by Gary Paulsen
He dragged the deer back to where the children had gathered wood and grass. It was nearly dark and Billy was chewing on a piece of half-dried venison.
“Here,” Francis said, “start gutting and skinning and I'll get a fire going.”
“Do we need more meat?” Lottie took the knife he handed her and stood looking at the dead deer with distaste. “It seems as if we have enough meat for a couple of days, and wc—”
“We are on foot,” Francis cut in. “With bad shoes and two people with short legs. If we had horses or even that mule it would be different. Wc could pack food or take turns riding and cover some ground. On foot we're going to be lucky to make seven or eight miles a day. I stood on a hill and could see close on to twenty miles and believe me, there is nothing out there where we're heading. So unless wc come across some horses wc need plenty of food and water now. Start cutting while I get a fire going. Billy, you make us some grass beds up on that ledge. It isn't going to rain tonight so we don't have to worry about flooding. Dig back in a bit and watch for snakes.”
Francis shredded dry grass, took a double pinch of powder and put it on a flat stone next to the grass, placed a percussion cap next to it and struck the cap with a rock. It snapped and set the powder off; the powder flashed and the grass caught.
He put more grass on it, then small twigs, and soon the ledge and rivcrbank were lit with a cheery yellow glow. Francis climbed out of the streambed and was pleased to see that neither the flames nor a glow from them showed above the cut bank more than thirty yards away.
He had taken two steps back toward the riverbed when he heard Billy scream.
“Yaaaaaeeeeee!”
Snake. It was all Francis could think of. battlers hunted at night and they denned up during the day. Billy must have dug into a den just when one was getting ready to come out.
Francis ran back to the edge of the bank and jumped into the streambed.
“Ha'nts!” Billy yelled. “There's ha'nts back in there. I hit a cave of ha'nts!”
“What?” Francis stopped next to the ledge. He couldn't sec anything. Lottie was there, covered with deer blood, holding the knife.
“There be ha'nts!”
“What is a ha'nt?”
“Ghost,’” Lottie said. “He saw a ghost. That's what they call ghosts back home.”
Francis peered under the ledge. “In there? In the dirt?’”
“Look for yourself,” Billy said. “I ain't going back in there.”
Francis peered back beneath the ledge at a slab of limestone. Over countless years the water had cut back beneath it, making a small roofed area perhaps three feet deep. It could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a cave. Not even a hole. But just above the recess the recent rain and flooding had cut the earth away, and when Billy had started to work back in to make a bed the loosened earth above the ledge had given way and a clump had fallen out. There, in that clump of earth, shining in the firelight as if suddenly come to life, was a complete human skull.
Francis jerked back. Then his common sense took over. “It's nothing,” he said. “Just a skull. Probably some old grave.”
“It's a ha'nt!” Billy stared wide-eyed at the skull. “It's full of evil luck.”
“Only for the man who was the skull,” Francis said. “It looks like his luck ran out. You can see the hole in his head.” He turned the skull slightly with a finger and pointed to a small triangular hole in the forehead. “It looks like a lance hit him, or some kind of sharp club or hammer.”
“What's that?” Lottie had come closer and pointed.
“What?”
“Up there, in the dirt. It looks like a piece of steel or something.”
Francis put more wood on the fire and in the brighter light he poked back carefully into the dirt the skull had fallen from. He found a metal edge and pulled at it. At first it wouldn't move and then suddenly it came, pulling dirt and what seemed to be the rest of the skeleton along with it. Francis found himself holding—he blinked—a steel helmet. It was rusted and tarnished and somehow looked familiar, though at first he could not tell why. It was round, with a steel brim that came to a point in the front and back, and had a steel edge down the middle of the top.
“It's Spanish,” Lottie said. “I remember Pa talked about how the Spanish came to this country before the settlers landed back cast, and the Spanish had cities and everything out here. He had a book with pictures and I remember a picture of some men wearing hats like this. He was smart, Pa was.” Her voice became sad. “I miss him something fierce sometimes.”
Francis nodded and they were silent a moment. He looked down at the helmet. “I remember too. My parents had a book in the wagon, and the pictures showed the Spanish had swords and battle-axes. But no guns.” He shuddered. “I wouldn't want to be alone in this country without a gun.”
“There's more.” Billy had gotten over his fear and pointed back into the cavity left by the falling skeleton. “More metal. Sec it shine?”
This time he was wrong. Francis reached once more into the hole and tugged at a corner of metal. He pulled out a bar that he took to be lead. Then he dug his fingernail into it, or tried to, and knew. Oh no, this wasn't lead. He took the knife from Lottie, for once speechless, and he scraped a corner with the blade. The metal shone brightly in the firelight.
“It's silver,” he said softly. “A whole bar of sil-vcr.
“There's more,” Billy said, reaching back into the hole. “A whole lot more.” He pulled at a metal band and a rotten wooden container fell onto the ground, bars scattering around Francis's feet. Not all of them were silver. He caught the sheen of yellow through the dirt and picked one up.
“Gold?” He almost whispered it.
“We're rich.” Lottie tried to say it aloud but it came out a whisper. “Look at it all.”
