Talley and I discussed the question, and all the while, our eyes and ears were alert for trouble. We believed we had a good lead on them, but to take such a thing for granted was to borrow trouble.
Twice we changed direction. Several times we descended into stream beds and backtrailed, emerging where a rock surface left little in the way of tracks, and then plunged into the deep woods. Deliberately we swung fallen trees across our path, chose unlikely ways, and all the while, we knew we might not be fooling them at all.
Bob Sandy rode right along. That his wound bothered him we knew, but he let us see none of it. "Only one thing to do," he said.
"We got to lay in wait. We need to pick a good place an' cut them down as they come into range." The thought had occurred to me, and I had no qualms about ambush. When facing superior numbers, any tactic is useful, and we knew they outnumbered us, and we also knew their leadership was uncommonly shrewd. However, if we waited in ambush, we would lose whatever distance we had gained, and might ourselves be surrounded and wiped out.
We decided to move on.
Twice during the day I got out the map I had found in Conway's pocket, but could find nothing in the terrain that corresponded with what the map indicated. Unfortunately, we were moving fast, and I feared the map required a better overall view of the country. I began to get the impression it had been drawn from some vantage point higher than we now were.
There was, of course, the possibility we would find nothing. Two hundred years is a long time, and the Indian or those who told him might have told others. Treasure is ever elusive, a will-o'-the-wisp that has a way of not being where it is supposed to be.
Deliberately I chose a way that took us higher and higher upon the mountain, and when we camped that night, it was in a thick cluster of spruce trees with branches to the ground. To our right and rear there were aspens, a thick stand virtually impossible to penetrate without sound. Before us and beyond the stand of spruce, there was the mountainside falling steeply away and a green and lovely swell of meadow with occasional outcroppings.
"I'd no business getting you into th," I told them over the fire. "You'd have been trapping beaver by now had I not joined you." "And I," Lucinda said.
"It's nothing." Degory Kemble waved a hand, dismissing our comments. "We're learning more of the country, and when we do begin trapping, we'll be the better for it." Later, after the sun had gone down and when the land was light, I moved to the edge of the spruce and studied the country and the map.
No man can know a country seen only in daylight. The morning and evening hours are best, for then the shadows have gathered in the depressions, the hollows, and canyons, and the terrain is revealed in a completely different manner. Nor is the light at dawn the same as at sunset, although there are similarities.
Lucinda came out beside me, and we sat there, screened and shadowed by spruce, studying the terrain before us. After a moment, she indicated a shoulder of rock some ten miles off across country to the east and south. "That's a place I was to look for.
We're very close." "What is it we're to look for? How will we know?" She waited several minutes to reply, and I could understand. Without doubt, it had been drilled into her to tell no one. That she had been told at all was simply the only kind of insurance her father could offer... in the event something happened to him, and to Conway.
Solomon Talley had come up beside her, but she hesitated no longer. "There's a great slope burned bare above a blue black cliff about twenty feet high. Above the burned area there's a slope of reddish yellow broken rock." "Is that all?" I stared at her. I simply could not believe it, nor could Solomon. "Was there nothing more?" "Across the creek bed there was a rocky face with a jagged white streak... like lightning... upon the face of the rock." Neither of us said a thing. We just stared off across the darkening hills, not knowing whether to laugh or simply throw up our hands. They were just such landmarks as a tenderfoot might choose... and utterly useless.
She looked from Solomon to me. "What's wrong?" He poked at the ground with a stick, and I said, "Lucinda, in these mountains, and in any lot of mountains, you'll find a thousand such places. And as for that bare slope... there's hardly a chance that it's still bare." "You mean... you mean it isn't any good?
We can't find it?" "I didn't say that. We do know it's near here. But you see, that Spanish officer expected to return. He knew the place. The landmarks he chose were no doubt taken quickly, with little time.
He noticed the most obvious things.
"Such slopes are quite common high in the mountains, and as for the white streak, it was undoubtedly quartz and that's a familiar sight, too. It's evident this description originated from the Spanish officer. Any Indian with him would have observed differently." She looked like she had been struck. Her face was pale. "Then we can't find it?" "One chance in a thousand," Talley said, "but there must have been something else? Some other thing? A hint of some kind?" "No." We walked back to the fire and sat down.
Talley explained briefly. We all felt sorry, not for ourselves, because we had lost nothing, but for her, who had lost everything.
We had come west after fur, at least most of us had. Why I had come I did not yet know.
To run away from something? From everything? To change myself? Or to return to a lost boyhood?
"The joke's on him," Shanagan said, "that white-faced spalpeen from Mexico. After all, we did come after fur, and we can still get fur.
He's got nothin' facin' him but a long ride back." "But he doesn't know that," Ebitt replied gently. "He doesn't know, and he'd never believe it. He'd think we were lying. And you remember what he said... he'd kill us all ... trying to make us tell what we don't know." We looked at each other across the fire. The hope of treasure was gone; the long march to the Mandan villages remained. Nothing was solved.
And somewhere on our back trail, Rafen Falvey was riding.
CHAPTER 14
We sat about our fire feeling very glum indeed, not for ourselves, for we had little to lose, but for Lucinda, for whom we'd all come to feel a great affection.
In a difficult and desperate situation, she had not complained. She had ridden with the best of us, she had calmly made do with what was available, she had said nothing about the food, nor had she asked any special privileges.
Suddenly angry, I looked over at Degory Kemble. "Damn it, Deg, we've got to do something! The stuff was hidden, and with information as poor as that, I doubt if anything has been found." "How far from that promontory back there?" Talley asked.
"A day's ride," she said.
"And that might be anything from twelve to thirty miles, depending on their horses, their anxiety, and what they figured to do." "It would be nearer the lesser figure," Cusbe Ebitt replied. "Think now... they had the treasure with them. Indians were already with them or closing in. We cannot be sure of just what the situation was after so long a time, yet they must have been pushed to let go of the treasure at all.
"Think of it now. They wanted to get away to the French colonies where they could return to Europe and live in style in Paris or London or Rome. They didn't want to bury that treasure.
"So they would have moved slowly, I think. They would have been looking for a place, something that offered a camp... a good reason for stopping... and something that offered some kind of a marker. Something more than we've been told." "But I've told you all I know!" Lucinda protested.