"If we uncover any of the gold yet tonight, we will," Luke stated. "Otherwise, we'll start work again in the morning."

Night's gathering darkness had thickened the valley's shadows when Luke and Griff finally approached camp aboard the ATV. Like the others, Angie stood in silent expectation, but one look at their somber and weary expressions revealed that further digging, had been, as yet unsuccessful.

"We'll try again in the morning," Luke said in a voice that indicated he continued to regard the search as futile.

Angie summed up the mood of herself and the others. "We're close," she said with conviction. "I know we are."

"If you say so." Luke's dry skepticism silenced the others.

With tension and fatigue pulling at their bodies and dreams of gold filling their thoughts, little time was spent talking during the evening meal. Afterwards, they turned in early, eager for night to end and morning to come.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

The sun had climbed above the eastern horizon over an hour ago, but its rays had yet to shine on the canyon's high wall. Within its shadows, the air retained an invigorating crispness that sharpened all the senses.

The smell of freshly turned earth rose from the dirt pile next to the hole and mixed with the fainter scents of coffee and pine resin in the air. Using the extra shovel, Angie pushed more of the dirt away from the side of the ever-deepening hole, then stood back.

For a moment, the rhythmic chunk, scrape, and thud of the shovel, as it bit into the ground, scooped up dirt, and dumped it onto the pile, dominated the morning stillness. Then Tobe paused and wiped the sweat from his upper lip on his shirtsleeve.

"How much deeper do you think we need to go?" he asked when Luke stepped into the hole to relieve him.

"Another foot probably," Luke replied, then glanced at Angie, seeking her opinion.

"I can't imagine they would have buried it any deeper than four feet," she agreed. "I think it would have taken too much time. Time that would have been better spent covering up the fact the area had been disturbed at all."

Stepping on the shovel, Luke drove it into the ground. The instant Angie heard the distinctive clink of the blade striking something hard, her heart skipped a beat. But it turned out to be another large rock, one of a score they'd encountered.

Minutes later Griff drove up on the ATV, hauling a thermos of coffee and a big jug of drinking water from camp. He set them both on a flat rock that had broken off from the cliff long ago.

"How's it goin'?" He hurried to the hole.

"Nothing yet." Luke tossed another shovelful of dirt onto the pile.

The digging continued.

At a depth of four feet, there was still no sign of the gold. Keenly disappointed, Tobe turned searching eyes on Angie. "I thought you said it would be here."

"I thought it would be." Clearly she'd been wrong. "Maybe it's buried farther out from the base."

The excavation was expanded to cover another three feet in length. The sun rose higher as they worked. Still nothing. Next they chopped away at the right side, widening the hole.

The sun was at its zenith when they broke for lunch, still with nothing to show for their labor. For the most part they ate in silence, communicating in grunts and grumbles, the underlying mood turning cranky and irritable.

When work resumed, they attacked the left side, and the sun crossed to the western half of the sky. Muscles began to feel the strain from all the digging.

More underlayers were exposed, still without revealing any glint of gold. Weariness and frustration worked on nerves that were already taut, fraying tempers and dashing hopes.

Less than a foot from the desired depth, they hit a layer of large rock chunks. Straightening, Luke stepped back to survey the area yet to be excavated.

"We're wasting our time digging out this section," he concluded. "The gold's not going to be here."

"You don't know that," Griff snapped angrily and scrambled into the rectangular hole that now measured six feet by nine. "Those outlaws coulda dumped those rocks on top of the gold just to make some fool like you think that way. Now, gimme that shovel and get out of the way."

"Have at it." Luke held out the shovel.

Griff jerked it from his grasp, then began an assault on the rock layer, channeling his anger and frustration into furious action. Tobe jumped in to help, using his hands to pry out the rock chunks near the surface.

Luke climbed out of the shallow pit and paused next to Angie. She stood near the edge, watching Griff's feverish efforts, a small worry line running across her forehead. Luke tugged off his dirty gloves and absently pressed a hand to the small of his back, arching spine and shoulders to stretch cramping muscles.

"It doesn't look good," he told her quietly.

"I know," she murmured, the line deepening with confusion. "I don't understand either. It has to be buried somewhere in this area. Maybe we have to dig deeper."

"Maybe." But he still doubted they would find anything.

Moving away, he headed for the water jug on the rock, then hesitated, as he spotted Saddlebags sitting in the shade of some brush, watching the diggers with interest, bony arms resting on upraised knees.

His bright-black eyes encountered Luke's gaze, and he cackled with a kind of malicious glee. "Didn't I tell ya? It ain't there. It surely ain't," he declared and cackled again.

