Zachary's Gold Page 6

  It was a beauty—two feet square and three high, with fancy legs and the name Palmer in raised letters across the door. It made me realize, thinking of him carting that cast-iron contraption all the winding way from Barkerville, that the trapper must have lived in this place for quite some time and poured out as much of his sweat as any law-abiding pioneer.

  A map of British Columbia was pegged to the wall logs. It was curled and yellow-stained where the chinking had allowed moisture. Two or three books sat on his shelves next to the jam tins and plates, along with several copies of the Cariboo Sentinel. A canvas backpack and various items of clothing could be seen stuffed under the bed. His boots, slightly larger than mine, I noticed, were behind the door.

  On the table, besides a miscellany of buttons and burned matches, were an unlit oil lamp and a kerosene cooker with a pot of stew on it. The stew was cold, but beside the lamp was a ceramic mug full of steaming hot liquid. I had arrived at tea time, it appeared, and with some pleasure I swept off a layer of bearberry leaves and spruce needles, and began to drink the brew.

  Standing thus in the doorway of his cabin, I felt obliged to thank my host.

  “You make a good cup of spruce tea,” I granted, “and I appreciate you keeping it hot. We’ll have a frost by morning. Hope you don’t mind my using your bed tonight. It’s getting late, and I’m sure you’ll sleep better than I do anyway.

  “I’m only joking, friend—no need to look so upset.”

  A very slight and cool breeze fluttered the poplar and birch leaves and carried to me the rich smell of the mouldering—an ancient, empty smell.

  “You should never have tried to bushwhack me,” I told him. “You’re a worse shot than I am at close range with that buffalo beater. I was going to get your tea anyway, so you might just as well have invited me in. Now look at yourself—bloody and uncomfortable and two nasty holes in your jacket.

  “And let me assure you, I’ll find your gold as well, so I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble hiding it. You might just as well have left it here on the step, because I’m quite determined. Yes, I’ll find it.”

  Already the sky was shading to a darker blue. The search in earnest would have to wait for the morrow.

  ALTHOUGH I WAS LOATH TO touch it, I knew I would have to do something about the corpse before nightfall. It was either that or be faced with lying on the dead man’s bed and listening to the coyotes divvying him up in the dark, and, while not a sentimental man, I knew I would find that disturbing.

  On the other hand, it seemed unwise to bury the fellow. When I eventually got the sheriff out to the place, he would want to identify the body.

  During these deliberations, the unpleasant thought appeared at the back of my mind that if I was unable to discover the gold and stolen goods on the premises, I would have no small problem in explaining why I had shot this solitary trapper. Granted, he had acted strangely over the past week and had shot at me with intent to cause bodily harm, but we were, after all, situated on his property, and I was the one who had come creeping through the bush with rifle in hand.

  Until I had solidified my plan of action, I considered it best not to dispatch my adversary to the devices of worm and beetle.

  On the south wall of the cabin, two lynx hides had been stretched, and between these hung a good length of quarter-inch rope. Tying on one end of this around the body, I dragged it twenty or thirty yards to the base of a stout poplar tree, just out of sight of the porch and window. Here I could hang him safely enough for the time being without feeling spied upon.

  I threw the rope over a thick limb that stuck out from the tree fifteen feet from the ground, and made a lariat loop with one end. At first I intended to hang him thus by the ankles, but the mental picture of him dangling upside down was distasteful to me, so I retied the rope around his chest and under his armpits. I knew he was dead, but somehow I felt he should not have to be uncomfortable as well.

  Hoisting him up was more difficult than I had expected. He was a heavy brute, and his arms and legs, which had already started to stiffen up, had a tendency to get caught on rough spots in the bark. Finally, though, he was duly suspended with his back to the poplar trunk, and I tied the long end of the rope to a neighbouring tree.

  He made a strange spectacle. The lariat loop had pulled his arms up until they stuck almost straight out, and he looked like a scarecrow, or as if he were about to take off in flight. His eyes were rolled back and wide open, giving him a look of terror, and once again my sense of decorum was offended. I trotted to the cabin and fetched his cloth cap. I was able to scramble high enough up beside him to jam it down over his head, half covering his face.

