again.
Eulis patted her cheek, and then glanced over his shoulder to the opening in the wall.
“What did you go and find, girl?”
“Find? What are you talking about?”
He pointed toward the corner of the room.
When she saw what had happened, she started to get up, but the motion made her dizzy. She sat back down with a thump.
“Easy, darlin’,” Eulis said. “You stay here. I’m gonna take a closer look.”
He peered inside, but it was so dark he couldn’t see beyond the doorway.
“Where’s that piece of candle?” he asked.
“On the shelf above the cooking pans,” she said.
He got it, lit it with an ember from the fireplace, and then carried it to the darkened opening.
“Lord have mercy,” he whispered, and took a couple of steps inside. Almost immediately, he could tell that it was some kind of a shaft and that it ran straight back into the mountain.
Letty held the compress to her head as she got up, staggering a bit until she got her balance, and then followed him inside.
She ducked underneath his arm and then stopped.
“Is it a mine? Did we find a mine?”
“Well… I don’t know about that, but it’s definitely a tunnel.”
“It’s a mine,” she repeated, then took him by the hand and pulled him forward.
“Careful,” he said. “The floor feels a little uneven.” Then he lowered the candle for a better view.
There were no holes in the floor of the tunnel, but there were a lot of rocks. He kicked them aside and then started forward when the faint light from the candle caught and held in something bright.
Letty had seen it too.
“What was that?” she asked, then took the candle from his hand and knelt down.
The floor of the shaft appeared to be littered with rocks, but rocks like she’d never seen before. Her heart started to pound as beads of sweat appeared on her upper lip. Since it was anything but hot inside the tunnel, and she was still chilled from lying on the cold floor, she figured she was about to pass out. And since she already had one knot on her head, she figured the best thing she could do was stay down. At least this time she wouldn’t have far to fall.
She handed Eulis the candle, then sat.
“Honey… are you all right?” Eulis asked.
“No. I got an extra hole in my head. Hurts something fierce, but that’s beside the point. Do you see what I see?”
He squatted down beside her, holding the candle even closer to the rocks, unable to believe what he was seeing. But it was there just the same. Thick veins of gold ran through everything he picked up. Then he stood up and lifted the candle high, shedding a faint, but persistent, light on the walls of the shaft. The veins there were as wide as his arm. He thrust his knife into the wall to see how deep it ran. When it went all the way to the hilt without stopping, he thought he was dreaming.
“Letty… are you seein’ what I’m seein’?”
“If you’re seeing gold, then yes. I reckon we’ve found us a gold mine, and if this stuff is as good as it looks, we’re most likely rich.”
“Wait here,” he said, and moved a few yards forward, curious as to how far back the shaft went.
He hadn’t gone more than twenty or thirty yards when he saw a bundle of rags lying against the wall. Upon closer inspection, he realized there was a skeleton within them. He took a deep breath, and then called back.
“Letty.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a dead man back here.”
Letty yelped, and then scrambled to her feet. Using the wall to steady herself, she moved toward the candlelight. Seconds later, she saw the skeleton.
“Oh lord. Wonder what happened to him?”
“Most likely, he just died of natural causes.”
Letty leaned down, staring at the slack-jaw of the skull and the empty eye sockets and whispered.
“How can you tell?”
“Well, if someone had done him in, they would have most likely gone and laid claim to the gold? But since that Indian woman told you the man who lived here was dead, most likely when he didn’t show up anymore, they assumed the obvious, and the mine became his tomb.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Letty said. “If he had just up and disappeared, then why would she say he died? Assumption would lead anyone to believe that he’d just left for greener pastures, so to speak.”
Eulis frowned. “You’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right,” Letty said, then leaned a bit closer and