by Janet Dailey
“I suppose I have,” Angie admitted with a faint sigh.
“It bothers you that you haven’t located the infamous eagle rock yet.” His smiling eyes studied the clean lines of her profile. He never seemed to tire of looking at her. “Worried that you might not find the gold?”
“A little, maybe,” Angie conceded. “It’s been easy up to now.”
“You know the odds are against you. What happens if you don’t find it?” Luke knew that the obvious answer was that she would go back to her teaching job in Iowa. Secretly he hoped that Angie would tell him she planned to stay in Wyoming—at least through the summer. More time with her, that’s what he wanted.
She hesitated, as if thinking it through. “I won’t have the sense of closure that I wanted.” The tone of her answer made it obvious that she was responding on an analytical level, considering her emotional response to the situation, when his question had really sought a literal one. “Taking my grandfather’s remains home for burial will only end that particular chapter in our family’s history. The story won’t be finished until the gold is found.” There was a sudden glimmer of the old twinkling look in the glance Angie sent him, a touch of wry humor curving her lips. “I don’t know about you, but I’m irritated when a book leaves me dangling at the end.”
“You prefer happy endings, do you?” Luke murmured, liking the idea himself. “That’s not very realistic.”
“It’s very realistic,” she stated. “That all life is.”
“What?”
“A series of happy endings, one after another.”
Intrigued by her statement, he cocked his head. “How do you figure that?”
“It’s easy. Everyone has lean times, hard times, rocky times—whether financially, emotionally, or physically. But we get through them. And each time we do, it’s a happy ending. Pain is always balanced by pleasure, sadness by joy, bad times by good, sickness by health, etcetera. Most people don’t recognize it as a happy ending because nobody types those two magic words THE END at the bottom of that particular page in their life.”
“That’s a bit simplistic, don’t you think?” Luke countered.
“Do you really believe it’s more complex than that?” Angie parried with amusement.
“You yourself said that taking your grandfather’s remains home wouldn’t give you the sense of closure you expected,” Luke reminded her. “But being able to take the body home, shouldn’t that be one of your happy endings?”
“Definitely. But that’s also why we don’t usually recognize them—because we go by our feelings rather than facts.” All this talk about finding the gold had Angie’s thoughts circling back to the problem at hand. “But it’s also a fact that I won’t find the gold until I locate that eagle rock.”
There was a determined set to her chin. Luke knew that she wasn’t about to let the morning’s lack of success discourage her from the search. Truthfully, he would have been surprised if it had.
Immediately after lunch, Angie was back in the saddle. Trip after trip she made up and down the canyon wall, visually combing every inch of its face. She rode close to it, then drew back to view the shapes from a distance. Each time she met up with Luke or Tobe, making their separate searches, they shook their heads. They weren’t having any more luck than she was.
By afternoon’s end, Angie was almost ready to throw up her hands in defeat. “I don’t understand. It has to be here.” Confusion etched a troubled frown on her face as Angie studied the rock bluff. “We must have missed something.”
“If you say so.” Luke tiredly pushed his hat to the back of his head and laid both arms across the saddlehorn. “But I don’t know what it would be.”
“Neither do I.” She almost sighed the answer.
“I know one thing—these horses could use a drink. What do you say we ride back to camp, get them some water, grab a cup of coffee for ourselves, and stretch our legs a bit?”
Like it or not, the suggestion was a sensible one. “Might as well,” Angie agreed. “We’re not that far from camp.”
“I know.” Straightening in the saddle, Luke lifted his hat and set it back square on his head. “With any luck, Fargo will have supper started. We can eat and come back out when the light on the wall is different.”
“Yes, that could make a difference.” She warmed to the thought. “If the outlaws left the canyon early in the morning, then it’s logical to assume they reached it very late in the afternoon or early in the evening.”
“We’ll find out.” Luke started his horse toward camp.
Angie was quick to follow him on the roan. Before they reached it, Tobe joined up with them, looking tired and disgruntled.
