by Jan Hudson
She laughed. “The church isn’t there anymore. In my preliminary research, I discovered that it burned down in 1896 and was never rebuilt. Turn here,” she said, indicating a dirt road on their right, which was little more than shallow ruts.
After they had bumped down the road for about a mile and a half, they pulled to a stop and studied the maps and notes Tess had assembled in a file folder labeled “Five.”
“The church was somewhere in this area.” Dan tapped a spot on the map he held. “We should be close if the Bowie brothers buried it south of where the springs rise to form this branch. I’m surprised that the old pirate trusted them with so much loot.”
“Privateer,” she corrected automatically. “And apparently he did. They were longtime friends and business associates. I doubt that he trusted lightly. Let’s see if we can find the stream and then we can follow it back.”
When they got out of the SUV, Tess was almost giddy with anticipation. Dan laced his fingers through hers. “You’re trembling.”
“I’m excited. Have you got the compass?” He nodded and smiled indulgently. She laughed and tugged at his hand. “Come on. I can’t wait.”
As they walked through the woods, redolent with pine and the fresh scents of newly leafed sweet gum, sassafras, oak, and hickory trees, Tess could barely contain her exuberance. She felt like dancing to the sound of the twittering birds overhead; she felt as if she would have flown over the treetops if Dan weren’t holding on to her hand. She was close. So close.
Ducking under low-hanging branches, she ignored the vines and underbrush plucking at their jeans as they trekked over the newest layer of pine needles and deteriorating leaves. Now and then there was a skittering rustle in the bushes as if the rabbits and squirrels were clearing a path for their guest.
Her thoughts were bumping into each other as she hurried in the direction of what she was sure smelled and sounded like water.
Suddenly, her right foot felt only empty space beneath it. She pitched forward, but Dan caught her and hauled her back. She had nearly plunged over the bank of a small creek.
“Hold it, woman,” Dan said, laughing and hugging her to him. “You almost got a dunking.”
Her eyes widened and her heart was racing like a runaway train. When she recovered her wits, she squealed, “Oh, Dan, we found it!” She threw her arms around him and planted a smacking kiss in the general vicinity of his mouth.
“We’ve found the branch,” he reminded her. “We haven’t found the spring or the treasure.”
“But we will,” she said, grabbing his hand and charging upstream. “We will.”
They had tracked only about fifty yards when Tess saw something and stopped dead still. Not more than twenty feet ahead stood the distinctive rock and the headwaters of the branch. Her heart was in her throat and an eerie rush swept over her. “Look,” she whispered, pointing with one shaking finger to the spot shaded by dense foliage.
The twisted trunk of a late-blooming dogwood tree, its branches in full white flower, clung to the earth and draped its limbs over a huge, rust-colored rock. Beneath the rock, which rose from a thick cluster of deep green wood fern, was an embankment of striated clay in putty gray and rust brown hues. In several areas along the four-foot bank, shaped by eons of wellspring erosion, water trickled from unseen crevices and gathered in a Stream. It trilled, glass-clear, over a bed strewn with pebbles and rippled from years of washing. So pure and cool did the water appear that it seemed to invite them to dip their hands in and drink.
Smells of cool, damp clay, warming humus, and the pungent crispness of verdant growth hung in the sheltered thicket of old trees and ancient springs, entreating Tess to breathe in their sensual essence.
“How beautiful,” she whispered again.
Dan stood beside her, looking more at her than at the sight which had enchanted her. “Beautiful.”
Tess smiled. “This is the rock he described. These are the springs. They must be. The Bowie brothers must have camped beside this very spot.”
“Think we’ll find one of Jim Bowie’s old knives around?” Dan teased.
“Not likely.” Tess gave him a little pinch on the belly as she beamed with excitement, “but I suspect we’re about to find something even better. Taking his hand, she pulled him toward the rock. “Come on.”
After Dan brushed aside the branches of the dogwood tree so that she could stand flush against the rock, he broke off a small sprig of the white blossoms and tucked them behind her ear.
