#30
Money For Old Rope
By John Outram
About the author
"THEY
SAY THERE'S A CURSE ON ELK RIVER GOLD," said Jevan darkly as he lifted
a tankard of ale. "They say it never brought any good to anyone."
Castor laughed scornfully:
"Give me as much gold as you like and I'll take whatever curses come with
it!"
Jevan shook his head
thoughtfully.
"There are evil spirits
out in the wilds, spirits that have no love of men," he said. "They are
jealous of the gold stolen from them, and they work evil on those who plunder
their realm."
Castor grunted his
derision, but Jevan noticed that some of the other patrons of the inn were
nodding in agreement, while others were frowning unhappily. Since gold
had been found in the forest wilderness beyond the mountains, Menendah
had been transformed in less than a year from a sleepy hamlet of hill farming
folk to a busy wagon stop on the eastward to the Elk River settlements.
Most of those passing through were concerned in one way or another with
the fabled Elk River gold.
"It's true, the ordinary
man gets little luck from the yellow curse," said a tall fellow called
Mannion, a trapper-turned-prospector himself. "It sounds so easy, doesn't
it? All that gold just lying in the riverbed, waiting for you to pick it
up? But there's tools and gear to be bought, and a journey to make, long
before you start in the gold fields. Then you have to find the damned stuff,
and while you're finding it you have to keep yourself fed and supplied.
I've seen a loaf of bread sold for ten shillings on the Elk River, and
a shovel for a bag of gold dust!
"And then there's enough
folk would kill you for the little you've scraped out of the ground. So
it's safer to come back in a caravan, with guards to pay and packhandlers
wanting a fee, and then you have inns and taverns on the way charging well
over the odds -- no offence, landlord, but you haven't always charged fourpence
for a mug of ordinary. I'm afraid the fortunes that are being made are
not made by the men who scrape the gold out of the Elk River, and it needs
no spirits to wish bad luck on those who go seeking the yellow curse."
"So you don't believe
in spirits?" asked Jevan, provoking a cynical guffaw from Castor.
"I can't say I do,"
replied Mannion bitterly.
The landlord brought
a tray of tankards to the table and took his seat with the company. He
was a man past middle age, balding and paunchy, and if he was any happier
at being able to charge fourpence for a mug of ordinary ale, his face did
not show it.
"You may or may not
believe in spirits," he said grimly. "But there is a tale of the Elk River
that may set you right. I can speak for the truth of it, for the end of
it took place here, in Menendah, in this very inn!"
"The spirits of the
Elk River came all the way up here?" jeered Castor. "They were lost,
then!"
"They were seeking
their lost gold!" said Jevan angrily. "Pray go on, landlord. Did you see
a spirit? With your own eyes?"
The landlord shook
his head sadly.
"What I saw and what
I didn't see, I find it hard to say for certain. But there was deviltry
here, and the Elk River gold was at the heart of it."
Mannion plucked a couple
of silver coins from his purse and placed them on the tray.
"Fetch us another round
of ale, and a good sized mug for yourself," he said. "I know what I know
and I know what I believe. But I'll hear your story before I dismiss it,
and maybe you can make me believe in the Elk River curse."
"Elk River curse or
not, it's a curious tale," replied the landlord, when he had replenished
all their mugs. "It ended here in this inn, maybe four months past, but
the story begins down in the Elk River goldfields. There were two fellows.
Travis of Skellar was one, a cooper's apprentice by trade but well past
thirty and not likely to make his fortune hammering barrel staves. He saw
the glint of gold from as far away as Ibroc and made his way up here to
try his luck at prospecting. It was here in Menendah that he fell in with
the other, one Kavlar by name, a wild lad of the woods. Seems he was some
kind of half-bred barbarian, Pictish blood or some such."
"If it's the Kavlar
I've heard of, he's a full-blooded Waren from across the Narwhal Strait,"
said Mannion. "Kavlar the Boxer, I've heard him called, because he packs
a punch like a sledgehammer. But go on, landlord."
