Page 8 of Riches Beyond Measure (Golden State Treasure #3)

Annie smiled. “Can I work with one of them? The Sidleys are doing great in the other two classes.”

The Sidleys were the young couple who’d met and married and stayed on to teach at the school. Jessica Sidley taught the younger girls, while her husband, Larry, taught the younger boys.

“Do you think they’ll want to stay? You need someone to take over your class, especially the boys in the morning. I don’t know if anyone can do what you do with history in the afternoon.”

“Larry’s got a talent for teaching and a love of history. I’ve had him sit in on my history classes. I don’t know about him taking my older boys in the morning, though. They’re friends of his, so he might have trouble controlling them.”

Annie laughed. “Him and everyone else but you.”

“We’ll think of something.” Tilda’s smile faded, and she gave Annie a worried look. “But you don’t want to claim one of them, Annie? I thought you loved teaching?”

“It’s true I love doing it, but I’m not sure I want to keep on teaching for years. I didn’t exactly choose it as a career. Like you, I got roped into this. One day I found myself standing too close to Michelle.”

They both laughed as they walked to the ranch house for the noon meal.

“What would you rather do, Annie? We all depend on you so much. I guess I’ve never asked if you’re happy doing it. I’m not sure if anyone has thanked you, and for certain no one pays you.”

“Or you,” Annie reminded her.

“Right, and we’re going to have to pay the students who stay here to teach. We can’t just dragoon them into working for us.”

Annie couldn’t hold back a smile at that.

“One reason I’d like to find another teacher is because I sometimes feel as though I’m missing out on other things when I’m in the classroom.

Take last fall, for instance. Everyone went on the treasure hunt but me.

” She sighed wistfully. “Although I don’t suppose a treasure hunt in the wilderness is any place for a five-year-old. ”

Tilda said, “Why not? Children have walked with their kin across the country following wagon trains. They’re a tough lot. Caroline can ride a horse, can’t she?”

“With close supervision.” Annie felt a spark of excitement at the thought of riding out into the wilderness. “But riding a horse is one thing. Some of our treasure hunters have ended up getting shot.”

Tilda waved a hand as the two of them approached the ranch house.

“That only happened once.” Her brow furrowed.

“Of course, there’s the time Cord cracked his head on a shield, and his wits were almost knocked out of him when a skull rolled out of that helmet.

Still, that isn’t the same as dangerous outlaws trying to overpower us to steal gold doubloons. ”

“Cord hit his head?”

“That’s right. He bled all over, and Josh was worried because rusty iron isn’t anything you want to mess with. He had to let it bleed a while to clean out the cut so it wouldn’t become infected.”

“I don’t remember that.”

Tilda gave her a long look. “No reason you should remember. He was mostly over it by the time we got back to the ranch.”

Annie wanted to ask Tilda what that look meant. Instead, she reached for the door handle and let Tilda lead the way inside.

Michelle was busy setting the table with Leah on her hip.

Gretel was working over the stove with her toddler dancing around the hot metal.

Gretel was a master at blocking her attempts to get too close while still getting her work done.

Her baby was in a little playpen Zane had built. Sometimes Leah went in there with her.

Tilda took the plates Michelle had in one hand. “I’ll finish setting the table. Tell us what you found in your workshop. Are the men back from visiting the museum in town, and did Josh come back?”

As usual, Annie had been busy teaching and, not counting yesterday’s earthquake, had missed all the excitement.

“None of the men are back yet.” Michelle sat and bounced her little girl on her knee. “The big development this morning is that I found the missing shield.”

“Where was it?” Annie slid biscuits out of the oven, off a baking sheet, and into a basket. “Was it hidden somewhere in the woods?”

“No, it must have been overlooked. It was lying flat on the floor and shoved under the table where I mix chemicals.”

Annie frowned as she helped Gretel get the meal on. “I didn’t notice it there last night.”

“I didn’t see it right away either. There wasn’t a lot of light, and it was pushed way back in the shadows under the table.

I expect those no-good thieves just didn’t notice it.

I wonder if the earthquake knocked it off the table.

Depending on how it landed, it could have rolled before it tipped over. ”

“Did you look to see if there were more pieces still there?” Tilda loved that suit of armor.

Of all of them, she’d been the most involved in researching the historic pieces and studying the conquistadors and especially Captain Cabrillo, whose armada of Spanish ships had explored the California coast some three hundred years ago.

And anything she found, she wove into her history class.

“I scoured the place, believe me,” said Michelle.

And Annie did believe her. Michelle wasn’t a careless woman.

“Do we have a list of all that was kept in there, so we know what exactly got stolen?” Annie thought between Tilda and Michelle they could remember, but there were many small pieces to the suit of armor plus the weapons.

