Chapter Twenty-Three
B
ack at camp, conversation was minimal, which suited Angie. Preoccupied with her own thoughts, she didn't feel like talking. She took the coffee cup Luke poured for her and found a place to sit apart from the others.
The fire had burned down to a bed of hot-glowing embers with an odd flame or two licking at the chunks of half-burned wood around the edges. She stared into the coals, her head swirling with regret, blame, and dejection.
She was slow to notice Luke when he crouched beside her and ran a probing glance over her expression. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” It was an automatic response, and not entirely truthful.
Her glance traveled to Fargo, puttering listlessly with some camp gear, then on to Dulcie, still casting fearful glances toward the thick brush while not budging an inch from her brother's side, and finally to Tobe, noting the lost, dispirited look in his eyes and the shadow of a day's fuzz on his cheeks. The latter was a poignant reminder of how eager they had all been when morning dawned, certain they were on the verge of finding the goldâtoo eager to waste precious time by shaving. Even Luke sported the stubble of a beard, Angie noted. And she had been just as guilty, she realized with a sigh and swept off her cap to run combing fingers through the snarls in her hair, snarls that she hadn't taken the time to brush out.
She cast a sideways glance at Luke, studying his profile as he took a sip of coffee. “You were right,” she said.
“Which time?” His smile was warm and teasing, an attempt to lighten her mood.
In response, her lips curved in a smile that was decidedly rueful. “Every time,” Angie replied in a subdued voice that didn't travel beyond Luke's hearing. “It was a mistake to come here. I should have stayed in Iowa, sent the records to verify the identification of my grandfather's body, and given up any thought of looking for the gold. But I didn't, all because of pride.”
“What did pride have to do with it?” He frowned, like her keeping his voice pitched low.
“Everything. I was positive I had discovered the key to the letter's coded message, that I would find the gold when others had failed. That's a heady feeling, but it also means I thought I was smarter than everyone else who had tried. Obviously that empty hole we dug proves how wrong I was.”
“Not necessarily,” Luke said. “For all we know, someone found it years ago.”
“You told me that shortly after I came, but I wouldn't believe you. I was convinced I was the first person to figure out the key, but I was wrong there, too, because Saddlebags said he'd dug up the whole area below the eagle rock. Which means he'd figured out that the directions in the coded message had to be flip-flopped.” Angie paused a beat and stared into space. “I still don't know for sure how he got his hands on Grandfather's copy of the letter. I should have asked him outright when and where he'd found it. And, what happened to the rest of Grandfather's things. That's always supposing he even remembers after all these years.”
“True,” Luke agreed idly.
Dulcie had strayed from Tobe's side to approach the dwindling campfire, her movement drawing Angie's glance.
“You tried to warn me about the effect my search for the gold might have on people, but I didn't believe youânot even after the attack in the parking lotâby Fargo, of all people.” She released a sigh, heavy with profound regret. “Look at the lives I've ruined.”
“You're being a little overly dramatic now,” Luke chided.
“Maybe. But every time I think about that horrible moment when I didn't know whether Saddlebags was going to shoot Griff or notâ” She broke off the thought and shuddered expressively. “You have to admit that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't set out to find the gold. Absolutely nothing good has come from my being here. Nothing.”
“I don't agree with that,” he began a protest only to be interrupted by Fargo with the coffeepot.
“Ya might as well drink the last bit of coffee so I can brew up a fresh pot,” he said as he topped off the coffee in Angie's cup, then poured the remains in Luke's.
Leaving Tobe's side, Dulcie slid one of her shy, questioning looks at Angie. “Aren't we gonna look for the gold anymore?”
Before Angie could answer, Fargo growled, “You forget about that gold, little girl. It won't bring ya nothing but grief and heartache.”
Tobe laughed, and the sound was harsh with cynicism and lingering frustration. “I thought it was sweat and blisters.”
“I figure you already got them,” Fargo stated with a pointed glance at Tobe's ungloved hands.
