Curse Of The Spanish Gold (The Mountain Men Book 2) Read online

  Curse of the Spanish Gold

  by

  Terry Grosz

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2016 Terry Grosz (as revised)

  Wolfpack Publishing

  48 Rock Creek Road

  Clinton, Montana 59825

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-62918-861-4

  Table of Contents:

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  An Excerpt from The Adventures of Hatchet Jack

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Several years had passed since the violent battle in 1836 between trappers Jacob and Martin, and their Snake Indian wives, and a Gros Ventre raiding party in the Wind River Mountains of present-day Wyoming. Leo and Jeremiah, fellow trappers and adopted sons of the embattled Jacob and Martin, had watched in anguish from a safe distance as the trappers’ wives (whose men had been ambushed and killed earlier in the day) tried to hold off the same raiding party. The younger men knew they were so heavily outnumbered that to interfere in the battle at that moment would mean instant death.

  Riding to the burning cabins after the raiding party had left, Leo and Jeremiah were beside themselves with joy when they saw the small sons of trappers Jacob and Martin, who had been killed earlier, emerging safely from their hiding place in the outhouse. They had been hidden there by their mothers, who had calculated that no attackers would look there. After burying their adopted parents’ burned and mutilated bodies, they gathered up the now parentless Jacob and Martin (each named after his father) and rode to their own nearby cabins. They found their wives scared but undiscovered by the raiding party and hurriedly made plans to leave the dangerous area the following morning. When daylight came, the little group gathered together the last of their belongings, loaded their pack animals, and left this formerly happy land. The recent numerous Gros Ventre Indian incursions into their trapping area had made life there untenable.

  As they fled southwest, Leo and Jeremiah were surprised to cross the tracks of the same retreating and heavily decimated Gros Ventre war party that had killed the children’s parents. The war party had originally headed north toward present-day Montana, only to have its route blocked by the Gros Ventre’s mortal enemies, the resident Snake Indians. Those Snake Indians were now swarming across the land looking for the remainder of the raiding party.

  Come nightfall, a vengeful Leo and Jeremiah tracked down the remaining members of the Gros Ventre raiding party and extracted the full and bloody final measure of frontier justice as the raiders slept. They saved the cruelest punishment for the raiding party’s war chief. He died screaming as emboldened wolves, crazy with the smell of blood from the many nearby dead warriors, tore his body to pieces where he had been left tied to a tree and mutilated.

  Continuing south, the little party finally arrived in the area soon to be known as Fort Bridger, Wyoming. This area was well watered by numerous streams and had mountain grasses that came belly-high on their livestock. The land was also littered with herds of bison as far as the eye could see, interspersed with fleet bands of pronghorn and large concentrations of the lords of the plains, the graceful elk. To the south of this pristine area lay mountain ranges covered with evergreen timber and holding abundant populations of black and grizzly bears along with Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. After carefully looking around, the men decided that this would be the site of their new home—a place far from the murderous Blackfoot Nation Indian bands, where one could raise a family in relative peace.

  Continuing to trap furbearers and hunt buffalo for their skins after building their new home, the men began a slow change from mountain men to hunters, trappers, and small-scale tillers of the soil. These new pursuits more than supplied their families’ needs and made their desire for the more violent frontier lifestyle a thing of the past.

  During the following years, Leo and Jeremiah, as masters of frontier survival, began the deadly serious job of training young Jacob and Martin as they had promised their parents over their freshly dug graves. This promise was kept to a degree that only the two murdered trappers and their wives could truly have appreciated. Leo and Jeremiah knew their adoptive fathers would want the very best of frontier survival training and skills imparted to their sons because they had lived and died by those same standards. The West was a harsh yet beautiful land to the practiced eye but deadly violent to those who looked and could not see. The only way to survive was to become woods-wise, understanding of animal and Native American behavior, weather-smart, skilled in the trade of “kill or be killed,” and cautious yet alert to the rustling winds of change.

  By 1843, life in their little valley had become even more interesting and comfortable for the two frontier families. Longtime trappers Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez settled in the area and built a crude log trading post nearby named Fort Bridger. Its purpose was to serve as a trading post for the area’s growing number of residents and those now starting to head west in wagon trains on the nearby Oregon Trail. These groups migrating westward were in many instances led by mountain men, who were wise in the geography and ethnology of these new horizons. Bridger and Vasquez soon found the trickle of Argonauts turning into a flood of westbound hopefuls. Soon the fort was a thriving center of trade for the remaining mountain men married to the land and to their Indian wives, the military, the Mormons, and others headed for a new life in the far western lands of promise.

  Still lurking unknown to Leo and Jeremiah lay the Curse of the Spanish Gold. The older Martin and Jacob had acquired golden ingots in a trade with a Ute chief at a rendezvous many years earlier. The ingots had been taken by the Ute chief and his warriors from a Spanish mining camp after they had killed the entire party of miners and the priests who accompanied them. Before his death in that battle, a Catholic priest had cursed the yellow metal ingots that drove men to an unholy madness that exists to this very day.

