Zurry halted abruptly and wheeled, looking back down the trail behind Jonathan. The dog didn’t bark or growl, merely stood silently as a protective sentinel. Jonathan turned and squinted into the morning sun, looking for what Zurry had sensed, not necessarily seen. Out of a halo of light, a slight figure appeared and raised a hand in greeting. “Hello,” a woman’s voice called.
Jonathan waited for her. Panting slightly, she approached. A tangle of red hair spilled out from beneath a University of Washington ball cap. “I’m Cassie,” she said and extended her hand.
“Miss Cassie, pleased to meet you. I’m Jonathan.” He shook her hand. “This is Zurich.” He dropped his gaze to Zurry.
“Oh, my. What a gorgeous dog! May I pet him?”
Jonathan nodded.
She knelt and ruffled Zurry’s fur. Given Zurry’s size, they ended up nose to nose. He licked Cassie’s cheek.
“What is he?” she asked.
“A Bernese Mountain Dog. A working breed, but he’s very gentle.”
Still petting him, she stood. “You said your name is Jonathan. I’ve heard about you.”
Jonathan gave her a weak smile.
“You’re the one they call Neahkahnie Johnny.”
“I’d be hard to misidentify, wouldn’t I? A six-foot-two black man with snow on the roof.” Not only that, Jonathan knew, but African Americans were truly a tiny minority in Oregon, outnumbered not only by whites, but by Hispanics and Asians, as well.
Cassie laughed. “Dead giveaway.”
“So you’ve heard the stories about me?”
Cassie shrugged. “What? That you’re a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD, or a stoned-out ex-hippie, or a former medical doctor addicted to prescription drugs?”
“Yeah, those.”
“Not to pry, but is there a smidgen of truth to any of them?”
“Probably.”
She waited, apparently expecting him to say more, but he’d already allowed his mind to drift away from her question, and didn’t bother to follow up. Overhead, a hawk circled, a dark smudge against a turquoise sky.
“So,” Cassie said, “I understand you’ve been poking around for the treasure supposedly buried up here?”
“Yeah, me and a hundred thousand others over the years.”
“But there’s nothing, right?”
He studied Cassie, attempting to divine what her interest might be in him, in Neahkahnie, in hidden riches. But he lost his focus and merely shrugged. “Probably just a legend,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not.”
She caught his interest. “Why do you say that?”
“I’m a researcher,” she said, stroking Zurry’s head as he sat patiently beside Jonathan. “I’m investigating Native American legends along the north Pacific Coast. The last few weeks I’ve been talking to Chinooks and Clatsops, what few descendants of the original people I could find, anyhow. The tribes were pretty much wiped out by disease and battles after explorers and traders began to settle near the mouth of the Columbia.”
“As I understand it, the legend of the lost treasure began with the Clatsops,” Jonathan said.
Cassie nodded. “And I gather that pretty much everyone in Oregon has heard the tale. That a great ‘winged canoe’ visited here in the late 1600s and white men toting a large chest came ashore and buried whatever they were carrying. The ‘winged canoe’ was probably a Manila galleon from the Philippines, although variations of the story suggest it could have been an English or French privateer. Anyhow, it’s unclear whether the ship wrecked or merely anchored here temporarily.”
“As the Indians told it,” Jonathan added, “the sailors were accompanied by a giant, dark-skinned man whom they killed and buried with the chest, believing his spirit would protect it until they could return for it.”
“Probably a slave from west Africa or the Caribbean,” Cassie noted.
“Now you understand part of my interest in the treasure, or whatever it was,” Jonathan said.
She didn’t respond immediately, appearing to analyze his words. “I see,” she said softly. “One of your forebears may have been buried on this mountain.” She reached out and touched the sleeve of his shirt. “I’m sorry.”
His thoughts floated away again. He pictured the mariners and the black man struggling up the forested slopes of Neahkahnie, lugging the chest, digging a deep hole, then lowering the crate into it. He grimaced at the next image: the sailors running a sword through the black man—“thanks for your help”—and finally, after he’d gasped his last breaths, tossing his body, like the carcass of an elk, into the hole to be its forever guardian.
