If you've ever tried to pretend to snore for an hour you'll know that it's about as hard a thing as there is to do. My mouth dried out, my nose blocked and my head ached, but I kept it up until Eli was convinced and came sneaking over towards me. I could smell the whisky on him from a few yards away and I wouldn't have dared lie there like that if I hadn't thought that sobriety and the element of surprise would give me the edge. The old villain crept close and I saw moonlight glint on the blade of his knife. That brought me out in a sweat but his target wasn't my throat, not in the first instance anyway, but the thong around my neck which held the pouch. He was confident and a little sozzled; when he had his blade on the thong I made my move. I slipped my hand out from under the blankets and put the point of my knife into his crotch.

  'Don't move a muscle, Eli, or I'll feed your balls to the fish.'

  He froze and I took the knife from his hand. By the time he recovered I had the Colt cocked and under his chin. I was trembling which probably didn't help him feel any more secure. I pulled the pouch from inside my shirt.

  'You wanted this?'

  He nodded.

  'Charley Moon tell you to get it?'

  He shook his head. That had been one of my worries – that I had been set up in some way by Charley.

  'Why, then?'

  'Warm-Woman say much money in pouch.'

  Well, she was right in a way of course, but just a little off the track. I tucked the pouch back and gestured for Eli to stand. He did and I got to my feet with the blanket still around my shoulders. We must have looked a sight standing there in the moonlight, with the pines casting long shadows, the camp fires burning low and the Indians sleeping like the dead. The real Indian and the make-believe Indian: it would've made a good scene for the movies and they've probably done it, near enough, in some B Western or other. But it was no entertainment then; Eli would be dangerous as long as there was breath in his body and I didn't know what to do next or how to control him. Fortunately, he solved the problem himself by pulling out a knife he had hidden somewhere and leaping straight at me.

  I didn't have time to think but I'd been right in my assessment of the situation – the liquor Eli had drunk had made him a less effective savage. He was a little slow and lop-sided in his leap and I had just enough space to swing the long Colt in and bring the barrel and some of my fist up hard against his temple. Eli dropped like a stone; he'd hadn't yelled when he'd attacked, probably because there was no other male Indian to show off to, so the rest of the band slept on. I stood there with a bruised knuckle and a heaving chest and wondered if I'd ever walk down a civilised street and sleep under a roof and in a proper bed again.

  But there wasn't much time for philosophising. Eli could wake up at any moment and so might Warm-Woman. There was no telling what she might do if she saw me and my pouch slipping away – a well-thrown hatchet wouldn't have been beyond her. I grabbed my blankets and a fur rug and crept to the river bank. Into the canoe went the bedding and as many of the paddles as I could find. I used my knife to hole the other canoes – not enough to ruin them but enough to need patching and prevent pursuit. Doing all this, plus untying the canoe in the dark was tricky work and I suppose I made enough noise to waken the Indians if they hadn't been full of whisky.

  My feet were wet, I was sweating and I'd skinned my knuckles, but at last I was in the canoe with the load properly distributed and a couple of feet of water underneath me. I dipped the paddle and manoeuvred out into mid-stream. The black water flowed quietly, which wasn't to say that around the bend there couldn't be a hellish stretch of rapids or a waterfall or a fork in the river with no signpost. It's a bad habit of mine to expect the worst when I'm in physical danger and the best when the danger appears to be past. It hasn't always worked out like that. I drew a breath and looked up past the high, dark pines to the clear sky. A light breeze was moving the tops of the trees but the air was cold and still on the water. I took one look back at the bank; I could just see the glow of the fire. I had a flash of regret for the warm, musty feel of the Indian woman who was one of the most comfortable bed companions I've ever had. I'd never paddled one of the canoes solo until then, but I'd never beaten an Indian with a knife or drunk a whole bottle of coffee-flavoured water either – there's a first time for everything. I dug into the water and headed off for the red rock, whatever the hell that was.