  After that battle, the Ute chief laid claim to the hoard of 126 golden ingots, and the Curse of the Spanish Gold began. Over the next year, that chief lost two of his sons to savage grizzly bear attacks, and another son was severely injured in a fall from a horse. When the trappers Jacob and Martin gave the Ute chief a magnificent grizzly-claw necklace, the chief, not to be outdone, gave them the cursed golden ingots in return. With the ingots once more passed the Curse of the Spanish Gold!

  Several years later, Leo and Jeremiah picked up the ingots that had been scattered about after the deadly battle at the trapper’s cabin in 1836 and kept the gold for the orpha
ned children. The Gros Ventre had left the gold behind because they placed no value on the yellow metal. The Curse of the Spanish Gold once again passed with the possession of the ingots. All the men in the raiding party that had killed the trappers and their wives had handled the golden ingots, and several days later they died horrible deaths at the hands of Leo and Jeremiah. Years later, Leo and Jeremiah were in turn killed by a Lakota raiding party in an early-morning raid. When their adopted sons, Jacob and Martin, returned to the battle site, they buried their adopted parents and dug up the hidden Spanish gold from beneath the burned-out cabin. With that, the Curse of the Spanish Gold passed on to the boys.

  Chapter One

  The Odyssey Begins

  Leo, Jeremiah, and the two boys, who were fast becoming men of the frontier, left their home; a cabin nestled in a thick grove of cottonwoods, early one morning and headed for Fort Bridger. Today would be the start of an adventure that the boys were looking forward to, although they were also a little apprehensive about what the following days might bring.

  Leo and Jeremiah had spent years working with the boys, teaching and honing their frontier skills to the point where there was little difference among the four in those abilities other than experience. Leo and Jeremiah had been pleased with the boys’ progress through the rigors of frontier survival training as they grew older, stronger, and wiser. Both young men, like their fathers before them, had adapted well and quite easily to the frontier teachings—so much so that soon they had gained an understanding of life on the frontier that was far beyond their years. They were crack shots with their rifles and pistols and skilled in knife use, including those skills necessary to defend oneself in a fight to the death. They were their adoptive fathers’ equals in tracking and trapping. They easily spoke various dialects of the Lakota, Crow, and Snake languages and were equally at ease with the talk of the plains, namely, speaking in sign. Reading the weather and animal signs and learning the ways of Native Americans came easily to the boys. So did the making and use of the ancient Native weapon: bows and arrows. At age seventeen, both young men stood slightly over six feet in height, weighed about 200 pounds, and were strap-steel tough from many hours of hard labor on their folks’ farms and small ranches.

  Their adoptive Lakota mothers, White Feather and Prairie Flower, had taught the boys the domestic ways of the frontier, including making clothing, caring for hides and furs, becoming familiar with the many medicinal properties of native plants, and making even a mountain lion or bobcat loin taste good in a Dutch oven. They had also taught the boys how to treat wounds and sew up any torn flesh that was damaged so extensively that it couldn’t be left alone to heal by itself without fear of infection. The women also taught them to respect Mother Earth, honor the gods, and understand the way of the ancients.

  The young men couldn’t wait to begin their new adventures. Little did they realize the many trails they would travel and the dangers they would experience before they laid their heads down on Mother Earth for the last time.

  Reining up in front of the fort’s open outer gates in the summer of 1852, the boys were amazed at what lay before them. They had never been to the fort before. Fort Bridger was a collection of rough-hewn cottonwood logs forming a palisade within which was a small number of crudely made hay sheds, cabins, and storage rooms in addition to the trading post. To the south were about thirty Indian tepees occupied by white fur trappers and their Native American wives. Herds of horses and oxen belonging to Bridger roamed at will in the fort’s adjacent grassy fields. On this day, the tranquil scene was accompanied by the ringing of blacksmiths’ hammers clanging off iron rims being reset on the spokes of a traveler’s wagon wheel, the din of children playing around two different wagon trains circled outside the fort, and the barking of numerous dogs. The pungent smell of lye soap from the laundresses doing the weekly wash commingled with the fragrant aroma of baking bread. A sound foreign to the young men’s ears was the groaning of a hand-pumped organ and voices singing to the heavens in hopeful tones.

  Dismounting, the four frontiersmen made their way through the gates into the center of the fort. Off to one side sat what was called the trading post, a building made just as crudely as the fort’s palisades. Hitching their horses, they went inside, where the young men met with many more new sights and smells: curing hides, gun oil, freshly baked bread and pies, made by the ladies in the wagon trains and exhibited for sale on a nearby counter, and both stale and fresh tobacco. At the far end of the wooden counter were salted and brined fish in open barrels and smoked slabs of bacon stacked up in greasy heaps. Beneath all these odors was the underlying pungent smell of stale sweat from unwashed bodies.

