by David Niall Wilson
The setting sun outlined the mountains in stark shades of orange, indigo, and violet, silhouetting them against a background of darkening blue and shadowed clouds. The twisting expanse of the "zigzag" canyon was a confusing blur of crystalline reflection and muted color, falling rapidly to a line of darkness deeper than the surrounding shadows.
It was a beautiful sight, the kind artists strive to capture and tame, but seldom with success. It was the sort of beauty one had to witness firsthand.
Chad caught his breath, stilling his horse for a long moment of deep silence. Somehow the animal seemed to understand. As shadows claimed the valley that stretched below, Chad glanced to the two men that rode by his side.
"Is this the place, Pocowah?" he asked, already certain what the answer would be.
"It is," the Apache answered, face void of emotion. "We camp."
It was not a question. There was no way to go on in the darkness, and they'd covered nearly twenty hard miles that day alone. Without further speech, the three rode slowly down to the foot of the strange twisting canyon and dismounted. As Pocowah began the practiced routine of setting camp, Chad and his partner, Bart Waltrip stood side by side, facing the mouth of the canyon.
At first they maintained the silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Dreams, in their common, ethereal form, are pleasant diversions--emotional relief valves. Dreams that had come to life in the solid world of reality required more concentration.
Their journey had begun on a shaky foundation of myth and legend. Now they stood at the gateway to those legends, and rather than the elation he'd expected, Chad felt a sobering wave of awe washing over him.
"So," Bart said finally, unable to stand the heavy, unnerving weight of the silence. "This is it -- the end of the trail."
Chad couldn't help wondering. Was it really the end? It seemed more like another beginning. Either they would find the gold they sought, or they would not. Whatever happened, they would never again feel that particular goal drawing them onward. Their lives were changed. Turning to join Pocowah, they returned to their silence, moving about the tasks of setting their fire and preparing a quick meal.
They gathered wood, and filled several pots with fresh water from a small brook that bubbled down from the hills nearby, hanging them over the fire, one for coffee and one for stew. Pocowah had managed to snare a rabbit the night before, and it didn't take him long to have it simmering in the larger of the pots.
As comfortable as the fire and the odor of Pocowah's stew made them, the canyon, snaking away into moon-born shadows kept drawing their attention. Only Pocowah didn't watch the canyon. It was not his dream. His dreams came mostly from bottles, and he alone knew the true risks that they were taking. He had been hired because he was Apache, and because he had been willing to guide the two white men to this place. Riding through Indian country was foolish, at best, but to do so without a guide would have been worse. Suicidal.
The danger had grown steadily as they neared the zigzag canyon because it was a sacred place, a place of darkness and ghosts. That it held gold, Pocowah did not doubt, but no price would have induced him to set foot inside to find it. White men too often traded for gold with their spirits. Pocowah had traded for promises and a small place of his own among the whites-traded for visions that poured thick and sweet and freely from their glass bottles. He was not certain who was more foolish, he or they, but he would let them search for the gold.
As the fire died to a small, glowing bed of coals, Chad and Bart rolled themselves in their blankets and their separate thoughts and drifted off to sleep. Each was looking ahead in his own way to the coming day.
Pocowah sat back to watch the night. He held a brown, corked whiskey bottle tightly by the neck. Something scraped against stone off in the shadows and the hairs at the nape of his neck rippled. Nothing else stirred, but the feeling of unease would not leave him. Pocowah popped the cork and took a long, nervous swig. His eyes darted among the shadows, and his ears were tuned as closely as possible to the sounds of the night. A coyote howled, and the old Apache started nervously, taking another huge swallow and collapsing deeper into the warmth of his blanket as the fiery liquid rushed down his throat.
Half the bottle was gone when his eyelids grew too heavy to rise. He never woke Chad for his watch. It probably wouldn't have mattered.
~ * ~
Chad woke suddenly, rolling to a sitting position. His eyes did not focus immediately, but he knew that something was wrong-very wrong.
"Bart?" he said groggily, "Bart, what..."
His vision cleared, and he saw that they surrounded him. Faces, an unbroken ring of solid, emotionless faces. Apaches! They didn't speak. They made no move to attack, but anger misted in the air, heavy and electric with potential threat.
Very slowly, Chad drew his legs up in front of him, crossing them in the Indian style and looked about himself for Bart and Pocowah. Bart was sitting a few feet to his left. Fear was liquid and boiling in the man's eyes. Though a cool breeze still blew, and the sun was only a rose-tinted suggestion on the horizon, sweat stood Heavy on Bart's face, running in small rivulets down his neck.