Tobe rubbed at a red patch on his palm. “That's for sure,” he grumbled, then lifted his head, catching the distant rumble of the ATV, traveling at low throttle. “It looks like Griff found that out.”
Griff's arrival at camp was met with a thick silence. Angie watched as he crawled off the vehicle, looking for all the world like a weary and beaten man. His head and shoulders slumped in soul-sick dejection. There was a leadenness to his step and a dullness in his expression when he approached the fire circle. His glance slid over all of them without ever making eye contact.
“The gold wasn't there.” His head moved from side to side in a dazed shake of bewilderment. “I dug out every bit of dirt, and it wasn't there.” He stared at Angie. “You said it would be.”
There was no anger, no accusation in his voice, just a kind of hopelessness.
“I know,” she began.
“Where is it then?” Griff looked around, bewildered and empty.
“I don't know,” she admitted. “I've gone over the coded message a thousand times in my head, thinking I might have missed something, but the gold should have been buried ten feet to the right of the eagle rock.”
“Maybe we need to dig deeper,” Tobe suggested, trying to cling to some kind of hope.
“No.” Angie shook her head. “They wouldn't have buried it much deeper than two or three feet. They couldn't be sure how close the posse was, and the ground would have been too muddy and unstable from all the rain to dig much deeper.”
“Maybe there never was any gold,” Griff said to no one in particular, then punctuated it with a low, bitter laugh. “Maybe it was all one big joke from the start.”
“It wouldn't surprise me a bit,” Fargo declared. “Like Luke said, somebody from the posse probably found it shortly after they caught them outlaws, an' never told nobody about it.”
As if too weary to stand another minute, Griff sat on the ground, jaws clenched against the pain of disillusionment. “It isn't fair,” he muttered in frustration. “That gold was my one chance. My one chance. And now it's gone.”
Fargo cleared his throat, but said nothing, silenced by the finality of Griff's statement. Head down, he directed a sightless stare at the ground and absently reached across his body to cup a hand over his left arm where the sleeve was pinned back. There was something about his flat expression that conveyed a deadness of spiritâof hopes lost and dreams broken.
“I should have known there wasn't any gold,” Tobe mumbled, a shine of tears in his eyes. He pivoted away to hide them, his young shoulders drooping.
A stillness settled over the campsite, depressing in its heaviness as each withdrew into the privacy of dark thoughts. The moment threatened to stretch and bury them in a silent gloom.
Luke broke it, drawling, “If you aren't a fine bunch.” With a downward fling of his cup, he emptied out the coffee dregs and straightened away from Angie, standing erect. “Here you are, all down in the mouth over that gold and what it could have gotten youâwithout ever once realizing that you already had it.”
Confusion, denial, and indignation flashed through the group, but Luke gave them no chance to voice it. “Fargo, you wanted the gold because you were worried about where and how you were going to live when you're too old to be useful. The Ten Bar's always been your home. I wouldn't throw you out just because you're no longer useful. You've got a home here for as long as you live. As for you, Tobe,” Luke turned without a break, “you wanted a ranch of your own mainly because you think it would make you a full-fledged cowboy in people's eyes. But people around here already look at you as one. Then there's you, Griff. You're dreaming about having a restaurant when you've already got one.”
“That place?” Griff curled his lip in derision.
“Yes, that place,” Luke retorted. “I know you, Griff. You wouldn't be happy with a fancy steakhouse in the city for long. In a place like that, you wouldn't have time to personally butcher your own meat, grow your own produce, or any of the hundred other things you take such pride in.”
“Maybe, butâ” Griff struggled to deny the logic of that.
“There no maybe about it. It's a fact,” Luke stated, then gestured toward Angie, something gentle and wry about the look in his eyes. “Angie here is about the only one in this whole group who hasn't been wearing blinders, and that includes me.”
“You?” Tobe frowned, protesting, “But you didn't even want the gold.”