  They heard laughter from a group of men nearby—voices that were liberally spiced with strong whiskey, from the raucous sounds. Before them were furs by the bale being traded and others packed for travel. The fresh-meat smell of elk and buffalo hindquarters hanging from the rafters, still dripping blood onto the dirty wooden floor, hung heavily in the air. It was all topped off by the thickness of the confined, oppressive, stagnant summer heat.

  Hanging back, the two young men followed the leads of their adopted dads. Planning on drawing on their credit with the trading post from previous fur and hide sales, Leo and Jeremiah motioned Jim Bridger over. As he approached, the boys observed a powerfully built man who moved with the grace of a deer. After much back-slapping and a long pull by each man from a gallon jug of whiskey concealed beneath the counter, the three men got down to the business at hand.

  “These here young’uns are getting ready to go out on a hunt to make meat for our families,” Leo informed Bridger. Bridger looked seriously at the two boys and then, with no sign of emotion, brought his eyes back to Leo and Jeremiah. “They will need to be supplied for at least a ten-day trip out onto the plains, and that is why we are here. I will need to use a portion of our credit to procure some powder, caps for their Hawkens, two nipple picks, a couple extra skinning and gutting knives, a steel, two sharpening stones, and two pounds of your long-leaf Virginia chew. They will also need a six-quart Dutch, a boilin’ pot, an ax, and a couple of fire steels,” said Leo as Jeremiah nodded in agreement. “Then they will need a large sack of your salt yonder and two pounds of pepper. While you’re at it, Jim, throw into that mix a jug of your bear lard, a jug of honey for biscuits, ten pounds of flour, and a two-pound sack of sugar cones. And they will need five pounds of your dried pintos there and a large bag of coffee beans,” continued Leo as his experienced eyes roamed across the selection of goods on the shelves behind the counter.

  “That we’un can fix right up,” said a grinning Jim Bridger, who was quick in taking in the order, and a sharp man when it came to bargaining. Turning, he beckoned for one of his clerks to give him a hand pulling together the goods just ordered. Soon the wooden counter began to fill with stacks of the items Leo had requested. As each requested tool was laid out on the counter, Jeremiah carefully examined it for any flaws from shoddy manufacturing. He also checked the beans and flour for any signs of weevils. Pleased with each item as it arrived, he replaced them on the counter and grinned at Bridger through his massive beard.

  “That will about do it,” said Bridger as he looked up at his two grizzly-bear-sized friends, men he knew from long-past rigorous days of trapping wet and cold on the beaver streams. “I will remove the cost of these goods from what I owe the two of you in credit from previous fur deals. That is, unless you have a problem with that.”

  “That’ll be fine with us,” replied Leo with a smile, knowing they had made a good trade and gotten the supplies needed to make the boys’ upcoming trip safe and successful. “At least they’re covered in the food and ‘chew’ department,” thought Leo.

  “Well, if that be a deal, I can’t let the two of you out of sight without sharing a bit more of my snakebite medicine afore you go,” Bridger replied with a smile, as if he needed to justify the snort of whiskey the three friends were soon to share.

  The
boys, knowing their places, stood silently, delighted by the friendship the three mountain men openly shared. The trading, drinking, and palavering over, the four walked back out into the bright sunlight carrying armloads of their trade items. Greeting their eyes were friendly Indians, trappers, travelers, children, and numerous dogs along with a few domesticated pigs looking for food scraps. The boys grinned at the activity playing out before their eyes, a far cry from the quiet and solitude they had grown up with in the wilds. Yet they were already missing the comfort of home and wishing they were once again back within its less busy and noisy confines.

  With their newly acquired supplies loaded on two pack animals, the four turned their backs on the noisy fort and headed out into the comforting and well-loved quiet of the high intermountain prairie toward their homes.

  Chapter Two

  On Their Own

  Arriving home just in time for supper, Jacob and Martin gulped their meals, hardly tasting anything. The boys hurried to eat so they could finish organizing for the first hunting trip of their lives on their own. Dreams of coming home with pack animals loaded with meat and hides danced in their heads, as happens with young men about to embark on a vision quest. Hardly sleeping a wink that night, the young men were up long before the crack of dawn the next day and soon had their horses and mules fully loaded for their grand adventure. This trip promised a lot of hard work and the element of danger. But it would also usher them through the passage from boyhood to manhood.

  Their mothers put a large breakfast of elk stew thick with gravy along with Dutch-oven biscuits and coffee on the table, and the two boys fell to like there was no tomorrow. They knew that the buffalo had moved many miles to the east to avoid the humans in their valley. If they were to find the great herds, they would have to ride long and hard that first day. Supper, if any, would be late at night, and jerky would have to sustain them throughout the day’s hard ride. However, that was not a bother because they were young, well equipped, and currently loading up on a great breakfast. What more could the young men want?