The Hunted Read online

  The thought both excited Charlie and sickened him, because he’d seen firsthand what the mining consortiums from back East could do to pretty places like mountainsides and river valleys. They came in and cut down all the trees, dammed the rivers, dug huge pits, killed all the critters and big game for miles around, made the water unfit to drink. He got to thinking about such things and it shamed him that he’d participated in mining in one form or another for so long.

  When he’d started prospecting, it had been a clean pursuit, scrambling around creeks and rivers and hillsides, looking for promising sign of color in quartz. He’d gotten better at finding it, but never developed what one old rock hound had called “a nose” for it. Charlie reckoned his sniffer was more suited to detecting a campfire with a pot of Arbuckle’s bubbling, maybe a beefsteak sizzling.

  “What do you think you are up to, nosing around my freight, Big Boy?”

  Charlie spun to see a grinning Rollie right beside him, looking as if the two of them were old friends from way back.

  “Hey, Rollie.” Charlie cast him a cautious glance, but the man appeared as casual as could be, the distinct sour smell of whiskey clouded around Rollie’s head like an unseen fog. “Couldn’t help noticing all this gear, the crates open and all.”

  “Yeah, I expect that stuff is more junk, not worth much. I’m tempted to leave it beside the trail. Heck, I don’t need to haul that up there.”

  Charlie smiled, looked at Rollie with one squinted eye. “Aw, you’re joshing me.”

  Rollie popped a quirly between his lips and struck a match, sucked the smoke deep, shaking his head. “No, I ain’t neither.”

  “I don’t believe they’re paying you to decide what it is you’re hauling, Rollie. Just that you haul whatever it is they want you to.”

  As he expected, as if Charlie had snapped his fingers, Rollie’s sour, know-it-all mood once again immediately turned to raw anger at Charlie’s comments. Charlie sighed inside and quickly said, “Look, I only mention it because . . .” He leaned close to the sputtering man and said, “All this stuff you say is useless is going to be mighty, mighty useful in pulling that gold from the ground up in Gamble. Heck, from what I understand, and I have it on good authority”—he tried to make his voice sound friendly and as if he were sharing a secret—“that Gamble is filled with gold.”

  “Yeah, it is, you bet,” said Rollie, softening his hard edge a bit, regarding Charlie with squinted eyes through his cigarette’s smoke. “And I aim to get it all without doing a lick of digging.”

  “Well, now, Rollie.” Charlie smiled, shook his head. “If you know the answer to that secret, you are going to be a mighty rich man one day.” He chuckled.

  “No, I mean it, Big Boy. That gold’s all settin’ there in bags, waiting for ol’ Rollie to roll on in.” He smiled and rubbed his grubby hands together.

  Charlie couldn’t help it, he laughed at that. “Most all the gold in Gamble is still in the ground, Rollie, not in some warehouse up there. Why, sure, I bet they have a few sacks of dust here and there and crates of ore, bound to have some stockpiled. But look, you dump all this equipment and gear that they’ll need to get lots more gold out of the ground, why, you’ll be . . .” Charlie snapped his big fingers, smiling.

  Rollie flinched, a confused look on his face.

  “It come to me, exactly what you’re saying reminds me of an old story my granny used to tell me. About a goose that laid a golden egg. Went like this: There was this goose, see, and she laid solid gold eggs. Day after day, one egg a day. Things was going along okay for the old couple who owned the goose, what with all that gold appearing, slow and steady.”

  “You don’t make no sense at all, Big Boy,” said Rollie, rolling his eyes and finishing off his quirly.

  “Bear with me. One day, the man, he gets impatient. His wife’s out . . . well, I don’t rightly know what she’s off doing, but he’s alone with the goose. So he gets to looking at that goose and he figures that if he could cut to the chase, why, they’d all be better off.” Charlie looked at Rollie, eyes wide, expecting the freighter to catch on. But he didn’t, so Charlie plowed on ahead with his story. “So that fool of a man killed that goose, cut it open right there. And do you know what he found?”