He stood facing her, one arm holding back the limbs that framed her with delicate blooms, the other hand at her neck. His thumb stroked the curve of her jaw. “I don’t think you’ve ever seemed so lovely or so precious to me as you do now, Tess.”
“Because I’m about to be rich with Jean Laffite’s gold?” She gave him a saucy grin.
“No.” He shook his head slowly.
“Then it must be my fetching outfit,” she said, plucking at the front of her turquoise jersey, which had an advertisement for the Mermaid emblazoned in purple across her chest.
“No.” He grinned and dropped his hand to trace the mermaid’s tail that ended just at the inner swell of her right breast. “Though it is extremely provocative.”
At Dan’s touch, a rash of goose bumps prickled over her skin, and she smiled. “Then why?”
He kissed her lightly. “I suppose it’s because each day I see more of your spirit and love you more. I’ve never known anyone like you, Tess. You’re unique. And very, very special.” He kissed her again, gently. “Gold or no gold, purple jeans or Paris silks, I cherish you, love. I don’t want anything to hurt you, ever.”
Her smile widened. “I think I like being cherished.”
He tweaked her nose and chuckled. “You should.” Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out the compass and looked down at it. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure.”
He handed the instrument to her. “One hundred paces, due south.” Still holding the branches away from her. he stepped aside.
Her fingers closed around the compass and she could feel a similar constriction in her throat. She was excited and a little scared. Her insides felt like a sack of agitated bumble bees.
What if the treasure wasn’t there? No. She wouldn’t allow such thoughts to enter her mind. It was there. It had to be.
Looking down at the needle to get her bearings, she shifted her position slightly. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath.
“Here goes.” She squared her shoulders and took the first step. “One,” she said as she began to count her strides. “Two.”
When she had moved away from the branches of the dogwood, Dan paced beside her, clearing her path of low-hanging limbs and steering her around trees and bushes while she kept her eyes on the compass and counted.
“Ninety-nine . . . one hundred.”
Tess stopped and looked up. The spot where she was standing seemed no different from the rest of the wooded area. For some reason she was disappointed. It was irrational, since the church had been gone for over a hundred years, but she had expected to find a clearing or at least something significant to indicate that a fortune rested in the ground beneath her feet.
“I’ll mark the place,” Dan said. He pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket and tied it to a bush about a foot to the right of where she stood.
She didn’t move. “What now?”
Dan smiled and took her hand. “Let’s look around.” They searched in widening circles with Dan studying the ground and stopping occasionally to scrape the leaves aside with the side of his boot.
“What are we looking for?” Tess whispered when he squatted down to examine a pile of rust-colored rocks.
Standing, he dusted his hands on his jeans and chuckled. “Why are you whispering?”
Tess shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Something about the place and the occasion seems to inspire reverence, I suppose. What are we looking for?”
�
��I’ll show you.” He walked a few yards to another tumbled pile of rocks and pointed to them.
She looked at the rocks and back to Dan. “So?”
“So, I suspect that these piles of rocks were once used as piers to support the lumber girders of the church building.”
“Ah,” she said, understanding. “The church was here.” She grinned. “You’re handy to have around. Let’s get the metal detector and the shovels.”
“You stay here and I’ll move the truck closer and get the things we’ll need.” He gave her a quick kiss and struck off through the trees to the road.
Tess sat down on the pile of rocks and, elbows on her knees and chin on her fists, stared at the white handkerchief tied to the bush. Three feet under the ground were old metal chests which would provide Aunt Olivia and Aunt Martha their racehorse and Tess with her dream castle.
She closed her eyes and envisioned the way each room would look when it was finished. She could imagine Dan and herself working on the plans, watching the changes as the old mansion came to life again, and, finally, sitting together in the living room beside a fire in the Italian marble fireplace. The couch was huge and poofy, covered in oyster suede; the walls were blue watered silk; a magnificent Persian rug covered the polished wooden floors; a Christmas tree stood in the corner beside a long table where a gleaming brass samovar reflected the twinkling tree lights.