  “There now,” I murmured, wiping my hands on my trouser legs, “That’s good. Can’t expect anything more than that.”

  By hanging him there, I was acting in what I honestly felt to be the best interests of the deceased, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a sort of grave desecrator, and I found myself talking to relieve the nervousness.

  “That’s about all I can do for the moment, I’m afraid. I don’t suppose I’m obliged to make you look pretty—just keep the weather and the wildlife off you for the time being. Take it or leave it.”

  Sometimes in the mountains it seems as if the stars come out before the sky starts to darken. Someone turns up their wicks a little prematurely when the weather is clear and cold, and they are already gleaming at the full when the robin’s-egg blue overhead begins to darken towards navy.

  The first thing I did when I got back to the cabin was start a fire in the little wood heater. Under a moosehide beside the main woodpile, I found kindling already cut and a stack of birchbark—enough to last a week or two at least. Matches were neatly stored next to the foodstuffs in one of the powder cases. It seemed my late host was an orderly man, and as I waited for the room to heat, I supposed I might as well find out if he could cook, since there was already a good-sized pot of grub ready to be set on the stovetop.

  I ate two good helpings along with bannock from my own supplies and mentally congratulated the fellow on his culinary prowess. He made a fine stew from potatoes and some meat with a taste akin to pork—bear perhaps, or porcupine. I didn’t let my imagination wander any further than that.

  Warmed and fed, I began to inspect his belongings more carefully, hoping for some clue as to where his valuables might be hidden.

  The floor was solid earth, smooth and undisturbed as far as I could see, which was disappointing, for if he had buried the gold indoors I should probably have been able to spot something. I was looking for a fairly bulky load, and I quickly searched the ten-foot-square room to no avail.

  I did, however, find some things of interest in a small carrying satchel made of soft leather, which was half hidden behind the pile of clothes under the bed.

  First I drew out two bottles and, taking them closer to the kerosene lamp, discovered that they were sealed and certified as Scotch whisky, bottled in some distant place with a name that only a Scotsman could pronounce. To say that this was something rarer than gold would be an understatement. There were two brands of whisky produced and bottled in Barkerville, and the miners all agreed that they were “refiners’ liquor”—that is to say that if one poured the stuff over gold quartz, it would dissolve the rock and leave behind the pure metal. The precious stuff that the trapper kept under his bed was probably not available in most drinking establishments of San Francisco—certainly not in the nether corners of the Cariboo.

  I wasted no time before pouring a sample into a ceramic mug. I was no connoisseur of spirits, but it was most certainly pleasant to the taste and gentle in the throat, and I paused to savour it for a long moment before delving deeper into the leather bag.

  All that remained therein was a pair of steel-framed spectacles, two silver dollars, eight fancy brass buttons, and a small blue clothbound book—Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. It was a well-read volume, wrinkled and dog-eared, marked randomly by pen scratches inside th
e cover page. The frontispiece was inscribed “To Neddy, on your birthday, 1854,” which brought a variety of thoughts and speculations to mind.

  That salutation, combined with the nature of the book, implied to me that the recipient might have been a very young man. A gift to a scholarly lad from mother or aunt. That would have made the man I hung from the poplar tree considerably younger than I had supposed. I had assumed him to be older than me, but he could, in fact, have been still in his twenties. A beard can certainly have a misleading effect.

  Then again, the inscription could well have been written by a sweetheart to her beau. In that case, where was this darling of ten years past? Were her affections long since alienated and forgotten, or was she now somewhere waiting for the lover whose life I had cut short?

  A third, very likely possibility was that the writing on the opening page had never been addressed to my dead trapper at all; that the book was given to another unknown, and I had shot a man named Archibald or Nathaniel.

  For convenience, I assumed from that time on that his name was indeed Edward, and I began to mentally refer to him as “Dead Ned.” The Lamb’s Tales was too well handled and given a very special hiding place; I could not believe it to be only a casual, second-hand possession.

