Over the Edge (19 page)

“Callie, how much do you know about Seth’s cavern?”

Julia had shown up at noon with food for them all. They wolfed down the meal and went straight back to work. Julia stopped Callie before she could join them.

“He told me about it today for the first time. Is it around here?” Callie had to admit she was curious about what had gone on with Seth to leave him so scarred. “Plenty of caves in a mountain range.”

Julia looked left and right and whispered, “Follow me. I’ll show you the entrance.”

Callie would’ve preferred to keep tearing at the cabin, but she still ached from her shootout, and a little break wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.

Seth and Rafe were busy. Ethan and Heath had gone back to cutting down trees. Callie let Julia drag her along behind what was left of the cabin. They reached a steep trail that led down to a stream.

“We don’t have time to ford that,” Callie said. “Let’s get back to work.”

“It won’t take long, I promise.” Julia headed down into a dark gully that sent a chill up Callie’s spine. What if there was a rainstorm? The steep walls edging this stream would fill up fast.

Julia went on fearlessly, so Callie tagged along, moving quickly.

When they’d climbed the other side, Julia went straight for a black hole in the ground and dropped to her knees beside it.

Following her, Callie peered down into a bottomless pit and took two quick steps back. “What is that?”

“It’s a cavern.”

Callie went to her knees, feeling a little less likely to go plunging in, and stretched out to look down into the pitch-black. “Seth likes it down there?”

Julia reared back to sit on her heels. “I do, too. It’s the most beautiful place.”

Callie looked skeptical. “How can you tell? It’s pretty dark.”

“I don’t suppose you can draw a picture, can you?”

Strange question. “I’ve always had a knack for drawing.”

With a thrilled gasp, Julia grabbed Callie by the wrist. “Can you really? Are you telling the truth?”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Callie asked with a scowl.

Instead of a shootout, Julia threw her arms around Callie and gave her about the biggest hug of her life.

Then Julia let go and began clawing in one of her pockets. She brought out a folded-up piece of paper and a pencil.

“Take this and listen to me. Draw what I tell you.”

“What? We need to get back to the cabin.”

“
Just do it
.”

Callie jumped and took the paper.

“This is really important.”

Callie suspected her idea of what was important was real different from Julia’s. But right now, it seemed sketching out a quick picture would get Callie back to work faster than trying to escape from her overly excited sister-in-law.

“At the bottom of this cavern entrance is a room about twenty feet tall and about the same distance around.”

Callie shook her head. “And you think that’s more important than building a cabin?”

Julia tapped impatiently on the paper. “Draw it. And make it small; there’s a lot more.”

With a defeated sigh Callie began following orders, adding tunnels and rooms here and there. Julia oversaw it all, and before they were done, they had about five sheets of paper covered front and back.

“There’s really a cave this big down there?” Callie had her doubts, but she couldn’t figure out why Julia would make it up.

“Yes, and this is just the general outline. It doesn’t begin to show the stalactites and stalagmites and the fossils.” Julia seemed to be getting breathless.

Callie looked between Julia and the hole to make sure that if Julia fainted from excitement, she wouldn’t fall to her death.

A steady pounding of axes and falling trees set the work the family was doing to a rugged kind of music.

“We need to get back,” Callie said.

Julia’s jaw looked rigid enough to crack. “I want Seth to see this. He knows that cavern better than anyone. He says he’ll show me around, and he has a few times, but not nearly enough. He always has something to do that keeps him away. Herding cattle or building a fence or damming up a stream, some stupid job.”

“Sounds like he’s trying to run a ranch, Julia.” Callie folded the paper.

“Wait!” Julia grabbed the map.

Callie was running slap out of patience. “What now?”

Julia looked from the map to Callie to the cavern entrance. Finally she nodded, frowning. “Tonight we can show this to Seth.”

“Why does Seth know the cavern better than anyone else?”

“We can talk about it tonight. You can stay at my cabin and we can work on this map some more.” Julia smiled. She really was a fanatic about the cavern.

“Can we go back now?” Callie was tired of sitting around drawing when there was work to be done.

“Right, we’d better go.”

“Julia, where’d you get to?” Rafe’s voice came from all the way across the stream.

“We’re coming. I was just showing Callie the cavern.” Julia got up and hurried back to the shack.

“You didn’t go down in it, did you?” Rafe’s question seemed to contain a threat of some kind.

“Not without me.” Seth sounded more like he was pouting.

Callie, shaking her head, tagged along. As they crested the top of the gully behind the cabin, Callie saw there was no cabin. Not anymore. “It’s gone.”

“Yep.” Seth came up the trail to meet her. “All that’s left is the floor.”

“There are split logs. Some of ’em might be reusable.” Rafe straightened with an armload of kindling, the last of the inside wall of the cabin, which had separated the main room from the two small bedrooms.

Seth fell in beside her, and Callie liked having him close, so much she could cry.

Seth liked slipping his arm around Callie’s slender waist, so much he could’ve howled like a mountain wolf. “Should we just leave the floor there?”

“No.” Rafe had an answer, of course. “About half of these split logs are rotten. Let’s tear it up. We’ll build the walls and worry about putting down a floor later. Might be that men stuck here in the line shack this winter could lay flooring when the winds are too fierce to go outside.”

Seth knew his brother hated to see a man waste a single minute. Being buried in snow was no excuse for idleness.