"Well, it might be
the same, for he was by all accounts a big and lusty lad, though not much
more than a boy in years," the landlord admitted. "All sorts of stories
clung to that lad, most of them bad. One said his mother was a woman of
the fair haired clans that live on the Elk River, a gentle folk they're
said to be, but that his father was a Bad Spirit that came out of the forest
one night and took her while she lay asleep. And that when he grew up,
the demon seed of his father showed true and the clan would have put him
to death, but he got the better of the struggle and slaughtered all his
kinsmen to keep the secret of his birth…"
"Unsuccessfully, it
seems, since you know so much," chortled Castor, but he was silenced by
the glares of the company.
"Whatever his birth,
he was a wild and savage young man, well used to living in the wilderness,
and he went partners with this Travis," continued the landlord. "There
was another story that two years ago Kavlar had murdered a beaver trapper
called Alleas who was his partner, and for a fact he killed a man here
in Menendah, though that was self-defence in a knife-fight. Travis himself
was a hard fellow, but the lad had the look of a real killer. When they
set off together to make their fortunes in the Spring of last year, not
many expected to see Travis alive again.
"But six months later
he proved us wrong. Seems the lad had been a real godsend. Seems the pair
of them took on a gang of robbers, and killed six men between them. And
they never went hungry, what with the boy could hunt and fish. Whatever
evil spirits live by the Elk River, they knew the lad for one of their
own, or he knew the spells to ward them off, being a savage-born himself,
and they left Travis and Kavlar both well-alone. And what's more they found
a good amount of gold out there, enough to set them both up for life.
"Now I hear what you
say, sir, about the ordinary man not getting much of a cut of the gold
he scrapes out of the river, but this pair weren't ordinary. They'd had
more than a share of luck, and maybe the stories about Kavlar show there
was some devil's luck in it, for who should fare better with devil's gold
than a devil's son. Like I say, they'd lived off the land and run up fewer
debts than most diggers do. After the business with the gang of robbers
they weren't afraid to travel back up the trail by themselves. So it was
just the pair of them, a couple of dogs and a sled full of gear that came
back up the mountain road, not to mention three bags of gold dust and nuggets.
"Now that's a hard
trail, that mountain trail, and you'll recall that last winter came on
us an awful hurry. Treacherous enough in good weather, those paths are
nothing short of murderous when the heavy rains hit, and they hit two days
after Travis and Kavlar started up the mountain. They had come too far
up to go back down, but not far enough to feel sure of reaching the other
side. The rain came down hard enough to wash them off the face of the cliff,
and the sky was so dark that even in the middle of the day they couldn't
see more than a couple of yards in front of them.
"First one of the dogs
went over the edge. Then it was the sled, with all their gear on it. Travis
made a grab for it and caught one of the runners, but it was too heavy
and if Kavlar hadn't grabbed him by the arm he would have gone over with
it. Even so, there was a desperate moment when the weight of all that gear
-- food and tools, and most of all the threee bags of gold -- would have
taken them to their doom. And then the bindings split on the sled, and
everything dropped away over the side, everything but a coil of old rope
that stayed tied to the frame."
"The curse of the Elk
River gold!" gasped Jevan.
Castor whistled, imagining
that much gold dropping into a hopeless ravine.
"Yes, the gold was
gone, but Kavlar wasn't daunted. They had a rope, and he was a fair climber.
Even with the rain lashing down, he worked his way down the cliff a bit
at a time, and then worked his way back up. The rope they had was only
forty feet, and their gear had fallen five or six times as far, but by
taking it in stages he managed to climb all the way down to where their
gear had fallen. Now he wasn't going to sweat for all of that old gear,
of course, because the picks and shovels were so damned heavy and he was
all done with digging in any case. But he knew they needed food, and he
damned sure wasn't going to leave without the gold. So first he climbed
up hauling a sack full of biscuit and dried meat behind him, and he threw
the rope up to Travis to pull it up the last step of the way. Then he went
back for the three bags of gold dust. By now the rockface was getting wet
and Kavlar was getting pretty tired. Worse still, the rope was getting
worn with being hauled all over the rocks and all.
