by Becki Willis
A noisy commotion erupted in the hallway and made its way into the kitchen. Delroy Hatfield pushed Fred into the room and gave her a shove that almost sent her toppling.
“Well, well, looks like we’re having ourselves a party!” Everett said with a leering grin.
To Hannah’s surprise, Fred straightened her small frame, narrowed her eyes, and fairly spat at the big man. “Bigs Hatfield, what are you doing back here!”
He merely grinned at her outburst. “I remember you. You’re still a fine-lookin’ woman, even after all these years. I came back to claim my treasure, don’t you know.”
“Wilhelmina threw you out years ago and warned you to never come back!”
Both Hannah and Delroy were confused by the turn of conversation. Delroy was the first to speak up. “What’s she talking about, Bigs? You been here before? But the curse…”
“Once, don’t you know, back in the late sixties. I was on a job down in San Antone, so I made a little detour. This whole place was run by women, don’t you know, including the Hannah woman, that one whose family put the curse on ours. I didn’t do nothing, just tried to reason with them.”
Fred snorted. “More like you tried to threaten us, but Wilhelmina set you straight. Sent you packing, all the way back to Kansas.”
Bigs’ face colored with anger. He didn’t like being reminded of his failure, particularly in front of his brother. “But I’m back now, and this time, I ain’t backing down. I ain’t leaving, till I find the gold that little gal hid!”
“You old fool, she hid the map, not the treasure.”
“Fine! Then I’ll tear this place apart until I find the map. And you ladies are going to help me!”
“Says who?” Fred sassed, hands upon her hips.
“Says me and my Colt.” Bigs Hatfield reached into his baggy overalls and produced a gun. He pointed it at the older woman, motioning for her to move. “Get over by your friend so I can keep an eye on you.”
“You know Walker is right outside,” Hannah reminded the men. “He’ll be back at any moment.”
“I ain’t worried ‘bout him,” Bigs, aka Everett Tinker, said with an evil grin. “Me and my Colt done had our conversation with him.”
“You killt him?” Delroy squeaked, his eyes popping wide. “You said no more killing!”
“Shut up, Delroy! I didn’t kill him, least ways I don’t think I did. Knocked him over the head is all. Now shut up and find us something to eat.”
At the mention of food, his brother brightened. He eagerly made his way to the refrigerator, no longer concerned about the possibility of another death on their count. “They do have some fine eating here. Maybe they have some more pork chops.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
Hannah had been in the process of easing her leaden leg back down to the floor. She paused in the process to exclaim, “Pork chops! It was you, wasn’t it?”
“I swear, those were the best pork chops I ever did eat. Say, maybe you could give me the r—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Bigs whipped off his cap and swatted his brother. While he berated the foolish notion of swapping recipes while under gunpoint, not to mention in the middle of searching for lost treasure, Fred slipped Hannah her cell phone. She then made a show of helping Hannah adjust the ice pack to her ankle, providing effective cover while Hannah shot off a text to 9-1-1. Not that the arguing brothers even noticed, particularly when Delroy opened the refrigerator and found the leftover sausage.
“Maybe I’ll skip California,” Del said, talking with his mouth full, “and settle down here. These Texans sure know how to eat.”
Bigs stuffed a fat link into his mouth, wiping the grease from his mouth with the back of his hand. “That they do, little brother. But when we’re done here, we won’t be sticking around.”
“Why not?” Del whined. “I like it here. And I sure would like to meet up with that pretty little blond gal again. She sure can cook.” He looked around the kitchen, as if expecting to see her.
“His light is even dimmer than his brother’s,” Fred muttered from the side of her mouth. “What blonde is he talking about?”
“Caroline.” Hannah saw Fred’s eyebrows shoot upward. “Yes,” she whispered, “I know about Caroline. And no, Delroy doesn’t.” Despite the serious situation they were in, a giggle escaped her lips.