  The next part of the journey was a piece of cake. If I'd managed to bring another bottle of whisky along to keep out the cold I'd have been almost happy. The river ran steadily; there was the occasional log to watch out for but no white water or forks. The moon cast enough light to keep the banks in sight and to avoid overhanging branches when the stream narrowed. I paddled for a couple of hours, then I tied up, slept fitfully until dawn, and set off again.

  The sun was barely up when I rounded a bend and saw the red rock. Whether it would have been red at any other time of the day I'm not sure but it was certainly red then. It was a big lump of sandstone about thirty feet high jutting straight up above the river. Water had cut away the base and bushes had grown around the top but there was a flat face of a couple of hundred square feet and it glowed red in the dawn sun.

  'Browning's luck,' I breathed, and I remember that the words came out with puffs of steam. It was bitterly cold. I pulled over to the bank beneath the rock, grabbed some branches and pulled in until the canoe was touching the bank. I tied up and climbed out onto the roots of some big trees that grew right to the water's edge. Ten minutes later I was at the base of the rock, twenty feet from the water and crouched over a fire and the coffee pot. I drank some scalding coffee, ate some jerky, smoked a cigarette, warmed my hands and opened the pouch. Inside was a map, some money and a note from Matthew Tolliver:

  Hank (this was crossed out and 'Dick' written above it) –

  Your on the Tusk river by red rock if you ain't in hell. In back of the rock you'll find a track witch leads to a road witch takes you to a farm. Bout a mile from the river. 25 years back the people on the farm was shit poor and i don't reckon things will have changed much. We bought some horses and you can do the same only don't get a bad one like pore 'Fancy' done, i hope you know horses. Won't none of them be good but don't get the worst is all i'm saying. Ask the farm folks to point you to Hanging Bluff but don't nessessarily believe what they tells you. Look at this map and find yore own way. If you was in the army the way Bob says you was you won't have any trouble.

  Take a day's hard riding to Hanging Bluff two if you ain't a good rider or get lost or something. Just past the Bluff Fancy come off his horse and we walked back. He berried his gold deep under a big rock fifty paces due west of the Bluff. You can take a baring on a tree witch gives the Bluff its name. If the tree ain't there or if the creek's rose or changed direction or a badger's rooted up the bags you could have some trouble. If you find the gold you should ride south east til you get to the scarpment. Youl have to go threw a narrew george that will be icy this time of year and not easy when yore threw line yourself up with the dip in the scarpment and you should be by a stream with some low hills to the east. Light a fire at dawn and send up a smoke of some kind, any kind will do. Fire two shots – rifel would be best but pistil will do.

  This here's the longest letter I ever writ and it's dang hard work to do it. I'd a sight rather make the trip yore on but Bob says we're too old. I don't think so, fire the shots and wait. God wiling we'll be seeing you soon, good luck.

  The letter was written in ink with many blotches and crossings out. I'm reading from it now as best I can because the paper is creased and torn in places. The signature was very clear – Ollie Fisher Esq. God knows where the old bandit picked up the 'Esq.' idea from. [Unlike the other letter mentioned in this narrative, this from 'Ollie Fisher' also known as Matthew Tolliver, has survived. Among Browning's effects deposited in the Silkstein Agency basement, I discovered an old leather pouch wrapped in dried out and dilapidated oilskin. The letter was inside the pouch which identifies it as the one Browning wore around his neck on his Canadian journey. There was, however, no trace of the map mentioned below. Ed.]

  I examined the map and it seemed clear enough. The main features of the country – streams, high hills, distinctive rocks, etc. – were marked and there were even suggestions as to the best places to take shelter if the weather was bad. It was cold but not snowing and the sky was a clear pale blue. There didn't seem to be any point in delaying; the weather wouldn't get any better. I got the shotgun from the canoe and put it over my back in a sling. I had a knife and a pistol in my belt and a rifle under my arm; otherwise, I had only a couple of rolled blankets, some dried meat, tobacco and matches, along with some coffee and a tin pan in a soft Indian bag. Before I left the river I hacked off my long hair with the knife and tried to saw it into some kind of ordinary shape. My stubble had grown. I ripped the fancy stitching off my coat and got rid of the bone necklace. With my pants worn out over the leggings I didn't look like a half-breed anymore. Armed like that and smelling the way I must have, I suppose I looked like a bandit or maybe a nervous prospector. I tucked the note, map and money back inside the pouch and set off along the track which was overgrown but followable. I was glad to be walking again and exercising joints and muscles that had grown stiff with all the canoeing. Being on horseback would be even better. I was reasonably confident although one thing worried me – Ollie hadn't said what I was to do if I didn't find the gold.

