Emmet knew how she felt. He'd spent many a day on horseback that left him feeling he needed to shake himself loose before he could move normally.

"How much farther?" Hattie said as they were relaxing after supper.

Emmet shrugged. "A couple more days, I'd say. We're goin' slower than I'd figured."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't mean to slow you down."

"You're not," he assured her. "Last time I went through here, I was on horseback. We're makin' as good time as we can expect, going afoot."

"I still do not understand what we're going after," Flower said. "I cannot believe my father would have cached anything up here. I thought he stored everything he owned in the cave behind the cabin."

"Not this," Emmet said, stirring the fire to send flames into the new wood he'd added. "This cache is something he intended for you." Again he poked at the flames. "You and Hattie, for he took a great liking to her."

"Of course he did," Flower said, smiling crookedly at Hattie. Her voice was tremulous. She'd never grieved openly for her pa and Emmet knew they'd been close, for all they went their separate ways after Flower's mother died. "I am happy you were there," she told Hattie. "I would not have wanted him to die alone." This time her voice did break and she turned slightly away from the fire.

Flower sighed. "I wish he had let me come back with him. But like any wild thing, he wished to die alone. Still I could have...."

"Of course you could have," Hattie said, laying a sympathetic hand on Flower's arm. "Your father knew that. But he didn't want to burden you."

"So he burdened you instead. As if you hadn't enough troubles." Resentment and anger filled Flower's voice.

"He was awful surprised to find me in his cabin," Hattie said, smiling at the memory. She laid the sleeping Ellen back onto the bearskin robe and moved to sit beside Flower, enfolding her in a healing embrace. "He frightened me at first, but it wasn't long until I saw beyond the fierceness. I loved him." She had to swallow twice before she could say more. "And no matter what Emmet says, I have no intention of sharing whatever your father left to you."

"Buff wanted you to share in it," Emmet said, finding himself envying Flower Hattie's embrace. "He had strong thoughts about that."

"We'll see." She scooted aside so that Silas could sit beside her.

William squatted across the fire. "Stock's all bedded down Mist' Em." He smiled widely. "I tied 'em good so's we won't have to be findin' 'em come mornin'."

Emmet would have left the stock to graze free but William insisted on tying them each night. He'd braided ropes of deerhide while Emmet was fetching the rest of Hattie's goods, making a tether about ten feet long for each ox. Emmet still hobbled his horse.

It saved them the trouble of rounding up the stock each morning, but it also made the animals more vulnerable to attack by the panthers, bears, and wolves inhabiting these mountains. Emmet had, just this afternoon, seen fresh sign--grizzly from the looks of it--in the sandy creek bank.

With any luck they wouldn't have to face off with a hungry bear. He didn't fancy that kind of risk.

"Emmet, what is in my father's cache?" Flower said. "He sent his furs to Fort Vancouver last summer. Any why are you being so secretive?"

He looked around the circle of faces, all alive with curiosity. These people depended on him, trusted him, and were dearer to him than his own long-lost family had ever been. He relished the fabulous gift he was about to bestow on them.

"It's gold," he said. "More gold than you can imagine, if Buff wasn't lyin'.

"I figure if we fill up half the panniers, we'll none of us ever go hungry again."

Chapter Twelve.

The silence lengthened. Hattie couldn't believe her ears. From the looks on her companions' faces, neither could they. "You're not joking?" she said, searching Emmet's face for a sign of humor.

"I wasn't joking when I dragged you all up here," he said, mouth hardening. "If I'd had my druthers, we'd be headin' west, not north."

"Oh, Emmet, I didn't mean...." Now he was upset. Darn him! The man had skin as thin as Ellen's.

"Does you mean we's all gonna be rich, Mist' Em?"

The scowl turned into a smile. "I don't know about that, William, but if Buff wasn't fooling, we'll have enough to get by, that's for sure." He stood, a tall, grim man whose rugged face was cast into sharp shadows by the light from the flickering fire. "But there's one thing you've got to remember. You're going to have to be real careful about letting anyone know where you got this gold. And how much you've got."

"But why?" Hattie said. "I can understand why we'd want to be careful about how much gold we have--Karl always said that where gold was concerned there were few honest men--but what does it matter where we got it? We're going to be leaving here as soon as we can."

"If someone wicked thought you knew where to find a fortune," Flower said, "he might try to make you show him."

"Oh! But how could anyone expect me to know...?"

"Hattie, just take my word for it," Emmet told her. "Be real careful about where you spend your gold and do it a little bit at a time."

She nodded, thinking here he had her spending gold already and she hadn't seen the color of it. For all she knew, Buffalo's cache was another of the tall tales the old man had been fond of telling.

