Luke's Gold Page 7

  After moving the horses up to the point where they had last seen Cade and Luke’s first camp, Snider left the other two to make a small fire, and proceeded on foot. He had an idea where Luke and Cade might have set up their second camp, so he cautiously made his way along the riverbank, using the gullies and sparse patches of willows as cover. After walking a few hundred yards farther, he came upon the still warm ashes of a campfire, and knew that he had to be getting pretty close. Seeing a stand of cottonwoods near the river, he headed for them, using them for cover as he made his way along the banks. About to leave the trees to cross an open area, he glanced down to discover fresh horse droppings, telling him that they had left their horses here while they stalked the antelope. A slow grin crept across his whiskered face as he thought about how surprised Luke Tucker was going to be when he found out he’d been followed. Moving to the edge of the trees, he pulled up when he caught sight of the hunters down close to the water’s edge. Just like I figured, he thought. Each man was busy butchering a carcass. Snider settled back on one knee and watched for a while as Cade and Luke carved up the two antelope. The aroma of roasting meat drifted by his nostrils as he watched Cade cutting up strips of meat to dry over the fire. Satisfied that his prey would not be leaving any time soon, Snider backed carefully away and retraced his path.

  When he rejoined his partners, he found them sitting next to a small fire waiting for a coffeepot to boil. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere today,” he said. “They’re fixin’ to dry some of that meat. They’ll be doin’ that all day.”

  “Why don’t we just go on up there and jump ’em where they stand?” Dawson demanded. “Then, by God, I bet I get that hidin’ place out of ’em. I know how to pry a man’s tongue loose so he’ll be tellin’ things he didn’t even know he knew.”

  “Now, see,” Snider replied, “that’s the reason I’m runnin’ this show. If we did it your way, they could tell you anything. We wouldn’t have no way of knowin’ it was the truth or not. They’d just send us off on a wild-goose chase.” He glared hard at one and then the other to make sure they knew that he was calling the shots. “We’ll wait ’em out, and let ’em lead us to that gold, just like we’ve been doin’.”

  “I reckon you’re right,” Dawson gruffly admitted. He knew he was wrong, but he was getting restless and anxious to take some kind of action, even if it was wrong. He stewed over it in his mind for a few moments before suggesting, “Hell, we ain’t a half a day’s ride shy of Big Timber. Why don’t we circle around ’em and get on their trail again when they come through town? I could use a drink.”

  “Me, too,” Curly piped up.

  Snider favored his partners with a look of disgust. “All right, you two go ahead and do that if you want to,” he said. “I’m stayin’ right here where I can keep an eye on ’em. Maybe I’ll see you again, and maybe I won’t. There ain’t no tellin’ where they’ll head from here.” He knew it was just talk. Dawson just had to have something to complain about.

  “You look like you’ve done that before,” Luke commented as he watched Cade hang thin strips of flesh on a limb he had suspended over the fire.

  “Well, I ain’t,” Cade replied. “I just know that Indians smoke meat to keep, so I figured I’d try it.”

  “How long do you have to let it dry?”

  “I don’t have any idea. Till all the water’s out of it, I guess. I figured I’d leave it till dark at least. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, either,” Luke said. “That’s probably long enough. Hell, if it spoils, we’ll just throw it away.”

  They filled their bellies with fresh roasted meat, then turned in for a contented night’s sleep, with no suspicions of the danger barely a quarter of a mile away. On their way again early the next morning, they made Big Timber before the sun climbed directly overhead. With only a brief stop in the little settlement between the Yellowstone and the Boulder to rest the horses and ask about Indian activity in the area, they decided to ride on until nightfall. Informed that the only Indians in substantial numbers were Crow, they anticipated no trouble from that quarter.

