Page 18 of Whispers of Fortune (Golden State Treasure Book #1)

E IGHTEEN

The afternoon was half gone, and as the altitude rose, the temperature dropped.

“Look. That looks like a monster tree, and it’s broken off.” Pointing, Lock’s voice rose with excitement.

Brody snapped his head up and realized he’d been dozing in the saddle or the next thing to it. His heart sped up. “Is ... is that a sequoia?” He was awestruck by the massive size of its trunk. “It is a monster tree. I can see why Grandpa described it that way.”

The tree was so wide at its base, all five of them, arms reaching out, couldn’t stretch around the trunk. And yes, it was broken off, but so high up that Brody couldn’t estimate its full height. Was it thirty feet, forty, fifty?

Still standing, the trunk showed rot on one side that had formed an opening like a cave, deep enough for a man to step into without ducking. Looking at the dark crevasse in the giant tree made Brody feel as though he were staring into its heart—its broken heart.

Before breaking and falling, the treetop must have dominated the rest of the forest. The underbrush hid the extent of the once-majestic sequoia from view.

“There are huge old oaks back in New York.” Brody spoke in a hushed voice as he might have when in church. He was struck hard by the beauty of God’s creation. “I’ve taken the train from New York City to Boston. Along the way, I’ve seen some mighty big trees.” He paused as he took in their surroundings. “Nothing compares to this.”

“If we head north,” said Josh, “there are some of these same trees closer to the ranch. Every summer, Pa and Ma used to pack a picnic lunch and take us out to see them and spend an afternoon in the shade of the sequoias. My brothers and Annie and I would pretend they were giants, and we’d play hide-and-seek around their trunks. I’ll never get over the splendor of these trees.”

Brody felt like this was the chance of a lifetime to see something so magnificent.

“And that,” said Josh, pointing to the left, “is a trail fit only for a jackrabbit.”

Despite Josh’s unflattering assessment, Brody never would have recognized it as a trail. Josh turned left. The trail went straight down, cut right into the side of the mountain.

Brody had to tear himself away from the tree when he wanted to stay and just absorb the grandeur. He rode forward while vowing he’d come back and spend more time in this stand of trees.

The broken colossus blocked the trail in front of them, so it was just as well they needed to turn off. It was a rocky stretch, yet there were sprouts of life shooting up from the roots of the broken sequoia, as if the tree were fighting for life.

Patches of green grass wrapped around the base of the tree, and with the mountain rising up to the west and against the blue California sky, the beautiful view was fit to be a masterpiece painting.

Thayne looked over his shoulder at Brody and asked, “Do you know, is the green pond the next landmark?”

Brody shook his head. “No. Next we search for a hole, then the green pond.”

“The trouble with using landmarks,” Ellie said as if wanting to warn them against getting their hopes too high, “is that rocks cave off or break. Trees can get swept away in a landslide. With the earthquakes California is so famous for, we’ve had creeks jump their banks and carve new routes. We even had one dry up completely. There was a crack in the creek bed, and the stream plunged underground.”

Ellie looked at Brody. “Can creeks do that? It’s not like there’s a tunnel for it to follow under there.”

“I don’t know much about earthquakes—or vanishing streams, for that matter.”

“You’ll get a chance to learn more. We get little quakes quite often. It gets so I don’t pay them much mind. Anyway, with your grandpa’s journal, a lot can happen in thirty years.”

“Your grandpa,” Josh called back as he rode down the treacherous slope, “should have given you better directions, but I reckon saying that now is a waste of time.”

Brody agreed with Josh on both counts.

“Do you suppose Pa ever got this close to Grandpa’s trail, Brody?” Lock was almost bouncing in the saddle. “Do you suppose he rode this exact path?”

It was a steep trail and barely wide enough to ride side by side. Brody thought, at the rate it was narrowing, it’d be single file soon.

Brody looked at Ellie. “You never met a man out here, mad with gold fever? Pa only came home this last winter, so if he was treasure hunting, he might’ve even come by the ranch to fetch a meal or something. He looks more like Lock than Thayne and me. We took after Ma.”

“I can’t remember such a man, but it’s a big mountain. Your pa might’ve wandered far from the trail we picked. Do you reckon he ever came this way?”

Brody shook his head. “What Pa did was a mystery. We’re on the trail left behind by Grandpa.”

“We need to be hunting for that hole Grandpa spoke of,” Lock said. “Problem is, his clues are cryptic and buried in lengthy descriptions of scenery. Some of his sentences don’t seem to go with the rest of his writing. I’ve tried to pay special mind to that. I think Grandpa was hoping to hide directions to his treasure by salting them with flowery words.”

Brody had little doubt that his brother had the journal as good as memorized.

