by Janet Dailey
“Left what?” She tried to focus on the moving paper. “Griff, you aren’t making any sense.”
“I’m makin’ plenty of sense, and you know it!” he shouted, neck muscles bulging, hot tears filling his eyes. “You knew I’d find this in the wastebasket! You did it to trick me, and I fell for it! I oughta—”
“Back off, Griff.” Luke grabbed his arm and spun him away from Angie. “Back off now!” For a tension-charged second, the two men glared at each other. Breaking it, Luke muttered, “What kind of loco weed have you been eating anyway?”
Reaching out, he snatched the crumpled paper from Griff’s grasp, looked at it, shot an accusing look at Griff, then passed it over to Angie. It was the decoded message from the letter, the one Luke had written on the notebook paper. “You found that in the wastebasket, did you? What did you do—break into her camper?” Luke demanded.
Chin quivering, Griff snarled, “You can’t call it breakin’ in when a place isn’t locked.”
“Maybe this time it wasn’t,” Luke conceded, “but what about the first time?”
Griff struggled to maintain his air of bellicosity, but he had trouble meeting Luke’s eyes. “All right, so it was me who picked the lock and went through her camper the first time. So what? I didn’t take anything. No harm was done.” He shot a sudden glance at Fargo, his expression turning sly with malice. “At least I didn’t hit her over the head like he did.”
Luke swung around to stare at the one-armed cowboy in disbelief. “You?”
The redness of shame and embarrassment flooded Fargo’s face, his mouth working soundlessly for a moment. “Luke, I didn’t—I was careful not to hurt her, honest. I only meant to—” Fargo began lamely, then broke it off to point an accusing finger back at Griff. “It was all his doin’!” His voice went shrill with a kind of defensive anger. “He was the one who said the letter she showed us was phony, that she still had the real one in her purse. I just wanted to stun her long enough to grab the purse and skedaddle. That’s all.” He hesitated guiltily. “With that letter, I figured I could find the gold. Dammit, Luke, I need it.”
“Why?” Luke stared at him with a growing sense of having been betrayed.
“Why?” Fargo laughed out the word in disbelief, then spoke with a catch in his voice, “That’s a fool question to ask a sixty-eight-year-old man with one arm and no money and no family. One of these days I ain’t gonna be able to do your cookin’ and cleanin’, ya know. Then what’s gonna happen to me? Where am I gonna live? How am I gonna survive with jus’ a measly pension check from the government? Why, that piddly amount wouldn’t be enough to keep me in beans for a month. But with that gold . . .” He choked up, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“Gold,” Luke repeated in a voice that was grim and hard. “It was all for the gold. Look what it’s done to you.” His gaze sliced from Fargo to Griff, then bounced to Tobe, including him in its censure. “It’s turned you into a bunch of muggers, thieves, and slackers, out for what you can get regardless of who suffers along the way.”
“You’re a fine one to be preachin’,” Griff challenged. “You want that gold as much as we do.”
“You’re wrong,” Luke told him. “That gold can’t buy me what I want. It can’t bring back my wife and son.” Pivoting on his heel, he swung away from them and flashed an angry look at Angie. “I warned you that gold changes people, turns them into complete strangers.”
Perhaps she should have felt as hurt and outraged as Luke, but she only felt sad and sorry. “It wasn’t the gold, Luke. It’s the greed for it,” she reminded him.
“The two seem inseparable, don’t they?” he taunted without humor.
Ignoring that, Angie glanced at the crumpled notebook paper, then up to Griff. “I want you to know, Griff, that I threw this away because I didn’t need it anymore. It never occurred to me someone would go through my trash.” On impulse, she handed it back to him.
“Well, I did.” He kept his head down to conceal the bitter tears still swimming in his eyes. “I thought this paper was gonna be my ticket out of that fleabag bar. But it turned out to be worthless.” He balled the sheet in his fist. “Now you’ve found the gold, and I’m gonna be stuck in that dump the rest of my life, never havin’ a real restaurant of my own.”
“We’re still looking for the gold, Griff. We haven’t found it yet.” She watched him, pulled by the intense longing in his voice.
