"Looking for more relics?"
"Yes."
"And maybe a lead to the Lost Espectro, eh, Gary?"
Gary flushed. "I didn't think there would be any harm in that."
"I've told you quite a few times this summer to forget about the Lost Espectro."
"It isn't easy, living right in the shadow of the Espectros, to forget about the treasure hidden up there." Gary leaned forward. "The Lost Espectro is supposed to be richer than the Dutchman's Lost Mine, the Lost Adams Diggings, the Lost Padre, and maybe Tayopa itself!"
"Fairy tales! Lies embroidered by old-timers!"
"The Dutchman brought out gold from the Superstitions, didn't he? Adams found a bonanza and researchers agree that perhaps others found it as well and lost it again! The Lost Padre exists! You told me yourself you used to hunt for it on weekends when you went to college in El Paso. You just can't deny Tayopa, Dad. The old records in Mexico prove that Tayopa was one of the richest silver mines in the world!"
"Take it easy," said Mrs. Cole nervously. She glanced at her husband.
But Gary was warming up to his favorite subject. It was almost an obsession with him. "My great-grandfather spent a large part of his later life looking for the Lost Espectro," Gary continued, "and actually made a derrotero of his findings! He told your father the chart was as accurate as he could make it. He said that on his deathbed. Would he lie to his own son when he was dying? You yourself have always said that Great-grandfather Cole's derrotero probably held the key to the Lost Espectro if anything did!"
"Maybe it does, son," said Pete Cole quietly, "but where is it?"
This last remark was like a dash of cold water against Gary's face. The chart, or derrotero, had vanished years ago.
"I saw you looking for that legendary Spanish miner's symbol that is supposed to be cut into the east wall of The Needle Canyon, Gary. I know it's supposed to be visible about four o'clock in the afternoon during the late part of the summer. Did you happen to see it today?"
Gary couldn't help himself. "Did you, Dad?"
It was Pete Cole's turn to flush. He glanced quickly at his wife.
Lucille Cole stood up and began to clear the table. "Yes, Pete," she said quietly, "Gary knows you still look for it. How can you expect him to forget about the Lost Espectro when you haven't forgotten about it yourself?"
"There's nothing but death up there for those who look for it," said Pete.
"Yet you searched for it, Pete."
"Are you siding with Gary?" he snapped.
"No, Pete. But he's as like you as you were like your grandfather. Your own father was a rancher, and he never thought about the Lost Espectro."
"I consider myself a rancher, Lucille!"
She smiled. "By birth rather than by choice I think, Pete. I can remember when we were in high school in Cottonwood Wells how the other girls used to talk about you. But you were always more interested in lost treasures than you ever were in girls."
"Until I got interested in you, Lucille," he said.
"But you were still looking for the Lost Espectro even after you came back from the war, Pete."
He looked down at his almost useless legs. "For a time," he said bitterly.
Gary began to help his mother. It hadn't been so many years ago that Pete Cole had been fired upon by a hidden marksman while he was searching an offshoot of Cholla Canyon for clues to the Lost Espectro. His horse had been shot to death and in the fall Pete had suffered damage to his spine, which had already been injured by his war wound. He had been found by Jim Kermit, a local rancher, a full day after his fall. His condition now prevented him from ever again riding into the Espectros.
Pete Cole got to his feet and reached for his crutches. "Gary," he said sternly, "I don't want you ever to ride past The Needle. That's final!" He dragged himself from the kitchen.
Gary looked at his mother. "I'll do the dishes," he said.
"He means it, Gary."
"I won't go beyond The Needle," he promised. He smiled ruefully. "Not much reason to, I guess. I haven't found any leads to the Lost Espectro."
She took off her apron. "Tuck called," she said.
"I'll call him right back," Gary said eagerly.
"No need to. I told him to come out and stay with you tonight."
He stared at her. "But you asked me to go to The Wells with you and Dad tonight."
She kissed him. "I don't need a lost derrotero to tell me the obvious," she said. "Remember, Gary! Do not go past The Needle!"
He watched her as she walked toward the door into the living room. She seemed so tired. "Mother," he called out. She turned and looked at him questioningly. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the folded five-dollar bill. He handed it to her. "Buy a hot dog and a bottle of soda pop for yourself and Dad," he said.
She eyed the money and then her big son. "Where did you get this?"
"The Lost Espectro," he said. He swung out his arms. "The place was loaded with bales of 'em, but I wasn't greedy."
She reached out and touched his forehead. "Gold fever," she said quietly.
Later, after his father and mother had left in the battered green pickup truck, Gary walked outside and looked at the dusky light over the mountains. For thirty years persistent stories had lingered about mysterious murders and disappearances in the Espectros. Rifle shots from the clinging, dark shadows of canyons had turned back seekers of the lost treasure supposedly hidden in the mountains. Skeletons had been found in remote, sun-drenched canyons with bullet holes in the grinning skulls. Men had entered those brooding mountains and had never been seen again.
Purple shadows now filled the canyons and hollows. Only the highest peaks of the Espectros were still bathed in the intermingled rose and gold wash of the last rays of the dying sun. The mountains looked so quiet and still, so peaceful and pleasant; and yet, mysterious death waited up there, haunting the silent canyons and the lonely purple mesas, as it had haunted them for many years.
Then the sun was gone from the upper tips of the peaks as though a master hand had flicked a switch. A cold wind began to search through the canyons and to whisper down the darkened slopes. Far across the silent desert came the drifting, melancholy crying of a coyote. Gary shivered a little. The windmill ground into slow life and the whirring blades sang a sad little song of their own. It was then that something seemed to catch at the corner of Gary's left eye — a pinpoint of yellow light, quickly coming and vanishing high on the rugged slopes beyond the looming pinnacle of The Needle.
Gary narrowed his eyes. No one lived up there. The local Apaches, with cold horror, shunned the thought of entering those mountains after dark.
The ranchers entered the fringe canyons of the Espectros only during daylight, always armed and never alone. Those few men who were caught in there after dark never showed a light.
It had always seemed to Gary that the mountains moved in closer at night like a huge crouching beast, a beast that stared at the lonely Cole Ranch, slowly licking its thick wet lips, baring every now and then a long yellow fang, poisonous and sharp as a needle. Some dark night…
Cold green fear flowed through Gary. He glanced quickly at his rifle which leaned against the wall of the house. "Lobo!" he called sharply. There was no answer from the huge dog. In fact Gary had not seen him all that day.
Gary walked to the low sprawling house that had been built near Chiricahua Springs in 1866 by his great-grandfather, a tough and hardened veteran of the Civil War. James Cole had fought Apaches and squatters to hold his land. Bullet holes and arrow nicks pocked the thick adobe walls. Beyond the ranch buildings, closer to the ever-flowing springs, was the private cemetery of the Coles'. Gary's great-grandmother lay buried there, with three Apache bullet holes in her. There were others there who had died violently, some of them by the hand of Jim Cole himself. It was a hard country. It was peaceable now, but it was still a hard country.