“Yes, we have a thorough list. Besides the full suit of armor, we kept one of every type of weapon: a spear tip, a shield, a sword, a halberd, a dagger, plus the helmet.”

“What’s a halberd?” Annie asked.

Tilda answered, “It was that thing that looks like an ax with a spike at the top. It normally would have been on a wooden handle about six feet long. Nasty weapon. But the handle had rotted away—three hundred years will do that to wood.”

“I remember it now. Did we have any one-of-a-kind weapons or pieces of armor, or was everything like the other artifacts we’ve loaned out?”

“None that I can think of,” Michelle said.

“Well, I doubt the Crockers or your pa, Tilda, would steal from us. But those men from the university might,” Annie suggested.

Michelle snorted as she bounced the baby on her knee. “Those men are highly respected scholars. They wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Someone sure did.”

Tilda came to the table with a bowl of chicken and noodles. “Gretel, you’re welcome to stay and eat with us. Rick can eat with the cowhands. It’s a big job for you to haul food and your children all the way home.”

“No, thank you. Rick will come and help me. He likes seeing me and the children and joining us for meals.”

A knock on the back door told them he’d come just like Gretel said. “That’s Rick now,” she laughed.

Rick didn’t wait to be invited in. Walking home with his family to eat together was routine. Soon Annie, Michelle, and Tilda were alone. As for Caroline, she preferred sharing the midday meal with her friends at school.

“What did you find out in town?” Annie asked Michelle. “And didn’t Zane ride with you? Where is he?”

“He went back to branding. He says two more long days and they’ll be done.

The remaining chuck wagon—the one left after the other sank into the ground yesterday—was just heading out when we got home, so he’s eating with the men.

” Michelle scooped up chicken and noodles onto her plate and dug in, chewing thoughtfully.

“We talked to your pa, Tilda. He hasn’t had anything go missing.

He said the men we brought in have been there studying the armor, and they’re fascinated by it.

Professor Hardy is around the most. But Carl didn’t think they’d done anything suspicious.

So far he isn’t seeing many folks interested in visiting the museum.

We talked about maybe moving it either to Sacramento or San Francisco.

We liked the idea of keeping the museum here, luring tourists into town, but we haven’t had much luck with it.

I think he’d push for moving it, that is, if he didn’t want to stay close to you. ”

Carl Cabril seemed to enjoy sitting in on his daughter’s classes and would sometimes add to the discussion in fascinating ways.

Tilda was still adjusting to having a father after her years of living as an orphan.

She’d also discovered that she had an older brother and a twin sister, Maddie, who had become a true sister to her.

“Josh told me he was riding out with Cord today in hopes of finding and following any tracks.”

“Zane might throw in with them after he works a few hours. Josh promised to leave a trail.”

Annie helped herself to a second biscuit, along with more chicken and noodles. This was her favorite meal that Gretel made, and it seemed like she was still hungry after a sparse day of eating yesterday.

“We’ll be to the end of the school term in a couple of weeks.

We need to figure out how to give the children a fun summer.

It’s not like they can just go home. And the baby will be here before school resumes, so I’ll need to quit teach ing.

” Tilda and Josh’s baby was expected to arrive by the end of summer.

Michelle nodded. “Even with a baby, you can keep teaching the history class. You realize you have a rare talent for it.”

The small tip of Tilda’s head, almost like a little shrug, was in Annie’s opinion a long way from agreement. Annie wondered if her father or Maddie might step in to teach Tilda’s classes. They were always on the lookout for teachers at the Two Harts.

Some of the archeologists who’d come to study the armor were professors.

The one who came most often, Professor Oswald Hardy, had brought students out with him, and his assistant, Walter Rombauer, had been a constant at his side.

And he was not at all pleased about how they’d brought in the armor.

He’d insisted they should have contacted him.

They should have allowed him to dig up that graveyard in a correct manner.

In fact, he thought they should have given him and the university all the artifacts they’d found.

Hardy was big on issuing orders and pointing out mistakes. That might work with his students, but no one at the Two Harts Ranch was overly impressed with his bossy behavior, nor were they interested in earning a good grade from the man.

“Maybe Professor Hardy would volunteer to teach a class,” Tilda said. “He could share with our students what he does for a living. It might pique their curiosity. Of course, the professor seems to think teaching young children is beneath him.” Tilda’s frustration was evident in her tone.

Annie pushed herself to her feet, feeling the burden of responsibility for those young lives who’d started out in such a harsh way.

She wished to help them find a path that would give them a good life.

That conflicted with her often hard-to-control wish that it might well be someone else’s job to see that task through.