Thunder Gods Gold by Barry Storm

Author:Barry Storm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

3. CLUES TO FORTUNE

I have often wished that I had immediately followed up the clue to the soldiers’ lost vein after Vall’s precipitate departure. But at the time George Snell arrived from Connecticut and Francis Splichal from Kansas too quickly to allow any deviation from the quest for the lost mine trail which Adolph Ruth had followed to his death. Snell had been experimenting for some time in the location with high frequency radio beams of underground metallic objects, and Splichal had a sardonic but brilliant knack for seeing unsuspected relationships between things. I expected considerable help from both of them. So I said nothing at all of the clue except to explain that Vall had been unexpectedly called away, and we began working from my base camp at First Water.

It took weeks of exploration to identify the mineralized region I had marked in upon my topographic map, and many more weeks to learn the lay of the involved East and West Boulder Canyons and the parallel Needle Canyon, all draining down toward the location of my first golden clue miles below. And that mineralized region was our first destination for in it somewhere, I was certain, would be an exact duplicate in reality of the Peralta-mapped La Sombrera and accompany hill.

We moved camp to it by easy stages, and at last found that we had to move beyond it into LaBarge Canyon two or three hours away so we could be sure of water and some shade. Then after we had labored for the better part of a week getting our equipment carried over upon our backs jungle style, Abe Reid finally rode through from the Quarter-Circle-U where he had been working.

First, he led us up the hot, cactus-studded slopes of the high mountain between East Boulder and Needle Canyons where he had found the piece of rich ore himself. I knew that he had spent two years hunting its source. And that meant that he had undoubtedly obtained enough firsthand information from his Apache friends to convince him that they had really hidden mines nearby after the Peralta massacre of a near-century ago.

“On this hill?” I asked, thinking that a mountain that was over a mile square according to my topographic map wasn’t being very definite.

“Yeh. I knew one of the Indians who helped,” Reid explained. “He said medicine men sent a work party of squaws and boys in here to hide the mines so no white man could find them. When I found my piece of gold ore I hit him up to tell me where but he said it was taboo. He was one of the boys and the best he could do was tell me about working on this hill, covering up four mines with half the squaws while the rest hid four more further up canyon. He knew I’d never find them.”

“How did he say they covered them?” I asked excitedly, while Snell and Splichal crowded closer to hear his words.

“With caliche-cemented logs over the holes, then dirt and stones to match the ground.

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