I pulled the Henry rifle out of its loop & dismounted & cautiously moved forward into the clearing. I did not see any bears but as I got closer to the cave that rank smell of them got stronger.
‘What’s wrong with the horses?’ called my pa from further back on the trail. ‘I almost lost control of them.’
‘They are spooked by the smell of bear!’ I yelled back.
‘Bear?’ called Pa from the edge of the clearing. ‘There are bears hereabouts?’
‘Grizzlies, I’d wager,’ I hollered, ‘Probably why they call it Grizzly Gulch.’
Pa cursed.
I cocked the Henry & I went cautiously to the cave mouth.
‘I can smell bear around here,’ I called over my shoulder, ‘but I do not think they have been here for a while. That is probably why the stage horses are spooked, but not my mare. She is used to the smell but they are not. I reckon this is their shebang all right,’ I added in a carrying voice.
‘You mean those danged Reb Road Agents set up camp outside a bear cave?’ yelled Pa, still astride his horse.
‘By the looks of things, they set up camp inside it. But I think it is safe.’
Pa dismounted & tethered the horses & came across the moonlit clearing to join me at the black mouth of the den.
‘Anybody in there?’ he asked. ‘Or anything?’
I sniffed. ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘But bears have been here. Look.’ I kicked at a dark pellet near the mouth of the cave. ‘See that turd? That is a hibernation plug.’
‘What?’
‘It is a turd that plugs the bears up all winter,’ I explained. ‘Like a bung on a barrel. When they come out of hibernation they pop it out of their rear ends. My Indian ma taught me that.’
Pa cussed under his breath. ‘Those dang fool idiots.’
‘Maybe they were not so foolish,’ I said. I had just spotted something inside the cave entrance on the left. Seeping moonlight showed me a box-shaped object. It was one of those iron reinforced wooden strong boxes favored by Wells Fargo & Co.
‘Most people would not look for a Wells Fargo strongbox inside a grizzly bear cave,’ I observed.
There was enough light in there to let me see that its lock was smashed to smithereens. I leaned my Henry Rifle against the damp cave wall & knelt down & opened the lid of the strong box & whistled through my teeth.
‘This box is full of gold,’ I said. ‘That must be the “booty” they were talking about.’
Pa almost knocked me over in his haste to get to the strongbox.
‘Sweet Jesus!’ he said. Then, ‘Help me drag it out of here.’
I helped him drag it out of there & into the moonlit clearing where we could see it was full of gold coins.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Pa. ‘There must be hundreds of twenty-dollar gold pieces in here. They never said, the rascals!’
‘Who never said?’ I asked.
He looked up at me from his crouched position over the box. The silvery moonlight showed confusion on his otter face, as if he could not remember who I was. Then something shifted and he became Pa again. ‘Wells Fargo & Co,’ he said. ‘They never said it was gold they lost.’ He stood up. ‘This will make us rich.’
‘No,’ said a voice behind us. ‘It will make me rich.’
We both turned to see a man with an Army pistol in his hand.
The moonlight showed us his bushy black mustache & muttonchop sideburns & long coat & bandana around his neck.
But he was bareheaded, for I was wearing his hat.
Yes, it was Ray G. Tempest, the other Pinkerton Detective. He had not broke his neck but had survived.
Without any more warning, he cocked his Army revolver & fired.
BANG!
Pa slumped to the ground.
‘Pa!’ I cried.
Then Ray turned his piece on me. Before my head knew what to do, my feet jumped me to one side and then sped me to the nearest shelter: the cave.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG! My hat flew off!
BANG! CRASH!
‘Ugh!’ I could not help crying out for I had crashed into the rear of the cave and fallen back. As I lay there on the bear-smelling dirt floor half stunned, I wondered if I had been shot. I thought not. I felt in my sacque pocket & pulled out my four-shooter. It was a pathetic weapon against a Colt’s Army, but it was about all I had.
I cocked it & was about to roll over on my stomach & shoot back when I realized that Ray had stopped firing. He was probably re-loading as he had fired five shots.
I decided to play possum & wait for him to come near to see if I was dead. I lay on my back, death-still, with my eyes half closed & my little four shooter cocked but out of sight down by my side.