“You struck out, too, didn’t you?” he guessed and shot an accusing look at Angie. “Are you sure this is the right canyon?”
“I’m positive.”
“Well, I’m not,” he grumbled. “I’ll bet it’s one of the other ones.”
“Maybe, but I’m not ready to give up on this one,” Angie said to him.
Tobe muttered something under his breath and fell silent.
At the camp, Dulcie saw them coming and ran to meet them.
“Did you find it?” Dulcie fastened her hopeful gaze on Angie, watching as she dismounted.
“Not yet.” Angie followed Luke’s lead and loosened the saddle cinch.
“Oh.” It didn’t occur to Dulcie to hide her disappointment. “I thought you would have found it by now, for sure.”
“So did I,” Angie admitted. “But it didn’t turn out that way.”
“Tobe”—Luke gathered up the reins to both horses and passed them to him—“take the horses and get them a drink.”
“I wish I could go look for it.” Dulcie trotted alongside Angie when she crossed to the campfire. “I’ll bet I could find it.”
“If you didn’t get yourself lost first, you mean,” Fargo chided as he poured coffee into a metal cup for Angie.
“I wouldn’t get lost if I went with Angie,” Dulcie reasoned.
“She’s got you there.” Angie sent a teasing glance at Fargo over the cup rim.
Dulcie leaped on that hint of an agreement. “Could I go with you? I saw lots and lots of stuff when I looked before.”
“You did, huh?” Angie murmured, her thoughts already beginning to stray from the conversation.
“Uh-huh. I saw a turtle and an old woman with no teeth and an angel and a camel—”
The list Dulcie rattled off started Angie thinking in another direction. She abruptly turned to Luke, shocked by a whole new possibility. “I just realized that I’ve been assuming all along that by an eagle he meant a bird. But what if he meant something else?”
“Like what?” He took a sip of his coffee, eyeing her skeptically.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But there are other definitions for the word. It can be a golfing score . . . or a gold coin—”
“Wait a minute,” Luke broke in, his gaze suddenly slicing to the girl. “What did you just say, Dulcie?”
She shrank from the sharpness of his eyes. “Nothing,” she mumbled.
“Yes, you did. You were telling us all the things you’d seen,” he reminded her, while Angie looked on, thoroughly mystified. “What were they again?”
Deciding that maybe she wasn’t in trouble after all, Dulcie began reciting her list: “I saw a camel, an angel—”
“How could you tell it was an angel?” Luke interrupted again.
“Because it had wings.”
“Wings,” he repeated in satisfaction and looked at Angie.
She knew exactly what he was thinking. She had just been struck by the same thought. Her pulse quickened with the rising excitement she felt.
“Do you think you could find that angel again, Dulcie?” Luke asked.
“Uh-huh. It’s really big. You can’t miss it,” she assured him, then frowned. “Didn’t you see it?”
“I’m afraid not,” Angie told her. “Would you show us whe
re it is?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, Tobe,” Luke called. “Cinch up those saddles and bring the horses back.”
When Tobe returned with the horses, Luke lifted Dulcie onto his saddle, then swung up behind her. After checking to verify the others were mounted and ready, he asked the girl, “Which way do we go?”
“That way.” Dulcie pointed to an area toward the right, then tipped her head sideways to look up at him. “It’s over where I talked to that scary old man.”
“Saddlebags?” Angie said in surprise. “You saw him?”
“Uh-huh.” Dulcie bobbed her head affirmatively, her ponytail brushing the front of Luke’s shirt. “Right after I saw the angel. He was beside a big tree.”
“An angel?” Tobe stared at his sister as if she’d taken leave of her senses.
“Yeah, in the rock,” she replied as Luke set out for the spot, flanked by Tobe and Angie.
“I hope it didn’t talk to you.”
“Not a real angel, Tobe,” Angie explained when she realized he had taken Dulcie literally. “She saw the shape of one in the rocks.” Feeling foolish, he fell silent. “You said you talked to Saddlebags. What did he say to you?”