Pocowah was on the right. The guide was as expressionless as always. Chad saw through the air of detachment to what he needed to know. Pocowah was scared. Sweeping his gaze over the faces that confronted him, he focused on the oldest of the Indians.
The man seemed fragile, thin and emaciated with long gray hair blowing freely about a wizened, leathery face. Feathers and beads, entwined with string and colorful bits of cloth, dangled over bony shoulders and woven so cleverly into his flowing, whitened locks that they seemed to have grown there naturally. The eyes that returned his gaze were ancient, hard and unforgiving. Chad shivered, but he didn't look away.
The Apache had no respect for fear.
"Greetings," Chad said slowly. "We are honored by your visit." When only silence followed he added, "Pocowah, tell him what I said."
Without a flicker of emotion, Pocowah repeated Chad's words in Apache.
There was another long moment of silence. Finally the old man spat out a few guttural words, and like an eerie toneless echo, Pocowah translated.
"Why have you come?"
Chad weighed his chances of getting away with a lie, and they came up short. Given the fame this place had enjoyed for so long, there was only one reason someone other than an Apache might seek it out.
"We are prospectors," he said slowly, watching for warning signs on the old man's face. There was nothing. "We have heard legends of a canyon that twists like a snake where the ground is lined with gold."
"This is our land," the old man said. His voice changed in neither volume nor intensity. "We do not wish for land," Chad answered, trying a thin smile that brought no response. "We have brought gifts -- beads and tobacco. We wish only to search for the gold, then to leave."
"We will smoke." The old man's words were not a question, nor were they a request. Chad reached slowly beneath his blanket, keeping his hands as clearly in view as possible, and pulled his pack from where it had served as a pillow. He withdrew a small leather tobacco pouch and a packet of rolling papers. It took all of his concentration to keep the trembling of his nerves from progressing to his hands as he carefully rolled a smoke.
The old man watched carefully, the first slight spark of interest flashing in his eyes. Chad reached out a twig and fumbled it around in the ashes of the night's fire until he found a coal. When the end of the twig was hot and glowing red, he raised it to the cigarette and inhaled, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs and sparking the paper to a smoldering flame. When he was certain that it would stay lit, Chad rose carefully, seating himself directly in front of the old Indian and offering him the smoke. It was accepted in silence, and the old man drew heavily on it, inhaling deeply It was as though the others were not present. Passing the cigarette back, the old man spoke again.
"This is a bad place," came Pocowah's translation. "Spirits live in the canyon. They guard that, which is above," The old Indian's head tilted and he gestured at the plateau far above the canyon, at the other end.
Chad could not see where the canyon met that bluff because of the zigzag stone walls between, but it was obvious that it was where the passage led.
"My people, we watch this place, but we do not go there."
"You could have killed us," Chad said evenly. "We slept like children."
"My men would like to kill you," the old one said matter-of-factly. "I wished to speak with you."
"Why?" Chad asked, the chill returning to his heart.
"We kill you," the old Apache answered, "maybe more white men come looking. We send you away, you bring more white men with talk of peace, then kill us in our sleep." He glared momentarily at Pocowah, who never batted an eye. "Maybe we let you look for gold. This is a bad place. Maybe you live, maybe not. If you go back, you will tell your people."
Chad carefully digested what the man was saying, looking for signs of hidden danger. "Then we can enter the canyon?" he asked finally.
"You look for gold in canyon," the old one said steadily. "If spirits let you live, you leave in peace, but you must stay in canyon. If you go above, you will die."
Chad wanted to question the man further, but he got no chance. The cigarette was burned to a stub and the old Indian rose with such sudden grace that if Chad had blinked he would have missed the motion entirely. The others had risen simultaneously, as if on some mental command from their aged leader. There were no words of farewell, They turned in silence, mounted their horses, and they were gone. The silence that followed the fading echo of their horses' hooves was deafening.
Pocowah was the first to move. He went to where he had been caught sleeping and found the half-full bottle of whiskey. He upended it, taking a huge gulp.
"Let me have a hit of that," Bart stammered. "Damned if I didn't just about shit myself." Chad ignored them, letting his nerves and heartbeat settle. When he spoke, his voice sounded distant. "Pocowah, make some bacon and coffee. Then I want to hear about what's at the end of that canyon."
"What difference does it make?" Bart snapped, his voice still quavering. "You heard that Indian, Chad. We can't go up there."
