Zachary's Gold

by Stan Krumm

  First I needed water, and I carried two pots full from the creek, placing one on top of the woodstove, along with the remains of the stew. Next I managed to hack one block of spruce into kindling-sized pieces and start a fire. Lastly, I reached deep into my stores of compassion and used the last of my strength to drag an armload of strawy marsh grass to the mule. The poor beast was tethered on stony ground with little to eat.

  By the time I went back indoors, the cabin was mostly warm, and I felt quite proud of myself, albeit exhausted.

  Half of that day I spent sleeping. When awake, I forced myself to eat a bit, drink water, and cleanse my wound. In the afternoon I sat in the doorway for a while, taking the air and allowing the healing rays of sunshine to work on me, even as they mopped away the remnants of snow. I tried to keep my mind on a positive track—away from the unanswered questions about my current predicament—but the unpleasant truth kept returning to my shadowy thoughts.

  There could be no neutral outcome to this affair. If I succeeded in proving Ned’s guilt by finding the stolen gold, then I would be a hero in the eyes of the law and a tidy bit richer. If I could not prove my suspicions with concrete evidence, however, I would be viewed as a glory-seeking fool who shot an innocent man before the poor fellow could explain himself. Feeling as miserable as I did, I would readily have admitted the latter, at that stage.

  My fever returned with nightfall, and I spent another night fighting with phantoms.

  I slept late next day—a good sign for my recovery. Not so pleasant, though, was the arrival of a new malady—a foul bout of diarrhea. I don’t know how long the trapper had been working on the pot of stew that I had eaten for two days, but I blamed the stew for my gastric distress. I threw it as far as I could into the bushes, pot and all.

  Needless to say, I did not feel terribly energetic that day. Neither could I come up with an obvious next place to carry on my search, so I contented myself with rest and recuperation.

  For matters of diet, I boiled a batch of red beans and potatoes into a tasteless muck, which improved greatly when I threw in the crumpled leaves of certain weeds that were hanging upside down in one corner of the room. Whether he was a real woodsman or only a desperado in disguise, I couldn’t say, but Ned obviously knew something about edible plants. Not many of God’s little green things can hope to make boiled beans and potatoes palatable.

  I no longer felt a soul-sickening guilt when I pondered the fact that I had killed the man, but it was still an oppressive thought, for practical as well as emotional reasons. I wished at least that I had been able to interrogate him before I shot him. At times I felt sure that the fellow could not have been the outlaw I had taken him for, but when I thought it through, my original hypothesis was supported by too much evidence, circumstantial though it was. New questions presented themselves as well. This was a prime season for furs, so why, if what I had in my coat pocket was a map of his trapline, was he using only a dozen or so traps? For that matter, several of the ones I had seen were not even set. Why was the map hidden so carefully? Why would an honest man be so secretive and suspicious about his trapline? Undoubtedly, Ned was more than the simple trapper he wished to appear.

  After rolling all this over and over in my thoughts, I was as exhausted mentally as I was physically.

  To pass the time, I read whatever was available—the trappers’ handbook, which was entirely tedious, apart from the illustrations, and Lamb’s Tales, a most enjoyable volume.

  Turning to the book’s frontispiece, I read the inscription written there and once again regretted that I hadn’t tried my alternate plan when I tracked Ned down—to come upon him openly as a friend.

  Was “Neddy” really lovable? I tried to imagine him fresh-faced, smiling and in love, but I could not. The picture in my mind’s eye showed his smile as a wily grin, and he still held a gun behind his back.

  Seated on the bed with a cup of strong tea, I took note for the first time of the few other random markings across from the dedication. These consisted of four short, curved lines, several inches apart, with a number and abbreviation beside each. Next to the longest line was carefully printed “50 p.,” while “20 p.,” “15 p.,” and “10 p.” were inscribed beside the other segments.