“No, I didn't,” Luke agreed. “But like you, I couldn't see what I had. I've been too blinded by what I'd lost. I guess it took watching all of you to finally open my eyes to that.”
A surge of elation swept through Angie. But there was something deeply poignant about Luke's words that kept her silent, some nameless emotion clogging her throat with happy tears. The others sensed it, too. A kind of awkwardness seemed to grip them, averting their gazes as they searched for something to say in response.
Luke solved the problem, the metal cup clinking when he set it on one of the stones forming the fire circle. “It's going to take some time to fill that hole back in. We might as well get started.”
“Good idea.” Quick to agree, Angie rose to her feet.
“How come we have to fill that hole in?” Dulcie wanted to know, a look of half-formed alarm returning to her expression.
“Because some animal might fall into it and get hurt,” Angie replied when Tobe jogged past her to catch up with Luke.
Dulcie darted a worried look toward the cliff. “What if that old guy comes back?”
“He won't bother us.” Angie curved a reassuring hand on the girl's shoulder, drawing Dulcie with her as she started after Luke, automatically shortening her stride to match Dulcie's pace.
But her attention was on Luke, walking ahead of them with a long and deceptively lazy stride. Maybe it was her imagination, but Angie thought she saw a new peace in his face, an acceptance of the deaths of his wife and young son. One that didn't diminish the loss or their memory in any way, yet one that allowed him to look forward to tomorrow. Knowing that lightened her own step.
“Do you think some animal might've fallen into the hole while we were gone?” Dulcie wondered.
“It's possible,” Angie conceded.
“I'd better go see.” She ran ahead to catch up with Tobe.
When Dulcie ran by Luke, he slowed his steps and cast a questioning glance at Angie. “What's her hurry?”
“I told her an animal might have fallen in the hole,” she explained with a small smile.
“And she wants to see.” Luke waited for Angie to draw level with him, his glance lingering on her with a new level of interest in his eyes. It ignited a warm pleasure somewhere deep inside. All too soon, he directed his glance to the front. “I guess you'll be heading back to Iowa in a few days,” Luke remarked.
“Probably.” Angie discovered she had very ambivalent feelings about returning home. She swept her gaze over the rugged landscape, a wistfulness creeping up on her.
“You can always come back and hunt for the gold again,” Luke suggested with a wry, yet subtly hopeful glance.
“I could, couldn't I?” Angie smiled, fully aware it wouldn't be the lure of the outlaw gold that would bring her back to Wyoming. It would be the man walking beside her.
The ATV rumbled up from the rear, then swung in a wide arc around them. Griff was at the controls, with Fargo perched on the seat behind him, one hand propping the water jug on his thigh.
When Luke and Angie reached the section of canyon wall below the eagle rock, Tobe and Griff were already at work, shoveling the loose dirt back into the shallow pit. Luke pulled on his work gloves and picked up the other shovel to join them.
Dulcie left Fargo's side to run to Angie. “There weren't any animals in the hole when we got here.”
“That's good.”
“Yeah.” Dulcie's glance strayed back to the three men and the loads of dirt flying into the hole. “I wanted to help, but Tobe said I was too little.”
“You're big enough to help me throw some of the bigger rocks in,” Angie assured her, then cautioned, “just be careful that you don't get in the way of those shovels. We don't want you getting hurt.”
“I'll be careful,” Dulcie promised and dashed to pick up the nearest stone, eager to have a role to fill.
They worked in silence, the stillness dominated by the thud of dirt and the clatter of rolling stones. After about twenty minutes, Tobe paused to wipe the sweat from his upper lip. He waited while Angie gathered up an armful of rock chunks from the dwindling dirt pile near his feet.
“You know,” he began thoughtfully, “it's probably just as well we didn't find that gold. If I'd bought a ranch with my share of it, I probably would have ended up goin' broke.”
Startled by his pessimism, Angie asked, “Why?”
“'Cause I don't know enough about the business side of ranchin' yet.”