“Okay, sugar,” he said, “at the risk of getting handed my head on a plate, what are we looking for again?”
She gave him a good-natured shoulder bump. “I’m not gonna take your head off.”
“Good to know,” he said, bumping back. “Now tell me this theory of yours again.”
“Well,” she said, “we know there’s nothing up there with mineral or petroleum value. So I think whatever is so important about the draw has to be man made in some way.”
“That’s a fine theory,” he said, gesturing toward the screens, “but there really is nothing up there but brush and rocks, which I have now photographed from every conceivable angle.”
“I know,” she said, “but it all looks different in the winter. We might see something we didn’t see when the trees had leaves and the grass was growing. Are you sure there’s no old Baxter family legend about that land?”
“You mean other than you all stealing it from us?” he asked grinning.
That won him an outright punch and a mock glare.
“Ouch!” he said, rubbing his arm. “You’re looking at the last Baxter, darling. If there’s an old family legend other than the . . . transaction . . . with your granddaddy, I never heard it. What about Lockwood lore?”
“I never even heard the story about the poker game until you told me that day you spooked my horse,” she said.
“Technically, it was the ATV that spooked the horse,” he said, blinking innocently. “A feller can hardly be blamed for what an engine does.”
“Unless his ass happens to be sitting on said engine,” she countered.
Reinterpreting the story of their first meeting had rapidly become one of their favorite verbal games. “Well,” he drawled, appearing to ponder the facts, “since it was your lovely . . . backside . . . that hit the ground that day, I reckon I’m willing to concede this one point.”
“How very big of you,” she said wryly.
Leaning toward her, he grinned, “Aw come on. Don’t I get a little reward for giving in so easy this time?”
“You’re impossible, you know that?” she said, but her fingers lightly scratched the stubble on his cheek. He’d forgotten to shave that morning, and it looked good on him. She met him halfway for a kiss that ended with a contented sigh. “And you’re impossibly good at that,” she said.
“I’m a man of many talents, darling. Want me to show you?” Josh asked, his eyes sparkling.
It was a tempting offer Jenny almost accepted. Josh watched indecision play out on her features and settled the question for her. “How about I come back over tonight and we spend the evening in front of the fire?”
“I’d like that,” she said softly.
“So would I,” he said. “Now, do you mean to tell me that all the time you spent growing up on this place, nobody ever said anything about Baxter’s Draw?”
She smiled, silently thanking him for his smooth return to the business at hand. She slid out of her seat and took her coffee cup to the counter for a refill. “Not so much as one word. But the Draw was kind of Daddy’s place. None of us would have dared ask him about it.”
“You want to make me one of those?” Josh asked, holding out his cup.
“Josh, for God’s sake, it’s a Keurig machine,” she said with good-natured exasperation. “You’re as bad as Kate. You put your cup under the little spigot and punch the button. How in the name of God can you use expensive digital cameras all day and be scared of breaking a coffee machine?”
“I’m scared of you if I break the coffee machine.”
She took his cup. “Okay, I’ll concede that point, so we’re even.”
“For now,” he grinned. “So what do you mean the draw was your Daddy’s place?”
“Every few weeks, for no good reason, he’d get up at the crack of dawn, saddle his horse and ride up the draw,” she said, returning to the table with their coffee. “He’d stay gone all day, come back about supper time, and if anybody had the guts to ask him, he’d say he went up there to get ‘some goddamn peace and quiet to think.’”
“Anything else?”
“Just that he refused to even consider cutting a road up there,” she said.
“Huh, it is awful pretty country back in there, but damn it’s hard to get to, especially from your side. A man on horseback has to pick his way up that dry creek bed for at least an hour just to get to the mouth of the draw.”
“Honestly, why is it even called a draw?” Jenny asked. “It’s a box canyon.”
“Why does anybody around here call anything what they do?” Josh asked. “I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around Old Wreck Road.”
“Oh, that’s easy. That’s where J.R. Ellerstadt wrecked his Model T on the way to the Saturday night dance,” she said.
“And when was this?” Josh asked.
“Nineteen-fifteen, I think.”
“And New Wreck Road?”
“Clod Fenton in a Ford slantback, 1937.”
“So both the new and the old are ancient history?” he asked, blowing on his coffee.
“Told you it made perfect sense,” she said. “Welcome to small-town Texas.”
“Okay, fine, but what’s your problem with a canyon being called a draw?”
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Smarty Pants,” she said, reaching for the computer mouse. “I have actually given some thought to that very thing.” Clearing her throat she read, “A canyon is a deep valley between cliffs carved by a river. A ravine is a small valley created by a stream cutting erosion. A draw, or an arroyo as it is called in Spanish, is a dry creek bed that fills with water after a heavy rain or seasonally.”
“Sounds like to me you got a little of it all working up there,” Josh said, flicking through his pictures. “There’s your dry creek bed that opens up into a little valley before you get to the canyon.”
“Fine,” she said, “but there’s only one way in and one way out of that canyon and the survey says there’s no water up there.”
“Not now,” he countered, “but this whole part of Texas was an inland sea back when dinosaurs were stomping around. That canyon’s been there for millennia.”