  A little before dusk, they came upon a peaceful meadow where a healthy stream emptied into the Yellowstone. There was no discussion necessary. Both men knew this was the place to camp. After the horses were taken care of, Cade walked a few yards up to the top of a little rise in the prairie, and stood gazing around him in every direction. He felt as if he had seen the place before in spite of the fact that this was the first time he had set foot in this part of the country. It was the vision of Montana he had seen in his dreams.

  From where he stood, the tall, sweet grass of the prairie ebbed and flowed with the gentle evening breezes, giving the impression of a green, living sea, tipped here and there with obscure plumes of white, like ocean foam. The vast sea of grass swept away to the north to touch the base of a distant rugged mountain range of silvery peaks standing against the deep evening sky. Luke told him they were the Crazy Mountains. Behind him, to the south of the Yellowstone, rose the mighty heights of the Absarokas, the home, Luke said, of most any kind of game a man could imagine. Why, then, Cade asked himself, would anyone want to wander farther? This was the place to breed his horses. He could feel the pull of the country on his soul.

  He turned to find Luke gazing at him quizzically. “What’s ailin’ you?” Luke asked. “I called your name three times. You look like you got buck fever or somethin’.”

  “Nothin’,” Cade replied, “I was just thinkin’, I guess.”

  “Well, maybe you oughtn’t to do it if it freezes your brain like that,” Luke said with a chuckle. “Whaddaya say we have us a little supper?”

  Once again, the two partners filled their bellies with the fresh meat and washed it down with hot coffee. “I’m gonna bust if I take another bite,” Luke finally admitted and leaned back against the side of the gully. He relaxed there a while, content with his world. After a few minutes of reflecting, he asked, “What you gonna do with your share of that gold, Cade?”

  Cade shrugged. “I don’t know—set myself up in the horse-wranglin’ business I reckon. I ain’t thought much about it.” His answer was truthful. He had not spent any time speculating on the prospects of being wealthy. There were still too many ifs to interfere with their plans. He told himself he’d wait until he had it in his hands.

  “Well, I’ve thought about it,” Luke said. “I just might set myself up in a hotel somewhere, one that’s got a big porch with rockin’ chairs—maybe find me a woman like Belle back there in Coulson to keep me warm at night. Prop my feet up on the porch rail in the daytime, and on the bed board at night.”

  Cade laughed. “Hell, you’re too young for that. You’d get tired of that in six months’ time. Then you could come help me raise horses.” And you’d be welcome, he thought as he watched the lanky cowpuncher chuckling over his remark. Cade realized at that moment that Luke was a good friend. He had never really had a close friend before, and the idea gave him a feeling of peace, a feeling that he was not strictly a loner as he had been all his life up to now. It was a good feeling.

  Unable to go any farther without the risk of being seen by the two they trailed, Lem Snider knelt at the top of a grassy rise, a pair of field glasses in his hand. After a while, he rose and descended the rise. “They’re making camp, so I reckon we can, too.”

  “I wish to hell we had stopped back there in Big Timber long enough to find somethin’ to eat besides this damn moldy bacon,” Bob Dawson complained.

  “We couldn’t take a chance on losin’ ’em,” Snider said.

  “Ain’t much chance of losin’ ’em,” Dawson replied. “They’re just followin’ the river west. We coulda caught up with ’em anytime we wanted to.” Snider didn’t bother to grace the comment with a reply.

  “I reckon they’ll be fillin’ their bellies with some more of that fresh pronghorn,” Curly said, rubbing his stomach. “I can almost smell it from here.”

  “Don’t surprise me
none,” Dawson scoffed, “you’re part coyote. Too bad you got a coyote nose, and none of the brain.”

  Curly frowned, his eyes in an angry squint while he tried to think of a reply. “I got enough brains to skin a two-legged coyote,” he said, and drew his long skinning knife. Waving it back and forth, switching it from hand to hand, he said, “Lem, tell him how I skinned that Injun woman down on the Big Horn.” When Snider didn’t bother to answer, Curly made a gesture like he was slitting his throat. “I could carve you up real pretty, Dawson.”

