“Some wine?” Burleson asked, fetching a bottle out of the basket and drawing the cork. He poured it into tin cups and offered them around. “Good Napa Valley cab. Might as well take advantage of the bounty of our great state. No roughing it in my camp.”

The dinner was everything Nora could have asked for, and more: the steaks perfectly grilled, the potatoes crisp, the salad just right—and key lime pie for dessert. Unexpectedly, Jack Peel led them all in a blessing before dinner, which seemed oddly appropriate in the vast wilderness setting. When the dishes were done, Maggie pulled a guitar from among the gear and sang “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and “Lovesick Blues” by the crackling fire, her surprisingly pure contralto rising into a vast black sky filled with stars. She finished up the mini-performance with an atmospheric rendition of “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

“Plenty of ghost riders in the sky around here,” she said, lowering her guitar. “I grew up in Truckee, and I could tell you some stories.”

“You implied as much back at the ranch,” Adelsky said eagerly, leaning toward the fire. “So what are you waiting for? Put your money where your mouth is.”

“You pint-sized little varmint,” Maggie said amiably. “Okay, you asked for it. Ever heard the story of the ghost of Samantha Carville?”

Peel rose abruptly and disappeared in the darkness, heading for his tent.

“What’s with him?” asked Maggie, turning to Burleson.

The man shrugged. “Damn good wrangler, but he’s not much for conversation.”

“Go on,” said Clive. “What’s a campfire without a ghost story?”

“Well,” said Maggie, her voice growing hushed, “in my hometown, the old-timers still tell stories of what really went on out here. Like Samantha Carville. She died of starvation up at the Lost Camp, aged only six.”

Clive nodded. “There was a family by that name in the party.”

“They buried her body in the snow. And there Samantha stayed. For a while, anyway. As the starvation time began, two men snuck out one night, dug up her body, chopped off part of her leg, and ate it.”

“There’s nothing about this in the historical record,” Clive said. “It’s hard to believe they would have started with a child.”

“You hush!” Maggie scolded him. “You’ll ruin a good story.” She turned back to Adelsky. “Those two men were bad ’uns, but after starting in on her leg, even they couldn’t finish. They threw away the bone and covered Samantha’s body back up again.”

She paused, her voice deepening.

“And so they say, even today, that on a moonless night, deep in the forest, you can still hear her wandering around, looking for her leg bone. You can’t mistake the sound—a kind of shuffling, knocking, like a one-legged person hobbling on a stick.” And in a sudden, chilling display of mimicry, Maggie put her hands to her mouth as if preparing to yodel, and made a peculiar hollow sound: Ssshhhhhh-KNOCK. Ssshhhhhh-KNOCK.

Nora felt her skin crawl.

Maggie’s voice trailed off, and there was a moment of silence as everyone seemed to be listening in the dark. Then Adelsky began to laugh.

“Wow! Now, that’s a ghost story! We’ll all be lying awake tonight, listening for little Samantha knocking about the trees, searching for her leg.” Huffing and blowing, Adelsky tried to imitate the sound but failed. Then he laughed again, only this time without quite the same gusto as before.

14

May 5

THE FOLLOWING NOON, resting in the shade on a flat rock by Hackberry Creek, Nora pulled from her pack the lunch Maggie had made for her. Clive sat down beside her with his own lunch packet. They had made good progress that morning scouting up the creek, and were almost ready to begin a search for the actual Lost Camp.

“There’s something I’ve been worrying about,” Nora said.

“Let me guess. The gold again.” Clive unwrapped the tinfoil to find a BLT sandwich.

“When we find it, it’s going to be really awkward explaining that we were looking for it all along.”

“Just like it was awkward for me, deciding when to explain it to you.”

“Maybe we should tell them now. They might be upset at being kept in the dark.”

“We don’t know anything about Burleson’s gang. I mean, look at Peel—the guy is so silent. Practically the only thing I’ve heard him say was that prayer last night. Even a normal person might do something really stupid for twenty million dollars.”

“I’m sure Peel’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with having faith.”

“Agreed. But if they learn about the gold before we actually find it, we might have a mutiny on our hands. And what if word leaks beyond the group? This whole area will be crawling with yahoos carrying metal detectors.”

Nora shook her head. “I don’t like keeping secrets.”

“So you’ve said. But we have to keep this secret. When the time comes to explain—with the gold locked safely in the strongbox—then we’ll do so.”

They ate in silence for a while, and then Nora asked: “Weren’t you ever tempted to find the gold and keep it for yourself?”

Clive laughed. “Honestly? Yes. You can’t help but think how that kind of money would change your life. But then I considered all the complications. How do you turn that much gold into cash? How would you pay taxes on it? If you try to sell the coins, you’d flood the market and dealers would know immediately some treasure trove had been found. Even if you were able to sell them, you’d still be faced with the crazy task of laundering twenty million dollars.” He shook his head.

“I can see you really did think about it.”

He laughed again. “It’s only human nature.”

They finished their sandwiches. Clive took a Trimble GPS out of his day pack and checked it against a photocopy of Tamzene’s map. “Here are the clues,” he said. “It seems Tamzene drew one creek on the right when there are actually three. But the camp was definitely down one of those smaller creeks. She also mentioned a couple of landmarks. Not far up from the creek’s mouth was a place where the canyon seems to have narrowed. She wrote: the Carville party’s wagon scraped the wall of a rocky defile and lost a running board. Beyond that lay the meadow where the third group camped. After Boardman later staggered into Tamzene’s camp, she wrote: Mr. Boardman stated in his fever that the only true marker to that dreadful place was the rocky profile of an old woman, visible high on a bluff, as distinct as the famous Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire.”

“That’s the key clue,” said Nora. “Let’s go find the old woman.”

They finished lunch and hiked up Hackberry Creek. They passed a couple of canyons to the left of the stream, which they ignored: their destination was to the right. At last, Clive nodded toward a gap in the rocks, almost hidden by trees. “According to my GPS, that’s the mouth of the first creek—Sugarpine.”

“Shall we check it out?”

“What if we go up it two miles, looking for the ‘rocky defile,’ and then if we don’t find it move on to Poker Creek and, if necessary, Dollar Fork?”