Slocum nodded.

  “I don’t know if I can trust you at all. Why were you at Seamus’s claim? How did the cave-in happen?”

  “I didn’t cause it.”

  “Probably not. Seamus had warned me about going into the mine because of the rotted timbers. He feared that his digging would bring down the roof eventually, and it might have.”

  “I was with Seamus’s brother when he died. He wanted me to give Seamus a legacy.”

  “A legacy,” snorted Erin. She began poking through the stack of crates to find something for breakfast. There was no dearth of canned goods to pick from. “The man was a liar, a braggart and not to be trusted.”

  “He got Seamus involved in the robbery?”

  She looked at him sharply. “I may have said more to you than I intended.”

  “I have half a map I was to give to Seamus,” Slocum said. “It might show where the loot was hidden.”

  Erin heaved a soulful sigh, sat on a crate and put her face in her hands. She began sobbing.

  “I told him to have nothing to do with that worthless brother of his, but he wouldn’t listen.” She looked up. Her blue eyes brimmed with tears. “He has this weighing down his soul now that he is dead and gone. I can only hope St. Peter understands and lets him through the Pearly Gates rather than damning him for all eternity.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know the details, but Seamus, Michael and a dozen others hijacked a gold shipment in the middle of Geiger Pass. It was going to San Francisco and the greedy bankers there. They had extorted the gold from the mine owners. Phony use permits, rights of way—those banker fellows did not miss a single thing to charge for. Some contracts were for guaranteed future shipments. Oh, they collected a great, grand wagon train of gold.”

  “Wagon train?” Slocum perked up. He had been thinking in terms of a strongbox filled with gold dust. This was truly a prize worth seeking if Erin wasn’t exaggerating.

  “Ten wagonloads. So much they could not make off with it all in a hurry, so they hid it.”

  “Why’d they need a map?”

  “Do you think a banker will allow even a penny to be stolen from him? The robbers were tracked down and killed, some of them. But three families were involved and as one robber died, he passed along a segment of the map to someone else in his family. Someone who had not taken part in the robbery.”

  “But Seamus and his brother had taken part, so they knew where the gold was stashed. Why didn’t they go fetch it for themselves?”

  “Seamus stole horses for the gang but wasn’t actually there when the gold was stolen or hidden. Michael assured him of an equal share because he was there.”

  With the bankers so intent on killing the men responsible for the robbery, it made sense to let the bulk of the loot remain hidden until the heat died down. Unfortunately, it looked as if the Pinkertons or whatever detectives the bankers had set on the trail had killed off a goodly number of the participants. The families of the surviving robbers were intent on eliminating their partners and looked to have been successful with the Preston brothers. That reduced the contenders for the gold to two families of road agents.

  “I don’t want any part of such tainted gold,” Erin said.

  Slocum pulled the map from his pocket and held it up. She stared at it, then broke into tears again.

  “That sheet of paper killed Michael and Seamus. I want nothing to do with it. I only want what’s mine, by right.”

  “What’s that?” Slocum asked. He tucked the map back into his pocket.

  “The claim. I want Seamus’s claim. It was something he worked for, hard, and he got enough gold from the mine to make a living.”

  “Scavenging petered-out mines is hardly a living,” Slocum said.

  “It’s an honest living. It’s not like taking gold drenched in blood.”

  Slocum didn’t bother telling her that gold washed clean mighty easy, but his situation was still unusual. He had promised to deliver the map to Seamus and now couldn’t, unless he wanted to throw it into the man’s grave before covering him up. He ought to give it to Molly, if she was actually Seamus’s sister.

  “I’ll go back to Virginia City and register my claim. Nobody will contest it. Everyone thinks the mine has been picked clean.”

  “You intending to work it yourself?”

  “If I have to, for a while. I don’t know. But it’s mine by right. Seamus owes me that much.” Erin sniffed, wiped her eyes and went back to fixing breakfast for them. Slocum poked around and found rusty tools. Without a word, he left and went to locate the body of the man causing so much trouble.