  The people at the farm didn't seem surprised when I ambled in asking if I could buy a horse. Their spokesman was a tall, lean character with a spade beard who said his name was Brother Rivers.

  'Well, Brother Rivers,' I said. 'How about you invite me in for a cup of coffee and we can horse trade.'

  'I can't invite thee in,' he said. 'Thou art unclean.'

  'Well, I haven't had much of a chance . . .'

  'I mean spiritually. And we do not use coffee or engage in trade.'

  'I see.' A few more had drifted into the yard outside the big log cabin and it didn't take much observation to see that this was some kind of religious community. There were more women than men for one thing which is something you'll always find in these set-ups. I've spent enough time in California to know – highly convenient arrangement for the men I've always thought, but I daresay the Bible gives it the okay somewhere. Ollie had been right though – they were shit poor to judge from their broken boots, threadbare clothes and starved look, and I'm talking about men, women and children.

  We are the Brethren of the Valley,' Brother Rivers said and a sigh escaped from the assembly. 'You come among us armed. You may take anything you want. That is our way.'

  'No, no. I'm happy to pay.' I reached into the pouch and took out two ten dollar notes.

  'We have no use for your money. Take anything.'

  I glanced around. There wasn't much to take and I certainly didn't fancy any of the women. As to horseflesh, I couldn't see any unless you counted half a dozen mules pulling at grass around the base of one of the cabin walls. Just then a woman stepped from behind Brother Rivers. She was nearly as tall as he – a great raw-boned creature with a face like a gravestone and huge red hands dangling at the end of scrawny arms.

  'We need the money, Brother. Take it. Let him have a mule.'

  'Two mules,' I said.

  'No. It is not our way!'

  'It's not my way to let my children starve.' She reached over and took the twenty. Brother Rivers fell to his knees in the mud, turned his beard up to the sky and began to pray. The woman nodded to me and I walked over to the mules. They were ugly but strong-looking. I'd had some dealings with mules in the army and I knew that they'd sometimes get you through where your 'three parts thoroughbred at least'18 would let you down.

  'Have you got a saddle or anything?' I asked the woman.

  She shook her head. 'Got a bit and rein you can have and some rope. You'll have to use your blankets.'

  I nodded and gave her a silver dollar when she brought the harness. I picked out the two best-looking animals and tied a blanket around the one and strapped on the Winchester, shotgun and my bag. I put a lead rope on the other. Brother Rivers was still praying but the others were ignoring him and clustering around the woman with the money. I climbed up onto the mule, trotted around the yard once to get the feel of it and stopped near the woman.

  'Can you tell me how to get to Hanging Bluff?'

  She pointed south.

  'Hard road?'

  'Life is a hard road,' Brother Rivers said, 'for the ungodly.'

  'You said it.' I touched my hand to my cap and the woman smiled at me. Scrubbed up, dressed properly and given a couple of years rest from hard labour, she mightn't have looked too bad.

  'The road's all right. What're you looking for, stranger?'

  'Gold,' I said.

  Her laughter followed me out of the yard.

  15

  It started to snow on the ride to Hanging Bluff and I wished I'd brought the fur rug, but I'd wanted to put all things Indian behind me, I guess. My coat was lined and thick and I had good gloves but I was a bit cold around the head, and after a while the sun on the snow began to dazzle me, so that it was hard for me to keep direction and steer by the landmarks on Ollie's map. The mules were smart animals though: it was almost as if they knew what south meant. Many times I would've lost the direction but for the preference of the mule I was riding for one way around an obstacle rather than another.

