Silver Dreams (29 page)

"I think maybe this isn't the right time after all," she said.

"No kidding." He discreetly climbed off her and flopped down on his makeshift pillow. She started to say something to smooth over the awkwardness of the moment, but he held up his hand. "No, don't say anything. Just give me a minute."

When he spoke again, his voice was gravely. "Sorry, Dooley, if we kept you awake."

"Are you finished?" the old man asked.

"You might say that. Go to sleep, okay?"

Within minutes Dooley's breathing was steady, and only then did Max speak to Elizabeth. "I've thought lots of times about making love to you, Betsy. Even when you've been unpredictable and uncooperative, it's never been far from my mind. But of all the ways I imagined it happening, I never counted on this."

She stared into his eyes. “Max, you owe me an apology.”

"I know. I can’t believe I forgot about Dooley."

"Oh, no. You don't need to apologize for that.”

"Then what?”

"For calling me unpredictable and uncooperative. I've never been either one of those things."

He caught her around the waist and pulled her down next to him. She started to squeal, and he smothered the sound with his mouth. "Like hell you haven't," he said when he let her go. She settled against him and he put his arm around her. His shoulder was the only pillow she needed. "Our time will come, Betsy, and when it does, it will be right. Now go to sleep."

His words floated somewhere in the back of her mind because she'd already begun to do what he told her.

Max brushed strands of hair away from Betsy's forehead and listened to the soft murmurs she made in her sleep. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let things get so carried away? After all, Betsy wasn't Ramona Redbud or even Sally from Flanagan's.

A girl like Betsy is raised to believe her virtue is her honor, her special gift to the man she would marry, and despite Max's bravado to the contrary, the voice of old Seamus was probably right. An upper east side Sheridan would not likely marry a mid-town Cassidy. Max had no right to take away what was not rightly his.

And besides all that, he still had to deal with a nagging conscience that continually reminded him that he hadn't been honest with Betsy since he'd first boarded the train in New York. He was here, after all, to discredit her brother, and make him look in print to be the fool Gus Kritsky believed him to be. He had come to Colorado to give the
Gazette
editor a story that would knock Winston Sheridan off his journalistic pedestal.

And that wasn't the end of Max's dishonesty. He knew that the money Ross used to finance the trip had come from Frankie Galbotto. More than once, Betsy had refused to believe that her brother would have anything to do with a thug like Galbotto, and she probably wouldn't believe Ross was capable of the association now. What would she think of Max if she knew he'd kept information like this from her?  And what if her life was in jeopardy because of Ross's connections?  That was the most chilling thought of all.

As he lay awake listening to Betsy sleep, Max wished Ross would actually find silver in that damned mine and come out of this looking like a financial wizard. Ross could then pay back his debt and keep Galbotto from possibly killing him and others. It was the only way Max could fathom Ross maintaining his stature in his sister's eyes. And Max wished that the two men he'd seen on the Penn Central train and the pair of shadows on the gully wall didn't make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. But the truth was, he suspected that any minute, this little adventure could take a dangerous turn.

He looked down at the beautiful, trusting face of Betsy, and because of his feelings for her, he realized that he had probably never truly loved anyone before in his life. He might have loved his mother if he'd had a chance to know her. He certainly didn't love the bastard who'd fathered him. But he was falling for Betsy Sheridan just as surely as if he'd tumbled off Devil's Fork Mountain. And when she found out the truth, he figured his landing would be just as hard and just as painful.

At least he hadn't taken the gift she offered him tonight. Maybe he'd deceived her, but he hadn't done that. And he might just get the chance to do one more thing for her, too. He'd protect her with his own life if it came to that. But right now, as he faced a sleepless night, he'd settle for being wrong about a lot of things.

Chapter Fifteen

Preparing a warm breakfast proved much easier in the kitchen of the Bonanza Hotel than it had over an open campfire with a cold wind chilling everyone to the bone. Max made a fire in the old stove which was adequate for heating the muffins and oatmeal the prospectors had brought with them.

While they were eating, Dooley announced that the time for lolly-gagging was over. "Today's the day we find the Fair Day," he said, with such confidence that Elizabeth's spirits were raised almost as much as when Max had given her a secretive little smile at the table.

“Dooley's right,” Ross said. “We’ll look over the landmarks for the mine until you are sure what we're looking for."