“Lot of good that does me.” Turning, he heaved the wadded ball into the air. But the lightness of it carried it only a few feet.
Angie hesitated, then went with her instincts. “If you’d like to help us, I’ll offer you the same deal I made with Tobe: twenty percent of whatever I receive for the gold. There are no guarantees it will be enough to buy you a real restaurant, but . . . something is better than nothing.”
He was instantly leery. “You’d cut me in? Why?”
“Why not? It’s only money,” she reasoned, then smiled. “Why be greedy about it? There’re five of us here. As long as we each do our share, why not split it five ways? It seems to me that’s the only fair thing to do. What do you say? Shall we count you in?”
His glance darted to the others as if he still believed there was a catch to it. Finally he gave a fierce nod. “You’re darn right you can count me in.” Immediately Griff went into action, crossing to the hole and taking the shovel from Tobe’s hand. “Here. Let me do the diggin’ for a while.”
Luke tugged off his gloves, eyeing her askance as he murmured for her ears alone, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I.” But she’d already searched and found no regrets, no doubts.
Moving away, Luke walked to the idling ATV and killed the engine, then glanced at the fading light overhead. Already the lavender-gray of twilight tinted the eastern sky.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he stated. “You’d better get supper started, Fargo, while there’s still enough light to see by. Tobe, take the horses back to camp, unsaddle them, and hobble them for the night. You might as well go with them, Angie. I’ll stay here and give Griff a hand. We’ll give a shout if we hit anything before nightfall.”
“I guess there’s not much point standing around here, is there?” She curved a hand over Dulcie’s shoulder. “Come on. We’ll walk back together.”
“We aren’t going to quit digging when it gets dark, are we?” Tobe protested. “Can’t we rig up some sort of light, start a fire or something?”
“If we uncover any of the gold yet tonight, we will,” Luke stated. “Otherwise, we’ll start work again in the morning.”
Night’s gathering darkness had thickened the valley’s shadows when Luke and Griff finally approached camp aboard the ATV. Like the others, Angie stood in silent expectation, but one look at their somber and weary expressions revealed that further digging, had been, as yet unsuccessful.
“We’ll try again in the morning,” Luke said in a voice that indicated he continued to regard the search as futile.
Angie summed up the mood of herself and the others. “We’re close,” she said with conviction. “I know we are.”
“If you say so.” Luke’s dry skepticism silenced the others.
With tension and fatigue pulling at their bodies and dreams of gold filling their thoughts, little time was spent talking during the evening meal. Afterwards, they turned in early, eager for night to end and morning to come.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sun had climbed above the eastern horizon over an hour ago, but its rays had yet to shine on the canyon’s high wall. Within its shadows, the air retained an invigorating crispness that sharpened all the senses.
The smell of freshly turned earth rose from the dirt pile next to the hole and mixed with the fainter scents of coffee and pine resin in the air. Using the extra shovel, Angie pushed more of the dirt away from the side of the ever-deepening hole, then stood back.
For a moment, the rhythmic chunk, scrape, and thud of the shovel, as it bit
into the ground, scooped up dirt, and dumped it onto the pile, dominated the morning stillness. Then Tobe paused and wiped the sweat from his upper lip on his shirtsleeve.
“How much deeper do you think we need to go?” he asked when Luke stepped into the hole to relieve him.
“Another foot probably,” Luke replied, then glanced at Angie, seeking her opinion.
“I can’t imagine they would have buried it any deeper than four feet,” she agreed. “I think it would have taken too much time. Time that would have been better spent covering up the fact the area had been disturbed at all.”
Stepping on the shovel, Luke drove it into the ground. The instant Angie heard the distinctive clink of the blade striking something hard, her heart skipped a beat. But it turned out to be another large rock, one of a score they’d encountered.
Minutes later Griff drove up on the ATV, hauling a thermos of coffee and a big jug of drinking water from camp. He set them both on a flat rock that had broken off from the cliff long ago.
“How’s it goin’?” He hurried to the hole.
“Nothing yet.” Luke tossed another shovelful of dirt onto the pile.
The digging continued.
