Soul of a Gunslinger

by Jim Cox

  The boxed-in river didn’t stop Lefty. He simply took to the water, staying close to the west side in six to twelve inches of water. I understand why the miner said they were as far north in the valley as they could go, Lefty thought. There ain’t no place for ‘em to dig.

  The walls along the river continued as the two men and their five horses made their way. Riding in the clear rippling water along scenery of colorful, high rock cliffs on the sides was very pleasant, and the streams from small creeks sliding over the top of the cliffs’ walls into the larger river was breath-taking. However, after a time, it became boring and even upsetting riding through the water. It seemed as if they were riding through a never-ending tunnel. Occasionally, small rapids and waterfalls in the river had to girted, but the horses did fine.

  When two hours had passed in the tunnel, the men were getting worried, wondering how much longer it would be before they’d reach dry ground and could set up camp. Long shadows were being cast from the west cliff, making the river basin appear like nighttime was underway. It won’t be much longer before we can’t see to guide our horses through the rippling water, Lefty thought. They stopped twice to discuss the situation, but they both agreed the only thing to do was to keep on.

  The twilight of the evening had slid past, and nighttime had set-in. It was neigh-on to nine o’clock, and the river tunnel was black; the quarter moon and stars helped some, but not much. Lefty heard Shorty yell and then heard water splashing. When he turned, he saw Shorty lying in the water with his hat floating downstream, and Gray, the horse he was riding, was getting up from a fall. Lefty quickly turned and grabbed Gray’s rein to prevent him from bolting. By this time, Shorty was up, standing in two feet of water in dripping clothes, giving Gray a once-over. As he was getting back on the horse, he called out, “Guess he must-have stumbled on a rock or stepped in a hole. I don’t believe he’s hurt, so we can go on.”

  “We’ve got to find a place where you can change clothes, and I can get a fire going to get you warm. You’ll be freezing ‘fore long in those wet clothes and this cold air…if you ain’t already.” Lefty was right; Shorty was already shivering.

  They were anxious and rode with caution as they continued on through the dark tunnel, looking for any kind of a stopping site suitable to assist Shorty. They knew their horses were dead tired from wading through the water and the chances were fair any one of the five could stumble on a rock or step in a deep hole and fall just like Shorty’s horse had done. If this happened, there was a chance the horse would be injured, maybe even brake its leg and would have to be shot. Lefty or Shorty might even be injured.

  As time passed, the water was becoming swifter, and the temperature was dropping by the minute. They rode on, not knowing what else to do. Not only was the current becoming swifter, but the water depth was now up to the horses’ knees. Both men were miserable. Lefty was cold and hungry. Shorty was freezing; his fingers so cold they could no longer hold the reins.

  Nearly two hours after Shorty’s horse had fallen, Lefty pulled his horses to a stop. Shorty followed. When the horses stood quietly, the sound Lefty thought he had heard was now clear.

  “What’s that sound up ahead?” Shorty asked.

  “Sounds like a waterfall to me,” Lefty answered.

  Shorty shook his head and said with shivering lips, “If we didn’t have bad luck, we wouldn’t have no luck at all. What are we gonna do, Lefty? Our horses ain’t able to climb no waterfalls…they’re dead tired.”

  “I ain’t sure what we should do. Let’s ride on for a bit and see what it’s all about.” Lefty didn’t see Shorty shaking his head.

  Several hundred yards farther on, the waterfall became so loud, it drowned out the sound of the wading horses, and when the men rounded a curve, they could see the water falling from a rock ledge over thirty feet up. Both men thought they had ridden to death’s end when Shorty shouted, pointing to the west cliff, “Look over there, Lefty. There’s a wide crack in the cliff’s wall. Maybe it leads somewhere.”

  It was a tight squeeze, but the horses were able to fit through the crack and climb up a rocky embankment for thirty or forty yards onto a flat area surrounded with trees. A good-size patch of grass was off to one side. Neither man could stop grinning.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Within minutes, Lefty had a fire going for his friend’s freezing body and to shed a bit of light. In spite of standing bare-naked within a few feet of the blazing fire with the tent canvas hovered over his body to catch the heat, Shorty couldn’t keep from shivering. While he stood turning his naked body from front to his backside to prevent being roasted, Lefty got busy putting coffee water on, stripping the horses and hobbling them in grass several yards away.

