Curse Of The Spanish Gold (The Mountain Men Book 2)

by Terry Grosz

  That evening the Lakota guests and their horses slept within the circle of wagons beside the cooking fires. The next morning another feast of biscuits, honey, cooked mush with fruit, fried venison, and pots of scalding coffee was held in honor of the Lakota. When finished, the men bade farewell to their Indian friends, but not before giving them some more tobacco from Jacob and Martin’s stores. Just as Jim Bridger had predicted: “Bring along plenty of supplies. You will never know when you will need them, especially for Indian trade.”

  But a somber note was sounded by some news passed on to Jacob and Martin at the same time. Their friend Cain, they were told, had wandered away from the tribe after his wife had died in childbirth. He was so distraught that he had left in the dead of night during a violent spring storm, and his Indian friends had never seen him again. Jacob and Martin were upset by the news because they felt that they had just lost a brother.

  That was followed by more bad news. The Lakota under Chief Red Cloud were on the warpath, killing any white people going up the Fort Hall Road. They had had enough of the invasion and were doing what they felt was right in trying to keep the settlers from flooding through, destroying their game and lands. Jacob assured his friends that the people in his wagon train were leaving the Indians’ lands forever and that he hoped they would have safe passage. Chief Many-Horses-Walking told him they would have safe passage, but they should leave before things got much worse. Jacob and Martin thanked their old friends and, after saying good-bye, watched them ride off. They saw Chief Many-Horses-Walking and his son stop on the top of a small rise, wave farewell, and disappear over the horizon. The brothers realized that another chapter in their lives had just been closed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fort Hall, and Dr. Larson Saves the Day

  The following afternoon the wagon train topped a rise, and there in the distance lay Fort Hall. At first excitement reigned at the prospect of visiting civilization once again, but that feeling soon disappeared. The closer the wagon train got, the smaller the fort looked until everyone realized the fort was nothing more than a small trading post. It was located on a barren plain next to a bend in the Snake River and was surrounded by several dozen tepees from members of the Shoshone and Bannock tribes.

  Circling the wagons on a small grassy plain that had not been grazed to the dirt by previous wagon trains and leaving Dave Hall in charge, Jacob and Martin rode over to the fort. They were invited in by several of the fort’s employees and met with the factor in charge of the trading post. To their disappointment, they discovered that supplies at the fort were very low and contained nothing that their wagon train needed.

  As they walked out through the walls of the trading post, Jacob told Martin, “Good ol’ Jim Bridger. If he hadn’t insisted on us topping off with supplies and adding extra, we might be in trouble. All I saw in the way of supplies were mounds of buffalo hides, fresh buffalo meat, piles of moldy jerky, and slabs of half-rancid bacon left by those who came before us to lighten their loads.”

  “I agree,” said Martin. “Those poor devils have nothing we want and are a lot worse off than we ever thought of being. Not to mention, they are surrounded by hostile Indians, and I doubt many supplies they need will be getting through now that Chief Red Cloud is on the warpath.”

  As they passed by some tepees, Jacob noticed a lot of sick children lying around on blankets, softly moaning and crying. Martin grabbed Jacob’s arm in alarm and said, “We need to leave this area. They have white man’s sickness that makes them vomit the black liquid. We need to leave this area of death fast!”

  Jacob remembered a time in the Wind River Mountains when a small band of Shoshone had been wiped out by the white man’s sickness called cholera. With that in mind, he spurred his horse, and the brothers rode quickly back to their wagon train.

  “Hook ’em back up!” yelled Jacob, circling his arm in the air to emphasize the urgency of his command.

  “There is sickness back at the fort, and we need to leave the area fast,” shouted Martin.

  Both men bailed off their horses and began helping the others gather their livestock and hook them up to the wagons. In about thirty minutes the wagons were once again strung out along the trail, heading southwest along the Snake River.

