Page 3 of Follow the Lonesome Trail

“Gold dust?” His numbness intensified until he almost thought he was floating in a dream. Or a nightmare. “Where would O’Rourke get gold dust?”

“He found it in a stream, he said. He’d been trapping beaver, and he thought the riverbed looked promising, so he panned it for color, and there was enough to keep him panning a little whenever he had time.

He wanted to go back up there with you and see if, together, you could find where the gold was washing down from. ”

“Did he tell you where it was?”

“No. And he wouldn’t draw any map, for fear someone else would get hold of it. The secret died with him. But that poke of gold, he left for you.”

“He seems to have confided a good deal in you, Mrs. Masterson.”

“He trusted me. And Pop.”

“And your husband?”

“I’m a widow.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” A flash of warm sympathy stabbed through his numbness. She’d said every family there had lost someone to the epidemic. “The smallpox?”

“No, no.” Julia Masterson twisted her fingers together where they rested on the table.

“It was our—my third son that the smallpox took. My husband died out on our ranch more than a year ago. Thrown by a horse he was breaking for spring round-up.” She gestured vaguely around the kitchen.

“Pop insisted I move here with the boys. It was supposed to be temporary. One day, I will move back to the ranch. We proved up on the land, but I simply can’t keep it running on my own.

Pop helped me sell the stock, but the rest is still there, waiting for someone to come along and run cattle again. ”

She pointed at the saddlebags. “Anyway, this is all that’s left of Seamus’s things.

He told us to sell his rifle and horse and saddle to pay for Pop’s doctoring, and for his room and board here.

I mightn’t have done it, except…” Her voice sank, and she glanced away, making it hard for Hansen to catch her last words.

“Times have been lean here since the smallpox started up.”

“If he told you to sell them, I’m sure he meant it. No shame there, ma’am.”

Abruptly, she stood. “More coffee?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Masterson.” Hansen rose politely, picking up the saddlebags and his hat while he sidled out from behind the table.

“If you’ll give me that poke of gold, I’ll be going.

” He would ride out, spend the night up past the tree line.

The idea should have comforted him. Mountains were always a place of solace for Hansen.

But instead, regret soured his stomach. Maybe it was too soon for leaving.

He ought to say goodbye to O’Rourke, that was it.

“In the morning, if it’s not too much trouble, could you show me his grave? Before I ride out.”

“I’d be glad to. But, I’m sorry—I don’t have his gold dust.”

“Who does?”

“Mr. Carter.”

“The bartender?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He has a safe. It’s the only one in town. O’Rourke wanted his gold dust kept secure until he got well again. Or… for you, instead.”

“Then I’ll go ask him for it.”

Julia Masterson laughed, not pleasantly. “He won’t give it to you.”

“Why?”

“Because then he’d have to give all the rest of us our money back too.

It’s all locked up in his safe, every bit of gold and silver and cash money.

Even most of the jewelry. Anytime someone got sick, he offered to lock up their valuables until they got better.

Gave them a paper receipt, even. It wasn’t until folks started taking those papers to him and asking for their money that we realized what he’d done.

He took over the whole town in the middle of our misery, and we let him. ”

The irritation Hansen had harbored earlier flared up again, mixing potently with his grief to form an anger that blazed so high it left him breathless. “We’ll see about this.”

This time when he entered the saloon, Hansen let the door bang against the wall and drift half closed while he stalked straight up to the bar, O’Rourke’s saddlebags over one shoulder.

Most of the same men lingered, still looking like they’d gotten whupped for asking for another bowl of gruel.

He understood the meaning behind their appearances now.

“Welcome back,” Carter said from behind the bar. He raised one eyebrow and waited.

“You have something of mine,” Hansen said.

“My friend asked you to hold it for me until I could come claim it. I’m here now.

” The short walk from Doc Masterson’s had cooled his temper enough to remind him that requesting the gold reasonably might work.

He had only an unknown woman’s word that Carter wouldn’t simply give him O’Rourke’s legacy when he asked for it.

Sure, Julia Masterson talked what sounded like good sense, but she could have some reason for wanting to set a powerful-looking stranger against the bartender.

People had been known to trick others into settling grudges for them before this.

“Is that so? Was it this man you mentioned earlier?”

“O’Rourke. Seamus O’Rourke.”

“What makes you think he left something here for you?”