“Guess that’s why the Texas Tech guy is interested in the creek bed,” she said. “Kate thinks it’s about arrowheads and stuff, but if you dig around in the rocks there’s all kinds of fossils. When Mandy was little she liked to go up there and look for them.”
“I wouldn’t have taken her to be the kind of kid to want to play in the dirt.”
“She wasn’t once she discovered nail polish,” Jenny laughed, “but she can shinny up a tree with the best of us. I used to try to get away from her down here in my tree house and she’d climb right up after me, just like a little monkey.”
“How do you feel about this archeology business?” Josh asked. “You leaning toward letting this guy on the place?”
“Well, I want to hear what he has to say, same as Katie, but yes, I think it might be a good idea.”
“That wouldn’t happen to be because you think he might find something that will give us a lead on the draw, now would it?” he asked, with a look that told her he already knew the answer.
“Why Josh Baxter,” she said, feigning innocence. “Are you accusing me of having an ulterior motive for allowing a scholar to do his work?”
“I reckon that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“Then you would be right,” she said, staring at the iMac screens again. “I’ll take answers about Baxter’s Draw any damn way I can get them.”
27
“You’re Dr. Lowell Martin?” Kate asked, barely disguising her surprise at the appearance of the man looking back at them from the screen.
He winced. “I know. Stuffy as hell isn’t it? But it’s actually Lowell J. Martin. People who want to spare me the pain call me Jake.”
Kate laughed. “Then in the interest of a pain-free conversation, hi Jake. I’m Kate and this is my sister Jenny.”
“Hi Jenny,”
the man grinned, actually waving at her.
Jenny waved back, quietly assessing Dr. Lowell J. Martin. He was probably about Kate’s age, but he looked a little bit like a college reject. His Hawaiian shirt was so loud it almost hurt her eyes. Personally she didn’t object to the thick sandy hair that just touched his collar, but by ranch standards, he needed a haircut. Gold wire glasses perched halfway down a fine Roman nose that matched his angular face and when he smiled, which seemed to be perpetually, the man actually had dimples.
“You look like a beach bum,” Kate said, voicing Jenny’s thoughts.
“That might be because I’m on loan to the anthropology department at the University of Hawaii,” he said. “See?” He angled his computer around to show an external view of a lush campus liberally studded with palm trees.
“That is definitely not Lubbock, Texas,” Kate agreed.
“For which I have been endlessly grateful these past few months,” Jake said. “But alas, my idyll in paradise is coming to an end.”
“You’re leaving in the middle of the term?” Jenny asked.
“No, I should have left at the beginning of the term when my summer workshop was over, but I opted to take a sabbatical for the coming academic year. As much as I hate to leave, and as hard as it may be to believe, you actually can get tired of sipping Mai Tais on the beach.”
“I’ll just have to take your word for that,” Jenny laughed. “Why are you leaving now?”
“Just antsy to work. I’m an odd duck,” he shrugged. “I really love what I do, and I want to get back to the states and spend the rest of the year tackling my own research. I’m hoping some of that will be on your ranch.”
“Why here?” Kate asked.
“Have you ever heard of the Mission Santa Cruz de San Saba?” Jake asked, pushing his glasses up with his forefinger.
“Considering I’m sitting about 40 miles from it as the crow flies, yes,” Kate answered. “Why?”
“Do you know the story?”
“I vaguely remember that the Comanche completely destroyed the mission,” Kate said. “Seems like the presidio survived longer.”
“Correct,” Jake said, sounding professorial for the first time. “The mission was destroyed in 1758, but the presidio wasn’t permanently abandoned until 1770. I have reason to believe that a party from the presidio camped on your land for several months during that 12-year period. I’m looking for archaeological evidence of that fact.”
“What were they doing around here?” Jenny asked.
“Official correspondence suggests they may have been looking to move their base of operations a little farther south and were scouting defensible positions on the Llano rivers. The powers that be pulled the plug on the presidio before a new site could be chosen.”
“Why haven’t I ever heard this story?” Kate asked skeptically.
“Because most people think I’m absolutely nuts,” Jake said. “This is all pieced together from various reports and bits of correspondence. It’s not a straight-line narrative, but then these things rarely are.”
“Why does it matter if they camped here?” Jenny asked.
Jake scratched at his jaw. “To most people it wouldn’t,” he said. “But I wrote my dissertation on Mission Santa Cruz de San Saba and I’m working on a book.”
Kate leaned back and narrowed her eyes. “Out with it,” she said evenly.
“Excuse me?” he blinked, trying to look confused and failing completely.
“You’re looking for the silver, aren’t you?” she said.
“What silver?” Jenny asked, genuinely confused.
“Jenny,” Kate said. “I think we have a would-be Indiana Jones on our hands. This feller is looking for the Bowie Mine.”
Jake threw his hands up. “Well, hell. Do I at least get points for trying to put an academic spin on it?”
“You’d have gotten points for telling the truth,” Kate said flatly.
“Everything I’ve said to you is the truth,” Jake said. “I just didn’t want you to think I’m a total nut case.”
