THREE

 

 

North of Moscow, Idaho

October 6, 1999

 

“Your grandfather’s notes say it is about here,” my dad said as he pushed aside underbrush and climbed over a small ridge of rock. I looked up at the red back of dad’s hunting jacket as he picked his way up through the pine trees and underbrush. I couldn’t believe I was with him on this crazy treasure hunt. We were a good half mile up the mountain above Grandpa’s house and I was beginning to think we were going to be lost. Or worse, shot by a stupid deer hunter who thought our crashing through the brush was a reason to shoot.

It was bad enough that my crazy grandfather had died, especially right in the middle of my senior football season and the roughest semester I had signed up for in four years. But now dad was acting like a strange kid since he found Grandpa’s journal.

Three hours ago Dad had been up in the attic cleaning out and sorting Grandpa’s things. When he came down he looked as if he had seen a ghost. Mom asked him if he was all right and he handed her a yellow paper and then a journal that had Gold Mine written on the outside in gold pen. He said it was Grandpa’s handwriting.

“Take a look at this,” Dad said, and sat down at the kitchen table where Grandpa used to sit and smoke. The house still held the thick, rich smell of his pipe smoke, but with the windows open and the cool fall air from the surrounding forest coming in, the place was almost bearable.

I crowded in behind Mom and we both read. The first entry in the journal said that Grandpa and Grandma had moved to Moscow from Boise back in 1914 to find a lost gold mine.

Dad flipped quickly ahead in the journal. Grandpa and Grandma had lived in Moscow and a large number of the entries for the next year tell about Grandpa’s search for the mine. In May of 1915 his journal says he found the abandoned mine on the back side of Moscow Mountain. But the mouth of the mine had caved in and he would need money and time to dig it out. He was going to very quietly check around town to see if anyone had a claim filed. For some reason that entry seemed almost paranoid.

The next entry in the journal a week later was about how much trouble he would have getting a claim to the land because the previous owner had disappeared years before under very strange circumstances.

Next entry was very short. “May have mentioned the mine to the wrong person.”

There was another short entry a month later about meeting a man named Carl and the other members of the Wheelbarrow Association. The entry said they were the ones who had collapsed the entrance to the old mine, called the Lost Wheelbarrow Mine. Grandpa said in the entry that he had dinner with the men of the association and there was no way they were going to allow him to open the mine back up.

He feared for his and Grandma’s life, since it was obvious these men would do anything to keep the mine closed. And had numbers of times before.

The last entry was a month later. All it said was, “They took me inside the mine. Now I understand. Joined the Association. Youngest member. Let us hope I will be the last.”

Then in a different color ink Grandpa had scratched, “I was right about the Governor.”

There was nothing else in the journal except a deed showing that Grandpa owned a huge chunk of the back side of Moscow Mountain and a map drawn years later after Grandmother had died in 1965. Grandpa had built a house on the back side of Moscow Mountain the next year. The map gave exact directions to the mine from the house. The location on the map of the mine was inside the land that Grandpa owned and the deed gave clear ownership of the Lost Wheelbarrow Mine to Grandpa. And now Dad. Grandpa had scratched on the side of the deed, “No gold left.”

By the time Mom and I finished reading, Dad could hardly contain himself. He had never heard Grandpa talk at all about the mine or why Grandpa and Grandma had moved to Moscow or why Grandpa had moved to the back of Moscow Mountain. It just hadn’t occurred to Dad to ask. In fact Dad had no idea that Grandpa had owned so much forest land.

Dad wanted to go see if we could find the mine and Mom wanted nothing to do with it. So Mom decided to keep cleaning while Dad and I went up the mountain looking for the old mine sight. It was a wild goose chase, as far as I was concerned, but Mom wouldn’t let Dad go alone because he had had heart pains last year. I was elected.

Dad scrambled over the top of a slight ridge and disappeared through some underbrush. A moment later I heard him say, “Got it.” Then, as if I hadn’t been right behind him the entire time he yelled “Gary, it’s over here.”

I ducked under brush and around a large pine and came out into a slight clearing about fifty yards wide. It looked as if someone had kept the trees and brush cut back. Across the clearing in front of me the mountain side went up sharply and there was a rock outcropping to the right. Even with the growth of brush under the outcropping I could see where a long time before there had been a cut into the side of the hill. Dad was standing in front of the cut, looking through the brush.

I moved up beside him. “Any opening?” I asked.

Dad shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it.” He broke back some limbs and climbed around where the opening should have been. After a minute he said, “No luck.”

He backed out into the clearing and stood looking around. “Your grandfather must have kept this area cut back for some reason. It looks as if there are the remains of a road coming in here.” I looked to the right where he had pointed. It still took me a moment to see the faint possibility of a road cut into the hillside, now overgrown with sixty-year-old trees.

Granted, it was fascinating thinking that way back in the past someone had dug a mine here. It was sort of thrilling to think there was some mystery about it that Grandpa had kept to himself. But mostly right then I was worried about passing a City Planning test tomorrow morning and then making it through football practice at three. I had already missed three practices because of Grandpa’s death.

“Dad. Mind if we head back now?”

He stood for a moment, hands on hips, staring at the cut in the mountain, nodding. “No problem,” he said. “But guess where I’m going to spend next summer?”

“Water-skiing behind our new boat?”

He laughed. “Well, just maybe. We might buy one. Right after I open up this old mine.”

He started off down the hill before I even had a chance to groan. I knew for a fact I was going to get stuck helping him.