Emmet used a stick to break the fire apart. "Time to turn in," he said. "I'll take first watch."

They had two more days of difficult travel before the valley widened enough that they no longer had to take to the slopes each time the willows along the creek grew too dense for them to penetrate. The valley was wooded, with enormous pines scattered over wide meadows, tall cottonwoods and willow thickets along the stream. The surrounding hillsides were covered with dense forest--pines, firs and hemlock, all looking just a little different than any Hattie had seen thus far. She wondered what it would be like to live in a house tucked just under the edge of such a forest, with deer and elk grazing the meadow in front, bear and wolf hiding in the dark woods behind.

She rather thought she would like living that way. As long as Emmet was there with her.

They camped about a mile above a fork in the creek, in a small meadow surrounded by willows so thick they had to chop their way in. "You'll get eaten alive by the skeeters," Emmet warned, "but it's better than being out in plain sight."

He'd been watching their back trail all the way from Buffalo's cabin, although he'd admitted he hadn't seen any sign they were being followed.

Once their camp was set up, Emmet and William took off, walking upstream.

Seeking the gold they'd come after.

Hattie and Flower explored as well, staying within sight of their camp as Emmet had insisted. Flower was seeking potherbs and whatever else she could find.

"It is too early for much of anything to be worth harvesting," she told Hattie, "but we might find some of last year's seeds yet." She poked into thickets and looked under fallen logs, but they found little beyond a few extremely unripe berries--looking like raspberries, but on trailing vines along the ground.

"Blackberries," Flower confirmed. "The leaves make a good tea when they are dried. But the berries will not be ready to pick for another month yet."

"Do you really think we'll find gold?" Hattie asked her as they were picking young shoots of horsetail.

Flower shrugged. "I suppose. Buffalo usually knew what he was talking about. But whether there will be as much as Emmet seems to think, I do not know." Another shrug. "I am not counting on it."

Ellen fussed and Hattie swung the cradleboard off her back. As she unwrapped Ellen, she said, "Doesn't the thought of having enough gold to last you the rest of your life mean anything to you?"

"I have what I want," Flower said. "All this--" She spun around, her arms held out from her shoulders. "All this is free. I do not need gold to purchase it."

"But what about other things? Things like coffee and sugar and flour?" Hattie could remember enough of her happy but impoverished childhood to know that she didn't ever want Ellen to go hungry. Or to go barefoot in the winter for lack of shoes.

"The earth will give me what I need," Flower said. "My mother's people have lived since the beginning without coffee or sugar or flour."

"So you intend to live with the In... with your mother's people?" Hattie had wondered. Flower spoke English as well as she did, was probably better educated.

Buffalo had once told her that a young HBC free trader had spent several winters with them, teaching her formal English and a smattering of French.

"I do not know," Flower said, doubt plain in her voice. "I don't fit with them."

She bent to look under another fallen log. "No more than I fit with my father's." Her voice was soft.

Hattie heard loneliness. "You fit with us," she said, touching Flower's arm.

"You can come with me to the Willamette Valley." Of course! Why hadn't she thought of it before? "Oh, yes, Flower. Come with me. Please. Say you will?"

Turning back, Flower sank onto the ground, not seeming to mind its dampness.

"Hattie, you and Emmet do not want another woman in your house."

Hattie shook her head. "Emmet won't be in my house," She said, biting her lip to keep it from trembling. "It will be just me and William and Silas."

"But he is your husband!"

"Only until he sees us safely there. Then he'll leave me."

"And you will let him?" Outrage was plain on Flower's face.

"I made a bargain," Hattie said. "All I asked him to do was get me safely to the end of the trail. After that he's free to go if he chooses."

"But you love him!"

Hattie shook her head, not in denial, but in resignation. "I can't love him, Flower. Because he's going to leave me, whether I do or not. And when you love, it hurts too much to say good-bye." She thought of all those she had loved and said good-bye to. She couldn't do it again.

Somehow she would overcome her love for Emmet Lachlan so that when he left her, it would be easy to say good-bye.

The water in the creek was icy, proof that there were still pockets of snow hidden in the high valleys. Emmet's feet were as cold as they'd ever been, even in those winters he and Buff had trapped beaver.

The gold was here. Emmet had seen glimmers of color in several pools, but he wasn't after the fine granular stuff. He wanted nuggets, big enough to hammer into a semblance of coins. The less like raw gold the stuff looked when they went into a trading post, the less trouble they'd have spending it. And afterward.

William splashed into the creek ahead, stirring up the water, sending clouds of sand and silt downstream. Emmet cursed when he could no longer see into the water.