  I made good progress that day, covering about three quarters of the distance to judge from the map. I camped under a rocky cliff overhang which Ollie had marked as 'shalter'. As light snow had accumulated in the hollows, water was no problem. The country was lightly grassed and wooded and I had no trouble getting enough fuel for an all-night fire. However, it was hard to warm the body all round; only the part that faced the fire was really warm and I spent the night twisting and turning in my blankets. Coffee and dry meat aren't very warming either – I'd have given a lot of what money I had, something shy of a hundred dollars from recollection, for a bottle of whisky.

  I'd hobbled the mules and they grazed contentedly enough. I was stiff and sore from the unaccustomed riding – a mule has a hard, narrow back – and the restless night. A mug of coffee, a cigarette and a thunderous bowel movement and I was ready to go on. Overnight the snow had melted leaving the ground muddy but firm enough. The day was fine but I'd learned that the high, powdery clouds in the morning meant snow in the afternoon so I was keen to move fast.

  Because of the hardship later, it now seems to me that the location of Hanging Bluff and the discovery of the gold was a piece of cake. You couldn't miss the Bluff. It was a high, rocky outcrop with a single tree growing on it. The tree had a thick branch running almost parallel to the ground about twelve feet up. It wasn't my imagination – I could see where ropes had scarred the branch. I was so excited when I dismounted that I almost forget to tether the mules and it still makes my blood run cold to think what would have happened if they'd run away. But I got them tied and checked Ollie's note again and took the fifty paces in the right direction. The creek hadn't risen, the boulder hadn't been disturbed and, after half an hour's scrabbling the dirt with my hands, the tin pan and a lump of wood, I dragged out two calico bags which had been wrapped in oilskin and were as sound as the day they were buried.

  The bags weighed about fifty pounds each which would be a cruel weight to carry in that country on foot and would have taxed a horse already carrying a man and a similar load. I felt I should have been able to mark the moment at which I made my fortune with something more memorable than a chew on some jerky and a cigarette. But that was all I had and all the time I could spare. It was late morning and the clouds were beginning to take on a snowy look.

  'Here's some work for you to do, Fraser,' I said to the pack mule. The animal stood docilely while I tied the bags securely on its back, one on each side. Suddenly I was a man of wealth and I felt the responsibility. I wanted an armed guard and a bulletproof vest but all I could do in the way of extra security was to sling the shotgun over my back again. I decided to call the other mule Pedro, after my old Mexico and Hollywood comrade Pedro Cortez, not that Pedro was a mule – far from it. I had thoughts of how to spend the money as I trotted south. Nothing exotic, nothing beyond a few gallons of champagne daily and a blonde with plenty of imagination.

  I was happily lulled by these thoughts and Pedro's bumpy gait and so unprepared for the first sharp flurry of snow which happened almost at the entrance to Ollie's 'george'. I was in heavy timber following a faint track and with almost no view of the sky or what lay ahead above the tall pines. I still have nightmares about that place. I wake up sweating and yelling; I believe I'm stumbling along that ribbon of a track high up above razor-sharp rocks, blinded by snow and with my ears and nose about to drop off from cold. I don't know how it got that way, some freak of nature I suppose, but it seemed to trap icy winds and increase their velocity and drop their temperature until it seemed that nothing could live there. No vegetation did – from the first yard to the last it was a barren, stony stretch that wound and climbed and turned back on itself.

  I've never bothered to study the geography of the place, but I think an underground river must have surfaced and cut the gorge through soft rock. I could hear water running below the track along the side of the almost sheer cliff but I couldn't see it down through the snow and mist. There was no water at the other end so I guess the river must have gone underground again. As I inched along on the mule, holding the lead rope and feeling for the cliff wall to the right, I thought the gorge was bottomless and endless. It took hours and it was everything Ollie had said – icy in places so that I had to get down and lead the mules – and rock strewn. I heard occasional rumblings on the cliff but, mercifully, no rocks fell in my path.

 

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