"I didn't say I wanted to go there, Bart," Chad said, dragging his eyes from the distant cliffs to his partner. "I just want to know, okay?"
Pocowah said nothing. He only fetched water and started the coffee, pausing every few minutes for another hit at his bottle. When the bacon was sizzling on a flat piece of stone in the fire, and he was poking distractedly at the coals with a tree branch, he suddenly looked up and spoke, his eyes glazed.
"Mountain is burial ground," he intoned. "No one goes there, only the dead and sometimes medicine man. It is a place of great power-a place of the gods.
"It is said that the sun goddess weeps when one of her children dies. Her tears fall there. It is her place. It has been sacred since before my father's father walked the land." Pocowah took a swallow of whiskey, "Some say it has always been here ... that some of the mounds are very different from those of my people. Much older...before the Apache. Our ancestors they say the goddess spit lightning to form this canyon and breathes mist to cloak it from sight. Only the Apache know where to find it. We are the chosen children of the sun."
"Guess that explains your likin' that firewater so damned much," Bart muttered. "You gettin' drunk on watch near to got us killed."
"If you'd been awake, and those Indians had come," Chad said calmly, "what would you have done, Bart?"
"Why," Bart cut himself off before he could say something stupid, but he continued to glare at Pocowah, who continued to ignore him, drinking in silence.
"I think," Chad said, "that we'd better get on into that damned canyon. One thing I caught for sure; they won't follow us in there, Let's get packed and move on in."
"I will wait here." Pocowah said flatly. "Canyon bad place. You go, find gold. I wait."
"I expected that,' Chad said, tossing his saddle over his mount with a practiced swing. "You just don't forget who you're here with. Those others come back, you find a way to let us know."
Pocowah didn't speak. He found a shaded spot beneath a gnarled, twisted old tree and he propped his back firmly against it. Without further speech, Chad and Bart finished packing what they would need for the day and mounted up. It was nearly a mile and a half down that twisting, shadowy trail to the cliff the Indians had mentioned, and the gold fever was starting to burn again, evaporating their fear. At a curt nod from Bart, Chad started off, keeping his horse to a slow walk.
It did not seem like a moment to be rushed. As they entered the canyon's mouth, Chad looked down and gasped. Halting his mount, he gestured silently to a small patch of earth to their right. Bart stopped beside him and followed his gaze. There were three wooden stakes planted in an uneven row in the rocky soil. Each was pounded through a sun- bleached skull. The center skull wore a cavalryman's cap. The other two were bare, except for thin string bandannas that held several aged and weathered feathers and beads. Around the bottoms of the stakes, held by leather thongs, were hide pouches. Each was covered in designs of colored beads and filled with something.
"Medicine bags," Chad muttered. "Seen some just like 'em back at the fort. Scouts wore 'em."
Sunlight was just beginning to seep into the closed-in canyon, filtering through cracks in the stone walls. A stray ray of light caught on something lodged in the eye sockets of the first skull, glinting brightly. Chad's breath froze in his lungs. It was gold. They were filled with nuggets of pure gold. Bart caught sight of it at the same moment, started so violently at the sight that his horse shied, almost throwing him.
"Damn," he said, "Damn,"
"Come on," Chad said, turning his horse's head toward the canyon's still gloomy interior. "We can't go back now, It's probably just a warning to anyone who came here by accident."
He started off again, leaving Bart to follow. The "warning," if that was what it had been, had left him trembling and a little chilled ... he didn't want his partner to notice. Bart was a good man, and he knew more about gold and prospecting than anyone Chad had ever met, but he was not extremely brave. Chad knew that if they were to reach their goal, he'd have to take the lead, and he couldn't afford any appearance of fear.
As Chad passed the skulls, a vague feeling of unease stole through him, a sensation of violation and of undeniable hostility. The hairs on his neck prickled with the weight of unseen eyes, and he felt an almost overpowering urge to spin his mount and ride like hell. His hands twitched at the reins and his horse shied violently, coming to an uneasy halt.
Ignoring Bart's startled outcry; Chad leaned close to the horse's neck and kicked his heels. The animal leaped into the canyon at a near-panic gallop. About a quarter of a mile in, Chad finally regained control.
Moments later, Bart drew up beside him, wild-eyed and breathless, but Chad ignored his partner, concentrating on his surroundings. The feeling of unease was not gone, but it was muted. It nagged at his senses, but faintly, like an annoying itch. Ahead, a small stream flowed through the canyon's center, looping around and rushing down a crevasse in the left wall. There was no sound but that of the stream. No birds called. No insects spoke their monotonous litanies. Nothing.