They rode on downward. Strange to have such a steep descent on a mountain where the trails went mainly upward. Soon the trail twisted, rising occasionally, though mainly they were going down. Finally, they reached a wooded stretch where the trees blocked out the sky. In the deep shadows, Brody felt as if he were sliding down into the belly of a huge beast. A chill rushed up his spine at that thought, and he shoved all such thoughts from his mind to watch where he was riding.

“That might be what Grandpa was talking about.” Thayne pointed to a rockslide.

“Why? That’s not anything I’d describe as a hole.” Brody glanced at Ellie, wishing she knew enough about this mountain to help with Grandpa’s mysterious clues.

“Look just above those scattered rocks. There’s something there. I think if it wasn’t for the rockslide, we’d see it better. Let’s look closer.”

Josh reached the slide, which covered the trail. “That’s called a scree. Like we said, the trouble with landmarks is they can change. That could be the right spot, but the rocks are hiding it.” He reined in his horse. “It does look like there’s something there.” Josh turned to Thayne and nodded.

Brody rode up behind Lock and halted, watching as Lock let his horse walk out onto the scree.

“Should he be walking across that?” Brody asked.

Ellie gasped. “Lock, no. Come ba—”

Lock’s horse slid on the loose pebbles, then caught itself and took lurching leaps back onto the trail. Lock fell backward off the horse with a shout of terror. He landed hard on the crumbling rock, then slid out of sight over the edge of a cliff.

Brody jumped down off his horse and ran to the spot where his brother had disappeared. He felt the rocks give and went flying after his brother into midair.

Brody hit the ground hard, then slid downward, twisting to claw at the jumble of small rocks. He heard his name being screamed from above. It was Ellie.

He caught hold of something, which jerked him to a stop. Then he broke loose and started tumbling again. He kicked up dirt, choking as he fought to stop his fall. A tree growing out the middle of the talus slide slammed into his belly and stopped him for a second. He glimpsed Lock below him, still skidding down the nearly sheer slope.

The tree wrenched out of the rocks, and he fell again, faster this time. A solid blow to the head left him addled. Suddenly he stopped, his head still swimming. He forced his eyes open and saw he was on a ledge half as wide as his body. There, gasping for breath, he looked down and saw Lock, who was still falling.

Brody’s ledge gave way, and he started tumbling again. He hit a boulder, hard enough it knocked the wind out of his chest. He realized rocks were sliding with him as he’d created an avalanche.

If he survived this mad fall, he might well be buried with the rocks he’d shaken loose. Gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, he saw another pine tree ahead, bigger this time. He surged forward with his battered legs and flung his arms around the tree.

The rough bark of the scraggly tree scraped his face. Branches slapped him. But it held.

Still not breathing well, he looked down. The world whirled and faded. He dragged a leg over the tree so it held his weight in case he blacked out. Panting, aching in every bone and joint, he looked down again. He spotted Lock below him at the bottom of the slide, lying flat on his belly. He wasn’t moving. Little rocks cascaded down, bouncing off his brother’s back and legs and head. Lock was bleeding.

Brody’s mind cleared enough that he could see he’d fallen most of the way down, and what was left wasn’t as steep.

Sickened and with no idea what else to do, Brody eased himself off the tree branch. With some modicum of control now, he slid the rest of the way down the slope. He felt his pants snag on a sharp point. Tearing fabric followed.

When he reached the bottom, he crawled across the rocks, with more of them peppering his back, and threw himself over Lock. And there he lay until the rocks quit pouring down. Feeling dizzy and halfway to having his wits knocked out of him, Brody pulled away from his brother.

He pressed two fingers against Lock’s neck. With a near sob of relief, he realized Lock was still alive. Brody slid his hands expertly over Lock’s arms and legs. No obvious sign of broken bones. Lock’s face was bleeding, scraped nearly raw on the right side. But Brody knew just how many injuries there could be that didn’t show and were nearly impossible to treat. Broken spine, broken or cracked ribs, skull fractures, ruptured spleen. A body could be busted up inside in a hundred different ways.

Brody heard a shout and looked up to see Ellie. She was coming down. They’d found a path off to the side where they could climb down safely. He saw Josh ahead of her, with Thayne, white-faced and terrified, right behind him. All three of them were heading down to lend their help.

Brody’s vision narrowed. It was like looking through a tunnel, and with each passing second the light lessened, until the only thing he could see was Ellie. She glanced over her shoulder in her recklessly fast descent. Their eyes met.

He wanted to shout to her that he was all right, but he was too dazed to manage it. And too tired and hurt.

He was still trying to muster the strength to reassure Ellie he was fine when the tunnel closed. He was only dimly aware of his slumping flat onto the ground in utter darkness.