Double Mountain Crossing (5 page)

He remembered all the bad times as he gently rubbed the gold vein. No, no more of that. He would dig himself enough ore out of that vein to buy him the best time he had ever had in his life.
San Francisco
, the City of
The Angels
,
Chicago
,
Boston
and even
New York
.
Anywhere there was a good time to be had. The women! He had never really had much to do with women because he had never been able to afford the good ones that looked pretty and smelt real nice. It was said touching their skin was like fondling rose petals and their breath was almost as sweet as the cool breeze that blew off the prairie of an evening. Having those big golden double eagles in his pockets would surely change his habits. The only women he'd ever enjoyed had been foul
mouthed,
both their breath and their language, and he'd never liked to hear that from a woman. He guessed it was because his own mother had been real gentle and quiet, sort of fragile. These whores in these frontier towns, why, some of them bore scars near as bad as men who'd come back from the war. At least the men who were disfigured had got their wounds fighting for the
Union
or the Rebs, not from brawling and scratching like alley cats. Some of the women had amazon bodies, great broad shoulders and legs like tree trunks and just as hard to fell unless you proved you had plenty of jingling money in your pockets, armpits as rank as a buffalo hunter's buckskins, and hair as matted as grizzly fur. By God, he'd seen steers with sweeter looking faces than some of the flesh in the cathouses, even if their horns weren't no way ranking against those of the powder queens.

Well, he would surely get to know a few pretty ones now, even if they came as high as $10 a throw. He'd have the best and when he'd had his fill of really high living, well then he'd buy himself a couple of quarter sections of land, prime land too, all legal with those bits of paper, and he'd furnish it with the best breeding cattle money could buy. Like all those other wealthy men, he'd sit up on the porch and watch his hired hands do all the chores. When cruel winter winds howled round the ranch house at dawn, he'd turn over in his nice warm bed and let the hands ride out, grumbling, into the snow. Maybe when spring came and the land grew green again would he ride out and inspect his herds. Yes, he just about had it all figured out.

There was only one problem now.
To dig out the gold.

Morgan Clay smiled at all the things the bright future held,
then
decided to forget all about it and get on with the work in hand. He came up off his heels and ground out his cigarette butt, then strode to his pack. He selected the pick from among his tools and hefted the shaft experimentally in his strong hands. Every day for the last few months he had worked, swinging that pick fruitlessly. Now, each and every swing would count.

He spat on his hands and spread his legs wide. The tendons flexed across the skin of his bare arms and his muscles bunched as he swung up and back, then down in a well practised, economical movement. The sharp edge of the tool bit into the ground with a deep clunk, different in timbre to the usual ring of steel on stone. He stopped to see what he had dug out.

His reward was a gleaming nugget half the size of his massive fist.

***

Before them, the land swept away majestically, miles and miles of sagebrush dotted prairie. Soon they would come on the hidden gash in the endless plains that was the
Palo
Duro
Canyon
, where the Spaniard, Coronado, had first watered his horses over two hundred years before. Then they would follow the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the
Red River
through the great canyon and turn north across the Salt Fork and east to meet the
North Fork
. From there they would be able to sight the
Wichita
Mountains
.

They would soon be home.

A golden eagle swooped low across the cloudless sky to snatch a gopher who had exercised bad timing in poking out his head from the earth. Swift-Foot appreciatively watched from the back of the dappled grey. It was a beautiful, although cruel sight, containing all the harshness and reality of nature. The
eagle,
broad winged and powerful, never even broke the pattern of his flight. A flash of talons and the gopher was already dead, gone up into the sky.

“Look,” the Kiowa boy said, arm outstretched to the eagle that was climbing effortlessly into the blue.

“Yes, I see it,” Short-Lance replied. He had been watching and thinking of the day when he would have to pit his wits against those of the eagle, when he had accomplished enough courageous deeds to entitle him to make a war bonnet. He remembered his grandfather telling him how it must be done, the old man's face wrinkling into a smile as he recalled his own younger days when he had caught
his
eagles. A war bonnet must be made from the feathers of the golden eagle, not those of the bald, and as only the best feathers could be used, those from the tail, it was necessary to capture five or six eagles, and alive too. They must not be shot from the air as that would mean bad medicine. A pit had to be dug then disguised with branches and sods of turf. The brave would lay a dead coyote on top of the latticework of branches before dawn when the golden eagle hunts, then hide beneath in the hole. The eagle would land on the carcass and begin feeding, and after a few minutes when the bird was growing slow and heavy the brave would grab its legs and pull it down into the pit. As an eagle is powerful and able to inflict a great deal of damage in a small area,
it's
neck must be broken quickly. Then after you had caught your first eagle, you had to begin all over again until there were enough feathers to complete the war bonnet. A great deal of patience and courage were needed.

But Short-Lance felt sure, the day would undoubtedly come.

The roan mustang stumbled beneath him and began to limp. He frowned and drew rein, sliding silently to the ground.

“What's the matter?” Swift-Foot asked, taking his eyes from the eagle and looking down at his friend.

Short-Lance lifted the mustang's right forefoot to examine it. He snorted and drew his knife. “He has a stone in his hoof.” He grunted as he dug out the splinter of rock and the roan danced sideways. “It will be sore for a while. I will have to lead him.” He straightened up and began to walk. Beside him, the tough pony painfully limped, head bobbing up and down as he kept pace with the boy. Short-Lance frowned, irritable at the delay. The journey had already taken long enough. It would soon be winter and he had no desire to be caught on the plains when the hail and snow began to fall. They would die.