  When he returned, he dug out dry clothes from Shorty’s bag and took them to him. By the time Lefty had sliced several pieces of bacon and hung them over the fire on tree branches, the coffee water was steaming. He dumped ground coffee into the pot and let it boil for a minute or so; then added a half cup of cold water to settle the grounds and poured two cups. Not long after the coffee was poured, Shorty was dressed and squatting beside Lefty next to the fire eating a bacon sandwich and drinking coffee. “I sure thought we were goners when we came to the waterfall,” Shorty said. “I was about to freeze and couldn’t have lasted much longer.”

  “We’re lucky,” Lefty responded. “I’d given up all hope of surviving.” Shorty poured more coffee and put wood on the fire.

  The day had been hard and long and very nerve-racking, so after drinking their coffee, the men rigged-up their normal nightly tepee with its front a few feet from the fire and hit the sack with the echo of the waterfall rumbling in the background.

  Shorty’s snoring started within a minute or two after he had laid down, but in spite of being tired, Lefty laid wide-eyed thinking about his decision of leaving the ranch and chasing after gold. I made that decision three months ago in early May, and it has already become part of my life’s past, he reasoned. I have to make the best of it now. The taste of gold had led him to this wilderness where no man had probably been, and he wasn’t even sure there was any gold in the area. Thoughts about his ma and brother surfaced. He wondered how they were getting along; if they’d had any problems with the cows and how Bub was gonna get ‘em all tended and castrated come spring without his help. He thought about Louise and Hide back in San Francisco and wondered how Hide’s injury was coming.

  Lefty must have fallen to sleep thinking of his past because a loud clap of thunder woke him several hours later. He sat up listening, trying to determine how bad the storm was. He’d heard folks who were familiar with the mountains, say that mountain storms could be very destructive. Lefty pushed the covers back and crawled on his knees to the front flap. The ground between the two ground clothes was wet from the rain coming in the tepee’s top, but neither bed was wet. Shorty had stopped his snoring, but he was still sleeping in spite of the rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning.

  Lefty swung the tepee’s front flap back and looked outside through the darkness and pounding rain. The ground was covered with a skim of water flowing east toward the river. Luckily, we erected the tepee on high ground beside the tree line, he thought. The fire pit was dead, and their saddles and pack-rack bags were soaked. I hope Louise’s baked goods ain’t ruined, he thought. Lefty suddenly realized something was missing. Where are the horses? Lightning flashed, and this time Lefty looked closely for the horses in the patch of grass north of the tepee where he’d hobbled them; they weren’t there. When the lightning flashed again, he looked south. Still no horses.

  Lefty knew the horses had to be found, that his and Shorty’s life depended on them. Lefty quickly went into action. He shook out and pulled on his boots, strapped on his gun belt, and put on his hat and wool coat. Then he went to Shorty, whose eyes popped wide open when Lefty shook him. “What’s going on?” Shorty asked. “How come you woke me up?”

  “There’s a bad storm taking place, and the
horses are gone. I’m gonna go look for ‘em, but you stay here. There ain’t no need of both of us getting wet. If I can’t find ‘em, I’ll come back after you.”

  “I’ll be dressed and waiting,” Shorty said as he sat up. Lefty picked up his canvas ground cloth, swung it around his head and shoulders and headed out. The blowing rain peppered his face and somehow got inside his ground cloth, soaking his clothes from head to toe. When he got to the area where he had hobbled the horses, he was unable to see any signs because of the darkness, but when the lightning flashed seconds later, he could see their prints in the muddy ground. Then darkness blinded everything again. Even though the horses were hobbled, they had made their way into the trees, somehow. Lefty had no idea where the trees led, but he followed the horse prints bit-by-bit whenever the lightning flashed. When he had walked a few yards, he saw Gray on his side lying on the ground. The horse had gotten his hobbled feet tangled in a tree limb causing him to fall. Lefty removed the limb, cut the hobble bindings, and pulled on his bridle to help him stand. Gray didn’t seem to be injured in any way, so he left the horse standing and continued following the other horse tracks. It wasn’t long until he came to all four horses, standing by a straight-up, rock cliff much like the ones in the river tunnel. Knowing the horses weren’t able to move very far because of being hobbled, Lefty headed back to camp to get ropes so he could create a string for the horses and bring them back to camp. When he came to Gray, he took hold of the halter and led him along.