“Hey!” Bigs barked, jerking his attention back to the two women he more or less held a gun upon. In actuality, the barrel pointed down and off to the side as he devoured another sausage. “What’s so funny over there?”
“Just the two of you, Bigs,” Fred said, seemingly unconcerned with the danger of goading him. “Thinking there’s still a fortune to be found. If we knew where the map was, don’t you think we would have already claimed the fortune for ourselves?”
Both men narrowed their eyes, considering the possibility of her words. Again, it was almost amusing, watching the time it took for their thoughts to compute. When they finally did, Delroy’s face crinkled with concern, while Bigs’ face contorted in rage.
“You stole our fortune?” Bigs bellowed. “All our life, we’ve waited for the old lady to die, waited to get our hands on the fortune, and now we’re here, and you tell us it’s already gone?”
“I said no such thing!” snapped Fred.
Hannah could see the situation was getting out of hand. Bigs was angry, Fred’s saucy attitude only made matters worse, and Delroy, once again digging in the refrigerator, threatened to eat them into starvation.
“Out of curiosity,” Hannah quickly interjected, hoping to cut the tension in the room, “what does Miss Wilhelmina’s death have to do with this? Why were you waiting for her to die?”
“Because she was the last of the Hannah family. When she died, so did the curse on our family.”
“What curse was that?”
“That medicine woman put some sort of hex on our great-granddaddy for breaking that Hannah gal’s heart, don’t you know. Cursed us for all generations. But with the Hannah bloodline now gone, there’s no more need for the hex. It frees our family from the curse, once and for all, don’t you know.” His eyes lit with greed and a smile spread across his fleshy face. “And with the curse out of the way”—he spread his arms wide in a gesture of freedom—“we’re free to come back here and search for the gold.”
“Except for extending the curse.”
Bigs did a double take at her words. “Huh?” A dumbfounded expression filled his face.
Hannah nodded her head vigorously, hoping to sound convincing when she said, “You ignored the curse and came back anyway, back in… when was it?” She looked to Fred for confirmation.
“Sixty-nine.”
“Okay, that was almost fifty years ago, so naturally, that extends the curse by another fifty years.”
“Is that true?” Delroy poked his head out from behind the refrigerator door, losing interest in the cold noodles. “Bigs, did you do that?” His voice hitched higher. “Did you extend the curse?”
“No! No, of course not! She’s making that up!” his brother claimed, but he didn’t look—nor sound—so sure of the fact.
“Come on, Bigs,” Fred put in, “everyone knows this. If you ignore a curse, you simply prolong it.”
“She’s lying!” Bigs jabbed his beefy finger toward Hannah, his eyes going wild. “You’re lying!”
“No, I’m not. And I can prove it, too.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Hannah grabbed her cell phone and tapped several keys.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’d ya think you’re doing?” Bigs demanded.
“Why, I’m pulling it up on my cell phone.” Hannah batted her eyelashes for added credibility. “You can find anything on the web. Don’t you know.”
His eyes narrowed. “You ain’t trying to trick us, are you?”
Pressing the ‘send’ button, Hannah looked Bigs straight in the eye. And lied. “Of course not.”
She hurriedly pulled
up the internet and pressed a few keys. “Here it is right here. No, never mind, that’s not it… Okay, it says here… no, that’s not it, either. Just give me a second. I know I saw this, just the other day…”
“Let me tell you something, little girl,” Bigs snarled. “If you’re messing with us, this Colt here will put a curse on you that ain’t never gonna come off.”
Hannah gave him her best wide-eyed stare. “You’re holding a gun on us. Why would I mess with you?”
Standing a bit taller, Bigs puffed out his chest as he fell for her flattery. “You best remember that, too,” he sniffed.
“Absolutely.” She batted her blue eyes and covertly pressed another button, sending Walker a brief text.
You OK? In kitchen. Gun.
“Well? We ain’t got all day! What’s that fancy little phone of yours say about the rules of a curse?” Bigs demanded.
