She was also worried Dawn might mention her dream to her Apache stud. She already knew they talked about the gold mine. Mateo’s brothers, Anton and Rafael, admitted they were searching for the gold mine the first night they met them on the Superstitions. She couldn’t take the chance anyone would get up on the mountain with this new information ahead of her, so she had to go tonight.
The sun was hanging low in the westerly sky by the time she parked her SUV in her usual spot at the base of the Superstitions. The narrow trail she always took was heavy with shadows from the tall rocks and low brush along the sides. Although she had come up here and searched around by herself during the daytime many times over the years, she had never come here alone at night. When a weird slow-moving coldness inched down her spine and made her footsteps halt only a couple of yards from her vehicle, she realized the shadowy trail was freaking her out more than just a little bit.
She glanced around nervously. She could always sleep in the back of her SUV. That idea made more sense than trying to hike up to the campsite this late in the evening. It would be completely dark long before she was even halfway to the camp. Another frosty chill raced down her spine. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and looked around again. Beads of sweat broke out along her upper lip.
This was so ridiculous. Before now, she had never been afraid of these mountains, and she never thought much about all the stories of people who had gone missing in this remote mountain range. But she was thinking about all of them now. Rumors had the dead or missing head count at over six hundred since the mid-eighteen hundreds. Who knew how many more disappeared before anyone was actually taking a head count?
“Okay, staying in the car tonight,” she said out loud as she opened the back hatch. She folded the rear seats down and unrolled her sleeping bag. Luckily, she thought to bring her tablet along and it was loaded with unread books she never had time to read at home. She could pass the time reading while she cowered in the back of her SUV until daylight.
She chuckled and shook her head at her silly case of the willies. At least, Dawn wasn’t here with her, because she had been a total scaredy cat when they had been up here last weekend. The two of them together acting like big cowards wouldn’t be a good combination. But if the new clues from Dawn’s dream proved to be helpful in locating the Lost Dutchman, Chloe would gladly share the wealth with her new friend. Well, some of it anyway.
After locking all the doors and leaving just a tiny crack at the top of all the windows for air, Chloe settled into her sleeping bag with her headlamp strapped around her head. She tried to focus on a mystery novel she downloaded months earlier. But every faint noise made her jump, and she kept imagining things darting around outside her vehicle.
There was a huge full moon tonight so the landscape was lit up with the natural glow of the bright orb, and she knew if there really was something out there, she would surely be able to see it. But every time she attempted to read a few lines of her book, she thought she caught something from the side of her eye moving around behind the rocks or bushes.
“Fuck,” she mumbled after nearly jumping through the roof when she thought something had just rubbed against the side of her vehicle. Slowly, she glanced out the window, expecting to see an animal lurking outside. There were plenty of cougars, wolves, coyotes, and even panthers were known to roam around in these rugged mountains. A relieved sigh escaped from her when she didn’t see anything close to her vehicle. She needed to get a grip on her out-of-control emotions since she was obviously imagining things. What was it Dawn said? Oh yeah.
“Cowboy up, you big fat chicken cupcake,” Chloe said in a loud aggravated voice.
Flipping off her headlight and shutting down her tablet, she decided she needed to get some sleep and quit scaring the crap out of herself. Something else Dawn said echoed through her mind.
Count Dracula.
“Seriously?” She attempted a weak laugh. She yanked her sleeping bag over her head and sunk farther down into its comforting refuge.
The sun coming up in the desert sky was more than a welcome sight. Chloe barely closed her eyes all night. But unlike Dawn, when they had been camping, she wasn’t plagued by dreams that woke her up feeling hot and flustered. Instead, she had been shrouded in a suffocating fear that would not give her a moment’s peace, and she didn’t even know what it was she was so afraid of. But she was certain of one thing, this terror was like nothing she ever experienced before, and never hoped to experience again.
“Just my shitty luck…no wet dreams,” she mumbled in a foul tone as she kicked her sleeping bag away from her feet.
It was early, barely six a.m. She glanced around as the sun cast its first golden rays over the mountain peaks and began to fill the desert floor with the hazy light of the new day. She should have waited to come up here this morning. Last night had been a complete waste of time, and it only proved to her she wasn’t as brave as she always believed. She shook her head in disgust as she recalled the ridiculous thoughts in her head last night, mostly about Count Dracula.
“Thanks for putting that stupid idea in my head, Dawn,” she muttered as she opened the back hatch of her SUV and climbed out into the open.
The morning was cool and calm. There were no sounds or signs of anything moving for as far as she could see in any direction. She felt alone—really alone—and defenseless in a way she never felt before. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and glanced out at the barren desert landscape as an uneasy sense of growing panic began to consume her.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” she asked as if someone would answer her. It had to be sleep deprivation making her so jumpy and stupid. She just needed to focus on the reason she was here, and get started on the hike up to the Old Military Trail. It wouldn’t take her long to get there, though, so it would be a long day of waiting until the sun set this evening. But what else was she going to do all day now that she was here?
