Red Gold

by Robert D Kidera

  We reached the western rim of the canyon an hour or so later. It was heavily treed and promised favorable cover, but the trail to the canyon floor could only be seen in spots. The sandy ground and narrow gauge convinced us to walk our animals down. Jose’s horse limped badly now; it bucked several times and balked at the switchbacks. I led my horse and the pack mule down, and then walked back up to assist Jose with his injured mount.

  As soon as we reached the bottom and hobbled our animals, we heard voices from above the canyon rim. One man, who shouted in English, ordered others to take up positions. At this point, I thought we were done for.

  I motioned for Jose to follow me as I scouted upward along the canyon for an escape route. But the steep walls, layers of sandstone and basalt cut by a few veins of rhyolite, offered no exit.

  The canyon’s other end was no better; it was clogged by debris and branches left there by floodwaters.

  We were trapped.

  But then I stumbled against an overgrown foot-high pile of stones. They were part of a tumbled-down wall that formed a rectangle beneath the vegetation. They rose no higher than my knees.

  The squat remains of a chimney and a cabin wall stood at the rectangle’s far end. Its large hearthstone was barely visible beneath heaps of fallen rock.

  “My friend,” I told Jose, “we will make our stand here.”

  Jose looked puzzled. Before I could explain, a shot crackled from the canyon rim above us. Then more shots, as men poured lead into the canyon.

  Soon, the firing stopped. Nothing more happened until early evening. By then the air felt cooler and light at the canyon floor had begun to fade. The birds moved about in the trees and their calls filled the canyon as dusk approached. We settled down behind the remnants of the cabin wall, and scanned the rim as best we could.

  Jose asked me if I thought the men had given up and gone away.

  I told him they were probably waiting until cover of dark to attack us once again.

  Before I could say more, another volley of shots sounded along the rim. For ten minutes that could easily have been a lifetime, all of Hell’s fire broke loose above us.

  But none of the bullets struck anywhere near us.

  The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and a fog of gunpowder settled over the canyon. Voices called back and forth above us, mingled with the cries of frightened horses.

  A single voice called out a command in what sounded like the Keresan language, I couldn’t be sure. A series of hideous screams raised the hair on my neck. A faint echo of horses’ hooves ebbed into the distance. Then silence…complete silence, except for a few high-pitched complaints from birds in the canopy above.

  Jose and I remained vigilant and fearful on the canyon floor for the rest of the night. We said more than our share of prayers in that darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Second Day

  July 17

  Our fears had abated somewhat by sun-up, but our hunger had increased. I told Jose to take the animals to a small stream that trickled along the bottom of the canyon and give each of them a cup or two of our dwindling supply of feed grain. For the two of us, jerky and hardtack would have to do once again. Afterward, we refilled our canteens and led our animals out of the canyon.

  When we reached the rim, Jose and I set eyes on the most horrific sight we had ever beheld: bodies of five white men lined up in a row upon the ground, five boots with five human feet piled nearby; each of the dead men was missing his left foot.

  I retched, but managed to steady myself. Jose was not so lucky. Tears came to his eyes afterward and he asked me why someone would do such a thing.

  “Oñate,” I said. Jose had never been to school, but he knew well the tale of the great and treacherous Juan de Oñate, Spanish explorer and governor of this land when it was a province of New Spain. The land we stood upon once belonged to the Acoma people. After defeating them in battle in January of 1599, Oñate had taken their women and children away into slavery, and every captured Acoma adult male lost his left foot to a Spanish sword.

  The shooting at dusk had been a revenge killing. After more than three hundred years, part of that ancient score had been settled.

  Whoever had tracked and killed these men would know about us as well. But with Jose’s horse still limping on its damaged hoof, we couldn’t have outrun a desert tortoise.

  Suddenly, a band of a dozen mounted Indians emerged from a dry wash less than one hundred yards to our north. They approached carefully. Most had rifles; a few carried spears. Wearing full tribal garb, they rode in a single line abreast. An old man rode in front.

