“That’s gonna be a problem, then, ain’t it?”
I’m ’bout to tell him he’s a rotten pain when I spot a flake of grief in his features. “I’m sorry for yer loss,” I says dryly.
“You and everyone but God, it seems.” He reaches a hand over the fence. “Jesse Colton. Abe was my father.” I bend from Silver and we shake. “This is the part where you tell me yer name,” Jesse adds.
“Nate,” I says. It’s the first thing to pop into my head. “Nate Thompson.”
“Thompson?” Jesse’s squinty eyes go even narrower.
“I were to come see Abe if anything happened to my pa. Well, something happened, so here I am.”
But Jesse’s not even listening no more. He’s waving for the other boy in the field like a madman flagging down a stagecoach. “Leave the horses,” he shouts to him. “Meet me inside.”
What a waste of time. Abe dead, Wickenburg pointless. I click my tongue, and Jesse vaults over the fence, putting his hands up to stop me and Silver.
“What was yer pa’s name?” he says.
“Henry.”
“Henry Thompson?”
“That’s what I said, weren’t it?”
Jesse rubs his jaw. “Why don’t you come in and sit awhile. Sarah’s making biscuits and it won’t be no trouble if you join.”
“I ain’t got time for biscuits or sitting,” I says. “If Abe ain’t here, I got places to be.”
“Nate.” Jesse grabs Silver’s bridle and looks me dead in the eye. “Abe always said a young Thompson might come calling. We got something for you, something of yer pa’s. We been holding it for ages.”
Inside, the farmhouse smells of fresh bread and burnt coffee. The table’s covered in mismatched plates and silverware, and I don’t think there’s a single mug that ain’t chipped.
I smear honey on a biscuit and shovel it down ’longside some eggs. I know I’m eating like a heathen, but I can’t tell if the quiet’s ’cus of my lack of manners or just the very fact that I’m here.
“Yer real,” says the boy ’cross the way. He’s so small, his chin barely clears the table. Maybe five years old. “Will said it were all horseshit.”
“Jake, you watch yer mouth,” Sarah snaps, smacking the back of his head for added emphasis. She’s pretty—pale hair and pale skin and a slender neck accented by the buttoned collar of her periwinkle dress. She looks like one of them porcelain dolls. I reckon she’s Jesse’s wife, but no one’s introduced me proper, and frankly, I don’t give two hoots. I’m eating, getting whatever they’re holding for me, and making for town. Trails run cold pretty fast when you ain’t riding ’em.
“You were mentioned by Abe nearly once a week when he were still alive,” Sarah says to me by way of apology. “It was always, Henry’s kid’ll come through one day, don’t yous forget it, but sometimes it were hard to believe. More coffee?”
She sloshes some into my mug before I can answer.
“And what do you know, Will?” Jesse says, elbowing the boy he was saddling horses with earlier. “I was right like always.”
“And the day yer finally wrong, I’m gonna let you know it for a decade,” Will mutters back. Theys got the same nose and jaw, only Will don’t squint constantly.
Jake stuffs some biscuit in his mouth and keeps his eyes rooted on me.
“Didn’t nobody tell you it’s rude to stare?” I says.
The boy wipes his nose with his sleeve and keeps at it.
“Use a napkin, Jake,” Jesse says.
“You don’t gotta pretend to be his father,” Sarah says to Jesse.
“Well, when’s Roy getting back, Sarah? He were due two days ago, and we ain’t heard a word. I told you I never trusted that miner. I don’t know why you went and married him.”
“You don’t trust no one, Jesse. Not even yer own sister!”
Not married, then.
I keep my head down, eating while they argue ’bout Roy and someone named Clara. I ain’t got the energy to try and figure the relationships or follow the argument.
When there’s a brief lull, Will cuts in. “What happened to yer pa, Nate?”
“Got himself hanged.”
“For horse thieving? High-grading?”
“My pa weren’t no criminal,” I says.
“So why a hanging?”
“It were a murder, and I’m fixing to find out why. Hopefully whatever Abe’s been holding’ll help.” I drop my fork and wipe my face clean. “What was it you had for me?”
Jesse stands and motions for me to follow him. In a small bedroom, he pulls open a desk drawer and dumps the contents. Then he lifts away a piece of wood lining the bottom to reveal a hidden compartment. There ain’t nothing in it but an envelope. He hands it to me.
“A letter?” I says, doubtful.
He shrugs. “I’ll give you a moment.”
I sink into the desk chair and turn the envelope over in my hands. It’s yellowed with age, and there ain’t a mark of ink on it. Not my name or nothing. I slide my finger beneath the wax and break the seal.
The pages I pull out are brittle and coarse. Pa’s script is formal and elegant, so unlike his speaking voice.
If you’re reading this, it means bad folk came for me, and I’m terribly sorry I never told you the truth, Kate. I always planned to, at the right time, but maybe time got away from me. Maybe I thought we were safe.
The short of it is, your mother and I found gold when we were very young. Not here in Wickenburg, but farther south, in the Salt River Valley. There’s a mine and a couple caches sitting in the Superstition Mountains, and we only found our way to it because of the journal. We crossed two burro skeletons while prospecting, and a pair of human ones accompanying them. The saddlebags were still loaded up with gold, but the men had their skulls shot through, and the journal was sitting there among the bones. Leather bound, thick. The very one I keep under my bed. It had maps and directions. Instructions based on the sun and the cactuses and the canyon rock forms. It had everything, Kate, and we found one of the caches. Not the mine itself, but even still the cache was overflowing with ore.
I reckon it was someone’s wealth, stored up. Probably the dead mens’ or whoever shot ’em through the head, unless that were Indians. I didn’t want to touch the stuff—I had a bad feeling—but Maria said we could live easy off it. We took as much as we could carry and never looked back.
The problem, see, is that gold tends to leave a trail. Back in Tucson, people wanted to know where we’d struck. They asked too many questions. Some even came to the house in the night, aiming to kill us for the prize. Once you were born, I knew we had to move.