Gold Dust

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  The short yelp of a siren broke the silence. Out in the country, sirens mostly announced volunteer fire trucks and ambulances. The two yips told Owen everything he needed to know.

  Even with the windows locked tight against the cold, the car tires popping on the gravel drive were crisp and distinct. The roar of an engine rose as a car flashed past the window, headed for the rear. A Collin County deputy peeked into the window fifteen seconds later.

  “This is it!” Owen raised the three-foot shotgun and fired, grunting as his wound tore from the recoil. The deputy disappeared as the glass-and-wire screen shattered.

  The front door slammed open. Voices shouted in the living room. Trembling with pain, Owen couldn’t take the shotgun’s punishment again so soon. He waited until a big-eared Collin County deputy appeared in the doorframe to his right with a revolver pointed at the rustler.

  “Don’t move! Don’t move! Get both hands in the air!” The over eager deputy who only minutes earlier sounded his siren in excitement stepped into the room. He motioned with the cocked pistol. “Hands up!”

  Owen held up his empty left hand in a magician’s move to gain the deputy’s attention. “I can’t.” At the same time he raised the Luger hidden in the folds of the chenille bedspread and fired. The 9mm round shattered the deputy’s pelvis. He shrieked and returned fire before falling out of view.

  The deputy’s lucky shot shattered Owen’s right femur. The rustler howled from the impact. Two pools of warm blood flowed onto the sheets as an adrenaline dump shorted-circuited the sensors in his pain center.

  Still in the kitchen, Cody flinched at the firefight erupting on the other side of the wall. Anna knelt, taking stock of the situation. Cody caught a glimpse of Sheriff Hawkins dragging his fatally wounded deputy onto the front porch at the far end of the long house.

  Finding himself afraid that Anna was going to get hurt again, and still feeling responsible for the fading bruises on her face, Cody pushed down on her shoulder to keep her in place. “Stay here. Going through the bathroom!”

  Big John rushed past Anna and into the cluttered living room to find a closed door leading into what he suspected was a bedroom where Owen was holed up. He kicked at the paint-splattered metal doorknob. It gave enough for him to see the back of a large piece of furniture in the way.

  The heavy chifforobe blocking the door behind Owen’s right shoulder jolted as someone kicked it from the other side. He twisted and emptied the Lugar’s magazine through the wall.

  Temples pounding at the gunfire, Cody saw what he suspected to be a door leading from the bathroom and into Owen’s room. Following the front sight of his 1911, he took a deep breath and stepped into the bedroom, hoping Owen’s attention was focused on where John was kicking through the door.

  Frustrated by Cody’s overprotective attitude, Anna ignored the sheriff’s warning and rushed past John as rounds punched through the wall. He recoiled from the slugs snapping through the faded wallpaper only a few inches away. “I think there’s a damned chifforobe in the way!”

  Holding her revolver in the classic battle stance she’d learned as a recruit in Houston, Anna sidestepped toward the deputy’s blood smear leading to the front door. “He’s right through there.” She peeked into the empty front bedroom at a perfectly made bed.

  Owen dropped the empty pistol and caught a glimpse of someone in the bathroom doorway. He instinctively twisted to see who was coming through and groaned at the electric bolts of pain shooting through his body. With a grunt, he once more raised the sawed-off shotgun from his lap at the same time the Lamar County Sheriff appeared in the doorway.

  “Don’t do it.” Cody’s voice came soft and low. Conversational.

  The shotgun’s muzzle wavered, rising. Surprised at how calm he felt, Cody fired three times in quick succession. Deflected by bone and the steel barrel, one .45 round angled up into Owen’s chest. Another blew the rustler’s thumb off the shotgun’s grip, but his index finger tightened in reaction. The hard crump of the sawed-off was deafening in the small room. The buckshot missed, leaving nine .38-caliber holes in the wall only two feet to Cody’s left.

  Owen fell back. Cody lowered his pistol in relief.

