Zachary's Gold

by Stan Krumm

  It was her turn to placate me then, and after a moment or two of silence, she spoke in a soft voice.

  “Leung tells me that you are strong and brave. He says you captured this great mountain of gold from a gang of very fierce bandits. As he understands it, certain corrupt magistrates and sheriffs wish to steal it back from you, and you have been forced to flee from one battle to the next. This is correct?”

  I shrugged, choosing not to contradict my friend on matters of detail. I could tell there was something else she wanted to say, and in a few seconds she blurted it out.

  “A man named William Atherton has been to Ashcroft and all across the country telling lies about you. He shamelessly bore false witness to the effect that you shot two of his friends and stole his gold.”

  I recognized the reference to the scoundrel who had tried to bushwhack us, and I couldn’t help but half admire the way he had turned his failed criminal enterprise into a chance for personal profit. May Sang did not feel such appreciation for his subterfuge.

  “Mr. Cox already knew your name from a Barkerville newspaper, and he said, ‘Oh yes, this must be true,’ and now the whole country believes these lies.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I advised her, then had a disturbing thought. “Did this Bill Atherton say anything about Rosh? Did he say I had a partner? Did he say anything to anybody about a Chinaman? This Atherton was the fellow that shot your husband, you know.”

  Her eyes flickered with a mixture of anger and fear while she thought back.

  “No,” she said finally. “He said nothing of that.”

  I gave her my advice as specifically, as carefully, and as adamantly as I could. She must return to Ashcroft, claiming to have escaped from me. She should say that I was on my way down the canyon towards Fort Hope. Rosh could stay at the cabin alone for a while. In three or four days, she should pretend to have received a message that her husband was on the way back from Barkerville, quite sick. If she let everyone think he had been hurt in a mining accident, not shot, then Bill Atherton was unlikely to make any connection, and she could come and collect her husband in safety.

  She considered all this carefully.

  “What will you do, Mr. Beddoes?”

  I laughed, trying my best to be nonchalant.

  “I always knew this was going to be a bit of a long shot,” I told her. “I still have a decent chance of getting myself and my goods across the border, but I’ll have to try a different route, I think. They’ll be watching for me in the canyon, so I’ll try going across to Fort Kamloops and south from there. There’s a big lake I can follow and a lot of desert country to stay lost in.”

  She didn’t offer an opinion of my plan, but she looked worried. I suppose she realized as well as I that after the excitement of the last few days, it would be difficult for me to escape.

  By the time we let the fire die out, I felt as if we had achieved something a little better than a truce, although I still didn’t know if she genuinely cared about my fate any further than it affected the future for her and her man. Still, she gave me one of the blankets before she wrapped herself around her husband under the other. We all slept soundly until dawn.

  I ROSE FIRST IN THE morning, while the young couple still lay bundled in their own parcel of warmth. I collected my towel from the stack of supplies and personal goods next to the door and stepped out into the fresh, cool sunlight of the first hour of day.

  After washing up, I draped the towel over my head and sat on a rock by the creek-side to watch the sun peer over the horizon, as I tried to think of a better way out of my predicament.

  Travelling south via the Fraser Canyon route was out of the question—too many bottlenecks and too few places to hide where the road hung on to vertical cliff faces for miles on end. Going south from Fort Kamloops would allow me plenty of room to manoeuvre, but it also admitted the distinct possibility of getting lost and starving to death in those broad, unknown spaces. The odds would be even worse if I attempted to cross the mountains and reach the great plains. The only other way out of the Cariboo was the Lillooet to Fort Douglas route. This required distances of travel by steamboat along the lakes, and I would be too conspicuous for the authorities to miss. It is an amazing phenomenon that in this country of great distances and sparse population, news sometimes travels even faster than in a metropolis.

  Waiting would not improve my prospects, however, so I made up my mind to head south, then east that same day. I could be of no further assistance to Rosh and May Sang. Indeed, they were constantly at risk as long as I remained in their presence.

  They were awake, with a fire going and a pot of water heating, when I returned to the cabin. We had no tea to add to it, but we sat together and drank the hot water in silence. The mood among the three of us was sombre. We all recognized somehow that I was about to leave, and the uncertainty we felt was mixed with sadness.

  There was only one thing to do before I took my leave, and to that end, once I had emptied my mug, I picked up one of the short iron bars we used to make a cooking tripod and went outside. I selected a large, gnarled pine tree with a great grey boulder at its base, and I used the bar to dig a shallow hole between the roots. It didn’t need to be big, just inconspicuous at present and easily found at some date in the future.

  May Sang watched me from the doorway and followed me inside when I returned. She sat down beside her husband, and the two of them looked on as I rummaged through our baggage, separating for myself one of the blankets, one towel, one bowl, and so on. Finally, I divided the gold.

  There was no question of being exact, but I assumed that the two gold bars totalled sixty pounds. The loose dust and nuggets weighed in at perhaps a hundred and forty.

  I carried the rest of my kit outside and set it in the sunshine. May Sang took one armload out for me and tried to speak to me, but I asked her to wait until I had all my gear assembled in one spot. When this much was accomplished, I turned to her, expecting some sort of farewell.

