by Phil Truman
“Well, why’d you stop?” Goat pressed.
Buck sighed, and then looked at Goat. “It’s a hard thing to explain, and it still gives me the shivers when I think about it.” He put his pipe back in his mouth, drew in some smoke and then went on. “Now I never put much stock in any of that ‘curse’ talk, but here’s what happened to me.
“One day I was out looking, as I did pretty regular back then. It was in November. A rainstorm had come through the night before and left it cold and damp. The woods dripped, and dark thick clouds still filled the day. Anyway, I was climbing up the side of this wooded hill. My feet kept slipping on the thick fall of wet leaves, and I had to grab saplings as I went so’s not to slide down the hill. All of a sudden, this feeling come over me that I was being watched, so I stopped and looked around. Didn’t see a thing. I then noticed how quiet it had got. Now in November in the woods around here you don’t hear a lot anyway, but this was beyond that. No birds, no wind, no nothing. It was down right spooky. And things just didn’t smell right.
“I tell ya, I’ve done a fair amount of hunting in these woods, and when a bear or a cougar or bobcat came around, I knew it; even came up on a small pack of wolves once. But this wasn’t like them times. Something in the woods was watching me that day, and I had no idea what. What I did know was that a little voice inside was yelling at me to skedaddle.
“So that’s what I did, and I ain’t gone back to look for that treasure since. Don’t really care about that sort of thing any longer, though. I figure I’ve got all I need right here. I wouldn’t know how to act if I’uz rich, anyway.”
“Interesting story.” Goat handed the framed picture back to Buck. “So whadda you think; that treasure really exist?”
“Oh, it’s out there, awright,” Buck said. He took a few sucks on his pipe, filling the air around them in billowing clouds of pungent smoke.
Goat shook his head and laughed. “You’d think in a hundred years, someone would’ve found it; if it was real,” he said.
Buck nodded. “Mebbe folks looking didn’t have the right information on its whereabouts.”
Goat scratched the side of his face, and smiled at Buck. “Are you saying there’s a map?”
Buck grinned around his pipe stem, and chuckled a bit. “Not exactly, but let me show you something else.”
Buck turned the picture frame over and started moving the four clips to the side. He removed the cardboard backing, and took out a yellowed piece of paper folded in fourths. Goat leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. Buck carefully unfolded the paper.
“Ed must’ve known he was skating on thin ice with his occupation and life-style, so he wrote this letter. My Gramma Starr said they found an envelope in amongst Ed’s things after he was killed which was addressed, ‘To Ned Starr on the event of my dying.’ It was sort of Ed’s last will and testament. My Gramma Starr kept it tucked behind this picture, and I left it there when this frame and picture was passed down to me.
“Let me read it to you.” Buck took his reading glasses out of his front shirt pocket and put them on. He cleared his throat.
Sept. 22, 1905
To my cosin Ned who is the only famly I care about and also my only frend.
If you are seeing this then I guess I am ded.
You will find that all them storys that are going around about the stuff I took from my ma and got hid are true. I am riting this becuse I want you to have it after I have done died. Ther is a map that I got hid that tells you wher my loot is hid but I aint givin that to you in this hear leter as I do not want it falling into the wrong hands.
I will tell you in a way I figger you will know what I am saying but wont no one else.
Out at W.S. go to the bent sicamor where we got drunk onest and almost drowned. Go in the directon to wher old S.T. lives and look for 2 hills. Walk to the hill on the left and go to its top. If you look east, there is a cliff about 3 mile off. Go to that cliff and look along it til you see some rocks that makes a picher like that animal you would not never hunt for. Just to the right of that is a cave door but it is hid by some rocks. It is about halfway up on the cliff. That is the cave where I put the map to ma’s loot. It is in a tin box at the back.
Ned you was always like a broter to me.
Yours truly,
James Edwin Reed
Buck carefully folded the brittle piece of paper back along its creases; put it back in its place behind the picture, re-assembling the backing to the frame.
Goat sat staring at Buck with his mouth open. Finally, he grinned and said, “Well, ol’ Ed was a careful man.”
