LU FELT SOMETHING wet plop down on his forehead.
“Wake up now, son. It’s time for you to get up.”
“Henry?” Lu opened his eyes to see the face of his friend, surrounded by a fantastic blue sky. “I don’t want to shoot the rifle today, Henry. I’m tired. And my head hurts.”
“Don’t you go back to sleep on me.” With one arm, Henry lifted Lu into a sitting position. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to try and stay awake.”
Lu reached up to discover a cool rag had been placed over his forehead. “What happened, Henry?”
“That pistol of yours, that’s what. Got you right above the eyebrow. Dug a trench near to the bone. It’ll scar, I’m afraid. Won’t look too bad, though. A man can’t go through life without a few scars.”
“Is Chino all right? And Sadie?”
“Both fine, thanks to you.”
“What about Mr. MacLemore?”
The look on Henry’s face was unlike any Lu had yet seen.
“Is he dead?” Lu asked.
“Not yet.”
“But he’s hurt.”
“Shot in the stomach.”
“Where is he?”
“Sadie and Chino carried him into the house. He’s in his old room.”
Henry nodded.
With his friend’s help, Lu managed to stand up and make the short walk around to the front door. His head was throbbing so hard that he found it difficult to maintain any sort of balance. Henry held his hand the whole way.
The inside of the house was in even worse shape than the exterior. Mold grew on the remains of an old kitchen table. Whole chunks of flooring had been ripped up. Even the stove had been smashed to bits and scattered. Worst of all was the blood. A trail of it led from the front door, across the room, and up the stairs.
MacLemore had been placed in one of the second floor bedrooms, on what remained of an old gray mattress. Generous portions of the ticking had been torn out and strung across the floor, along with the broken remains of a wood bed-frame. Sadie sat in the corner, watching her father’s chest rise and fall. There were lines of dirt running down both of her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying now.
“How is he?” Henry asked.
“Asleep,” Sadie said.
Lu stumbled toward the mattress, still clutching the damp cloth to his forehead. When he saw what remained of Mr. MacLemore, he nearly passed out. The man’s face was as pale and yellow as an old boiled shirt. Blood poured from a bullet wound in his gut, the color of tar. Lu was amazed that he’d lived this long. He didn’t think a person had that much blood in them.
“Is there anything we can do?” he asked.
Henry shook his head. “The bullet went through his liver,” he explained. “There’s nothing anyone could do.”
“Where’s Chino?”
“Scouring the woods. He’s hoping to find some sign of our Yankee.”
“Phillip Traum.”
Henry and Sadie both started.
“That’s his name,” Lu said. “Same as it was in the notebook Jack gave us. We should have remembered it better.”
“Shut up,” Sadie growled. “Just shut up about your damned notebook.”
“What’s all this?” MacLemore whispered. “No reason to be mean to the boy.”
“Daddy?” Sadie rushed to his bedside. “Oh Daddy, I’m so sorry. We never should have got separated in the woods.”
“Not your fault. No one’s fault but Traum’s.” MacLemore coughed. “He made Chino and me think we were enemies. I’d have sworn Chino was the very Yankee we were after. Even took a shot at him.” He chuckled. “Chino was too fast for me … Too fast for your old man.”
“What exactly happened out there?” Henry asked him.
“Not long after I lost y’all, I came across a fine upstanding southern boy. Good manners. Said his name was Phillip.” MacLemore took a deep breath. “He told me he knew where the Yankee was hiding, even offered to guide me to the house.”
He paused to let out a long, chest rattling cough.
“You don’t have to say any more,” Sadie whispered. “Save your strength.”
“I need to.” MacLemore smiled feebly. “It doesn’t really hurt. I just can’t seem to catch my breath.”
“Take your time,” Henry said.
MacLemore continued—“So Traum asked me what I wanted with the Yankee, and I said I wanted to shoot him. More than anything in the world I wanted to get a shot at that Yankee.” He patted Sadie on the knee. “It was really for your mother all the time, you know.”
“I know it, Daddy. I know it.”
“I wish you could have known her,” MacLemore said.
Tears rolled down Sadie’s cheeks.
“You’d have loved your mother. And she’d have loved you.”
“But I’m not womanly,” Sadie said. “I don’t make clothes or like opera.”
“She wouldn’t have cared. Your mother was a strong woman. Had to be, living all the way out here with me.” MacLemore took his daughter’s hand. Lu could tell he was trying to squeeze it, but his muscles didn’t seem to have the strength. “Nothing wrong with a woman knowing what she wants from life,” he continued. “I wouldn’t change a thing about you for all the world.”