A sensation like tiny knives cutting away at her skin rippled through her body. She shuddered and thought about climbing back in her SUV and getting the hell out of here before anyone knew how crazy she had been. If she went through with this plan, tonight she would have no choice but to spend the entire night at the location where she would be looking for the gold mine. It was way too dangerous to attempt to climb down from the Weaver’s Needle trail after the sun went down.
A deep sense of foreboding settled in the pit of her stomach. Maybe she should wait until she could bring someone else up here with her. But who? Her dad had been diagnosed with cancer recently, so he probably would never come back here to the mountain with her, and Dawn was most likely going be too busy with her Apache stud to want to spend time with her anymore. She doubted she could even convince her to come back up here after their last excursion, anyway. It had been more than a little obvious how nervous this area made Dawn and how anxious she was to get away from these mountains.
Chloe drew in a nervous breath. She truly was alone in this quest. She either needed to get over this silly phobia she recently developed or just give up her search for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine altogether. If she left now, she could almost be to her classroom on time, and no one would ever know she spent the night up here cowering in her sleeping bag imaging who knows what lurking outside her vehicle. She wiped her shaking hand over her sweating brow and stared at the handle on the driver’s door.
Just go home.
Before it’s too late.
An exasperated huff escaped from her lips. She never believed any of the scary stories about the ghosts or demons that guarded the treasure and kept gold seekers from getting too close to the mine, assuming them to be the result of someone’s overly active imagination. So now, of all times, she sure wasn’t going to allow herself to start believing them.
She grabbed her backpack, and stuffed her tablet in the side pocket. It would be a long day, and hopefully she would be able to concentrate on reading rather than spooking herself out while she pa
ssed the endless hours until sunset.
Hiking up to the Old Military Trial in the coolness of the morning was enjoyable and gave her a chance to calm her nerves and clear her head of all those daunting thoughts. By the time she arrived at the general location in Dawn’s dream she was laughing at her earlier feelings of doom and gloom. She knew these mountains so well, and the idea they might hold endless riches somewhere deep in their hidden interior only increased their lure to Chloe and her family, just as they had to countless other gold seekers.
It was not evil spirits she needed to dread. It was her own carelessness she needed to worry about. If she didn’t watch every step she took along the steep trails; if she became distracted, slipped and fell into one of the deep gullies or canyons, she would become just one more of those hundreds of casualties claimed by these unforgiving mountains. Even a step too close to one of the rattlesnakes concealed and coiled among the rocks or hidden under a bush could be a deadly mistake.
These mountains really were filled with endless dangers, but it wasn’t from horned demons or ghostly specters, she told herself as she settled in for the long wait until the sun went down.
Considering it was almost the first of October, and the day started out at a cool comfortable temperature, by mid-day it was scorching. She was grateful for the baseball cap she had worn today to keep the burning sun off her face, but the long sleeve cotton shirt and jeans were way too heavy. She took her shirt off and tied it around her waist, leaving only her yellow sports bra to cover her upper torso. She thought about stripping down to just her bra and panties, but modesty and the thought of having a caravan of hikers appear on the trail before she could cover herself, kept her from taking any more clothes off.
Still, she was miserable. Rivulets of sweat ran down her neck, the length of her backbone, between her breasts, and made her entire body drenched. She was too hot to even read. Packing the tablet had been a complete waste of time. She spent the entire day moving from rock to rock in an effort to find the teeny bits of shade they offered at their bases, and having daydreams about what she was going to do with all the gold she was about to find. Everything from the cruises she would take to exotic lands to the charities she vowed to donate to if she could find this gold mine dominated her thoughts during the long tortuous hours until sunset.
When the sun finally began to drop lower in the sky, Chloe was once again rethinking her plan. She was surprised she hadn’t dropped dead from a heat stroke, and she had already drunk most of the bottled water she brought with her. There was more water in her SUV, but she wouldn’t get back to it until tomorrow sometime.
If she found something here tonight, she might not get back even then. She could be spending—who knows how much time—chipping and digging out gold ore from the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine to haul back so she could finally prove to everyone, to the entire world, it really did exist.
She carefully made her way through the boulders along the bottom of the mountain as she tried to analyze all the clues again. Most of Dawn’s dream held the same clues to the mine’s location Chloe and her father followed every time they came here. The only differences were that in the dream she climbed higher on the overhanging ledges so she could see the face Jacob Waltz mentioned in his clues, and that face was on the desert floor below Weaver’s Needle.
To see an open expanse of the ground below the towering sphere of Weaver’s Needle, Chloe realized she had to climb up farther up on the mountainside than she and her father ever considered in their previous hikes. The route to that higher ledge was going to be more than a little treacherous.
Even though it was slightly cooler as she hiked up the side of the mountain in the early evening, she was still sweating like a pig. Every couple of minutes she had to stop to wipe the river of sweat from her eyes so she could see where she was going. Blinded by the sweat, she slipped a couple of times on the loose rocks where she was trying to find secure footing. Each time, she froze at the possibility of tumbling down the side of the mountain, and falling into some deep crevice, never to be seen again.
