Deep Trouble

by Mary Connealy

  She shrieked. He leaned forward to see the ledge crumble under her feet. He pulled at the rope desperately and she fell, but instead of plunging down two more levels of cliff houses to the canyon floor, she swung. His plan exactly. Now there she dangled like a plump spider spinning a web.

  Lowering her quickly, he said, “Grab hold of the next ledge. I’ll hang on until you get a firm foothold.”

  The rope swayed as she hung from her tough belly. Finally, with his doing his best to manipulate the rope without leaning out too far and being pulled down after her, she caught a cave door and pulled herself to the ledge and stood.

  He looked down. She looked up.

  “Your turn to jump, Gabe.”

  He smiled. “I don’t think so, Shannon.” Hanging on tight, paying the rope out the least amount possible, he used footholds to make his way carefully down to her.

  They stood, facing each other, grinning like idiots.

  “Let’s go on down.” It took him a few seconds to even think of it. “I don’t like it up here very much.”

  “Me neither.”

  They inched their way across the front of this row of caves without his letting go of the harness he had tied on her. Carefully they finally reached solid ground.

  She turned to him. Her face was scratched from the fall. Her nose was dotted with dried blood. Her hair was as wild as a wolverine in a feeding frenzy. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  And he realized he hadn’t seen anything yet when she launched herself into his arms.

  Five

  Shannon held on, knowing it was crazy. “Thank you.” Knowing he was a stranger. “Thank you so much.”

  But he was solid and his feet were on solid ground. “Thank you.”

  So were hers. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  She needed him to know she appreciated it. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s all right. You’re safe.” His arms came around her so naturally she could have cried. It might not even be a bad thing to cry. It might help wash her face.

  It went on way too long before she gathered her composure enough to let go of her death grip. Life grip was really a better way to describe it.

  She raised her eyes to look into his and saw such kindness. “Hi. I’m Shannon Dysart.”

  “I’m Gabe Lasley.” He lifted one hand and touched her chin. There was a little dent in it, and Gabe looked at that dent for what seemed a bit too long. “Uhhh… how did you say you got up there again? And how did you come to be stranded? And what are you doing out here in the wilderness? And why are you—”

  “I need to excuse myself for just a minute, Gabe.”

  Gabe’s brow furrowed.

  She knew the man had waited a long time to question her, but she really did need a moment of privacy.

  He must have figured out what she meant, because his face went bright red.

  “Okay. I’ll go… check my horse.” He turned away and almost dragged her off her feet.

  Shannon realized she was, in fact, still lassoed. She started fighting with the noose, which was handy. Now she didn’t have to see him blush.

  Gabe noticed the rope wrapped around his own waist.

  If ever a couple could say they had the ties that bind, it would be Gabe and her.

  He unwound his side of the rope. They both got free about the same time. Then he rushed over to his horse, a pretty chestnut that was standing only feet away, in no way needing to be checked. Gabe firmly turned his back.

  Shannon raced for a moment of necessary privacy. She returned and faced his black-as-midnight eyes. “I’ll tell you everything. But we need to be on our way to town.”

  “It’s too late tonight. We’d be riding in the dark inside an hour. Not safe.”

  “Well, we can’t stay out here.”

  “We have to. There’s no choice.”

  Shannon really didn’t want to go to fussing at the man moments after he’d saved her life, but she had no other course of action. “I can’t spend the night with a man out here. It wouldn’t be proper.”

  Gabe arched a brow until it disappeared into his Stetson. As if to uncover that arch, he pulled his Stetson off his head and scowled at her while he gripped the brim with both hands and held it to his chest. “I would never do anything to shame you, Shannon. In fact, I think it’s insulting that you’d say we can’t stay together.”

  “But we can’t stay together.”

  “I am a Christian man, Shannon Dysart. I would never dishonor a woman. I wouldn’t harm you. In fact, if you will think back long and hard to… oh, about five minutes ago... you will realize I would do whatever is necessary to protect you, or any woman, from harm.” Gabe frowned until the downward curve of his mouth was a match for his moustache.