  It took almost an hour to dig a grave deep enough, but Slocum finished, wrapped the body in a blanket from the cave and rolled Seamus Preston’s remains into the hole. By the time he had replaced the dirt, Erin came, holding a small cross she had made. Slocum let her say a few words, then they both went back to the cave in silence.

  Erin had eaten before going to the grave. Somehow, Slocum could not find an appetite.

  The hike back to Seamus Preston’s cabin took longer than Slocum anticipated. Snow blanketed the mountainside and turned the path slippery. By midday, the frozen slush had turned to slick mud. A little after noon they reached the vent from the mineshaft. For an instant only, Slocum considered sliding back down that chimney to the tunnel and retracing their steps. The idea of being trapped under so many tons of rock barely supported by rotting timbers kept him moving to the crest of the mountain.

  From there the cabin lay only two miles off. It was twilight when they found the dubious shelter of the ramshackle building.

  “We’d better stay here for the night,” Slocum said. “Looks like the sheriff took our horses with him when he left.”

  “Where’d he get off to?” wondered Erin. “Why not leave our horses?”

  “He didn’t know if we would return anytime soon,” Slocum said. He did not add, or if we would ever return. They would be lucky if Sheriff George didn’t sell their horses back in Virginia City for what he could get.

  “It’s a long walk into Virginia City,” said Erin.

  “You can stay here and I’ll fetch the horses,” Slocum said. It had been strained between them all the way from Seamus Preston’s grave. He thought Erin was feeling guilty for having slept with him when Seamus wasn’t even in his grave.

  “I have to see to transferring the deed into my name.” Erin sat on the cot and pursed her lips. “It might cost me a few dollars, but it will be worth every penny. With luck, I can find enough gold in the drifts to prove Seamus was right.”

  “Prove him right about what?”

  “Why, everyone said this was a good-for-nothing claim. I aim to prove them all wrong. And make a few dollars to live on while doing it.” Erin sat primly, hands folded in her lap. She spoke more to convince herself than Slocum about the rightness of her course. Slocum didn’t want to disturb her with picayune questions like why the land office would give her the deed since she was not married to Seamus.

  Erin hadn’t been married, but Molly might be his sister. If true, Molly inherited the mine. That would set Erin off. It also raised the question gnawing away at Slocum like a wolf with a deer haunch. What did he owe Michael Preston and his memory now that his brother was dead?

  “I looked around. The sheriff is likely to swing back this way before going to Virginia City,” he said. “He won’t leave us in the lurch.”

  “I don’t trust him. Seamus didn’t. No reason I should, either, although he is the only lawman within fifty miles.”

  “Seamus didn’t trust him because the sheriff would have arrested him if he had known about his part in the robbery.”

  “Stop it, John. Stop it now! I don’t want to hear any more about that awful robbery.” Erin clapped her hands to her ears and turned away. Her shoulders shook but she didn’t start crying again.

  Slocum knew better than to say a word. He slipped out of the cabin and went to the hole. He had meant what he had said about the sheriff and his posse returning. Slocum doubted they would be successful catching the owlhoots who had hurrahed Seamus and tried to get the map from him.

  Reaching into his pocket, Slocum pulled out the map and stared at it. A wild thought flashed through his mind. Could this formerly abandoned mine be where the road agents had stashed their ten wagonloads of gold? That would explain Seamus’s insistence on remaining at a played-out mine. He wasn’t the lily-white saint Erin thought him to be. He might even have played a larger role in the robbery than stealing horses for the gang’s getaway.

  Slocum turned the map fragment around and around, fitting it to the terrain. It matched exactly and meant nothing. He realized how the map could indicate just about any valley he had seen in the Sierras. There had to be more.

  He pulled out the half coin from under his shirt and turned it over in his fingers. It was the mirror half of the one dangling about Erin’s swanlike neck. The completed coin along with the map half might be enough to find the gold. He heard footsteps behind him and hastily tucked away both map and coin.