After what felt like forever, she finally pulled herself up to the jagged ledge about two-thirds the way up this side of the mountain where she was sure Dawn described she had been standing in her dream. With a sense of relief, combined with an invigorating feeling of anticipation, she turned slowly around to look at the valley below.
The sun would be falling behind the uneven peaks of Weaver’s Needle in a matter of minutes. Since it had taken her longer than expected to climb up here to this higher ledge she worried she missed the critical window of opportunity to find the rock face below on the desert floor. As she exhaled the breath she had been unconsciously holding, she gazed down.
“Oh my God,” she gasped as the shapes of the prestigiously situated rocks Dawn talked about seeing in her dream, caught her attention. The last rays of the sun were settling along the outline of the rocks, making the face an obvious sculpture on the desert floor. Her entire body began to shake. She had to lean against the rock wall behind her to keep from falling to her knees.
A rock face looks up at my gold mine.
All these years—so many trips up here—endless hours studying Jacob Waltz’s clues, and not once had any of them thought to climb up high enough to look down upon this narrow expanse of the desert floor for the rock face. Evidently, all the other gold seekers through the years made the same mistake, searching for the face along the walls of Weaver’s Needle or surrounding cliffs and towering rocks of the Superstitions, because no one ever suggested the rock face was a scattering of rocks on the bottom of the canyon below the Needle on the desert floor.
Her gaze grew blurry as she focused so intently on the visible face spread out below her. The desert ground clearly outlined the shape of a man’s face with a rock mouth in a barely curved grin, and nose with two nostrils. Nearly identical brown hued rocks formed the man’s eyes and a couple of dark spots on the sides of the rocks resembled pupils in an eyeball. They were directed at an angle, which appeared to be looking at an area to the right of the Needle, and farther up the mountain behind where she stood now.
She exhaled sharply, not even aware she had been holding her breath again, and began to turn slowly in the direction of the rock eyes’ unwavering stare. Scanning the area above her head, she couldn’t see anything more than the menacing ledges of sharp stone. Growing shadows of the rugged mountains were swiftly cloaking the entire area in gloomy shroud.
But a single ray of the fading sunlight shone along the ridge where the rock eyes were pointed…the sun sets on the gold in my mine. She had no doubt the last beam of the setting sun would lead her directly to the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine.
Her heart beat frantically against her breast as she wiped away the thick gummy layer of sweat along her upper lip. Somewhere up there on that narrow-looking ledge, where she couldn’t see from this location was the one thing she and her dad had been dreaming of and searching for their entire lives. She imagined her father’s face when she told him and showed him the proof she had found the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, at last. There would be no greater joy in her life.
She wished her grandfather and great-grandfather were both still alive so they could share in this amazing discovery. They had all believed unconditionally and been ridiculed for that belief. But now, at long last, she was going to prove to the world their devotion had not been in vain.
A panicked sense of urgency overcame every other emotion she was feeling. Darkness was closing in fast. She had to get up higher—hopefully high enough to reach the cave that supposedly housed the gold mine Dawn had seen in her dream, and she had to get there before it became too dark for her to see where she was climbing.
There was no trail to follow and her headlamp would not afford much light. Once again, she reminded herself of how one wrong step could be fatal. Maybe she should just spend the night here on this ledge and climb up the rest of the way in the morning? It would probably be safer to be in the
cave than out here in the open all night. Besides, there was no way she could wait until morning to see those rich veins of gold Dawn described in her dream, and she had no doubt they were there, because everything else in the dream had been spot on.
The hammering of her heart was deafening in the stillness of the dusky mountaintop. Her entire body was trembling with an overpowering sense of excitement. The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine was real. She had really found it. Her life would never be the same again.
She reached up to grab on to a protruding rock to begin the last of the precarious trek, but the feeling she was no longer alone made the blood grow cold in her veins. Her hands began to slide down to the sides of her body as her recent excitement began to turn into a paralyzing sense of dread. The breath she tried to inhale hung up in her parched throat and made her feel as if she was strangling on her own terror.
She was only afforded a brief glimpse of the man as she turned to look at him. A fleeting, disjointed realization crowded in with the all-consuming terror ruling her mind and body. She almost smiled in relief because he seemed vaguely familiar.
This dark dangerously handsome stranger who just appeared out of nowhere was as gorgeous as the three Two Moons Brothers. How odd? There must be another one of them. It was her last conscious thought.
Chapter Twelve
Monday had been horrible—even worse than she expected.
Dawn’s students were cranky and difficult all day, and the Open House with their parents had been long and boring, although, she tried really hard to be enthusiastic about meeting with all of them. She felt a little guilty, because usually she really enjoyed school-related events. But today she couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the next time she would see Mateo. Occasionally she would be reminded of the little nagging fact they made love over and over again throughout the entire weekend without even thinking about or discussing any sort of protection.
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