  Rollie sighed, shook his head. “Big Boy, I reckon that fool found a handful of goose guts.”

  “Yes!” said Charlie, poking a big finger up at the dark night sky and smiling.

  “That still don’t make no sense.”

  “Don’t you see? That goose wasn’t full of gold eggs, Rollie. Just like Gamble ain’t full of gold. You got to give it time, work at it to get the gold out. I aim to. But if you go up there and gut that little mine camp, why, you’ll never get at all the gold that will come on out of the ground eventually.”

  Rollie looked at Charlie for a long moment, and Charlie thought for sure he’d gotten through. Maybe turned a corner with ol’ Rollie, after all. He still didn’t trust him, but maybe the man would think twice before doing stupid things like dumping all this good gear.

  Rollie pushed away from the wagon and walked away, shaking his head and saying, “Hey, fellas. You will never guess what Big Boy just told me! He thinks geese lay gold eggs!”

  The next few minutes were spiked with bursts of laughter and glances his way from the freighters. Charlie felt his face heat up and was relieved that at least it was nighttime so the fools wouldn’t see him. All he wanted to do was pop ’em each on the nose, make them howl a bit.

  He roamed the edge of the camp for a while longer until the burbling laughter ended and the men resumed their drinking. The day ended much the same as the previous day—with Rollie and his cohorts eventually flopped back in snoring heaps, the cold air not affecting them in the least. Charlie hoped they all woke up with frostbite.

  The women weren’t particularly talkative, not that he could blame them. It was coming off cold and they barely had enough wood to make it through the night. He did his best to keep awake, still not convinced that Rollie had forgotten his plans for dallying with Delia. Though from the looks of him, Rollie would barely be able to roll over, let alone fight off the she-cat named Hester. She was quite a perplexing creature, no doubt about that. Maybe under different circumstances he might have fancied such a willful woman, but here, on this hellish trail, and this late in his life—no, thank you, ma’am.

  With such thoughts, and a last glance around the camp to ensure that everybody looked to be where they should be—all four freighters snoring, the two women huddled tight to each other and well wrapped with blankets, and the pulling beasts out of sight in the shadows—Charlie nestled his head down into his collar and figured that a few winks of shut-eye would do no one harm. He’d earned more than that, but a stolen minute here and there surely wouldn’t hurt.

  He awoke sometime later, though how long he had slept, he had no idea. But it was still dark and the fire had petered down to a clump of glowing coals. Something had wakened him. He remained still, with his eyes open. Several minutes passed, then to his right, the soft sound of fluttering, as if light wings taking flight, or perhaps it was a whisper. Then it was gone. But he had heard it, hadn’t he?

  Charlie had held his arms crossed in his sleep, and now he slowly shifted them down to his sides, the fingers of one hand resting on the hilt of his Green River knife, ready to lift it free when he stood. And he would have to stand soon, not only for the fact that he had to shake the blood back into his legs, but he felt he needed to explore the camp—something was giving him the distinct feeling that he was the object of someone, or something’s staring attention. And he didn’t like it.

  He managed to stand and not make too much of a sound outside of cracking his knee on a wagon wheel. He grunted and bit back the pain as he ambled as quietly as he could around the outside of the camp. He stepped easily on dried leaves and twigs, and tried to take a head count of the animal
s. Other than the mild Mabel-Mae, who he’d tied close by, he couldn’t see too many of them in the dark.

  He was about to turn to the fire, quietly stoke it back to life, when he heard the fluttery sound again. And again, he held still for several minutes, but heard nothing more than the occasional rustle and blow of one of the pulling animals, a far-off small sound—a small critter, no doubt, searching for food.

  Charlie made his way back to the fire. Though it was still dark, he knew it would soon be time to wake and get moving. Well, it would on a normal freighting trip. But this one had taken a number of odd turns. Still, he prodded the fire, fed twigs to the hungry coals, then blew on them until he was rewarded with smoke and small, licking flames. He nursed it along until it cracked and snapped. The huddled figures around the fire slowly began to stir at the sounds, at the tang of wood smoke, and the heat and light the fire offered.