"I found some! Mist' Em, I done found me some gold!"

Emmet hurried upstream. When he reached where William was kneeling, hip deep in the cold water, he shared William's excitement.

The boulder was larger than most of those lining the stream. Other, smaller rocks had, over time, piled up against it, until a small diversion, extending nearly halfway across the creek, had formed. And behind it, spring floods had been slowed, to drop their loads.

William lifted a double handful of pebbles and sand. "Looky here, Mist' Em. Jest you looky here!"

Emmet looked and knew that Buff hadn't lied. In William's dark hands was a fortune in gold.

Not sand, but fine gold. Nuggets from pea-sized up to as big as a walnut. Theirs for the taking.

That night they planned. "Buff's map shows another valley over west of here,"

Emmet said. "I'd like to check it out."

"I'll go with you," Silas said.

"No, you stay with Flower and William," Emmet told him, without thinking. "I'll take Hattie and a yoke of oxen. You three can work these creeks." He told himself that he couldn't trust either of the others to care for Hattie as well as he could. She needed protection as Flower did not, for Hattie had Ellen to hamper her ability to flee or fight back.

Silas was inclined to argue; Emmet could see that in the stubborn set of his chin. But the lad said nothing, only turned away from the fire and busied himself fixing his bedroll. He wondered if Silas would be more talkative if they were alone and was almost tempted to change his mind and take him rather than Hattie.

No. She needed him. "We'll take tomorrow to rest up, then the day after we'll head out. I don't think it'll be much of a trip. Buff's map shows a low ridge, not much to cross."

"I'll be ready," Hattie said, a strange expression on her face.

They agreed that he and Hattie would return in a week, no matter whether they found another gold-filled basin or not. While they were gone, Silas, William and Flower would explore this basin and amass as large a store of nuggets as they could.

"You'll need more moss," Flower said to Hattie when they all headed toward their beds. "I'll help you gather it in the morning."

"And I'll wash...." Her voice faded as Emmet walked away from the dying fire. It was his habit to make a wide circle around their camp each night, to make sure they were indeed alone.

Hattie filled the worn canvas bag with the partly dried moss. She would be glad when the cat-tails were ripe for plucking. Moss wasn't nearly as satisfactory as cat-tail fluff as a diaper substitute. "I'm almost ready," she told Emmet when he led his horse over to stand near Bessie and the oxen. She handed him the bag when it was fastened, then lifted Ellen's cradleboard and worked her arms into the straps. "I don't know what I'd do if Buffalo hadn't made this for me," she said. "It works so much better than a shawl for carrying her."

Soon they had everything they needed. While Emmet stood patiently, Hattie hugged Silas, William--the big man seemed uncomfortable when she did--and Flower. "Take care of yourselves," she advised. She felt almost disloyal, being so excited about leaving them behind.

It wasn't leaving them that filled her with bubbling anticipation. It was going off alone with Emmet. "Now I'm ready," she said, picking up the shotgun. She hated having to carry it, but Emmet had insisted. He was taking his rifle, leaving the others with nothing but Karl's gun, for which they had pitifully little ammunition. Hattie didn't think it was fair, but as Flower had pointed out, she and William were both adept with knives, while they wouldn't know what to do with a gun. William also had his spear, and Silas preferred the .44 caliber Patterson revolver that had been Karl's pride and joy. And they had Dawg, to warn them if any creature, human or animal, approached.

She only hoped they would be safe.

The path Emmet chose was easy, slowly winding up a steep hillside and through the dark woods. It followed a game trail for part of the time, although he often chose an alternate route when the narrow trail went straight uphill. By noon they were over the first ridge.

After a brief stop for her to nurse Ellen, they turned more in a northerly direction, still climbing. Hattie was taken with the dark, silent forest. Its floor was carpeted with pine needles and the thick trunks of the great trees gave it the appearance of a deep cavern, its ceiling supported by rough black or red columns. Wherever there was a break in the canopy, shrubs reached for the sun. Mostly, though, there was little undergrowth to hamper their progress.

Neither spoke often. Hattie found the sound of human voices a raucous counterpoint to the soft murmur of the wind in upper branches, the occasional chitter of a squirrel or melodious birdcall.

When at last they topped the highest ridge and started downward, it was late afternoon. She caught glimpses of more mountains ahead, not too far away. "Do we cross them too?" she wondered aloud.

"Nope," Emmet said. "So far Buff's map has been accurate. This should be the other valley it showed." He halted. "You tired?"

She was, but she'd rather save her resting for level ground. "I can make it,"

she said. "Let's keep going."