At a depth of four feet, there was still no sign of the gold. Keenly disappointed, Tobe turned searching eyes on Angie. “I thought you said it would be here.”
“I thought it would be.” Clearly she’d been wrong. “Maybe it’s buried farther out from the base.”
The excavation was expanded to cover another three feet in length. The sun rose higher as they worked. Still nothing. Next they chopped away at the right side, widening the hole.
The sun was at its zenith when they broke for lunch, still with nothing to show for their labor. For the most part they ate in silence, communicating in grunts and grumbles, the underlying mood turning cranky and irritable.
When work resumed, they attacked the left side, and the sun crossed to the western half of the sky. Muscles began to feel the strain from all the digging.
More underlayers were exposed, still without revealing any glint of gold. Weariness and frustration worked on nerves that were already taut, fraying tempers and dashing hopes.
Less than a foot from the desired depth, they hit a layer of large rock chunks. Straightening, Luke stepped back to survey the area yet to be excavated.
“We’re wasting our time digging out this section,” he concluded. “The gold’s not going to be here.”
“You don’t know that,” Griff snapped angrily and scrambled into the rectangular hole that now measured six feet by nine. “Those outlaws coulda dumped those rocks on top of the gold just to make some fool like you think that way. Now, gimme that shovel and get out of the way.”
“Have at it.” Luke held out the shovel.
Griff jerked it from his grasp, then began an assault on the rock layer, channeling his anger and frustration into furious action. Tobe jumped in to help, using his hands to pry out the rock chunks near the surface.
Luke climbed out of the shallow pit and paused next to Angie. She stood near the edge, watching Griff’s feverish efforts, a small worry line running across her forehead. Luke tugged off his dirty gloves and absently pressed a hand to the small of his back, arching spine and shoulders to stretch cramping muscles.
“It doesn’t look good,” he told her quietly.
“I know,” she murmured, the line deepening with confusion. “I don’t understand either. It has to be buried somewhere in this area. Maybe we have to dig deeper.”
“Maybe.” But he still doubted they would find anything.
Moving away, he headed for the water jug on the rock, then hesitated, as he spotted Saddlebags sitting in the shade of some brush, watching the diggers with interest, bony arms resting on upraised knees.
His bright-black eyes encountered Luke’s gaze, and he cackled with a kind of malicious glee. “Didn’t I tell ya? It ain’t there. It surely ain’t,” he declared and cackled again.
Incensed by the taunting sound, Griff reacted with a snarling one of his own. “Why? Because some tottering old coot couldn’t find it when he looked?”
Stung by the insult, Saddlebags scrambled to his feet. “I wasn’t old when I first looked!” he shouted, both hands gripping the rifle. “Ya can dig all the way t’ China an’ ya still ain’t gonna find it anywheres along here.”
“That’s a lie.” Griff renewed his attack with the shovel, muttering under his breath, “It’s here. It has to be here.”
“Lyin’, am I?” Outraged, Saddlebags scuttled closer to the hole. “You ain’t dug up a ounce of soil that ain’t been touched by my sweat or the water from my blisters.” He bent in a crouch, hands on his knees, legs bowed. “Ya hear? Sweat an’ blisters, that’s what you’ll find with all your diggin’.”
“Shut up,” Griff growled out of a corner of his mouth.
“Sweat an’ blisters. Sweat an’ blisters.” Saddlebags chanted the taunting phrase over and over. “Sweat an’ blisters. Sweat an’ blisters.”
Griff spun around, gripping the shovel like a weapon. “I ain’t gonna tell you again—shut up!!”
Breaking off the chant, Saddlebags gave him a mean-eyed glare. “Why should I? I already dug up the ground under this eagle rock three times. I even dug deeper’n you are. An’ I dug all the way back to where he’s a-standin’ too,” he declared, thrusting a skeletal finger in Luke’s direction. “Afore I was through, I dug from one end o’ this wall t’ the other. An’ there weren’t no gold bars nowhere!”
Angie stared at him with a mixture of shock and dismay, her heart sinking. As much as she didn’t want to, she believed him. She believed every word he said. The gold wasn’t here.
She turned away, trying to understand how that could be. The letter, the coded message, the second key...
