The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,30

the neckline of her dress. Because she felt so lost inside, she ran to the door and yelled out into the street. “And you can’t find your butt with both hands, Snag Crutchaw. What makes you think you’ll find gold?”

“Want another drink, Truly?” Moose the Bartender asked.

She stuck out her tongue and flounced upstairs, not for the first time wondering if she’d made the wrong choice. Her heartstrings pulled as she entered the room and closed the door.

Hell yes, I made the wrong choice. I’ve been doing it since the day I was born. Why should I suddenly become careful and wise?

Miles rode west.

Out of Sweetgrass Junction.

Back toward the mountains.

With fire in his heart and tears in his eyes.

He’d find gold or die trying, or his name wasn’t Miles Crutchaw. This time not even God Himself could have deterred Miles from his quest. He would find gold and he would marry Truly Fine. And he would not return to Sweetgrass Junction again until he could claim her.

On the seventh day out of Sweetgrass Junction, he entered his camp, glad that the ride was over. He stored his provisions in the usual places, taking care to secure them against the marauding bears and other varmints that seemed to have a sixth sense about Miles’ periodic trips.

Before he’d been mildly irked; allowing them their ravaging for no other reason than because they’d been here first. But this trip was different. When this was gone, there would be no more sugar. No more salt. No more anything bought from Sweetgrass Junction until he’d struck it rich. He’d lived off the land most of his life and would do it again for as long as it took. But what he wanted most was what lay beneath it.

With dogged determination and the spirit of a gambler who believes mightily in the next deal of the cards, he took up his lantern and pick axe and headed up the mountain above his camp.

The location of his mine was a secret, but one not hard to keep. Except for an occasional Shoshone on a hunting expedition, there was no one around for miles. And the Shoshone gave the big miner a wide berth. No Indian would have anything to do with a man who talked to himself as Miles often did. A man with a disturbed spirit was a man to leave alone.

Hours later, and deep inside the heart of the mine, Miles dug and cursed—picked and shoveled—his back jolting from the shock of pick against stone. Dirt splattered and chips flew as he swore beneath his breath.

“I’ll find your gold, Truly Fine. And when I do, you’ll have to be my bride. You promised.”

Slowly, but surely, his wheelbarrow filled. And when it was overflowing, he began the long trek out of the mountain’s belly toward the mouth of the mine where he would empty it into the sluice he’d built by a high mountain spring.

Behind him the mountain rumbled, like the guts of a man who’s eaten too many green apples. Miles paused, listening.

“Fart and get it over with,” he shouted. “I ain’t finished with you yet. Not by a long shot.”

And so the days passed into weeks, and then months. And before he knew it, the sugar was gone, as was the last of his salt. When he boiled the empty salt sack with last night’s squirrel in hopes of soaking a flavor from the cloth, it hadn’t tasted bad, but he’d been forced to sort thread, as well as bones, from his meal. Both the squirrel and the sack had come apart at the seams.

That night, wrapped snug in his blankets and sheltered by the lean-to he’d grafted into the side of the mountain, he slept hard and deep, unaware that things were happening inside his mine that were out of his control.

This particular year in the mountains, the late summer weather was unusually wet. Day after day the rains pounded upon the earth, running downward in swift, red rivulets between trees and rocks toward the river below, like blood pouring out of a wound. Unbeknownst to Miles, the water wasn’t just running over the land, but was flowing through it as well; filtering down into the cracks and crevices of the mountain that housed his worm-hole mine, carrying away more dirt than he’d planned, and weakening the tunnel on a daily basis.

Miles began to worry about the constant dampness inside the hole. The walls wept continually. Day after day he noticed that the