  “I just might shove that damn knife up your ass,” Dawson retorted.

  Curly’s frown faded into a malicious grin, and he gestured with his fingers. “Come on, then.”

  Dawson drew his six-shooter, and leveled it at Curly, but once again Snider stepped between them. “Damn you two. Bob, put that damn gun away. You want them to know we’re right behind ’em?” When neither man made a move to back down, he railed, “Dammit, we’re in for a big payday if you two can just leave each other alone. After we find that gold, you can kill each other. Matter of fact, I hope to hell you do.”

  Finally, Curly put his knife away and Dawson holstered his pistol, although they continued to glare menacingly at each other. “Fry up some of that bacon,” Snider said, making an effort to hide his disgust for his partners. “After dark, we can sneak up a little closer to keep an eye on that pair. Curly, you take the first watch. Bob, you take the second. I’ll finish up the night.”

  “Hell,” Dawson grumbled, “I’ll bet they ain’t even goin’ after no damn gold—probably just headin’ west like they said—and us followin’ along behind ’em like hound dogs. How many years ago was that again?”

  “You can turn around anytime you want,” Snider said, weary of the squabbling. “Ain’t nobody says you gotta go with me.”

  Curly, already with his knife out again to slice off some strips of bacon, looked at Dawson and grinned. He stuck his tongue out and touched the tip of the razor-sharp skinning knife to the underside of it. “I got lookout first,” he taunted. “Maybe you’d best sleep with one eye open tonight.”

  “You big dummy,” Dawson jeered.

  Lem Snider poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down across the fire from his two companions. Waiting for the black liquid to cool a little in the metal cup, he considered the two men he had taken as partners—thinking that maybe he should have let them go ahead and settle the bad blood between them. He had no intention of sharing that gold with the sorry likes of Curly Jenkins and Bob Dawson. He had struggled too long and hard to find the big payoff he needed.

  “You want some of this, Lem?” Curly held the frying pan up from the fire.

  Snider shook his head. He was hungry. He had been hungry for as long as he could remember, but not for food. He never ate much, a fact that astonished his two partners, and his hard, lean body bore evidence of this. Living primarily off coffee and whiskey, with an occasional slab of meat to keep the sides of his belly from rubbing together, he seemed to get his nourishment from the black deeds he was good at.

  After the war broke out, he had joined the Union Army simply because he was in Nebraska at the time. He felt no sympathy, or loyalty, to either North or South. Little more than a kid at the time, he joined because he was down on his luck, and he figured there would be opportunities to collect on the spoils of war as the army marched through the South. Much to his disappointment, he was posted to a frontier fort, and detailed to escort duty for emigrants. There was some fighting, mostly with Indians. His first murder, however, was a sergeant in his own company who had made the mistake of fighting with him over a whore in Virginia City. During a minor skirmish with a band of Sioux, the sergeant was hit with a rifle ball in the back. There had been more murders after his army days, resulting in very few financial gains, but murder was a necessary part of his occupation. Looking across the fire at Curly and Bob, that fact struck him even more so.

  Tossing down the rest of his coffee, he said, “It’s gettin’ dark. Curly, you’d best get up there and start watchin’ them fellers. We don’t want them to decide to move off somewhere in the night.”

  Though reluctant to move from the fire, Curly got to his feet and picked up his rifle. As he passed Dawson, he leaned down and whispered, “One eye, best keep one eye open.”

  “I’ve got a good mind to put a bullet in that simple brain of yours right now,” Dawson retorted. He could hear Curly chuckling to himself as he walked away.

  Chapter 5

  Another day’s ride found Cade and Luke at the point where the Yellowstone turned south. Saying good-bye to the river, they continued west toward the Bozeman Pass. Luke tried to hide it, but Cade could readily see that his friend was getting a little anxious as the end of their journey approached, for he urged Cade to continue on past their usual time to camp. Darkness was already descending when finally Luke selected a campsite. He was ready to go again early the next morning. They arrived in the town of Bozeman the next afternoon, and made one more camp near the banks of the Gallatin River.