This was my plan: as soon as his upside down face loomed above me, I would jerk up my arm & shoot him!
My foster ma Evangeline had made me promise never to kill a man nor exact revenge, but Ray G. Tempest had shot and killed my pa!
My heart was pounding so hard that I could not hear anything but the blood whooshing in my ears.
But he never came.
I reckon he heard me grunt & saw me fall back on the cave floor & lie still.
I reckoned he thought he had killed me.
I waited and waited.
By and by my heart stopped being so noisy and I heard sounds from outside the cave, viz: the clink of metal and horses snuffling. I reckon he was adding gold coins to the silver ingots in the mail bags on the backs of the six stage-coach horses.
After about 9 minutes of this, I heard the sound of heavy-laden horses being led back out of the clearing towards the main road.
I lay quiet in case it was a trick.
After about six more minutes I uncocked my little pistol & rolled over on my stomach & I wormed my way cautiously forward to the mouth of the dark cave.
The moon was on its way down and was almost touching the tops of the pines. But it was still high enough to show me that Ray & the horses were gone. The only thing left in the moon-washed clearing apart from the empty strongbox was my pa, lying hatless & awful still. I ran to him & looked down.
His white shirt was soaked with blood. I tore it open and found the bullet hole about half an inch below where his ribs ended.
I knelt down & I rested my head against his bare chest. The skin was still warm & I could hear his faintly beating heart. In the moonlight his face was pale as milk.
‘Pa?’ I said. ‘Pa, are you conscious?’
‘He took my hat,’ said Pa in a faint voice. ‘Ray took my new beaver-felt brown hat that you bought me.’
‘Probably because I have his,’ I said.
‘I am gut shot,’ said Pa in a whisper. ‘I am a goner.’
‘Don’t say that!’ I cried. ‘I will go and get you help.’
‘No,’ he said, lifting his head a little. ‘Don’t go. I don’t want to die alone.’
‘All right then, Pa,’ I said. ‘I will stay with you.’
He let his head sink back onto the ground & closed his eyes.
‘Please do not die,’ I said. ‘Everybody dies on me. I could not bear it if you did too.’
He did not reply.
Lying there on in the soft dirt of the clearing with his eyes closed and his face relaxed, he looked almost as young as Kepi.
My vision got blurry. I blinked & it got clearer. Suddenly something made me look to my left.
I saw two dark bushes at the edge of the clearing by the dark pines.
In the eerie moonlight they almost looked like bears.
Then one of them moved.
They were bears.
Read on...
Too late, I realized I had not tied Kepi’s hands. That was my mistake. Somehow he must have wormed his way out from under the leather reins wrapping him to the tree & then undone the belt around his ankles. He had also taken his socks out of his mouth.
It only took me an instant to realize this. But in that same moment, my pa whirled around & pulled out his small revolver.
‘No!’ cried Kepi. ‘Chance– ’
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Before he could say more, my Pa’s revolver spat out three .32 caliber balls.
The Reb Road Agent stared down at three little holes & a dark stain spreading on his pale jacket right below the heart. The shots were still echoing in the mountains around us.
‘You shot me,’ he said, and then repeated. ‘You shot me!’
He said it with a half-smile, like he could not believe it had really happened.
He kind of sat down on the ground. Then he fell back onto the carpet of pine needles & stared up at the stars. His kepi had fallen off. He had curly hair.
‘Look at them stars,’ he said. ‘So many. Sparkling like little bitty silver ingots.’ Then he spoke no more.
I looked at my pa. ‘You killed him, Pa. You killed him dead.’
In the moonlight Pa looked deathly pale. ‘He might of hurt you,’ he said, staring at the corpse. ‘He might have hurt you.’
Over by the pine tree, a movement caught our eyes.
The leather traces binding Slouch to the pine had been loosened by his pard wriggling free. Slouch would have got free, too, but his bare right foot was tangled in one of the reins I had used to tie him. His hands were still bound behind him up & the socks were still sticking out of his mouth & his eyes were bugging out, too, as he stared wildly at us.
Pa sucked in a deep breath & picked up the double-barrelled shotgun from where it lay & went over to the tree.
Before I could say or do anything, Pa blasted him at point blank range.
BANG!
Slouch slammed against the tree & then slid down in a sitting position & then slumped forward, as dead as his friend.
