Page 29 of Whispers of Fortune (Golden State Treasure Book #1)

T WENTY -N INE

“Lock and Thayne, can we just hold on a minute before we go haring off after more treasure?” Brody gave an exasperated sigh. “I know you didn’t know our grandpa, but I’d like to have a moment of silence and prayer, a moment to remember him.”

Lock’s eyes lost the feverish look. He nodded and sank to the floor of the cave. “It’s not where I’d like to spend the night, but let’s eat our supper here, and we can be quiet while we remember Grandpa. I never met him, but I’ve heard plenty of stories. Then we can go on for a time while we’ve still got the light.”

Brody was worried about Lock with his wild dreams of treasure. Add to that, the kid was worn clean out. Sure, they could stay here, eat something, and remember Grandpa, yet Brody thought it might be best if instead they found a place nearby where they could set up camp for the night. Their adventuring needed to end, at least for today.

Brody took the leather packet of papers and handed it to Lock. “Look over these papers while we get a fire going and a meal ready. Thayne, you help. Be careful with the papers—they’re as brittle as that map.”

Ellie looked at the paper she’d found by itself in the sad dlebag. She gave it the brothers. “This is fragile, too. Study it along with the papers.”

Josh went outside but was back shortly with the packs on their horses. He then gathered up an armload of kindling.

Brody had to admit he’d’ve liked to go over those papers too, but then he figured their finding Grandpa would have been enough for him for this weekend. He’d rather they headed back to the ranch and planned another treasure hunt some other weekend—or next spring. Any treasure that had stayed hidden for thirty years could wait another week or two. But what about Boston? He certainly couldn’t treasure-hunt from the far side of the continent.

“Brody, look at this.” Lock thrust a paper at his brother. Written on the paper in an elaborate hand were the words, Al norte de la Bahia de Los Pinos con Capitan Cabrillo en una espesa niebla . “Grandpa must’ve copied that in the journal.” Lock handed it to Brody and went on to the next paper. “He must’ve found all this with the rest of whatever treasure there was. Maybe it’s all he found, or maybe—”

“Brody, look.” Ellie’s tone drew everyone’s attention. She pointed at a tattered spot on Grandpa’s leg. The fabric of his pants was so old, Brody could see the bone.

“A broken leg.” Brody knelt beside the skeleton and concealed how much this grieved him. He did his best to act as if this were a simple medical situation. But it was Grandpa, and how or why he’d met his demise and came to be lying here in this cave made Brody sad. “He must have visited a post office and sent the journal to Pa. On his way back, guided by his map to where he found these things, somehow he ended up with a broken leg.”

“Not that hard to get hurt out in rugged land like this.” Josh frowned as he stared at the bone.

“He couldn’t go on.” Brody sat back on his heels. “He might have hoped it was only a bad sprain. Hoped if he rested here for a while, he could recover.”

Brody locked eyes with Ellie, and he saw that she understood what it was he’d been struggling with as he knelt by his grandpa’s body. She stepped forward and rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Grandpa crawled in here for shelter and never left.”

“He really did want us to share in the treasure, didn’t he?” Lock sounded so young when he said it.

“I think he hoped we would join him out here,” said Brody, nodding. “Just those few gold coins we found would’ve paid for the trip out here for Pa, Ma, Theresa, and me. Grandpa and Pa could have built a house and bought a few head of cattle. You boys would’ve been born out here, and then our whole family would’ve been together. That might’ve been enough for Grandpa to call it a treasure.”

“But why mail the journal? Could it be he thought he was in danger?” Ellie couldn’t help but wonder.

Brody shook his head slowly as he considered that. “We’re just guessing about all this, I suppose. Grandpa was secretive in the journal, so he might—”

“Brody.” Lock waved a paper, his eyes wide. “Look, it’s a letter from Grandpa. He wrote it after he broke his leg, hoping we’d find it.”

Brody took the letter and read it swiftly.

Frasier, me lad,

Your da broke his leg bad. I ain’t gonna make it, I’m affeered. If ye found me here, it meens ye found my map in the book. Gotta tell you what I done...