Incensed by the taunting sound, Griff reacted with a snarling one of his own. "Why? Because some tottering old coot couldn't find it when he looked?"

Stung by the insult, Saddlebags scrambled to his feet. "I wasn't old when I first looked!" he shouted, both hands gripping the rifle. "Ya can dig all the way t' China an' ya still ain't gonna find it anywheres along here."

"That's a lie." Griff renewed his attack with the shovel, muttering under his breath, "It's here. It has to be here."

"Lyin', am I?" Outraged, Saddlebags scuttled closer to the hole. "You ain't dug up a ounce of soil that ain't been touched by my sweat or the water from my blisters." He bent in a crouch, hands on his knees, legs bowed. "Ya hear? Sweat an' blisters, that's what you'll find with all your diggin'."

"Shut up," Griff growled out of a corner of his mouth.

"Sweat an' blisters. Sweat an' blisters." Saddlebags chanted the taunting phrase over and over. "Sweat an' blisters. Sweat an' blisters."

Griff spun around, gripping the shovel like a weapon. "I ain't gonna tell you again-shut up!!"

Breaking off the chant, Saddlebags gave him a mean-eyed glare. "Why should I? I already dug up the ground under this eagle rock three times. I even dug deeper'n you are. An' I dug all the way back to where he's a-standin' too," he declared, thrusting a skeletal finger in Luke's direction. "Afore I was through, I dug from one end o' this wall t' the other. An' there weren't no gold bars nowhere!"

Angie stared at him with a mixture of shock and dismay, her heart sinking. As much as she didn't want to, she believed him. She believed every word he said. The gold wasn't here.

She turned away, trying to understand how that could be. The letter, the coded message, the second key...

Behind her, Griff exploded out of the pit with a roar of rage. Saddlebags fired his rifle, the deafening report of it stopping Griff in his tracks as a bullet ricocheted off the cliff face, unleashing a shower of splintered rock. Dulcie screamed once and covered both ears with her hands while Angie swung back to the two men in shock. Saddlebags had the rifle pointed directly at a rapidly paling Griff who stood frozen in place, the upraised shovel still held over his head.

"You take one more step an' I'll put the next one in yore belly," Saddlebags warned, pumping another bullet into the chamber, the ominous sound adding threat to his words. "Now, put that shovel down nice an' easy."

Griff slowly lowered the shovel, all the while struggling to hold onto his anger and disguise his fear. "By God, I oughta have you arrested for this," he sputtered.

"Fer what?" Saddlebags challenged. "Fer defending m'self when you was gonna clobber me in the head with that shovel?"

"I still oughta," Griff blustered, tightening his grip on the tool.

"That's enough. Both of you." Luke moved in and jerked the shovel from Griff's grasp, tossed it back in the hole, then stepped between Griff and Saddlebags. "Point that rifle in a different direction before somebody gets hurt."

"Wouldn't nobody get hurt that didn't have it comin'," the old man retorted with a quick and pointed glare at Griff before he let the rifle muzzle sink toward the ground.

"Why don't you just shut up?" Griff complained. "I'm tired of hearin' your mouth. I liked it a lot better when we hardly saw you an' rarely ever heard a peep out of ya when we did. Now you've turned into a damned ole windbag."

"Callin' me a windbag, are ya now?" Saddlebags bristled at the insult.

"I'll call you a lot worse if you stick around here. So, go on! Get out!" Griff gestured in emphasis. "Nobody wants to listen to your pack of lies."

"Lies, is that what you call 'em?" Saddlebags curled a lip back in a taunting grin. "I'm tellin' ya, I already dug all around here an' never found nothin'. But don't take my word fer it. Ask him." He poked the rifle in Luke's direction. "Or ask old One-Arm Fargo Young. Twixt the two a them, they's seen all the places I dug."

Looking on, Angie saw doubt flicker in Griff's expression for the first time. As if against his will, his glance slid to Luke to see what he would say. But Luke didn't respond directly to Saddlebags's claim.

"You've had your say, Saddlebags," was Luke's smooth reply. "And rubbed more than enough salt in. Be satisfied with that, and move on."

For a moment, Saddlebags mulled on his words as if he were of two minds whether to stay or go. Coming to a decision, he cast a glance at Griff. "Sweat an' blisters-that's all yore gonna find here." Before Griff could snap a response, the old man turned and walked off, chortling under his breath.

The instant Saddlebags was out of sight, Dulcie launched herself at her brother and hugged both arms around his legs. "Hey, what's this?" Tobe looked down, startled and confused by her action.

"He scared me," Dulcie replied in a thin and wavering voice that tugged at Angie's heart.

"That old bag of wind?" Tobe reached down to extricate himself from encircling arms, then changed his mind and crouched down. "You don't need to be scared of him. He's gone."