  Later that evening they came to a dividing of the Oregon and California Trails. Remembering Bridger’s instructions, Jacob pointed the wagons toward the trail heading almost due south. After traveling about a mile, they found good grass for their stock and a small creek of fresh water. They circled the wagons near the creek and let the stock out to feed and graze below the camp. Some of the party began the laborious job of trying to find firewood on the wood-scarce plains. Not finding any wood, they finally gave up. Needing fuel for their fires, they began bringing in armloads of dried buffalo dung, which was now also getting very scarce, and sagebrush sticks. Soon several fires were blazing merrily away, and from the comer of his eye Jacob saw Dr. Larson coming his way with a worried look on his face.

  “Jacob,” Howard began, “I think we might have a problem. We need to have everyone boil their water before using it for drinking or cooking with it.”

  “Why is that, Doc?” asked Martin.

  “What you described at the fort back there sounded like cholera to me. If that be the case, we need to make sure all our water is boiled so we don’t come down with the illness. Plus, I took the time to walk a short distance upstream from our camp and discovered that another wagon train had camped there earlier. They may have fouled our drinking water, so now I think it best to boil all water used for drinking or cooking. That should help prevent infection if anyone on that earlier wagon train had or was coming down with the disease.”

  “Are you sure, Doc?” asked Martin, carefully examining the doctor’s worried face.

  “No, I am not dead sure. But from everything I have read over the years about the disease, it seems it is more readily found in filthy living conditions and around fouled water,” Howard answered with a seriousness neither Jacob or Martin had seen in him previously.

  “Well, I don’t want that kind of trouble in our wagon train,” Jacob said firmly. “Martin, you tell those folks to the south of the circle of wagons, and I will tell those to the north about boiling all their water. Be sure and tell them that those are orders from the doctor!”

  The two men made fast work of their mission, and just in time. Several folks were already at the edge of the stream starting to pull up buckets of water so they could refill their water barrels! That evening around a communal campfire, Howard gave everyone a lesson in trying to keep clean and making sure they boiled their water before drinking, eating, or washing dishes. There was some grumbling about needing a cold drink sometimes, but Dr. Larson held firm, as did Jacob and Martin. Death was the only alternative if anyone chose to be careless, to their way of thinking.

  The next morning Jacob and Martin took a ride around their camping area. There was plenty of good grass and water as long as everyone boiled it. They decided to stay the day so the women could do some baking and wash their clothes for the next week. For the rest of the day the men greased axles, repaired harnesses, checked oxen shoes, hauled in what wood they could find, boiled water, and gathered a small mountain of buffalo chips for their campfires. The women washed their families’ clothing, draping it over the wheels, sagebrush, and wagon covers to dry. Then they began baking the next week’s breads, and soon the circle of wagons was full of good smells. Jacob and Martin went into a nearby sagebrush draw and brought back two fat doe deer over their saddles for fresh camp meat to be shared by all. They had hoped for a buffalo, but ever since they had left Fort Hall and headed into the sagebrush country those animals had all but disappeared. In their place roamed the mule deer, elk, and pronghorn antelope.

  That evening the people in the camp celebrated their day’s labors. Jacob and Martin spent their time catching up with and getting to know their newfound kin, learning family stories and more about the histo
ry of their fathers and the two clans.

  Daylight the next morning found the wagon train continuing southwesterly by way of the Raft River. When evening came, the tired travelers were treated to one of Mother Nature’s surprises. A jagged rock formation, looking somewhat like a city made from rocks, appeared along the trail. Since grass was good about one- quarter mile off the trail, Jacob and Martin called a halt to their travels once they reached the good grazing. Circling the wagons, the men unhooked their oxen and let them mingle, feed, and water with the horse and mule herd. Two heavily armed men, Rich Grosz and Mark Webb, took the women and children back to the City of Rocks so they could see the phenomenon close up. On the way back they gathered up what wood and sagebrush limbs they could carry for fueling the evening’s cooking fires. Soon the dancing fires cast many shadows on the sides of the wagons, making the evening near the City of Rocks even more surreal.