  “There’s sure a helluva lot more folks in this town than the last time I saw it,” Luke had commented when they had reached the edge of the settlement. “I expect we’d just as well circle on around it.” Cade was surprised that Luke showed no interest in finding a saloon, preferring to stay in camp. He decided that Luke must be so close to realizing his treasure that he feared any distraction that might somehow hinder his reaching the gold.

  Luke was up well before sunrise the next morning, and Cade wondered if he had slept much at all during the night. While Cade stirred up the coals and rekindled the fire, Luke strode back and forth along the riverbank, mumbling to himself. Finally, Cade asked, “What’s eatin’ at you? You’re as nervous as a cat.”

  “I don’t know,” Luke answered. “Well, I reckon I do know. What if that gold ain’t there no more? I mean, we came a long way to go fishin’ if it ain’t.”

  “I reckon you’ll just have to help me round up some horses for breed stock instead of sitting around somewhere with your feet propped up,” Cade said. “If you’re thinkin’ you mighta put me out some by ridin’ all this way with you, hell, I was comin’ out here, anyway. I found what I want, so if the gold ain’t there, at least I ain’t lost nothin’.” He recalled to mind the picture of the lush grass prairie that stretched from the Yellowstone to the Crazy Mountains near Big Timber.

  “I reckon you’re right,” Luke said. “Hell, let’s get saddled and head on up the river. There’s a lot of things different around here, but the river’s still the same. I oughta be able to find that rock where I left them sacks.”

  As Luke had feared, his memory had faded considerably after thirteen years. Right away he began to doubt his recollection of how far upriver he and Luther Adams had been when they unloaded the gold from the mule. At the time, his mind was beset by many distractions, as the two of them had been desperately trying to save their necks. Things had changed. He didn’t remember that the river forked around a little island here, or took a sharp bend there. The trees were taller and the brush thicker than he remembered. There was nothing he could do but push on, following the river, hoping to see something that jogged his memory. It was past midday when Luke, about to admit that he was whipped, suddenly pulled up short.

  “We’ve gone too far!” he exclaimed excitedly. He waited for Cade to pull up beside him. Pointing to the other side of the river, he said, “That’s the gulch we got ambushed in! That’s the gulch we rode down into the water.” He looked back toward the way they had just come. “We got to go back. I got to figure how far we drifted downstream before we came out.”

  With renewed optimism, Luke wheeled Sleepy around and started a thorough scout along the bank of the river. Cade followed, leading the packhorse. At last, he began to catch some of Luke’s excitement. If luck was with them, he might be able to buy his breed stock instead of trying to catch wild horses. There were a number of places along the shore where rocks of various sizes
protruded out into the water. Unable to tell for sure from the bank, Luke waded out into the water and continued downstream while Cade led the horses.

  Wading in water waist-deep, Luke worked his way along the bank. A couple of rocks looked promising, but turned out to be nothing, causing Luke to wonder if one of them might have been the place, but the gold was gone. He continued wading along the edge of the river, moving another fifty yards before he came to it. The rock was smaller than he had remembered. Cade couldn’t even see it from the shore. Luke ducked under water, and in a few seconds, came back up. “Glory be!” he shouted. “It’s still here! Goddang it, I knew it would be! I knew it!”

  Hardly able to believe that they had really found it, Cade tied the horses in the trees, removed his gun belt and hung it on his saddle horn. Unable to keep from grinning when he saw the expression of sheer joy on Luke’s face, he waded into the water to help him retrieve the gold. Luke’s gold, sixteen leather pouches, originally bound for the Union Army, undisturbed after so many years, were now carefully transported to dry ground. Once all sixteen of the heavy pouches were accounted for and resting on the grass above the rock, Luke opened one of them to make sure everything was all right. “Sixteen sacks of gold, Cade!” he said. “And half of ’em is yours.”