“Yesterday,” Dwayne told her, frowning. “Didn’t he tell you he was coming to see us?
And what he was doing?”
“Ah, yeah. He did mention it,” she quickly prevaricated.
Dwayne suddenly snapped his mouth shut, his frown turning into a glare as he waggled a finger at her again, this time scolding. “You just never mind, missy. I don’t know nothing.”
“Where’s Harry?” Sadie asked, looking over Dwayne’s shoulder at the camp behind him.
Dwayne stepped to the left to block her view. “Harry’s in town buying us some supplies.”
Sadie sighed and rubbed her forehead. “It’s okay, Dwayne. The reason I’m not home cooking for my husband is that I’m checking to see if Morgan really did come visit you and that he did what he said he was going to do.”
Her convoluted words nicely confusing him, Dwayne frowned again. He thought for a minute, shook his head, and suddenly smiled at her.
“I guess I can show you. Since the gift’s really from you and all,” he whispered, as if afraid even the trees might hear what he was saying.
He shot a suspicious look around the rim of his campsite, then excitedly waved Sadie over to some boxes stacked by a honeysuckle bush. He put his finger to his lips for her to be quiet and looked around again just before he crouched down on his knees.
Sadie took a look around herself and then bent to see what he was doing. Dwayne pushed several of the boxes out of the way and started digging in the dirt.
“We hid it good, didn’t we?” he whispered, pawing the sand away like a groundhog.
“You surely did,” Sadie quietly agreed, shrugging her pack off her back and kneeling beside him.
Sadie gasped when Dwayne pulled a quart-sized Mason jar out of the ground and brushed the sand off it. “You hid it real good,” she whispered in awe, blinking at the jar full of gold nuggets.
Dwayne continued to pet the jar, reverently cleaning every speck of sand off it with a slightly trembling hand.
“Morgan told me and Harry this was all the gold,” he said, his voice still quiet and reverent. He looked at her, clutching the jar to his chest and grinning like a child at the circus. “That you and him found Jedediah’s gold, Sadie, and that you want us to have it.
That you don’t need it none, being you have a rich husband now.”
Unable to speak, Sadie nodded, feeling her face heat again. Dwayne suddenly grabbed her around the neck and noisily and very wetly kissed her shocked mouth.
And then he scrambled back, the gold still clutched to his chest, his own face as red as a sunset. He shot a look around his campsite with wide, horrified eyes.
“I—I didn’t mean to do that!” he yelped, his entire neck and face now blistering red. “I mean, I… but… ” He looked around the campsite again. “I don’t want your husband to think I was… that I was… ”
Sadie patted his arm and stood up, finally gathering her wits enough to smile at him. “It’
s okay, Dwayne. Morgan understands that you and Harry are my friends. He wouldn’t take offense even if he were here. Which he isn’t,” she assured the still worried man.
Sadie reached a hand into her pocket and curled her fingers over the two gold nuggets she still possessed. She had planned to give them to Harry and Dwayne, but now the gesture seemed lame, considering she had apparently already given them a fortune.
Why had Morgan brought this gold to them?
And just where had he gotten it? Everything had been destroyed. The gold had been buried under thousands of tons of granite.
“Did Morgan tell you why he—I mean, why we gave you the gold?” Sadie asked, waving her hand at the jar Dwayne was still clutching.
“Because you don’t need it none,” he repeated, crawling on his knees to the honeysuckle bush. He put the jar back in the ground, carefully covered it up with sand, and set the boxes back over it.
“Did he tell you where we found the gold?” Sadie asked.
Dwayne looked at her and frowned. “No. We asked, but he wouldn’t tell us nothing. He just said this was all of it, that there weren’t no more.”
He stood up and brushed off his hands, suddenly narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “Was he telling the truth, Sadie? Is this all of it?”
She nodded. “Best as we can tell, Dwayne. There wasn’t really a mine. Jedediah had only found a large deposit of placer gold, not the source.”
“Where?” he asked, cocking his head and squinting one eye. “Was it close to a logging camp? Say, about a mile or so north of the camp?”
Sadie shook her head. “Nope,” she lied, smiling while she did, having already decided it would be best to guide the Dolans to look elsewhere. “It isn’t even in this valley, Dwayne.” She pointed toward the mountains. “It’s in the next valley over, almost in Canada.”
“The next valley!” Dwayne shouted, only to look quickly around himself again. He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You mean, we’ve been searching the wrong valley all these years? Even Frank?” He narrowed his eyes again. “Your daddy thought it was near the Prospect. And Harry and me even found flakes of placer gold here.”
Sadie shrugged. “We all thought it was here, Dwayne. But if you were to look in the valley to the west, you’d probably find several old logging camps.”
“Where?” he whispered, taking another step closer. He set his face into a puppy-dog look of pleading. “Can you at least give me a hint, Sadie?”
“Why? It’s all gone, Dwayne.”
“But there might be more.”
“Why do you need more?” she asked, waving toward the honeysuckle bush. “There’s enough there to go to Russia and bring back a dozen wives if you want.”
Dwayne was startled by the idea. “We don’t want a dozen,” he said, looking horrified again. “We only need two.” He suddenly grinned. “Morgan helped us pick them out.”
“He what?”
Dwayne strode over to his tent, picked up a magazine, and came running back to her, leafing through the pages as he ran.
“Here,” he said, slapping the page with his dirty, callused finger. “Morgan said I should pick this one.”
Sadie leaned away to focus on the page that was now being held in front of her face. A fortyish woman was smiling back at her, looking shy and a whole lot scared.
Dwayne suddenly pulled the magazine back and turned to another page. He held it up to her again. “He said Harry should pick this lady,” Dwayne said, pointing to another woman.
This one was a bit older, a bit more worn-looking, also smiling with what appeared to be… hope.
Sadie smiled at her old friend. “They’re pretty, Dwayne,” she said. “They look like they’
ll make you and Harry fine wives.”
Dwayne moved beside her, held out the magazine, and leafed through it again. “I liked this one,” he said, showing her the picture of a twenty-something woman. “I think she’s beautiful.”
“She is.”
Dwayne looked over at Sadie, his mouth lifted at one corner, his dusty gray-hazel eyes shining with wisdom. He was shaking his head at her.
“Morgan said she wasn’t beautiful,” Dwayne told her with authority, nodding his head in agreement with her husband. “Morgan said beauty isn’t here,” Dwayne elaborated, tapping the young woman’s face. “That’s it’s here,” he explained, quickly turning the page to the woman Morgan had chosen for him. Dwayne touched his finger to the older woman’s eyes, then let it trail down to stop just below the photo, where her heart would be.
“Morgan said me and Harry have to look really deep below the surface to find beauty in a woman. That if we’re wanting good wives, we won’t be tricked by a pretty face.”
Dwayne squinted one eye at her, letting the magazine drop to his side. “Like you, Sadie,” he said.
“Like me? Morgan said like me?”
“Naw,” Dwayne said, shaking his head again. “I’m saying it. Look at your hand,” he told her, waving toward her gloved right hand. “And I know you got other scars. But that didn’t stop Morgan none from picking you.” He smiled and touched her hair.