Chapter 6

“Smallpox?” I asked.

“Yes! The last entry said that they were abandoning the site because the smallpox had killed so many Spaniards and Utes and they all feared for their lives. It said that the Utes had spread the word to other tribes and bands that the plain was cursed, and so many of the Spaniards died that the survivors just fled.”

“But with all this gold, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t come back,” I said. “Unless when they left, all of these books were the only proof of the places existence and the survivors died before they could pass on the knowledge.”

“That could be, Paul. But smallpox!”

“Opal Anne, after seventy plus years, I can’t imagine that the disease is still around. It gets passed from person to person, and I’ve heard that it can be passed in clothes and blankets, but I know towns in the South where there was smallpox, and people live there now. I think you and I and the baby are safe.”

“The baby?”

“Yes, Opal Anne. I know you well enough to know that you won’t get this shaken for yourself. You were thinking of our baby.”

“OK, Paul, maybe I was. I’ve just heard such horror stories from the doctors who came to treat the whores in the brothel. They always told us to check out our customers cock as we played with it and if we saw any open sores or warts or unusual coloring to wash our hands in hot water with lye soap and get rid of the man.”

“I never stopped to think about any kind of a disease that whores might carry.”

“I’m OK. I never caught any of the diseases. I was very careful.”

“I wasn’t saying anything against you, Opal Anne. I guess I’ve never looked at you as a whore. From the moment I laid eyes on you in that wagon, I just saw the most beautiful woman in the world.”

I must have said the right thing because suddenly my arms were full of a sobbing, kissing, hugging woman. When she finally calmed down, I took my wife by the hand and led her back into the office and had her check though as many of the records as she could, in the time we had.

“Paul, the more I read the more I believe that these men dropped everything and ran away. I found one side note talking about coming back in a few months, but it obviously never happened. When we go to file the claim, we’ll find out if the land is owned by anyone. If it isn’t then we can claim the whole plateau.”

“I thought the size of a claim was limited to a few hundred yards.”

“A prospecting claim is, Paul. But a homestead is different. It can be 160 acres and that will cover the better part of the plain. Then all we have to do is live here and make improvements. Then we can mine to our hearts content.”

“Opal Anne, how do you know all this?”

“Paul, men in brothels like to talk. Many of them are nervous and aren’t used to being with a woman. Many of them thought that whores were very high-class women...”

“Like you.”

“ ... and they ... thank you, my love. They don’t know how to talk to high class women. So, we start with a conversation and move on from there. Some men just want a tug or a poke and then get back to drinking and gambling. I tried to stay away from those.”

“How do you propose that we handle the homestead?” I asked Opal Anne.

“I guess we head for Fountain City the next time your brothers go in. We can all get our supplies. We’ll need to pack ours in, so a new mule or two might be better than a wagon. We can bring some gold down with us; we still have the agreement to split our findings with them. Then we can go and file a claim and, in the process, ask about a homestead. The land office should be the place to file claims and establish homesteads. That’s when we’ll find out if anyone has a claim on the plain. If there is nothing registered, then we go for the homestead and the separate claim like we planned.”

“I don’t know as much as you apparently,” I said bowing to my wife’s vast knowledge. “But when those books were written this wasn’t a territory yet. I’m thinking that there will be no record of anything before the area became a territory. Especially if the smallpox survivors never got back.”

“That makes a lot of sense, Paul.” Opal Anne kissed my cheek as a reward.

“With all the timber here,” I continued. “We can cut it down and build a fence around the property. That will count towards the improvements we have to make to keep the homestead. We can block off access to the gold with a wall and use it as a defensive position if anyone finds out about our claim. And still have the steps as an escape route.”

“We can use the firewood too,” Opal Anne added. “I’ll bet that the winters up here are bitter cold and windy.”

I nodded in agreement.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the rest of the plain. In one of the larger hogans we found machinery to crush rock. Opal Anne looked around and found documents which showed the room to be used for breaking down the rock that held the gold and separating it from the non-gold rock.

