Hard Gold (3 page)
Authors: Avi
Adam said, “I don’t believe it.”
“Read it yourself,” said Jesse, flipping the paper down.
A map of the Kansas and Nebraska territories
Adam wouldn’t even look. Said, “Just what are you suggesting?”
Jesse grinned. “What I’m saying, brother Daniel, is that we could sit on our stumps and lose our farm. Or—I could go out to this Cherry Creek and snap up some of that gold that’s lying about. Pay the farm debt in double quick time. Be free of Judge Fuslin fast.”
“What do you know about digging gold?” demanded Adam.
“Go on, read it,” cried Jesse. “They got gold with an ax, didn’t they? A hatchet! Lord! A frying pan!”
“You’d have no idea where to look,” Adam scoffed.
“Sure I do,” said Jesse. “Says it’s on this Cherry Creek, right off the South Platte River. Guess what else I learned in town? These Cherry Creek diggings are only seven hundred miles from here.
Seven hundred!
I bet we walk that far when we plow each day! Why, a fellow could travel out there on his hands—backward.”
“Now, Jesse,” said my ma, “for once you need to be serious.”
“I am!” cried Jesse.
Pa shook his head. “Jesse,” he said, “dreaming don’t work in the sunshine.”
Jesse offered him the paper. “Printed words don’t lie.”
“If a man set the type, they can!” growled Adam.
“Digging for gold,” said my mother, “I remember people wanting to go to California years ago.”
“And if we’d gone,” I cried, unable to hold back my keenness, “we’d be rich now.”
Adam snorted. “Or dead.”
“I guess you’d prefer losing the farm,” Jesse taunted.
Adam turned red.
“Would you just go way out there,
alone!”
Ma asked Jesse.
Jesse looked across the table and winked at me. “Little brother can come with me. That way, we’d get the gold twice as fast.”
“I like that,” I said, ready to gallop.
“Lot of good Early would do you,” said Adam.
“He’d do just fine,” said Jesse, making me feel good.
“It would cost plenty to get there,” said Adam. “And we don’t have anything to spare.”
“I’ll find it,” said Jesse.
“How?” Adam challenged.
Jesse didn’t answer that question.
Pa shook his head. “We’re not going to lose the farm. No one is going anywhere.”
End of discussion.
But over the next few days, Jesse and I shared other newspaper stories up in our room.
The Iowa
Democrat
wrote:
The excitement caused by the discovery of the Pike’s Peak gold mines is still unabated. Every man has gold on his tongue. The first question one hears in the morning after coming downtown is, “What’s the news from the gold diggings?”
There was one from the Kansas
Weekly Herald:
Gold! Gold! Gold! Reliable reports concerning the recent gold discoveries in the vicinity of Pike’s Peak still continue to arrive. Every trader or prospector coming from the region gives flattering accounts. The gold has been discovered in all the streams flowing from the mountains. Those who ought to know say that with the proper tools fifty dollars can be obtained per day.
Days did pass, but all Jesse would talk about was Pike’s Peak. “Gold! Fifty dollars a day! Early,” he kept saying, “it’d be so fine if I could save the farm. Not for Adam. For your ma and pa. For all they done for me.”
“Adam gets the farm in the end,” I reminded him.
“Sure,” he said, “but he’d have to thank me for it, wouldn’t he?”
And I said, “And we’d have enough left over to buy another farm just for us.”
“We would, too!” he said, laughing. Then he got serious. “Early, I got to go!”
In fact, couple of nights later he got so restless he walked right out of the room we shared, and, so he told me later, sat on the porch all night staring at the moon.
Next morning all he said to me was, “Hey, Early. Ever notice how much the moon looks like gold?”
No doubt, Jesse had gold fever, and he had it bad. But what it would lead to, I had no idea.
T
HE PEOPLE in our part of the country were getting desperate about money. All kinds of unusual things were being gossiped about. The Robinson family, having big debts, up and disappeared one night. No one knew where they went. The bank in Wiota, the one Judge Fuslin owned, was broken into and robbed. Three hundred dollars stolen! Then there was Tobias Elliot, from the other side of town, who got so hopeless he took his own life. And we kept hearing about people—people who had stayed in Cass County their whole lives—who just packed up and headed west to that Pike’s Peak place, or to California or Oregon—places that promised ways to recover busted lives.
Then we had our own strange thing happen.
Judge Fuslin sent Pa a message telling him he must come see him at the bank, right away. Pa went. When he met with the judge, Fuslin announced that he was sure
Jesse
was the one had who had robbed his bank! Being county judge, he could have had Jesse arrested.
“Do you have some proof?” Pa asked.
“He was seen in town that night,” said Fuslin. “Near the bank.”
“Don’t mean a thing,” Pa said and got up to go.
“Hold on,” said Fuslin. “I’ll make a deal. You sell that farm to the railroad, and I’ll make sure no charges are placed against Jesse.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Look here, Daniel, I’ll be honest. If you sell to the railroad, I’ll get my share.”