  There were three other books in the cabin, but these stood in a row on the back of the table, held between two blocks of quartz/granite amalgam. Baker’s I Discovered Africa and a book of some mystic’s theories on the end of the world sat on either side of a large publication called The Trapper and Furrier’s Guide, which alone of the three seemed much used. It was a sort of almanac issued by the Hudson’s Bay Company, containing numerous hints and bits of information on the setting of traps, skinning of animals, and storing of pelts, along with price lists, maps, and diagrams of various tracks.

  Did my newly expired acquaintance learn his trade from a book? I wonder. Was the time he spent on the trapline purely a facade to hide his criminal activities, or was he rather a bona fide man of the wilderness, who had dabbled in robbery as a sort of sideline?

  Once again the third possibility had to be admitted: that he was entirely what he appeared—a lonely woodsman, made a bit trigger-happy by cabin fever—and that the only criminal was myself, killer of an innocent man.

  I poured another cup of whisky and examined the room once again without finding any hint of illegal activity or ill-gotten gains. Only the liquor saved me from worry and depression. Tomorrow, it appeared, I would have to widen the area of search and scour the campsite and surrounding bush for evidence of a hidey-hole.

  I was not totally disheartened, but in that dark and unfamiliar cabin, with only the sound of a strong wind for company, I couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous. I knew perfectly well that the trapper had lived alone, and yet some instinctual caution made me listen for sounds of someone returning—a rightful owner, ready to throw me out of this place.

  I must admit that my rather childish fear made me carry the lantern outside with me when I found it necessary to attend to the other activity associated with drinking. It was a beautiful night. If one must waste time casting spent liquor onto the ground, I supposed it was best done thus, with shadows dancing and windblown clouds scrolling hastily over a sparkling sky.

  Buttoning my trousers, I wandered the few paces through the bush to where my silent companion was dangling.

  “Ned, Ned. You’re looking better this evening. I think the night air agrees with you.”

  The ropes had settled around his chest a bit, and his arms had dropped almost to his sides, so he did look a little less daunting. The cloth hat pulled down over his eyes was a great help as well.

  “My friend,” I continued, “you have most excellent taste in whisky. And you serve it up unstinted. You are the perfect host, I must say. Sir, I salute you!”

  I daresay I appeared something of an oddity to the owls and raccoons that night—lantern in my left hand, ceramic mug raised to toast my suspended friend.

  “My gratitude and my admiration know no bounds, Ned, but there remains one fact which is unarguable. You are a thief. You know it and I know it, and since you have divorced yourself from the cares and desires of this world, you might just as well come clean. Cough up, so to speak, my good man, and tell me where the gold is. Stop being coy. Where is it?”

  My cup was empty and I was cold.

  “You let me know, then, but hurry it up. A stiff doesn’t get many good opportunities coming his way, you know. I’m going back inside, but you’ll like it better out here. Not being unsociable, you understand, but it feels like a real chill blowing in, and that’ll keep you, well, held together. Just mind them crows, and keep your hat down over your eyes. Those critters have no sense of decency when mealtime rolls around.”

  With my third cup of whisky in my hand, I stood again at every angle to the room and glared at each of the very limited number of nooks and crannies available for inspection. The place could very well have been drawn up in the Hudson’s Bay guidebook under the title “A Well Appointed Trapping Cabin.” No log sounded hollow; no piece of furniture covered a hidden pit; no tin or box contained anything but the proper sort of food. I slouched into the chair, cup on lap.

  The bottle of elegant Scotch had, by that stage of the evening, done Hell’s own business inside my tired brain, and done it well. Apart from my days in the goldfields, I was never much of a drinker, and I suppose the stuff took me by surprise. When I attempted to lean my chair back and swing my feet up on top of the shelves, I overbalanced and nearly wound up flat on my backside. Instead, I kicked the shelves apart with my flailing feet—one of the powder cases landing beside the stove, spreading its contents on the floor.

  I had time to utter only one mild profanity before I saw Dead Ned’s hiding place.