"Now Kavlar was lucky
in one sense, because he found the gold lodged on the rock face. If it
had gone all the way done the ravine, he wouldn't have had a hope of finding
it. But maybe that would have been for the better, for that was the last
journey he made. He threw the rope up for Travis to pull the gold up to
the top. Then, when the gold was safe, Travis told Kavlar to attach the
rope to himself so he could be pulled the last step of the way. And that's
where his luck ran out, for the rope broke and Kavlar fell back -- right
the way down the ravine, twenty fathoms if its an inch."
The landlord's audience
sighed appreciatively. The landlord tapped his fingers on the stained and
scarred wood of the table, and timed his pause before adding:
"At least, that's the
way Travis of Skellar told the tale when he reached my tavern..."
***
"But he remained haunted by his experience. Lying there in his fevered bed, we heard him cry out several times. Sometimes he cried that the howling wind was searching for him, and sometimes he cried for the gold he thought he had lost, though it lay not five feet away by his bedside. But most of his most awful visions seemed to come when he dreamt of his partner falling into the abyss.
"'No, no!' he cried, 'I swear it was the rope that betrayed you! It broke, I tell you, it broke! Don't look at me so! It was the rope, upon my life!'
"The vision haunted him each night of his fever. Once he imagined that the dead man had risen from the dead to haunt him, accusing Travis of having cut the rope and sent him to his death. Then the sick man begged for mercy, begged to be left in peace, but still the fever gripped him.
"'Away from me, you heathen fiend! Away you devil!' he screamed, fighting with his coverlet as if wrestling a foe. 'Take the gold! Take it all! Only go and leave me in peace! I did not do it, I swear! I did not kill you! It was the rope, the damned rope!'"
"Mercy!" breathed Jevan as he listened to the landlord's account. "Surely this was no ordinary fever, but a haunting of the forest spirits, come to reclaim their gold."
"Yet men in the grip of fever cry out the strangest things," replied Mannion. "Go on, landlord. What happened next?"
"After three days and three nights, the fever broke," said the landlord. "Travis was restored to health, or so it seemed, and he remembered nothing of the nightmares that had so haunted him in his sickness. He stayed with us another two days to build his strength, and I begged him to stay longer, for he was still weak and had been through a terrible ordeal. But he insisted he would leave on the sixth day, for the weather seemed to be changing for the better and he was eager to make his way east to Matraban.
"But noon was not long past before the weather changed again, and for the worse. The wind blew up again, and a harsh sleet battered down. The sky grew dark long before the appointed time, and I put up my shutters an hour before sunset to keep out the worst of the weather.
"I had just begun to serve the evening meal when I heard a thumping at the door and a howling to put the wind to shame. The voice outside was so wild and desperate I was almost afraid to unbolt the door. But so I did, and it was Travis of Skellar returned, his fever running as hot as ever despite the bitter cold. He had lost both hat and cloak to the wind, and he was raving about the 'evil spirits of the forest' and the 'damned rope' again.
"I sat him down and made him drink something to revive him, but even then he did not talk sense. He told us that once begun upon his way, he had felt himself watched from the eaves of the woods. The further he walked, the stronger the feeling grew, until at last he became afraid. The gathering wind seemed to him the voices of angry spirits, and amidst the rush of the wind and the crack of branches he imagined he heard the crack of a loose end of rope, whipped about by the gale. He decided he would turn back, but as he did so he imagined he saw a face in the trees -- the pale and ghostly face of his former partner, Kavlar! Yet as soon as he fixed his eyes upon the shade, it was gone, melting away into the storm-tossed forest.
"'He has come back for me, I know it,' he wept. 'He has come to claim back his share of the gold. But I swear it was not my fault he died. The rope broke, upon my oath! It was not cut, but wore away on the rock through too much use!'