“More than three hundred, I’d guess,” said Pa.
“Yes, sir. A lot more.”
“In other words,” said Pa, “sell the farm, or Jesse gets arrested.”
“Just trying to be helpful.”
“Judge Fuslin,” said Pa, “that’s what I’d call blackmail.” He left, came home, and told us what was said.
I was shocked by the charge against Jesse. Outright horrified.
“He offer any proof that it was me?” asked Jesse.
Pa repeated what the judge had said.
That made Adam ask Jesse, “Were you there?
Did
you rob the bank?”
But then Ma cried, “Adam! Don’t even say such a thing!”
“Have anything to say for yourself?” Pa said to Jesse.
Jesse shrugged, grinned, and said, “What am I supposed to do? Can’t just sit around waiting for that judge to arrest me, can I?”
Ma said, “If you didn’t do it, you’re not going to be arrested. We’re not going to lose the farm.”
Pa added, “No one is going anywhere. And we’re not going to talk about it anymore.”
That was fine with me, especially since I noticed Jesse hadn’t answered Adam’s question.
A few days later, it being Saturday afternoon, Adam allowed Jesse and me to go off on our own. We went out into our woods, at the southern end of the farm, where we had a place on some rocks that was good for sitting and talking. We hunted there, too. In fact, Jesse had his rifle, and we were waiting for the pigeons to rise when he drew out a piece of paper.
“Hey, little brother, look here,” he said. “Fella in town had a brand-new guidebook about that Pike’s Peak gold. I copied a piece. Listen to this:
“Gold exists throughout all this region. It can be found anywhere—on the plains, in the mountains, and by the streams. In fact, there is no end of the precious metal. Nature itself would seem to have turned into a most successful alchemist in converting the very sands of the streams to gold.
There were all kinds of guidebooks to the gold diggings.
Just a few of them had really good information.
“Isn’t that something grand?” said Jesse. When he looked at me with his bright eyes, I could have sworn I saw bits of gold swimming in them.
He stuffed the paper back in a pocket and picked up his rifle and aimed it. “I’m telling you, Early, I think I just might go see the elephant.”
“Do
what?”
“It’s what folks say when they talk about going west: seeing the elephant.”
“Are there
elephants
out there?”
“Doubt it. It’s just what people say.”
“Look here, Jesse,” I said, “maybe you and me should go off and go see that elephant for ourselves. Get away from everyone.”
“I just might,” he said, lowering his gun. “I’m of age. But it wouldn’t be fair to the folks to take you, little brother. Anyway, what’ll Adam say?”
I said, “Don’t care apple cores about Adam. Just don’t you go without me, Jesse Plockett. Anyway, didn’t Adam say it cost money to go?”
Jesse thought for a moment. “About two hundred dollars.”
“No way could we find that,” I said.
“I might find a way.”
I looked at him closely. “How?” I asked.
The only answer Jesse gave was to take aim, shoot, and drop a pigeon at forty yards. I always wanted to shoot like that.
“Wish that was old Fuslin,” said Jesse. Then he added, “I saw him in town.”
“He say anything?”
“Wanted to know if Daniel had thought about his offer. Said that time was running short.”
“Before he places charges against you?”
“Sounded like.”
“Jesse,” I cried, “what you going to do?”
“Got some ideas,” he said and shot another pigeon.
I will confess there were a whole lot of questions I wanted to ask him. First off: where was he that night he told me he was looking at the moon? Second: why did someone say he was seen in town that same night? I just couldn’t get my words out. Kept putting them off for the morrow.
Then, a few days later when I woke and went down to the kitchen, Ma, Pa, and Adam were just there doing nothing. So right off I knew something had happened.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Jesse,” said Adam.
“What about him?”
Pa handed me a piece of paper with Jesse’s scrawl.
I’m going to the Kansas territory. Just Know I’ll be bringing back some gold.
Jesse
“He gone?” I cried. “Really?”
Pa nodded. “Looking for gold.”
“Fool’s gold,” added Adam.
Ma said, “He was fretting so about Judge Fuslin’s charge that he thought he might as well go. Only took an extra shirt and his rifle.”
“No money,” said Pa, “and winter coming.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” I said.
Ma shook her head and said, “I suspect he didn’t want to disappoint you.”
I was so upset, I ran off to our secret place in the woods, hurt that Jesse would go without saying anything to me. But when I got there, I found another letter.
Little Brother:
I’m going to get some of that Pike’s Peak gold so as to pay off the mortgage and make everything right. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back soon rich as blazes. Don’let Adam bother you. We’ll have our own farm soon!
Jesse
I spent a whole lot of time reading and rereading that letter, thinking about Jesse and what he’d done. He said I wasn’t to worry about him, but I did. In fact, after I was finished brooding, I’d made up my mind: I had to go after him.
I just didn’t know how.