She could smell the wood burning, and the fragrance of evergreens and warm cinnamon and nutmeg and potpourri wafted through the high-ceilinged room. Snuggled beside Dan, she felt totally content. He would look at her, smile, and say—
“Tess!”
She startled and the image popped like a bubble.
Dan was grinning. “Where were you off to?”
She laughed. “Beside a fire in the living room. Oh, Dan, everything is going to be so fantastic.” She squeezed her hands between her knees.
He drew his brows together. “Tess—”
“Yes?”
He hesitated. “Nothing. Let’s check the area with the metal detector.”
* * *
By dusk, Dan had dug four holes and found an old pick-ax head, part of a wagon wheel rim, a horseshoe, and the rusty remains of what looked to have once been a kettle.
He pulled off his gloves, stuck them in his back pocket, and leaned on the shovel. “We have to face it, babe. It’s not here.”
Chewing on her lip, Tess shifted her weight from one foot to the other as her eyes darted over the area. “You know, Jim Bowie’s legs may have been longer than mine. Or shorter. We may have missed it by a few feet. Let’s walk it off again. I’ll take longer strides this time.”
Dan caught her arm as she strode toward the springs. “Love, we’ve searched the entire area with the metal detector. It’s not here.”
“But it has to be!”
Dropping the shovel, he gathered her to him, hugging and soothing her with soft words of comfort. “I’m sorry, Tess. I’m sorry.”
* * *
By midmorning they had driven the twenty or so miles to Nacogdoches, a picturesque little place set amid gently rolling hills and red dirt, reputedly the oldest town in Texas. They checked into a hotel a block or two off the brick-paved main street.
After he’d tipped the bellman and closed the door, Dan asked, “Shall we make another trip to the county courthouse?”
“Nope.” Tess smiled smugly. “Everybody knows where the Old Stone Fort is. It’s on the campus of Stephen F. Austin University on the north side of town. I had some friends who went to college there, and I spent a few weekends visiting with them. Would you believe I even toured the place once? I must have been within a few feet of the spot where the treasure is buried.”
Spreading a sheaf of papers on the bed, she lay down on her stomach to study them. Dan stretched out beside her and propped his head on one hand while the other stole under the hem of her red cotton sweater to lazily stroke her back. When he touched an especially sensitive spot near her right shoulder blade, she wiggled. He chuckled, leaned over, and touched the tip of his tongue to her nape.
“Dannn!” she squealed. “I’m trying to read.”
“You’ve read those pages a hundred times,” he said, laughing as he brushed the papers off the bed and pulled her on top of him. He kissed her nose. “I’ll bet you can recite them verbatim, can’t you?”
She grinned. “Probably. Jean Laffite had the Bowies bury this batch behind the fort, six feet out from the center of the back wall. He’d originally meant it to help finance some of the early settlers. I gather that he had ‘deposited’ it and was waiting to see if it would be to his advantage to loan them money. But he got ticked off at James Long, who was”—she tucked her chin and lowered her voice to speak in an exaggerated French accent—”a dishonest, land-grabbing thief who proclaimed himself Governor of Texas to lead his band of robbers.”
Dan laughed. “Wasn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
“I suppose it depends on your point of view. Long may have been considered an early Texas hero, but Laffite had nothing good to say about him. According to his journal, Long and some of his men made a mistake when they stole goods from Laffite. He had his own peculiar code of honor; I think the rascal took perverse pleasure in knowing that all the time Long and his emissaries were begging him to loan them money for armies and expeditions, they were sitting in Nacogdoches only a few feet from a fortune.”
“He was a rascal.”
“I have an idea. Why don’t we go check out the fort before lunch?” Tess tried to push herself up, but Dan held her.
“I have a better idea. Why don’t we—” He whispered some slightly scandalous suggestions in her ear.
