Chapter 14

Note – In Ch 13 I had the hero using Remington revolvers. It should have been his modern Rugers.

I went to the staked out youth and started to cut him loose. As I did, I spoke to him in English to no avail, then in Spanish, which he did understand.

“How did you end up in this situation?” I asked him as I doctored his cuts and abrasions.

“I am Kaviu, one of the people whites call Pima, those you killed were some of the Tonto Apache who attacked my people and the Maricopa ten summers ago. They were driven off but took me captive and have used me as a slave since that time. I killed the one who was beating me five days ago and ran away. Those you killed caught me and you know what they were going to do to me. They killed all my family when I was six summers old and beat me for ten years. You gave me my revenge. I will serve you all the rest of my days and die for you if needed.”

With that he knelt at my feet and put my hand on his head. Crap, first Diego and Isabella wanted to serve me for life, now Kaviu wanted the same. I started to think that maybe I should form a fan club with secret hand shakes and such. I had to nip this in the bud.

I pulled him up to his feet and said, “I have no need of a slave, but a blood brother would be welcome.” With that I touched a bleeding abrasion on my forearm to a cut on his wrist.

“Brothers then, brothers until death,” he said.

I could see in his eyes that he would keep faith with me until his dying day.

“Well brother, we have things to do. First get weapons, clothing and whatever else you need from our dead foes, and then we need to cover the bodies. Left exposed they will attract buzzards, and buzzards will attract those we do not want to meet. So we’ll put the bodies in the gully and collapse the side down on them. That will cover them with several feet of sand and rocks.”

It took almost two hours to clean up the site to our satisfaction, but we got it done. I then explained to Kaviu what I was looking for, and we proceeded up the gully. We made good time even with Kaviu picking up plants and roots as we traveled. At one point he even snagged a fat six foot rattler, killing it, skinning it, and gutting it, all within a half an hour.

That night we made camp in the gully, after we made sure that we had an easy way up and out in case of a flash flood. The gully kept us and the glow of our small smokeless fire hidden. Kaviu cut the snake into six inch chunks that we roasted over the flames and enjoyed along with the broth he made with the plants and roots he had collected. The snake was better than the dried mutton I had been eating, but the story that snake tastes like chicken is BS. The snake we didn’t eat we turned into jerky. I guess I could switch between dried mutton and snake jerky for a few days. Yum.

The next morning I went over the map again. The instructions said to go up the gully until the needle was directly on my left and the four peaks were in line so that you could only see the leftmost one, the other three would be hidden behind it. At that point we needed to look for a narrow red walled canyon to our left. After I went over that info with Kaviu, who could speak Spanish but not read it, we set out. Every half hour or so, I would boost Kaviu up onto Mutt’s pack so that he could see over the rim of the gully. About two hours after we set out, he indicated that the four peaks now looked like one. We proceeded up the gully, looking carefully at every gap on the left. In short order we found it, a narrow canyon with walls that reminded me of the red rocks at modern day Sedona, up towards Flagstaff.

Indicating the canyon entrance, I said, “Now brother, after we go around the fifth bend we need to look for a red stone about man height that looks like a horses head. The cave we seek is behind that stone.”

We proceeded up the canyon and sure enough we rounded the fifth bend and saw a red stone. It was about five feet wide and six feet high and could pass for a horse’s head, if you accepted a third graders drawing as your model. But hell, who was I to be picky? Any horse’s head would do. We climbed up to the stone, looked behind it and discovered that it had hidden a three foot wide crevice in the canyon wall. The crevice was four feet behind the red horses head and was only about five feet in height, but after we advanced into it about six feet, it expanded into a cave the size of a large room, reaching up to about twelve feet in height. We could see this because there were open gaps all over the ceiling that let in much light. That same light showed us that the floor was littered with mule packs, lots of mule packs.

I had to know, I just had to. I opened one of the packs and got the surprise of my life. I was hoping for ore that contained a good percentage of gold. What I discovered in the pack, and eventually all the others, was refined bullion. The del Peralta family had not only dug out the ore over the years but had also refined it and melted it into six by four by two inch bars. It made sense, transporting the refined gold would be easier than moving the much greater weight of unrefined ore. I now had twenty-four packs, each about two hundred pounds of almost pure gold. I did the math in my head and was shocked to find that I had about 4,800 pounds of gold. I had researched prices before I came back in time, so I knew that in 1867 gold was valued at about $28.00 an ounce which was almost a month’s pay for a laborer. I wasn’t just rich; I was super rich by 1867 standards.

As Kaviu tended to Mutt and set up our camp, I examined the other packs. They all contained about 200 pounds of gold. Then, in one corner of the cave, I noticed a canvas tarp covering some sort of pile. Taking off the tarp, I exposed numerous crates, boxes, and barrels. Opening one of the crates I discovered that it contained two dozen flintlock muskets. The other three crates contained the same, for a total of 96 muskets. Some of the boxes contained hatchets, knives, musket balls, molds, tin powder flasks, raw lead, and flints. The barrels contained gunpowder, salt, and sugar. I tried all three types of barrels and found that the dry conditions in the cave had perfectly preserved everything. No rust, and no spoilage, everything was as good as it was when it was first placed in the cave several decades ago.

“Well I’ll be dammed;” I said out loud, “ del Peralta was not just stealing gold from the Mexican government he was also a big time smuggler, and was probably selling arms to the Indians as well. I wonder, did he sell muskets to one tribe and, as a result, piss off another one? Is that what got the family wiped out all those years ago?”