  It didn’t take long for the four hungover men to stretch, scratch, and swig from their bottles in an effort to ward off the coming headaches they were surely beginning to feel.

  One by one they wandered off, not too far from the fire, and relieved themselves. The ladies made sure they did what they had to do far from the men. Finally Rollie roused himself and wandered off to do his business. He was gone for some time. Then they heard him swearing and stomping in the dark over near the animals. He agitated a number of them.

  Charlie could hear slaps and he knew Rollie was smacking the animals, maybe to get them to move for him. It was obvious to Charlie that Meecher had no love for animals. The big man stood, looked for Rollie, and saw him storming back toward the fire.

  “We been robbed!” He strode into the light and swept them all with a glaring look from his still-puffy, bruised face.

  “What are you talking about?” said Charlie.

  Rollie poked a finger at Charlie, coming as close as any man had in a long time to actually poking the big man in the chest with the finger. “We lost two horses.”

  “What do you mean . . . ‘lost’?” said Bo, rubbing his temples with two shaking hands.

  “I mean,” said Rollie, not shifting his eyes from Charlie’s face. “They’ve been stolen.”

  “What? That’s impossible,” said Charlie, even though he knew it was quite possible. Especially with all those animals and with Indians loose in the hills all around them.

  “You know what I think?” Rollie took another step closer to Charlie. “I think you took them.”

  Charlie and the women, even a couple of the freighters, laughed. “You’re joshing me, right, Rollie?”

  But the hungover freighter shook his head slightly. “You were the one tending the fire, the one who stayed up all night, the one who suggested yesterday that we all should sleep in shifts, stand watch, all that foolishness. Wonder why that is. And why in blazes is your nasty mule still here?”

  For a moment, all eyes turned toward Mabel-Mae, who, it seemed, had far less interest in them than they did in her. She stood still, as always, one ear flicking occasionally.

  “My mule is here because, well, because that’s where I tied her last night. And I suggested what I did for one simple reason: There are Indians around us, Rollie. Heck, that dead man we come upon yesterday should have been reason enough. How dumb does one man get anyway?”

  “Don’t you dare call me dumb.”

  “Fine, then stop acting that way.”

  “You took them horses, I know it.”

  “Okay, Rollie, say I did.” Charlie crossed his arms, beginning to warm to the tall tale that was unspooling before him. “What did I do with them?”

  “You tell me, you’re the one who took them!”

  Charlie noticed that beneath the bruising and bloodshot eyes, Rollie Meecher was working up a fit of rage not unlike what his uncle Everett had done a few times in the short amount of time Charlie had known him.

  “Aw, Rollie.” It was Norbert. As with Shiner and Bo, he too sat on the ground before the fire, his long, bony hands cradling his head. He spoke without looking up. “Let off that crazy talk. Ol’ Charlie wouldn’t have no reason to take no horses, no matter which way you come at this problem.”

  Charlie was impressed. For once, one of the men didn’t back down to Rollie, and what’s more, it was Norbert, with whom Charlie felt some bond, however thin and stretched it might be.

  Charlie decided to intervene before Rollie decided to shoot Norbert for standing up to him. “Look, Rollie, as soon as it’s light a couple of us can go off and look for the horses. Maybe they got loose and wandered off. Can’t be they’ve gone far. In the meantime, if we can’t find them, then we should give thought to rerigging a wagon or two.”

  Oddly, Rollie said nothing, just glared at everyone and kept to himself. They all went about their business of making coffee and preparing a bit of food—eggs and biscuits. Turned out that Bo was a pretty good hand at cooking.

  “Biscuits is about all I can do, though.”

  But he seemed pleased that Charlie tucked right into the stack of them. In truth, Charlie could eat the bark off a tree and it would have tasted as good to him, he was that hungry. Instead he smiled and nodded and kept right on chewing.