  Shannon wasn’t handling this well, but it had been a long day. She was clean out of tact. “I apologize, Gabe. It’s not that staying out here… What I mean is… I… I trust you. I’m not saying you’d… you’d…” She fell silent as a shocking parade of improper things trampled through her exhausted brain—throwing herself into his arms foremost among them.

  “Let’s get you something to eat. Then I’ll build a fire and we can bed down… uh… I mean… get to bed… That is we can… can… settle in.” Gabe was strangling his hat.

  And the poor hat hadn’t done a thing. Neither had Gabe, except save Shannon from a slow, painful death by inches from thirst and hunger.

  And here she stood insulting him. “It’s not that anything sinful would go on, Gabe. I do trust you. It’s that people would think it had.”

  He turned and stalked toward his horse.

  Shannon watched him go, wondering just what a woman was to do in such a situation. She couldn’t quite wish he’d never come along. “We’ll have to use the caves for sleeping.” She looked up the wall. The lowest one was a ways up. Horrible, dark, nasty place. With a shiver of dread, she tore her eyes away from a hole in the rock that was now deeply shaded as the sun went lower. She felt her throat swelling shut with terror at the thought of poor Gabe having to sleep in that cave.

  “All right, if that satisfies your fears about what people would say.” Gabe pulled the leather off his horse and began unpacking his saddlebags. “Or I’ll ride off a piece so everything is good and proper. I don’t want you to be shamed by my presence.”

  Shannon almost started crying at the thought of his riding off.

  He crouched down and began snapping a mesquite bush into kindling. He wheeled on the toes of his boots and glared at her. “But if it’s improper to be out here, because of what people will say, then when we ride into town together, the same people who are not here to see the truth are going to look at us and believe whatever they want.”

  “A man and woman traveling alone together like this is shameful unless they’re—” Shannon wasn’t about to say it.

  “Married.”

  And she wished he wouldn’t have either.

  “I saw a spring nearby.” Gabe got a small fire going.

  The comforting crackle of wood and the soothing aroma of wood smoke eased some of the crazy out of her. “That’s probably why whoever lived here picked this spot.”

  Pushing a few larger sticks into the fire, Gabe said, “I’ll go get water and we’ll eat. Then we’ll do whatever it is you decide we need to do so the people that aren’t here won’t be scandalized.”

  He stood and would have walked away if she hadn’t grabbed his arm. “What?”

  The man could surely growl.

  “Thank you. You saved me today.” Shannon had all she could do not to hurl herself into his arms again. “I’m sorry about this. I do trust you, and you’re absolutely right that in the end people will just have to believe what they wish. Besides, so what if we go riding in late tonight or early tomorrow? For all they know, we could have been riding around together for weeks.”

  “And if they wish to believe something terr
ible, then what?”

  “Then I’ll go on my way with a bit of shame attached to my name and never see these people again.”

  Gabe’s jaw tensed as he looked at her. Shannon realized his eyes weren’t pure black but such a deep brown that it was hard to see where the center of his eye quit and the color began.

  Silence stretched between them. Shannon felt caught by his gaze, unable to break free.

  Finally, he spoke so quietly she almost thought the words came from inside her own head. “What were you doing up in that cave, Shannon?”

  “I’ll tell you everything. I promise. But first I would desperately love a drink of water.” Which was nothing less than the truth. Desperate thirst definitely described it.

  “It probably wouldn’t hurt for you to wash the blood off your face either.”

  She’d forgotten how she must look. Following him to the spring, she did her best to clean up. The blood was dried in her hair and behind her ears. It was awful. She was grateful for the absence of a looking glass to tell her the horrible truth.

  After she was done, she drank her fill of the cold spring then went back to the camp where Gabe was pulling provisions from his saddlebags. She wasn’t that eager to tell Gabe everything. She thought he might decide, especially considering the utter lack of gold in this city they’d just found, that he had someone on his hands who might easily be named Delusional Dysart.