For a moment Francis couldn't move, couldn't think. It had been so long since he'd really considered money. His life had been all powder and lead and hunting and shelter. Money didn't enter into it. He had never had a dream of wealth. All he thought of was getting through the day—sometimes just getting through the next hour—and the constant thought of somehow, someday, some way getting back to his family.
Now this, he thought. It was almost an irritation. Now this … as he looked at the bars scattered around his feet. There were four silver bars and five yellowish bars. All crudely cast but in rough rectangular forms. Not big, but big enough. He used the knife again and knelt down and scraped one of the yellow bars and found it softer than the brass of his ball mold. The scraped area emerged a wonderful glistening yellow-gold color.
Yes, he thought. It's gold.
Yes, he thought again. We're rich. And then a third thought came, the first realistic one: the gold and silver didn't mean a thing out here and it was a long way, an incredibly long, dangerous and hard way on foot to anywhere that gold and silver had any true worth.
“I wonder how it came to be here?” Lottie said. “All just in a pile like this.”
“Indians,” Billy said. “They must have killed him.”
“And then buried him?” Lottie snorted. “I don't think so.”
“There was somebody with him,” Francis said.
“They had a fight but fought them off, whoever they were. Then they buried this man and—”
“Buried the gold with him?” Lottie shook her head. “Why would they do that?”
“—and buried the gold for the same reason we have to rcbury it. It's too heavy to carry. Go ahead, pick one of them up.”
Lottie hefted one of the bars. “It must weigh close to fifteen pounds.”
“And the silver weighs almost as much. Nine bars times fifteen pounds—that's going on a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Even breaking the nine bars between us we can't carry it far.”
“I could try,” Billy cut in, his eyes shining as he stared at the bars. “We ought to give it a really good try.
“No.” Francis shook his head. “We wouldn't
make five miles and believe me, we have a lot more than five miles to go before we're out of this godforsaken flatland.”
“So what do we do?” Lottie asked.
“We take some of it. Two bars of gold. Then we bury the rest in a different place and we mark it well so we can find it again. Wc head north until wc can buy some horses and wc come back for the gold.”
“We share it?” Billy looked up.
Francis nodded. “Share and share alike. A third each.”
Billy smiled. “How much rock candy can I buy with my share?”
Lottie shook her head. “We'll talk about how you're going to spend it later. Help me with the deer. Wc have to clean it and strip it and hang the meat to dry. And we have to bury this poor man again.”
“Bury him?” Billy looked down. “He's nothing but a few bones and some hair.”
“He was a real person and he should get a real burial, same as anybody, isn't that right, Francis?”
Francis nodded. “We have to hide all this again so wc can find it when wc come back, and that includes burying the man. But not here, not here …” He clambered up the edge of the strcambed and studied the surrounding terrain for a moment in the darkness.
There was a small depression near three large boulders, the depression in the center of imaginary lines drawn from all three stones. X, Francis thought, marks the spot—or a thrcc-lcggcd X.
“We'll bury him in here.” He moved to the dcpression . “The ground is soft and we can find it again.”
“We can dig with these.” Billy came up holding a sword in one hand and the old helmet in another. They were rusty—the helmet had a couple of small holes where the rust had eaten through—but the sword was in surprisingly good shape. The blade was short, perhaps two and a half feet, and wider than Francis would have thought. The sword he had seen in the book had a long thin blade, very sharp, with a basket handle. This one had merely a crosstree to protect the hand, and the blade was more like a long sticking knife.
But Billy was right. It would make a good digging tool.
“Start digging,” Francis said. “Lottie and I will work on the deer meat.”
They had a small fire and Francis hung strips of meat on green sticks over the fire to cook. When they were done and still hot he took some up to Billy, who was digging away, loosening the dirt with the sword and scooping it with the helmet.
It was hard dark now, but a full moon had risen and it threw” so much light that it was easy to sec where to dig.
“That's close to enough,” Francis said. The hole was waist-deep on Billy and about three feet across. “It can't wash out here and the wind can't blow the dirt away down low like this.”
Billy put the sword and helmet aside and sat on the edge of the hole, chewing the meat Francis handed him. “Ain't it strange?”
“What?”
“He was rich, that man. He came along here and he was rich and somehow died so he never got to spend it. Then we come along and find his body and now we're rich.”
Somewhere of Fin the distance a coyote wailed— short yips followed by a long high note. Another answered, mimicking the tone. Francis looked around the prairie in the moonlight and thought but did not say what he knew was the truth. They were a long way from being able to spend the money. There were many things that could happen to make them wind up like the Spaniard, wind up in a hole in the ground.
He shook the feeling off. “Conic on, let's get Lottie and bury him and hide the gold. We have a lot of work to do.”
“How many arc there?” Lottie stared down at the tracks.
“More than five,” Francis said. “The tracks run together. And they're fresh, since the rain three days ago/’
“Maybe only a day old.” Lottie looked hard at Francis.