“I’m still looking for it…”
“Come to think of it,” Fred suddenly pitched in, “didn’t you tell me you found that in one of the books in the office?” With her head turned just so, the men couldn’t see the coded look in her eyes.
“Aah… Yes, maybe that was it,” Hannah decided. “Maybe it was in one of those big books.” Those big, heavy books. The kind heavy enough to do some damage upside a man’s head. “But my ankle…”
“Del, take Freddie in the office and look for a book on curses,” Bigs directed, unwittingly playing into their hand. He motioned to Hannah with his gun. “You keep looking on your phone.”
“I’m sure one of us will find it,” she claimed with false optimism. She sent one more brief text, before pulling up a search on how to cast a curse. To her surprise, the page populated with thousands of hits. “Oh, my,” she murmured.
“What? What does it say?”
She heard the worry in Bigs’ voice and played upon it. “This isn’t good,” she murmured, pretending to read from the screen. “Not good at all. Let me try another site.”
The big man paced the floor. He muttered to himself, but Hannah caught occasional snippets of his rant. Apparently, Big Daddy, whomever that was, had warned them. Curses weren’t to be taken lightly. He rattled on about bad luck and lost jobs and not getting that pony when he was ten, all because of some old Indian woman. When he began to moan about Hank Ruby and the lawyer and being forced into it, Hannah grew concerned.
Walker hadn’t replied yet, meaning he must be seriously injured. Her mind wouldn’t consider the possibility of it being anything worse. Knowing she had to check on him, she came up with a new plan. By the time she executed it, the police should have arrived.
“I just realized something.” Her sudden announcement stopped Bigs in his tracks.
“What? You found an anecdote? Something to stop the curse, even if I extended it?”
“No, this isn’t about the curse. This is better,” she bluffed. “I think I may know where the map is hidden.”
“Where? Tell me!”
“I’ll take you there.”
He looked suspiciously at her leg. “What about your ankle?”
“It’s better now, see?” She hopped to her feet, biting back the howl of pain before it could make a liar of her. Turning a grimace into a forced smile, she said through clenched teeth, “A—All better.”
“Where are we going?”
“F—Follow me.” She steeled herself to the pain and led the way out of the kitchen.
“Tell me where we’re going, or I’ll shoot you now!”
Hannah stopped to lean against a chair in the big room. Not because she believed his threats, but because she needed the breather. Despite her pain, her voice came out cool and even. “Then you’ll never know, will you?”
He grumbled and motioned for her to continue, balking only when he realized where they headed. “You’re headed to the saloon, ain’t cha? You’re trying to trick me. You just want to check on your boyfriend.”
In too much pain to elaborate, Hannah managed a terse, “Yes, saloon. No, boyfriend.”
“Hold on here now,” Bigs sputtered, but Hannah ignored him and kept going. If she stopped now, she might fall. Best to keep moving while she could.
Reaching the saloon, Hannah fell against the rails of the porch and caught her breath. From the looks of the large man huffing and puffing behind her, he needed to do the same thing. After a brief breather, she summoned the strength to stand again on her throbbing ankle and pushed the door open. She flipped the lights on and immediately searched for Walker, fearing the worst.
It was bad, but not in the way she expected.
“Where’d he go?” Bigs bellowed, barging through the door behind her. He pointed to an empty spot on the floor, smeared with something that could only be blood. “He was right there, crumpled over like a sack of potatoes!”
Panting in pain and exhaustion, Hannah caught her breath as she wailed to herself. Great! I hobble all this way out here to make sure he’s still breathing, and he’s not even here. He’s probably sneaking back to the kitchen, thinking he’ll rescue me. Now what do I do?
“Never mind the lawyer,” Bigs said, grabbing her arm and twisting. “Tell me where the map is!”
“Right there on the wall.”
He glanced behind him, at the row of framed photographs and posters. “Ain’t no map up there,” he snorted. “You messing with me, girl? Because I done warned you—”
It was Hannah’s turn to snort. “Of course it’s not right there in plain sight, for just anyone to see. Don’t any of those faces look familiar to you?”