  “I have contemplated and speculated, Mr. Beddoes, and in due time I have assembled a sort of plan—something that you may wish to consider before you proceed on your expeditions.”

  I raised my eyebrows. I would hear her out in time, but there was one thing I wanted to finish while my mind was still on it. I asked her to hold her suggestion for just a moment and follow me.

  I made three trips, staggering down the path to the hole I had dug under the pine tree. I carried with me both gold bricks and a good-sized canvas sack full of rough nuggets. May Sang watched with a concerned expression as I dropped the three packages into the little pit and stamped a layer of earth over them.

  “You just leave that where it is for now,” I advised her, “but it belongs to you and your man when you need it. There’s a stamp on each of the bricks from the place that originally owned it, so be sure to scratch that off or pound it out. Maybe you shouldn’t dig it up for a year or so—until you’re ready to leave the area and people have had a chance to forget some things—but that’s up to you.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. This is entirely too much, I think. Leung said only a small share belonged to him. I should speak to Leung.”

  “Speak to him after I’m gone. He’s not strong enough to argue with me, and I don’t want a big fight when I’m trying to leave. Even shares—that’s fair.”

  “He did not earn this, though.”

  “He just about got himself killed.”

  “But this is a huge fortune, and he has only been with you for a few days.”

  We were already walking back towards the cabin.

  “If time and sweat are the measure, then I didn’t earn it either,” I said. “For that matter, neither did the Ne’er Do Well Company. They dug that much up in less than a week, robbed it out of a hole in the ground. I’ve got enough gold to set me up for life. As it is, I just might break that poor mule’s back.”

  “Don’t take the mule,” she blurted out.

  “What?
”

  “You don’t need the mule. I have an idea, or rather Leung and I have discussed this problem, and together we have formed a proposal.”

  It was a plan with two halves, and by the time she explained it to me, I had added enough of my own thoughts to claim a share in it myself. As she saw my interest growing, her eyes shone even more brightly, and we became so animated in our conversation that Rosh called out to us and May Sang felt obligated to go inside and tell him what all the babble signified. I walked down to the creek, then up and down the bank, trying to foresee problems or inconsistencies in the scheme.

  There was more than one place where the plot could be ruined, more than one step that would have to be planned as it arrived, but I had never expected security or predictability in this project. All in all, May Sang’s devious strategy was a definite improvement on my own.

  Once the decision had been made, I was anxious to proceed, so I hurriedly strung my bundles of goods across the mule’s back and saddled the horse. It was a good day for starting out—the confused weather patterns of the past few days having given way to a perfectly blue sky and cool, cleansing sunshine. Even those monotonous hills of sand, sage, and scrub pine had a beauty about them.

  At last I turned to the cabin. I had no great practice at saying goodbye to friends, but I recognized the solemnity and the importance of it, so I couldn’t disappear without formalities. When I entered the room May Sang helped Rosh to his feet, then took a step or two backwards.

  I reached out to shake his hand, and with a stern, dignified look on his face, he took both of mine in his.

  To some extent I had rehearsed what I meant to say, but now the words came out differently than I had planned.

  “I’m leaving now, then. Goodbye, Rosh. I thank you for your work, your assistance in my endeavours. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner, and I couldn’t have made it anywhere near this far without you. I think maybe I should apologize, really, because I know that I haven’t always treated you with due respect. I always meant to act squarely with you, I think, but sometimes I become impatient and I fail to be kind. I trust you’ll forget those things. Maybe you didn’t even understand some of my harsh words, and that’s all the better. Anyway, I’m off to the coast, and then back to my home in California. I wish you could come along the rest of the way, but that’s impossible, of course. Still, I think I might make it. I’ve lightened my load, and I’m over the worst part of the journey, so I have a pretty good chance. One thing you should know: if anybody catches me, sheriff or outlaw, they’ll never hear about you from my lips. I’ve still got some running to do, but you should be fine now. If you can keep away from drinking and bragging, you’re free and clear.”

  The moment I finished speaking, Rosh began his own speech. He was long-winded and probably eloquent, although the only words I could pick out were the names “Rosh” and “Barkerville.” Nonetheless, a good deal of meaning can be discerned from a squeeze of the hand and an intonation of voice, and I was deeply affected. His stern expression remained, but as I watched, several tears ran down the man’s cheeks. One landed on the back of my hand.

  When he was done with his farewell address he nodded, and I helped him to sit down again on his bed.

  “Goodbye, Rosh,” I said.

  “Goodbye, Rosh,” he replied in his best attempt at English.

  I turned and walked outside, with May Sang following behind. She touched me on the shoulder as we reached the animals.

  “Do you wish to know what Leung said to you?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I answered.

  The first part of the plan involved stealing Mr. Farrell’s horses—not just one or two, but all of them. May Sang thought that would total four or five. By the time Farrell made it on foot to the road and from there to Ashcroft, I would be well clear of the resultant activity.

  The initial idea had been to bring the horses over the ridge trail and load my gear onto them there at the cabin, but I pointed out that that would bring the first trackers right up to their hideaway. My Chinese accomplices were clever enough, but they hadn’t as much experience with devious theories as I, and they had missed a few elementary flaws such as this one.

