“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Yet the old man eased up closer to the mule.
“That’s far enough,” Nickolai said in a tone that left no room for misinterpretation. “Step away from the mule.”
“Friends, you’ve got the wrong idea here about me. I’m just out here camping with ole Bessie here.” He reached up and patted the mule’s neck.
“I said, step away from the mule.” Nickolai’s voice demanded adherence.
“Fine.” Jediah stepped closer to Landry.
“I’m sure you are camping, sir. I know you purchased your gear at the military surplus store recently, after you got the map from Phillip in Cobb’s Restaurant and Lounge.”
The old man opened his mouth then shut it.
“Why does Phillip want the gold so badly?” Landry asked.
“I don’t know; I’m just a professional prospector and gold hunter.” He held up his hands. “Look, the man contacted me over the Internet a couple of weeks ago. Said he had a map come into his hands that he believed to show where the Dutchman’s Lost Mine was hidden. Agreed to pay me twenty-five thousand dollars to spend a week looking for it.” He sat on a large boulder and took off his hat, wiped sweat with his shirtsleeve. Put the hat back on his bald head. “Twenty-five grand for one week? Count me in.”
“So you agreed?” Landry lowered herself to a smaller rock. Nickolai moved in behind her.
“I agreed to meet with him. We met on Thursday late afternoon, at Cobb’s, just like you said. He showed me the map.” Jediah spit on the ground. “I’ve lived near these mountains all my life, grew up chasing the lost mine as a teen before I expanded my hunting grounds. I gotta tell you … the map has markings and details like I’ve never seen. It looks pretty genuine. I thought to myself, what the hey? Besides, twenty-five big ones just to look was a great motive. I talked to some of my old contacts here, like you saw, but they only warned me to stay away.”
Landry shook her head. “I’m confused. People have looked for this mine for generations. People have had maps before. This is a national park. If there were really a mine, don’t you think someone would’ve found it by now?” That was rational … logical … but still, Landry held out hope that there really was a mine.
Jediah spit again. “It’s been said over and over that the old Dutchman hid the cave in plain sight. Said you could drive a pack train over the entrance and never know it. That’s what makes professional hunters so frustrated. We should be able to find this mine. Whoever does … they’ll be king in the business.”
“So you believe it’s here?”
“I do. And I think the map will lead me right to it.”
“Now see, that’s where we have our problem.” Nickolai stood and moved in front of Landry.
Jediah stood up and faced Nickolai, doing his best not to look intimidated. “I don’t see that as a problem. The man gave me the map and hired me to do my best to find the mine using the map. That’s what I’m doing.”
“But Phillip stole that map, Jediah. We’ve been hired to recover it for the rightful, legal owner.” Landry moved beside Nickolai. Her right hand almost ached for her gun.
“So you say.” The old man lifted his chin in defiance.
“So we say.” Nickolai jutted out his own chin.
“Don’t suppose you’d have any actual proof of that, now would you?” Jediah wasn’t going to back down.
Mercy, but the testosterone had grown as thick as the sultriness of the desert. “We do, actually.”
Nickolai shot her a baffled look.
Had the old man not been there, she would’ve laughed. Instead, she pulled out her cell phone and pulled up the news report of Bartholomew Winslet’s murder. “Here, read for yourself.” She handed her phone to Jediah, who spit before he took it.
She glanced at Nickolai as she eased her backpack to the ground and pulled out her water bottle. It’d gotten downright scorching. If this is how it felt in the middle of February, she couldn’t imagine how smoldering it would be in the summer. Then again, unlike the humidity back home in Louisiana, this was a dry heat, so despite being warm, she wasn’t sweaty and sticky.
“Hmm. Doesn’t say Phillip stole it.” He handed the phone back to Landry.
“But here’s the connection.” She pulled up the website for Winslet Industries and loaded the page with the board of directors. “Check this out.” She kept hold of the phone this time, just moved closer to Jediah so he could see the screen. “See, that’s Phillip, right?”
He didn’t have to answer—his eyes verified Phillip gave him the map. “That’s him.”
“So now you understand we aren’t making anything up, we’ll need that map. Mrs. Winslet hired us to recover it and return it to her.”
“It’s right here.” The man reached for one of the packs on the mule.
“Slowly.” Nickolai leveled the gun at the man. “I don’t want any surprises.”
Jediah reached into the pack and pulled out the map, still in its protective sleeve but rolled. “I did my best not to damage it.”
Landry took the map from him. “Do you really believe the mine is here?”
“I do.” He nodded at the map. “I think I finally figured out what all the symbols mean. When I take that into consideration, the map shows only a couple of places where the mouth of the mine could be. I’ve checked out three of them. There are two others.”
Landry wouldn’t lie—the idea of finding the lost mine …
“But I gotta warn you.” The old man spit. “There are some natives who want that map. Really bad. I’ve been having to move and search primarily in the middle of the day. Early morning and nights … well, those Indians can move through here like ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” The stories of the ghost warriors and Shis-Inday scratched against Landry’s spine, prickling her arms with goose bumps.