Sadie couldn’t hold back a moment longer. She put her face against her father’s chest and bawled. Lu felt tears beginning to well up in his own eyes, and quickly wiped them away. Even Henry was moved. He grabbed Lu by the forearm and gently pulled him toward the door. “Let’s leave them be,” he whispered.
They went downstairs to the front porch, where they sat eating Pearl Lower’s vegetables and watching the surrounding trees for any sign of Chino. Lu’s head was beginning to feel better.
“So what did you see out there?” Lu asked Henry.
“In the forest?” Henry picked up a snap pea and popped open the husk. “Well, I saw a sort of bright red light, like from a campfire. I thought you were all right behind me, so I went for it. But when I reached the clearing, I was all alone.” He dropped the peas into his mouth and flung the husk away. “There was an old man sitting beside the fire. He said he was a preacher, heading for San Pablo.”
“Phillip Traum.”
Henry nodded. “I told him we were after this Yankee, and he said he’d pray for our safety. I told him he ought not to travel in such a place by himself, and he asked if I wouldn’t help him cross the river. So, I rode him across. All the time he’s asking about my hopes and dreams. He seemed like a kindly old preacher, knew his Bible forward and back. I told him how I’d like to start my own church. He said that sounded fine, and tells me he hopes I rid the world of this Yankee once and for all.
“Next thing I know, I’m riding down a back road, headed toward an old house. There’s a blond-haired devil, pistol drawn and firing on you, Chino, and Sadie. I swear I could hear you calling to me for help. So I pulled out my rifle. I had him in my sights, ready to shoot, when all of a sudden I hear the most awful explosion, and fear unlike anything I ever knew goes all through me.” He looked at Lu. “It was like seeing my every sin, hearing my every petty thought, all at once. It was so terrible I dropped my gun. Lucky that I did, too. Because when I looked up again, I saw it wasn’t a blond man hiding out behind that old outhouse, but Chino. And him looking near as scared as me.”
“How is Chino?” Lu asked.
“Furious. With himself as much as anything else.”
“But it wasn’t his fault. There was some kind of sorcery.” Lu shook his head. “We should’ve known when we first heard that strange music. Remember how we all heard it different?”
“Chino knows we were duped, but I’m not sure that does him much good. If he could get his hands on Phillip Traum it might help him some, but …” Henry shrugged.
“He won’t find Traum out there,” Lu said. Firing that bullet yesterday had given him a number of insights into Traum’s methods. “If you want to know the truth,” Lu continued, “Traum never really was here. No one was. This was just a sort of big elaborate trap. MacLemore’s gold was the bait.”
“And just how do you know all that?”
Lu was about to answer when he noticed movement from near the tree line. “Look, there’s Chino,” he said.
Chino had just emerged from the forest. He was on foot, leading his tall mare. The expression on his face was so tired, so full of guilt, Lu thought he looked at least ten years older.
“Find anything?” Henry asked him.
“Not a damn thing. I seen Lu’s tracks. And Sadie’s. I even found where you crossed the river. But no Traum. It’s just as though he was never there at all.” Chino tied his horse to the porch rail between Crash and Carrot, and then sat down next to Lu. “How are you, chico?”
“Pretty good.”
Chino let out a long sigh. It sounded almost as if he’d been holding his breath.
They sat a while in stony silence, wondering what they ought to do next, or if they ought to do anything at all, when all at once the door behind them swung open and Sadie stumbled out.
“How’s your father?” Chino asked her.
Quietly, but clearly, she said, “We need to dig a grave.”
There were picks, shovels, and other mining implements in a little shed attached to the main house. Most had long since gone to rust, but a few were strong enough for an hour or two of work.
They chose a spot in the graveyard, just a few steps from the front door of the cabin. Upon inspection, they discovered that the headstones weren’t stone at all, just wood, weathered until it had turned a dull gray. Not one of them had a name attached, though most had a winged skull carved into the face. Henry called it a “death’s head,” and said they were a common feature on gravestones back east. Lu thought they were gruesome, and a bit scary. Into one eye socket of each skull had been placed a tiny speck of gold-dust, the only portion of the supposedly vast MacLemore horde these former adventurers would ever get. The idea was enough to make Lu shudder.
There were only two headstones without skulls. They stood side by side, one half-again larger than the other, and both of them blank. Sadie stared at them a long time, then declared that her father’s grave should be dug between.