‘Pa!’ I cried. ‘Why did you do that? We could have just left him tied up for the Law to collect. Or we could have made him show us where they have their shebang.’
‘He was about to get loose,’ said Pa. ‘Like that one.’ He pointed to Kepi with his chin. ‘Plus, after a trial they would have hung him by the neck till dead. It was a mercy I was showing him. Also, they are wanted Dead or Alive. Come on,’ he said, tossing the now empty shotgun aside. ‘Let us get those silver-laden horses out of here and find their shebang.’
I felt queasy. The champagne, which had been making me happy five minutes before, had turned sour in my gut. The high moon which had been smiling on our dance now seemed cold and distant. In its pale light I saw a gaping black wound in Slouch’s chest.
I felt like I might vomit up the jerky I had eaten a while earlier so I turned away.
Pa’s stomach was not as strong as mine. Over in the trees, he was being sick. I reckon he had not shot a man in a few years what with being behind a desk so much.
He wiped his mouth with his C.P. handkerchief & without speaking, he led the silver-laden stagecoach horses up towards the road.
I spotted the Reb Road Agents’ mounts further up in the black shadows of some pines. I untied them and chose the smaller one to ride. She was a little bay with a stringy tail. I put Kepi’s Henry Rifle in a saddle loop. I had to hike up my daffodil-yellow Merino wool dress underneath my belted sacque just so I could get my leg over her back. Thankfully, the velvet sacque covered my legs to just below the knees; it was getting real cold. I was shivery.
Taking the other Reb horse by the reins, I rode after Pa who was trudging the silver-laden stage-coach horses back up the steep mountainside. I glanced back once to see the still form of Kepi lying on his back in the dying firelight. I could not even see poor blasted Slouch. He was lost in the inky shadows.
Up by the road, I found Pa untying his big gray gelding.
He took a crude halter that the now-deceased Reb Road Agents had fixed over the head of the lead pack-horse & swung up into the saddle & set off west.
With Pa leading and me following, we had a convoy of nine horses, viz: the six stage horses, the two Reb horses & pa’s gelding. They were strung out in a line, moving between tall black pine trees on the moon-washed wagon road.
We rode in silence. In my head, I kept seeing my Pa shoot those two Reb Road Agents. They had tried to kill me, but I still felt bad they were dead.
I thought of Kepi with his bare feet & curly hair & wondering expression on his face as he looked up at the little bitty silver ingot stars.
I thought of Slouch with his eyes bugged out in terror & that black sucking wound in his chest. I wished I had not put a sock in his mouth. Maybe he could have begged Pa to give him a chance, like Kepi had.
I did not even know their real names.
That picture in my head should have turned my stomach sour but I was hungry again. Also, my legs were cold. I wished I had my soft long underwear & my buckskin trowsers & my pink flannel shirt & my blue woollen coat & my nice slouch hat that kept my ears warm. Then I thought of poor dead Kepi & Slouch & Ray & Dizzy. They were all four dead and cold by now. I reckoned I was lucky to be alive and should not be complaining, even in my head. I had been colder than this in my life. I guess living in a boarding house with a feather bed had made me soft.
We had gone barely a mile when the moon showed me a lightning-blasted pine tree on the left hand side of the road and a meadow beyond & below it.
‘Pa?’ I said. ‘See that tree and that meadow? That might be where they stashed the loot.’
‘By God, ye got good eyes,’ he said. ‘Do ye want to lead the way?’
I nudged my little bay mare forward. I could tell straightaway that she knew the path, so I gave her the reins and let her find the best footing.
‘My horse knows the way, Pa,’ I called over my shoulder. ‘I reckon that is proof we are on the right track.’
‘Good thinking,’ he said. He sent the silver-bearing stage-coach horses down the track after me & took up the rear.
From time to time the moonlight showed me a path marked by scuffed pine needles and bare earth, but mostly I gave the bay mare free rein to guide us. She led me & Pa & those six heavy-laden horses along the edge of the meadow, close to the trees. All sudden-like, she turned left and passed between two towering pines and we were in another moonlit clearing with a cave like a gaping black mouth in the steep hillside straight ahead.