He stood back and scanned the wall. “I see Elvis and Willie Nelson. Lyle Lovett. Don’t know some of those other bands.”
“What about the Wanted posters?”
While Bigs stepped closer to examine the smaller posters, Hannah looked around for a weapon of some sort. There was nothing within reach, not even a chair she could crash over his head. What if she broke the glass in one of the pictures and held it to his neck? She immediately discarded the idea, knowing he was stronger than she. There had to be something…
“Why, that there is my great-granddaddy, Patch Hatfield!” Bigs crowed in pleasure. “And look at how much he was worth, dead or alive! He really was famous. A true American legend.”
Hannah didn’t point out that he may have been a legend, but not in a heroic way. The man was an outlaw. His ‘worth,’ as Bigs called it, was measured only by the price his would-be captors were willing to pay to put him behind bars or in the ground.
Bigs took the framed poster down and held it as tenderly as if it were a newborn child. Were those tears in the big man’s eyes?
“Just like Big Daddy always said,” he cooed.
Hannah inched toward the door, her first few steps undetected. When a board squeaked beneath her feet, Bigs jerked his head up from his reverie.
“Where do you think you’re going, missy?”
“I was going to give you a minute,” Hannah offered. “I know this is a proud moment for you. I’ll just wait outside.”
He brushed his knuckles beneath one eye and shook his head. “It is, but never mind about that. Just tell me where the map is.”
Time was running out, and she still hadn’t heard the wail of sirens. And where, by the way, was Leroy when she needed him?
Bigs’ face hardened with impatience. “I asked you where the map was!”
“Well, obviously, you’re holding it.”
“Huh?”
As she started to explain, she heard Leroy bark. By the time she finished her hastily contrived explanation, the dog was making quite a ruckus. It sounded like it was coming from the empty cabin next door.
“Well, it stands to reason that Lina Hannah would hide the map behind the picture of the man she loved, the man who had, in fact, helped to steal the treasure in the first place. Your great-grandfather, Patch Hatfield.”
“Right here?” Bigs asked in wonder, turning the frame over in his hands. “But I don’t see it.”
�
��She would have put it inside, don’t you think? Under glass and behind the wanted poster. But you’ll have to be careful, and go slow,” Hannah cautioned. “They’re very old papers, you know. They’ll tear easily. You’d better use the table.”
“That crazy dog won’t shut up!” Bigs complained as he carried the frame to the nearest table. “I shoulda shot him when I had the chance, instead of just shutting him up in that cabin.”
Bigs bent over the back of the frame, his hands trembling with excitement.
Hannah took a small step backwards.
He eased the metal prongs up, the ones that held the backboard in place.
Hannah retreated another step.
“I can’t believe I’m this close,” he whispered, carefully setting aside the backboard.
Even with her hurt and throbbing ankle, Hannah increased her stride and moved one giant pace closer to the door.
“Lina Hannah thought she was so smart, keeping the treasure hidden from my family all these years, but I’ll show her, don’t you know.”
His hand touched paper. Any moment, he would turn it over and realize it was only the wanted poster. He would whirl around and find her there, just steps away from freedom. Hannah had to hurry. She slid another step backward, preparing to take another.
A man’s voice stopped her, but it wasn’t Bigs speaking.
“You fool,” the voice said bitterly. “Lina didn’t keep the treasure from your family. She saved it for you, hoping Patch would come back for it. For her. She pined her life away for that fool of a man. And she carried the secret of the hidden treasure to her grave.”
“Huh? Who said that?” Bigs jerked his head up. He whirled to his left, searching for the man behind the voice. He turned right, still looking for the speaker. He finally turned around, and spotted Hannah there, almost to the door.
“So close!” she moaned beneath her breath.
“Who said that?” Bigs demanded.
She tried looking innocent. Maybe she could get him refocused, and still make her escape. “Who said what? Did you find the map? You didn’t tear it, did you?”
