The Treasure of Hidden Valley

by Willis George Emerson

The little bunch of friends had set to work with a will. Jim Rankin got the first team down within half an hour, and by that time the Major, Tom Sun, who had duly turned up from Rawlins, Boney Earnest, Grant Jones and Roderick had a goodly pile of the one-hundred-pound ore sacks stacked in front of the house, ready to be lifted into the wagon. Without a hitch or delay the work proceeded, and now that the loading was completed, and the rifles and ammunition had been stowed under the drivers’ seats, the tension of suppressed excitement was relaxed. Pipes were alight during a final consultation.

The three tough old westerners, it was settled, were to drive. Boney had announced his absolute determination to come along—the smelter could go to blazes, he had applied some days before for a week’s leave anyways and if W. B. Grady chose to buck because he took it now, well he could “buck good and plenty, and be damned to him.” Tom Sun was keeping in stern repression his wrath against the miscreants who had massacred his sheep and probably killed his herders as well; it would be stern satisfaction for him to have a fight on the road, to settle accounts with Bud Bledsoe by the agency of a rifle bullet. Jim Rankin, after his quiet taking-down by Roderick at the livery stable, had recovered his accustomed self-assurance and bellicosity, and was “prognosticating” all manner of valorous deeds once it came to guns out on both sides and fair shooting.

While these three would manage the teams, Buell Hampton, Grant and Roderick would scout ahead on their riding horses, and provide a rear guard as well so that the alarm of any attempted pursuit could be given. Badger had been fed and rested, and looked fit for anything despite the night’s ride to Jack Creek.

Jumping into the saddle Roderick, accompanied by Grant Jones, who knew the road well, led the way. The wagons followed, while the Major delayed just long enough to lock up the house, including the now empty inner chamber, and clear away the traces of the night’s work. The whole cavalcade was three or four miles out of Encampment before the sun had risen and the townsfolk were astir.

The distance to be traversed was just fifty miles, and that night the first camp was made beyond Saratoga. No public attention had been drawn to the wagons; none of the people encountered on the road or at stopping places had any reason to think that these ordinary looking ore-sacks held gold that was worth a king’s ransom. There had been no signs of ambushed robbers ahead nor of pursuit in the rear. But that night, while a few hours of sleep were snatched, watch was kept in turn, while each sleeper had his rifle close at hand. With the first glimmer of dawn the journey was resumed.

It was well on in the afternoon when the Major spied, some distance out on the open country to the left, the dust raised by a small party of horsemen. He rode up to the wagons to consult his friends. He had just pointed out the sign to Jim Rankin, when the riders disappeared behind a rocky ridge.

Jim had been shading his eyes while gazing fixedly. He now dropped his hand.

“By gunnies, they are after us right enough,” he exclaimed. “That was Bud Bledsoe in the lead—I know his ginger-colored pony. They’re going to cross Pass Creek lower down, then they will swing around into White Horse Canyon, coming back to meet us after we’ve crossed the bridge and are on the long steep hill just beyond. Dang me if that ain’t their game.”

The Major rode ahead to warn Grant and Roderick. The bridge over Pass Creek was only three miles from Walcott. If the three scouts could gain the crest of the steep slope, before the robbers, the advantage of position would be theirs.

Roderick grasped the plan of campaign in an instant, and, digging his spurs into Badger’s flank, galloped off full pelt. Grant and the Major followed at the best pace of their less mettled ponies.