  The “p.” I understood to be the English abbreviation for “pence,” and I thought that these jottings were some type of accounting figures. Perhaps as a child he had thus kept track of his petty debts. At first, I decided it was one more facet of this intriguing character’s history that I would never have a chance to clarify—young Edward as a tiny lad in an English country village.

  Thinking again, I remembered the brief words I had heard him speak and recalled that his accent was not English at all—it was American. Also, the printing was too fresh—done, as a matter of fact, in the same colour ink as my map.

  My curiosity was up. I pulled the dirty, folded paper from the pocket of my discarded shirt and held it in one hand, Lamb’s Tales in the other. Examining the two, I discovered that not only was the ink the same, but each piece of paper was the same size, with a matching blot of ink covering one corner, where evidently the pen had been laid down and had leaked.

  As I moved from the bed to the table for better light, I knew there was a link to be made here that held a great deal of importance, but it remained indecipherable for a time.

  Finally, I began to laugh—chuckling at first, then breaking into a deep and joyful laughter that I found difficult to stop. When at last I gained some control, I strode to the door, swung it wide open, and shouted.

  “I’ve got you, Ned! I finally got you all the way, you mouldy old rascal!”

  Then, leisurely and confidently, I picked up the map and the book, which I held by the frontispiece page. Placing one on top of the other. I pressed the two sheets against the window and observed how the lines traced each other.

  When I set up the ink blots in the corner so the one on the book’s page exactly covered the one on the map, the four short lines aligned themselves perfectly with four segments of the trapline’s dotted path. Each of the little curves began at one of the stars that marked a trap set and wound along the game trail for a portion of the distance to the next star. It took little imagination to guess that the “p.” abbreviation stood for paces, and all that was needed to find the first designated location was to step off fifty paces, or twenty, or whatever.

  And what would I find at each of these points? I was quite sure I knew, but to say I was anxious to view it with my own eyes would be the grossest understatement.

  The only problem was that the nearest cache was most of an hour away, and darkness would be complete long before I could make it back.

  I was still tempted. I had been over the route once, and I had a lantern and matches, but the penalty to be paid if I lost my way in the darkness was too hard. I was weak, the ground was slimy with new-melted snow, and the breeze would likely extinguish my lamp.

  I looked at my watch as if it were a note from my worst enemy. Twelve hours it would be before I could start out. Although my tired body could well use another half day of rehabilitation, the momentary excitement had left a void when it passed, and I felt cheated.

  I thought of a celebration drink to pass the time, but the very smell of the whisky was repulsive to me—sour and medicinal. I contented myself with tea made from more of the trapper’s weeds, and warmed-over potatoes and beans, which by now had developed a crust the thickness of bacon rind.

  Disappointment and impatience led to melancholy, which turned to a feeling of nervousness that I could not shake. I tried to raise my spirits by visualizing my moment of victory as I returned to civilization leading a mule carrying Dead Ned and the gold. People along the street would catch the odour of decay, see the iron set of my expression, and turn silently to follow me with their eyes.

  I would confront Sheriff John Stevenson in the open air outside his offices, with a crowd of the curious around us taking in every word.

  “The
re’s the man. Here’s the gold.” He would look ruffled and confused while he examined my goods. Then suspicion would cloud his gaze.

  “There was loose gold taken along with this, and one of the bricks has had some pieces carved away,” he would say. “Where would they be, Mr. Beddoes?”

  “I undertook the search only after you had given it up, Sheriff,” I would reply with a hint of contempt. “The outlaw must have stashed that portion before I reached him, while you were looking down south.”

  If there was any question that total public support was behind me, I might then and there bare the wolverine wounds and describe the hardships undergone while furthering the cause of justice. No mention need be made of the whisky.

  If there was a reward forthcoming, I would accept it gracefully as my due. If not, I would be no man’s beggar but retrieve at a later date what I had invested in a safe place on my way into town.

  The scenario was satisfying to some extent, but it did not compare with the exhilaration of actual discovery, and it did not help much with passing the time. Three or four times during the night I got out of bed and checked the time by the faint fingers of light that escaped from the wood stove.