At least they had eaten well on the way back. Not having their leader's natural reluctance to waste ammunition, they had used the old Remington to bring down game. A buffalo calf had provided them with fresh meat and pemmican and much needed soles for their moccasins. Each night they camped they staked out the hide, replete with curly wool and had rubbed buffalo brains into it, then left it to cure. If the bad weather caught them, they would have need of it. What they had now was little enough.

“You make a scout ahead. You may be able to reach the canyon from here. A turkey would settle well in my stomach.”

Swift-foot wheeled his pony and drew alongside to lean over and take possession of the Remington rifle that had been their
leader's
. He laid the old single shot across the neck of the grey.

Short-Lance grinned. “Make a good hunt.”

Swift-Foot grinned back and put his heels to the grey.

“I will!” he shouted.

***

Morgan Clay made slow time as he rode for Redrock, winding down the trails of the high country. He was beginning to feel the chill in the air and had taken to wearing his old wolf skin coat in the evenings. He had made the coat when he had slept out at the picket line, protecting the horses from the thieving rebels, during the war. Each time a wolf had worried the horses he'd rolled out of his blankets and added the pelt to his growing collection. At first the soldiers, most of them green from the towns, had laughed when he skinned the wolves, but when the coat was complete and the nights had grown so cold the men couldn't sleep on the frozen ground, they had soon begun bidding for the long grey coat. By then, he'd been the one laughing and he had refused every conceivable trade, finding protection for himself and his shotgun under the heavy pelts as the men stamped and flapped their arms, cursing the vile weather.

He remembered that winter campaign with a smile as he turned the dun's head onto a fresh trail that cut around the long hogback ridge ahead and led down to a pass, not far from the prairie. Behind him, the bay plodded wearily, sacks of gold ore heavy on its back. He'd transferred the camping outfit onto the dun so both horses now toted big loads, and they would get no relief until he reached Redrock.

Turning in his creaking saddle, he glanced back at the twin peaks where he had discovered the gold.
The
Double
Mountains
.
He hoped he had disguised his strike well enough to discourage strangers poking about. Not that he had seen any in the high country other than the three Kiowas, and they were long gone. But to be on the safe side he had covered up the site as best he knew how. If nobody found it before the first snow then his secret would be safe until the spring.

The mother lode had run off the trail and down the hillside, and as he had excavated the rich vein he had filled the creek bed behind him with rocks, wood and soil so the trail leading to Sun Creek was now unbroken. He had walked the horses back and forth across the new ground to beat it down firm, then transplanted an evergreen bush so if a rider did chance along the trail he would not see the workings that were strung along the downward slope.

After a month's long and arduous work he had reached the end of the vein, the very nature of its tapered end showing him if he cut into the steep ground on the topside of the trail he would find it again, possibly even richer than the section already worked. What he had already got was enough of a load for the packhorse, and as he knew winter would rapidly close in up there in the mountains, he had made up his mind to hightail it before the first snowfall. When that occurred he wanted to be safely holed up in the hotel at Redrock. He would weigh in the ore at the bank and stash the money, keeping only enough
to stake
him for a few card games and a couple of women. Not that Redrock would be able to furnish one of those pretty, sweet smelling ones, but until the job was complete he would have to make do. When spring came he would resupply and make it back up to the
Double
Mountains
and dig out the rest of the gold ore.

In late afternoon Morgan rode out from the cedar brakes at the fringe of the timberline and onto the wide open plains, the mountains ranged behind him in a variety of multihued purples. The wind had picked up, bending the brim of his low crowned hat and rolling the tumbleweeds on the beginning of their endless journeys. He found a shallow draw on the edge of the prairie where a few twisted cottonwoods offered partial shelter from the biting wind and made camp. He unloaded the horses and hobbled them so they could forage while he dug at a water seep, cutting a small basin so the muddy water could collect. There were buffalo chips aplenty and they burnt well, but the coffee was practically all mesquite beans, weak and dissatisfying. As he hunched over the meagre warmth, wolf skinned back to the eye of the wind, he glanced over at the ore sacks and his weathered face cracked into the semblance of a smile.

It would not be long now.

Seven days at the outside and he would be in Redrock.

***

Short-Lance squatted on the ground, using the shade made by the roan's shadow as he examined the sore hoof. The strain of walking on three legs had tired the pony and it stood quietly, lazily flicking its tail. The boy grimaced. It had been worse than he thought. It would be another day before he could ride. He wondered if they should kill the pony and double on the grey, but immediately discounted the idea. They would make better time with two ponies even if they sacrificed a day. The mountain trip had already proved the grey wouldn't last long carrying both. Miraculously, the tough pony had recovered some of its old energy and was faring well with the burden of only one rider.

It would be better to be prudent, for there was still before them a trail of many sleeps before they would be back among their people.

He lowered the roan's hoof and the pony gingerly tested its weight, lifting it away from the earth quickly. Short-Lance sighed and turned to scan the horizon. Away to the southeast a huge black mass undulated slowly across the prairie grass.
Buffalo
, a herd of many hundreds.
He did not bother trying to estimate, an impossible task. He knew that the sacred buffalo covered the grass of all the earth and that the huge beasts whose chin tufts dragged on the ground held in them all the power of the universe. Did not the Medicine men of the
Pau-ewey
, the Buffalo Society, say so? The Kiowa Nation was dependant on the buffalo for everything but their ponies; food, tools, clothing, shelter, and even the bowstrings for their weapons. Was it little
wonder
the Indians held the buffalo in such great esteem, and it should play such a great part in their religion? Wherever the mighty buffalo roamed, the Kiowas trod. Without the buffalo, there would be no Kiowas.