  By the time Lefty got out of the trees and back to camp, the rain had slowed down, and the clouds were breaking up, showing a flicker of light in the eastern sky. But what really got his attention was the sunrays glistening off of the snow-covered mountaintop. “Pretty, ain’t it? That’s where we’re headed.” Shorty said as Lefty walked up leading Gray.

  Lefty nodded and then asked, “How high-up do you think we are Shorty? It ain’t far to where the trees stop growing.”

  “I’d say we’re three, maybe four thousand feet up. I know it looks close, but I’d say it’s another two to three thousand feet before the trees stop.” Lefty shook his head in disappointment and then offered some instructions.

  “As soon as the rain stops, get a fire going and start breakfast while I go after the horses. I found ‘em hold-up beside a cliff in the trees. I’m gonna look around a bit and try to figure out what we’ve got ourselves into before I bring ‘em back.” Shorty nodded and started after wood.

  Lefty walked back to where he’d left the horses and then walked north through the trees beside the cliff wall. Within minutes the trees thinned a mite, but the cliff wall continued up the mountain as far as Lefty could see with the river flowing rapidly downhill about a hundred yards east of it. Lefty decided to walk to the river and get his bearings, so he turned toward the sun and walked to the sound of flowing water. To his surprise, when he got there, he was up-river from the waterfall, standing on gravely ground, and level with the river. He looked around, studying their situation, trying to determine their location and their best way out. After a considerable time, he concluded, over thousands of years, the runoff of the melting snow from the mountaintop has cut this river canyon out, creating a boxed-in area all the way down the side of the mountain. Our only way out is back through that crack in the wall we came through and back down the river tunnel.

  Lefty started to turn back for camp, but he couldn’t resist the temptation. He stooped at the river’s edge and scooped-up a double-hand-full of sand. After he swirled his hands in the water to get rid of the sand, five gold nuggets remained.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What’s got into ‘ya, Lefty? You ain’t stopped grinning since you brought the horses back,” Shorty said after eating breakfast and pouring more coffee.

  “You ain’t gonna believe it, Shorty!” Lefty said, reaching into his pants pocket for the five gold nuggets. “I’ve got a surprise for ‘ya.”

  “Where’d you get those? We ain’t done no digging yet,” Short shouted out, reaching for the nuggets. Lefty explained where and how he’d found them, but before he could say another word, Shorty stood and bellowed out, “Let’s go. Let’s go start digging. This is why we came all this way.”

  “Hold on, Shorty. There ain’t no need to rush things…we ain’t in no hurry. We’re in a boxed canyon and there ain’t nobody within miles…I ain’t seen a track of any kind.” Shorty sat back down and poured another cup.

  Lefty continued. “We need to take care of things around here and get our belongings dried out before we go traipsing off digging for gold. They’ll be plenty of time for that. The sky has cleared, and the sun will be warming things up before long. I’ll start unpacking our bags and hanging whatever is wet on tree branches to dry. You can take the horses to grass and hobble them.”

  The day lingered. Shortly after high-noon, the sun had dried the men’s clothes hanging on tree branches and dried the landscape. The saddles were still a mite wet, but they’d soon dry out. Louise’s pastries were nothing but mush and had to be thrown away.

  After drinking their mid-afternoon coffee, the men removed the horses’ hobbles, attached lead ropes to their halters, and led them northeast to the river. The strip of dry ground between the river and cliff was only a hundred yards wide in most places and was covered with trees. When the horses had finished drinking, the men walked beside the cliff up the mountain, leading the horses, looking for a place to camp. After walking for nearly a half hour, the cliff curved toward the river and at this point was only fifty to sixty feet from the water.