  Between the two boxes was an almost unnoticeable space about an inch and a half deep—a sort of shallow tray, a foot or so square. He had lined it with a pair of perfect white rabbit skins, and on these were placed a stack of paper money and six pocket watches.

  After staring stupidly at the tableau for a moment, I reached out and leafed through the pile of currency. It was a mixture of bills—some British and Canadian, but mostly American; all in all, the equivalent of perhaps a thousand dollars.

  I then turned my attention to the timepieces. They were arranged in two careful rows of three—two silver-coloured, and four gold—one with a hinged cover over its face. I picked that one up and opened the cover, and as I did so the wheels within jiggled enough to move the second hand a few notches. Up to that moment it had been stopped at precisely twelve o’clock.

  Looking down, I realized that the other five watches were likewise stopped at precisely midnight (or noon, if you prefer). Hour, minute, and second hand on each one were exactly aligned towards the top of the dial.

  This discovery unnerved me slightly for some reason, and I replaced the device, its cover closed, and took another drink of whisky. After a moment of puzzled thought, I reached out and shifted one of the other watches slightly with my fingertip. Immediately the longest hand tripped forward a few steps and stopped. The same occurred when I shifted its neighbour. They were precision pieces.

  But why such careful settings, I wondered? It would be no simple task to line up those eighteen chronometric arms, although time was obviously in no shortage during the long nights of a trapper’s winter. Closer examination revealed that the bottom powder crate had been nailed to both floor and wall to keep it from jiggling, even after such a bang as I had administered to it a few minutes before. That was a good deal of engineering to ensure the arbitrary immobilizing of a batch of clock wheels.

  Some very peculiar sort of superstition it had to be, I reasoned, and such was not out of character for the men of that region. The darkness of night is so unfathomably black, and the sounds of the wind and the wilderness are so full of suggestion, that eccentricity begins to sprout from the sanest and most logical of men.

  It was another man’s supersti
tion entirely, but it affected me as well in some way, for I felt disinclined to tamper with the little tray of personal valuables. I speculated, though, that the assorted types of money and the collection of watches were the sort of things that a highwayman might naturally accumulate. Once again, my confidence was bolstered that I had indeed tracked down the man who had absconded with the Ne’er Do Well Company’s gold bars.

  The thought was not totally pleasing, however, for with it came the knowledge that he had crossed twenty-five miles of mountain on his way home from the robbery, and he might well have stashed his booty anywhere along the way.

  It took my liquor-fogged eyes a lengthy time to register the corner of a sheet of paper protruding slightly from under the rabbit skin. I drew it out carefully, shifting the little white fur blanket and setting all the watches in motion. It might take an hour to realign all six. At that point I realized why it had originally been done.

  “So now you know,” I whispered to Dead Ned. “I’ve found your secret, my friend.”

  It was a single sheet of good quality paper—five inches by eight, marked with red ink. Two long, wandering lines crossed the page, one small square was drawn near the bottom, and six stars, each encircled, were connected by a dotted line that formed a diagonal loop.

  “Your watches are ticking, Ned. I’ve found your treasure, and it’s too late for you to do anything. But maybe you can relax a bit now. You’re a suspicious man—careful and suspicious. I’ll bet that tonight will be the first really sound sleep you’ve had in years.”

  It took no genius to figure that the little square was the cabin wherein I sat, and the irregular lines a pair of creeks. What lay where the dead man drew the stars I would discover on the morrow.

  Daylight was not a pleasant thing, when it next penetrated my senses. As soon as I shifted my weight in the leather hammock bed, I began to suffer the unavoidable after-effects of poisonous quantities of liquor. I remained half-seated, leaned against the log wall until I was certain I would not immediately disgorge my previous evening’s meal, and tried to make sense of my surroundings. My brain was like a whirlpool, and as I reached into its swirling patterns, I came up with only random, scattered thoughts and impressions. I remembered discovering the hidden map and the promise of gold bars to be found, but at the same time I recalled standing over the corpse of a stranger, dead by my own hand. It was a poor trade-off of memories, first thing in the morning.