Zachary's Gold

by Stan Krumm

  After he had found a better way to manoeuvre a cupful of water into my mouth, Rosh delicately unbuttoned my shirt and undershirt, and exposed the wound inflicted by the wolverine a couple of weeks earlier. The look of horror and revulsion on his face told me everything I needed to know. The chafing of the packstrap had stripped away the surface layer of skin and scab, and now the area was a pulpy mass of pus and blood. I was assaulted by an overpowering fear and panic.

  I was a walking, breathing clump of infection. It had been three days since I had even examined my shoulder properly, let alone cleaned or cared for it. The poison had seeped inward from my wound and it now flowed through my body unrestricted. I have not, either before or since, felt such a sensation of fear. Nothing is so frightening as sickness—the invisible demon warrior that comes from without and within, and can only be chased away, never defeated.

  I don’t know how I managed to return to sleep, but I must have done so very quickly. When my restless flurries of dreams and hallucinations next abated, the Chinaman was once again forcing me to drink. Why so much water? I thought. Why so much water? I was already soaked to the skin.

  Again I slept, and again awoke. The fire was low, mostly coals laced with occasional flame. My companion was curled up under his own blanket at the edge of our pale circle of light. Shifting my position slightly, I could see shapes on the ground just past my feet—my boots, and my revolver.

  I gauged the distance to my revolver, stretched out my arm, and wiggled my fingers towards it. If I could reach it, I would shoot the Chinaman before he could stir. It was a matter of self-defence, and revenge as well. First, though, I needed a bit more rest.

  My eyes closed and opened again to more water being pushed at me. He was up and had his boots on, although it was still dark. At first I thought I could see the beginnings of daylight, but the extra brightness came from the fire being more built up. The horror of night would never end. The water felt good on my throat, though, and when I slipped back below the surface of sleep, it felt more like I was relaxing, rather than returning to a great unconscious battle.

  Although I had wandered in and out of wakefulness all night, when I next awoke I felt that it was the first time I had reached full consciousness. The day had dawned, the sky was bright blue above me, and I felt like I was neither burning nor freezing. My relief was great but short-lived.

  Rosh was gone.

  A person can somehow sense the difference between momentary separation and the emptiness of being absolutely alone. Stretching my neck a bit, I could see the spot where the mule had been tethered for the night, just past the boulder facing me. Rosh was gone, and he had taken my gold.

  He would never make it. I would catch him.

  I looked down to see my boots and my Colt .45 still at my feet. I would catch him and when I did I would blow the traitor’s head right off his shoulders. He had a head start, but even if I laid up and recuperated for a full day or even two, I would make up the ground before he could reach the Thompson River canyon, because I would be travelling light and angry, while he struggled along under a greedy robber’s double burden. He could have saved himself by taking my gun and boots, but he was complacent and in a hurry, which he would live to regret.

  I slept.

  It was dark when I regained consciousness. Somehow, I was going to have to care for myself for the next twelve hours or so, while my body destroyed the invading poison and my arm regained its strength. I would have to keep the fire alive, refill the water pot when it was empty, and scrounge a bit of food from somewhere. Then I would start after the Chinaman.

  With my right hand, I daintily lifted my shirt front to inspect my wound. It was developing a foul odour. I found my underwear to be solidly attached to the grey dried skin of the infection and knew that I would have to swim until the water soaked the material away.

  I prepared to sit up, a move that required the use of both arms to some extent, but my left limb would no longer shift at my command. I touched it with my good hand but there was no feeling left at all. I might as well have been prodding at a chunk of pork. My arm was no longer my arm.

  For the first time in my adult life, I wept bitterly—partly in fear, partly in frustration. I would not recapture my gold. I would die here, alone in the wilderness. Probably the fever would burn me to death before I starved, but one way or the other, there was no question of recuperating and chasing after my turncoat partner.

  My panic was so great that I was unable even to retreat into sleep. At times, I would try to reassure myself by saying that the great weight of my anger and hatred could accelerate the recuperative process and renew my strength, but one cold touch to the dead meat on my left side quickly deflated such postures. I was dying.

  Soon I became aware of the return of the fever in full force, and with the fever came my fear. At the periphery of my understanding was a knowledge that I could scarcely bear to face—that this night would be my last on earth.

  It was a welcome release when blackness absorbed me.

  It took a great deal of time and effort to decide whether what happened next was reality or painful dream, as Rosh propped me against his chest and levered my mouth open to make me swallow the most foul-smelling liquid I had ever encountered. If my metabolism had been more vital, I believe I would have vomited, but as it was, I let the horrible brew trickle down into my stomach and tried to make sense of this dream. Was he supposed to be helping me, or had he returned to torture me still further?

  It was the centre of night. Sharp stars burned above me; a campfire crackled at my left. Rosh kept me leaning against his own chest and peeled away the clothing from my upper body, anointing me with another liquid that somehow managed to exude a stench even more disgusting than the stuff he had made me drink. Gazing past the cloth in his hand, I saw the flames flickering and dancing in the night blackness.