Cursing softly under his breath, Chad dismounted, not allowing the warnings in his head to stop him. Leading his horse, he walked down to the edge of the stream. He heard the scraping of leather that meant that Bart was following his lead, but he didn't turn. He scanned the stony bluffs and darkened crevasses surrounding them, trying to pinpoint whatever was causing the prickly feeling on his spine. There was nothing.
It was cool in the canyon, but still he reached up to wipe a heavy sheen of sweat from his brow. Carefully keeping his voice as even as possible, he said, "You want to start lookin' for color down here, or work on up the stream?"
Bart looked nervously over his shoulder at the only escape route, which was receding at an all-too-rapid pace. "Might as well start here as anywhere, Chad, If there's gold upstream, it'll show here,"
Chad had figured as much himself, but Bart was the prospector. Chad was there for only two reasons, really: to make Bart feet more secure, and because Chad knew more about Indians. It was Chad, working with the barest facts and fanciful tales that Bart had unearthed, who had spent the time and liquor to get Pocowah to agree to be their guide.
Now they had reached the canyon and it was Bart's turn to be useful. To his credit, Bart was already rummaging through his packs for his equipment, despite his obviously barely- controlled fear. He pulled loose a couple of pans and tossed one to Chad, who caught it with a slow grin.
"Let's do it, partner," Chad said, heading to the stream. "This place gives me the creeps. I say we fill our bags and get out."
"Amen," Bart mumbled, following him down to the streambed.
Chad waded in. The water was cool and clear and the streambed was covered in fine sand and smooth stones. He reached out and dug in with his pan, chopping out a chunk of gravel and silt and beginning the easy, side-to-side motion that would wash free the sludge. The idea was to let the gold, which was heavier, sink to the bottom of the pan. Chad had done this part of a prospector's trade often enough. All in all he'd found about enough gold in all his days to buy a bottle of cheap tequila.
Apparently, his luck had changed. When the water and sand had cleared, the bottom of his pan held a thin film of gold dust, mingled with several pea-sized nuggets. It was pure -- not imbedded in chunks of quartz, as he'd so often seen it.
Chad let out a whoop, tossing his hat over his head toward the bank. The sound died quickly in the stuffy silence of the canyon, and the horses shied, nearly bolting. Bart glanced over at him, startled, but he was wearing a wide grin.
"It's here!" Bart said fiercely, heading for the stream's bank. "I'm not a fool. It's really here!"
"Well where the hell are you going then?" Chad asked. "We need to fill up on this stuff and get out of here while those Indians are still of a mind to let us live."
"That's why we have to move upstream, Bart said determinedly. "There's good color here, but mostly dust and small stuff. It's all washing here from near the lode. If we can get in close to its source, we can fill these bags more quickly, and with bigger nuggets."
Shrugging, Chad poured what he'd found into a small pouch on his belt. He was taking no chances. He'd keep what he found. Bart's enthusiasm was contagious, though, and Chad was soon hurrying to the bank and mounting up to follow his partner upstream. It was only about a quarter of a mile to the cliff at the end. Might as well go all the way to the wall, he thought out loud.
His nervousness over the eerie silence and the odd sensations brought about by the canyon were all but forgotten. Gold does that to a man. The sun had risen a little farther, and the light was better. It seemed to lift some of the unease with its warmth. With the water glistening brightly and the shadows fleeing the noonday sun, it was a lot harder to credit the presence of spooks or Indian ghosts.
Dismounting, they put their horses off to the side to graze and headed back toward the stream. It was deeper at this end. The water cascaded noisily down a small crack in the cliff face from some unseen source above, forming a clear pool at the bottom. This pool trailed off into the stream they'd followed from the canyon's mouth.
Bart headed immediately for the creek's mouth, where the water flowed with the most force. By the time Chad had caught up with him, Bart had already been in and out of the water and was dancing about like a madman.
"See! See!" he cried. "I knew it. Look at this, Chad, look good and hard. We're rich!" Chad hurried up to where he could see into Bart's pan, and his jaw dropped. These were no pea-sized nuggets ... by a long shot. The gold in the large metal dish varied from the size of an acorn to one that was nearly as large as an apple. And there were a lot of them, more than Chad had ever seen in one place at one time. He grabbed a handful out of Bart's pan, letting it slip through his fingers as his mind fought to comprehend the sheer magnitude of it.
This was the end and beginning he had foreseen. His life would never be the same again.