Dooley nodded and tapped the side of his head. "We don't need any of your maps and papers. I got the landmarks all memorized right here where they won't get lost. Once we get close to the tree line, we start looking for Clyde Faraday's markers. There's four of them all together."

"At least tell us what they are," Ross said.

"Number one, we find the old man's tear. Once we cross over that, we come to the horse thief's heel, then the head of the third bald man and straight to the spinster's sun bonnet."

Max whispered to Elizabeth. "Shouldn't be too hard. Sounds like navigating midtown Manhattan to me."

She was as confused as Max. "I'm afraid I don't understand you, Dooley," she said. "How will we know when we come to those things?"

Ross chuckled and shook his head slowly, like a school teacher might with a poor student. "You sure don't know much about the old West, Lizzie. That's the way old timers write maps. They just look around them and make up word pictures to match the landscape. Dooley’s markers may not make sense now, but once we get there, all these things will be clear as glass."

Max crooked his thumb at the grimy kitchen window next to them. "See there, everyone?  Ross says it'll be clear as glass, and there's a fine example."

"We could be hopelessly lost, right, Max?" she whispered, unable to hide the despair that had suddenly come over her.

"
We're
not," he assured her. "I left markers of my own all the way down the mountain to Georgetown just in case. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Fair Day Mine was lost...forever."

"Maybe we'll run into the ghosts of Ian and Clyde Faraday," Elizabeth said to raise the party’s spirits. "They can show us the way."

Dooley pounded his fist on the table and glared at her. "Don't you talk that way, girlie. Not never!"

His face had turned as pale as the ghosts Elizabeth had been speaking of, and the finger he held in her face shook with an agitation that bordered on hysteria. "There ain't a prospector with half a mind left who'd go inside a mine after talk of haunts and apparitions!"

"Sorry, Dooley. I promise." She put her hand on his arm comfortingly. "I didn’t know you were so superstitious.”

“Not superstition,” he said. “Fact.”

She glanced at Max who shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “No more talk of ghosts

Later, after journeying out of the gully, climbing part way up the mountain, and scrutinizing the landscape for hours, no one had spotted anything that could definitely be called the old man's tear. Several times during the morning, members of the party called out rock and tree formations that might, with a stretch of the imagination, be the tear they were looking for. However, when no other member confirmed the sighting as being
it,
the search continued.

In the early afternoon a frustrated silence settled over the travelers. No one said that locating the old man's tear was becoming hopeless, but an overall gloom indicated that everyone thought it. Max suggested that they stop and have something to eat. He chose a patch of level ground protected by a narrow rocky ledge jutting out of the mountain side. While the food was unpacked, he walked back the way they'd come, returning a few minutes later.

Ross accepted the bread and cheese Ramona gave him, but refused to sit. He paced in a circle, biting off bits of food and chewing furiously, as if his meal were the focus of his anger. He finally exploded. "This is a damn fine thing! Five hours and not a sign of any old man crying over anything. So help me, Dooley if you've led us on a merry chase, you'll be the one shedding tears around here.”

Dooley raised a threatening fist in the air and aimed it at Ross. "I'll give every bit as good as I get, you mule-headed city slicker. Don't try to buffalo me with your hot air..."

"Stop it, both of you,” Elizabeth said. “Squabbling won't help anything."

Ramona reached for Ross's hand. "She's right, honey. Come sit down next to me and cool off. Who knows? We might just find that little tear around the next boulder."

"I wouldn't count on it," Max said, studying the ledge over their heads.

Ross squatted reluctantly next to Ramona. "And why the hell not?" he said, redirecting his anger at Max.

"Because if my hunch is correct, we're sitting smack in the middle of the old man's tear right now."

"Oh, right, Cassidy. After searching this mountain for five hours, we just happened to pick the very spot we've been looking for to have lunch? Not bloody likely. Besides, the last time I looked, tears were wet. There's nothing around here but dry, solid rock."

Undaunted, Max looked at Dooley. "Tell me, Dooley. When did Clyde Faraday come up with his list of markers? What month?"

"It was May as I recall. The first of May."

"Isn't it likely that snow was still melting off the highest peaks and running down the mountains at that time of the year?"

"Not just likely, boy. That's the way it is up here. Some of the worst avalanches happen in the spring when the snow is unsettled. A good run-off can cause all sorts of mischief."

"Then Clyde might have seen some of this run-off when he thought up the old man’s tear."