“Paul these notes keep referring to a method of separating the gold from the rock used in someplace called South Africa. From the description of the process, the Spaniards had a mule attached to a long pole and rode around in a circle. The big round stone in the middle crushed the ore. They it was gathered and washed. The heavy gold parts sank and the lighter quartz was washed away.

“When the wash was done they gathered the remainders and let it out to dry before bagging the dust. Normal quartz ore might only have a quarter ounce of gold per pound of quartz, but now it was closer to ¾ of a pound of gold for a pound of dust.” The Spaniards had a good understanding of extracting the gold. It was my guess that the folks downstream were finding the stuff they missed.

The other thing we were able to find the next day made us really excited. We found, if Opal Anne’s Spanish was correct, the land grant from the King of Spain for the land on the plain. The entire plain! It was dated way back in 1781 by King Charles III of Spain. It basically proclaimed the holder of the grant as the legal holder of the land.

“Paul, if this is legal, we own the entire plain!”

“I wonder if that’s right. I think our trip to town just got a lot more important. I wonder if we can find a lawyer in Fountain City that has any knowledge of land grants by former kings, be they Spanish or French or British. We could be in a wonderful place, for us and our children forever!”

“Well we can’t do anything about it now, let’s keep looking around.” Opal Anne took my hand.

Then when we thought that things could not get any better, we were amazed to find a route onto the plain that would support a wagon, if the team pulling it was stout. We walked off the area to establish the size and were overjoyed to find that the area we had originally wanted was just under 160 acres. We figured that if the land grant wasn’t valid anymore, we would at least own the potion of the plain that we really wanted. If we moved the homestead back away from the cliff and waterfall, we could file a claim for the streamway right up to the waterfall.

With several plans set up in our minds we walked back down the steps, repacked our things, and got set to ride back to the top.

“Wait!” Opal Anne yelled as I was riding out. “I forgot the fish.”

She dismounted her horse, and went over to the tree where her trotline was tied off and began to pull it in. She had managed to catch three good sized catfish and a trout. With a proud smile, she gutted them right there, tossed the guts back in the water and strung them onto the pack on the mule.

With that finally done, I rode around from the pool in the direction we thought the trail from the top would be. We almost passed right over it, because it was overgrown with brush and small trees. I turned the horse up the hidden trail, and we were back at the top in time for a fish dinner and a good night of making love in our new home.

For our new home we chose the largest hogan on the plain. While Opal Anne cleaned the hogan, I began to gather the books and documents about the mining office. We’d need that information if there was any doubt that the place was abandoned by the Spanish and the Utes. We’d keep them hidden with the land grant in case anything happened.

Over the next few weeks, we cleared the area around the hogan to protect it from fire. There was always a danger of a lightning strike this far up in the mountains. We turned another large hogan into a stable for the horses and our mule and the new animals we would bring back with us. When it was very hot or very cold, the animals would be as well-kept as me and Opal Anne.

I repaired the doors to the hogan and stable and to the office. Opal Anne figured that if we were going to be making a lot of money, we may need a company office and it was perfect with its counter and desks and chairs already in place.

We figured that my brothers were going to need to head to Fountain City soon and so we packed up our mule with several empty satchels and followed the new plain trail back to where it met the river. The trail met the river about a mile above the rocky debris field. That further lessened the chance that anyone would accidentally find the trail, since no one wanted to pass through that mess willingly.

We followed the river to the debris field, made our way through it, and then followed it back to my brothers’ camp. The trip back was a little longer, but there were no thorns or low hanging trees. There was a whole lot of brush and ground cover though. Looking back at the way we came; you couldn’t tell there was a trail in that direction. It was going to be perfect, even if we came back with a team and wagon.

“Let me see!” Raylene screamed when Opal Anne got off her horse obviously showing that she was with child.

“Oh please! You and Betty Mae have seen a pregnant woman before.”