"I calmed him as best I could. I gave him as much to eat as he could manage in his weakened state, and put him to bed. The bags of gold I placed in the foot of the bed, by his feet, for he seemed mortally afraid that they would be taken from him. Once he slept, I saw to it that the fire was well stoked, and then I came down to the taproom.
"But he did not sleep soundly. Even as the voice of the gale grew louder and louder, still his cries drowned them out. He screeched that his former partner had been a witch, that he was bound in blood to the demons of the woods and that they were after him, seeking vengeance. And again, he cried out upon the rope that had betrayed his partner.
"At about midnight, with most of the company abed, I heard one of the taproom shutters -- that one there, gentlemen -- come loose in the ferocity of the storm. I went to fix it straight again, and as I did I chanced to look out into the starless night. What I saw there chilled my blood to ice...
"In shape it seemed as a man ... but no mortal man could have worn such a monstrous appearance. The face was pale as death, the hair tangled and bedraggled, the clothes ragged and torn, and the whole muddied and bloodied and torn. A corpse dragged up from the riverbed looks so. Yet it stood tall, straight and proud, the mouth grinned like a death's-head, and a murderous light shone in its eyes. I put my hand to my mouth so that I would not scream and so wake all the house.
"And when I looked again it was gone, vanished as suddenly as it appeared. Yet I knew for certain what I had seen. It was the ghost of Kavlar, come to claim the Elk River gold.
"I knew then that I must warn my guest, but all strength had gone from me. I sank into my chair and sat by the fire, helpless and trembling, while once more he cried out in his fever.
"'No! I swear I was not to blame!' he cried. 'I did not cut the rope! I did not! I swear on my life it broke! Take the gold! Take it all! Only go now, and leave me in peace!'
"And all this I endured, but then my guest let out a shriek more piercing than any that had gone before, and this was suddenly cut short. My manly strength returned, and I sprang up the stairs to his room. To my horror I found that he had bolted the door against intrusion. I set my shoulder to it, shouting for help, and at last I broke in. But I was too late.
"There he lay on the bed, the coverlet thrown off. He was dead. He had been strangled. His face was a picture of horror such as I hope never to see again. The shutter had blown in with the wind, and the fingers of an old larch tree reached menacingly into the room.
"I checked the bed to see if the gold was there, but the three bags had gone. What I found instead were two short parts of a length of rope, one of them the yard that had been used to strangle him. And when I looked at the ends of the rope where they had been joined, I saw that surely they had been frayed and worn by running over sharp rocks, almost to the point of breaking -- all save the last strands which had plainly been cut with a sharp knife!"
***
THE LANDLORD FINISHED HIS TALE with a thump of the wooden table that made all the company jump.
"Is it true?" asked Castor, his voice trembling. "Is there really a curse on the Elk River gold, a curse strong enough to make men come back from the dead to take revenge."
"I know only what I saw," replied the landlord. "But I know what I saw through the broken shutter was not a man, but a devil in man's form."
"Mitra preserve us," muttered Jevan, making the sign to ward off evil.
Mannion chuckled, and fished two more coins out of his pocket.
"An excellent tale, and well told, landlord," he said. "Let's have another round of ale and drink to the spirits of the Elk River, before bed and sweet dreams."
"Do you doubt the tale? Do you mock the spirits?" asked Jevan, while Castor gazed at him wide-eyed, and the landlord replied with a note of anger: "The tale is true, sir, not a word is made up."
"I don't doubt your tale, not a word," said Mannion. "If anything I have more reason to believe than anyone. And if you saw a devil in a man's form, well, you wouldn't be the first and I swear you won't be the last."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Kavlar is a devil indeed," replied Mannion. "I saw him with my own eyes in Matraban this winter, on his way to Ibroc. His skin was pale and his eyes gleamed terribly, but I thought he looked very much alive."
"But can you be sure this is the same Kavlar?" the landlord asked.
"No," admitted Mannion. "But he did have three bags of gold with him."
The End.
