by Janet Dailey
“That should do it.” He began ladling the boiling water into an enamel coffeepot. “Coffee’ll be ready in a short snort.”
“Sounds good.” Tired, Angie sank onto a flat boulder a few yards from the stone-encircled campfire.
“Was a time when a body could drink the water straight from the stream without needin’ to boil it first,” Fargo recalled, then smiled at another memory. “Last time I tried that, everybody got such a bad case of the trots, we had genuine traffic jams around every bush. That was one miserable camp, I’ll tell you.”
“I believe you.” She swept off her ball cap and shook her hair free.
“You’d better,” Luke told her, joining them. “It’s true. As one of the victims, I ought to know.”
Angie clucked her tongue in mock sympathy. “Poor guy.”
“Got the tents up, have you?” Fargo surmised and took the kettle off the fire, then hung the coffeepot in its place.
“All done.”
“It seems a shame to sleep in a tent when it looks like it will be a perfect night for sleeping under the stars,” Angie murmured with a touch of wistfulness.
Fargo snorted in disagreement. “You won’t think so when the bugs start flying and the snakes come slithering out of the rocks.”
Angie shuddered expressively. “Let’s don’t talk about snakes.”
“All right.” Luke grinned. “Instead of snakes, how about shadows? Want to see if we can tell where this one’s pointing while we’re waiting for the coffee to get done?”
Before Angie could respond, she was distracted by a rattling in the brush to her right. Thinking it was one of the horses, she turned and found herself staring into the bearded face of Saddlebags Smith.
With dark eyes glowering beneath the floppy brim of his hat, he challenged, “What’re you doin’ here?”
Calm once again after that first skitter of surprise, Angie rose to face the scarecrow-like man in baggy clothes. “The same thing you are,” she replied, with a smile. “Looking for the gold.”
“Ya think the shadow from that rock’ll guide ya to it?” He aimed a skinny finger at the tall boulder atop the knoll. “If ya do, you’re wastin’ your time. It ain’t gonna point you to nothin’ but heartbreak. Ya think I ain’t followed it? Ya think I ain’t looked in every direction? I scoured every canyon, an’ it ain’t here. An’ if I can’t find it, you won’t either!”
But Angie wasn’t about to admit defeat before the search had begun. “We’ll see.”
Pain and anger twisted through his expression. “You won’t see nothin’, I’m tellin’ ya!” His ill-fitting dentures clicked and clattered, creating an odd background cadence to his near shout. “Open up them ears o’ yours an’ listen!”
Recognizing the futility of arguing, Angie tried another tactic. “I’m willing to listen,” she told him. “We were about to have some coffee. Why don’t you join us?”
“The coffee ain’t ready yet or I’da smelt it,” Saddlebags retorted, back to glowering with narrowed, accusing eyes. “You weren’t about t’ drink it. You was goin’ to see where that shadow pointed. I heard ya talkin’.”
“The sun’s still too high. I was about to tell Luke that when you showed up,” Angie replied.
He grunted his doubt. “But you was plannin’ on checkin’ it out.”
“Later.” She sat back down on the rock and patted the broad space next to her. “Come have a seat. The coffee will be ready soon.”
Saddlebags shot a wary look at Luke, questioning his welcome. “Like she said, have a seat.” Luke motioned to the rock. “I’ll rustle another cup out of the pack.”
Still chary, Saddlebags sidled closer to the fire but steered clear of the flat boulder and rested his haunches on a rotted log instead. “You shoulda done like I told ya an’ gone back home. What was your folks thinkin’ anyway, lettin’ you come out here by yourself? You do got folks, ain’tcha?”
“My mother’s still living. I lost my father a few years back,” Angie replied.
“How come she didn’t come with you?” His gaze darted about, alert to every move Luke and Fargo made.
“She’s busy on the farm.” A smile tugged at a corner of her mouth. “And, to be perfectly honest, she thinks it’s sheer foolishness to look for the gold.”
He nodded, his glance falling to the ground near his feet. “You shoulda listened to her. You really shoulda,” he said with a kind of ache in his voice.