I smelled an old fire & saw some empty oyster cans & bottles off to one side & a pile of firewood & maybe a latrine pit. Over to the left I heard the gurgling of a brook. I reckoned this was the camp of the Dead Road Agents & that cave was their shebang.
My little bay mare was suddenly pulled up short. The lead horse behind her had stopped. He was snorting & tossing his head & as I had roped his halter to my pommel it made me stop too.
Behind me, the other pack horses started whinnying & snorting & I could hear Pa cussing in Scottish.
I smelled something faintly rank that always makes me think of my Indian Ma on account of she used to make hair pomade out of bear fat.
Now I knew why the horses were spooked.
And why they called it Grizzly Gulch.
Read on...
I grabbed the shotgun & whirled to see what was coming into the firelight. I was kind of crouched and my scattergun was cocked and ready for action.
Hallelujah!
It was my Pinkerton Pa.
Dang!
He was aiming a small pistol at my heart.
I remembered I was wearing my disguise of Ray’s hat and a belt around my sacque.
‘Don’t shoot, pa!’ I put down the shotgun & stretched out my hands. ‘It is me! Pinky!’
‘Prudence!’ cried my Pa. He dropped his piece back into the pocket of his overcoat. ‘You’re alive!’ He ran forward & shmooshed me in his pa’s bear hug for a long time.
At last he held me out at arm’s length. ‘I canna believe it!’ he said. ‘Are ye really all right?’
I nodded. I suddenly felt like crying.
‘Praise the Lord,’ he said. ‘I heard gunshots and rode back as fast as I could. Then I saw firelight, but when I saw ye from behind – wearing that hat – I dinnae recognize ye. Where’s yer own wee hat with the daffodils? Why are ye dressed like that?’
I said, ‘I am dressed like this so those Reb Road Agents would take me seriously and not try to escape nor kill me.’
‘Reb Road Agents?’ he cried. ‘What Reb Road Agents?’
I pointed to the foot of the pine tree.
The moon had made the tree’s thick branches cast an inky black shadow on Slouch and Kepi. They had seen Pa, but he was only just now noticing them.
His face looked white in the moonlight. Now he was the one wearing Expression No. 4 – his mouth & eyes open wide in surprise.
He looked down at me. ‘This was your doing?’
I nodded.
‘What did they say?’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I gagged them with their own smelly socks.’
My pa gave a crooked smile & shook his head. ‘Dang! You are a one. What happened?’
I said, ‘We were about five miles out of Friday’s Station and it was getting dark when they jumped out of the gloaming and told Dizzy to stop the stage. But Dizzy bullwhipped the one in the kepi and got the team moving again. We almost got away. Then the one in the slouch hat shot Dizzy. I took over the reins. We were going downhill when–’
‘Where was Ray all this time?’
‘He was inside the coach sleeping on the mailbags. He had drunk a lot of Tooth Elixir. But then he climbed out of the window and pulled poor Dizzy right off the driver’s box even though he might have still been alive.’
‘By Dizzy, d’ye mean the driver?’ asked my pa.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Ray climbed up to the box even though we were still going a mile a minute. He told me to stop & surrender to the Reb Road Agents as we would never get away. I was all for driving the team on to Yank’s Station but he tried to wrassle the reins from my grip and then it happened, just like in my nightmare. We went off the cliff and down into this gorge.’
‘That dam fool,’ said Pa. ‘Where is he?’
‘Dead, most likely.’
Pa shook his head. ‘It is a miracle ye’re still alive.’
I said, ‘Yes. It was a miracle. A branch caught my sacque –’
‘Your what?’
‘This velvet cape. I reckon it’s the only thing that kept me from breaking my neck. Ray was not wearing a sacque,’ I added. ‘So his neck is probably broke.’
‘I never should have suggested this plan,’ said Pa. ‘Ye could have got kilt.’
I said, ‘Never mind, Pa. It would have been a good plan if it had worked.’
‘But it did work!’ he said. ‘Thanks to you. Look at that. You captured them single-handed.’
‘Where is the decoy stage full of agents?’ I asked. ‘Did you bring them back with you?’
‘They are probably halfway to Sac City by now,’ he said. ‘I was hanging back to see where ye were and they got well ahead of me. I don’t understand why these rascals did not try to stop them.’ He narrowed his eyes at the bound & gagged Reb Road Agents.
