Colter's Path (9781101604830)

A RISKY ENDEAVOR

Jedd eyed the door and pictured himself bolting through it, leaving this group and their venture behind. But he didn't. He'd agreed to let Plumb hire him. Even if the whole enterprise was looking increasingly off-putting and unpromising, he wouldn't just walk away.

He settled in his seat and did his best to exhibit a face of unworried dispassion as the three partners in the California Enterprise Company bickered and snarled at one another, and Crozier Bellingham listened and scribbled feverishly with his pencil.

Jedd looked again at one of the paintings on the wall, a depiction of a deep and shadowed mountain range stretching to a far horizon, and wished he were part of it, lost in that great solitude of hills and forests, far away from jabbering voices and the scratch of pencil on paper.

COLTER'S
PATH

CAMERON JUDD

A SIGNET BOOK

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To Jedd Dotson and the rest of the Class of '74, Putnam
County Senior High School, Cookeville, Tennessee

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part Two

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Postscript

The Long Hunt

Knoxville, Tennessee

J
ANUARY
1849

O
ttwell Plumb swabbed his broad tongue across a mouthful of gold teeth and said, “To get straight to the point, Mr. Colter, I am told you are the best. I am told that any band of travelers you pilot is as safe and assured of safe arrival as any such group in these times can be. And I am told you have made a successful journey to Oregon already, and one to California.”

Jedd Colter listened, sipping on a mug of hot black coffee. He was a lean, weathered man of twenty-eight who stood an impressive six feet tall and was well featured, generally considered a fine figure of a man despite a tendency to go too long unshorn and unshaven. “I would say I have made
two
journeys to California, sir. It depends upon how you count it. The route I've followed has been the California-Oregon Trail. Both my California journeys happened before the gold was found at Sutter's, just folks moving across to California to settle. My first journey was the long trot, the whole distance. The second band I piloted only the final half of the journey, replacing the original pilot who had died along the way.
I got them pilgrims safely to their destination in his place.”

“Well, here's to his memory, and your success in his stead,” said Plumb, lifting his coffee in salute. Colter followed suit out of politeness, and marveled as a new smile provided another flash of Plumb's mouthful of gold. Plumb spoke again. “The fact that we share common North Carolinian roots, you and I and my partners the Sadler brothers, only enhances the logic of our collaboration on this grand venture. We have trodden the same hills and valleys, drunk of the same wellsprings, gloried in the same expansive Carolina skies…. It seems fitting that we should undertake together to be part of this nation's grandest new adventure!”

“Permit me to ask you something, sir,” Colter said to the man he'd met only two hours earlier. “Is that California gold you've had them gilded choppers made from?”

Plumb smiled widely, displaying the golden teeth to full measure. Then he squelched the smile and leaned a little closer to Colter. “Between you and me, Mr. Colter—”

“Call me Jedd.”

“And call me Ottwell. Between you and me, Jedd, the gold in my mouth is not from California, though I allow people to believe it is. In my line of business, it pays to display some degree of, shall we say, flamboyance? Extravagance. Whatever draws the public eye. My combination of silver tongue and golden teeth brings attention to my plan. Showmanship, you see. Which is one more reason I have sought you out and hope to involve you in our work. Showmanship.”

Jedd drew in a long breath. “I'm not sure how I fit into a scheme such as that one, sir. I'm obliged to say two things to you. First, I am one of the poorest examples of ‘showmanship' you could have picked, if that's what you're after. I'm a man of the hills and mountains and plains. A rover and rambler. I shun human attention like a pox, and oftentimes, even human company. Second, I would advise you to find another way to advertise your venture, other than by way of your teeth. With the hunger
for gold as high as it is in this nation just now, there are some who might find it more handy to ‘mine' their gold directly out of your piehole than to pan it out of a stream.”

“I can take care of myself sufficiently to avoid trouble,” Plumb said, patting his chest in a way to let Jedd know there was a pistol hidden beneath his coat.

“I hope you can,” Jedd said. He refocused the discussion. “What you're asking of me, Ottwell, is to work with your California Enterprising Company of…of…”

“The California Enterprise Company of East Tennessee,” Plumb prompted.

“Right, right. You want me to work with your California Enterprise Company of East Tennessee as a scout, pilot, and trail adviser.”

“Precisely so. Essentially the same work you have already done for others, but in this case we seek to specially promote your name and reputation as part of our company's attraction to the public.

“I believe your excellent reputation, and that of your history-making family, is something this venture can trade upon to increase the attractiveness of our effort to the general public. The more emigrants we can add to our band, you see, the better our profits…and your share of them. But, for you, it gets even better than that.” Plumb took on a sly, between-you-and-me expression. “What you haven't been told yet is that I…uh,
we
intend to pay you in a manner that will at least double your usual gain in such ventures, and do so in an ongoing way.”

“How so?”

“In addition to the onetime fee that is your standard, and the additional percentage paid based upon the size of the group, we propose to pay you ten percent of profits made from the mining of
gold by my partners in this venture, Wilberforce and Witherspoon Sadler. It is they who will be involved in the actual work in the diggings. For every hundred dollars in gold they obtain, ten dollars of it will go to you. This arrangement will stand as long as the Sadlers involve themselves in the mining of gold, either directly by their own hand or by those whom they hire.”

“And I don't have to work the diggings myself for this income?”

“You needn't lift a pan unless you so desire.”

“And if I did choose to pan for gold on my own? And found color? Would I then be obliged to share the same percentage back with you and the Sadlers?”