  Like a bad dream, Owen rallied and raised the shotgun again. The twelve-gauge bore looked big as a culvert. Shocked that the odd-looking man was still drawing air, Cody brought the pistol back to level, but knew it was going to be close.

  Three hammer-blow reports from Cody’s .45 told Anna the sheriff had found his man. Then came the heavy blast of a shotgun.

  She peeked around the doorframe at the same time a bloody and dying man attempted to bring a nasty-looking little shotgun to bear on Cody. Anna blew three holes into the rustler’s chest as if she were on a firing range and would have kept shooting had she not felt Big John’s hand on her shoulder, telling her it was over.

  As Owen’s nerveless hands dropped onto the bloody sheets for the last time, Cody sagged against the doorframe, knowing the gal he was worried about had saved his life.

  Chapter Ninety

  Cody met Anna in Bill Preston’s yard the next time Bill came in from Dallas. The extravagant modern house overlooking the Red River far below was completely out of place in that part of Northeast Texas. They waited beside their marked cars until Bill came outside at the sound of Cody’s car horn.

  Bill was the definition of an oily used car salesman, which is what he was before he started working for a dealership only ten years earlier. Cody’s suspected the snake with legs had earned enough money to acquire a dealership through illegal means.

  The arrogant car salesman wiped his palm on his gray slacks before extending it toward Cody. “Sheriff. Can I help you?”

  They shook. Cody tilted his head toward Anna. “Howdy Bill. This is Deputy Anna Sloan.”

  Preston didn’t offer his hand to Anna at all. “You’re the deputy the mayor was telling me about.”

  Anna face turned white. “What’s he said to you?”

  Bill smirked. “Oh, that you were doing a good job.” He’d made his point. “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

  Cody waved a hand at the two-story house, then toward the western slope. “I see y’all had to bring in a lot of fill, but this is the place I’d pick, too.”

  “That’s the truth.” Bill was proud of his house. “Took ten thousand dollars just to build that retaining wall, but it was worth it. No matter the cost.”

  “The cost to people, history, and the law, huh?” Insulted at being snubbed, Anna’s voice was stiff with anger.

  Bill’s expression went cold. “What does that mean?”

  Cody decided to be direct. “She means that I bet if we was to be invited into your house, I’d find some pretty interesting things on the walls and shelves.”

  Caught between their discussion, Bill seemed indecisive. “Uh, what?”

  Anna pressed forward. “Will you invite us inside to look at any Indian artifacts you might have?”

  “What makes you think that? And no, we can talk out here, unless you have a warrant.”

  Cody tilted his hat back. “Bill, why don’t you tell me what I want to know before I have to come back with that warrant you mentioned?”

  Bill rubbed his bulbous nose. “Indian stuff. Yeah, bought a few things for the walls. I can provide canceled checks for those.”

  “Did you keep records of the artifacts you dug up with the fill dirt? If I’m right, based on how much that house cost, I’d estimate you earned enough from the sale of those items to interest the IRS.”

  Bill deflated. “All right. Yeah, we found some old Indian stuff, bones, and a few trinkets.”

  “Like breastplates, bowls, weapons, and how many gold coins?” Anna crossed her arms, waiting for an answer.

  “What? Gold?”

  “I’m tired of playing around, Bill.” Cody took his arm. “We know yo
u sold that and a bunch of Spanish gold coins. Probably what those old Indians found at some point out by Palmer Lake. My ancestors didn’t have much use for gold coins except for decoration, so I imagine they buried them with their people.”

  “There wasn’t that much. It was just some old bones.”

  Cody was surprised when his voice cracked. To him digging into Indian burial grounds was the equivalent of robbing graves at the Forest Chapel Cemetery.

  “Maybe not much there, but what about the other places you’ve been digging with that bulldozer. Sounds to me like you’ve found more than one grave. You’ve gotten pretty good at it, after finding the first one. You made enough off the sale of my ancestors to build a much nicer house, huh?”

