Zachary's Gold (9 page)

My cup was empty and I was cold.

“You let me know, then, but hurry it up. A stiff doesn't get many good opportunities coming his way, you know. I'm going back inside, but you'll like it better out here. Not being unsociable, you understand, but it feels like a real chill blowing in, and that'll keep you, well, held together. Just mind them crows, and keep your hat down over your eyes. Those critters have no sense of decency when mealtime rolls around.”

With my third cup of whisky in my hand, I stood again at every angle to the room and glared at each of the very limited number of nooks and crannies available for inspection. The place could very well have been drawn up in the Hudson's Bay guidebook under the title “A Well Appointed Trapping Cabin.” No log sounded hollow; no piece of furniture covered a hidden pit; no tin or box contained anything but the proper sort of food. I slouched into the chair, cup on lap.

The bottle of elegant Scotch had, by that stage of the evening, done Hell's own business inside my tired brain, and done it well. Apart from my days in the goldfields, I was never much of a drinker, and I suppose the stuff took me by surprise. When I attempted to lean my chair back and swing my feet up on top of the shelves, I overbalanced and nearly wound up flat on my backside. Instead, I kicked the shelves apart with my flailing feet—one of the powder cases landing beside the stove, spreading its contents on the floor.

I had time to utter only one mild profanity before I saw Dead Ned's hiding place.

Between the two boxes was an almost unnoticeable space about an inch and a half deep—a sort of shallow tray, a foot or so square. He had lined it with a pair of perfect white rabbit skins, and on these were placed a stack of paper money and six pocket watches.

After staring stupidly at the tableau for a moment, I reached out and leafed through the pile of currency. It was a mixture of bills—some British and Canadian, but mostly American; all in all, the equivalent of perhaps a thousand dollars.

I then turned my attention to the timepieces. They were arranged in two careful rows of three—two silver-coloured, and four gold—one with a hinged cover over its face. I picked that one up and opened the cover, and as I did so the wheels within jiggled enough to move the second hand a few notches. Up to that moment it had been stopped at precisely twelve o'clock.

Looking down, I realized that the other five watches were likewise stopped at precisely midnight (or noon, if you prefer). Hour, minute, and second hand on each one were exactly aligned towards the top of the dial.

This discovery unnerved me slightly for some reason, and I replaced the device, its cover closed, and took another drink of whisky. After a moment of puzzled thought, I reached out and shifted one of the other watches slightly with my fingertip. Immediately the longest hand tripped forward a few steps and stopped. The same occurred when I shifted its neighbour. They were precision pieces.

But why such careful settings, I wondered? It would be no simple task to line up those eighteen chronometric arms, although time was obviously in no shortage during the long nights of a trapper's winter. Closer examination revealed that the bottom powder crate had been nailed to both floor and wall to keep it from jiggling, even after such a bang as I had administered to it a few minutes before. That was a good deal of engineering to ensure the arbitrary immobilizing of a batch of clock wheels.

Some very peculiar sort of superstition it had to be, I reasoned, and such was not out of character for the men of that region. The darkness of night is so unfathomably black, and the sounds of the wind and the wilderness are so full of suggestion, that eccentricity begins to sprout from the sanest and most logical of men.

It was another man's superstition entirely, but it affected me as well in some way, for I felt disinclined to tamper with the little tray of personal valuables. I speculated, though, that the assorted types of money and the collection of watches were the sort of things that a highwayman might naturally accumulate. Once again, my confidence was bolstered that I had indeed tracked down the man who had absconded with the Ne'er Do Well Company's gold bars.

The thought was not totally pleasing, however, for with it came the knowledge that he had crossed twenty-five miles of mountain on his way home from the robbery, and he might well have stashed his booty anywhere along the way.

It took my liquor-fogged eyes a lengthy time to register the corner of a sheet of paper protruding slightly from under the rabbit skin. I drew it out carefully, shifting the little white fur blanket and setting all the watches in motion. It might take an hour to realign all six. At that point I realized why it had originally been done.

“So now you know,” I whispered to Dead Ned. “I've found your secret, my friend.”

It was a single sheet of good quality paper—five inches by eight, marked with red ink. Two long, wandering lines crossed the page, one small square was drawn near the bottom, and six stars, each encircled, were connected by a dotted line that formed a diagonal loop.

“Your watches are ticking, Ned. I've found your treasure, and it's too late for you to do anything. But maybe you can relax a bit now. You're a suspicious man—careful and suspicious. I'll bet that tonight will be the first really sound sleep you've had in years.”

It took no genius to figure that the little square was the cabin wherein I sat, and the irregular lines a pair of creeks. What lay where the dead man drew the stars I would discover on the morrow.

Daylight was not a pleasant thing, when it next penetrated my senses. As soon as I shifted my weight in the leather hammock bed, I began to suffer the unavoidable after-effects of poisonous quantities of liquor. I remained half-seated, leaned against the log wall until I was certain I would not immediately disgorge my previous evening's meal, and tried to make sense of my surroundings. My brain was like a whirlpool, and as I reached into its swirling patterns, I came up with only random, scattered thoughts and impressions. I remembered discovering the hidden map and the promise of gold bars to be found, but at the same time I recalled standing over the corpse of a stranger, dead by my own hand. It was a poor trade-off of memories, first thing in the morning.

As my thoughts became marginally more coherent, the outlook for the day deteriorated even further. The light that came through the cabin window had an unmistakeable pallid luminescence. I did not need to look outside to know that it had snowed.

Even with a treasure map in one's possession, there are times when it is impossible to feel excited. I managed to pull on my boots, find a cup other than the one I had used the night before, and stumble and slide over the white-sheeted clearing to the creek, where there was hope that I might extinguish my flaming thirst.