  Shorty was the first to spot a deep indentation in the cliff’s side. It was about fifteen-foot-deep, several yards long, and high enough for the horses to stand; a perfect place to make camp. Not only was it a good place for the men’s camp, but the trees opened up, allowing the grass to grow beside the cliff for a long distance, making it a good place for the horses. By twilight that evening, all of their things had been moved to their new camp, the horses were grazing, and Shorty nearly had supper cooked.

  While they were eating, Shorty spoke up, “If you don’t mind, I’ll let you wash the dirty supper pans and plates while I go do some panning. Lefty nodded and passed on a big smile. It was long after sunset when Shorty returned and handed Lefty several good size nuggets.

  The next three days fell into a pattern for the men. The horses were watered and re-hobbled in a new patch of grass, and the men had eaten breakfast and drank coffee by first light when they headed for the river. They were panning both sides of the river and took turns on who waded the water. It was a back-breaking job, staying leaned over dipping pan after pan all day long. The cold water kept their hands nearly frozen, but there was no let up to their search. Both men were finding nuggets. Of course, many pans were empty, but some yielded four or five good-sized nuggets. By the end of the three days, Lefty had panned eleven bags, and Shorty had panned thirteen.

  Waking to heavy rain on the fourth day, the men stayed inside their dry cliff hole most of the morning resting their weary bodies. The rain stopped just before noon, so the men ate an early noon meal and headed out. Shorty went to the river with his pan, but Lefty saddled Star and rode through the trees up the mountain slope to see what lay ahead of them. He had ridden for nearly an hour, thinking about the gold they’d panned and how they were going to get out of this boxed canyon when Star suddenly stopped and fidgeted around a bit with his ears pointing forward. “What’s wrong boy? What’s got you riled up?” Lefty got down and started walking in a circle, looking for sign. He hadn’t gone far when he came to a muddy path covered with animal tracks leading from the river going north, probably to the cliff someplace farther up the mountain. He squatted down and studied the signs more closely. There were tracks of deer, elk, and off to one side were prints of a large bear, probably a grizzly. Lefty stood and returned to Star. “That’s what has you all riled up, ain’t it boy. You smell the scent of a bear that’s passed by here.” Lefty had no sooner got the words out of h
is mouth when a thought suddenly came. How did those animals get into this box canyon if it’s totally closed up with no way out? They could have come through the crack in the wall we came through, but they’d have to come through the water and besides, Shorty or me would have seen tracks if they’d come through that area. “I need to find the opening they’re coming through,” he mumbled.

  Lefty stepped into the stirrup and started following the path. It wasn’t hard because the rain had made the path very visible. But that brought another thought. If the prints are fresh and indented into the mud without much water in them, that means the animals came across here fairly recently. Lefty reached down and removed the rawhide safety loop from his pistol’s hammer. He rode on, but by now the trees had a lot of undergrowth. He had traveled fifteen to twenty minutes from where he’d found the animal tracks and was riding as quietly as possible when he heard and saw the brush moving several yards ahead. All of a sudden, a huge grizzly broke through the underbrush, thirty yards ahead, coming at full speed. Lefty was reaching for his gun when Star flared, threw Lefty to the ground, and ran off. Lefty quickly rolled to his right side, drew his pistol, and pointed it at the big beast who looked enormous. One, two, three shots sounded, each one hitting the bear who was now within ten yards of him and not slowing down a bit. Lefty could see blood oozing from the bullet wounds. He thought each shot would have been fatal, but they weren’t. Lefty was still lying on the ground, and the bear was now only a few steps away. The giant animal raised up on his hind legs, ready to pounce on his victim, but he paused with his mouth wide open and let out a loud roar. Without hesitation, Lefty fired his last three shots into the bear’s mouth. Then Lefty rolled several times, anticipating the bear’s mauling, but nothing touched him. He laid still for a long minute and then raised his head to look. The bear was lying dead not over five feet from him. Lefty didn’t get up. He couldn’t. He just laid there shaking like a leaf. All of a sudden, his stomach started churning and then he threw-up his noon meal. A few minutes later, he raised to a sitting position, and as he did, the gun he was holding came to mind; it was empty. He quickly pulled six shells from his holster-belt and loaded his pistol. Then he stood.