“Yeah, I expect he was, right up until the minute he got shot and killed,” Buck said, and both men laughed.
“So what did your grampa do with this information,” Goat asked.
“Don’t know for sure. Everyone who knew Ned figured he knew something. And word soon got around about the letter Ned got. Most figured it told Ned where to find Ed’s stash. Granddaddy Starr must’ve thought his life was worth more than that treasure, so he told everyone that the letter was personal, and that he had burned it.
“My Gramma said, after word got out about that letter, people followed Ned everywhere he went, thinking he was going to lead them to Ed’s treasure hideout. Granddaddy was a pretty good woodsman, and Gramma said several times he would catch some fellas following him, so he would lead them on a goose chase until dark and leave them lost in the woods. Some of them never were seen again, and the ones that come back said they never wanted to set foot in them woods and hills again.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” Goat asked.
“Don’t know. Maybe it was the same feeling I got. There’s something in the woods around here that scares people, and has for as long as people been living in these parts. Like I say, the Cherokees and Choctaws got legends.
“My Gramma thought the so-called treasure had a curse, too. Anyway, that’s what she said my granddaddy said. He probably started saying that to keep people from looking, but the truth is, she didn’t think Granddaddy had much interest in finding the treasure, and she didn’t think he ever really went looking for it. He told her, she said, that having gold gave a man more trouble than comfort. Interesting, though, that he didn’t destroy this letter.”
Goat leaned back in his chair stroking his chin. “I’m thinking with you having that letter, you must’ve been able to find the cave the map is supposed to be hidden in.”
“Well, I tried a few times, but I never could decipher what ‘W.S.’ meant or ‘S.T.’ Plenty of hills and cliffs around here, and several had possible animal pictures on them, if you used your imagination. Not even sure what kind of animal to look for. But I never located any cave in a cliff face, anyway. Whatever Grampa Starr knew about that treasure, he took it to his grave.
“And I tell ya, I don’t know if there’s anything to that curse thing, but I do know every time I went out looking for it something peculiar would happen. Sometimes it was simple things that stopped me like bad weather, or broken equipment. Whatever it was, it always seemed like something kept me from it. Could’ve just been coincidence, but I don’t know.”
Goat nodded and smiled.
When Lorene and Sunny came into the room, the conversation changed. Lorene walked over to open the living room window remarking that they needed to let some of that fresh spring air blow through the house to get rid of Buck’s stale tobacco smoke. Then she sat in her straight back rocking chair and looked at Goat.
“So tell us what you do for a living,” she said to him.
Chapter 3
Ed Takes His Share
February 3, 1889
The sound of the horse drinking at the water trough awakened Pearl. When she looked out the window, she could see dark splotches on its neck and mane, perhaps blood. She finally realized the horse was Venus, her mother’s mare, and it seemed to have injuries.
Pearl got up from the bed, went to the door and opened it. “Ma?” she called out into the col
d afternoon. The only answer she got came from a crow cawing somewhere down by the river. The air stood still and damp; a scent of impending snow seemed to fill it. The mare turned its head toward her and neighed softly. Pearl grabbed her shawl by the door, and wrapped it around her as she headed for the saddled mare. The animal seemed skittish at her approach, jerking its head upward with wide whitened eyes. She looked cold and frightened.
“Easy, easy. Whoa,” Pearl coaxed softly as she reached for the loose reins dragging the ground. She examined the blood spots on the mare’s neck and could see only a few turkey shot-sized wounds. A smear of blood ran down the horse’s shoulder, and Pearl could tell it wasn’t the mare’s. “Mother?” she called again, this time with growing alarm, looking frantically about.
Big, soft snowflakes had started slowly floating down, when Pearl found her mother. Back at the house, she’d hitched Clod, the big bay mule, to the wagon, and headed toward the landing of Hoyt’s Ferry on the north shore of the Canadian River. With the rider-less mare showing up, Pearl knew her mother must be somewhere between her home and the ferry crossing. The only way back to Younger’s Bend from Fort Smith was to use the ferry to cross the river near Whitefield. Three miles from the house, Pearl found her. She lay beside the narrow road with a light covering of snow over most of her, except for those large shotgun wounds in her back, neck, and face. The blood remained warm enough to melt the snow’s collection upon those places. However, Pearl held no doubt her mother, Belle Starr, was dead.