  “Most of the money came from my business.”

  “We’ll let the lawyers figure that out.” Anna opened the back door of the sheriff’s car. “Get in.”

  A horse snorted and Cody watched Mack Vick ride up. The cowboy’s eye was black and both lips had been split, but healing. He tilted his hat back to reveal an ear decorated with several stitches. He crossed one leg over the saddle horn and took the makin’s out of his shirt pocket. “Chickens finally come home to roost, huh?”

  Bill glared. “You want to keep your job, you’ll get back to work.”

  “Smoke break.” Mack built a cigarette and grinned. “I told them what they were doing was illegal. There’s a dozen 55-gallon barrels out there behind the house, every one of ‘em’s full of bones and stuff.”

  Cody studied the cowboy. “Looks like you tied into a buzz saw, from the looks of that face.”

  “Just some city fellers who were a little upset when their cupcake Scottie took up with me for a little bit.”

  “How little?”

  Mack shrugged. “’till the idea of gettin’ rich soured. Ol’ Bill there was nice enough to let Scottie stay here in the big house while his wife’s in Dallas. I believe he liked looking at her. Anyway, Scottie took us both, Bill. She stole my heart, and the rest of your Spanish coins. She left this mornin’ and good riddance.”

  Bill blanched and it wasn’t because Scotty was gone. “You’re fired.”

  “Naw. I quit.”

  Anna took out a pad and clicked her pen. “I’ll get something out on the radio about her.”

  Cody sighed. “Bill, you’re under arrest.”

  “What for?”

  “Grave robbing. It’s called looting…”

  “Well, hell, Sheriff.”

  “The charges are looting of Indian artifacts, theft of private property, and trespassing.”

  Bill’s face fell. “What do you mean?”

  “That little draw where you’re got your fill dirt belongs to Harp Johnson. Your line is on this side of that big oak tree. I went over to his pasture and took a look around.” Cody pointed at a line of bare trees in the distance. Already devoid of leaves, the crooked limbs looked like arms and fingers pointing toward the sky. He shivered at the image of Top’s vision that Miss Becky’d told him about only days before. “See there? That line of trees that’ve already lost their leaves?”

  “All these leaves are falling. It’s that time of the year.”

  “It is, but those started falling first. You cut the roots, the trees died, and those are a couple of hundred years old. A couple are marker trees the Old People bent to point toward water and springs. You killed a spring over there, too. That’s where you dozed first, to find the graves this past summer. Add malicious destruction of private property and natural resources to the charges.”

  “They’re just old Indian bones. What of it?”

  Cody felt his face redden as his anger built. “Those old bones were people. Miss Becky’s people. It was their graveyard, and you dug ’em up with a damned bulldozer.”

  Bill sulled up. “You wouldn’t have found out about it if it wasn’t for this damn gold rush everybody’s all worked up about.”

  Cody took his arm. “Yeah, the one my granddaughter started when you traded a coin you dug out of a grave for building supplies. Come go get in the car.”

  Bill went with him to Anna’s car. “It was the first one I found. I didn’t think it would be worth much with that hole drilled in the top.”

  “That’s so it could be a necklace.” Cody slammed the car door and turned to Anna with a grin. “The mayor, huh?”

  “I’m going to nip that in the bud as soon as we get back to town.”

  “You do that. Book him for me, because I have one more thing to do.”

  “What?”

  “Pepper started this. Now she’s gonna finish it.”

  Cody drove back to Center Springs to end the gold rush. The parking lots of both general stores were filled with strange cars and trucks. Knots of men loafed in small groups that formed then dissolved. Others spread maps over the trunks or hoods of their vehicles, looking for possible places to explore.

  He crept past, making sure they all got a good look at his sheriff’s car. He accelerated on the oil road past Neal Box’s store and turned into the long drive in front of the Ordway Place. He tapped the horn and pulled to a stop under the spreading oak trees.

  James came out on the porch. “What’s going on?”