Brody frowned. “He says he sent a second map and a letter to someone else. Someone he owed money to. A man named Mayhew Westbrook. He says the map he enclosed in his journal is only half of it. We need the other half to find his treasure. And he filed a claim on this land ... no, on some land. He filed it in Cornerstone, California. We’re to find that claim. Find Mayhew. Find the other half of the map. Mayhew’s map is hidden from him just as ours was hidden from us.”

Brody lowered his grandfather’s note and looked from Lock to Thayne, then to Josh, finally to Ellie. Then he glanced down at his grandpa’s remains. “What did he find? What was important enough that he needed to hide clues and maps and write in such a secretive way? A map in two halves? What does this Mayhew Westbrook have? Did Grandpa mail two journals?” So many questions still.

“Is there any point in going on?” Ellie asked. “It’s very likely that X your grandpa marked on the map is just the end of your map and the beginning of the other half. I’d say the next step in your treasure hunt is to find Mayhew Westbrook. And find out if he’d like to join your hunt.”

Brody looked at the letter in his hand, then the map. “What do you say, boys?”

“I say we need to find the other half of the map.” Lock nodded to the one Brody held. “But we’ve got another day. Can we go to where Grandpa’s map leads us? If he marked it with an X, maybe there’s something to be found. We can at least discover the right trail.”

“I agree,” said Thayne. “We found the green pond after a long day of searching. This time we rode straight to it. It took another long day to find this cave. If we get to the end of our map, then go find this Westbrook partner of Grandpa’s, we can all ride to the right starting spot.”

Brody turned to Ellie and Josh. “That makes sense, I suppose.”

Josh nodded. “We’d planned to be out another day. Let’s keep following the map.”

Brody considered the gold coins they’d found, eight in all. He had them in a little stack beside him. He picked up the coins and handed them around.

Josh waved him off. “That’s MacKenzie’s Treasure. It’s yours. We’re way off the Two Harts Ranch—we have no claim on this.”

“We can talk about that later,” Brody said. “I suppose half of this is owed to Mayhew Westbrook. Grandpa said he promised the man half of his treasure for funding the search. For now, let’s split up our little treasure right here. If something happens to any of us, a hole in our pockets or something, we’ll have a good chance of getting back to the ranch with most of the coins.”

Ellie took her coin and held it up. “It’s heavy. Probably two or three times the size of a twenty-dollar gold piece, and it’s old. I suspect it’s very valuable. The eight of them together may be worth a sizable fortune. Your grandpa was right that he could bring your whole family out west and buy land here with just these coins. This could be all the treasure he found. And that dagger is probably valuable, too.”

Lock got that gold, feverish gleam in his eyes again. “There are more papers to go through,” he said. “Maybe it’s written down what else Grandpa found. Maybe he brought back these coins as a sample but left behind a larger hoard of them.”

Ellie closed her fist around the coin. “We’ll find your grandpa’s X location tomorrow, then ride back to the ranch before sundown.”

Brody nodded. “Then we’ll go to work finding Mayhew Westbrook, whoever he is. He could be long dead by now—or long gone.”

“We should ask Michelle about Westbrook. She may have heard his name before.” Josh dropped his coin into his pocket, then pulled the pocket open and looked into it. “No holes.”

Brody divided the rest of the coins between his brothers and kept two for himself.

“Good idea. Michelle’s family knows a lot of people, and they might have a better idea of where to search.” Ellie opened her hand that held the coin. “I just wanted to hold it for a few seconds. I don’t have a pocket. Brody, you carry my coin along with yours.”

Brody took it from her, checked his own breast pocket for holes, and put the three coins inside it.

Lock pocketed his coins. “So we’ll find Westbrook and bring him and his map with us next time. We’ll ride to the end of our map and pick up where his map starts.”

Something about the way Lock put the coins away gave Brody a notion, and he turned to Grandpa’s skeleton. He reached for the pocket he could see on the shredded remains of a pair of pants. He drew out three more coins from the pocket. He checked Grandpa’s other pants pocket and found three more.