She loaded the body into the wagon and headed back up the road to Porum. Whitefield was closer, but Porum had an undertaker and a sheriff. Besides, in her current state of mind, Pearl didn’t want to have to endure the incessant yakking and questioning of Bud Hoyt’s ferryman, Cecil Loudcrow. Cecil was the best way for news to travel in those parts.
“Whur’s Ed?” the Sheriff asked Pearl.
“I ain’t right sure,” Pearl answered. “I ain’t seen Ed in over a week. Him and Ma got into it about something and she took a horsewhip to him. He cussed her good, and lit out.”
“Izzat right,” the portly sheriff said, nodding. Then he spit into the brass spittoon next to his desk. He knew about the hostility between Ed and his ma. He also knew about the whippings, as he’d personally witnessed one. Belle had found the boy, then a teenager, inside the Porum Saloon sharing a whiskey bottle with Big Elsie, and chased him out onto the street with a bullwhip. She laid into him over and over, Ed on the ground wailing and begging her to stop. Even though the sheriff regarded Ed as a no ’count and mean little bastard, he had tried to make Belle stop the whipping. But she pulled a pistol on him and said it was between her and Ed, and she’d shoot him, meaning the sheriff, if he interfered. Everyone knew about Belle’s explosive temperament, and it didn’t take much imagination to believe she would do what she said. The man cared much more about his life than Belle’s and Ed’s differences, so he’d stepped back.
The sheriff figured Ed Reed was a prime suspect in Belle’s killing; on the other hand, so were about ten other people. Belle wasn’t a popular woman around those parts, and there wouldn’t be much mourning at her passing. It didn’t seem to him that investigating her murder would be a good use of his time. But he did have a civic duty to uphold the law, and there was an election coming up, so he decided he’d arrest Ed Reed for the murder of Belle Starr, the next time he saw him. And that’s what he told everyone, including Pearl.
When Pearl returned to Younger’s Bend from Porum after depositing her mother’s body at the undertaker’s, she found Ed in the cabin sitting in front of the fire staring into it.
“Ma’s dead,” Pearl told her brother.
“Yeah, I heard,” Ed said.
“How’d you hear?” Pearl asked. She wasn’t entirely unsuspicious of her brother.
“Cecil Loudcrow told me,” he said.
“How did Cecil Loudcrow know?”
Ed shrugged and didn’t say anything for a few seconds, continuing to stare into the fire. Finally, he said, “He says he talks to crows. Maybe they told him.”
Pearl walked to the fireplace and put her hands out to warm them. “Sheriff Connelly said he was going to arrest you for killing Ma,” she said. “Did you kill her?”
Ed didn’t say anything, so she looked back at him. “Did you, Ed?” she asked again.
Ed looked up at her, his eyes dark and sunken in his fire-lit face. “Cain’t say the thought never crossed my mind, but no, Pearl, I didn’t kill her.”
Pearl nodded and turned back to face the fire. They both kept silent for several minutes, and then Pearl said, “I wonder who did?”
The only sound in the cabin for half a minute was the pop and hiss of the burning wood. “I think you better leave here, Ed,” Pearl continued. “That stupid sheriff in Porum may decide to get up a posse and come after you. He’s lazy, and I don’t think he much likes you. He’d just as soon see you hang for Ma’s killin’ as anyone.”
“I’ve already been thinking about that, Pearl. I’m riding out in the morning. But before I go, I want to settle up with you. You know, Ma had a lot of loot stashed around here. She told me where she kept most of it. Well, I divvied up what I could find, and I put your share in on your bed. I kept a little more than I gave you, but that’s because I want you to have all the land and live stock and the house here at Younger’s Bend. I figure you’ll get a pretty fair price if you decide to sell.”
“How much you leaving me, Ed?” Pearl asked.