“This.” Hansen pulled his letter out again and held it up for Carter to read.

Carter glanced at it. “And what does that prove?”

“That O’Rourke left something for me here.”

“But it doesn’t say anything about me.”

“No, Mrs. Masterson filled in that detail. She was with my friend when he died.”

“Ahh.” Carter shrugged. “We’ve had a lot of deaths here, stranger. I’m sorry I can’t remember them all.”

From the corner, a man said, “Come down off your fine horse, Carter. Seamus O’Rourke was that trapper who drifted in about the time we was finally getting better.”

Hansen turned a little so he could see the speaker, but still see Carter too. “You met him?”

“I helped carry him to Doc’s from the livery when he took sick,” answered the man.

“Thank you.” He wished he knew better, stronger words to show his gratitude.

“Only decent thing to do. Most of us do remember what that means. Most of us.”

Hansen faced the bartender. “How about it? Does that jog your memory any?” He stood tall, trusting his height and build to lend his words weight.

Carter nodded slowly. “A fur trapper, yes. Yes, I do remember him.” He offered his mustache-lifting grimace of a smile again. “I’m sorry, but I have no proof that anything he may have entrusted to me was meant for you.”

“What about this letter?”

“Anyone could have intercepted it. You say you’re the man mentioned, but can you prove it? I can’t hand over valuables on your say-so alone.”

“McDonald over at Fort Connah knows me. Would you believe him?”

“Well, yes, I suppose if you can’t trust the word of a Hudson’s Bay man, who can you trust?” Carter folded his arms. “Of course, you have no proof that O’Rourke wrote that letter. You could have written it yourself.”

Hansen tucked away his letter slowly, making a great effort not to seize Carter by the shirt front and shake him until his mustache wilted and his eyes rolled. He didn’t even trust himself not to cuss the man out if he spoke, so he left the saloon without another word.

Behind him, he heard the same dry cough that thinly disguised a laugh.

The sun had barely peeped over the bare eastern plain when Saul Hansen tied his horse to the cemetery fence and began his search for O’Rourke’s grave.

He checked his back trail by habit, but the land lay empty all the way to the mountains where he’d spent the night.

Maybe he should leave the gold. He hadn’t known about it until yesterday.

He’d sold his furs at good prices and had no need for more money.

His cabin was drafty and could stand to be reshingled, but that wasn’t anything he needed money for.

A fresh round of mud in its chinks would stop the drafts, and he could split his own shingles.

Even if it wasn’t the life he’d dreamed of as a youngster, fur trapping was honest and useful work.

But the unfairness of the situation galled him.

Carter had no right to keep O’Rourke’s gold.

He had no right to keep the townsfolk’s money, either.

Not if they wanted it back. Carter’s refusal to give Hansen the gold tallied so closely with Julia Masterson’s prediction that it had demolished Hansen’s doubts about the other things she’d told him.

Finding O’Rourke’s grave didn’t take long. Every grave had a simple wooden cross with initials painted on the crosspiece and a date on the staff. “S O’R” must mean Seamus O’Rourke. The date matched Julia’s story.

Hansen stared down at the oblong mound in front of the marker.

Hard to imagine O’Rourke on the other side of that dirt.

O’Rourke would never laugh over an age-worn joke again, never challenge Hansen to a marksmanship contest, never lose at poker all night long with a laugh and a shrug after every hand. Never. Not ever.

Hansen squinted at the horizon, waiting for the tears to subside. You couldn’t be friends with a man since you were both shirttail young’uns and then have him drop out of the world this way, could you? O’Rourke had died months ago, and Hansen hadn’t known. Shouldn’t he have known, somehow?

A sound behind him startled Hansen, and he whipped around, curling his fists and crouching reflexively.

Mrs. Masterson stood just inside the fence, her arms full of flowers. “I see you found him.” She came closer. “I brought some of these for him. For you.”

Hansen’s sight blurred again. He accepted a handful of the flowers. Pinks, reds, whites. He had no notion what sort of flowers they might be. “Thank you.” His sorrow choked him too much to say more. He dropped to one knee and laid the blossoms at the foot of the simple cross.

Julia Masterson walked a few yards away and bent over to lay half of her remaining flowers on a small grave, replacing a faded bunch. She rested a hand on the grave marker for a moment, then straightened and took the rest of her bouquet to the far end of the cemetery.