I nodded. ‘It is almost as if they were expecting us,’ I said. Then I thought of something. ‘Pa, do you know what a “shebang” is?’
He nodded. ‘It’s like a rough shelter or hut.’
I said, ‘Then I know where they are keeping the rest of the stolen money.’
‘Ye do?’
I nodded. ‘They were talking about it before I threw down on them,’ I said. ‘They have stashed some booty at a place called Grizzly Gulch which I think it is less than a mile from here.’
He said, ‘We had better find it quick.’
I nodded. ‘We still have a few hours of moonlight. If we start now with the horses and the silver, we could get there before the moon sets. Once we have found their shebang we can turn in these two and get the reward. Then I can go back to Chicago with you and be a detective,’ I added.
Pa looked at me with a strange expression. I could not read it. He picked up the champagne bottle that Kepi had been swigging from and took a suck. Then he held it out to me.
‘Here!’ he said. ‘Dutch courage.’
I said, ‘I got my own courage.’
‘Then drink a toast to us: Pinkerton and Daughter!’
I hesitated.
‘Go on!’ he said with a wink. ‘Remember? The bubbles mean it ain’t spirituous.’
I lifted the heavy bottle to my mouth and took a sip. It was warm & sweet & fizzy. It reminded me of the previous night when we had dined & drunk champagne & then danced the Schottische.
I drank another swallow, then held it out to him.
‘To Pinkerton and daughter!’ said my Pa, holding the bottle aloft and then taking a drink. ‘Now you say it, too.’
I said, ‘To Pinkerton and daughter!’ I took another sip, but I swallowed wrong and it fizzed hotly all the way down to my chest and made me cough.
He patted me on the back, laughing.
Suddenly everything felt fine. I was with my pa. We had saved the silver & vanquished the Reb Road Agents & would soon find their stash. Best of all, I was going back to Chicago with Robert Pinkerton as his savior & legally adopted child.
I held out the bottle to Pa. He swigged the last of the champagne & tossed the bottle into the trees.
‘Yee-haw!’ he cried.
‘Yee-haw!’ I agreed.
Then he stood up & grabbed me & waltzed me round the campfire among the scattered letters. He was humming the tune of the Schottische we had danced to the night before.
We must have seemed a strange sight to those two Reb Road Agents tied up to their pine tree. A humming Pinkerton Detective aged about 45 dancing with a 12-year-old half-Indian girl in a too-big, flat-brimmed hat & button-up boots & a fur-trimmed velvet sacque belted with a piece of whang leather with a Remington Revolver stuck in the front & a yellow velvet purse dangling from the back.
The almost-full moon was directly above. It seemed to smile down on us. The golden sparks from the fire hurried up to join the wobbling stars.
I felt bubbles of happiness rising up in me, too, like a thousand tiny hot air balloons. My pa & I were dancing together in a silent glade beneath a million stars.
But as my pa spun me around I caught a flash of a something emerging from the shadows into the flickering firelight. It was Kepi. Somehow he had got free.
‘Watch out, pa!’ I cried. ‘Behind you!’
Read on...
When I came out into the firelight with the double-barrelled shotgun, the two Reb Road Agents stopped and stared at me with Expression No. 4 – Surprise – across both their faces.
‘Drop ’em. Now!’ I said in my most commanding voice. I held the gun beside my hip, my grip relaxed but not loose.
They looked at me & then they looked at each other & then they started to laugh.
‘Lookee there! It is that strange little girl from the stagecoach!’ cried Kepi. ‘She is dressed up as a midget Marshal, you bet.’
‘I reckon if she pulls the trigger the kick will knock her off her feet,’ said Slouch.
They were laughing so hard they did not even bother to draw their sidearms.
I pointed the double-barrelled shotgun at the branch above their heads & pulled the trigger. There was a gargantuan explosion that echoed and re-echoed in the mountain night and sent pine needles drifting down into the clearing. The gun had indeed given a powerful kick, but I had been holding it slightly away from my body so it did me no harm at all apart from the ringing in my ears. When the gun smoke dispersed I saw their sidearms on the ground before them and their hands stretched high in the air.