“Close to fifty thousand dollars, I reckon. That ought to keep you going for a good long while.”
“Well,” Pearl said. She turned her backside to the fire. “I expect so.” Then she added, “Where you going to go?”
“I thought I’d head up north a ways; see if I can’t mix in among some of them Starrs up around Tahlequah; some of old Sam’s kin. I’m gonna take Clod to pack my stuff. I figure John Christie will sell you another mule.”
Just before daybreak, Ed had all his belongings, along with his share of Belle’s gold, silver, and paper money, packed up on Clod. He tightened the cinch on his gelding, and then turned to Pearl. He looked at the ground, then the sky, then his sister. “Well, goodbye, Pearl,” he said. Neither was sure they’d ever see the other again.
“I think I’m gonna bury Ma out here under that hickory tree, rather than in town,” Pearl said. She turned and indicated the large tree forty yards from the left corner of the front porch. Then she surveyed the whole homestead, looking last down towards the river. “Ma liked it out here, especially in the fall.”
“Yeah,” Ed said.
Pearl opened up then, and started sobbing uncontrollably. Ed put his arms around her and patted her back. He didn’t know what to say, so he just stood there and let Pearl cry. After a few minutes she slowed and then stopped. Ed kissed her on top of her head, then he mounted up and rode off without saying another word to his sister, pulling along the lead to Clod.
* * *
Ed heard the sound of a Winchester levering a round into the firing chamber, but the late afternoon sun came from the same direction as the sound, so he couldn’t see who held the rifle. He pulled up on his reins and held up his left hand. He slid his right hand cautiously toward the holstered Colt at his waist.
“Name’s Ed Reed,” he said loudly into the glaring sun. “I come up from around Eufaula looking for some of my ma’s kin.”
Ed waited for several long seconds before he got a response.
“Who’s your ma’s kin?” The voice sounded like that of a boy.
“She was married to Sam Starr. Her name is Belle Starr.”
More time slipped by in silence. Finally, the boy voice said, “Sam Starr was my uncle. I know who Belle Starr is, but she ain’t kin. She just married my uncle. I don’t like her much.”
“Well then, you’ll be happy to know she’s dead,” Ed said. “She was shot in the back and kilt yesterday. I had to hightail it out of there, because the sheriff is thinking I was the one w
ho shot her.”
“Well, did ya?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not to me, it don’t.” The boy walked around to the left side of Ed’s horse out of the sun’s glare. He pointed his rifle at Ed from about ten feet away. Ed took the boy to be about fifteen or sixteen.
“Your folks got a place around here?” Ed asked. He still kept his left hand in the air, and his right on his pistol handle. The boy didn’t say anything. He just kept his rifle leveled at Ed’s chest.
“’Cause I sure could use a hot meal. I been riding and pulling this mule since sunup. And I ain’t stopped to eat all day. My horse and mule could use a rest, too.”
The silent stare continued from the boy.
“Of course, I’d be willing to pay your folks for their trouble,” Ed added. He smiled trying to show he meant to be friendly.
“You got money?” the boy asked.
The smile melted a little on Ed’s face and he moved his right hand back to grip his pistol. “Some,” he said. He was thinking he could slide off his horse to his right, draw his pistol, and fire at the boy under the horse’s neck. His horse might take a slug, but under the circumstances, it was his best chance. He was seconds away from putting that plan into action, when a man’s voice came from the trees.
“Henry!”
The boy looked toward the tree line, but he still kept his rifle pointed at Ed. The man emerged from the trees carrying his own rifle, but in one hand at his side.
“Lower the gun, Henry,” the man said. Then he looked up at Ed.
“Sorry about the boy, mister. He’s had some bad personal experiences with white men, so when one of you rides across our land, Henry here don’t care for it.”
Ed put both his hands on his saddle horn and nodded. “You folks Cherokee?” he asked. The man nodded. “Well, I ain’t looking to cause no trouble,” Ed continued. “Like I told the boy, I come up from Eufaula looking for some of my ma’s kin. Your boy there says Sam Starr was his uncle. I reckon that makes you his brother.”