Behind her, Griff exploded out of the pit with a roar of rage. Saddlebags fired his rifle, the deafening report of it stopping Griff in his tracks as a bullet ricocheted off the cliff face, unleashing a shower of splintered rock. Dulcie screamed once and covered both ears with her hands while Angie swung back to the two men in shock. Saddlebags had the rifle pointed directly at a rapidly paling Griff who stood frozen in place, the upraised shovel still held over his head.
“You take one more step an’ I’ll put the next one in yore belly,” Saddlebags warned, pumping another bullet into the chamber, the ominous sound adding threat to his words. “Now, put that shovel down nice an’ easy.”
Griff slowly lowered the shovel, all the while struggling to hold onto his anger and disguise his fear. “By God, I oughta have you arrested for this,” he sputtered.
“Fer what?” Saddlebags challenged. “Fer defending m’self when you was gonna clobber me in the head with that shovel?”
“I still oughta,” Griff blustered, tightening his grip on the tool.
“That’s enough. Both of you.” Luke moved in and jerked the shovel from Griff’s grasp, tossed it back in the hole, then stepped between Griff and Saddlebags. “Point that rifle in a different direction before somebody gets hurt.”
“Wouldn’t nobody get hurt that didn’t have it comin’,” the old man retorted with a quick and pointed glare at Griff before he let the rifle muzzle sink toward the ground.
“Why don’t you just shut up?” Griff complained. “I’m tired of hearin’ your mouth. I liked it a lot better when we hardly saw you an’ rarely ever heard a peep out of ya when we did. Now you’ve turned into a damned ole windbag.”
“Callin’ me a windbag, are ya now?” Saddlebags bristled at the insult.
“I’ll call you a lot worse if you stick around here. So, go on! Get out!” Griff gestured in emphasis. “Nobody wants to listen to your pack of lies.”
“Lies, is that what you call ’em?” Saddlebags curled a lip back in a taunting grin. “I’m tellin’ ya, I already dug all around here an’ never found nothin’. But don’t take my word fer it. Ask him.” He poked the rifle in Luke’s direction. “Or ask old One-Ar
m Fargo Young. Twixt the two a them, they’s seen all the places I dug.”
Looking on, Angie saw doubt flicker in Griff’s expression for the first time. As if against his will, his glance slid to Luke to see what he would say. But Luke didn’t respond directly to Saddlebags’s claim.
“You’ve had your say, Saddlebags,” was Luke’s smooth reply. “And rubbed more than enough salt in. Be satisfied with that, and move on.”
For a moment, Saddlebags mulled on his words as if he were of two minds whether to stay or go. Coming to a decision, he cast a glance at Griff. “Sweat an’ blisters—that’s all yore gonna find here.” Before Griff could snap a response, the old man turned and walked off, chortling under his breath.
The instant Saddlebags was out of sight, Dulcie launched herself at her brother and hugged both arms around his legs. “Hey, what’s this?” Tobe looked down, startled and confused by her action.
“He scared me,” Dulcie replied in a thin and wavering voice that tugged at Angie’s heart.
“That old bag of wind?” Tobe reached down to extricate himself from encircling arms, then changed his mind and crouched down. “You don’t need to be scared of him. He’s gone.”
“But he might come back.”
That possibility clearly hadn’t occurred to Tobe. Recovering, he assured her, “If he does, then we’ll just chase him off. You don’t have to be scared of that old guy, Dulcie. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“Hey!” Fargo’s shouted call distracted the group. As one, they all turned toward the old cowboy as he approached the cliff face at a laboring trot, a rifle in one hand and the stump of his arm clutching a first-aid kit to his chest. “What’s the trouble?” He came to a puffing stop. “I thought I heard a gunshot.”
“You did,” Luke confirmed, then explained briefly about the confrontation with Saddlebags Smith.
When he finished, Fargo nodded and murmured absently, “And here I thought somebody mighta gotten snake bit, and it was only ole Saddlebags.”
“Only?” Griff challenged the dismissive word. “That old man’s a menace and should be locked up. If you don’t have Beauchamp swear out a warrant for him, Luke, I will.”