Tess giggled and almost blushed as she gave him a playful swat. “You’re a worse rascal than Laffite. I knew from the first time I met you there was a tiger beneath that staid exterior.”
Looking pleased, Dan broke into his lopsided, boyish grin. “You think I’m a tiger, huh?” Suddenly, he snarled and flipped her on to her back, nipping and nuzzling her neck until she squealed with laughter and begged him to stop. “You bring out the animal in me,” he growled, holding her down and continuing his feigned biting over her bare midriff where her sweater had ridden up.
In the space of two heartbeats, the playfulness changed to passion, the biting to trailing kisses, wet and warm across her belly as he unbuttoned the front of her denim skirt.
Tess came alive as he stroked and petted and caressed. Electricity charged her body as his tongue laved her, as his kisses covered her, as he whispered love words in her ears. Longing to have him inside her pushed away all thoughts of treasure and the dreams it fostered. Dan, the smell of him, the feel of him, the taste of him, filled her mind with a solitary splendor.
They shed their clothes and came together in a slow melding of skin on skin, giving and receiving, loving and being loved, until they lay quiet and replete in each other’s arms.
“Lord, I love you,” Dan said, running his hand over the curve of her hip. “Tess—” He stopped before he finished the question he was about to ask. He wanted to ask her to forget the treasure and marry him today, now, before she suffered a final disappointment. He wanted to wrap her in a charmed cocoon of protection so that she would know only joy and laughter and the fulfillment of her slightest wish. But he’d come to know Tess Cameron too well. She’d never give up without trying to find her treasure. Not when the spot lay only a few miles away. Not his Tess.
“Yes?”
“I’m hungry,” he said, improvising a quick reply.
“Me, too.”
They showered and dressed, then went in search of a restaurant. After lunch, they drove to the university campus and parked near the Old Stone Fort.
Rather small and insignificant among the huge trees and modern buildings, the two-story fort was constructed of native rust red rock. Heavy wooden beams supported an open gallery off the second floor and rose to support the roof overhang as well.
Tess and Dan stood in front of it and looked up at the many flags fluttering from poles mounted on the beams.
The campus was busy with cars and bikes and students going to and from afternoon classes or simply hanging out with one another on the sunny spring day.
A young man in cutoffs and a faux hawk had parked his convertible under a nearby tree and was waxing it. The radio was blaring hard rock, and he spread the paste to its beat. He missed a couple of licks when two shapely coeds in snug short-shorts jogged by.
Tess and Dan looked at one another and grinned.
“Ah, spring,” Dan said.
“Ah, hormones.” Tess laughed as they walked to the big wooden door of the fort.
It was locked. A notice posted the hours it would be open the following day. Tess shrugged. She didn’t care if the museum was unavailable for viewing. Only the outside of the fort interested her. Trying to look nonchalant, she and Dan strolled around to the back. There was a small wedge of open ground, no more than seventy-five feet at its widest point, between the rear of the fort and a sprawling modern building with a large greenhouse beside it. By mutual consent, they walked the length of the rock wall, counting quietly as they went.
When they reached the corner, Tess did a little mental arithmetic and whispered, “It’s twelve and a half paces to the middle.”
They stepped off the distance and stood hand in hand with their backs to the wall. Tess’s heart was beating so loudly that the sound of it in her ears drowned out the rock music from the radio across the way. The chicken spaghetti they had eaten for lunch formed a seething blob in her stomach that seemed to be creeping up her esophagus. She swallowed it back down and squeezed Dan’s hand.
They took a synchronized giant step forward. Then another.
“It’s here,” she whispered, barely able to keep her voice down. “It’s here right under our feet. We’re standing on a fortune in gold.” The words came out in a high little squeak.
Dan cleared his throat and cut his eyes toward a couple a few feet away. The girl was against a big elm growing beside the greenhouse, and the boy, a hand on either side of her head, was leaning on the tree. They were gazing rapturously into one another’s eyes.