Something More (26 page)

W
ith her head craned back, Dulcie gazed in fascination at the towering rock bluff. At first, she had seen nothing but the solidness of the cliff's long face. Now, patterns and shapes were beginning to emerge.

It was like cloud watching. Over there was a turtle; to the right of it, a hump-backed camel. Then, high along the rim, it kind of looked like the head of an old woman with no teeth sleeping with her mouth open. The image made Dulcie giggle into her hand.

She went a step farther, then stopped and darted a quick look over her shoulder. Between the trees, she saw a scrap of blue fluttering in the breeze and breathed easier.

A couple more steps and her attention was caught by the protruding roundness of a huge boulder. Her mouth opened in a round and silent
O
.

“An angel,” Dulcie breathed in wonder.

As she took a step toward it, she tripped over a tree root and went sprawling to the ground. Embarrassed, Dulcie scrambled to her feet and dusted off her jeans. She glared briefly at the protruding root that had tripped her, then ventured closer to the canyon's towering wall.

Next to the massive trunk of an old cottonwood, Dulcie paused to search out her angel rock again. A leafy branch obscured the top of it. She bent low to peer at it, automatically resting a hand on the bark-covered trunk. From farther down the canyon came the creak of saddle leather and the plodding clop of slow-walking horses.

Thinking it might be Tobe, or even Angie, Dulcie stepped from the tree to look. At almost the same moment that she caught a glimpse of two riders, she heard a faint snort from somewhere very close by. She glanced around and instantly froze.

There, on the other side of the tree, stood that scrawny and withered old man. The floppy brim of his hat hung low on his face, further shadowing eyes hooded by his tufted brows.

As if sensing her presence, he turned fractionally and fixed the black glare of his eyes on her. “What're you starin' at?”

The low growl of his voice broke the grip of silence.

“Y-you scared me,” she whispered.

His eyes narrowed, appearing smaller and meaner. “You should be scared.” Abruptly his glance shot to the two riders, only partially visible beyond some low brush. “
She
should be scared,” he muttered to himself. Then his expression crumbled into something bitter and forlorn. “Guess I got too old to frighten anyone fer long.”

Slightly reassured by his comment, Dulcie studied the cracked and splintering age lines that crossed and recrossed his weathered skin.

“You're really, really old, aren't you?” she marveled.

Saddlebags snorted. “Think you're a smart one to figure that out, do ya?” Again his attention was distracted by the slowly approaching riders. “She's a clever one, too. But not clever enough, I'll wager. She'll come t' a stop here, jus' like I did.”

Puzzled by his statement, Dulcie cocked her head. “Why?”

But she was denied an answer by Angie's questioning call. “Dulcie? Is that you?”

Turning, she saw Angie standing in the stirrups, a good forty yards from her yet.

“Hey, Angie!” Dulcie waved eagerly to her.

Immediately both Angie and Luke cantered their horses toward her location. Excited, Dulcie started to share the news with Saddlebags.

“Angie's com—” The word died on her lips when she discovered the old man had vanished.

Before she could even think about looking for him, Luke and Angie rode up. “What are you doing out here, Dulcie?” Angie questioned in concern.

“Looking for the eagle rock and—”

Luke interrupted before she could tell them about talking to Saddlebags. “Where's Fargo? Tobe said you were with him.”

“He's back at camp.” A second after she turned to point toward the site, Dulcie gasped in alarm. “The towel. I can't see it!”

“What towel?” Luke wondered.

“The one Fargo had me hang on a tree,” Dulcie explained anxiously. “He said I wasn't supposed to go where I couldn't see it. I didn't mean to, honest.”

“We know you didn't,” Angie assured her.

Luke walked his horse to her. “Come on. We'll take you back to camp.” Leaning low to the side, he scooped Dulcie off the ground, and as he straightened he set her across the front of the saddle. Her shoulders slumped in dejection.

“Fargo's probably gonna be mad, isn't he?” Dulcie mumbled.

“A little maybe,” Luke agreed. “But not as mad as he would have been if you had actually become lost.”

They hadn't traveled more than a horse's length when Dulcie spotted the blue cloth. “Look!” She pointed to it, her whole face lighting up. “There's the towel right there. It was just hidden for a minute, huh?”

“It looks that way,” Luke agreed, battling back a smile.

“I just couldn't see it for a little bit. That's not the same as not being able to see it at all, is it?” she declared, with growing confidence.

“It isn't exactly the same, but you were lucky this time,” Angie told her. “Next time you might wander too far and really be lost.”

“I won't. I promise.” But Dulcie was sobered by her previous promise to Fargo before she set out to look for the eagle rock. The memory of that triggered another thought. “Did you find the eagle rock?”

“Not yet,” Angie admitted.

“Me neither,” Dulcie sighed in disappointment.

The roan's sides swelled a fraction of a second before the gelding nickered to the horses tied along the picket line. In the wide clearing to the right, wispy smoke curled from a campfire. Fargo was down on one knee beside it, stirring something in a large pot. Observing their approach, he pushed to his feet, the movement a bit jerky and awkward, indicating a stiffening of his joints.

“No luck, I take it,” he guessed from their expressions, then waved the spoon toward the campfire. “There's coffee made and the stew'll be hot in a minute. Might as well get down and have something to eat before you go look some more.”

Although Angie wasn't all that hungry, taking a break seemed like a good idea. So far she had seen nothing that remotely resembled an eagle. The lunch break would give her a chance to relax, regroup, and return to the search with fresh eyes.

Without a word, she dismounted and handed the reins to Luke when he reached for them. She accepted the cup of coffee Fargo poured for her, then wandered to the edge of the clearing to gaze at the canyon wall.

Several minutes later Luke joined her, cup in hand. She acknowledged his presence with a brief, smiling glance.

“You're unusually quiet,” Luke observed.

“Thinking, I guess,” she murmured absently.

“You've been doing a lot of that since we reached the canyon.”

“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.