“I don't know,” she admitted. “But there are other definitions for the word. It can be a golfing score . . . or a gold coinâ”
“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 angelâ”
“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 where 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, IâThere 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 angelâor 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 faceâand 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. “âBuried 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 âbury' is âdig.' ”
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 digging.
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.”
“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 oughtaâ”
“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 doâbreak 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'tâI was careful not to hurt her, honest. I only meant toâ” 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.