  I told Jose to remain close to my side, let me do the talking, and—most important—show no fear. Our guns were sheathed in our saddle scabbards. I raised my right hand as a peace gesture. The Indians stopped ten feet from us.

  I saw no welcome in their eyes.

  The old man, with a red bandana around his neck and a rough, deeply lined face, was clearly leader of this group. He sat in front, bolt upright on his mount, and looked us over.

  My knowledge of Keresan was rudimentary, but I took a chance and bid them welcome. “Guw’aaddzi!” I noted a flash of surprise in the eyes of the old man, the one this band would call their cacique.

  He responded in Keresan and asked why we were in this place. He punctuated the question by spitting on the ground at my feet. I didn’t budge.

  I told him our names. When I introduced Jose Ramos, the cacique uttered a single word, “Kashdyera!” and spat a second time. He’d recognized Ramos as a Spanish surname. I stepped in front of Jose. “Can any of you speak English?” I asked.

  A young man rode forward. He said his name was Popé-Ta and that he was a son of Hopinkah, their cacique. I replied to Popé-Ta, but continued to look at his father. I explained that we were on our way to Albuquerque with mining supplies for my brother, and that we sought suitable land for Jose to raise sheep to support his wife, Alegriá, and young son, Ka’waika.

  The old man’s face lit up in surprise at hearing those names. He and Popé-Ta moved their horses a few yards away from the group to confer in private. Jose and I were left to stand there with nothing more to do than wait for our fate to be decided.

  When they rejoined the others, Popé-Ta came up and asked how Jose’s wife and son had come to have Laguna names. “The Laguna are our brothers,” he replied.

  I sensed our chance to survive, and further informed him that Alegriá was of the Laguna Corn Clan and Jose had named his son Ka’waika to honor Alegriá’s people.

  I pointed to the five dead men and assured Popé-Ta we had nothing to do with them, and had never seen any of them before. I told him we’d gone down into the canyon to hide from them.

  “Do not move from this spot,” Popé-Ta warned us. “We will leave a small distance—over to there—to talk about this. Do not try to run. It would be easy to catch you.” Then he and the entire group pivoted and rode toward the rock outcrop he’d indicated.

  Once they were out of earshot, Jose asked why I had lied about his son’s name.

  “I am an honest man,” I said. “But there are times when a little creativity can go a long way.” I told Jose from now on—if we lived—his son’s name should be Chato Ka’waika Ramos. He shook his head and wagged a finger at me.

  Jose and I stayed away from the five dead men but their smell came to us. So did the flies. The sun was dropping behind Veteado and Techado mountains, but I knew better than to start a fire. Such presumption might turn the Acoma against us.

  The Indians returned early in the evening. The cacique and his son dismounted. I raised my hand in greeting and ambled forward to meet them.

  Popé-Ta told us the five dead men had plagued the Acoma people for months. They had stolen horses, burned crops, raped two women, and killed a young boy. “They wanted to scare us away and search for gold on our land.” The Acoma had complained to the government men, but nothing had been done. Now they had taken the law into
their own hands and the dead men would trouble them no more. The cacique believed that we had nothing to do with these men. That was why we were still alive.

  I nodded to the old man. His son cleared his throat and then raised his voice. He told us that his father and the other elders did not believe we were delivering mining supplies to my brother. Therefore, we were instructed to hand over all of our tools, our dynamite, and several parts to a sluice box that were strapped to our pack mule. We also had to promise never to disturb this land again or allow others to do so.

  Jose was given their blessing to settle on this land, if he cared to return with his wife and son. The cacique wanted Ka’waika to grow up here and come to know the land.

  Then they surprised us. They gave us some corn and meat, and the cacique gave Jose a fresh horse to replace his injured mount. Popé-Ta told Jose they would bring his wounded horse back to health and someday give it to Ka’waika as a gift.

