go along with him. The whole thing’s a hoax, a game he plays with gullible tourists. I wouldn’t be surprised if he misspelled dirt on that sign just to draw people like us up here.”
“Might have at that.”
“If we’d gone along with him, what he’d’ve shown us is some spot he faked up with Native American artifacts and phony graves.”
“Just to get a good laugh at our expense?”
“Some people have a warped sense of humor.”
“Didn’t look like Peete had any sense of humor.”
“You can’t tell what a person’s like inside from the face they wear in public. You ought to know that.”
“I’d still like to’ve seen the place,” Ramage said.
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Satisfy my curiosity.”
“You’d’ve been playing right into his hand.”
“Still…I can’t help being curious, can I?”
He stayed curious all that day, and the next, and the next after that. About the fake Miwok burial ground, and about Peete, too. How could the old buzzard afford to pay for all the upkeep on that farm of his, and give away good rich soil, when he had no help and no livestock except for a few chickens? Crops like alfalfa, fruit from that small orchard? Maybe he ought to drive back out there, alone this time, and have a look at the “cemetery” and see what else he could find out.
On Friday afternoon, Ramage decided that that was just what he was going to do.
The snotty young fella named Coolidge said: “I don’t believe it.”
“Gospel truth.”
“Graveyard dirt from some old Indian cemetery?”
“Every inch of it.
“And you truck it in here and hoard it so you can give it away free. You think I was born yesterday, pop?”
“Prove it to you, if you want.”
“How you going to do that?”
“Burial ground’s not far from here,” Peete said. “Other side of that hill yonder.”
“And you want me to go see it with you.”
“Up to you. Only take a few minutes.”
Coolidge thought about it. Then he grinned crookedly and said: “All right, for free d-u-r-t, why not? What have I got to lose?”
“That’s right,” Peete said. He tightened his grip on Buck’s chain, tossed his new lucky piece into the air with his other hand. Sunlight struck golden glints from the doubloon before he caught it with a quick downward swipe. “What have you got to lose?”
He Said…She Said
by Marcia Muller
Cal Hartley heaved the last of the five-gallon water jugs into the back of his van and slammed the rear doors. Then he coiled the hose onto its holder on the spigot. As he got into the driver’s seat, he glanced across the parking lot at the White Iron Chamber of Commerce building; only two cars were there, both belonging to employees, and no one had seen him filling up, or else they’d have come outside by now, wanting to know where their so-called voluntary donation was. Three bucks well saved.
At the stop sign at the main highway, Cal hesitated. East toward home? West toward town, where he’d earlier run some errands? West. He didn’t feel like going home yet. Home was not where the heart was these days.
The Walleye Tavern was dark and cool on this bright, hot August afternoon. Abel Arneson, the owner and sole occupant, stood behind the bar under one of the large stuffed pike that adorned the pine walls, staring up at a Twins game on the TV mounted at the room’s far end. When he saw Cal enter, he reached for a remote and turned the sound down.
“What brings you to town, Professor?” he asked. “Professor” because Cal was a former faculty member of the University of Minnesota, recently moved north from Minneapolis to the outskirts of this small town near the Boundary Waters National Canoe Area.
“Water run. Hardware store. Calls on the cell phone. It doesn’t work outside of town.” Cal slid onto a stool. In spite of him and Abel being native Minnesotans, their patterns of speech could not have been more different. Cal sounded pure, flat middle America, while Abel spoke with the rounded, vaguely Scandinavian accent of the Iron Range.
Abel, a big man with thinning white hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses, set a bottle of Leinenkugel in front of Cal. “Not so easy, living without running water, huh?”
“Not so bad. The lake makes a good bathtub, and we’ve got a chemical toilet. All we need the fresh water for is brushing our teeth, cooking, washing dishes.”
“And from the hardware store?”
Cal smiled wryly. “Heavy-duty extension cords. I think I told you the power company allowed us