  What made that evening even more magical were the stories told to Jacob and Martin about their fathers when they were young men working on their farms. These tales featured their hard work ethic and their ability to shoot the heads off running turkeys. Jacob and Martin smiled at the turkey story because they too were crack shots in their own right. The evening also made for many longing moments for the boys as they realized how much they had missed in growing up without their real dads.

  The following evening the wagons stopped at Goose Creek, aptly named for the large numbers of Canada geese along its banks and in the flooded meadows. While their animals happily grazed in belly-deep grasses, several of the men went goose hunting, killing enough of the large birds for the entire camp to enjoy. Aside from the hordes of mosquitoes, which left many red welts on exposed skin, the travelers had a pleasant evening until about midnight. Then the skies, which had been foreboding for some time and were now jagged with yellow flashes of lightning, opened up, and everyone found their sleeping problematic. It was hard to keep the wagons dry in such a downpour, not to mention the almost continual loud cracks of thunder. The rain fell by the bucket, and soon the two men guarding the animal herd within the circle of wagons deserted their posts for drier places under the wagon tops. In the cool of the next morning, much to everyone’s relief, the camp was almost free of mosquitoes. The coolness also reminded Jacob and Martin that they needed to keep moving for fear of winter’s heavy snows closing the high mountain passes over the Sierra Nevada mountain range before they got there.

  The following afternoon Jacob slowly moved the wagons into the Thousand Springs Valley. Stopping on a hill overlooking the valley, he heard the sound of a horse moving up on his flank. Turning, he saw Martin arriving, looking intently into the valley ahead.

  “What’s up?” asked Jacob, sensing that his brother was on to something.

  “Elk,” quietly advised Martin, not taking his eyes off the brushy area into which the elk had vanished. “Over there by that big patch of willows near the cut in the bank of the stream,” he whispered. Unable to see the elk and not wanting to scare them any further, Jacob held up his hand, signaling the trailing wagons to stop.

  “Lead off, brother,” he murmured.

  Twenty minutes later the two brothers lay on a stream bank overlooking a small herd of quietly feeding and resting cow and calf elk.

  “You take that big cow on the right, and I will take that lead cow looking in our direction to the left,” said Martin as he moved the Hawken at his side into a shooting position.

  Boom—boom went the heavy rifles, and the small herd of elk fled in panic into the dense willows along the stream, leaving behind two fat cow elk kicking their last. After gutting the animals, Martin mounted his horse and rode back to the wagons for help and a couple of horses to help bring back the meat. Leading one pack animal loaded down with fresh meat, Jacob stopped to talk to Dave and Jerry, sitting in their wagons at the head of the train.

  “Have the wagons move to those yonder hilltops overlooking the edge of the valley. That way we will be out of the mosquitoes a bit, and they can circle the wagons there. Plus that gives us a good look over the valley below in case any Indians appear. Then have several of the men, at least six, mind you, bring the livestock down into the valley to water and feed. Make sure they are heavily armed because Martin and I are unfamiliar with the area’s tribes and don’t want any trouble having our critters stampeded off,” he carefully instructed.

  Jacob led the pack animal to the bluffs where the wagons were to circle and unloaded the elk. Heading back down to the stream, he and Martin loaded the rest of the elk and then headed back to the hilltop to unload so the entire camp could partake of fresh venison for their supper.

  “That ought to fill a few cooking pots for several days,” said Martin with a good feeling, especially because he had seen the elk before his sharp-eyed brother.

  “Good eye, Martin. I always did know you would be good for something,” Jacob said with a laugh, spurring his horse out of the way before Martin could get even.

  The brothers rode back down to a quiet, secluded pool on the creek and took a welcome bath, scrubbing off with sand to rid themselves of their many days of caked-on dirt, sweat, grime, and the smell of horse sweat and musty odor of freshly killed elk.