After an initial shrug of blankness, Dulcie recalled, “He said he was getting too old for people to be scared of him. But I was . . . kinda.” Then, pleased that she had remembered the compliment, she quickly added, “And he said you were clever. That was nice, huh?”
“It was. Did he say anything else?” Angie wondered.
Frowning, Dulcie thought hard over that. “He did say something about you being stopped,” she recalled, then brightened. “He was wrong, though. You aren’t stopped, are you?”
“Definitely not.” Angie scanned the high canyon wall before them, searching for the rock formation that, to Dulcie, resembled a winged angel.
“Did you show Saddlebags your angel rock?” Luke asked.
“No, I—There it is!” she burst excitedly and stretched a finger toward the wall’s upper section. As one, all three riders pulled up to look. “See it?!”
Angie made a rapid scan of the bulging cliff face but saw no formation jutting from it shaped like an angel—or an eagle, for that matter. “Where? I don’t see it.”
“It’s right there!” Dulcie continued to point to the same area. “Don’t you see it?”
“There’s nothing there but solid rock,” Tobe declared in disgust.
“That’s an angel,” Dulcie insisted. “A giant one.”
Luke bent to the side to better follow the angle of her finger. “Show me where its wings are.”
“One’s right there. See its feathers going up and down.” She made nearly vertical strokes in the air with her finger.
He searched for a similar pattern in the rock face—and found it. “Well, I’ll be,” he murmured in amazement and slowly straightened erect to stare.
“You found it? Where? I still don’t see it,” Angie said with growing frustration.
“Don’t look for a rock shaped like an eagle. Look for the shape of an eagle etched into that tall boulder,” Luke instructed.
“It’s not an eagle. It’s an angel,” Dulcie corrected.
“Angel or eagle, it all depends on which one you want it to be,” he replied, then said to Angie, “see those long, natural folds in the boulder?”
“Yes,” she breathed in answer, suddenly seeing the crude, winged form nature had carved into the stone. “That’s it,” Angie murmured and kept her gaze fixed on it as she stepped out of the saddle. Holding on to the horse’s rein, she moved closer to the wall to stare up at it. “That is definitely it.” This time there was a ring of conviction in her voice.
Hearing it, Tobe gave up trying to see it himself and decided to simply take her word for it. “We’ve found the eagle rock. Now what?”
From memory, Angie quoted the next phrase in the letter’s coded message. “‘Buried ten feet to the left.’ Which means it’s to the right.” Her glance cut to Luke, certainty glowing in her eyes. “And the antonym for ‘bury’ is ‘dig.’ ”
Tobe’s eyes rounded in astonishment. “You mean it’s here? The gold’s right here?”
“Right here.” Angie nodded emphatically, confident the search was over. “All we have to do is dig it up.”
“Ride back to camp and get the shovels, Tobe.” Luke dismounted to swing Dulcie off the saddle and onto the ground.
With a sawing of the reins, Tobe turned his horse toward camp and whipped it into a gallop, shouting the news to Fargo. “We found it! We found it!”
Dulcie ran to Angie’s side. “I helped find it, didn’t I?”
“You certainly did.”
“Where’s it buried? I could start digging,” she offered eagerly.
“It should be buried ten feet to the right.” Angie glanced at Luke. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“Somewhere in that area, yes.”
While they waited for Tobe to bring the shovels, Luke paced off approximately ten feet. With her hands, Angie began scraping aside the layer of loose stone at the base of the wall.
When Tobe galloped back with the shovels, Fargo was with him. Sliding his horse to a stop, Tobe piled out of the saddle and ran to join them, hastily tossing a shovel to Luke. Fargo didn’t lag far behind him.
“This is the spot, huh.” With avid eyes, Fargo examined the section of ground partially cleared of gravel, then belatedly handed Luke a pair of heavy work gloves. “I grabbed these out of the pack. I figured you’d need ’em if you had to do a lot of diggin’.”
“Thanks.” He paused to pull them on, then picked up the shovel.