  Once light came, they never did find the horses. But they found two spots on the picket line where their ropes had been sliced by a knife. Whoever did it had not gone to any pains to conceal the cuts. As Charlie searched farther out in a direction he hoped might provide clues, he thought back to when he’d awakened before the others. He felt guilty now, as he’d promised himself he’d stay awake, then didn’t. And he’d also heard those mysterious fluttery, whispery sounds. Now he wondered if maybe they had been Indians.

  He found no clues, though plenty of broken branches and scuffed leaves. He felt sure that a trained tracker could follow the trail, wherever it was. None of the freighters had any decent skill or experience tracking, and soon they all met up at the fire and drank the last of the coffee. They finished cleaning up camp, then moved out, everyone looking in every direction they could. Charlie even caught sight of Rollie craning his neck left and right for sign of Indians.

  Chapter 19

  They day began cold and soon became a long, wet one. The snow increased within hours after their midday break. Soon the rough trail was covered with a thickening layer of white. The frozen stuff pelted at them nearly horizontal to the ground, gusting at times until it felt as though they were being blasted with sand.

  Charlie tied Mabel-Mae’s lead rope to the wagon and made Hester climb in beside Delia. He wasn’t worried about the mule, but he was worried that Hester might wander off the trail and somehow lose sight of the wagons. The wind increased throughout the day and took on a nasty habit of buffeting them with squalls whenever they passed between trees and into the open.

  A number of times, Charlie heard shouts from wagons up ahead, but could not make out what they said. Soon they passed into a thickly treed clearing that looked to hold promise for a campsite. The wind was cut well by the trees and a series of jutting, rocky outcrops. The spot was wide enough for them to position most of the wagons in such a way that they helped block even more of the wind and snow. Charlie’s wagon was the only one that couldn’t easily be wedged into the configuration, but they managed to snug it up to the rest to be of some use.

  They all kept their heads down, wrapped in scarves, hats pulled low, and went about their camp tasks, even the mildly drunk freighters, with a vigor that surprised Charlie. He had amassed a sizable pile of firewood and it was matched by Bo’s and Shiner’s combined efforts.

  “Maybe have some more of those fine biscuits of yours, Bo?” said Charlie, hoping to break the ice with the man, but Bo shot him a surly look, mumbled something, and ambled off to find more wood.

  “Don’t pay any attention to them, Charlie.” Hester stood beside him, shaking her head. “They’re idiots and they’ll never change. I’ve seen the
ir kind before.”

  “Me too. World’s filled with them and it’s downright depressing at times. Heck.” He smiled. “Sometimes I’m one of them. And it don’t get more depressing than to wake up one day and find you’ve been acting like one of the people you swore you’d never be like.”

  Hester stared at him for a moment, then said, “I swear, Charlie, sometimes you are almost a poet.” Then she walked away.

  “What’d I say?”

  “And I’d advise you, Charlie, to not pay any attention to my cantankerous sister.” Delia moved slowly, carrying a small armload of branches and twigs. Her smile told Charlie she was in the midst of one of her good spells. They seemed to happen infrequently, but when they did, she was downright chatty and a little firecracker of good humor, something that her sister wasn’t.

  All Charlie could do was try not to laugh at Hester’s obvious displeasure at her sister’s assessment of her.

  By the time the fire was blazing, the animals tended, and the tarpaulins tacked up, dark had crept upon them and with it, the wind had dwindled. The snow continued to fall and the temperature inched downward. Once again, Charlie, Hester, and Delia had hunkered down on one side of the fire, the freighters on the other, drinking and growing increasingly loud.

  Hester prepared a decent feed of biscuits and beans for them, using some of Charlie’s own supplies, some of their own, and followed it up with a tin of syrup-soaked pears from a crate in the wagon. She prepared enough for all, and dished up plates for the freighters before herself, her sister, and Charlie.

  “Let me lend a hand. I’ll take them over,” said Charlie, scooping up the plates.

  “No,” said Hester, staying his hand. “I cooked it, I’ll pass it around.” She brought four around and went down the line, handing out the high-sided pie tins piled with steaming food. As they sat facing the fire, Norbert, Bo, and Shiner all nodded, grunted their thanks, and tucked in with gusto.