Zurry nudged his huge head into his master’s hip, bringing Jonathan back to the present. “So you think the Clatsops’ tale may have some credence?” Jonathan asked.
“Yes. There is evidence that a Spanish galleon shipwrecked near this coast around 1693. That would have put white men and maybe even ‘pieces of eight’ here in the late 17th Century, supporting the Native American stories.”
“What about the buried treasure tales?”
Cassie adjusted her ball cap. She edged out of the shadow of a towering Sitka spruce into a shaft of sunlight, and seemed to transform from a middle-aged woman into a young girl not yet thirty. It was as if a seasoned field researcher were morphing into a college cheerleader.
“All along the north Pacific Coast, Native American tribes possess oral histories of great battles between a massive thunderbird, a benevolent protector of the tribes, and a giant killer whale, the spirit of evil. The battles were said to have caused the earth to tremble and enormous floods to be unleashed from the ocean. Sometimes the Indians would flee the floods in their canoes. But many were killed.”
Jonathan waited patiently, sensing Cassie would get to the point. He watched her eyes intently.
“We now know,” she continued, “that many of these stories relate to a huge earthquake and tsunami that devastated the coast here in 1700. Some of the tales may predate that. There were other great quakes and tsunamis prior to 1700. The point is, these so-called Native American legends turned out to be based on fact, on something that actually happened. So why not the one about buried treasure?” She paused a beat. “Oh, and the part about burying a dead man with the treasure. While Spanish mariners didn’t do that, pirates did, and that’s something the Indians couldn’t have known, so it’s unlikely they made it up.”
Jonathan shrugged. “But no evidence of treasure has ever been found.”
“That’s because it isn’t here.”
Jonathan stared at her. “Say that again.”
She pointed at a large boulder embedded in a fern-covered slope adjacent to the trail. “Let’s sit a while.”
Zurry stood and bounded up the path, slobber flying from his lips. He appeared happy and eager to be on the move again. But when Jonathan and Cassie stopped and seated themselves, Zurry returned, his tail lowered in a sign of disappointment. He plopped down at their feet, raising a small cloud of dust.
“I found one descendent of the Clatsops,” Cassie said, “who remembers a story handed down by his grandfather, and probably his grandfather’s grandfather, and so on through many generations.”
“All orally?”
“Yes. The Clatsop language was Chinook Jargon, or Chinuk Wawa, a trade language used by many tribes in the Northwest. Think of it as the Chinook equivalent of pidgin English, which means the tales passed from generation to generation probably lacked detail. Anyhow, here’s the essence of what I’ve been able to glean.”
She related to Jonathan the legend of a great battle between Thunderbird and Whale, and the death and destruction it had wreaked upon the coastal tribes when the earth shook and the ocean surged inland.
“And you think that relates to the 1700 quake and tsunam
i?” Jonathan said. He struggled to remain focused on Cassie’s narrative.
Cassie nodded. “As I mentioned earlier, some tales may predate even that event. But here’s what’s really important. There’s an addendum to the most recent version of the legend, that is, if you consider three centuries past recent.”
Jonathan hung on every word, hoping Cassie would get to the treasure, or whatever might have been buried near here.
“The account goes on to tell of the chest the white men had buried on Neahkahnie Mountain being unearthed by a ‘river of mud,’ a landslide, I suppose, and being swept down to the beach where it lay half-buried in the sand for several generations. The Indians, of course, refused to go near it, fearful of the ‘giant black spirit’ that guarded it.”
“Always scared of the black dudes,” Jonathan said quietly.
“Any spirit of the dead, white or black,” Cassie added.
“But the chest, what happened to it? It wasn’t just left there. Somebody would have found it by now.”
Zurry lifted his head and looked around as if he sensed something.
“It was found.”
Jonathan ignored Zurry. “When? By whom?” His voice, though he harbored considerable skepticism, betrayed a note of excitement.