Rafe and Seth jerked the half-buried logs out of the ground. Julia and Callie teamed up to carry them away. Seth noticed the women kept up a friendly chatter, and he was glad to see Julia welcoming Callie to the family.

Rafe and Seth had to scramble to keep up with the women. As they finished the front room of the cabin and turned to the back, all that remained was the floor of the two bedrooms. Ethan and Heath appeared from the woods dragging more logs behind them. They had a nice stack.

Seth pulled up a split log and a small metal cylinder rolled out from between the flooring. “What’s this?” He bent to pick it up and saw a second cylinder.

Julia came up just as he asked the question. “Oh, throw those away,” she said. “My father’s cigars. He carried them with him everywhere. Awful, smelly things. I burned the rest of the cigars but forgot about the ones he had in those tubes. I guess they rolled into a crack in the floor when I took his shirt off.”

“They’d make good match tins.” Seth turned to Rafe. “You guys have your matches with you, right?”

Rafe and Ethan each pulled flat containers from their pockets.

“I have matches, too.” Julia produced her little container.

“Those are a little long and round to go in a man’s pocket,” Rafe said.

Seth took one of the tubes. “Callie, you should use these to carry matches with you. And Heath needs matches. And Audra.” Despite his love for that dark cavern, Seth felt his throat swell a bit to think of being stuck down there in the pitch-dark. “We’ll use these two and get some more.”

Seth extended one toward Callie, who stood closest to him.

She unscrewed the lid and wrinkled her nose. “It must still have a cigar in it.”

Seth took it back and tipped it. A cigar fell onto the ground. With a little
click
it hit a log lying at Seth’s feet, so dried out it cracked into several pieces. Seth opened the other container and tipped it to dispose of the cigar.

“It’s stuck.” Seth lifted it to his eyes. “They do stink.” Seth stuck a finger into the cylinder and tugged at the black cigar. He inched it out. A bit of tobacco leaf broke off and came out. Seth went back to digging in the little tube. The cigar gave slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time. Finally it was sticking out enough that Seth could get a solid grip on the crumbling thing and drag it out. It dropped and something pattered like tiny hailstones on the log at Seth’s feet.

He bent down. “What’s this?”

“Looks like broken glass.” Rafe came up beside Seth. “Lucky you didn’t cut yourself.”

“It’s not sharp.” Seth picked up a single one of the bits of clear glass and held it close to examine it.

Julia hunkered down beside him. Her gasp drew everyone else toward her.

“Not glass, Rafe.” Julia picked one up and stood.

“What, then?” Rafe took the little sparkling bit from her.

“I think . . . I mean I’ve studied geology, you know. I think these . . . they’re . . . they must be . . . diamonds.”

“Diamonds?” Seth turned a startled glance to the pretty stones.

“It looks like,” Julia said in a hushed voice, “we’ve found the fortune my father stole.”

Jasper had heard enough from listening around Colorado City that he could ride straight to the Kincaid Ranch.

He was pleased to realize he could still read sign, and the tracks told him they were approaching a good-sized spread. “The ranch is up ahead.”

Bea hadn’t done much grumbling, and Jasper hoped he could get through this without it. He wanted to still have a wife when this was all over. A wife and his diamonds.

“Let’s scout it out, Bea, honey.” He slipped off the trail and tied his horse, along with Bea’s, out of sight. There was a good lookout spot, and he settled in to watch for any sign of Seth Kincaid.

“This has to be the original Kincaid Ranch. It has an established look about it. Ethan Kincaid lives here with Audra Gilliland. It’s her husband who stole from me.” Jasper’s jaw tightened as he thought of his money gone to these ranchers while he lived in a hovel. They stayed hidden for a long time.

“I’m freezing, Jasper. Why don’t you just go up and knock on the door and ask Ethan Kincaid for your money, if you’re so determined to be an honest man?”

“Now, Bea, hiding up here, watching a house isn’t dishonest. I haven’t seen anyone come and go from the house and there’s no smoke coming out of the chimney. It’s too cold for them to not keep a fire going.”

“It’s cold for a fact.” Bea shivered.

“I think Ethan’s gone. And since Seth was coming home with his wife and baby, it’s a good chance Ethan is at Seth’s house. Let’s ride on and see if anyone’s there.”

He found the second cabin cut out of the mountains and forests like a raw sore. Clearly it was newly built. There was a small barn, but no hired men were in evidence and no livestock. The house had an addition so new that Jasper could still smell the fresh-cut wood. He was bolder about going up to this place. It also stood empty. So where were all the Kincaids?

“Let’s get out of the cold for a bit, Bea. There’s no one here.”

Bea might’ve protested entering a stranger’s house, but she was shivering until she could barely speak.

The place didn’t have a fire, but getting out of the wind helped a lot. He searched the cabin thoroughly under the guise of hunting up a blanket for Bea. The barn as well, which he excused by saying he needed to check the horses. The sun was setting when he finally gave up.

“We need to move on, Bea.”

“It’s almost dark. I don’t want to sleep on the trail.”

Jasper didn’t either. And the next home built by the Kincaids was something of a mystery. No one in town really knew where it was, and the talk had only made it more confusing. Though it wasn’t wise, Jasper’s years spent living in luxury overcame his qualms.

“If Seth Kincaid comes home, we’ll tell him we were out in the cold and used his house to sleep in.”

“Or you could just tell him the truth and ask him if he’s got your money.”