Free The Hinterlands by Robert Morgan

“Let’s get away from here.”
    â€œHe’s got some gold. He owes us some gold,” I said.
    â€œI want to forget about gold,” your Grandpa said.
    I bent down over the preacher’s body, sickened by the smell of sweat. I felt in his pocket for the poke of gold. But it wasn’t there.Instead I found a handful of sand and pebbles that felt like nuggets and I pulled them out.
    â€œLeave the gold be,” your Grandpa said. He took my hand and pulled me along the creek to where the horse was tied.
    â€œWe ain’t got no time to waste,” he said. “They’ll come looking for the preacher, and for us. If they can’t find the gold they’ll follow us to the Holsten.”
    â€œThe poke of gold is back in the camp,” I said. “I seen him showing it to all the men.”
    â€œWe still have to hurry,” Realus said.
    Your Grandpa said that since they knowed we was bound for the West they might follow us on the main trail. Best to cut to the north and go a more roundabout way. It would be harder to go through woods on Indian trails and buffalo trails, but it would be safer in the long run.
    â€œWe left some of our pots and pans back there,” I said after we had gone a mile or two.
    â€œWe’ll buy some more,” he said.
    â€œThey ain’t no stores in the West,” I said.
    â€œThey’s traders that come through and will trade anything for fur,” he said.
    The moon come up later and we could see the trail ahead better. But everything seemed stranger even than it had the night before. The mountains looked like a whole other world from the one I knowed. I got my second wind, for we must have walked ten miles before we stopped to sleep on a high-up place, right against a cliff where you could look out on the country below, blue in the moonlight.
    â€œThey’s liable to be a rattler in this rock,” I said to Realus.
    â€œThey won’t be stirring for another month,” he said. The pebbles I had got from the preacher’s pocket was still clutched inmy hand. I poured them in a rag and tied it up before we went to sleep.
    Children, the sad facts of life are always sad. You can look at anything in a certain light and it will break your heart. Something that seems perfectly ordinary, going smoothly, will suddenly taste like ashes and swill. I’ve always been the kind of person that could be overcome by the sadness of everything, for a while. Suddenly the luster and firmness will fall away, and everything shows its naked ugliness.
    The day at the gold diggings took some of the vigor out of me. I was relieved to get back on the road, but our mood wasn’t the same anymore. Maybe it was the loss of sleep for two nights, and all the work and worry around the preacher’s gold mine, and the hard walking. I had been keyed up for too long.
    They was something different about your Grandpa the next day too. Or at least it seemed to me he had changed. Maybe it was the fatigue and disappointment of the long day’s work in the mud, and the fight with Sarse. He was tired and fretty that day. He’d stop on the trail and listen, and if he heard somebody coming he’d draw the horse off into the trees and I’d follow. We hid there until whoever it was passed.
    â€œI don’t want nobody telling which way we’ve gone,” he said.
    â€œBut they know we’re headed toward the West,” I said.
    â€œBut I don’t want them to be certain,” Realus said. “They might follow us.”
    â€œDaddy wouldn’t do that,” I said. “He wouldn’t take the time and trouble. He will give up on me first.”
    â€œDon’t want people to know about my business,” your Grandpa said.
    So we avoided settlements and stands and taverns, whenever we come upon one. We never even stopped at houses. You never saw such places as we went through. It’s a good thing I was a strong girl.