“As the Clatsops tell it, or at least Clatsop—it’s a single-source narrative—after three or four generations, white men from the ‘Great River’ discovered the chest, dug it up, and carried it northward.”
“The Great River? The Columbia?” Jonathan fixed his attention on Cassie.
Zurry stood and took off down the trail at a rapid trot.
“Probably the mouth of the Columbia,” Cassie answered. “Anyhow, the Indians, from deep within the forest, watched the white men as they carried the chest away.”
“To where?”
“Now we get to the part that’s hard to interpret. The white men, traders I guess—”
“If the chest lay undiscovered for three or four generations,” interrupted Jonathan, “that means whoever found it could have been from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The explorers spent the winter of 1805-06 near the mouth of the Columbia, and we know they ventured as far south as here.”
“Yes, I suppose they could have been from the Expedition. At any rate, they headed back toward the river with the unearthed box.”
Zurry, from somewhere down the trail, erupted into a spate of furious barking. Jonathan stood to get a better view. He caught a flash of black as a bear, not much larger than Zurry, sprinted across the trail and down a steep slope into the safety of a dense cluster of salal and spruce. Jonathan whistled for Zurry who, reluctantly it seemed, returned to his master and Cassie.
“Sorry,” Jonathan said, “Zurry gets excited if he thinks I’m being threatened. The bear could care less about us, but Zurry doesn’t know that.” He petted the now-panting dog who once more lay at his feet, his huge head resting on paws the size of small snow shoes.
“It’s good to have someone looking out for you,” Cassie said.
“Yes. He’s not only my protector but my best friend.” He paused. “Go back to your story if you would, Miss Cassie. I’d like to hear the part you said was difficult to interpret.”
Cassie adjusted her position on the boulder. “The Clatsops, as I mentioned, watched the white men from a distance. And, according to the tale, the men reburied the chest. But where is the part that’s obscure to me.”
Jonathan stopped stroking Zurry’s head and fixed his gaze on Cassie. “What were you told?”
“That the box was buried once more, this time just inland from the stone fins of the great Whale and the towering sea lodge of the warrior Thunderbird, on the side of a short mountain.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what that means, nor did the storyteller, a young man who’s a student at Western Oregon University. He only repeated the tale as he’d heard it from his grandfather.”
Jonathan lifted his gaze toward the sky and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make sense of the description. The topography and geology of the north Oregon coast, where he’d spent so many of his years, flashed through his mind. To Cassie or anyone who hadn’t spent much time here, the description wouldn’t have made sense, at least in terms of landmarks and their modern names.
His heart fluttered as a clear image formed in his mind. He opened his eyes and turned toward Cassie. “I know where to look,” he said, suddenly abandoning his doubts as to the veracity of the tale.
Cassie stood. “Well, I must be on my way. Good luck with your search. I enjoyed meeting you.” She started back down the trail, but stopped and turned. “Yes, I think you do know where to look.” She waved and disappeared into a shadow cast by the forest.
Chapter Six
Cannon Beach
Cannon Beach, Oregon
Tuesday, June 9
JONATHAN STUDIED the towering sea stack, a vertical column of rock formed by erosion that sat just offshore from Cannon Beach. The monolith’s iconic shape, that of a giant haystack, gave it its name, Haystack Rock. The tide, at low ebb, allowed Jonathan to scout the perimeter of the rock. Because it rose over two hundred feet above the wash of the Pacific, Jonathan understood why the Clatsops could have envisioned it as the sea lodge of the warrior Thunderbird. The concept of a haystack would have been unfamiliar to Native Americans.
As he and Zurry trudged around the rock in spongy, gray sand, Jonathan studied the tidal pools surrounding its base. Filled with marine life—starfish, crabs, anemones—the tiny ponds sparkled in the morning sun like they might have at the dawn of creation.