By then Tobe had already made his first jab with the other one, but had barely made a scratch on the ground’s hard surface. “Man, this is like concrete,” he muttered. “We’re gonna need jackhammers to get through it.”
Over and over again, they pounded the area with the points of their shovels and gradually chipped away the top crust. Standing to one side, Angie watched their slow progress. At last, the first big bite of dirt was taken out of the firmly packed soil. The real digging had begun.
“You’re wastin’ your time,” a voice declared, scratchy with age.
Startled by it, Angie spun around as all work stopped behind her. She stared at the scarecrow figure of Saddlebags Smith standing not ten feet away, baggy clothes hanging off his bone-thin frame, dirty white hair poking from beneath his floppy hat.
“It’s our time to waste. And who asked you anyway?” Tobe shot back.
“Nobody. Jus’ thought I’d volunteer it.” He paused, a slyness invading his expression. “Ya think ya found the gold, don’t ya? But you ain’t.”
“You don’t think we’re gonna take your word for that, do you?” Fargo sneered. “That’d be real smart of us to quit diggin’ on your say-so. Why, the minute we walked away, you’d step in and claim the gold for yourself, and we’d be out.”
“You’re out anyways. All your work’s gonna be fer nothin’. When you’re done, you’ll only have sweat an’ blisters to show for it. The gold ain’t there.”
“How do you know?” Angie studied him closely, trying to judge whether he was telling the truth.
“’Cause I a’ready looked. Sweat an’ blisters, that’s what you’ll get,” he repeated. “Sweat an’ blisters.”
Cackling to himself, he turned and disappeared into the trees at a waddling trot. Angie stared after him, struggling to ignore the niggling doubt he’d planted.
Tobe was the first to throw off the seed the old man had cast, muttering, “The crazy old coot, what does he know?” He stepped a foot on the shovel and pushed the blade deep in the firm soil.
When Angie turned back to the site, her gaze briefly locked with Luke’s. She read the unspoken question in it and thought back over the message’s phrase. Her conclusion was still the same.
“It should be buried somewhere right around here,” she stated.
Luke nodded an acceptance and went back to d
igging.
A few inches deeper, the dirt became less compact, and the work went more quickly. Soon, they had a good-sized hole, but it wasn’t large enough for two men to continue digging at the same time. They started taking turns, with Tobe leading off.
Angie wasn’t sure when she first noticed the humming sound. It had been a background noise for so long that it had almost ceased to register. As it grew steadily louder and louder, she became aware of it again. She tipped her head, listening to it, certain she’d heard the sound before.
“The ATV,” she remembered and glanced at Luke.
“Must be Griff.” He gazed thoughtfully toward the canyon entrance.
“Man, is he gonna be mad when he finds out that we know where the gold is.” Grinning tiredly, Tobe tossed another shovelful of dirt out of the hole.
A moment later, the roar of the ATV echoed through the canyon as the vehicle barreled into view. It seemed to be headed toward the campsite. Then the driver obviously noticed the saddled horses grazing near the canyon wall and whipped the ATV toward them.
When it braked to a stop a few feet from the site, Angie saw the frantic wildness in Griff’s eyes. The day-old beard growth that shadowed his cheeks gave his face a gaunt and haggard look. His sweat-stained clothes were dirty and rumpled.
The instant he saw the hole they were digging, he sprang off the ATV. “You found it. You found the gold.” He looked and sounded stunned. In the background, the engine continued to putt-putt at an idling speed. “But . . . how? It isn’t supposed to be here.”
He turned a confused glance on Angie. In a flash, his whole demeanor changed, his expression wavering between fury and frustration.
“You did this.” He ground out the accusation through clenched jaws. “You planned this whole thing.”
Angie frowned in bewilderment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Immediately he was in her face, making no attempt to control his rage. “Don’t play dumb, lady. You aren’t foolin’ me one bit.” His whole body vibrated with anger as he shook a crumpled sheet of paper in front of her. Somewhere behind her a shovel clunked to the ground. “You deliberately left this just to throw me off track.”
