Days of Gold Read online

  “I’ll tell you everything on the way there,” Angus said to Mac.

  Welsch and Connor were so new at being soldiers that they looked to Mac to tell them what to do. He gestured with his head that they were to get their horses and ride out.

  An hour later, the four of them were heading deep into the forest of what was basically uncharted land. All of it had been traveled by people for centuries, but little of it had been mapped. To Angus and Mac, used to the wild hills of Scotland, it was glorious country, but Connor and Welsch kept looking about them apprehensively.

  “What’s Wellman up to now?” Mac asked as he glanced back at the young men close behind them. They looked as though they expected a war party of Indians to jump out at any moment, or maybe a grizzly bear would attack. They’d all heard the trappers who came to the fort to sell their furs tell exciting stories about their encounters with wild animals and wilder people.

  Angus dropped the English accent he used when around the soldiers and easily lapsed into his native Scots. “Betsy.”

  Mac groaned. “What is it now? She get some boy with child?”

  Angus laughed. “If it could be done, she’d do it. No, it seems that she’s engaged to a clergyman.”

  “May the saints save us!” Mac said. “Her married to a churchman! The Lord will send down a bolt of lightning.”

  “I’m more concerned that Austin will use his knife on him.” Austin’s nickname of “Jackknife” had preceded him as some of the soldiers had served under him in the French and Indian War, or the Seven Years War, as the English called it. The soldiers had seen what Austin could do with a knife to the bodies of the prisoners.

  “I don’t envy the man being engaged to someone Jackknife wants.”

  “Me either,” Angus said, and told Mac about the kidnapping of her fiancé. “If he’s still alive, I want to warn him of what to expect.”

  “About Austin or Betsy?”

  “Either. Both,” Angus said. “But if he’s in love with her, whatever I say won’t make a difference.”

  “Know that from experience, do you?” Mac asked. He was teasing, but when Angus didn’t answer, he looked at him and saw that a curtain had come down over his face. Everyone knew that Angus Harcourt didn’t gossip with the other men, didn’t tell about his past, not even where he’d grown up. Mac knew that Harcourt wasn’t his name, but no amount of hinting had made Angus reveal anything private about himself.

  Angus nodded toward the young men behind them. “Austin knew I’d choose those two because Betsy’s been eyeing them.”

  “And they’ve been looking at her.” Mac turned in his saddle to look at the two men. T. C. Connor was tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome. He was a quiet man, watchful of everything that went on around him, and mostly kept to himself.

  Naphtali Welsch wasn’t as handsome, but with his red hair and flashing blue eyes, he made everyone want to be near him. He laughed and sang rowdy songs and made the men laugh no matter what Jackknife Austin had done to them. One day the men were nursing their blistered feet after Austin had taken them on a twenty-five-mile march. They were cursing the bad food, the heat, and talking about deserting, but “Naps,” as he was called, started a game of seeing who could come up with the worst punishment for Austin. In the end, it had been T.C. who won when he made up an elaborate story that involved a plant that was found only in the far reaches of the new country. It ate people. When he finished spinning his yarn, their sore feet were forgotten and their moods had improved.

  After that, the newcomers had become quite popular, Naps for his humor and T.C. for his stories—when he could be persuaded to tell one. They were rare and always involved plants of such magnificence that they left the men speechless.

  “And he knew you’d choose me,” Mac said. “Now, I wonder why?” He was being facetious.

  “Maybe because he hates you?”

  “Aye, that he does,” Mac said with amusement. “I know more about the army than he does, and I get more respect from the men.”

  “And you can throw a knife better than he can,” Angus added. “He doesn’t like anyone to best him at anything.”

  “Including that little flirt that he’s decided he wants.”

  “She’s more than a flirt,” Angus said.

  Mac shook his head. “I don’t know why she hasn’t come up with child.”

  “If she did, her father would kill the man.”

  “Make him marry her, then kill him,” Mac said.

  “Do either of you know where we’re going?” Naps asked from behind them.

  “Kids!” Mac muttered, then said over his shoulder, “We’ll let you know when we get there. Until then, keep your yap shut!”

  “Did you understand what he said?” Naps asked T.C.

  “My guess is that he told you to be quiet and wait to find out where you’re supposed to die.”

  “You’re a gloomy one.”

  “I’d like to come out here by myself and take some cuttings from these plants.”

  Naps groaned. “Please! No more plants. You have the things everywhere. What are you planning to do with them?”

  T.C. shrugged. “I don’t know. Open a museum maybe. I’d like to learn to paint so I could record them on paper. The dried specimens lose a lot as the color disappears.”

  “Don’t you want something besides plants in your bed? Something warm and feisty like that little Betsy Wellman.”

  “I think that Miss Wellman is part of the reason you and I have been sent on this mission, whatever it is.”

  “Betsy? But what’s she got to do with anything? You know, she and I have been talking about marriage. It would be nice to marry a colonel’s daughter.”

  T.C. pulled a few leaves off a bush they passed. “Do you think that the colonel is going to let his daughter marry the son of a farmer from the north of England?”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Since Miss Wellman has also talked to me about marriage, I can’t very well be jealous, now can I?”

  “You!” Naps said, and his usually happy face changed. “Look here! Betsy Wellman is my girl, not yours! And if you—”

  “Shut up, the both of you,” Mac growled at them. “Betsy Wellman talks about marriage to every good-looking young soldier. The only thing she wants to marry is what’s in your trousers.”

  When Mac turned back around, Naps whispered, “What did he say?”

  “That it was a beautiful day and he loved hearing us argue.”

  Naps blinked a few times at T.C., then laughed. “You’re all right. You’re a bit too bookish for a girl like Betsy, but you’ll do. You have a girl back home?”

  “Did have; don’t now,” T.C. said, and his tone told that he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.

  “Heaven help me, but they’re fighting over the tramp,” Mac said to Angus. “I think that when we stop for the night you should tell them the truth.”

  “Me?” Angus asked. “What makes you think I’m qualified to tell anyone about women?”

  “All right, I’ll tell you what to say and you tell them. They can understand you.”

  Angus gave a bit of a smile. “That makes more sense.” For a while they rode in silence and Angus thought about what he knew of Austin and how he’d had the men waiting for him. Austin knew that Angus would take the men Betsy Wellman was after and that would get them out of her grasp for a few days.

  “So we’re to find this preacher Betsy Wellman wants to marry and take him back to her? Austin won’t like that!” Mac said.

  As soon as he heard the words, Angus knew what Austin was doing. “We’re going the wrong way,” he said as he turned his horse around. “We have to go to the payroll wagon.”

  Mac followed Angus, but he didn’t understand what was going on. “Payroll wagon? But I thought Indians had kidnapped the boy.”

  “That’s what Wellman thinks. But how did the boy get from the east of us to the west? Why didn’t we hear of it?”

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