Brendan Pope—In the year of Our Lord—1833
Cumberland Mountains—Kentucky.
Nyles was intrigued, but before he could read further, the door opened, and a co-worker entered. His lunchtime and privacy were over, and without thinking, he dropped it in his briefcase, telling himself he’d look at it later when he had more time.
But then that evening as Nyles was walking through the tunnel beneath the building out to where his car was parked, he thought of the journal in his briefcase. He had no intention of stealing anything, but his curiosity was piqued. He wanted to read it.
What had Brendan Pope been writing about? Why had this particular item been hidden behind a shelf? Was it simply an oversight? Or was there a more mysterious reason why it had not been shelved where it belonged?
As soon as he got home, he ordered in some dinner and, while he was waiting for the delivery, removed the journal and sat down at his kitchen island with it, utilizing the bright lights overhead.
By the time Nyles’s food arrived, he knew that Brendan Pope, a twenty-year old man and a native of Scotland, had immigrated to the continent of North America, and after two years of hunting for subsistence and trying to find his place in this land, he set up a trading post on a well-traveled trail in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky. The trail went through a valley and then up the mountain beside it, making it convenient for trappers and random settlers to get supplies.
When Nyles’s dinner was delivered, he paused long enough to wolf it down before returning to the journal, reading up into the early morning hours. By daylight he was exhausted, but he couldn’t let go of the tale and called in sick. He showered, then set his alarm and slept for three hours before waking up and going back for more reading. Brendan Pope was something of a storyteller, and the journal posts, while intermittent, were, for Nyles, like stepping back in time.
He was halfway through the journal when a woman suddenly appeared on the pages. Brendan Pope had taken a wife. A Chickasaw woman named Cries A Lot, and according to the journal, the woman started off as part of a trade.
Cries A Lot had been traveling with a mountain man, who rode off and left her at the trading post with Brendan because, after she saw the big Scotsman, she wanted nothing more to do with the trapper. Brendan Pope’s size fascinated her. He was the tallest man she’d ever seen. She told him she would stay with him because she liked the sound of his laugh, but only if he didn’t beat her. And it was obvious through the ensuing posts, that she became a huge part of Brendan Pope’s world.
He loved her, and he called her Meg.
As Nyles continued to read, the years passed. Brendan’s posts were less frequent. He was busy with his work and his family. He and Meg had six sons and one daughter. There was one single line in the journal that mentioned the little girl dying from a snakebite when she was only six.
But as he read through the continuing years that passed, the six sons grew up and claimed their own land up on the mountain. They had their mother’s black hair and their father’s great size. Four of the boys married daughters of nearby settlers. Another son married a Chickasaw woman, and another married a Cherokee, and they all lived on their homesteads up on the mountain, and that was their life.
But then the journal posts began reflecting the changing times.
Brendan’s trading post shifted into a dry goods store, and a blacksmith by the name of Liam Cauley set up shop nearby, and another man named Alfred Glass opened a saloon, and they named their outpost, Jubilee, and their sons and daughters grew up and married and built cabins like the Popes, until the mountain above Jubilee had a larger population than the little settlement below, and when a traveling preacher came through, they built him a church on the mountain. He named it the Church in the Wildwood, and so he stayed.
Nyles was mesmerized. He could see Brendan and Meg’s tragedies noted by two or three words. The births, the deaths. Battling weather and thieves, and it was obvious by omission that no one on that mountain was aware there was a civil war brewing in the states beyond, and if they were, they took no claim in it.
Nyles paused long enough to make some coffee, snagged a sweet roll from the pantry, and was back to reading a post from 1864, when he saw the words Confederate soldiers and something about a troop coming through the settlement pulling a wagon rumored to be carrying Confederate gold.
But Brendan only mentioned it in passing, because his main post on that day was that his Meg had gone to the nearby creek to pick berries and never came home. Thinking about those soldiers and worried about her safety, he’d locked up the store, gathered up their sons and some friends, and headed for the creek. They found signs of her berry picking and followed her trail up the mountain, all the way to a place known as the “Big Falls.”
They found her berry basket upturned, the highbush blackberries she’d been picking were scattered about, and a large amount of blood was on the ground, as well as the prints of her little moccasins in the crushed berries.
And all over the ground around them were at least a dozen different sets of boot prints. Panicked, Brendan and the searchers began following them. They soon realized there were two sets of prints. One coming to the falls, and a second set going out the same way. They followed them all the way back to the trail.
There, they found the Confederate wagon with a shattered wheel and empty of any cargo. There were signs that the soldiers had gone into the woods, only to come back out later and ride away. But there was no sign of Meg. No more little moccasin footprints. No sign of more blood. No sign of her anywhere. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air.
By now, Nyles was in tears. The little Chickasaw woman was gone, and he felt Brendan Pope’s heartbreak and rage as the story continued. Brendan and his sons followed the soldiers’ trail over the pass, only to come upon their bodies. Some had been shot. Some had died in hand-to-hand combat. But there was no sign of who they’d fought with, or why. It was almost as if they’d gotten into an argument and killed each other. Whatever they might have known had died with them.
Brendan was miles and miles from home, and with no other trail to follow, he was forced to give up the search. He rode back to Jubilee, grieving the loss of a wife who’d disappeared from his life as unexpectedly as she’d first appeared. The posts ended with Meg’s disappearance, and later, in someone else’s handwriting, mention of Brendan’s death in 1870 and being buried at the cemetery behind the church.
* * *
But this was where Nyles’s focus shifted. It had gone from Brendan and Meg’s world to that shipment of Confederate gold. The broken wagon wheel meant they could no longer transport it. And the trail of boot prints leading from the wagon and into the woods was most likely the soldiers taking the gold into the woods to hide, intending to come back for it later. They must have stumbled upon Meg and her berries, and since she would have been a witness to their cargo, they couldn’t afford to let her live, right?
Maybe they hid the gold and her body in the same place? If they saw Meg at Big Falls, then the hiding place must have been nearby. He knew Kentucky was rife with caves. What if he could find that cave? And what if that gold was still there? At that point, Nyles wrapped up the journal, went to bed, and dreamed of treasure hunting for gold.
He was already making plans as he got ready for work the next morning. He gave himself a long look in the mirror, trying to decide how he was going to make this work, and then decided he needed a disguise. He already had long hair he could dye, but he needed a beard to hide his face, and there was no time like the present to start growing it.