The ground was hard and rocky, making for sweaty work. But no one complained. Henry and Chino both took off their shirts. Lu didn’t, mostly out of a desire to keep Sadie company. By noon they’d dug a hole four feet deep, and by unspoken consensus decided that would be sufficient.
Sadie said she’d like to wash her face in the river. While she was gone, Henry, Chino and Lu, wrapped her father’s body up in his bedroll, leaving only his face uncovered, and carried it down to the grave. Chino filled MacLemore’s water-skin with some of the mattress ticking from the second floor, and then propped it under his head for a pillow. Lu went into the woods nearest the house and picked as many wild daisies as he could find. Henry built a fire in the fireplace, and began boiling water in a cook-pot he’d found amongst the litter in the kitchen. By the time Sadie returned, all of an hour later, they had her father laid out, looking as peaceful as they could get him, and mugs of hot vegetable soup for lunch.
They sat on the front porch, chatting about nothing in particular, as the sun made its lazy way across the sky. None of the men pressured her, and Sadie seemed to appreciate it. Finally, when the afternoon had faded into evening, and a sunset the color of roses hung in the notches between the surrounding mountains, Sadie said it was time.
“Would you say a word?” she asked Henry.
He nodded solemnly. From memory, he recited:
I will lift up mine eyes to the mountains,
Whence comes the source of my salvation.
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
May He save you from stumbling.
May He, your guardian, never slumber.
The Lord is your keeper, your shade,
He stands strong upon your right hand.
By day, the sun shall not smite you,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve you from evil.
He shall preserve your soul.
The Lord guards your comings and goings,
Both today, and forever more.
Henry paused, gazed for a moment up at the sunset, and the mountains upon which it lay, and then bowed his head. “May the Lord do as much for us all,” he prayed. “Amen.”
Sadie picked up a fistful of dirt. She reached out, and was about to drop it into her father’s grave, but stopped. “Where’s Daddy’s guitar?” she asked.
“It’s in the house,” Lu said. “We can bury it with him if you want.”
She thought about it for a moment, and then tossed her fistful of dirt into the grave. Henry immediately did the same, and Lu followed suit. When it was Chino’s turn, Sadie grabbed his arm.
“Will you help me to cover him up?” she asked.
“Me?”
“You.”
Chino picked up a fistful of soil from the pile and tossed it in. Then he took up one of the shovels and began filling the hole in earnest. Sadie grabbed another of the shovels and helped.
“Let’s go inside,” Henry said to Lu.
Sadie joined them soon after. Together, the three of them worked to set right all the damage that had been done to the cottage over the years. It seemed the best way to honor the spirit of their friend, to set his house to rights. They hauled the trash out behind the shed, replaced the ripped up floor boards, and scrubbed the mildew, blood and mold from the furniture and floors. There were a few salvageable items scattered amidst the wreckage—a carton of beeswax candles, a corncob pipe, and a silver thimble—all of which Sadie placed carefully into her saddlebags. It was past midnight before they’d finished, but the little cabin actually began to seem livable once more. Henry built a fire in the fireplace, and made a pot of coffee with grounds Pearl Lower had sent them. It was the first they’d had in months. Lu could hardly stand to drink it, the taste was so rich and full.
Finally, when they could think of nothing more to do or say to each other, they spread their blankets on the floor.
“What do you think Chino’s doing out there all by himself?” Lu asked, as he crawled under his. “Not still looking for Phillip Traum?”
“Probably just keeping an eye on things,” Henry said. “Making sure we’re safe.”
“You think he’ll ever come inside?”
“He will when he’s ready,” Sadie replied.
The next morning, they came outside to find Chino sound asleep on the front porch. He had a hammer in one hand and a rusty chisel in the other. The two blank headstones were blank no longer. On the larger one was carved a flower, a wild daisy just like those Lu had picked the afternoon before. And beside the daisy was a guitar. On the other, smaller headstone, Chino had carved a sun, half-risen—or half-set, Lu couldn’t tell which—over a mountain exactly like the one that rose up behind the MacLemores’ cottage. Lu was amazed at the skill of the carvings.
Sadie woke Chino with a bear hug. Neither said a word about the epitaphs Chino had chosen. It wasn’t necessary.
They ate the rest of the vegetable soup for breakfast, and then Chino said he was going back to the woods. He still hoped to find some sign of the missing Phillip Traum. Henry decided to go with him. As they saddled their horses, Sadie suggested that they might also go up to the mine. “Who knows? Maybe Traum’s up there.”
