Dawn was graying the sky as Dusty limped into sight of the ranch. Lights were burning in every window, it seemed, and the yard was full of wagons and horses. With mounting dread, he recognized one of the Steele’s wagons, the doctor’s buggy, and the sheriffs horse. With leaden feet, he walked the last few hundred yards to the house.
As he approached the porch, a woman’s rounded figure appeared at the door. It could only be Stella. “He’s back! It’s Dusty,” she cried, hurrying out to meet him. Taking his hands, she quickly looked over his dirty clothes, his sweat-stained face. “You all right?” she asked eagerly.
He nodded wearily. “Where is she?”
Stella hesitated a moment. “Inside,” she answered. Dusty’s hands tightened on hers. “Is she all right?”
Stella’s eyes were tragic. “Yes, but...”
“Is she all right?” he demanded again.
“She ain’t hurt but...”
“But what?” he asked, terrified to hear the answer. Stella spoke as gently as she could. “She ain’t in her right mind. Somethin’ happened.” Dusty had already pushed by her. Brushing past George, the sheriff, and the doc, he stormed into the house, his eyes searching every corner for Priscilla. Stella’s voice rose behind him. “Rita Jordan’s dead.”
He stopped and turned back. Stella caught up with him. Breathlessly, she explained. “Your hands came in after supper. They found Rita dead, out by the back door. Shot. Priscilla was here, still holdin’ the gun, just rockin’ an’ starin’. They couldn’t get nothin’ out of her. The Count stayed with her while Shorty fetched us an’ then went to town fer doc an’ the sheriff.”
Dusty looked up to see the doctor who had come in behind Stella. “She doesn’t seem to be physically harmed but-”
Stella interrupted, “Nothin’ she says makes no sense. We asked her what happened an’ she says Rita tried to kill her. We asked where you were an’ she says diggin’ for gold. Honey, I made her a cup a tea and she flung it across the room screamin’ how it was poison!”
“Where is she?” he asked once again.
Stella pointed toward the bedroom, and he slowly walked over and carefully opened the door. Priscilla lay on the bed, pale as death. His heart lurched when he saw the powder burn on the front of her dress. It had been that close. He called her name.
She stirred and sat up, looking around like a lost child. He called her name again. With a cry of recognition, she reached out for him. He hurried to her side and they clung to each other. Suddenly, she pushed him away. “You’re all right?”
He nodded. “You?”
Priscilla’s eyes were unnaturally large. “She’s dead.”
“I know.”
“She tried to kill me.” He nodded encouragement and slowly, painfully the story came out. He held her as she sobbed out the last of it, his face grim. When she was finished, she looked up. “Vance?” she inquired.
“Gone,” he replied and held her again. At last he stirred. “I’d better tell the others what happened. They think you’re crazy, all that talk about gold and poison.”
She clutched at him anxiously. “First, send the doctor in. There’s something I have to know.”
She told the doctor about the poison.
“If it worked like she said,” he commented, “I doubt that you had it in you long enough to do any harm.”
“Doctor, I... that is, I’m going to have a baby. Do you think...?”
The doctor’s eyes were kind. “How far along are you?” Priscilla flushed, conscious that she had only been married for three days. “About six weeks.”
He patted her hand. “You’ll have to do worse than that to shock me. You having any bleeding?” She shook her head. “I doubt the poison would have hurt anything. The shock might cause some problems but you stay in bed a few days. Likely everything will be fine. I better send Sheriff Winslow in. He’s almighty curious about what’s been goin’ on here.”