“What about your family?” Angie wondered, certain the old man was thinking of them.
“I ain’t got no family. Not no more,” he said, without looking up.
“Where was your home?”
His head came up, his gaze slicing to her. “This is the only home I got. An’ it’s the onliest one you’ll have, if you don’t get outta here quick.”
“Why?” In her side vision, she saw Fargo when he wrapped a towel around the handle of the enameled pot and lifted it off the fire. Steam rolled from the spout, aromatic with the scent of fresh-brewed coffee. One by one, he filled the tin cups that Luke had set out.
“Because lookin’ for that gold’ll make you crazy.” The wildness of it was in his eyes—and in his dirty, unkempt appearance. “It’ll get to where you can’t think o’ nothin’ else. You’ll forgit t’ eat, t’ sleep”—Saddlebags noticed his grimy fingers and nails as he reached for the cup Luke held out to him—“and t’ wash.”
She watched when he took the cup from Luke and drew it quickly close to his chest in an attempt to hide his dirty hands from her sight. “I don’t think you’re crazy, Mr. Smith.”
Fargo breathed out a scoffing snort and muttered, “Not much, he ain’t.”
“A crazy person wouldn’t notice how dirty he was,” Angie pointed out, as much for Fargo’s benefit as the old man’s.
“She’s right, Saddlebags,” Luke inserted. “A bath, a shave, a haircut, and a clean set of clothes that fit, and nobody would recognize you.”
“Just a bath would be an improvement,” Fargo stated and spat into the fire. There was an instant sizzle and hiss.
Glaring at him, Saddlebags raised his tin cup. “This coffee’d taste a sight better if’n ya put an egg in it t’ settle the grounds.”
“You’re danged right it would,” Fargo agreed, bristling with offense. “But the only eggs them packhorses can tote are the powdered kind. And they don’t taste too good in coffee.”
Without another word, Saddlebags threw a contemptuous look at Fargo, set his cup on the ground, and stood up. Fargo started to rise as if to meet the old man’s challenge. But Saddlebags turned and left the campsite at a trot that more closely resembled a fast, side-to-side waddle.
Angie was instantly on her feet. “Saddlebags, wait,” she called after him. “Come back. You haven’t finished your coffee.”
When she took a step after him, Luke laid a detaining hand on her arm. “Let him go,” he advised.
“But”—she frowned in confusion—“why did he take off like that?”
“Don’t be lookin’ at me,” Fargo declared. “It couldn’t a been nothin’ I said. He was the one makin’ insultin’ remarks about my coffee.”
“I know, but . . .” She looked in the direction Saddlebags had taken, but he’d disappeared into the brush. Sighing in regret, Angie turned back toward the fire. “There were so many questions I wanted to ask him.” Questions like, What did he know about the rock pillar and the significance of the shadow? and Had he found her grandfather’s effects, including a copy of the letter? “I wish he’d stayed longer.”
“It looks like your wish is about to be granted.” Luke looked beyond her at the spindly-legged old man hurriedly waddling back to the campsite.
He walked right past Angie, straight to Fargo; grabbed his hand; and placed a small, speckled egg in his palm. “Put that in the coffee.”
Fargo stared at it. “It’s a bird egg.”
“A chicken’s a bird, ain’t it?” Saddlebags challenged, then waved at the egg.
“That’ll work the same as a chicken’s.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Fargo cracked the egg open, checked the yolk, then tossed the egg in the coffeepot, shell and all. Saddlebags nodded in approval.
“The next cup’ll taste a lot better.” He picked up his cup and slurped at the hot coffee, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat and shot a quick look at the sun, measuring its distance from the horizon. “I’d best be goin’.” When he turned to leave again, he leveled a hard glance at Angie. “Mind what I said. That rock ain’t gonna point ya to nothin’ but heartbreak. Go home.”
Angie shook her head. “I can’t.”
A look of pure rage blazed in his eyes. “By God, I’ll make you go!” he roared and took a threatening step toward her.