  “I wanted to apologize, John. Seamus shouldn’t have died like he did, and it spooked me.”

  “You’ve been under a considerable strain,” Slocum allowed. Erin stood beside him, staring down into the dark pit. The sun had finally dipped behind the mountain to the west, casting long shadows across the canyon.

  “That’s no excuse.” She reached up to play with the coin pendant.

  Slocum commented on it. She smiled almost shyly and drew it out from under her blouse to look at it.

  “Seamus gave it to me. He said our love was as pure as gold.”

  “There’s only half a coin.”

  “Two hearts beating as one.”

  “He had the matching half?” This surprised Slocum. Did the coin mean anything at all if Seamus had one, also?

  “I . . . I don’t know. I never thought to ask. I suppose he did.”

  Before Slocum could ask to examine the coin more closely, the rhythmic clop-clop-clop of approaching horses brought him around.

  “You were right about almost everything. Forgive me for not believing you,” Erin said.

  Sheriff George and three of his deputies rode into the camp. Slocum’s and Erin’s horses trailed behind, looking bored and tired at the same time.

  “Good to see you folks’re still in one piece. More’n I can say ’bout one of my posse. The damn outlaws got old Lead Bottom.”

  “Shot him clean outta the saddle,” piped up a deputy. “We had to bury Lead Bottom Freddy where he fell.”

  “Shut up, Lucas,” the sheriff said. “These good people don’t care none about that.” He cleared his throat and continued. “Did you find Preston?”

  “Somebody found him before us,” Slocum said. “They stabbed him to death and let him bleed all over the rocks.”

  “A shame. I liked Seamus. Well, I liked him a little,” Sheriff George said, choosing to tell the truth rather than sugarcoat it. “Looks like we drew a bum hand this time. The outlaws got clean away and Seamus got himself killed.”

  “We found something mighty strange, Sheriff,” Slocum went on. He told George about the cave filled with supplies and how it had been boarded over to keep anyone from poking about, should they spot something inside.

  “Now why would anybody go and cache food and guns like that?” Sheriff George rubbed his chin and looked from Erin to Slocum and back. “You know any miners in these hills who’d do that, ma’am?”

  “No, no one, Sheriff,” Erin said. “We never saw many miners or prospectors. The mountains around here are played out.”

  “But you and Seamus, you two stayed. That’s mighty queer, if you ask me.”

  “Then it’s a good thing no one asked you, Sheriff,” Slocum said sharply. “What the lady is asking you for, though, is some help.”

  “Done what I could to catch them rascals,” George said.

  “She needs to transfer the deed to this property from Seamus’s name to hers.”

  “Now we can’t go and do that,” the lawman said. “Women can’t own real property. That’s the law.”

  “Then can Mr. Slocum get the deed put into his name?” Erin looked expectantly at Slocum. He cursed himself for getting mixed up in this.

  “So you can stay on, but on his property?” The sheriff nodded slowly. “If there’s no complaints from anybody in town, don’t see why not. But you staying on, well now, that would be up to whatever rent Slocum would charge you, wouldn’t it?”

  Slocum held his temper. He wanted to punch the arrogant son of a bitch for the smirk and the innuendo.

  “Let’s get to the land office and see to the details,” Slocum said, grabbing the reins to his horse. He and Erin rode back to Virginia City side by side, and again they found precious little to say to one another.

  11

  “Ain’t no way I kin do a thing like that,” the clerk in the land office said. “We got rules. And that goes ’gainst jist ’bout all the rules in this here book.” He put his hand on a thick volume on the end of the counter. From the amount of dust on it Slocum guessed it didn’t get as much use as the clerk made out.

  “The man’s dead. I buried him with my own two hands.” Slocum put his hands on the counter and slowly tightened them into fists until the knuckles turned white. The clerk took a half step back and licked his lips.

  “Don’t get riled up, mister. I got the law on my side. You cain’t threaten me none. Bigger men’n you try all the time.”

