“‘The lady…?’ That ‘lady’ you’re talking about is Lacey Stewart, you know…the same Lacey Stewart who was a child at her grandfather’s cabin ten years ago. The same Lacey Stewart who could’ve identified you and Blackie as the men who shot her grandfather.”
“Yeah, but she’s all growed up and she’s a lady now. And she didn’t blink an eye when she saw me and Blackie on the street a few days ago.”
“She saw you?”
“Yeah, and she didn’t give us a second look.”
Barret took a firm hold on his forbearance. “So you’re telling me, that’s it…they just stopped at a stream to cool off? They didn’t get as much as halfway toward the old man’s cabin?”
“Right.”
Silence.
“They did a little cuddling while they were at the stream, is all.”
“Cuddling…”
“Yeah, it looked to me like the lady was crying for some reason, and Scully was trying to comfort her.”
“They didn’t…you know…?”
“No, they didn’t even come close. They just stayed for a while until the lady got herself back together, and then they headed back.”
“Was it Scully’s idea to turn back, or was it the woman’s?”
The two men exchanged glances before Blackie replied, “I’d say it was the lady’s. She didn’t want to go on.”
Barret nodded. She didn’t want to look anxious. The girl was smarter than he thought.
He said, “All right, that’s all I need to know for now. Get out, and remember what I said. Don’t let that ‘lady’ out of your sight.”
Waiting until both men had left his office and closed the door behind them, Barret sat down at his desk and reached into his drawer for the small sack that was never far from his reach. He withdrew the gold nugget from inside the sack and held it tight in his hand as he had many times before. He recalled the moment when Charlie Pratt had walked into his office late that first day. Short, wiry, unkempt, Charlie had been indistinguishable from any other prospector he had ever seen, but when the old man smiled and put the nugget down on the desk in front of him, Barret knew his moment had come.
A man of few words, Charlie told him he’d struck it rich, that he wanted to register his claim in his own name and that of his granddaughter, and he wanted to do it “real legal like, so there’d be no problem afterward.” Charlie left the nugget behind for a “retainer” without disclosing the location of the claim, and said he’d return to sign whatever papers were necessary in a couple of days.
Barret’s heart pounded in vivid recall. He had immediately set Blackie and Larry on the old man’s trail. His plan had been simple. Charlie had kept his strike a secret. He had been cautious enough not to tell anyone but Barret about it. Blackie and Larry would follow the old man, find his claim and report the location back to him so he could record it in his own name before the old man returned—“real legal like, so there’d be no problem afterward.”
A familiar knot of frustration twisted tight inside Barret as memory returned the details of the debacle that followed.
Charlie also had been smarter than he thought. Charlie had evidently spotted Blackie and Larry following him and had led them on a circuitous trail obviously meant to confuse them before reaching his cabin in darkness. He had then tricked them into thinking he had gone to his bed, only to appear unexpectedly behind them with a gun, demanding to know what they were after.
According to Blackie, the situation deteriorated into chaos from that point, ending up with Charlie being shot and with Blackie and Larry determined to hide their crime by throwing Charlie’s body into the cabin and setting the structure afire.
Furious when they returned with their story, Barret had still considered the situation salvageable. It had seemed a matter of simply scouting the area Charlie had been working to find the source of the gold.
Barret remembered his panic at the news that Charlie’s eight-year-old granddaughter, Lacey Stewart, had arrived in town injured and bleeding, fresh from the scene of the burned-out cabin. He’d been sure she would tell someone about her grandfather’s strike, that she might even know its exact location. He had been furious with both his men for having allowed her to survive.
Fearing Lacey would be able to identify his men and the identification would eventually lead back to him, he had paid them off and told them to leave town. They had obediently stayed away until Lacey was sent to a school back east and it was safe for them to return. The girl never spoke of her grandfather’s strike. He had been overjoyed at that, but his dream of a return to the wealth and prosperity of his youth had died when all manner of prospecting and excavation in the area of Charlie’s cabin had failed to locate Charlie’s gold.
Now Charlie’s granddaughter had returned to Weaver, and with her return, his dream had been revived.
Barret clutched the nugget tighter. Lacey Stewart may have fooled everyone else, but she didn’t fool him. She wouldn’t have traveled back from the big city to a town in the middle of nowhere if she didn’t think it would be worth her while—if she didn’t have some idea where to look for the strike her grandfather had made.
It appeared, however, that she wasn’t about to share the strike with Jake Scully.
It also appeared that Jake Scully was totally taken in by her.
But Lacey Stewart didn’t fool him. He would get that claim—one way or another.
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