“They chant so low you can’t understand what they’re saying, but you can hear them. Always chanting. Sometimes there’s a drum in the mix.” Jediah shook his head. “The way they move … it’s like they’re mists.”
“Chants?” Nickolai asked.
Landry remembered he’d talked about an Indian chanting when he’d been in the hospital. The hospital worker had been sure he’d had a dream vision.
“Do they want the map?” Landry asked.
“I’m pretty sure they do, which makes me know the map will lead us to the mine.”
“Us?” Nickolai asked.
Jediah loosed a stream of dark juice from his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. “Well, yeah. I can be your guide. You might have the map, but if you can’t decipher the markings and know the area, you’ll never find the mine. Just like the legend says.”
He had a point. Landry started to speak, but Nickolai interrupted her thoughts. “We found you, didn’t we? Without the map.”
Although they did have copies.
“Not too hard to find an old man and a mule.”
“We found where you spent the night, then tracked you to here.”
Jediah laughed. “Well of course you could. That should be easy. I haven’t been trying to hide my whereabouts, except from the natives. A child could track me.”
Landry pressed her lips together at Nickolai’s frown. “So you want to find the mine so Phillip will pay you, right?”
Jediah shook his head. “My fee was never dependent on me finding the mine. If I did and brought him proof, then I’d be given a bonus, but the twenty-five thousand is paid just for me looking. I already got a ten-grand deposit.”
Here was proof Phillip was the murderer. He’d killed his best friend for the map and hired Jediah to locate the mine off the map. Obviously money was the motive, but Phillip’s records didn’t show him in dire straits. It just didn’t make sense.
“Come on,” Jediah said. “You know you want to see if the mine’s really here. What is it gonna hurt to let me guide you?”
Nickolai wasn’t sure this was the best i
dea, but he’d agreed to Landry’s request—what could it hurt just to take a few hours and see if they could find the mine? The map was secure in his backpack. The worst that could happen was they not find the mine and have to hike out with dejection hanging on to them.
“Hey, Jediah.” Landry moved right behind the older man leading the mule.
“Yeah?”
“The waitress at Cobb’s didn’t recognize you, but you grew up around here, right?”
Good point. Nickolai reassured himself that his gun sat securely against the small of his back, tucked into his waistband.
“I don’t go into the local businesses very often. Never did. My family was from the poorer parts of town.”
After seeing the condition of many area places, Nickolai could understand that.
“I spoke with the salesman at the surplus store and he told me you asked about camping out here. If you grew up here—” Landry pushed.
“Then I should know, right?” Jediah finished.
“Exactly.” Her tone was even, inoffensive, even as she questioned.
Nickolai had to give her credit. He’d seen very seasoned detectives who couldn’t walk the fine line of interrogation as smoothly as she had.
Jediah spit but kept leading the mule down around the offshoot of Weaver’s Needle. “Rules at national parks are always changing. I haven’t been camping out in these mountains in many moons. Most surplus store employees are more up to date on the current regulations.”
“Makes sense,” Landry said.
Snap!
Nickolai drew his gun and spun around to face the sound behind him.
Nobody was there.
“What was that?” Landry asked. She and Jediah had stopped, so Nickolai knew he wasn’t hearing things.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s the ghost Indians.” Jediah moved faster down the incline. “I told you they want that map.”
“Why would a ghost want a map?” Landry asked.
Nickolai stared behind him for a few more seconds then stuck his gun back in his waistband and followed them.
“Rumor has it that their spirit or whatever needs all legit directions to the mine destroyed.” Jediah quickened his pace even more. “Some say those spirits are what happened to the Dutchman and why he couldn’t recover from his illness.”
“Hmm. What’s interesting to me, and I don’t know the history well enough to have an answer, but what was a bread maker from Louisiana doing in Phoenix during the big flood?” Landry stumbled as she stepped on a rock. She grabbed the side of the mule and regained her balance.
“That I don’t know, but the stories I heard growing up, Julia’s husband had deserted her in Phoenix, and when she took care of the Dutchman, he paid her in gold, which further proved to everyone that there really was a gold mine. Some of the stuff you don’t hear in the legends is that Gottfried Petrash, a friend of both Julia and the Dutchman, was supposed to have destroyed the map.”
Nickolai listened carefully. If Julia’s husband deserted her, then did she really have descendants passing down the map to eventually get into Abigail Easton’s hands?
Jediah continued. “After the Dutchman died, it’s said Julia looked for the mine but couldn’t find it. Desperate, she supposedly fell in love with a fire worshipper named Alfred Schaffer and married him. It’s said she learned to speak to the fire spirits and then tried to convert many of the local Indians to her religion. There was some talk that some of them came to recognize her as a shaman. She and her husband left Phoenix, had children, and she later died. Heard tell some of her kin returned to the area generations later and settled back in Arizona.”
“That’s fascinating.” Landry slowed to fall in step beside Nickolai. “Isn’t it ironic that Julia was originally from Louisiana and we’re from Louisiana, and we’re possibly following in her footsteps at this very moment?”
Jediah chuckled. “I hope not. She never found the mine.”
