Zachary's Gold (16 page)

I WAS ON MY FEET
and moving before it was light, but I still thought it advisable to change my appearance as much as possible. I tucked my trouser legs into my boots, tied my hair back into a pigtail like a sailor, and removed my coat. I carried it wrapped in my blanket as I skulked past the sleeping small claim holders, around the fringe of Cameronton, and away from civilization.

I was still in possession of my map, and I plotted a course west-southwest, towards Mount Greenberry. This would allow me to skirt around the lower levels of Sliding Mountain and back down to the course of Antler Creek, not too far from Ned's cabin.

The sun was out when I reached Wendle Lake, but there wasn't yet much warmth to it. The water was freezing cold, but I stripped to the buff and waded in, scrubbing myself with black sand, and whooping with anguish and ecstasy. I felt a bit like I was punishing myself for the foolish mistakes that had made my last few days so disastrous, although the chief reason for my oblations was simple personal cleanliness. I smelled even worse than I felt.

The sunshine dried me quickly, and I went to work on my laundry. I rendered my coat in satisfactory condition by banging it against a tree trunk until the caked clay disintegrated, but the rest of my clothing had to be washed or left behind. I flushed out my trousers, shirt, and underwear in the lake, then draped it all over a sturdy willow bush.

I intended to sit there and sort out my plans while I waited for my drawers to dry, but immediately realized that I was becoming uncommonly hungry, and I had a long day's walk before I reached known food supplies. I was therefore compelled to start on my way dressed only in my coat, with my wet laundry dripping from a stick behind me, like a soldier carrying a most undignified flag. I found I could walk just as quickly naked as I could in proper clothing, but even there, in the deep privacy of the wilderness, I found it slightly humiliating.

I deserved to feel humiliated. With a most self-destructive efficiency I had burned all my bridges behind me. It was now impossible for me to carry out my half-formed plan to ship the gold in coffins, which was most regrettable, for something about that scheme appealed to my sense of poetic mischief.

I had one mule and about one hundred and eighty pounds of gold, and I would need a good stock of supplies to make a six-hundred-mile trip without ever visiting a roadhouse or a general store. This was entirely too much of a burden for a single person at the best of times, and my arm was still too weak and painful to be of much use. It had taken a fresh round of abuse during my flight from justice, and I felt sure that if the muscles had not been ripped completely asunder up to that point, they must be now.

I considered the possibility that I could make two trips. The second time north I would come in disguise and be better prepared. That idea, however, was both repugnant and unrealistic to me. I couldn't believe that any miner's sudden riches had ever caused him such immediate vexation of spirit.

It was about three o'clock when I reached what I figured to be Two Sisters Creek. At this junction I was able to look out over a broad area of swamp and marsh, at the far side of which ran Antler Creek, and across this flatland I could see a fine breath of woodsmoke from the same camp I had noticed on my way out to town. A new line of thoughts began to unravel in my brain.

While I did not like the idea of a partnership, it was an option that had to be considered if the opportunity came along.

The only person I actually knew and trusted was Carl, and he, of course, could not be used, now that the law was peering over his shoulder. There remained, though, the possibility of hiring on a stranger.

The drawbacks were obvious. There would be no way of knowing if the man was trustworthy. There was also the matter of sharing. If I took on a helper, would I be required to cut him in for a full share? A half? A tenth?

The day was in its latter stages, and I still had several miles to travel. I had to decide something soon.

I came up with a fabricated proposition that might sound plausible to a potential partner whose back was stronger than his brain. I could claim to be an agent for a group of unnamed and slightly mysterious fellows who wished their gold to be discreetly transported as far as the lower Fraser. On behalf of these dubious gentlemen, I would be entitled to hire one more able body who would receive, like myself, ten per cent of the goods. When we reached a place somewhere below Fort Hope, I would claim that it was the designated rendezvous, and I would dismiss my helper, suggesting that our desperado employers might arrive at any minute, and that his best chance for survival was to take his ten per cent and disappear without having to meet them.

As a cover story, it was noticeably riddled with implausibilities, but presented to the right stranger, it might suffice. I was running out of ideas. It was time to accept the risks and go to it. I decided to sneak up on the camp below me and take a look at what I could see.

From a clearing on the hillside I could look down and pinpoint where the smoke was coming from—a spot on a little creek not significant enough to be even marked, let alone named on the map I kept in my jacket pocket. When I circled around and reached its gully higher up, I found that the bed was dry—water probably running there only in the spring.

I worked my way down slowly until I could smell the burning wood and hear its distant pop and crackle, then moved into the forest border and picked my way stealthily through the spruce and scrub. The trees were tall and the underbrush thick through this area. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to cover the last hundred yards.

Finally, though, I glimpsed something white through the screen of branches and knew that I was on the outskirts of the clearing. I crouched down and waited to see movement, but nothing stirred. Becoming slightly anxious, I crept carefully over to my right to a pair of huge granite boulders, side by side and slightly higher than the open space and the fire. I could squeeze in between the two big rocks and peer over the top lip of the front one to get a good view.

The camp was empty. A sturdy lean-to or temporary cabin, with a moosehide for a door, was nestled under a pair of twisted Jack pines, and clothes or pieces of cloth were laid out to dry on a rock the size of the one behind me. A hatchet was stuck into a log near the fire. Over the latter was set a tripod of green willow, wired together, with a blackened pot dangling down over the flames.

No one was in sight. I waited and felt a prickly sensation rise at the nape of my neck.