  However, secluded as they were, they had been seen!

  Riding back to camp, they passed the men bringing the livestock down to water and graze. There was a lot of good-natured ribbing as the two groups passed. Arriving at the pile of elk meat, Martin cut out one of the tender back straps and took it over to the Martin Jones camp.

  Kim met him with a smile, saying, “Is that for me?”

  “Well, you and the rest of the clan,” said Martin with a nervous blush. Damn, he thought, I can’t do anything around her without turning red!

  The next morning the wagon train hit the California Trail early. To the northwest rumbled thunder from ominous black clouds still many miles away. Jacob knew the freshening wind told him they were going to get wet before the day was done. Looking over at Martin, he knew his brother’s senses were also reading the weather and telling him the same thing.

  They moved the wagon train into the Bishop Creek area near a grassy flat beside the creek, and not a moment too soon as the storm broke in all its fury, with howling winds, pelting rains quickly turning to hail, and lightning strikes just moments apart all around. Quickly moving to form a defensive circle, the men ran their livestock into the circle of wagons to avoid any loss from a storm-induced stampede. The travelers huddled in their wagons for what comfort they offered. Between the hard work of getting through the rugged canyon they had just traversed, the violent summer storm, no chance for a fire for an evening meal, and the hungry livestock milling nervously within the circle of wagons all night long, no one got much sleep.

  The next morning the wet and tired travelers built several cooking fires from the dry wood scraps picked up the day before along the trail, which had been tossed into canvas tarps carried under each wagon box, and started breakfast. As the campfires crackled to life, many of the women and young children stretched their damp bedding and clothing over the wagon wheels and nearby sagebrush to dry. Several of the men herded the livestock out from the protective circle of the wagons and into a nearby pasture area to let the hungry animals feed so they would be ready for the day’s heavy hauling.

  “We best stay the day and let everything dry out and the animals feed heavy after that hard trip through the canyon. My guess is that they are pretty well spent and hoof-sore,” said Jacob.

  Martin nodded in agreement, as did Dave and Jerry.

  “It would be no good to beat the animals who worked so hard yesterday and have not had a chance to graze until this morning,” said Martin, looking at the threatening rain clouds still ominously poised overhead and flowing in from the northwest.

  “I agree,” said Jacob. “By laying off for the day, that lets everyone dry their bedding and cook ahead for the next few days. Also, we can cook up the rest of that elk meat and prevent it from spoiling.
Let’s canvass all the wagons and see if anyone has stock who are really footsore after traveling that damn rocky canyon. If we find any, we can tie them off in the creek’s mud to cool them off. That will reduce their soreness, draw out the inflammation, and make them less foot sore down the trail.”

  “Hey, we are missing three horses!” yelled Mark Webb from his post guarding the horse and mule herd.

  Jacob and Martin raced out to where the herd was grazing and counted the remaining horses. Sure enough, three good riding sorrels were missing! Without a word, Jacob took a scout one way outside the circled wagons, and Martin went the other direction, looking for telltale tracks that would tell them what had happened to the missing horses.

  “Jacob, over here!” yelled Martin.

  Griping his Hawken, Jacob walked calmly over to where Martin stood, not wanting to raise any more concern among the travelers than they already had. There they were—the muddy indentations of the tracks of three horses leaving the circle of wagons and heading out into the countryside. Without a word and with the curious shuffle-like walk he used when tracking something, Jacob took off cold-tracking the hoofprints. Close behind him was his brother, with his Hawken at the ready just in case they were surprised by the horse thieves. Hard as he tried, Jacob soon lost the horses’ muddy traces less than one mile from camp because of the heavy washing rains from the evening before. But his mind was now whirling. The horses had been walking, judging from the distance between the hoofprints. They were not running as they would if they had been spooked and stampeded by the storm. Looking up at his brother, he saw that Martin had already figured out why the horses were gone as well. Back at the wagons, Jacob called an assembly of the party.