“Well, there is that little fact.” Landry grinned and took Nickolai’s hand.
This was what he wanted from this point forward—to walk beside Landry, even into the unknown, holding hands. Despite the heat and uncertainty, at this moment, he was content.
“What’s even more ironic is that it’s February, and the flood believed to have given the Dutchman the pneumonia that killed him happened in February of 1891.”
“That is quite a coincidence.” Landry spoke softly, as if her thoughts were somewhere else.
Nickolai squeezed her hand. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Some think that when she died, she joined the ghost Indians to protect the mine, since she could never find it in life.” Jediah slowed.
Nickolai squeezed her hand again. “It’s okay. I’ll protect you from any ghosts, Indian or otherwise.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Here’s where we need to start turning.” Jediah brought the mule to a stop. “We need to change direction toward the next markings on the map.”
They had hiked around to the side of Weaver’s Needle, where the large split carved dual peaks into the rock. This needlelike structure could be seen only from the side of the formation. Several crevices and crannies circled the area. A tree. Clumps of mesquite bushes and tumbleweeds. Cacti tall and thick. Small openings into dark places.
“What are we looking for?”
Jediah pointed. “That’s what’s marked on the map as water, and those are marked as the three pines.”
Nickolai pulled out the map and compared. It all matched up perfectly. Excitement shoved down his skepticism. “Which, according to the map, means the mine should be …”
“Along this way, between here and the Salt River.”
“How far is that?” Landry asked.
“Going this way, without the trails”—Jediah spit and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—“about eight to ten miles, give or take.”
Landry’s eyes widened and she smiled. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
Nickolai couldn’t resist smiling back at her. Her enthusiasm wasn’t only contagious, it was endearing.
CHAPTER THIRTY
How far have we gone?” Landry hated to sound whiny, but she was tired. All the workouts with Marcie hadn’t prepared her for hiking in the Superstitions.
“According to my GPS, about four miles.” Nickolai handed her a bottle of water then raised his voice. “Hey, Jediah, do you need some water?”
The older man turned, his eyes wide. “I think we’re close.”
Fatigue forgotten, Landry shot forward. “Really?”
“Yeah. Let me see the map again.”
Nickolai pulled the map out and held it out for Jediah to study.
“See this dark zigzag mark here?” Jediah pointed on the line that went from Weaver’s Needle almost to the marks before Salt River.
“Yes,” Landry said.
“Those are little tree lines. Or they were back when this map was drawn. But erosion and time has made them taller and thinner. If we compare them to the other row on the right by three pines, then right around here should be the mark Julia had circled.” Jediah looked up from the map and pointed in front of them. “Right in this area is where she has it marked.”
Nickolai put the map back in his backpack. “So what are we looking for?”
“Remember that the clues were given back in 1891, so the terrain has changed.”
“Right.” Landry leaned against the mule.
“But this is what’s important in the way of directions that the Dutchman gave to Julia, at least as the story goes. Two landmarks are pointed out: Weaver’s Needle and a two-room house in the mouth of a cave on the side of a slope near a gulch.” Jediah pointed to an area just to their left. “Right there used to be a small shanty years ago, but it was torn down sometime during the early 1900s.”
“You’re saying that shanty was the house he told Julia about?”
“Maybe
. But more importantly, he supposedly said that about two hundred yards across from the gulch and house, there was a tunnel that was well covered with bushes so it couldn’t be seen. He said that some distance above the tunnel, on the side of the mountain, is a shaft that isn’t too steep but is concealed. The Dutchman said, again supposedly to Julia, that the shaft led right down to the mine.”
Jediah shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. “Which, taking into account what I know about the terrain of the past, and erosion and other elemental details, I’m going to say that I think the entrance to the tunnel is right over there, by those old bunch of mesquite bushes.”
About eight or ten clumps of mesquite bushes, some grown full into trees, sat in the area he indicated.
“They look uninterrupted,” Landry commented.
“Well, if that’s the entrance to the tunnel that leads to the mine, and the mine has never been found, I would expect the old bushes to be unhanded. Do you know what the mesquite bushes are commonly called when they grow into trees? Devil trees. Fitting, wouldn’t you say?” Jediah smiled. “Shall we go check it out?”
Landry’s entire body tingled as she surged forward, holding Nickolai’s hand and keeping up with the surprisingly spry older man.
“What if we find the mine? People have looked for it for years without finding it, but what if we do?” she whispered to Nickolai.
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Let’s see what’s what first.”
“Spoilsport.” She stuck her tongue out at him, dropped his hand, and practically skipped to be beside Jediah.
The older man stopped by the bushes. “Keep in mind, this entrance has been hidden for many, many years.”
She nodded, smiling at Nickolai as he joined them.
“Be very careful.” Jediah bent beside the first clump of bushes. He pulled a walking stick from his pack on the mule and began jabbing it into the ground by the bushes.
Landry looked around and found a stick. Not as big or long as Jediah’s, but it would do. She moved to the next clump of the mesquite bushes or devil trees … whatever, and started poking the ground in between the bases of the plants. She’d never felt so alive.
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