She told them where she guessed the opening was, and the two men rode off. Lu and Sadie stood on the porch, watching as their friends disappeared amidst the trees.
“There’s no chance that they’ll find anything,” Sadie said. “Is there?”
Lu shook his head. “None.”
“Too bad.” Sadie bit her lower lip. “And they’ll be gone for hours.”
“What should I do?” Lu asked her.
“Follow me.”
Sadie led him back into the house. “I want to show you something,” she said. She bent down under the staircase and pulled up a trap door. Lu had noticed it earlier, while cleaning, and had even lifted it to look inside. A ladder went down into a deep cellar, smelling of earth. At the time, Lu had guessed there was probably nothing down there but more rubbish, and so didn’t bother to investigate. Sadie seemed to have other ideas.
She took a candle from her pocket, lit it with a match, and held it down inside the tunnel. Squinting, Lu could just barely make out the floor. As he’d figured, it was covered in trash.
“You want to clean up down there?” he asked.
“Maybe, but not right this minute.” Sadie swung one foot down into the tunnel. A moment later she’d disappeared down the ladder. “Well?” she called up at Lu. “Are you comin’ or not?”
Lu scrambled down the ladder as fast as he could.
“This was my mother’s root cellar,” Sadie explained. She waved the candle back and forth. Treasure-hunters had ransacked it thoroughly, though amazingly there remained one unbroken jar of what appeared to be pickled beets. There was also a door leading out of the room. Sadie turned the knob and the door swung open.
Lu followed her down the tunnel beyond. It was narrow, and they had to crouch to avoid hitting their heads on the support beams, but it did have a nice pine floor. In fact, so had the cellar. That certainly seemed odd.
“When they were building the cabin, Daddy found a hot spring. Mother loved to soak in the tub, so he built her a bathhouse. This was how she went back and forth.”
The tunnel ended on a smallish room. Never having seen a ladies’ bathhouse before, Lu had no way to judge whether it was larger or smaller than normal. It was certainly luxuriant, in a strange, outlandish sort of way. To the left of the passage, as they came in, was a long wooden bench. And over that was a series of hooks. The rest of the room was taken up by the tub, which had been carved from a single mammoth sheet of dark gray stone, and then sunk so that only a couple of inches extended above the floor. A pipe jutted out of the rear wall. It had a tap on the end, so that a person could shut off the flow when the tub was full. Sadie reached over and turned it on. Immediately, steaming water began to flow into the tub and down the drain.
“Neat,” Lu said.
Sadie sat down on the bench and began pulling off her boots.
“What are you doing?” Lu asked her.
“Help me clean it out.”
Lu kicked his own boots into the corner, and then the two of them got down inside the tub and began swishing the water all around, washing away years of collected dust. When they were done, Lu climbed out and put his boots on. Sadie turned off the water, but stood in the tub, thinking.
“What’s wrong?” Lu asked her.
“Daddy’s last words to me were about the gold.”
“Really?” Lu hadn’t entirely forgotten about the gold, but he hadn’t felt comfortable mentioning it either. It would come up when Sadie was ready, he figured. “So what’s that got to do with being down here?” he asked.
“He said the gold was in Mama’s tub, and told me to bring you.” Sadie frowned. “But there ain’t nothin’ down here. Some treasure hunter must’ve found it after all.”
“What exactly did your father say?”
“He was pretty out of it,” Sadie admitted. “His breath was comin’ so hard. But I could see he wanted to tell me somethin’, so I leaned down. And he whispered, ‘The gold is in your mother’s bath.’ I asked him what he meant, but he started in coughing and couldn’t say. The last words he managed to get out were, ‘Take Lu.’”
“Strange,” Lu said.
“Yeah.”
They stood looking at each other, neither saying a word. Finally, Lu had a thought. “What kind of rock is this tub made of?”
Sadie felt the rim and shrugged. “Granite, I guess.”
“Is there anything shiny in it?” he asked. “Some kind of metal maybe?”
“I guess it’s sort of shiny down near the bottom. But that’s probably just the water.”
“Maybe we ought to fill it up,” Lu suggested.
They spent the next few minutes searching the room for anything they might use as a stopper. At last, Sadie found the actual stopper. It had a piece of rope tied through a loop at the top, and was dangling from a hook on the back of the bench. She pushed it down into the drain, twisting it until it seemed solid, and then turned the water back on. By the time there was three inches in the bottom of the tub, the whole room was filled with steam.
