Bodie Stark urged the black stallion on to greater speed as the red demons closed in and he could hear their guttural screeching shredding the brisk night air.
He looked back once and saw the three nightriders whose skeletal skulls were beaming with an eerie light that made their feathers glow beneath the full moon. Their eagerness to catch him was palpable as they screamed curses and lashed their hell-seed stallions on to greater speeds. Suddenly Stark came to a dead end – a cliff. He turned to face his tormentors and drew his Bowie knife from its leather sheath for the final confrontation. Then he was tumbling into a dark ravine before he knew what happened. The darkness closed in…
Stark woke, like so many other times recently, shouting “Stop!” The nightmare was getting worse in the last two weeks and his nerves were frayed to the point of breaking and going insane. Opening his eyes cautiously he looked around the bleak room. A nightstand and a table with two chairs completed the scene. The wooden single bed he was on was covered with two gray horse blankets. He lay on top of the blankets trying to blink the nightmare away in the light of the day streaming through a single window’s glass panes. His thoughts drifted back to a month ago when he and his three comrades discovered the gold mine. Stark, being the most experienced woodsman among the group was following the river when he started spotting some gold nuggets that grew in size and quantity as he worked upriver. His partners got more excited the further they went until they came to a waterfall where two large gold veins were exposed beneath the cascading falls. The four men danced for joy. They had found what surely was going to be a massive gold payload.
The first day they camped in a clearing near the waterfall and celebrated their fantastic find. The whiskey bottle was passed around until the four men emptied it and passed out on the ground in the large tent, they’d put up the day before. No one stayed up to watch for unexpected visitors. It was a careless thing to do out in the wild and in the middle of the Appalachians in 1888. But their luck held, and their sleep was undisturbed. That morning, they had some black coffee and hard tack with strips of cured venison. As they ate, they agreed to split up into two-man teams and scout around the area before coming back and panning for gold in the crystal-clear waters of the river. Stark and the youngest man, William, went up stream while the other two men, John and Henry, circled around the site east to west looking for signs of humans. In particular for signs of the Cherokee people whose land they were trespassing on.
What needs to be said is that four explorers weren’t paragons of virtue and they were all greedy men with little or no consciences. They were rough and hearty men of their time surviving the wilderness for years on their strength and cunning. Each man had different ideas about what to do with his unexpected wealth. The only thing they were unified in was agreeing not to tell anybody about the location and sticking together until they got back to civilization. After that it got a little vague.
After scouting around Henry and John were heading back to camp when they heard a bird call. Then another from another location in answer. When the Cherokee war party burst through the forest in the waning light they fell upon the two unfortunates and promptly killed them and took their scalps. Stark and William had made it back to camp and were building a fire as the sun went down. They both knew it wasn’t a good sign that their partners weren’t back yet. The two men sat back-to-back near the campfire clutching their Winchester rifles and wondering when the attack would come. The night hours drug on as they both fought exhaustion to stay awake fearing for their lives. Stark should have known better. Most Cherokee bands didn’t like to fight at night unlike the Comanche who traditionally raided Mexico during the full moon so they could see at night. Just before daybreak the men gathered their processions and saddled up their horses. They lingered for a couple of hours and panned for gold, both quickly filling up little leather sacks of nuggets and stashing them in their saddlebags. They didn’t bother making coffee and satisfied themselves with water and some venison jerky while they rode back to the little mining town they had left from days ago. Both were lost in their thoughts when the arrows came! One struck Stark in his right shoulder. Then William suddenly looked like a porcupine as several arrows pierced his chest. His body collapsed and fell off his horse awkwardly. Meanwhile Stark recovered enough to pull out his Winchester and start firing point blank at his pursuers. Two immediately tumbled off their horses and the third managed to stay on his horse for a hundred yards before falling off with a bullet in his heart. Stark didn’t linger. He drove his horse hard as he left the chaos behind him. When he got to town, he found the doctor in the second saloon he searched and convinced him to tend to the wound. He’d broken the arrow off, and the stub burned like hell.
Stark took another swig from the near empty whiskey bottle in his hotel room and wondered how he could make the nightmare go away. He pulled the two leather pouches out of his jacket which hung on a hook on the door. He slowly walked over to the table and pulled a chair back and sat down. He placed the bags of little gold nuggets the size of human teeth before him and stared at them as if seeking an answer to his problem. He hadn’t shown anyone his gold since coming back to town. After considering everything he decided the gold was haunted and if he didn’t return it to the river, he’d never have any peace. It was a crazy idea, but he was desperate. Having to live through that death race every night was just too much to bear. He was tired but set out for the golden waterfall hoping for an end to the misery his nights had become.
When Stark was knee deep in the crystal-clear waters of the river he emptied the contents out of each pouch. He watched as the gold nuggets joined the others on the riverbed and took a deep sigh. He knew the nightmares would end now. And he was right. The next day some Cherokee warriors came upon Stark asleep and promptly brained him.
-30-
The Creative Chronicles of Dave Stancliff 