They had walked less than four miles before coining across the tracks. It had been a soft morning . The weather had remained clear but somewhat cooler—perfect for walking—and the moccasins were proving to be better than they looked. They had used part of the hide from the second deer to make a crude backpack for the two bars of gold. Billy had cut a strip to hold the sword at his side, though he was so short that if he didn't watch it, the tip dragged in the dirt.
Francis had moved out beside the streambed a few hundred yards, so Lottie, who was in the lead, had conic upon the tracks and called for him.
“Horses?” she had said, and pointed. Billy had crouched down to look.
Francis nodded.
“With riders?”
“It's hard to tell.”
“I thought you could track.” I can.
“They don't have shoes,” Lottie said now”.
“Maybe they're wild horses and we could catch one or two or even three.”
Francis had been thinking along the same lines, only a bit more realistically. Unshod horses were not necessarily wild. Indians did not shoe horses, nor were most of the Comanchcros’ horses shod. except for those they had stolen with shoes on. And catching wild horses wasn't that easy either. There was a reason they were called wild.
But Francis had learned from Mr. Grimes, the mountain man, who in turn had learned by studying wolves and coyotes, that you always watched everything; and when something came along that was different, you investigated it.
Francis had no intention of running into Indians or Comancheros and didn't have a clue about how to catch wild horses. But it was still very interesting that suddenly, in the midst of this flat, grassless plain, the tracks of five or ten horses came in from the side and moved up the strcambed ahead of them.
Francis knelt to examine the tracks more closely and found one, with a slight crack in the forward rim of the hoof, that he could identify and study without confusing it with the others.
They were not moving fast, not even trotting. More strangely still they seemed to be moving in a tight group. There was very little space between the tracks and now and then they stopped or moved off to the side a bit and he could sec where they had been chewing at small clumps of bunchgrass.
That was a good sign. Ridden horses were not allowed to stop at every little bit of grass. Maybe they were wild … but that didn't explain why they stayed in such a tight group. A single horse never went off to the side to nibble—it was always the whole group.
“We'll follow them,” he said after a few moments. “They're going our direction anyway. But keep it quiet in case we come up on them.”
And so they walked most of the day, moving quietly, taking turns carrying the pack with the gold. The thirty pounds felt heavier and heavier as the day progressed. They peered around each curve in the strcanibed as they came to it, and it was nearly evening when Francis, who was walking in the lead, froze and held up his hand to stop “Hilly and Lottie. He'd seen something, a slight movement. He motioned them to move off to the sides of the strcambed and wait for him and he made his way around one bend, then another, and when he came to the third curve, a sharp angle to the left, he saw them.
There were six of them. All small Indian ponies, tied together. Or they'd once been tied. Now they were more or less tangled together in a clump.
Francis stopped and studied them, trying to see how it could have happened. They looked rough, muddy, their hair matted and tangled, and some were bleeding from small wounds. But none seemed to have any broken bones; none was dragging a leg.
But where had they come from, and how could they have managed to get this far (however far it was) without killing each other?
They saw him almost at the same moment he saw them and another strange thing happened. Two of them seemed startled and shied slightly, started to run away, but they were all held by leather-rope halters and some kind of picket line that had become so wrapped and crossed that, though the two wanted to run, they were held back by the other four, which were trying to get a drink from a nearly dried-up pool. One of those ponies actually seemed to want to come toward Francis.
He approached them, walking slowly, keeping his arms still and the rifle
down at his side so it wouldn't appear to be a stick or club. They all watched him now, but even the shy ones didn't move away. Wherever they had come from, they certainly weren't wild. Their cars were up—filled with burrs and mud, but up—and they studied him with interest as he moved toward them.
Twenty feet away he stopped again.
“Easy.” He spoke low, almost whispered, but did not hiss. “Easy, easy, ca … sy …”
They held their position. In the end he walked right up to them, held out his hand, took the chin cord on the halter of a compact pinto. Francis grinned when the pinto nuzzled his shoulder.
“You're all sick of this, aren't you?”
Clearly they were trained and just as clearly they were monumentally tired of being tangled in a six-horse knot. They stood gently while he leaned his rifle against a small tree and untangled them, one by one, tying each horse to the tree when he got it loose.
“Oh my, Francis, look what you've found.”
Lottie and Billy came up and even that didn't bother the ponies. “Where did they come from?” Lottie moved to the pinto and began untangling its mane and forelock, taking the burrs out of its ears.
“I'd say Indians,” Francis offered. “Except that I don't know if there are any around here. They might be from the Comanchcros but it's a long way to their camp—unless they broke away from a moving band. Either way I figure they were picketed and pulled loose in that storm, still all tied to the picket line. They must have panicked and run a distance—probably still driven by the storm—and then kept moving in a clump.”
“Comancheros.” Billy looked over his shoulder. “They could be tracking the horses.”
“Could be.” Francis nodded. “But that was a powerful rain. Any tracks were wiped out, and even a Comanchero couldn't track in pure mud. Besides, if they were being followed it stands to reason they would have been caught by now, moving as slow as they were.”
“So they're our horses.” Lottie smiled.
Francis nodded. “We ride, at least for now.” He smiled back at her. “Which one do you want?”