“Anything happening?” Lu asked.
Sadie shook her head.
“Well, I’m all out of ideas,” Lu said. “Maybe you’re just supposed to take a bath.”
“Maybe.” Sadie set the candle down on the arm of the bench. She frowned. “I can’t exactly bathe with you here, but I guess I could soak my feet.”
She rolled up her pants until the better part of both legs were visible, from the middle of the thigh down. “Here now, get your shoes off,” she said to Lu, as she lowered her feet into the steaming water. “You may as well join me.”
“Really?”
“Sure. It’s plenty warm. Feel.” She grabbed up a handful of water and flung it at him, hitting him in the chest.
“Knock it off.”
Sadie laughed.
Lu sat down on the bench and began unlacing his boots. He couldn’t take his eyes off Sadie’s legs. They were long, white, and shapely. “See anything yet?” he asked. “Any sign of the gold?”
Sadie leaned down to inspect the sides of the tub. “Nope. Still nothing.”
Lu rolled up his pants until both legs were exposed to the knee. Suddenly, he was shaking so hard he thought he might topple off the bench.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sadie asked.
“Nothing.”
Lu felt ridiculous as he scooted to the edge of the tub. His legs were hideously bony, and sparse black hairs grew out of his shins. As he sat down beside Sadie, the naked skin of their lower legs happened to rub together for an instant. Lu winced. He hoped she hadn’t noticed, but couldn’t see how such a thing was even remotely possible. To Lu, Sadie’s leg felt as smooth and soft as … There was nothing to compare it with. He might have said they were as soft as Crash’s muzzle, except that they felt utterly hairless.
For the next couple of minutes, neither of them spoke. Finally, Sadie broke the ice. “I sure wish we’d find that gold, don’t you?”
Lu nodded.
“What’s wrong?” Sadie asked again.
“I … I just never saw so much of your legs before.”
Sadie scoffed. “You mean in all these months you never snuck a peek?”
Lu shook his head. “Not one. Did you?”
“One or two.”
“When?”
“While you were bathing with Joseph and his people mostly.”
“Which day?”
“Every day.”
This was a revelation. Lu blushed so hard he felt sure his face must glow. It was hard to believe a girl would be interested in such things. Everything he thought he knew suddenly felt blown apart, like so many New Year’s firecrackers.
“You spied on me?” he asked her.
“Dang.”
“Are you mad?” Sadie playfully elbowed Lu in the ribs, making him jump.
“I just wish I’d known.”
“Why?”
“Well … I would’ve tried harder to spy on you, too.”
Sadie laughed.
They sat there, chatting about various bits and pieces of foolishness until their feet were wrinkled beyond recognition. Lu couldn’t remember when he’d had such a nice time. Sadie appeared to feel the same.
At last, by mutual agreement, they decided that they’d had enough. It’d been a good long soak, and now it was time to go back upstairs. Grabbing the rope with her toes, Sadie pulled the stopper. Slowly, the water began to sink away.
They had nothing to dry off with, so they just sat on the edge of the tub, letting their legs air-dry for a few minutes before rolling their pants back down and pulling on their boots.
“Do you think we should do this again?” Sadie asked, as the water sunk from around their toes. “It was kind of fun.”
“Yeah, it was.” Lu’s self-consciousness was already starting to come back. “Do you want to?”
“If you want.”
Lu elbowed Sadie in the ribs. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “If Henry and Chino go off somewhere again.”
“Yeah, all right.”
“Who knows, maybe they’ll want to look for the gold.” Even as the words left his mouth, Lu was reminded of Sadie’s father. What could he have meant, sending Sadie and he down here? There was no gold in this tub.
“Boy, this drain is loud,” Sadie said. “Sounds like a waterfall. You’d think the water was going down a thousand feet.”
Lu listened. She was right, it was loud. Then a new thought struck him. “Where is the water going?” he asked.
They both leaned down to listen as the last drops of bath-water swirled away. When it was all gone, Lu grabbed their candle and handed it to Sadie. “Here. Try looking down the drain hole,” he said.
Sadie did, and gasped. “My God,” she said. “It must go down twenty-five feet. What in the world?” Then she stopped. They looked at each other, smiles spread across their faces. “So that’s what he meant.”
“Let’s go find Henry and Chino,” Lu said.
They were just pulling on their boots when a realization stung Lu in the heart.
“We’ll have to blow it up,” he said. “That’s why your father told you to bring me. That’s why he hired someone familiar with explosives. He knew right from the start.”
“What do you mean?”
