Cha'Nara's Gift

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Gold Fever

Sitting around the campfire, that evening, I asked Emily what year it was supposed to be. "1878 I think?" "You think?" "Well the data conversion between our data and the Vagan data isn't quite exact, until we can find out from somebody the exact date, so we can correct our data I just have to guess." "Sweet!" I replied, "Well, anyway, from the books I read, the big strikes don't happen until the 1880's, we've apparently beaten them by a year or two, which is what I wanted, get into these areas before everybody and his brother shows up. Cha'Nara, I'm going to have you stay in your "unit" AND buttoned up tomorrow while Emily and I work this creek, she'll cover me and I mean what I say about you staying buttoned up kid, if you hear any unusual noises from outside, you call us immediately, do you understand, it's very important."

"Yes, I understand," "Look, I know you won't like it, but there won't be anybody to make sure someone isn't sneaking up on this place, I don't want to keep harping on it, but security is our top priority here, do you understand?" Cha'nara had a pouty look on her face, but said, "Yes, I understand." "Good, play some of those games on the laptop Emily brought, and be sure to keep your comset on at all times."

Emily slept in the craft this time, and in the morning after we watched for an hour, I escorted Pip into the "unit" and made sure she closed the door, Emily and I then worked our way along the creek panning for gold. About two hours later I heard noises coming from my comset, Emily heard them too. I tried contacting Cha'nara, but only got static. "Do you suppose it's because she's buttoned up, cutting the signal?" asked Emily. "I don't know, let's get back there. Triple red, safety's off, let's go." We carefully moved back towards our stockade until the radio reception improved, "Deak, Emily, someone's banging on my "unit" where are you?" "Right here Sweetie" replied Emily, "Sit tight, the Calvary is coming." I had my M1A and Emily her Armalite, we went into immediate combat mode searching for targets, then I spotted them, two, possibly three men standing around the entrance to our stockade. Emily and I locked in on them, my ACOG scope reading 100 yards to the first mans head, "Step away from the stockade where we can see all of you, NOW!" I shouted, the men started to look around one drawing his pistol, "Dying time babe," I whispered into my comset. The mans head disappeared in a pink mist, Emily shot the second man just above the breastbone the third man ran towards his horse, I took him out with another headshot.

We waited for five minutes but nothing moved, slowly we moved up to the stockade, checking our handiwork. Both of my kills simply had no more heads, both were grotesquely twisted on the ground blood everywhere. Emily's kill was lying on his back, eyes staring up at the sky. I kicked him in the head to make sure he was truly dead, but there wasn't any movement. I pointed to my kills with the barrel of my rifle, "This is what I was talking about the other day Emily, it's begun. From here on out, the body count is just going to grow, you told me you could handle it, still think you can?" "Take a good look at them, I don't f**k around, this rifle doesn't either." Emily winced as she looked at the bodies, "I'm good, lover let's be sure there aren't any more." We moved up the hill, but saw no movement; I contacted Cha'Nara, and said, "Stay put for a little bit Pip there's bad business out here, no point in you seeing it I'll let you know when the coast is clear." We waited for almost half an hour before heading back down, Emily and I collected the horses and tied them to a picket line I then instructed Emily to get a roll of heavy plastic, and some rope from the craft. While she was doing that, I "looted" the bodies, checking them for valuables and any identification they might have.

One of the headless men wore blue army trousers and what appeared to be Calvary boots, he was carrying an Army .45 colt his hat, lying near the body was a dirty blue Calvary style Stetson, I suspected him of being a deserter. He had a few coins in his pocket which I quickly relieved him of. The other two men wore nondescript clothing, I took their boots, holsters and personal effects which amounted to a rusty pocket knife five dollars in bills and change, a small pocket bible, and a daguerreotype of a woman. Wife, girlfriend? Guess I'll never know. I cut a large piece of plastic, Emily and I laid each body on top of one another in the middle of the plastic, folded each end over, then folded each side over, and tied the bundle in three places. We then dragged the whole bundle for about 500 yards with the aid of one of the horses, to a wash where the digging was easier. Emily and I stacked arms but kept our sidearm's, shed our jackets and dug. We were paid for our effort, about a foot down Emily's sharp eyes spotted a couple of nuggets.

They were pretty decent looking nuggets. We watched as we dug further, but saw nothing further. The bundle was rolled into the grave and covered, nameless men in a nameless grave. Later, I stuck a board in the mound with "Arch Stanton" carved on it, in tribute to one of my favorite western's, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." In the film, Arch Stanton marked an empty grave. Lately I had started to feel a little like Clint Eastwood in one of those "Spaghetti Westerns" all we needed now was an Ennio Morricone soundtrack. Back at the fort, I scooped up the remains of the two men's heads along with the pools of coagulating blood, and dumped it all in a hole out from the stockade. We then let Pip out of her "prison." She was not in a good mood, and stood around pouting. Emily quietly explained to her why we didn't want her outside, she seemed to accept the reasons given, and went to inspect the horses. "Be careful there Pip, they can bite and kick. Don't walk behind them or get too close to their mouths, and for God's sake watch your feet, don't let them step on you," warned Emily.

We then sat down to clean our weapons and eat, after supper, in the approaching darkness, we inspected the weapons, clothing and personal effects gleaned from the bodies. The clothing we decided to keep was stuffed in a plastic bag, personal effects were put in a small box, the weapons we unloaded and did a quick cleaning. Our newfound "Armory" consisted of two single action 1873 Colts .45 caliber, a Smith &Wesson Model 3 Schofield and a Colt number 2 Derringer. The rifles included a Spencer 1865 Carbine, a Winchester Model 1873 Carbine, and a Sharps Model 1874 Military Carbine, this was what our "Deserter" was carrying I told Emily that these weapons would bring a real good price on the gun auction site, collecting antiques and weapons was a secondary goal for me as far as money was concerned.

