't you think? I have a job of short duration that I'd like to hire you for.”

“I don't work for nobody but myself.” He said it with a bit of hesitation. I had captured his interest with the hint of secrecy and intrigue.

“It's not really normal work, Mr. Evans, more like a favour I'd like you to do for me.”

“Now why should I do you a favour? Mostly when people ask for a favour it's 'cause they been fool enough to get themselves stuck in trouble.”

I smiled and tapped the bottle in my coat pocket with my knuckles.

“We could have a drink and talk about it, don't you think?”

His face relaxed instantly into a half smile and he ran his fingers once through what was left of his blond hair.

“Don't normally touch a drink before nightfall, what with the animals to tend to and such. Still, it might not be so bad, you know. I been working since sun-up. Should take a morning off now and then. I'm only forty-two, and I could still die young and miss all the joy in life if I'm not careful, you know?”

I tied the horses to the top rail of the little corral. I didn't remove the saddle or baggage, but I cracked open the bag of oats for them and left them enough line to reach the trough of stagnant water that serviced the cow and the other horse.

Evans led the way into the cabin, and we sat on the floor in the gloomy half-light of the windowless building while we passed the bottle. It was almost humorous to see the abrupt change in his attitude once the whisky appeared. We were suddenly fast friends, there was nothing unusual about my unexpected arrival, and he had never had a suspicion about me in the first place.

His shack was a sad little place, with no furniture at all except for a couple of wooden crates, and a solid layer of dirt and straw over the floorboards. After a drink or two it didn't look so bad, however, and my host held forth with great pride about his estate.

“Won it in a card game down south, you know.” He laughed brightly, already loose and a bit sloppy after the third swallow. “Next day, this guy wants his deed back, like. He's come up with some money, you see, and now he wants it back, but no chance. I wasn't giving his land back until I see it for myself. So I can tell what's it's worth, like, you know? I come up from the coast and looked it over, and I been here ever since.” He laughed again, drank again. “Had good offers to buy the place, too. Five hundred bucks, even eight hundred bucks cash, but no way. They like it 'cause it's got good water, and that little canyon on the way up protects it, you know—from Indians, from the weather, all that sort of stuff.”

Dedicated boozers are unpredictable. Some can soak up drink like a sponge and never wobble; others fall over after a whiff of the cork. Jack Evans was fast fading away from rationality, and we hadn't yet talked business.

“Would you like to hear my proposition, Jack?” I enquired, holding on to the bottle for an extended time.

We were leaned up against the wall near the open door, and before he responded, Evans stared out for a while at the clearing in front of his home with a satisfied, lopsided grin.

“Seems to me,” he said finally, “that when a fella takes this long to get around to talking about what he wants to do, usually it means something's gonna get lifted or someone's gonna get hurt.”

Alcohol had not burned his brain entirely to cinders.

“Believe it or not, Jack, there's nothing technically illegal about what I want you to do, but I admit that if the agents of the law discover you doing it, they might not be altogether pleased.”

“Hmmm. Now I don't know you or where you come from, but around here anything that makes the sheriff mad is illegal, you know?”

“I'm willing to pay you for the risk.”