Lu pointed at the tub. “There’s no way to dig it out. I’ll have to blow it up.”
“Mama’s bath,” Sadie said, and frowned. “No more soaking our feet.”
“Nope.”
Sadie stared down at the tub. “But maybe we can do it again somewhere else,” she said. “You think?”
“Sure.” But Lu knew such a set-up would only come once in a lifetime. Even if they found a great big tub like this somewhere else, they’d never be able to sit beside it together. Out in the world, Sadie was a white woman, and Lu Chinese. Even if their enjoyment of each other was completely innocent, society wasn’t likely to see it that way. Judging by the expression on her face, Sadie was having the exact same thoughts.
“Absolutely,” Lu said. “We’ll do it lots more times.”
“How does that look?” Chino asked.
He held the drill bit while Henry swung the hammer. After having spent the whole morning engaged in what amounted to a wild goose chase, both men seemed to enjoy the work. It’d taken them the better part of the afternoon, but eventually they’d managed to pound a hole through the hard stone tub. Actually they’d drilled two, one hole almost touching the other. Lu only wanted to do this once, and so had decided to use both charges at the same time.
“Looks all right to me,” he said, cutting two extra long bits of fuse and snaking them down the holes. As soon as he had the fuses placed to his satisfaction, Lu poured in the blasting powder. “Got that sand?”
Sadie brought him the cook-pot in which Henry had made vegetable soup the night before. They’d only found one old bucket in the shed, and it had a hole rusted clear through the bottom.
“The sand’s got rocks in it,” Sadie said. “But I can sift them out if you want.”
“Don’t bother.” Lu piled the sand into the holes, packing it down with the back of the drill bit. When he was done, he looked at his friends. “Guess you three ought to go outside now.”
“Here.” Henry set one of their candles down beside the tub. “But for heaven’s sake, be careful.”
“Just make sure you leave the door open at the end of the tunnel, and that someone holds the trap door for me to climb out.”
When all three of them were safely clear of the cellar, he lit the fuse.
Lu ran as fast as his feet would carry him. He stumbled once, halfway up the ladder, but Chino reached down, grabbed him by the wrists and hauled him out. They were racing down the front steps when they heard the explosion, and felt the whole earth shake. Timbers throughout the cabin creaked. Smoke gushed up through the trapdoor, filling the main floor, and even drifting upstairs. Thankfully, the walls and roof remained both strong and upright, and nothing caught fire.
Sadie and Henry, sitting on a pair of gravestones in the yard, waved them over.
“You blew up half the meadow,” Henry said.
Indeed, an enormous pit had been opened, just a few yards beyond the cabin. The hole was easily ten feet across, and all of fifteen feet deep. Shards of the wonderful granite bathtub littered the bottom, as did the splintered remains of the pine floorboards and ceiling supports. The tunnel to the house had partially caved in.
“Anybody see any gold down there?” Chino asked.
“Not yet,” Lu said. “But we will.”
It took them only an hour to haul the treasure up, now that they’d found it. Lu and Sadie, being the only ones slender enough to pass through the mouth of the drain tunnel, played a quick game of rock-paper-scissors to decide who got to do the honors. Sadie won two times out of three, and they lowered her in.
At the bottom she found a stone ledge with five water-skins stacked atop it, each brim-full of gold dust and weighing more than forty pounds. One by one she tied the skins to the end of the rope, and Henry, Lu, and Chino hauled them up.
They were just snaking the rope back into the pit to haul out Sadie herself, when she said she’d found something else. Quick as they could, the men dragged it to the surface.
It turned out to be an old trunk. They waited until Sadie was topside, and then opened it up.
Inside, along with a china-doll, some ladies’ dress combs, a tin-type portrait of a young couple sitting on a porch swing, and an empty perfume bottle, they found a dress and a pair of matching shoes. They also discovered, at the very bottom, an old notebook. The cover had been doodled over with butterflies, flowers, and other bits of girlish malarkey. Sadie opened it up, read the first page to herself, and then placed it gingerly back in the trunk.
Lu didn’t ask her what was inside, nor did Henry or Chino. From the look in her eyes, such questions were absolutely unnecessary. A man would have to be a fool not to know what was in that book, and an even bigger fool to ask.
“I guess we may as well haul this all back to the house,” Henry said.
Lu picked up one of the gold-filled water-skins, Henry and Chino each took two, and Sadie carried the trunk. It was the lightest thing they had, and the men figured she would want to carry that treasure herself.
They were right.