  “You did a good job. You look a sight better without the blood.” Gabe studied her as if he was trying to probe her brain for the information inside.

  He handed her some beef jerky and hard biscuits, and Shannon got very busy eating her supper.

  “Okay, time’s up. What are you doing here?” Gabe leaned back on the cliff wall, cradling his tin cup and stretching his feet out toward the crackling fire. Dusk was settling into dark, and the desert air was cooling rapidly.

  Shannon felt almost fully human. She’d given it a lot of thought, and she had a good idea. Considering the last idea one of them had come up with was her jumping off a cliff, she didn’t think this was so bad. “I’m searching for a city made of gold.”

  Crickets chirped in the background. A coyote howled. The wind gusted but not enough to disturb their sheltered fire.

  Too bad. A tornado would be a nice distraction about now. She just hoped Gabe wasn’t tempted to slip away in the dark.

  “Ummm… so… having any luck?”

  Shannon was tempted to hit him. “My father read every document he could that referred to a group of bishops that escaped from Madrid—”

  “Madrid, New Mexico? I’ve been through there. A little coal mining town. Don’t remember any bishops, although there might have been a house of worship. Maybe a Catholic—”

  “Madrid, Spain.” She wanted to add a knock on the head to get him to stop interrupting. Her great idea, about getting Gabe to help her on the next leg of her journey, was starting to feel not so great.

  “Oh, Spain. Sure. Heard of it. They speak Mexican there, right? Go on.”

  Shaking her head, Shannon continued. “A battle was coming, threatening Madrid, and these seven bishops were reported to have loaded up a king’s ransom in gold. They fled. Some say across the ocean.”

  “This year? They just got here?” Gabe looked up at the cliff as if willing to search for the bishops.

  “No, the battle that caused them to run happened in 1150.”

  “Eleven fifty?” Gabe pulled his hat off his head and tossed it aside, as if maybe he had a headache and was considering blaming it on an overly tight Stetson. “That’s about—” She saw his lips moving and his hands. He was counting on his fingers.

  Shannon couldn’t help counting along.

  “Seven hundred years ago?” He faced her, a skeptic if ever she saw one. “Didn’t the pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock in 1492? I learned that in school. The first folks from across the ocean to come to America?”

  “You want to hear this story or not?”

  There was an extended pause. He must really not want to hear it. Fine, she didn’t want to tell it either.

  “I just don’t get how a bunch of Catholic priests—”

  “Bishops.”

  “Who must have been dead for quite a while now—” Gabe’s dark eyes flickered in the firelight. Almost like he was mocking her. Exactly like he was mocking her.

  “Probably six hundred and fifty years at least.”

  “Got you stuck up on that cliff.” He was definitely mocking her.

  Shannon forged on. “The story goes that they made their escape across the ocean to America. With shiploads of gold and jewels, they settled in the West. But they told no one.”

  “That part’s true for sure.”

  She needed a stick to whack him if she was going to get through this.

  “Stories emerged—”

  “Emerged from where if they told no one?”

  Shannon spoke through clenched teeth. “About cities built with gold.”

  “Uh… did they take enough gold to build whole cities or did they find some of it once they got here? How many ships does it take to carry enough gold to build a city? Was it solid gold or just—”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  “Go on.” Gabe threw another stick on the fire.

  “So have you heard of Coronado?”

  “It’s in California. On the ocean. One time I took a ship to—”

  “Gabe!”

  “What?”

  “It’s a man. I mean he’s a man. Francisco Coronado is a man who came from Spain searching for the cities of gold.”

  “The ones that came over hundreds of years before the Pilgrims, on all those big ships, and didn’t tell anybody, right?”

  Well, at least he was listening—she’d give him that. “Coronado thought they’d landed in South America, so he traveled all over down there. When he didn’t find the cities, he came up north, searching for the gold. He never found it.”