Lock gasped as Brody handed the coins to his brothers. Their eyes shone with excitement.

“These have to be a part of MacKenzie’s Treasure,” said Thayne, “or Grandpa wouldn’t have drawn two halves of a map.”

“While we’ve been in the cave, the sun has sunk low in the sky,” Josh said, gesturing toward the entrance. “Let’s go. Get a little farther down the trail. The next landmark looks like...” Josh tilted his head at the map he held. “It’s an arched rock, I think, or maybe a bent-over tree.”

“Bring all the papers along,” said Brody. “We’ll head for home tomorrow in time to stop back here. I want to wrap up Grandpa’s body and take him back to the ranch to bury in a proper grave.” He paused and looked around the cave. “Or maybe we should leave him here where he’s been for so long. But I like the idea of him being buried somewhere we can visit. Ma and Pa are together in New York with marked graves. Is that the right thing to do for Grandpa, to bring him to the Two Harts?”

Ellie patted Brody on the shoulder. “We’ll talk it over, then you can decide what’s best to be done. Now, let’s follow that map for a while longer.”

Tilda couldn’t leave. The truth was that this place was going to fall apart if she left. And the missing helper was a nun. A wildly irresponsible nun, and that didn’t seem right. Surely she’d come back, or they’d send someone else. But had something happened to Sister Agatha? It made no sense that she’d just walk away and leave Rosa Linda with all these children.

Could this be where God wanted her? Working with orphans was what Tilda had been called by Him to do. But what about her two missing boys?

Cooking, cleaning, teaching, tending children while they ate and studied and slept kept her busy every hour of every day—including a lot of the night hours. The two babies she cared for had a tendency to wake up in the night, needing food or a dry diaper.

Tilda set the last plate of boiled cabbage in front of Bobby, then poured him a scant cup of milk. The bottle of milk left every morning wasn’t overly generous.

“Thank you, Miss Tilda.” Bobby smiled his gapped-toothed smile, and her heart softened for the little boy, for all the children.

The children chattered on, utensils clinking on tin plates as they ate their beans and side pork for the evening meal. Occasionally, there were apples, and once they’d been left a sack of potatoes and meat from which to make a stew. There was flour and sourdough, which Rosa Linda used to make biscuits. But mostly it was beans, side pork, and milk. Not the best nutrition, but the children could probably grow up on them with an apple added in once in a while.

Bobby knocked over his tin cup of milk, and Tilda gave up on even considering making a break for it.

How long had she been here? She mopped up milk, wiped chins, earned a giggle or two, and just settled in because she saw no other choice.

And she prayed for Sister Agatha to return soon.

In the midst of her praying, the front door swung open, and a pretty dark-haired woman stepped inside. A redheaded woman right behind her. Next in was a blonde. All of them quickly entered and swung the door shut. Tilda had to wonder if they knew they’d be locked in here, possibly forever.

The three of them were a picture. As pretty as any women Tilda had ever seen. They wore beautiful dresses, and their hair was perfectly styled. They made Tilda conscious of her one-and-only dress, her disheveled hair. The length of time it had been since she’d bathed.

It irritated her because she was probably only judging herself, as none of these ladies seemed to look down their noses at her. Or if they did, it was all inside their heads because their expressions were more than friendly.

“I’m Michelle Hart, and these are my sisters. Jilly’s the redhead, Laura the blonde. We’re here to see if any of you children would like to come out to the Two Harts School. We’ve got plenty of children out there and have found a few from the Child of God Mission.” The woman’s eyes sparkled with intelligence and kindness as she looked at Tilda.

“We don’t just let folks come in here and abscond with children.” Back in New York, Tilda had known people who had terrible plans for children. She knew that knowledge rang in her voice. Rosa Linda was silent. She most certainly didn’t jump in with a big welcome for these three ladies. A glance told Tilda that Rosa Linda was just as confused as she was.

The woman called Michelle Hart studied her. She seemed to look through Tilda as if she were thinking of what to say and wanted to say it just right.

Finally, the blond lady behind her asked, “Where’s Sister Agatha?”