  I asked Popé-Ta to give our thanks to the cacique and praise him for his wisdom. I offered to give over our guns as a sign of friendship, but Popé-Ta told us to keep them to protect ourselves as we rode on to Albuquerque.

  When Popé-Ta ceased speaking, the old man just shrugged, turned his horse, and led them all away.

  The corn and mutton they’d left us was the best meal either of us could remember. We scrounged up enough wood to give us fire for three or four hours and found some shelter from the wind, as we huddled against a flank of a nearby boulder. But even before we ate or gathered any wood, we piled rocks over the five dead men, enough to keep coyotes from having an unholy feast that night.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The grandfather clock in the corner of my library struck twelve. I shifted against the leather chair. Perspiration had soaked my collar and my mouth was dry. I put the book down on the desk. All the beer cans were empty. Otis lay curled up asleep under the warm light of the desk lamp. I returned to the kitchen and poured a tall glass of water. I took a solid swig and returned to the library…and Uncle Jimmy’s tale:

  The Third Day

  July 18

  The morning sky was clear; the air cool. For more than forty years I’d explored New Mexico, hoping to find the legendary Lost Adams gold. I’d never felt this close before. Even without our tools, we continued the search.

  After we ate the last of the corn and mutton, Jose and I left the pack mule tethered near our makeshift campsite, and led the horses to the canyon rim. With only a bit of resistance from Jose’s new mount, we descended once more to the canyon floor.

  At the bottom, I led the way straight to the cabin ruins and uncovered the large, flat hearthstone at the base of the ruined chimney. Jose asked me why I was so interested in it.

  I told him that, according to legend, in 1864 members of the Adams party huddled around their cabin headquarters, surrounded by Apaches. As the story goes, they hid their placer gold under its hearthstone in the hope that some would survive and return to reclaim the fortune at a later date.

  The stone weighed more than we could lift. Jose and I tried to slide it off; we sat on the same side of the mammoth rock and pushed in the same direction with our feet. Five minutes of this action bore fruit, as we uncovered the opening an inch at a time.

  We knelt together at the edge of the hole and stared into its depths. Five or six feet down, a large, black cast-iron pot sat rusted by time and partially caked with dirt.

  The top of the pot and the ground around it held a writhing mass of intertwined snakes that hissed at our unwanted intrusion. But we both knew gopher snakes to be shy creatures. They soon slithered away into a network of narrow tunnels, leaving the pot unguarded. After we pushed the hearthstone clear, I jumped into the hole and knocked the cover off the pot with the barrel of my Remington 8.

  It was full of gold.

  Men had sought the Lost Adams placer gold for nearly sixty years. Twenty-two men had died on this quest. Now we’d found it. The gold the Adams party had hidden in the cabin before they were attacked and slaughtered was all ours. I’m not ashamed to tell you that tears came to my eyes.

  Neither of us spoke at first. Jose brought the horses closer. We took my saddlebags and filled them to bursting with nuggets, some of them larger than a cat’s eye. After we loaded the gold, Jose and I led our mounts back up the trail to the canyon rim.

  At the top, Jose spoke for the first time since our discovery. “Where do you think the canyon of gold is?”

  “This isn’t enough for you?” I laughed. From all that I’d read and heard, I was convinced the Lost Canyon of Gold, the mother lode, must be nearby. But now was not the time to search for it. We’d already had a narrow escape on this journey, and would have to come back some other year.

  In the following weeks, I checked around and discovered that an old Irish prospector held title to this land, including the canyon where we’d found the ruined Adams cabin. We needed to own it ourselves, if we ever hoped to search again for the Lost Canyon, despite the Indians’ warning.

  Before we returned to Kingston, Jose and I made a two-week journey southwest along the Tularosa and San Francisco Rivers through Luna and on to Alpine, across the border in Arizona. It was there we cashed in about five thousand dollars worth of our gold.

  I spread a rumor about our having located the fabled Lost Dutchman mine beneath nearby Eucudilla Mountain, to throw any ne’er-do-wells off our trail. Then we skedaddled back to New Mexico, leaving under cover of darkness. The only thing more dangerous than trying to find gold, you see, is trying to keep it.