  “Because it wasn’t there?”

  “Because he was looking in the wrong place.” Shannon felt a shiver run up her spine. “It’s true. My father followed all the clues he found in ancient writings. He devoted his life to studying the cities of gold.” She paused, hardly able to believe it herself, but she had to convince him if she wanted any chance for success. “He found them.”

  It was very dark except for the crackling fire. And even that was dying down.

  She heard Gabe more than saw him lean closer. The fire might even have revealed a gleam in his eye. Was it the same thing that had overcome her expedition so that they robbed her and left her for dead? Greed? Gold fever? A thirst for wealth?

  She wanted to shout at him. Beat on him. Tell him he was failing her. Tell him he was supposed to be better than the people who had hurt her.

  “Is this rock pile one of them?”

  Tell him he was a sarcastic idiot.

  “I’ve got the notes he left and the words he spoke. I used what he told me to break the code of his maps and writing, and now I’ve discovered what he found.”

  Gabe sighed so long and deep he sounded like the wind blowing past their meager shelter.

  “This place was one of the destinations. I knew it was special, and because of that, I hoped it was one of the golden cities. But Father talked of treasure, and he was a history scholar. He would consider these caves a treasure. Now that I’ve seen it, I understand why Father was so fascinated. But there was another place he told me to go. Another destination on the map.”

  “I’ve wandered the West a lot, Shannon.” He sounded very kind, which probably meant he pitied her. Thought she was delusional. “There aren’t any cities of gold. I’m really sorry, but there just aren’t.”

  “Did you know this place was here?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then why couldn’t there be another city somewhere? The bishops would have taken pains to hide because they’d run away with so much wealth.”

  “How many ships did you say they t
ook? Because it’d take a lot of ships to carry enough gold to build even a real small town—”

  She cut him off, “They’d build the city in a hidden canyon, on a mountaintop, or in a secluded valley sheltered by a vast woodland. Why not?”

  “Okay, I suppose a city could be hidden out here somewhere. Doubt it.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain why you were stuck up in that cave.”

  “The people I hired to travel with me stole my maps and left me stranded.”

  “Oh.” Gabe nodded. “Guess that explains it. You should’ve said that about two hours ago. Saved some time.”

  “And I’ll prove I’m right about the lost city of gold just as soon as I can get back to a town where I can buy a horse, hire more people to scout the land for me, and head for the next place on the map.”

  “Hire more help? Didn’t you say it was your hired help who stranded you in that cave?”

  There was no possible way to deny it. “Yes. Three men and two women were with my expedition.”

  “And you’re going to trust yourself to hire more? ‘Cuz no offense ‘r nuthin’…”

  “Why am I suddenly bracing myself to be deeply offended?”

  “But you’re not that good at picking hands.”

  Shannon wanted to slug him, but now wasn’t the time or place. “Yes, I picked poorly that once.”

  “Real poorly. Awful.” Gabe shuddered.

  Right here in front of her was an utterly trustworthy man. Gabe. “What do you do for a living?”

  “Why don’t you go home?” He ignored her question, but that might be because he was busy telling her how to live her life. “Where did you say you came from?”

  “My mother lives in St. Louis. But that’s not my home anymore. She’s very unhappy with me for taking this journey.”

  “Sounds like a wise woman.”

  “No, she’s not! She’s a wealthy snob who has looked down on my father and his work for years.” Gabe had finally said something she couldn’t just brush aside. “She’s more interested in her high society connections and the cut of her overpriced gowns than she is in her own husband or her daughter. I will not go happily on my way while my father’s life’s work is subjected to scorn. My father died trying to bring education to people. His colleagues think he had gold fever, but he was not searching for gold. He was searching for knowledge. He wanted to find the history of this country. He wanted to prove America had inhabitants and old ruins just like ancient Greece. He asked me to find this place, and if I can’t prove he found it, then he died for nothing! He left me for nothing!”