“Twas the ghost of that old Spaniard, either still guarding his treasure, and was there kicking our plants around so as we’d pack up and leave...”

(continued from PART 1; https://steemit.com/fiction/@therealpaul/bart-s-secret-pot-patch-somewhere-in-a-high-mountain-meadow)

Bart paused to jam the old Jeep into low gear. “Or he’s but having his self a laugh-- the bastard-- clutching our flowerpots, runnin’ em like they were a pig, scrumming around in the dirt with em.”

The little meadow looked quite a bit different since I’d seen it last, and the spot where we used to park to set up Bart’s secret outdoor grow operation was now thick with undergrowth, as we’d planned.

We had been ”asked to leave” according to Bart, and were here to recover what was left of his secret weed patch in the wilderness, but first he had something to show me, and we walked around an outcropping and cut into a little oak grove to the north of the hidden weed patch, where short grasses struggled in the hardened earth between clusters of trees.

Bart’s Secret Garden

Indeed, it had been a few months since Bart and I had rolled that 55-gallon drum into that shallow hidden pond surrounded by reeds and short willows, knowing that if we filled it with water, then it would make a nice reservoir later when the weather had dried everything else up in the hidden location.

We had filled the drum with water and covered it, and it had been the same afternoon that we’d brought all of the started plants in their camouflaged buckets and hidden them in the glade, so that Bart could try to grow the kind of weed fit for an astronaut, high in the hills, right near space itself.

A good plan we both had reckoned, but while we were gone the tank had been tipped over somehow, and now the plants in their pots had been turned over, tossed around and battered by what I supposed was a bear, searching for worms and grubs under the wet buckets.

The Spaniard

As it turned out, there was a reason that old Bart had chosen this particular meadow in this remote wilderness, far from any development or human activity; Bart was a treasure hunter by heart, and he had a sense like a well-nosed bloodhound when it came to long lost things.

Now he tells me about a legend, wherein Spanish explorers had passed through this region long ago, and that one of the symbols that these Spaniards used to mark the location of hidden silver and gold was the image of a turtle, a symbol that would sometimes be etched into a stone over a hidden treasure to show it’s location.

We came to an opening in the brush, and Bart pointed down, asking me what I saw there before me.

I could have easily stepped across it and not seen it, and it looked like it had always laid in the floor of this forest, with mosses and lichens claiming the surface of it, yet the edges were a bit too perfect; here in the middle of the wilderness lay a small oval group of flat stones, arranged into the shape of what was no doubt meant to be a turtle.

A perplexing little mosaic indeed it was. The idea of Spanish treasure had already been planted in my head, but what was really planted here, hidden neatly under this old turtle, surrounded by miles of wilderness?

I asked Bart if it was perhaps a grave, but the stonework was too short and round to be a grave, Bart had reckoned, unless it was the marker for the grave of a child.

Any thought of digging up the rocks vanished upon such morbid reckoning, but it did look most like a mossed turtle there on the forest floor, and the thought of Spaniards burying silver ingots in this very spot was entertaining for my imagination there in that remote woody glen that day.

“Twas the moment that I first laid eyes on this turtle when I heard the scrum.” Bart waved over towards the little low willow thickets where his garden was hidden, and pretended to whisper.

“He’d torn it asunder, all of it... let’s us go have a look now, see what the scoundrel’s left us!”

As we turned to go back towards the weed patch, an odd sound came from the far side of the willow glade, followed by a loud crashing of brush and cracking of big limbs-- something huge was moving through the undergrowth, and we froze. Another odd sound or two came through the thickets, then the forest became horribly silent.

While Bart was undoubtedly thinking about the troublesome ghost of a Spanish explorer, I was thinking that either the bear had returned to Bart’s weed patch, or it was possibly a bigfoot, or a squadron of cops crashing through the willows to cuff us.

It had been a most unnatural sound, like nothing I’d heard in the forest before. Still frozen, it was nearly forever before we dared to move, and slowly we circled widely around the willow thickets, each twig shattering beneath our steps, betraying our stealth, when finally we reached the edge of the little meadow again. I laughed.

It was Bubba, the old red Jeep. It had rolled down the incline while we were looking at that turtle, and had run into a deep pile of sawbriars and brambles up against the edge of the willows. With another nervous laugh, I looked at Bart. Bart was ready to go.

As we drove back to town in silence, I inspected the lone surviving potted plant that I’d salvaged from Bart’s little wild weed patch before we left. It was battered and dry, but not the least bit wilted. The broad leaves glistened with a surreal powdering of shiny crystalline dimples, while every bump in the dirt road shook a bouquet of enchanting aroma into the cab of the Jeep, and the glowing plant had even started to show some flowers along it’s purplish crowns. This might be the very weed that the astronauts would take into space, the bud most suited for lunar explorations, or maybe even Mars.

We never spoke of the turtle again, and though it was always on our minds, the dreams of Spanish treasure were eventually hidden under the leaves of life, the directions to the meadow were lost, and the key to the rusted gate misplaced.

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thanks for reading along, all characters are fictional, this story is part of a Chronicles of Bart series that I’ll compile into a single post someday soon. Artwork above is mine, 2017- watercolor pencils and ballpoint pen on beige paper

@therealpaul