The wind had blown in the cold of winter with this early snow, and the shallow creek—only an inch deep in most places where it needled its way between the rocks—was frozen. Desperately I bashed at the surface with my cup until I finally found a deep enough pocket of liquid water to yield a decent drink.

Standing there in my boots and underwear, cup in hand, I felt much closer to being a poor, sick beggar than a rich, young adventurer or a fearless bounty hunter.

It was at that point that I once again remembered that I had killed a man. The fact registered in my mind, then slowly curdled in my belly. It was no longer just the alcohol that sickened me. There was a disruption—an affliction of soul and spirit that could not help but manifest itself in bodily fashion. I had not broken the law of the land, if the truth were told, and before God, who presses a higher standard than any court of man, I could defend all my actions and most of my intentions. Still, there was a bleak uncertainty within me.

Through a screen of branches up the slope, I could see the outline of Ned's body, and at that moment I was glad that I did not have to approach nearer. I had a sense that I had inadvertently become involved in matters too great for me, matters best left to God alone.

The mule had returned and was standing at the edge of the trees, watching me with laid-back ears and a solemn expression. I suppose a man has nearly hit bottom when he receives pity from a hungry mule.

I drank a couple of quarts of water and dragged on my trousers. Even the mental image of a pair of heavy gold bars was incapable of rousing any enthusiasm from me. Work was a better cure. Against one outside wall, between the woodpile and the cabin, was a large stack of dried marsh grass, which I took to be the animal's winter feed. He seemed grateful for it, at any rate, and allowed me to tie him by a long rope to a stake near the cabin. I expected to use him soon, and I had no wish for him to try his chances in the bush again.

After that, I chopped some wood, forced myself to swallow a few bites of bannock, and felt a bit more human. The sun speared through the clouds from time to time, and it appeared that the snow might not last the day. I shouldered my rifle, folded the map into a shirt pocket, and started out for the trapper's line of stars.

The near end of the dotted line lay due west of the cabin, but rough ground and dense underbrush forced me to circle south to approach it. Taking this route, I found that the bottom of my map roughly corresponded to the edge of a large marsh or shallow lake into which several of the creeks in that area flowed. Of necessity, I followed its meandering margin, although it was by no means easy walking. It was often a tangle of snaky willow and alder brush along with the dead spruce and balsam that some previous high water had smothered, and the light fall of snow added to my troubles by disguising the potholes and ditches full of icy water.

It took me two hours or so to negotiate the semicircle to the spot less than a mile from the cabin where the first star was marked. I suppose I was tired, and my feet were surely soaked, but in the full current of excitement I didn't notice these details much.

The map gave me two points of reference with which to find my goal—the place where the creek met the swamp, and a well-travelled game trail, for that was what I discovered the dotted line to be.

I don't know exactly what I expected to find when I got to that point. Obviously there would not be a sign saying
Gold Hidden Here
nailed to a tree, but I suppose I assumed that something obvious would present itself when I reached the general vicinity.

Several times I reviewed the map, even walking some distance down the game trail to ensure that it did indeed follow the route marked by a dotted line. The spot where I returned to stand was not large enough to call a clearing, but it was definitely the opening of the path where it met the swamp, and that was where the bright-red circled star was placed.

I criss-crossed the ground repeatedly, kicking at the snow, gazing up into every tree, and using my rifle butt as a broom to open up the smallest windfall, but I found not the slightest piece of evidence.

I was squatted down at the icy edge of the marsh, grumbling to myself, when I noticed a pair of beaver swimming through the shallows fifty feet from me. Standing up and looking farther into the water itself, I realized that Ned had set beaver traps almost within arm's reach of where I crouched.

I was suddenly afraid that I had discovered the unpleasant truth about my treasure map.

I fairly ran down the game trail from there—a veritable Roman highway compared to what I had just struggled through—and within ten or fifteen minutes had reached the junction of the path and the creek, where another star had been sketched. Now that I knew what I was looking for, it took me no time at all to spot what I expected to find. A pair of marten or mink sets had been laid just up from the stream bank beside the trail.

What I had in my possession, it seemed, was not a guide to buried treasure, but a diagram of a dead man's trapline. He had died, it seemed, defending the location of his traps.

I carried on farther down the rough track that corresponded with the dotted line, but no longer with hurried steps—no longer with eyes wide in anticipation.

The next two stars were placed quite close together at a point that, if Ned's scale and bearings could be trusted, would be about a mile due north of the cabin. Again I found the traps without much difficulty. In the first, I discovered a marten peacefully stretched out, but I couldn't be bothered to collect him at that moment. At the next star there were placed a pair of traps—one close to each side of the path.

These demanded more of my attention, but not because of any hope for gold.

Both traps were empty, but they had been sprung. Not only that, they had been dragged to the end of their restraining chains and thrust into the undergrowth. The ground around each was scratched up as if with some gardening tool, and dirt and snow were scattered on the traps. As if to provide a final insult, between the two was a pile of animal droppings, still steaming slightly.

Although I had never before seen the type of tracks that surrounded the spot—much like those of a marten, but larger, almost six inches in length—I could identify them easily enough. Even before I checked them, I knew that only one animal indigenous to that area would treat the work of human hands with such contempt.

Certain supposed experts would testify that the lower animals do not experience such emotions as anger, hatred, or malice. Such experts have had no contact with the wolverine. The Indians exhibited a deeper knowledge of the beast when they classed it as a fur-bearing devil—an evil spirit incarnated and set loose among the trees. Wolverine are not numerous in any region, but a trapper or a settler would readily decree that one wolverine in a thousand square miles is simply one too many. These creatures feed on whatever is available and will kill whatever crosses their path. Sixty pounds of wolverine is a match for any living thing in the wilderness, including man, for wolverines possess a demonic cleverness that compensates for any advantage that human intelligence might give.