«Or a man looking for gold,» Reno said.
«Same thing,» Caleb retorted.
Reno laughed. He and Caleb had never seen eye to eye on the subject of hunting gold.
«But here the trail gets hard to follow,» Eve continued.
Beneath her slim finger a page in the Spanish journal showed the major route unraveling into a network of trails.
«That symbol means year-round water,» Eve said, pointing to one.
Caleb picked up his father’s journal and began thumbing through it rapidly. Year-round water was rare in the stone canyons. Any source his father had discovered would have been carefully mapped and marked.
«What does that symbol mean?» Reno asked.
«A dead end.»
«What does the sign in front of it mean?» Reno asked.
«I don’t know.»
Reno gave Eve a sideways glance that was just short of an accusation.
«Tell me more about the other symbols,» Caleb said, glancing between the two journals. «That one, for instance.»
«That means an Indian village, but the sign just to the right of it means no food,» Eve explained.
«Maybe the Indians were unfriendly,» Caleb said.
«There was a different symbol for that.»
«Then it’s probably some of the stone ruins,» Reno said.
«What?» asked Eve.
«Towns built of stone a long, long time ago.»
«Who built them?»
«Nobody knows,» Reno said.
«When were they abandoned?» Eve persisted.
«Nobody knows that, either.»
«Will we see any of the ruins? And why don’t the Indians live there today?»
Reno shrugged. «Maybe they don’t like scrambling up and down a cliff to get water, or to hunt, or to grow food.»
«What?» Eve asked, startled.
«Most of the ruins are smack in the middle of cliffs that are hundreds of feet high.»
Eve blinked. «Why on earth would anyone build a town in a place that hard to get to?»
«Same reason our ancestors built castles on stone promontories,» Caleb said without looking up from his father’s journal. «Self-defense.»
Before Eve could say anything, Caleb laid his father’s journal down next to the other one and pointed at a page in each.
«This is where the journals go separate ways,» Caleb said.
Reno looked quickly between the two hand-drawn maps.
«You sure?» he asked.
«If Eve is right about that sign meaning a dead end, and that one meaning an abandoned village…»
«What about white cap rock?» Reno said, pointing to Caleb’s journal. «Does your father mention it?»
«Only well north of the Chama. Red sandstone is what he saw most of.»
«Cliffs or arch-forming?» Reno asked.
«Both.»
«How thick? And what about mudstone?»
«Lots of it,» Caleb said. He pointed to the Spanish journal. «Here and about here.»
«Were the layers thin or thick, slanted or level?» Reno asked quickly. «How about slate? Granite? Chert?»
Caleb bent to his father’s journal once more. Reno did too, talking phrases that were more like code to Eve. With every minute, it became more obvious to her that Reno hadn’t spent all his time in gunfights and looking for gold. He was a man of rather formidable geological learning.
After a few minutes Reno made a sound of satisfaction and tapped a page of the Spanish journal with the clean, short nail of his index finger.
«That’s what I thought,» Reno said. «Your father and the Spaniards were on opposite sides of this big neck sticking out into the canyon country from the main body of the plateau. The Spaniards thought it was a separate plateau, but your daddy knew better.»
Caleb studied the two journals, then nodded slowly.
«Which means,» Reno continued, «that if there’s a way to cross over the neck about here, we don’t have to go all the way to the Colorado River to pick up the Cristobal trail.»
«Where do you want to cross?» Caleb asked.
«Right here.»
Eve leaned forward. The hasty knot she had made at the nape of her neck after giving Ethan her scarf came loose. A long lock of her hair escaped and spilled across Reno’s hand. The individual strands gleamed in the lantern light like the very gold he had spent his life seeking.
And like gold, Eve’s hair was cool and silky against his skin.
«Sorry,» she mumbled, hastily redoing the knot.
Reno said nothing at all. He didn’t trust himself to. He knew his voice would reveal the sudden, hard running of his blood.
«Maybe you’re right,» Caleb said.
He looked intently between the two journals.
«But if you’re wrong,» he added after a minute, «you better pray there’s more water than either journal shows.»
«That’s why I’m hoping Wolfe won’t mind if I run off with a couple of his mustangs for packhorses.»
«Take the two Shaggies,» Caleb said. «And get Eve a desert mount, too. Her old pony wouldn’t make it.»
«I was thinking of the lineback dun,» Reno said. «She didn’t foal this year.»
Caleb nodded, then said bluntly, «Horses are the least of your problems.»
«Water,» Reno answered.
«That’s one, but not the worst.»
Eve made a questioning sound.
«The worst problem,» Caleb said, «is finding the mine — if the damned thing exists. Or were you expecting to find a sign saying, ‘Dig here’?»
«Hell no. I was expecting a carnival barker and dancing elephants to point the way,» Reno drawled. «Now, don’t you go telling me there won’t be any. It will plumb break my poor little heart.»
Caleb laughed and shook his head.
«All fooling aside,» he said a moment later, «how do you expect to find the mine?»
«Mining leaves marks on the land.»
«Don’t count on it. It’s been two hundred years. Long enough for trees to grow right over any signs of mining.»
«I’m not a bad geologist,» Reno said. «I know what kind of rock to look for.»
Caleb looked at Eve. «What about you? Think you can come close enough with that journal to find a mine?»
«If not, there’s always the Spanish needles,» she said.
«What?»
Eve reached into the front pocket of her faded dress. A moment later she brought out a small, leather-wrapped bundle. When she unrolled the leather, two slim metal rods fell into her palm with a musical sound.
«These,» she said.
«Spanish dip needles,» Reno explained to Caleb. «They’re supposed to find buried treasure, not metal ore or water.» Reno looked at Eve. «Where are the other two?»
She blinked, then understood. «Don said his ancestors had figured out that two worked as well as four, and were easier to use.»
«Hell’s fire,» Caleb said in disgust. «You’d be lucky to find the floor with those.»
«What do you mean?» Eve asked.
«They’re damned hard to use,» said Reno. «I’ve never tried it with two, though. God knows it can’t be worse than four.» He looked at Eve. «Have you ever used them?»
«No.»
Reno held out his hand. She dropped the small rods on his palm without touching his skin with her fingers.
«Look close,» Reno said to Eve. «The idea is to keep the needles touching on the forked end.»
«At the tips?» Eve asked.
«No. At the base. Interlocked but moving easily, able to respond to the least change.»
Eve watched, frowning. The notch of each Y was so shallow that it offered no real aid in keeping the rods together.
Delicately Reno brought the narrow metal sticks together until they barely met at the base of the wide Y. Breathing very lightly so as not to break the contact, he held them out for Eve to see.
«Kind of like this,» Reno said. «Just kissing, mind you. No real pressure.»
«Doesn’t look all that hard,» Caleb said.
«Not when one person is holding both rods. But they don’t work that way. Takes two people, one rod each.»
«No fooling?» asked Caleb. «Give me one of those.»