  May Sang and I led our animals down the creek, parallel to the road going east, then circled back to a spot we judged to be just below the main farm buildings. There we tethered them and unloaded their burdens, then headed off over the wooded rise. It was easy terrain for travelling cross-country, and within a few minutes we were at the edge of the clearing, trying to see signs of activity.

  Smoke came from the chimney of the main house two hundred yards away, but no one was visible there or at the big barn half that distance in front of us.

  After a minute we took a deep breath and ran across the clearing like frightened coyotes until we were behind the barn, out of sight from the house. The building had two wide double doors, facing each other on the north and south walls. When we stepped through one of these, we found ourselves in a central work area, with feed and storage rooms to the right and animal stalls to the left. I turned to inspect these, and four horses—three dark, one mostly white—returned my gaze expectantly. They hadn’t yet been fed.

  I walked from gate to gate, wondering where to begin, when a voice boomed out behind me.

  “What’s all this then? Who are you?”

  I spun around to face a stout, red-headed man with a feedbag at his feet and a rifle in his hands. I couldn’t speak. I felt the rush of blood up my neck and into my face and thought, “This is it. I’ve been caught.”

  My next jolt was when May Sang scampered three or four steps forward and pressed her back against my chest so suddenly it almost knocked me over.

  “Stand back, Mr. Farrell!” she shouted, “or this villainous highwayman will surely shoot me.”

  I quickly pulled out a revolver and pointed it at her side.

  “Oh misery and woe!” the girl wailed, “This is an evil man that has me in his power.”

  Farrell held his rifle across his chest. He now appeared to be as confused and unsure of himself as I was, but I managed to regather my wits first.

  “Just stay calm and move slowly, Farrell. Put that rifle on the ground. I have no wish to harm the girl or you.” I tried to sound as conciliatory as a priest. In reality, I was far from calm, for I had neglected to ask May Sang how many farmhands, sons, or brothers I might have to face in an emergency.

  He paused for a moment, then answered me thoughtfully.

  “I suppose you must be Beddoes, the gunman from the goldfields.”

  It was easier to confuse one of these homesteaders than to frighten him. Farrell stood still and peered at me closely, but he showed no inclination to put down his gun.

  “My oh my,” he said “you certainly have created one mighty big ruckus around here. And now it’s come home to me. My oh my!”

  I listened for approaching footsteps and strained my eyes, trying to look at both the big double doors at once. I wished madly that May Sang would give me some indication of how many others I should look out for. I could surely have shot this single potbellied farmer before he could point the rifle at me, but for all I knew, there could be an army behind him in the dry storage bins.

  “Put the gun down,” I whispered acidly.

  He seemed to remember all of a sudden that he was holding it, and leaned it gingerly against a rough wood half-wall.

  “May Sang, are you all right, my girl?”

  He took a step forward to see her better in the gloomy half-light, and both she and I said “stay back!” simultaneously.

  “I am fine,” she continued. “He has not harmed me thus far.”

  Farrell returned his gaze to me.

  “And now you’re here to prey on a poor old man and his wife, are you? Well, well. That’s just fine, Mr. Beddoes. What do you want? I have no money. Horses, I suppose. Take whichever you like. Someone will bring it back to me when they’ve hanged you. Yes, indeed. Don’t expect
to get far, though. There’s a good group of men not far behind you. You might do well to turn yourself in before you get yourself in any deeper. Plead for mercy. There’s a magistrate or two that might show you some, if you gave up of your own free will.”

  But I had begun to feel considerably more cocky once he admitted that he and his wife were alone there.

  “Thanks for the advice. Now I know what you will do if you’re ever in my situation,” I chirped. The old man showed neither amusement nor anger at my derisive comment, and I immediately began to feel slightly embarrassed at my own coarseness. I am not, I think, as hard a man as some things in my past might lead a person to believe, and I found it difficult over the next few minutes to maintain a cold-blooded facade, especially to order May Sang about rudely enough to keep up the image of her as my hostage. “Get over there, woman. Get those ropes,” I snarled. “You, Farrell—move the horses outside. All of them!” I kept one revolver pointed at each of them, stabbing directions with the barrels. “Put the rope there. Now come back and get that bag of oats. Farrell, tie the oats on the back of that one there.”

  With a mixture of obedience and inner defiance, he followed my orders. When all the horses were properly lined up on their rope leads and the girl and I were mounted, I asked the old farmer for one more thing.

  “Whisky. I want a full bottle—unopened.”

  He shook his head.

  “No such thing. Don’t drink the stuff.”

  Momentarily I was worried that May Sang had misinformed me. I would need that liquor soon.

  “Whisky or gin,” I insisted. “Either you go down to the house and get it, or I go inside looking for it. Maybe I’ll have to talk your wife into getting it for me.”

  I had struck the right chord, and he walked beside us down to the house, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed. When he went indoors I kept the rifle and one revolver pointed very deliberately at my supposed hostage and watched every window and corner of the building for a surprise attack. All I saw was a brief glimpse of a middle-aged woman—pleasant looking but very fat—as she peeked past a curtain.