Cha'Nara was still acting a bit grumpy, so I sat her down and tried to explain, "Cha'Nara, things happened out here today that weren't pretty, we had to kill some bad men, I warned you that this sort of thing would happen, they would have hurt you and certainly us. You were a good girl and did as you were told, this is what we asked of you, you came through, because of that, we're going to let you come with us tomorrow OK? Same rules apply though, you do exactly what we tell you, and as time goes on, and we feel you're ready we'll let you do more, how does that sound?" Although I couldn't understand her the smile and chattering indicated she accepted my offer. I slept in the "unit" this night, Cha'Nara and Emily took the watch, I was a bit leery of Pip being alone on watch, Emily insisted, " It will prove to her that she is part of this operation, and we're trusting her with more responsibility." Cha'Nara woke Emily at the right time, didn't make any noise and performed her duty as expected. "Cha'Nara, you did an excellent job, therefore you can accompany us today, when we stop to prospect, I want you up in a tree keeping watch OK?" Pip was overjoyed, and except for getting too close to a rattlesnake she did everything we asked.

We worked the creek and adjoining washed out areas for a mile either way, at one point, we encountered a large rattlesnake, Cha'Nara started to approach it but Emily shot it with her shotgun, Emily gave Pip a quick lesson on dangerous animals. "Cha'Nara, don't ever approach these things , they will bite and that bite will kill you."

I took the dead snake and forced open it's jaws showing Pip it's fangs, and forcing the venom out, Cha'Nara squealed and jumped back in horror. A valuable lesson was learned that day. We ended up collecting two pop cans full of gold flakes and another decent sized nugget. The next day Pip accompanied us again, we covered some promising washed out areas, I used a metal detector and added another two pop cans filled with small nuggets and flakes. We were going to remain for one more day before moving to a fresh site, but we planned on checking a branch of our creek farther out, and for this we would need the horses.

This time we insisted Cha'Nara remain in camp, she wasn't happy, but I think the prospect of riding on a horse with Emily scared her so she didn't protest too much. As far as riding, that was another matter, since we weren't the animal's original owners, they were somewhat shy of us, thanks to Emily's previous riding experience; she was able to get them accept us. As for my riding experience, that was another matter. I had never sat on a horse in my life, Emily gave me a crash course in horseback riding, and how to put the saddle on, plus a few other things. I was very uncomfortable, the horse seemed to accept me, but I didn't ask much of it either. As we rode, constantly harangued me with tips and pointers on riding. About five miles from camp I heard sounds of shooting and yelling. We cautiously approached along the line of cottonwoods marking the creek bed; I heard a piercing scream and saw a wagon on the other bank being attacked by Indians. "Head for that little hill Emily, pointing towards a hillock off to our right, we quickly rode to it and quickly dismounted, as we took up our positions, and dropped to prone positions, I yelled, "This range is HOT!" POWM, POWM! I dropped two Indians right off, Emily started firing her Armalite as fast as she could pull the trigger.

"Hey! Slow down there Marine, remember what they taught you, sustained, accurate rifle fire, maintain that sight picture, squeeze, that trigger," Emily looked over and glared at me "You ain't my f*****g D.I." she snarled, "I know, I'm worse, I'm your husband!' She did slow down took better aim, and Indians started dropping. "Kill the f*****g horses!" I shouted, I started dropping Indian mounts as fast as I centered on them, unfortunately one of them was only wounded, flopping around on the ground screaming, the sound was heart rending and only added to the confusion, and dust. I heard a noise behind us rolled on my back just in time to see an Indian bearing down on us.

I quickly placed my feet together and rested the barrel between my boots, got a good sight picture and put a round just below the horse's neck into it's chest. The animal's front legs immediately folded and the horse went down, it's rider flying right over it's head crashing into the ground in front of it. He rolled and quickly came up on two feet only to be slammed backwards by a .308 slug driving into his center of mass. Emily had finished off his companions and we slowly stood up and walked towards the murder site.

Images of "Once Upon A Time In The West" filled my mind, the scene where the men in dusters survey the family they have just killed also came to mind, "What do we do with this one Frank?" Again, an Ennio Morricone sound track would have been nice. As we walked, I commented to Emily, "See I told you, sustained and accurate rifle fire, works every time." As we approached the c*****e, I warned, "Be careful someone might be playing possum, like this guy!" an Indian started to jump to his feet behind Emily until I put a round in his head with my pistol. "Check for vitals" I said as we headed for the civilians. The father appeared to be dead, scalped. I saw a boy lying under the wagon when Emily shouted, "I got a pulse here!" I checked the boy and announced, "The kid's breathing but has a bad bump on his head, possible concussion." At this point I just wanted to scream, "Corpsman up!" but unfortunately we were the only corpsman here.

Before I did anything else I put the poor horse that was screaming out of it's misery, allowing me to think again, I carefully dragged the boy who appeared to be around sixteen or seventeen out from under the wagon, propping him up against the front wheel. "This must be the guys wife, Deak, but she's in real bad shape, I need to get her stabilized even then she might die," "There's a trauma kit in my saddle bag, I'll go get it." I sprinted back to where our horses had moved off to; I grabbed the reins of both and led them to the creek bed where they started to browse. I handed Emily the medical kit and returned to the boy who was showing signs of coming to life. I splashed a little water in his face, furthering his recovery, and held up my index finger in front of him, "follow my finger son, don't turn your head, just follow the finger with your eyes, he was able to do that so I didn't think he had a concussion. I let him drink from my canteen, his eyes focusing more as he regained his senses. "Who are you? Where's my mother my father?" "Relax son, your mother is with my wife over there, I'm sorry but your father is dead."