Stella and George stood by as Dusty told both his story and Priscilla’s to the lawman. “Vance had some sort of treasure map. It was buried Spanish gold, I think,” he explained. “He and Rita Jordan showed up here yesterday and threatened to kill Pris if I didn’t take him to the spot where the treasure was. I guess he figured I would recognize the landmarks and he was right. I took him out, and we dug a hole but didn’t find any gold. He got scared when he heard the shots—I guess that was folks looking for me?” His friends nodded and he continued. “He tied me up, ran off the horses and hightailed it. He had left Rita Jordan here to guard Pris. The woman must have been a little crazy. She told Pris how she’d poisoned all these men, even Franklin when he wouldn’t sell out to her. She used some kind of Injun poison. Then she told Pris that she’d poisoned her. Luckily, Pris got sick and threw it all up. Then Rita tried to shoot her, and they fought over the gun. You can figure out the rest.”
It was, Priscilla realized with some surprise, the honest truth that he had told, but without any embarrassing references to his past affair with Rita.
“Why d’you suppose she tried to poison you, Mrs. Rhoades?” asked Winslow.
Priscilla cast about for some explanation that would not betray their secret. “She was jealous, I guess,” she said lamely.
“Jealous?” The sheriff was mystified.
“You gotta be a woman to understand, Sheriff,” Stella explained helpfully. “A woman like that would just naturally hate a lady like Priscilla. She wasn’t in her right mind, either. She must’ve thought in some crazy way that Priscilla was a threat to her. I don’t guess she really needed a good reason. Seems like she just poisoned anybody she had a mind to.”
The sheriff nodded. He was mentally making plans to telegraph word for area lawmen to be on the lookout for Vance. Someone needed to ask him some questions about Rogers’s death. Meanwhile, he decided not to tell anyone his suspicions. No use upsetting Mrs. Rhoades any more right now. “Reckon we better head on out. You folks have had more’n enough company fer one day.”
Later, Priscilla sat on her bed eating breakfast from a tray that Dusty had brought her. The golden sunlight streaming through the window gave the lie to the nightmare of the preceding day. Dusty sat in a chair beside the bed, his eyes never leaving her. Occasionally, she looked up at him and smiled.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she asked.
“I was just thinking how scared I was when I got back to the ranch. It might’ve been you instead of her.”
She nodded solemnly. “At least Mr. Vance didn’t hurt you.” Dusty smiled grimly and touched the lump on the side of his head. “Well, he didn’t hurt you much,” she conceded. “He might have killed you. I guess he wasn’t really a bad person. Not like her.”
Dusty did not share her opinion, but he decided not to argue. She ate for a while longer.
“Poor Mr. Vance,” she commented.
“Poor?” he asked, amazed.
“All that looking, for months, and not even to find the gold in the end. I almost feel sorry for him.”
Dusty snorted. She ignored him and then said, almost to herself, “I wonder who did get the gold.”
“Nobody, I reckon.”
“Nobody? But you said it was gone,” she accused. He had told her the whole story in detail after everyone else had left.
“I said we didn’t find it. That’s ‘cause we were digging in the wrong place,” he told her blandly.
Priscilla’s eyes were wide with amazement. “But the turtle, carved on the tree, just like the map...”
Dusty grinned slowly. “You remember the story I told Vance, about the Mexicans?” She nodded. “Well, there’s more I didn’t tell him.” She leaned forward eagerly. “See, a couple years later, after the Mexes left and Pa came home, I found that tree, the one with the turtle carved on it. We were having a roundup and Pa had sent me out to rustle firewood. The tree had been lightning-struck and was rotten. It was pure luck I happened to see the carving at all.” He stopped.
“Didn’t you tell anyone?” she demanded.
“I told Pa. He just laughed. Said the only treasure we had on the place was the cattle. That’s what would make is rich. He was busy with the roundup and all, but I made him promise he’d help me look for it when he got back from the drive. He never got back,” he told her simply.
Priscilla nodded. After a moment she asked, “Did you ever tell your mother?”
“Yeah, well... you had to know her. She was real peculiar about money. She said if the Good Lord wanted us rich, we’d earn it. Thought it was pagan to go diggin’ around looking for gold, especially if it belonged to someone else. She would probably have given it back to the Mexicans if we had found it.”
“So you never even looked for it?” she asked incredulously.