Luke moved into his path. “Careful, old man,” he warned quietly.
“You have a care,” Saddlebags snarled right back. “An’ get her outta here!” He flung a hand in Angie’s direction, then took off, vanishing into the brush only yards from camp.
Although she was reluctant to admit it, the fury in his expression had left Angie a bit shaken. She tried to cover it with a show of casual indifference as she sipped at her coffee.
“I wouldn’t discount him as being totally harmless. There was some truth in what Saddlebags said,” Luke told her. “I hope you realize that. For years, he’s lived out here like an animal. And animals are very territorial.”
“Yes, but his bark strikes me as being too loud and too ferocious,” she remarked, thinking back over the encounter. “He wanted to scare me, I think—and he almost succeeded,” she acknowledged with a wry smile.
“Maybe it’s too bad he didn’t,” Luke mused.
Determination lifted her chin. “I am not about to give up before I’ve even begun to look.”
Luke made no comment and glanced instead at the rock formation. “Saddlebags certainly didn’t give any credence to the shadow thing.”
“He mighta been tryin’ to throw us off the scent, too,” Fargo suggested.
“Maybe.” Luke nodded slowly and swung back toward the fire. “We’ll know for ourselves in a couple more hours.”
With the sun sitting atop the rim of the western horizon, Luke and Angie climbed to the base of the stone pillar and halted in its shade. The long shadow it cast stretched far across the valley, its black finger pointing toward a treed slope on the far side. Through the binoculars, Luke scanned the area.
Lowering the glasses, he informed Angie, “There’s no entrance to any canyon over there. Which means this isn’t the right pillar.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Look for yourself.” He offered the binoculars.
“Oh, I believe you,” she assured him.
“Then what are you talking about?” His eyes narrowed in puzzled confusion.
Angie hesitated, then smiled ruefully. “I have a confession to make, Luke. I wasn’t entirely honest with you the other evening.”
“About what?”
“When I let you believe there wasn’t anything particularly significant about the postscript that was underlined in the letter,” she replied. “You see, I’m ninety-eight percent certain that it’s really the key to the entire message.”
“What? How?”
Chapter Nineteen
Ignoring his questions for the time being, Angie asked, “Do you remember what the postscript said?”
“Not exactly, no.”
She dug the folded copy of the letter from her jeans pocket and handed it to him. With the sinking of the sun, a breeze had sprung up. It tugged at the edges of the letter when Luke unfolded it.
He turned, using his body to shield it from the playful wind, and reread the postscript aloud.
“ ‘Remember. Always remember God’s way is not man’s way.’” He arched a questioning glance at Angie. “Which means what?”
“Which means . . . God’s way is usually the exact opposite of man’s way—or woman’s, for that matter.” But Angie could tell that Luke didn’t follow this line of thought. “For example, the three things most people want are money, power, and position. But the three things that God values are generosity, service, and humility. In other words, a person with a giving heart, someone who puts the needs of others before his or her own, and someone who doesn’t think he or she is better than anyone else.”
“I see.” Frowning thoughtfully, he examined the letter again. “So you think this postscript was deliberately underlined to indicate that—”
Angie jumped in with the answer, “All the instructions in the coded message need to be reversed. Instead of an evening shadow, it’s a morning one; instead of following the right wall of the canyon, you go left.”
“It sounds reasonable.” But there was a note of reservation in his voice.
“It has to be that way. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Why?”
“Because my grandfather knew about the twelfth-word code. He had deciphered the message before he came out here, yet in his last letter he wrote that it was all confusing—nothing made sense. Which can only mean the instructions in the message didn’t lead him to the gold.” Eager, excited, energized—she was all those things. The animation in her face and eyes fascinated Luke. “When I realized that, I knew there had to be something more in the letter. Something more than that kindergarten-level code.”
“And you’re convinced it’s the underlined postscript,” Luke stated.
