In the Valley
The air was thick and balmy as Heston’s mule clicked and clacked through the shady woods. Cool air brushed through his thick mustache as he rode along atop the trailer. Reins in hand and a briar pipe stuck in his mouth, perfuming his face with the peppery smoke of perique as he went along. He tried to keep his mind away from what the townsfolk had told him in his last supply stop. Dismissing as much as he could about their warnings.
“Only a damned fool would go up there” the barman had said. “Only death waits up there” another told him. Just superstitious he told himself. Surely, he thought, whatever they heard about up there is just a bear, or wolves maybe.
Heston steered his mind to the few jingling coins left in his pocket. A small remnant left over from a pocket of gold he’d panned out of a territory in northern Indiana. He’d have gotten a lot more out of it if the company hadn’t moved in on him. Heston was a rough man, plenty tough and good with a gun, but he knew his limits. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to cut down the seven men that rode in on the first day, let alone the twenty that arrived the day after, and even if he was some sort of bullet savant, he wouldn’t have been able to shake his tail of them once they gave chase. He’d figured it was best to take the little he’d gotten, sell off his take, and head to new ground. Somewhere remote, where his earnings wouldn’t be so easily stolen or spoiled or muscled in on.
He’s always heard of a remote spot north of the border. Nestled in the woods by a raging river. The stuff of myth as he’d been told. Untouched land teeming with fat veins of gold, but guarded by something fierce and brutal that no one could ever put a name or a face to. Some clever old prospector tale meant to scare off any competition Heston believed. If not an outright lie, I mean if the land is so dangerous, who found it? And where did the stories come from?
Heston hoped it wasn’t all a myth, not after dragging his cart and mule all the way through the foggy woods, after spending what little money he’d gotten on rations for the journey. His mind wondered again though as he scanned the trees from beneath his wide brimmed hat. It wasn’t the stories themselves that caused him to worry, but the quantity he’d received in warning, even from people not at all related to the prospector trade.
“What’s a barkeep know about prospecting anyway?” He remembered asking as he sipped at his rye.
“That valley is cursed my friend.” The barkeep replied. “The few that’ve been up there,” he looked up from the bottle he was recorking to meet Heston’s eyes directly. “They don’t come back with gold because they say that all they can find is bones.”
“The trees scream in the night”
“The river washes butchered heads onto the shore”
Heston had heard this from all manner of postman, housemaid, barkeep, anyone at all that’d learned where he was going. “He is going to headless valley” He’d once overheard between two drinking ranchers. The one who’d heard the whisper raised his glass in silent salute to Heston.
Prospector legends meant to keep the competition away. That’s all it is.
His tired eyes still skimmed through the trees though. As he made his way farther and farther north towards the valley, he couldn’t ignore the eerie, mossy silence of the space around him. Even when he’d stopped for lunch, his wagon still and the mule busy grazing, Heston couldn’t hear any birdsong, no chatter of squirrels or rustle of rabbits, not even a breeze to shake the leaves and branches of the towering oaks and pines.
At last, as if a godly line had been drawn into the ground, the trees stopped and opened his horizon to a vast grassy plain leading down to a gleaming river. Maybe it was as simple as the sun in the sky, or the sheer pristine nature of the land itself, but Heston drew a breathe of relief as he directed his mule to its resting place by the river. The place ain’t so scary. He thought, removing a woven basket from his wagon and loosely securing its top before nestling it into the water between two rocks.
The basket was only meant for catching minnows and small fish. The kind he could use as bait while he dug for worms and crickets. Once he’d wrangled a large catch from the river, he could finally break from canned beans and stale bread. He spent the rest of the day fishing and smoking as he set up a small canvas tent, watching the sun move past the horizon painting the sky in deep hues of orange and purple.
Heston woke up the next morning to the sound of his tent flapping in the wind. He stood stiffly as the cool morning air greeted his lungs and made his way to rekindle his fire, grabbing his coffee pot along the way. He stooped down to a knee to collect the leftover coals into a new pile and reached for his kindling sack. Halfway through the movement, he froze completely. He’d been on his own for years now, but he’d never felt as isolated as he did now noticing a ring of human teeth had been laid in a circle around his campfire.
Part two coming soon. . .
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