“I looked some. I dug around a little. That’s where I found my lucky gold piece,” he told her.
“That square coin I saw!” Priscilla cried. ‘That was the coin you tricked Vance with!” she realized. “It really was part of the treasure. But how did the turtle get carved on the other tree?”
“I carved it there. You gotta remember, I was just a kid. I was thinking if those Mexicans ever came back. I’d fool them. I reckon it was a good idea,” he grinned boyishly.
She looked at him with wonder and her eyes held the same gleam he had seen in Vance’s when he had looked at the coin. “Then the gold’s still out there,” she said.
He looked at her with disapproval. He got up and removed the tray from her lap. Then he knelt down beside the bed and took her hand in both of his. He looked at her with eyes more serious than she had ever seen them. “Look, honey,” he said. “Don’t you start. We don’t need any gold. We’re rich enough.” His voice became hoarse with emotion. “We got this place. We’ve got each other.”
With her free hand she touched his hair, and he buried his face in her lap. Vance had been right, he knew. A man would be a fool to go after gold when he had her.
Priscilla looked down at him. The sunlight caught his hair and she could see the golden flecks. He was right. They were rich. And he was the treasure. “Love me,” she whispered.
His head came up. He wasn’t certain he had heard her right. “What...?”
“I said, love me. Love me now.” She needed him, needed to feel him inside of her, needed his love to wash away the horrors that had come between them.
Her dark eyes glittered with desire, and Dusty’s response was instinctive, but his good judgment held him back. “You shouldn’t,” he cautioned. “Doc said...”
“That I should stay in bed,” she supplied. “I’m not going to get out of bed. Please,” she begged, drawing his face to hers.
The touch of her lips drew all resistance from him, and he followed her willingly when she tugged him down onto the bed. The fragile fabric of the nightdress Stella had helped her change into was no barrier to his seeking hands, and Priscilla impatiently pulled open the buttons of his shirt, longing for the warmth, the strength of him. Soon they were free of all restraints, their bodies intertwined, their lips whispering the secret words that only lovers know. Priscilla cried out in ecstasy when his power filled her, and Dusty had the oddest sensation that she was drawing more than just his seed from him as she seemed to absorb the very essence of his life into her depths. When they both lay sated and panting, Dusty very tenderly brushed the damp chestnut curls from her forehead and left a very chaste kiss in that newly bared spot. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, a worried frown creasing his own broad forehead.
Priscilla’s arms tightened around him. “You could never hurt me,” she declared with certainty as she clung to him with greedy hands.
He knew that was a lie, a lie of love, but nevertheless a lie. He had hurt her badly, cruelly, in the past, but she was partly right: he could never hurt her again. “You’re so precious to me,” he told her softly.
She looked at his face, her eyes filled with love. “When I came here, I was looking for something. Just like Jason Vance, I knew there was a treasure here, and I found it when I found you.”
“Oh, no,” he denied, unwilling to accept such a tribute. “You’re the treasure. Even Vance said so before he left. He was pretty worthless, but he was right about that.”
Priscilla heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Do you realize that we have been arguing ever since the moment we met and we’re still arguing?”
Dusty thought this over and then grinned wickedly. “We didn’t have one single argument during the last three days,” he pointed out.
She giggled. “I guess we were too busy doing other things,” she said, running one hand up his thigh provocatively.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he warned sternly, removing her hand from its dangerous position. “You’ve been ‘busy’ enough for today. It’s time we both got a little rest. Neither of us got much sleep last night.” Settling her more comfortably on his shoulder, he snuggled down and was quickly sound asleep.
Too keyed up to sleep so quickly, Priscilla watched the face she loved soften in sleep. He was wrong, she decided. They both were. They were not the treasure. No, it was something much bigger, much more important that was so valuable, and that was their love. Their love was the real treasure in Rainbow. Along with that they had each other, their child, the ranch—everything anyone could possibly want.
And somewhere out there was all that gold...