  Never in my life had I carried a watch; now I referred to one every other hour. I had claimed it as the finest of the six watches in Ned’s secret drawer, and I appreciated its fine decoration and smooth, heavy feel. I wished only that it would move faster.

  Morning finally came, and found me dressed and drinking tea at the table. When the light was good enough to distinguish between the mule and his pile of feed, I started across the meadow. In one hand I held my rifle, in the other I carried a shovel. On my back, my pack was empty except for Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, with a map between its pages.

  In the poor light, I tripped and skidded my way over the wet grass and clay, but I made good time. By six o’clock I was at the first set of traps—fifty paces away from my initial discovery.

  Where exactly, though, did I first place my foot? How long were my paces compared to those of the dead trapper? When I got there, did I look to right or left? Were the goods buried or cached up a tree?

  I was getting sick of these questions. For weeks and months, I had ordered my life according to the pull of mystery, the glittering unknown, and the thrill of the chase, but enough was enough, and as I stomped out the fifty paces, I yearned desperately for some end to it all.

  At a slight curve in the path next to a large rock, I set down my rifle and began to rummage in the undergrowth on both sides of the path.

  It didn’t take long.

  Five feet from where I had leaned my gun, I swung the shovel against what appeared to be a tangle of fallen spruce branches and heard a hollow, drumlike sound. Under a thin layer of boughs and needles was a wooden box, three feet wide, one deep, and four feet long. It was constructed of hand-hewn lumber but carefully built, with very few cracks at the joins.

  I had trouble manoeuvring the tip of the shovel head between two of the boards, but after that it pried open easily, and I was able to reach the contents, all wrapped in oily cloths.

  Guns.

  There was a Maynard rifle and two identical Henrys. A Sharps buffalo gun with a handsome, carved stock caught my eye, as well as a Winchester like my own, and several more rifles I didn’t recognize, both muzzleloaders and breechloaders. Handguns also had a place in the box—Smith & Wesson and Colt, both army and naval issue, as well as models with more obscure names engraved on butt plate or trigger guard. There were single-shot guns, repeaters, and revolvers, and to correspond with every rifle or pistol, it seemed there was at least one small pouch or box of ammunition, as carefully weatherproofed as the weapon itself.

  I appreciate a well-made firearm as much as any man, but at that particular time, the sight of those worthy machines made me feel a chilly disappointment and a growing anxiety.

  What had the maniac done with the gold? I didn’t want a ton of weapons; the Ne’er Do Well Company didn’t want them, and the sheriff in Barkerville didn’t want them. Who would want them? Had Ned sold the gold to outfit some army of brigands? Had I shot some outlaw general planning to take over the Cariboo goldfields by force?

  I left the guns unwrapped and the case open, and headed off briskly down the trail towards the next spot marked on the map. It was a mile or more distant, but I wager I was there in not more than ten minutes.

  I stepped off the twenty paces so quickly that I went more than the proper distance, and only after fifteen minutes of tedious circling and thrashing in the undergrowth did I discover a small nail keg, half buried in the soft duff of needles at the base of a fir tree.

  I made no attempt to be neat but crashed my shovel head repeatedly onto the wooden lid until it shattered. At first glance inside I was disappointed to see the familiar dirty brown of oilcloth, but when I reached into the keg and grasped the material, I found a double-sided pouch, such as express men use to carry mail. From its reassuring weight, I knew that this pouch was not full of mail.

  I braced myself and lifted it out. When I spread it on the ground and opened the flaps, I beheld two rough gold bars—approximately sixty pounds in total weight and most probably ninety to ninety-five per cent pure.

  I sat back on my haunches and just enjoyed the sight for several minutes, like a farmer surveying a well-ploughed field after a long day of work. Only after that did the memory return to me that a strongbox of loose gold had also been taken in the robbery. No trace of it was to be found, neither in the keg nor in the immediate surrounding area.

