«Eve?»
«Bones,» she said.
Reno stepped around her and held the lantern up to the coyote hole. Something gleamed palely inside. It took a moment for him to realize that he was looking at fragments of a leather sandal wrapped around a foot bone that could have been no more than six inches long. The dry, cold air of the mine had preserved the bones very well.
«Is it one of Don Lyon’s ancestors?» Eve asked quietly.
«Too small.»
«A child,» she whispered.
«Yes. A child. He was digging and the wall gave way.»
«They didn’t even bother to give him a decent burial.»
«It’s less dangerous to fill in the front of a bad tunnel than it is to dig out a dead body,» Reno said. «Besides, slaves were treated worse than horses, and even a Spaniard didn’t bury his horse when it died.»
The lantern swung away, returning the coyote hole to the darkness of the grave it was.
Eve closed her eyes, then opened them quickly. The darkness was unnerving, now that she knew it was inhabited by bones.
«You asked what a chicken ladder was,» Reno said a few moments later. «Take a look.»
A long log poked up from one of the holes. Notches had been cut into the sides of the log to serve as footholds. The shaft wasn’t straight up and down, but the slant was so steep that passage wouldn’t have been possible without the log.
«Some of them are made with branches poking out instead of notches cut in,» Reno said. «Either way, they work.»
The wood felt rough and cool beneath Eve’s hand, except where the notches were. So many feet had passed over the notches that they were smoothed to a satin finish.
«Hold the lantern,» he said.
Eve took the light, then watched with her breath held while Reno tested the chicken ladder. Soon she could see only his broad shoulders and hat.
«Solid,» Reno said, looking up into the golden light. «Unless water is around, wood lasts a long time at this altitude.»
The primitive ladder led to another level of the old mine where more coyote holes branched off in all directions. Many of them were too small for Reno’s shoulders to fit in the opening. A few were so narrow that Eve barely could find room to shove the lantern ahead of her.
«Anything?» Reno asked.
He hadn’t wanted Eve to go poking into every coyote hole, but the logic of it was inescapable. She could go farther, and do it faster, than he could.
«It keeps going,» she said, wriggling out breathlessly. «But once you’re past the bend, another tunnel comes in. It’s twice the size of this one.»
She stood and brushed herself off. «There’s something funny about that big tunnel, though. The arrows point the other way. At least, they used to. Someone scratched out the head of the old arrows and put a new head on the tail.»
Reno frowned, pulled out his compass, and checked.
«Which way does the coyote hole turn?» he asked.
Eve pointed. «The other tunnel comes in from that direction, too.»
Reno turned to orient himself with the hidden tunnel and its twice-drawn arrows.
«Same angle, or does that change, too?» he asked.
«It goes up about like this,» Eve said, holding her hand at a slant.
«Are you bothered by those tight tunnels?»
She shook her head.
«You sure?» Reno pressed.
«Very. I’ll take tunnels over ledges perched like God’s eyebrow over a thousand-foot drop,» Eve said wryly.
Reno’s smile flashed in the lantern light. «I’m just the opposite. I’d rather be on God’s eyebrow than down in coyote holes any day of the week.»
She laughed. «Want me to see where that double-headed tunnel leads?»
He hesitated, then reluctantly agreed. «But only if the walls are rock. I don’t want you crawling through any of the crumbling stuff we’ve seen. Understand?»
Eve understood perfectly. While the coyote holes didn’t bother her the way heights did, she had no desire to end as the slave child had, buried alive.
«Go on, then,» he said reluctantly.
Before she turned to leave, Reno pulled her close and kissed her hard.
«Be careful, sugar girl,» he said in a rough voice. «I don’t like this one damn bit.»
Reno liked it even less as the sounds of Eve’s passage through stone faded into silence and the minutes crawled by as though nailed to the stone floor. The third time he dug out his watch, stared at it, and discovered that less than thirty seconds had passed, he swore and began counting slowly.
Finally he heard the sound of Eve half crawling, half scrambling through the coyote hole. As soon as her head and shoulders appeared, he pulled her out and gave her a hug that all but squeezed the breath from her.
«That’s the last time you go into a coyote hole alone,» Reno said flatly. «I aged ten years waiting for you.»
«It was worth it, sugar man,» Eve said breathlessly, laughing, kissing him. «I found it! I found the gold!»
TWO gold ingots gleamed in the firelight, gold as pure and uncorrupted now as the moment when slaves had first poured the molten metal into molds to cool. Reno looked from the ingots to the girl whose eyes were the exact shade of the Spanish treasure she had found hidden in darkness.
Eve looked back at Reno, smiled, and then laughed softly.
«I can’t believe there are sixteen more just like that one,» she said. «You should have let me go back and get them. I could have had them all out in the time it took you to widen the coyote hole that connects the two big tunnels.»
«The gold has waited this long. It will wait until tomorrow.»
«With both of us working, it shouldn’t —»
«No,» Reno said flatly, cutting across her words. «You’re not going into that coyote hole again. The part where it cuts the second tunnel is too damned dangerous.»
«But I’m smal —»
«The reason they closed out that second big tunnel,» Reno said over her, «is that the middle section isn’t stable. It collapsed more than once. Each time they cut a coyote hole around the cave-in and kept digging until they mined out the good ore, and things kept on caving in. Finally they came at the ore from the other side, where we started.»
«Do you really think that second big tunnel goes all the way to the alcove?»
He shrugged. «The rock layers looked the same.»
«Dear Lord.» Eve shivered. «That mountain must be honeycombed with holes.»
«Are you cold?» Reno asked, noting the shiver that had passed over Eve.
«No,» she whispered. «I was just wondering how many slaves died for those eighteen ingots of gold.»
«Not to mention the other forty-four ingots that are hidden somewhere down there,» he said.
Another shiver passed over Eve. She knew that Reno was going to search for the missing ingots. The thought of him hunting through the mountain’s lethal coyote holes for gold that might or might not be there made her wish they had never found the mine.
«I didn’t see any other coiled-snake symbols chiseled in the wall,» Eve said. «Maybe the Jesuits took most of the gold with them. Maybe it would be a waste of time to search.»
«Maybe they didn’t have time to spend chiseling snakes into rock walls to mark where treasure was buried,» he said dryly. «Maybe they just piled the ingots in a coyote hole and got the hell out of there before the king’s soldiers came and dragged them back to Spain in chains.»
Reno finished the last of his coffee and began scattering the embers of the small fire. Soon there was no illumination but that of the moon.
«It’s worth staying until the weather changes to look for forty-four gold ingots, isn’t it?» Reno asked.
The dark velvet of his voice acted on Eve like a caress. Suddenly she knew he wasn’t asking about staying for the gold; he was asking if she would stay here with him awhile longer.