Several other early risers, a few bearing clam shovels, reconnoitered the moss-and lichen-flecked rock with Jonathan. A half-dozen seagulls waddled beside them. But not for long. Zurry lit out after them in an explosion of wet sand and officious barking. Overhead, feathery cirrus clouds floated lazily near the stratosphere. Despite the nearly clear skies and brilliant sunshine, the air remained cool. So unlike Middle Georgia where Jonathan had grown up, where a June day would have dawned warm and sticky, and any thought of needing a jacket would have seemed laughable.
Now, however, Jonathan cinched his windbreaker more tightly around his neck, warding off the coastal chill. He walked away from the reach of the tide into the softer sand of the upper beach. He turned and looked back at the rock, the Indians’ warrior lodge for the fabled Thunderbird. Beside it stood several smaller rocks, The Needles. Viewed at a distance, one could imagine them as the stone fins of a whale, or the great Whale, as the Clatsops had.
So, if this indeed was the spot referenced in Cassie’s narrative, the white men would have buried the box just inland from here “on the side of a short mountain.” Not a very precise description in terms of distance or direction. Jonathan turned again, this time to gaze inland, looking for a small hill or “mountain.”
It wasn’t hard to spot. A forested hump of land, probably no higher than Haystack Rock itself, rose immediately behind the beach. Its contemporary designation: Haystack Hill State Park. Jonathan had hiked it once. The path through the evergreens and brambles had been steep, rugged, and unmarked—a place unlikely to draw many visitors. But he recalled being rewarded by a spectacular view of the beach and Haystack Rock once he beat his way to the top of the hillock.
He knew, however, that the men with the chest—traders, trappers, explorers, whoever they were—wouldn’t have dragged a heavy wooden box very far up the hill. Nor would they have dug a hole for it on the beach. They would have had enough sense to keep the chest out of reach of storm tides, and therefore buried it a bit inland, probably just beyond the driftwood and small rocks that marked the narrow transition zone between sand and forest.
Except that now, more than forest lay beyond the beach. Civilization had taken over. Roads had been carved through the trees. Homes and cottages lay nestled among the beach pines and sala
l. Boardwalks led from paved parking areas to the fine-grained sand of the beach. Jonathan shook his head in disappointment. The task of finding any “buried treasure” would be virtually impossible, assuming, and it remained a huge assumption, that it had been buried here or nearby and hadn’t been removed. As far as Jonathan knew, there were no reports, either historical or modern, that a “treasure chest” had ever been discovered near Cannon Beach.
He realized he was piling conjecture upon conjecture and embarking on a pursuit of an apparition at the end of a rainbow. He peered down and addressed Zurry. “And that’s the fatal flaw of dreamers, isn’t it?”
Zurry wagged his tail.
Even beyond all the speculation lay a mystery. Why would the men have buried the chest here in the first place? Jonathan considered that and formulated an answer. If the men were from the mouth of the Columbia, as seemed likely if they were members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, or even if they were trappers who came later, getting back to the river would have been a long, difficult slog with heavy cargo.
Or maybe whoever found the box didn’t want anyone else to know. So why not stick it in the ground here, near easily recognizable landmarks, and hope to get back to it someday? Except—conjecture again—they didn’t. The Corps of Discovery, the Expedition, had pulled out in 1806 after wintering over. The fur trade blossomed a few years after that, but it was rough business in primitive country, and who knows what the life span of a trapper or trader might have been.
Zurry remained by Jonathan’s side. Jonathan lowered his hand to Zurry’s head and ruffled his fur. “Looks pretty hopeless, doesn’t it, old boy?” The dog woofed softly, perhaps agreeing with his master. “Well, if nothing else, I’m a determined son of a bitch.” Obsessed, my friends would say. Zurry woofed again.
Jonathan knew that his buddies, the few he had, and detractors, too, considered him three sacks short of a full load. And maybe he was. He’d been shot up pretty bad as a Marine Corps rifleman in ‘Nam. But being in the Marines had been a damn sight better than the existence he’d come from, and a whole lot better than where he would have ended up had he stayed in the South.
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