Just Walked Away

By the time the kettle sang, I was ready for my coffee. The mist was still clinging on to the valley and a way up the lower slopes of the hill among the pines. The fire was grown hot and we were in a little patch free of mist now, which parted as Debra nosed her way to my hand, bringing in a swirl with her.

‘Good girl - Do you want your oats? Is that it?’

She knew to push her soft muzzle into my widest coat pocket as this was our morning ritual ever since we left home. Me, the dog, the cart and Debra. All that I needed.

Then it was Tom’s turn.

‘Mornin’ Tom. How do you do it, Tom?’

Tom was better than a clock and knew my routines before I ever did. For four years he would climb on our bed at 5 o’clock, not a minute later, and lick my fingers until I noticed him. Never Jean’s fingers, always mine, because I had to get up first to lay all the fires in the house and Jean could have another half hour.

‘Well Jean’s gone now.’ I said. ‘Come to think of it, the bed’s gone now too. We just walked away… Just walked away.’

‘Think I will make this my motto,’ I said aloud to no one but Debra and Tom.

‘Angry neighbour? Just walk away! Bad boss? Just walk away. No sweat. Just walk away. Light the match and walk A-way! We found the way here alright, didn’t we Debra?’

I always knew the way since I found that little black notebook. I found it tucked down behind the old pewter cupboard in the big kitchen. I hid it in a tree and took it out and learned it and hid it again. It never did to be caught reading in that house. You could get hurt. Like my sweetheart Jean.

‘This ain’t no good, Debra. This is no good thinking this way, Tom,’ I said. ‘We just walked away from all that. No point bringing it along with us, is there?’

I carried on, ‘Well today is the day, you Two. The day you got to go. You’ve not been tied for a week now, have you? You know a way back. I know you do. Down the trail and go where you like. No wolves around here. Just a few people at the end. Plenty of grass and plenty of rabbits on the way. Like a big holiday.’

I knew I was rambling on, but I didn’t mind none because it was natural after two months all alone on the trail together. Two months since we just walked away in the quiet time of the night and found the way here. The problem was, I hadn’t really thought it through. How would I get them to go? I was turning it over in my mind the whole time I was speaking. They could track me by smell or just follow close. I would have to face it. I was gonna have to tie them with something thin so that when they got hungry enough to break free I would be gone. Walking up the stream with my boots around my neck and then down the other side of the mountain. Down the other side to a new life. Free to do whatever I please.

When we came here, picking our way down in the gathering dark, I could tell it had been lived in. I was tired out, and Debra was too, from trying to find a way through with the cart. To tell the truth, what I call the cart is more of a two wheeled contrivance that I just walk alongside, than something made for riding in, high and mighty, along the highway in your Sunday clothes.

This last week there were many times I had to cut our way through with saw, axe and hook as the trail has gone mostly back into the wild since the people around here gave up the land again. My hands were sore and my back too. Tom was still fresh as a daisy of course.

We found the place just like I remembered it said in the book. An old cut clearing above where the streams met, with mostly grasses and grey boulders that looked like sleeping animals from a story.

‘I saw an elephant once, Tom,’ I said. ‘Walking through the town to tell there was a Circus coming through.’ Tom always listened politely if there were no rabbits nearby.

We found stones put for a fire with a trivet in the weeds and a pile of rotten wood with some untidy rags alongside of it. I had my suspicions, but when I found the stone the book said would be there, shaped like a turtle, and I shifted it with Debra pulling on the rope, and then dug with Tom helping too, there it was. A treasure to be found and I found it.

Four bags of blue oil cloth, heavy and full. 1000 coins in all when I counted them. And all double eagles with Miss Liberty’s head on one side and 1850, and an eagle with an O below and those lovely letters, Twenty D, underneath that. And New Orlean’s finest it was. That a lot of people had died for that gold I knew well - had died before it was ever struck, before it was ever hidden here for me to find.

Now of who hid the book, I had my suspicions and they never could have been the same person as hid the gold. Gambling was a compulsion in that town and fortunes were won and lost every week and it was likely the little book had been won and lost a few times and maybe hardly believed in. It had been there for years behind that cupboard, judging by the dust and cobwebs, before I ever saw it. It was only when Jean was taken that I decided to run off and see if it was true.

‘The question is though, Tom,’ I enquired, ‘could they come here and look for it now?’

‘Well I don’t know.’ I answered myself. ‘The directions were long and careful and the map too and now the kitchen and the cupboard are gone and probably the whole place along with Jean’s body, where...’

‘Nope.’ I said. ‘No... No, I think we are clear away. And loaded down with a treasure a person could never think to spend if they spent years trying. Years trying.’

‘I like it here and I like you Tom, and I like you Debra and I even like you Mr Cart, and I like the peace and the quiet and the way the hills look now the sun is rising, and the sun off the water in the stream below. I like it here. Maybe I’ll stay another day or two. There’s no hurry.’