Still no one appeared. My mind flashed back to my first arrival at Ned's cabin, and I was thankful that once again I had decided to approach this place under cover. Without even rustling my coat sleeve, I drew my gun from my pocket.

What a horrible country, I thought, where even when you're sneaking up on someone, you have to worry about getting ambushed from behind.

I pictured in my mind the tall fellow whose brother had been unfortunate enough to know Trapper Ned. I could still see the immense bore of his homemade revolver.

I couldn't wait and watch anymore. I had to move before I froze with fear, or panicked and ran. Still holding my gun at the ready, I slid down and stepped out from between the boulders. Doing so, I almost ran smack into the man returning to his camp.

We both shouted at the same time. I yelled a simple Anglo-Saxon epithet of low character, but I cannot say exactly what his exclamation meant. He shouted it in Chinese.

If a Chinaman's face can go pale with shock, I believe his did at that moment. He was returning, I presumed, from doing what men of all races must go to the bushes to do from time to time, and as he walked he was tying a cloth belt or sash around his waist

His eyes levelled on my Colt .45, which was pointed directly at the spot where the furrows in his brow met the bridge of his nose, and his arms immediately flew into the air. His pants slid slowly down, until the waistband caught around his knees.

I was surprised to see that he was not wearing long underwear—only short pants under his trousers. His legs were rather scrawny, without a sprout of hair on them—a sad-looking specimen as he stood there in the pathway.

It wasn't the sort of first contact with a new culture that anyone would choose. We stood there, open-mouthed and dumb, for a long moment, like a pair of idiots—I staring at his knobby knees and he at my gun. Finally I lowered my gun and he raised his pants. Common etiquette didn't cover this situation, and neither one of us knew quite what to do.

“Hello,” I said.

He nodded with a confused and slightly worried look on his face.

“I was passing by on the creek, and I thought just to be friendly-like, I should drop up and say hello. See if you had a cup of coffee to share.”

He didn't reply.

“You have any coffee, by any chance?”

Still confused. No reply. I slipped my weapon back into my coat pocket.

“Sorry about the gun. I just wasn't thinking, and I was a little . . .”

He didn't have the slightest idea what I was saying.

“No English, eh?”

Finally I had spoken a phrase he understood, and he smiled and nodded proudly.

It was rather disheartening. Once again I had the sensation that I was jinxed. My plan of action was proving itself impossible before I even had a chance to see it fully formed.

The Chinaman asked me some questions in his foreign gibberish and pointed to his camp. I assumed it was an invitation and allowed him to lead me through an opening in the bushes and into his camp.

He watched nervously and smiled a lot as I sat down on the log beside the hatchet. He was every bit the self-conscious host, especially since he still didn't know why I had blundered into his domain, holding a gun and catching him in an undignified pose. Perhaps my obviously depressed mood put him a bit more at ease, because he eventually quit glancing at my gun pocket and began to say things in his native language that I had no interest in trying to understand.

There was only one thing capable of drawing me out of my melancholy, and that was directly in front of me, hanging from a willow tripod and exuding an aroma of boiling grouse or rabbit. No language barrier could disguise the lusting look I directed at the man's dinner, and despite a certain temporary reluctance, he was most gracious in making motions of invitation.

“I'd love to indulge in a bit of dinner,” I replied gratefully. “Haven't eaten since yesterday noon, and I've done a fair piece of work since then.”

He removed the pot from the fire and shovelled a serving of a white goulash into a blue and white ceramic bowl. This he gave to me, while himself taking his share in a tin cup, much like the one I had left behind in the Barkerville saloon.

“Looks good,” I said, “even if I have heard a few scary stories about what you people eat.”

As we sat and ate in silence, I wondered if this might be the same fellow who had a claim just below mine on Binder Creek. He looked basically the same, but I was really unable to distinguish one Oriental from another. I suppose they thought all Caucasians looked the same, apart from the different colours of their beards.

The meal was mostly rice cooked in broth, with little meat in it. I wolfed my first bowlful down in rapture, and since I couldn't make myself understood enough to be polite, I simply helped myself to most of what was left in the pot, smiling thanks to my host and mumbling compliments that I knew he couldn't decipher.

Having taken the frenzied edge off my hunger, I decided to savour the second helping a little more carefully. I had seen the cook drop a small dollop of some sort of relish on his own portion, so I fetched the bottle to try the taste for myself. It was a clear, oily mixture, with seeds and bits of red and green vegetable, almost odourless. I put half a teaspoonful in my mouth and swallowed it before I happened to notice the concerned expression on the Chinaman's face.

The flames that rolled down my throat could not have been hotter if I had stuffed my face with all the coals from the campfire. The water bucket was next to the lean-to, and I attacked it desperately. The pain abated only while I was actually swallowing, so I drank continuously for several minutes, soaking my shirt front in the process.

I give the man credit. He had every right to laugh, but he maintained an aspect of friendly concern throughout. He did, however, eat my bowl of food after I signified that I had lost my appetite.

I watched him in silence, feeling the skin of my throat turn crisp and flaky, and ruminated on my situation. I found myself in a most unusual state of affairs. It was not just that I was alone and sharing a meal with a stranger, for the unspoken rule of the backwoods was that any traveller was entitled to whatever form of hospitality he required, without question. Obviously, it was a rule that transcended boundaries of language and race, for notwithstanding my social gaff of pulling a gun on my host, he seemed quite willing to share his home with a weary wanderer.