The Windcatcher's Cave

Chapter 2: The Tiny Lamp

Chapter 2

The Tiny Lamp

It was the fall of the year, and the sun was just getting up good in the sky as Talon made the crossing and rode into Cougar Rock. He had a week’s worth of gold and needed a few supplies. The Mercantile had been open since six am as it always was and Joseph Long who owned it was sitting out front on the boardwalk when Talon rode up. Joseph was a little overweight for his five nine size, but he was a hard worker and an honest man. He liked Talon the first time he met him. Talon was easy going and pleasant to talk to. Joseph was one of the few people that Talon knew in town, and he had come to know him well.

“Mornin’ Mr. Windcatcher,” said Joseph. “You looking for some prime quality goods this fine day, I got ‘em.”

Talon liked his smile. It was always good to see a friendly face.

“Just a few little things,” said Talon.

He made a quick wrap with his horse’s reins around the hitching post and stepped into the store.

The little shop was filled to the brim with just about anything one could imagine. Every shelf and bin was as full as space would allow. For Talon, it made things a little complicated. He knew what he had come for, but there were so many things on the shelves that he began to wonder if there were a few more things on the shelves that he needed than he realized. He had a little more gold than his list required and all those goods always looked tempting to him.

He wandered around for a little while and found what he was looking for and was ready to pay up and leave when something caught his eye.

Joseph had come back into the store again and was standing behind the counter. The counter had a heavy glass top and interesting small things were under the glass. It was something under the glass that Talon had noticed. It was a tubular device with a glass face. Very strange, thought Talon.

Joseph saw him looking at it and pulled it from under the glass. “Ever seen one of these?” he asked.

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s a flashlight,” said Joseph. “You just push this little button forward and presto.” Talon stepped back a little when the light came on. Flashlights had been around a while in other places, but Talon had not been. It was new and amazing to him.

“It’s a lamp!” he said a little surprised.

The thought instantly came to him how handy that little light would be for prospecting.

“Yep,” said Joseph, “and look at this. It comes with this very well made leather sheath you can wear on your belt to carry it in.”

Perfect, thought Talon, Just what I need.

“How much you need for that little lamp?” asked Talon.

“One dollar, and I can have more batteries in a week or so when Dan brings up the wagon again from Bear Valley.”

Batteries? thought Talon. He had heard of batteries before but never had any reason to need one.

“So how does that work?” asked Talon

“Simple,” said Joseph, “you just use the light until the batteries get too low to shine good and then you come in and get more.”

“Just one dollar,” Joseph repeated. “That’s all, and you can find a hundred uses for it too. You need to make a run to that little shack out back in the middle of the night. You won’t need no lantern at all. Just push that little button straight up and you got all the light you could ever want.”

Talon didn’t need the sales pitch. He was sold the instant the light came on.

“One dollar huh,” said Talon. “Seems like a good bit but I do need it.”

Talon thought about the batteries for a moment and decided that they were definitely not a deal breaker. He really could just come in and get more. He snapped the little light on and off and then he smiled and handed Joseph his poke.

“Just as I thought”, he said to himself. “Don’t matter how good my list is, there is always something in this place I never knew I needed till I saw it on the shelf.”

He felt a little guilty about spending money he worried he might need later but seriously, this was something he really needed.

All the way home Talon studied the little light. He turned it on a few times just to turn it off again.

“White man stuff,” he said to himself “always something. What’ll they come up with next.”

Back at his cabin, Talon pulled the saddle from his horse and left him to wander in front of the cabin. The goods from the store where in a leather pack he wore on his back so he wouldn’t have to put the pack saddle on his other horse. It was handier and saved a lot of time.

He had purchased enough supplies to last a week and they were heavy in the pack. He was especially fond of canned beans and bacon and had a good number of cans of them in the pack.

That, when you combine it with the age of the ancient cabin might explain why, when Talon entered the cabin and knelt down to lift the trap door under his feet the entire floor gave way, and dropped ten feet to the floor of the cave he had made his home in.

Dust exploded with a mighty crash as the floor came crashing down. It took a second for Talon to realize what had just happened. The dust was settling down to the point he could see a little before he stood up to see if he was alright.

After he had sized the situation up for a moment he decided that all was not lost. He figured he would dig the ladder out of the rubble later if it wasn’t broken and fix the floor at his leisure.

Talon had discovered the cave the same day he moved into the cabin. A short time later, he discovered that the little stream in the cave had gold in it. The fact that it had been worked was easy to see. What had caused him to question was that there were no mining tools around the site.

Talon had already explored the cave for as far as a homemade torch could take him, but that was not near as far as he wanted to explore. Now that he had the little lamp he could see a lot more of it and that was just what he planned to do.

The floor caving in wasn’t the best, but not that big a deal at the moment either.

He had finished his evening meal and had let his cooking fire burn down to a bed of coals.

After he washed a little sand and gravel from the stream, he captured the bright yellow dust in the bottom of the pan and spread it out on a piece of deerskin to dry. He needed more wood for the little fire, which he planned on getting from the old floorboards of the cabin, and was about to get some more but got side tracked by what looked like a nice little nugget in the stream.

The noise from the running water and the wind in the cross shaft that the stream flowed in was loud enough that for the most part it drowned out everything else in the cave. That wasn’t a problem for Talon. The cabin design gave him every reason to think there was no reason to need to hear anything else.