  He had pursued me into hell.

  He would not, it seemed, allow me to sleep in peace for any length of time that night. I was continually dragged from my rest to quaff more of his horrible potion, then subjected to repetitious ablutions in the other noxious liquid.

  The disgusting odours and taste of Rosh’s concoctions did not improve over the next couple of days, but by the time I had regained enough strength to resist their administration, I had been forced to admit their almost magical efficacy, and I accepted them willingly, albeit with revulsion. I cannot guess the nature of the components of those medicines, but I am living witness to their miraculous ability to carry a man from the brink of death to reasonably good health in three nights and two days.

  To my great discredit, I did not, at that point in time, feel particularly grateful. My physical pain was accompanied by an overwhelming malaise, and even when I was able to rest more comfortably, with the alternating numbness and ache in my shoulder being replaced by an itchy tenderness, I felt a constant irritation. I was annoyed by the delay I had caused, and I was angry at Rosh.

  I no longer harboured any delusions about his treachery or duplicity. Indeed, I recognized that I owed him my life. I was irritated, though, by his attitude, as I perceived it. I would have felt better if he had chastised me for holding up our expedition, but he did not. He tended to my needs with a bland patience. This is not to say that he showed any particular sympathy for me. He ignored me most of the time, whittling at sticks or wandering around the clearing, humming discordantly to himself until it was time to fix my medicines. He treated me as he would have treated the mule if it had developed an ailment, and he had been forced to return to his old encampment and bring back medicines.

  He was not angry; he was not sympathetic. I could only assume that he was gloating, and that bothered me a great deal. His face often seemed expressionless to me, and he did not exhibit his feelings in any way, but while I lay there, watching him and brooding over recent events, I became convinced that he was basking in the glow of his own success. He had every right to gloat. He had gone from cabin boy to captain almost ov
ernight, and on top of it all, had proven his moral superiority by remaining faithful to me, even after I had showed him no consideration or respect.

  Each time I awoke, I found him watching me. He would greet me with a word that I initially took to be Chinese but later realized was his simulation of “hello.” Presumably, he was also able to say “goodbye,” but the occasion did not arise for him to make use of it. To pass the time, I made an attempt to teach him a few more words of English, but he brushed it aside, revealing that he was not always as patient as I had thought. He was satisfied with a six-word English vocabulary and preferred to whittle, juggle pebbles, and mumble to himself.

  At sunrise on the morning of our fifth day at the Cornish Lake camp, I arbitrarily reset my watch, which had completely unwound. At first, I called it seven o’clock but then decided that was a little late and changed it to six. I then wound it. Taking the map from the side pocket of my pack, I spent some time examining it. The line I had drawn for our projected course was already obsolete—a fact I found unreasonably distressing. Resisting the temptation to call Rosh and have him point out our position, I finally guessed where we must be and the route we would now have to take. I couldn’t find pen and ink to mark it down, though, which also irritated me.

  My partner watched me carefully while I did my share of the packing, and as we sat in the morning sunshine, each chewing on a slab of bannock, he evidently concluded that I was well enough to do some walking.

  Only when he came forward to return them did I realize that he had taken from my pocket the nine coins that symbolized my share of the gold. I was still eating, seated on a rock, while he carefully counted them into my hand, from one to eight. The ninth coin he held up for me to see, then dropped it into his own pocket and smiled.

  I scowled briefly, then shrugged and stood up to leave.

  On the one hand, I had paid him—for three days’ doctor’s wages—enough money to build a hospital. Then again, I reasoned, I had bought back my own life with only a tenth part of my fortune. It wasn’t a bad bargain. I would have conceded four times as much without argument. I began to feel some of the gratitude that I knew I owed my travelling companion.

  We could not hope to cover much territory on my first day, but we knew we needed to reach the Willow River and make lower ground as soon as possible. The snow on the Cariboo Mountains behind us crept lower each day.

  WE TRAVELLED SIXTEEN OR EIGHTEEN miles that first day—an excellent distance for a convalescent. It was fairly easy ground, down the Willow River to a main junction with a tributary not named on my maps, then up this stream to the opening of Beaver Pass. The descent was gentle, the valley fairly wide compared to the gullies and crevasses higher up, and the trail, while occasionally rocky and occasionally wet, made for easy walking. We stopped three or four times, and Rosh always waited for my signal before standing up to move again. He momentarily showed his disappointment when I signalled that I had had enough, although there were still a couple of hours of daylight, but he quickly set to work making camp and would accept none of my help. He knew as well as I that our rate of progress would be established by how much my battered body could endure. In spite of the feelings I had experienced on my sickbed, there was now no sense of competition between us. For my part, I was too tired to attempt to regain any of the status I had lost.

  I was able to make myself a very comfortable spruce-needle bed, and I felt one step closer to rejuvenation when we started off next morning.

  Up to that point, we had not met up with anyone, although in several spots we saw or heard evidence that mining was taking place close by. Beaver Pass was populated to some extent, and several active claims were strung along its five-mile length, but since it was also a fairly well travelled route of passage to the main road south, I thought we could slip past anyone we found there without raising suspicion by being unsociable.