"Let's get these bags loaded," he grinned, "At this rate we can be loaded and out of here in an hour!"
"Yeah...' Bart's eyes were kind of vague, as if his mind had suddenly focused on something far removed from the moment.
"Hey," Chad said, shaking Bart's arm. "Did you hear me? Let's get this over with."
“Yeah, sure," Bart said, shaking off whatever it was he'd been thinking and started to pan again. He apparently didn't feel much like talking, which was fine with Chad. His own thoughts were churning images of the coming trip through Indian and bandit country to civilization and the possibilities presented by his newfound wealth, Who cared what Bart was thinking? Let the man dream his own dreams.
The gold was as plentiful as Bart had promised. Chad's saddlebags were soon as full as his mount could carry, and Bart wasn't lagging far behind him. The sun was still high in the sky, and they hadn't eaten since that morning, but they decided to make the short ride out before stopping to rest. De-spite the gold, neither man was anxious to be in the canyon when the late afternoon shadows began to grow long once again.
As they mounted up to leave, Bart stopped to stare up the cliff at the point where the stream poured out and down. He seemed lost in thought, and it made Chad nervous, though he couldn't have put a finger on the exact reason. Maybe it was just the gold. It was weighing even more heavily on his mind than it was on his mount. Surely Bart wasn't stupid enough to be thinking about trying to take it all for himself?
"Let's go," he said finally, spurring his own mount. "That sun isn't gonna last forever, and I want out of here before dark."
Shaking his head, as though to clear it of some clinging train of thought, Bart answered, "Right. Let's get on out before that damned drunken Indian steals the rest of our gear."
Chad disagreed with Bart's opinion of Indians, but he'd tried as many times as he felt inclined to get through his partner's thick skin of prejudice. They disagreed on a lot of things. Bart had not been that long out of the cities back east. He'd had no time to come to learn to respect the tribal cultures, or to appreciate the reality of how badly the white man actually treated them. To Bart, Pocowah was all Indians, and the Apache guide was more than happy to feed Bart a clichéd underestimation of himself.
A drunken Indian was more than a match for most sober white men out in the wild. All Chad had to do was to keep the two of them off of one another's throats until they could get back and cash in that gold.
It seemed only moments before they approached the canyon's mouth. The feeling of unease grew again, but not as powerful this time. Chad’s shoulders itched, and he wondered if this time it wasn't coming from a different source. He resisted the urge to turn and look at his partner.
Something about the bright kiss of the sun drained the evil from the three nugget-eyed skulls. Chad hardly even spared them a glance as he rode out and reined in beside their campsite, trying to rid his mind of the nagging doubts assaulting him over his partner's strange detached behavior.
Pocowah was sitting, much as he had been when they'd left him, watching them return without expression. The bottle in his hand was noticeably emptier, and the fire had all but died.
As Chad and Bart dismounted, Chad called out . . . "Pocowah, see if you can rustle up some food. We'll be camping tonight and leaving at sunrise."
"You find gold." It was a statement, obviously read from the two prospectors' eyes. "We go now. This bad place. Pocowah not want to stay."
"Just fix the food,' Bart threw in, his voice harsh. "I'm tired, and I'm not riding anywhere without food and rest. You fix dinner, then finish that bottle. By the time you're sober enough, it'll be morning."
With uncustomary defiance, Pocowah repeated himself, "Pocowah not want to stay.”
Chad left the two to argue and took the cook pots and filled them with water. The stream was hardly a trickle outside the walls of the canyon, but it was enough. He was starving. If the Indian wouldn't cook, he would. He was tempted to dump the day's fortune out and just stare at it, but it was safer to leave it stashed away, They might need to light out in a hurry, and he wasn't about to lose that gold now that he had it.
When Chad returned with the water, he found the other two facing off over the fire. The Apache's hand was trailing down his side, dangerously close to his knife.
Chad walked hurriedly into the camp, holding out the water. Pocowah took the pot with a sullen, hateful glare at Bart, who was red-faced and had begun pacing back and forth.
"Maybe we should cut out this evening," Chad ventured, taking a seat with is back to the tree Pocowah had vacated, "We could be a few miles farther on in case those Apache come back."
"They told us we could go in there," Bart reminded him. "I just want to get some food, maybe a little coffee, and turn in. We couldn't make enough distance by dark to matter, and then we'd have to set camp all over again."