  Back home, I eventually located the Irishman who owned the land, offering him four thousand dollars for his forty-eight hundred marginal acres of scrub. We shook hands on the deal and he left with a broad smile on his face. No doubt he thought he’d conned me.

  I claimed title to this new property in my name, but the next month I helped Jose and his family settle there in a cabin we built on a mesa not far from the canyon. Over the years, I’d seen too many instances of Indians and Spanish-speaking peasants swindled out of their land. But I knew a thing or two about the Santa Fe Ring, and would never get swindled in one of their infamous fraudulent land dealings. With my name on the deed, Jose and his family would have less to worry about.

  On October 18, 1921, Jose and I sat down at the table inside his new cabin. We drank to our partnership and to the continued bond between our families. We’d hidden the gold. Now, at this table, we vowed that its location—its very existence—would remain our secret, lest politically connected thieves, murderers, or tax collectors target our descendants.

  In the years that followed, we continued to search for the Lost Canyon of Gold, but never found the mother lode. I came to the conclusion that the Acoma used our dynamite to seal off access to it on that fateful day back in 1921.

  Then…tragedy struck. On February 6, 1932, Jose died from a fever. I was too old to go out searching anymore on my own. But I’d found more than any other man who sought the Lost Canyon of Adam’s gold. I learned to be content with that.

  By now you may wonder why Jose and I didn’t cash in the gold right away. Why did we hide it all over again? I had learned to never trust bankers, nor my fellow man in general. Many a time, in my years as a prospector in the hills of New Mexico, I saw what happened to a man newly gifted with gold or silver. Deceit, robbery—even death can befall you at the hands of jealous men.

  I had been a rich man once before. Shortly after I came out to New Mexico, I’d struck near-pure veins of silver in the Brush Heap mine five miles from the center of Kingston. That was back in the ‘eighties. That time I cashed it all in and banked my earnings with the expectation that I was set up for the life of a ‘gentleman.’ But in 1893, the silver market collapsed. My bank failed with it, and I was left as penniless as when I’d first traveled west. No banks for me, ever again.

  Losing my fortune did teach me to live a simple life. The discovery of this gold is greater satisfaction than any comforts it might have brought into
my life. Even more, it is a legacy I wish to bequeath to the McKenna and Ramos families.

  Early on in life, I learned the law of Supply and Demand. Nowhere was this truer than on the frontier. As a miner, I also know that gold is scarce, hence precious, and that the supply will eventually be exhausted. When that happens, the gold we leave to our families will be more precious still. Holding on to this gold will be proven wise.

  And so it is hidden, and Jose and I have given to our heirs all necessary information to find it when they wish to do so. May they enjoy it in peace and prosperity!

  I roamed the natural world all my life. Mine has always been a restless spirit, nurtured by beauty that surrounded me at every turn.

  Yes, I believe there is a God. I never met a long-time prospector who didn’t believe in Him, for such a man comes close to the hand of God manifested in Nature. And gold is the finest adornment of His earth. I have no greater gift to leave you.

  Now, as I approach the end of my trail, my soul reaches out, still restless until I rest in Him.

  I closed the book well after midnight. Sleep was far from my mind. My hands shook and dull pain knotted the back of my neck. Red Gold answered some of my questions, but raised many more.

  The threatening note, the attempt on my life, the killing of Ricardo Ramos—was all of it because of gold?

  As an historian, I already knew about the Lost Adams gold and how twenty-two men had lost their lives in pursuit of it. I knew that Adams had tried to relocate his gold once the Apache Wars ended and the tribes were subdued to reservations. But he turned out to be an unskilled navigator and never found it. His bad eyesight turned to blindness and he had died insane.

  History is awash with blood from those who schemed, fought and killed, or were killed in pursuit of gold. For every intricately crafted gold necklace or band of marriage and love, a man lies somewhere—buried and forgotten.