"But he might come back."

That possibility clearly hadn't occurred to Tobe. Recovering, he assured her, "If he does, then we'll just chase him off. You don't have to be scared of that old guy, Dulcie. I wouldn't let anything happen to you."

"Hey!" Fargo's shouted call distracted the group. As one, they all turned toward the old cowboy as he approached the cliff face at a laboring trot, a rifle in one hand and the stump of his arm clutching a first-aid kit to his chest. "What's the trouble?" He came to a puffing stop. "I thought I heard a gunshot."

"You did," Luke confirmed, then explained briefly about the confrontation with Saddlebags Smith.

When he finished, Fargo nodded and murmured absently, "And here I thought somebody mighta gotten snake bit, and it was only ole Saddlebags."

"Only?" Griff challenged the dismissive word. "That old man's a menace and should be locked up. If you don't have Beauchamp swear out a warrant for him, Luke, I will."

Luke shrugged. "That's your choice."

"You're damned right it is," Griff snapped in reply.

Ignoring him, Fargo darted a curious glance toward the large hole. "Find anything yet?"

"Nope," Luke replied. "And according to Saddlebags, we won't. He claims he's already dug up this whole area."

"He said you'd remember," Tobe spoke up, joining them and drawing Dulcie with him.

With a pondering frown, Fargo searched his memory. "When I first came to work at the Ten Bar I used to keep track of every place where I'd seen signs of him diggin', but there got to be so many o' them . . . I do recall he did some diggin' in this canyon, but I couldn't say if it was exactly right here or not. It coulda been though," he concluded with a sigh of grim resignation.

"I think it's a safe bet that it was right here," Luke inserted. "And if he didn't find any gold, we won't either." He paused and shot a glance at Angie. "Don't you agree?"

She was slow to answer, gripped by a kind of deadness inside. She remembered too clearly that split second of horror when she thought Saddlebags was going to shoot Griff. Even though nothing happened, she felt responsible. Inside, she knew the confrontation would never have occurred if she hadn't been so determined to find the gold. Her decision had precipitated all of this.

Glancing at the mound of rock and soil piled next to the hole, Angie knew she had no more heart for the search. "It would be pointless to keep looking."

"In that case, we might as well start filling it in," Luke stated.

"Like hell you are," Griff retorted, jumped back into the shallow pit, picked up the shovel and started digging again.

"Give it up, Griff," Luke told him, grimness and impatience mixing in his voice.

"Nope." Griff jammed his foot onto the shovel, driving the point of the blade deep into the soil. "You can quit if you want, but I'm not leavin' here without that gold."

"If there was any gold here, Saddlebags would have found it years ago. Face it, Griff," Luke challenged.

For an instant, Griff was motionless. Then he bent to scoop up the next load of dirt and stone, and throw it from the hole.

"You can believe that if you want to." He glared at Luke. "But not me."

There was no reasoning with him. They all saw it. With a despairing shake of his head, Luke turned from the man and glanced at Fargo. "Is there any coffee left from lunch?"

Fargo drew his head back, mildly offended by the question. "I never let a pot stay empty."

"Then let's go get some." He included Angie with a glance in her direction, then struck out for camp, pausing long enough to relieve Fargo of the first-aid kit.

Angie fell in step with him while Fargo trailed behind still toting the rifle. Only Tobe hesitated, torn between going with them and staying with Griff in case the gold was found. Dulcie settled the issue with a tug of his hand toward camp. Reluctantly he walked away from the canyon wall and the crude shape of an eagle etched on its face.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Back at camp, conversation was minimal, which suited Angie. Preoccupied with her own thoughts, she didn't feel like talking. She took the coffee cup Luke poured for her and found a place to sit apart from the others.

The fire had burned down to a bed of hot-glowing embers with an odd flame or two licking at the chunks of half-burned wood around the edges. She stared into the coals, her head swirling with regret, blame, and dejection.

She was slow to notice Luke when he crouched beside her and ran a probing glance over her expression. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." It was an automatic response, and not entirely truthful.

Her glance traveled to Fargo, puttering listlessly with some camp gear, then on to Dulcie, still casting fearful glances toward the thick brush while not budging an inch from her brother's side, and finally to Tobe, noting the lost, dispirited look in his eyes and the shadow of a day's fuzz on his cheeks. The latter was a poignant reminder of how eager they had all been when morning dawned, certain they were on the verge of finding the gold-too eager to waste precious time by shaving. Even Luke sported the stubble of a beard, Angie noted. And she had been just as guilty, she realized with a sigh and swept off her cap to run combing fingers through the snarls in her hair, snarls that she hadn't taken the time to brush out.