It made sense. Besides, if that old Apache decided he wanted their scalps, a few hours riding would hardly save them. Chad leaned back, closed his eyes, and let his mind wander through fantasies of how he'd spend his money. There were worse ways to spend an evening. From time to time he glanced over to where Bart sat, propped against his saddlebags, furiously scribbling in the journal he carried. He had a faraway look in his eyes.
Chad figured his partner just didn't want to forget the fantasies that were occurring to him. Maybe the man was planning to write a book. If so, there'd be money to buy him a mighty comfortable place to write it.
Night closed around them quickly, and once supper was gone and the last of the sunset had followed, even Pocowah seemed ready to call it a night. Of course, the empty whiskey bottle at his side was more likely the cause of his change of heart than anything Bart might have said. They talked very little, and soon rolled into their blankets and drifted off to join the darkness.
It was the scream that brought Chad back to full wakefulness. Pocowah was already awake, backed against the same gnarled tree he'd lain under that day, eyes wide and full of more fear than Chad had ever seen on a human face.
"What..." Chad glanced around and noted quickly that Bart was gone. He clamped off further speech. If something was going on out there, he didn't want to go calling attention to himself. Moving as quickly and as quietly as possible, he moved over to Pacowah's side.
"Where's Bart?" he whispered, grabbing the Indian's arm. "What the hell is going on?"
Pocowah didn't speak at first; he only pointed at the canyon and the mountains beyond. Wisps of smoky mist swirled about the canyon's entrance. A dull, eerie throb-- like that of a huge drum-vibrated through the ground and up through Chad's bones. Tense as he was with confusion and fear, the primal message of the beat still sent the blood rushing through his veins. He started to rise, to move forward toward the mist, but Pocowah quickly grabbed his arm.
"Not go. Too late, now. Bart try to climb to burial ground. Spirits angry."
Even as a curse rose to his lips, Chad's heart and mind screamed for him to listen. Pulling free of the Indian's grasp, he stumbled upend began walking with halting steps toward the misty mouth of the canyon.
Moaning voices insinuated themselves into the already maddening drumbeats, permeating his thoughts with their anger -- their need for vengeance. He could make out too-tall figures moving through the cloudy draw. Chad shuddered, but images of his partner, hurt or in danger, drew him forward. The moving figures receded as he neared, pulling away from him and rendering any clear view of their features impossible.
Chad stepped around the stones at the mountain's base and into the entrance. This time the scream was his. Where the three skulls had stood, pounded through with stakes, a fourth now joined them. Blood pooled and clotted around the base, dripping from the severed neck and trickling down from where Bart's eyes had once rested. In their place, two jagged nuggets of gold had been pounded.
Bart's hat, the chin strap caught in the folds of flesh that had once covered his Adam's apple, sat back on his head at a jaunty angle. His tongue lolled over bloody lips. In the back of Chad's mind the drums, and his heartbeat, pounded louder, faster. No! No! No! No!
Turning, gagging so violently that he nearly fell, Chad staggered back to the fire. Pocowah had already saddled the horses. Bart's saddlebags rested on the back of the Apache's own mount. Numbly, Chad grabbed his own reins, leaning heavily against the horse's side. As he readied himself to leap into the saddle, he glanced down and to the side. Bart's journal lay a few feet away, face down over a root. Not sure why, he walked quickly over and grabbed it before mounting up. He slipped the small volume into the front of his shirt as he spurred his horse after Pocowah's, moving as rapidly as they dared into the darkness.
They didn't stop until the sun was dipping back to the horizon, and only because the horses could not go on. They didn't speak, but Pocowah dug into his bags and came up with two more bottles. One he handed to Chad, the other he took in a deathgrip, wandering away to wrap himself in his blankets and settle into the crook of a tree.
Chad wasn't a reader. He'd learned, as a child, enough to get by, but he'd seldom found the time or the inclination to put those lessons to use. Now he pulled Bart's journal from his shirt, popped the cork out of the bottle Pocowah had given him, and took a deep gulp.
Opening the book, he scanned the pages carefully. He didn’t stop until he reached the last page with writing. He could just make out the words in the growing gloom.
"Found good color and nuggets larger than my closed fist. Being at the bottom of a small waterfall, it must be washing down from above. Indians told us the nuggets were the tears of the sun god. I know the truth; it is the mother lode, I'm sure of it. Once Chad goes to sleep; I'm going to look. I wouldn't want to argue with him, or to put him into danger if the Indians return, but I have to know. May God watch over me. Bartholomew Waltrip"
As the bottle slowly emptied and the wind pounded through the trees above, Chad was certain he could hear the drums.