‘You,’ I said to Kepi. ‘Take off your pard’s belt and cinch up his hands real good behind his back. But first, back away from your guns.’
They backed away from their guns.
While Kepi was undoing Slouch’s belt, I walked over towards them and kicked their revolvers back towards where I had been hiding. Keeping the barrel of the shotgun trained on the two outlaws, I backed up. Then I used my left hand to pick up the biggest revolver. It was Slouch’s. One glance told me it was a Remington Army which takes a .44 caliber ball. I stuck it in my whang leather belt.
After Kepi bound Slouch’s hands real good, I gestured at Slouch’s feet. ‘Take off his boots,’ I said. ‘Then take off yours.’
‘No!’ whimpered Kepi. ‘Not that!’
‘Take off your boots,’ I insisted. ‘Or I will blow you out of them.’
With much grunting and glaring, Kepi took off Slouch’s boots & then his own.
‘Now, take those leather reins and use them to tie him to that tree trunk,’ I commanded.
‘Listen,’ said Slouch, as he backed up to the tree in his stocking feet. ‘We got lots of silver here. We are happy to share it with you if you will just let us go.’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘And stop talking.’
‘We were supposed to shoot her dead,’ muttered Kepi as he tied his pard to the tree.
‘I did my best,’ said Slouch.
I only had one shot left in the scattergun so I took that big Remington revolver from my whang leather belt & cocked it & fired another warning shot into the tree trunk a few inches above Slouch’s head.
BANG!
‘Dang!’ yelped Slouch, ducking down.
‘Cheese it!’ I commanded. ‘Now, sit down with your back against the tree. Tie him up good,’ I said to Kepi.
Slouch sat at the foot of the tree & Kepi tied him to it real good.
‘Now take off your belt,’ I said to Kepi.
Kepi took off his belt.
‘Use it to bind up your own ankles real good,’ I said.
He bound up his ankles. I noticed he had a hole in his sock where his big toe poked through.
‘Sit on the other side of the tree from your pard,’ I said.
Kepi hopped over to the other side of the tree & sat down awkwardly, with his back to the leather-bound trunk and his belt-bound legs straight out before him. I stuck the revolver back in my belt, transferred the shotgun in my right hand & took the end of the leather traces in my left hand. I tied it to the strip of leather already wound around the tree. Then I made three circuits of the tree, wrapping them both up real tight.
The fire had died down to a reddish glow so I threw a few more pieces of wood on the embers & stood with my back to it & examined my work. They could both see me if they turned their heads but they could not see one another.
‘One word from either of you,’ I warned, ‘and I will take off your socks and stuff them in your mouths as a gag.’
‘You goddam blank!’ said Slouch. ‘You would not dare.’
I put down the double-barrelled shotgun & went over to him & tugged off his smelly socks and stuffed them both in his mouth.
‘Try to spit them out and I will shoot you in the foot,’ I warned.
Then I went round to do the same to Kepi.
‘Please no,’ he whimpered. ‘I promise I will be quiet.’
But Ma Evangeline taught me never to make a threat unless you are prepared to carry it out. So I took off his threadbare socks and put them in his mouth, too.
I almost felt sorry for them until I remembered the .44 caliber bullet hole in my bonnet.
It was now chilly, even with my velvet, fur-trimmed sacque. I went over to stand by the revived fire. I warmed my hands above it and pondered what to do. They had mentioned a stash of ‘booty’ at ‘Grizzly Gulch’.
Then I remembered Slouch saying the ‘shebang’ was ‘less than a mile’.
I reckoned they were talking about their camp. If I set out now with the silver-laden horses, I could get there before the moon set. I might even see another stage or rider on the road and send for the Law. Then they could put Slouch and Kepi in jail to await a trial.
I glanced over at them. They sat barefoot & gagged & back-to-back with a big old pine trunk between them. They could not see each other but they both had their heads turned & were staring at me. With their socks poking out of their open mouths it looked like they were angrily sticking out their tongues at me.
But even as I watched, I saw their expressions change. Their eyes got wider & their eyebrows went up. They were giving me Expression No. 4 – Surprise.
Why were they looking at me like that?
Then I realized. They were not looking at me.
They were looking beyond me.
Someone – or something – was coming up behind me!
[Don't have a clue what's going on? Start with chapter one.]