  Leaving the motor running, Cody stood and leaned on his car door. “Pepper here?”

  “Yep.”

  “Get her and y’all come go with me.”

  “Where to?”

  “To put an end to this gold rush foolishness.”

  James stepped back inside and reemerged thirty seconds later with Pepper and Mark. Pulling on their coats, the stone-faced kids got in the back and James took the front passenger seat. Cody spun the wheel and headed back to the stores, glancing in the rearview mirror.

  “Pepper, I’m gonna pull up there beside the domino hall and block the road with this car. Then you’re gonna climb up on the roof here and when I get everyone gathered around, you’re gonna explain that this whole gold rush idea came out of your empty head, and then you’re gonna apologize.”

  Her jaw fell open and Mark had to cover his mouth with one hand so she couldn’t see his grin. “But Uncle Cody, I didn’t mean for all this to happen.”

  “We don’t mean for a lot of things to happen, but when they turn out wrong, we have to pay the piper.”

  He pulled the car across the oil road at the intersection between the domino hall and Oak Peterson’s store. He killed the engine, turned on his lights, and gave the siren a quick punch. The shrill yelp caught the attention of everyone in the area and they drifted in his direction. He stepped out and waved for them to gather around.

  “Y’all come on over here!” Cody ducked his head back inside the car. “I know you didn’t mean for this to get all out of control, but people have been hurt and arrested after you got crossways with that gal on Neal’s porch and told her a big windy. Now, get on up there and do what I told you.”

  Eyes full of tears, Pepper stepped out of the car. She hesitated until Cody held out his hand to steady her as she used the back bumper for a step. Her tennis shoes left distinct prints on the dusty trunk lid. She had to use a knee on the back glass to crawl onto the roof. By that time, a mix of strangers and Center Springs residents gathered around the car.

  Cody faced the crowd. “Folks, my niece Pepper here has something to say to y’all, and I want you to listen. Go ahead on, gal. Tell ’em who you are and what you did.”

  Face flushed red with embarrassment, she pulled her hair behind one ear and adjusted the feather. Her first words quavered, but gathered strength as she went on. “For y’all that don’t know me, I’m Pepper Parker, and my grandaddy’s the constable here, Ned Parker. This is my Uncle Cody Parker, and I guess y’all can tell he’s the sheriff.” She took a deep breath, staring down at the faces looking up, mostly strangers. “I got aggravated at that big-tittied…”

>   “Pepper!” Her daddy’s sharp voice caused her to jump.

  “Jeeze. Don’t have a cow. All right. I got mad at a girl over there at Neal Box’s and made up a story about finding a gold coin at Palmer Lake. There ain’t no lost gold that I know of, and all you greedy people just took a little fib and blew it all up.”

  Cody didn’t call her on the observation, because it was true. Instead, he watched the faces of those around him. “What else?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused. I didn’t mean to do it. ” She scrambled down and took off walking down the road toward home, her bell-bottoms flapping around her ankles.

  Mark started to follow, but James held out a hand. “Stay right here for a little while, son. It’s time you start learning about women. She needs to be alone and think about what she’s done. If you go with her, she’ll cry and let you shoulder some of what she needs to deal with.”

  “You all heard what she said.” Cody raised his voice so everyone could hear. “The buried treasure is an old wives’ tale and nobody’s found anything, so I want all y’all to go on back home and pass the word. You’ve been snookered by a little ol’ teenage gal who’s fessed up. This is over, and anybody I catch trespassing from here on out will be charged with a helluva lot more’n that. Judge O.C. Rains has cleared his calendar for the next three days and says he’ll levy the maximum fines the law will allow, and by the way, once we have somebody in custody, I’m gonna run background checks and that’ll take several days. So y’all need to get gone.”

  A few grumbled, and more than one person in the crowd voiced an opinion that Pepper’s behind should be worn out. One that Cody agreed with. Five minutes later, the parking lots were nearly empty and Cody’s car was still sitting across the oil road.