“The Hawaiian shirt pegged you for a nut case before you even opened your mouth,” Kate deadpanned.
Jake laughed. “Okay, fine. You caught me, but will you at least hear me out?”
“Talk,” Kate said.
“Okay,” Jake said. “It’s a really long story, which I will happily lay out for you, but let me give you the short version right now. The Spanish did try mining silver in Llano County at the Los Almagres Mine, which proved to be a bust. A lot of the lore that subsequently grew up around the whole business was advertising hype Stephen F. Austin used to try to get settlers to come to Texas. That’s how Jim Bowie’s name got tacked on to the treasure tale.”
“But hype or no hype you still think there’s a lost silver mine on our ranch?” Kate snorted. “What have you been smoking to round out that Beach Boys’ look you’ve got going there?”
“You’re not the first one to ask me that,” Jake admitted, “and no, I don’t think there’s a lost silver mine on your land, but I do think a Spanish patrol camped there for several months, and I’m trying to find evidence of that fact. I don’t believe that anybody really knows what the Spanish were doing in that area in regard to silver and other treasure, nor do I trust the official reports. It was pretty hard to keep commanders in line on a frontier as far-flung as Texas was in those days.”
“As I recall, most of the Spanish loot went to pay for the Counter Reformation,” Jenny offered, which won her a surprised look from Kate.
“What?” she said in mock self-defense. “I passed history in college.”
“Passed and remembered,” Jake said approvingly. “And you’re right. But a lot of that treasure was misdirected in one way or another. You wouldn’t believe how much of it is lying at the bottom of the ocean, which is why treasure hunting is so popular in Florida.”
Kate chewed on her lip. “Didn’t I read something about some guy who brought a massive gold chain on the Tonight Show from a Spanish galleon?”
“Mel Fisher,” Jake said. “He found the Santa Margarita in 1980 and the Nuestra Senora de Atocha in 1985. The Atocha alone yielded about $450 million in gold.”
“But you’re not looking for a shipwreck,” Jenny said.
“No, I’m looking for a private stash,” Jake replied.
“So what is it you want to do on our land?” Kate asked.
“Basically come out by myself and survey the length of the dry creek bed that lies to the east of your ranch house.”
“Which you know is there, how?”
“From the geological survey of the region.”
“And when do you want to do this?”
“I get back to Lubbock in 10 days. Any time after that is fine with me.”
Kate exhaled heavily. “That’s quite some story, Jake,” she said. “I expected you to be interested in fossils, or arrowheads.”
“Which I will be interested in if I find them,” he conceded. “But I’m hoping for something different.”
“Okay,” Kate said. “Give us a few days to think about it. We’ll be in touch.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I just appreciate you hearing me out. If there’s anything else you want to know or any of my research you’d like to see, please, just shoot me an email. I’ll show you anything I have.”
When the screen of the computer went blank, Jenny said, “Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting.”
“Me either,” Kate said, still staring at the computer with an odd expression. “I thought he was going to be ancient and wearing a pith helmet or something.”
Jenny eyed her appraisingly, “I was talking about the whole hidden treasure aspect of the conversation. You were paying attention to that part?”
“Huh?” Kate said. “Oh. Yeah. Right. The silver. Damnedest thing.” But she thought to herself, dimples. He had to have dimples.
28
Mandy expertly angled her scissors through the orange constructi
on paper without pausing until another perfectly formed pumpkin dropped to the surface of the table.
Jolene Wilson, the local librarian, picked it up and examined the edges, “I bet you always color inside the lines, too, don’t you?”
Blinking, Mandy said, “Doesn’t everyone?”
They were sitting at a round table well in the back of the library ignoring the occasional thump of a book being returned through the slot in the front door. It was after 5 o’clock and they’d retreated out of sight after Jolene refused to open the door for a woman who assured her she’d “just die without the next Nora Roberts book.”
“So Kate’s all for letting this professor guy come work in the creek bed?” Jolene asked, putting her reading glasses back on the top of her head, which was now covered with a short, but thick mass of red hair.
When Mandy reconnected with her old high school friend a few months earlier, Jolene was still recovering from chemotherapy, wrapping her bald head in brightly colored scarves and fighting off waves of dizziness and fatigue. Now, Jolene had put on a few badly needed pounds, and her once boundless energy, along with her hair, was coming back strong, an overall recovery that her grateful family attributed in large part to Mandy’s time and attention.
When Jolene’s husband, Rick, had taken Mandy aside one day and awkwardly tried to thank her, she’d caught hold of his big hands to stop their nervous twisting. “I didn’t do anything but give her something else to think about,” she said.
“You treated her like she hadn’t ever been sick,” Rick said, squeezing her fingers. “And you make her laugh. I was so scared I was gonna lose her, I forgot how to do that.”
He and the twins, Sissy and Missy, thought Mandy was a gift from God — the twins especially, since “Aunt” Mandy had taken it upon herself to teach them the fine art of shopping.
On this afternoon, when Mandy walked in the library to help with the Halloween decorations, she was greeted with, “My eight-year-old daughters are asking for acrylic nails. And the answer is no, ‘Aunt Mandy,’ so do not even go there.”
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 13