  The closer we were to Barkerville, the more dangerous it would be for me to be seen. My notoriety may or may not have seeped from town into the hills, but here it would be disastrous if someone was to recognize me and note my passage, especially in the company of a Chinaman—an unusual enough thing to make me easily followed, should the law choose to do so. Once I was south of Quesnelle Mouth, I would achieve the anonymity of the highway traveller, but until then, I would avoid speaking to any man, and I would keep my face in the shadows.

  Where the pass met with Lightning Creek and the main road south, there stood a roadhouse that sold meals and provisions. I would have paid a hundred dollars to wash up in a basin of hot water there and eat a plate of potatoes and eggs, but it was out of the question. We thought it best to leave the path a quarter mile before this, so we cut across the hillside and avoided coming within sight of the place. It might have been the hardest mile of travel on the whole journey, for we did not follow even the faintest game trail but simply burrowed through bush as dense and tangled as spiderwebs. We had to fight with the mule every step as well, so it was not surprising that we were less than alert when we stumbled out onto the main road. Crashing and cursing, we blundered out about twenty feet away from a man on horseback who had paused to see what the commotion was about.

  As had been my habit of late, I chose the worst possible course of action and ignored the fellow completely. I could have bettered the situation by nodding to the man and handing him even the flimsiest lie, but instead I adjusted my hat, scrambled out of the ditch and kept walking, while he stared at us in bemused fascination. He was going north, so I didn’t need to speak to him or see him again, but I had a terrible apprehension that our brief meeting would be elaborately described to anyone the man met.

  The road from Barkerville to Quesnelle Mouth was a poor one, but any road at all was an improvement over the rough trails and creek beds we had followed to that point, and the countryside was pleasant—solid forest of pine and spruce, with enough birch and poplar to bring variety and give scattered tokens of autumn colour. The weather in the afternoon was cool but not cold, with solid high, dark cloud cover threatening rain but never delivering more than an occasional spatter. My mood brightened, and I soon forgot the man on horseback.

  We had travelled for fifteen uneventful miles past Beaver Mouth, hurrying past Wingdam and the workings there along Lightning Creek, when just before sunset, as the prospect of stopping for the day was already beginning to appeal to me, I spotted three deer grazing where the forest met the road. I saw them before Rosh did and stopped him with a raised arm. For a moment we stared at them, and they returned our gaze, wondering if we were something to be feared. I pondered how long it had been since I last ate real meat, then motioned to my partner to come around to my side of the mule and take the .30-.30 and shoot. I did not think it wise to use my tender arm any more than absolutely necessary, but Rosh frowned and shook his head. I wanted to persuade him, but he stubbornly refused to look at me, and I couldn’t count on the game to stay put much longer, so I slowly unslung the rifle and pumped a shell into the chamber.

  Still looking behind them, the three whitetails started into a quick stroll away from us, and I shot the smallest one just behind the shoulder. I wondered whether Rosh was uncomfortable with guns, or was he perhaps squeamish about the business of killing animals? As if to answer my question, even before the echoes had died away he was on one knee beside the young doe, slitting her throat neatly, then dragging her by her hind legs farther into the bush, where he began to gut her. He wasn’t squeamish, but he evidently could not or would not use a rifle.

  I led the mule and carted the backpack up the hillside into the trees until all was well out of sight of the road. Then I found tinder and kindling, started a fire, and flopped exhausted onto the ground. Rosh arrived, carrying the animal’s heart in one hand and a good part of a hind quarter under his other arm. I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke, I was presented with a birchbark platter covered with two or three pounds of meat, all of which I ate. I knew I would probably feel ill and develop the trots, but I thought
it was worth the discomfort, and I noticed that my travelling companion took a portion nearly as large as my own.

  We slept well but began the next day in haste. The smell of snow was unmistakable in the cool breeze, and the grey wool clouds above us veritably bulged. We hadn’t travelled more than a mile before the first wet flakes began to fall. Soon the air around us was thick with floating, swirling snow, and within ten minutes the ground began to whiten. I tried to remember what the date was and guessed that it must still be only in the first half of October, but in the mountain country, high above the plateau, any month can bring a blizzard.

  I had hoped to make it down from the mountains and past the river junction and the settlement at Quesnelle Mouth, but it soon became obvious that it would be a short day and poor passage. It was small comfort to know that the snowfall would disappear, probably within a day, for the chilling wetness soaked our clothes and blanketed the trail with an inch of slop that made the track difficult and treacherous. Even the mule looked miserable—head back, ears down, trudging along at half his usual pace.

  Once we were completely soaked, mind you, we didn’t feel any inclination to stop and rest, so we carried on almost without a break through the morning and early afternoon.

  We saw no one else on the road that day. As we passed Cottonwood House we kept to the far side of the clearing and were chased briefly by a trio of loudly barking dogs, but I was little afraid that anyone would brave that weather just to see what had stirred up the obnoxious beasts.