“Why else did he underline it?” Angie reasoned. “Something tells me there isn’t a single thing in the letter that’s there by accident. Ike Wilson carefully thought through every word and every stroke in it. I’ve often wondered how many drafts he made. I know he must have been worried that someone other than his wife would read the letter and stumble onto his simple, twelfth-word code. Somewhere along the way, he came up with the idea of flip-flopping the direction. After that, it was probably an easy step for a minister’s son to make the connection with God.” She paused for a breath, her eyes sparkling. “So, in a way, I was truthful when I told you that I thought the postscript was underlined for emphasis. But what I didn’t tell you was that it’s the second—and vital—key to the message. Without it, we could look for years, just like Saddlebags, and never find the gold.”
“If you’re right,” Luke tacked on the qualification.
“Like I said, I’m ninety-eight percent sure I’m right. Let’s find out if I am.” Her smile radiated confidence when she reached for his hand and led him around to the other side of the towering boulder. “Look.”
With the sun’s red blaze directly in his eyes, it was a moment before Luke could block off enough of its glare to see where she was pointing. There, half hidden by the long shadows of sundown, was the entrance to a canyon.
“I’d bet anything,” Angie said, “that the rock’s morning shadow will be aimed directly at the mouth to that canyon. What do you think?”
He checked the stone pillar behind him, gauged the placement of the sun, and nodded agreement. “I think that’s a safe bet.”
“So do I.” The certainty of it smoothed her expression and brought a glow to her eyes. “Plus, the pillar is close enough to the entrance that Ike Wilson would have noticed the reach of its shadow when he and the gang rode out of the canyon in the morning.”
“It sounds like you think they camped there the night before.”
“It would have been logical.” She turned from the canyon entrance and the setting sun’s blinding glare. “After all, they’d ridden long and hard to elude the pursuing posse. Their horses had to be exhausted from carrying the double burden of the gold. And, it had to take them some time to stash the gold where it couldn’t easily be found. I don’t think they just dumped it somewhere and tumbled a bunch of rocks over it.”
From somewhere off in the distance came the putt-putting rumble of an idling engine. Luke turned an ear to it, trying to discern the direction of it, but it had bounced and rolled off too many r
ocks and hills to make any accurate determination.
“What’s that?” Angie wondered.
“It sounds like the neighbor’s ATV. He must have been out fixing his fence this afternoon,” Luke guessed.
“On an ATV?” Angie considered the choice of transportation curious, to say the least.
“Bob claims he can haul more with an all-terrain vehicle,” Luke replied, then added with a grin, “but the real truth is, he can’t stand horses.”
“A rancher who hates horses?” Angie repeated incredulously. “Isn’t he in the wrong line of work?”
“He probably was until they came out with ATVs.” A faint smile continued to crease his cheeks. “Now, he does just about everything but rope off of one.”
“It might be a bit difficult to dally a rope around the handlebars,” she remarked, amusement dancing in her expression.
“More than a bit, I’d say,” Luke agreed with a smile, then glanced toward the west. Only the top half of the sun remained above the rim, staining the sky around it with its crimson hue. “We’d better head back to camp while there’s still some light.”
Without conscious thought, Luke placed a hand on the back of her waist and guided her toward the campfire’s flickering light. Far off, an engine revved. The breeze stiffened, carrying the noise of it to them and making it seem much closer.
Astride the ATV, Griff Evans roared along the bed of the coulee, steering well clear of the camp Luke and the Sommers woman had set up near the base of the valley’s first stone pillar. The wrong pillar, he thought and smugly smiled to himself.
Perfect timing, that’s what it had been, reaching the valley while there was still enough daylight to see that the shadow from the first pillar pointed to a solid slope; there wasn’t a canyon within fifty yards of it. Now the Sommers woman was stuck in camp for the night while he checked out the other formation. Luck was still running with him.
The coulee bed roughened before him, forcing Griff to ease back on the throttle, reducing the engine’s roar to a steady rumble. Sunset’s shadows thickened around him, the gathering darkness warning him there wasn’t much light left. He pulled down his protective goggles, letting them hang about his neck, and increased the speed a notch, ignoring the jolting bumps it caused.