  The next box was more easily found than the previous two. Most of the spruce boughs that had originally covered it were scattered by the wind. It was built of rough lumber, as the first had been, and measured about three by three by one and a half feet deep.

  When I had pried the top off, I involuntarily caught my breath. As a matter of fact, I believe I may have stopped breathing altogether for a minute or two.

  I had hoped to find the strongbox holding twenty odd pounds of loose gold, and that I did find. What shocked me was that it was sitting on a stack of a dozen or more assorted other containers, and they likewise appeared to be full of gold—fine to rough dust, rice grains, and nuggets the size of walnuts. The stuff was loaded into leather pouches and canvas pokes, coffee cans, glass sealer jars, and boxes both metal and wood.

  Once my momentary stunned surprise had passed, I lifted them out of the crate and spread them on the ground, guessing at weights as I went. If the strongbox was twenty pounds, I thought, then the jars must each be ten and the largest canvas sack better than thirty.

  When I had emptied the box completely and peered into each individual container, I made an accounting and reached a total of roughly one hundred and twenty pounds of raw gold. Including the two bricks a half mile behind me, I now possessed about a hundred and eighty pounds.

  Rapid arithmetic spun out a figure of fifty thousand dollars. For some reason, my immediate thought was that for that sum I might very likely be able to buy the San Francisco City Hall.

  As if in a dream, I carefully restacked the odd-shaped bundles of wealth into the wooden box. I felt like a child rewrapping his Christmas gifts and replacing them under the tree. One leather poke, filled with a pound or two of small nuggets, I retained and dropped into my pack before recommencing my tour.

  There was one more drop-off point marked on the Lamb’s Tales frontispiece, and that was another half mile distant. To reach it, I had to cross a wide gully with boggy ground and twisted underbrush along its floor, and I twice lost the path completely and had to retrace my steps. On the other side, the route wound along parallel to the gorge, and where it narrowed to a crack I found the trap set—three small traps for marten or mink, all of them sprung.

  Carefully I walked off the prescribed distance of ten paces, then took my shovel and hacked at the bases of the trees and among the clumps of deadfall.

  After a half hour I had no luck at all and was totally mystified. I
had rechecked the map, repaced the distance, and rescoured the ground on both sides of the track, but no box, barrel, or burrow presented itself.

  I had already discovered more than I had hoped for originally, so I should have been happy to abandon the site without regret, but my curiosity had again been roused. It appeared that the deceased miscreant had very deliberately sorted his ill-gotten goods and distributed them according to several types—guns, gold bars, and loose gold (although why he found it necessary to spread them over half of God’s allotment of wilderness I do not know).

  What, then, could he have planted at this last, most distant station?

  It was nearly eleven o’clock. I took a bannock biscuit out of my pocket, unstrapped my canteen from my shoulder, and sat down to ponder what I might have missed.

  I had finished my meagre lunch and arrived at the conclusion that the trapper had at some time past moved this final stash, when my eyes finally lit on a coil of rope draped on the peg of a broken branch of the spruce directly in front of me.

  The coil hung just above my eye level, and leading upwards from it was a six-foot length of rough line and a dun green seaman’s bag that dangled easily at hand, yet well camouflaged. With a leap and a pull I had it at my feet.

  From the feel of the sack I could tell it contained only paper, so what I expected to find within was paper currency, but I was only partly correct. I found two hundred dollars or so in the bag, but more importantly, I discovered there the personal papers of a half-dozen or ten different souls, all of whose fate I could easily enough guess.

  Ned was an even nastier fellow than I had originally supposed.

  Inside a leather tube sewn shut at one end I found the laborious accounting lists of an unnamed miner. Month and day were listed on the left, the weight of that day’s take on the right. At the end of each month a running total of gold on hand was kept. The only declarative sentence on the document was written at the end of May. It said “I do agree and swar that I will hed for home aftr geting 250 ounses.” The last total on the page was “194 oz.”