  “Reach for that shotgun under the counter, and it’ll be the last thing you do on this green Earth.”

  “How’d you know I—” The clerk spun and stared. Slocum had seen the shotgun in a mirror on the clerk’s desk that he had been using to shave himself when Slocum had entered the office.

  “There’s no need for anyone to get hurt,” Slocum said, trying to sound reasonable. He was reaching the end of his rope. He wanted to settle the matter of Seamus Preston’s mine, transferring title to Erin, before he moved on. He snorted a little as that thought flitted through his head. As much as he liked the notion of leaving behind Virginia City, the gang trying to find the map and everything else in the boomtown, he knew he was going to stay.

  Why waste all that fine booty on a pack of howling wolves? He could be mighty rich for a long, long time if he dipped into that golden pond just a little.

  “Glad you see it my way. I got to be sure the next o’ kin gets the property. You ain’t claimin’ yer it, are you?”

  “There isn’t a next of kin, other than—” Slocum cut off his notion of naming Molly.

  “How’s that?”

  “Nobody’s come by saying they were related to Preston, have they?” Slocum asked.

  “Nope. And I cain’t transfer title to the land to this here woman, Erin Finnigan did you say?”

  “What happens to the claim if it doesn’t go to Preston’s next of kin?”

  “County seizes it for taxes, then sells it. Piece of fine property like that’d go for, say, five hunnerd dollars.”

  Slocum left the land office without another word. Such a princely sum was out of the question since Seamus had bought it for less than twenty dollars, but even that much was beyond Erin’s resources. If she didn’t get it for only a small transfer fee, she would have to abandon the property. Slocum didn’t count that as a bad thing. It was ridiculous to have such a fine-looking woman scrabbling through mountains of filthy tailings and clawing at worthless rock in a dangerous mine for a few specks of gold.

  Erin waited for him outside. Slocum hardly had the heart to tell her he couldn’t even get the title transferred into his name to give to her. She read his expression perfectly, saving him the trouble of thinking up the right words.

  “It’s not mine, is it? They wouldn’t give it to me, no matter that I shared bed and work with him.” Erin looked disconsolate. “What am I going to do?”

  “There’s another way. I met a woman who said she was Seamus’s sister. If a transfer can be made to me in her behalf, she’d sell out for a song and a dance.” Slocum didn’t add that Molly would probably sell the mine for stage fare to Carson City. She didn’t have any more money than Erin.

  “She would never do that,” Erin said, frowning. “She’d want a lot of money just because someone else wanted the property. That’s the way everyone is in these parts.”

  “I can add a bit to sweeten the pot,” Slocum said. He involuntarily touched his pocket where he kept the map. Swapping a worthless piece of paper for a worthless mine might be the only way everyone ended up happy.

  Everyone except John Slocum. He wanted some of the loot stolen in the robbery, if it was as grand a sum as Erin said. Ten wagonloads of gold was a powerful incentive for him to make certain Molly and Erin were willing to cut him in as a partner. Molly obviously knew of the map and Erin wished she didn’t.

  “I don’t know how to repay you, John. You don’t have to do any of this. From what you say, you didn’t even know Michael very well, much less Seamus.”

  “I’ll think of something,” he said. Erin recoiled and looked at him with wide eyes.

  “You don’t mean . . .” Erin was shocked as her imagination ran wild.

  “The pendant around your neck. The one Seamus gave you. It’s mighty attractive. That would be a decent payment if I can get you the title free and clear.”

  “It’s all Seamus ever gave me, except woe,” she said. Then she looked up into his green eyes and came to a decision. “I’ll never forget his love. What’s a gold coin mean?”

  Slocum almost asked her for it now but refrained.

  “I need to find Molly. I’m not sure she’s really Seamus and Michael’s sister, but if she can pass herself off good enough to convince the land office clerk, I’m not going to argue.”

  “It seems so dishonest.”

  “You worry too much. Think of this as a way of cutting corners. That’s your claim, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And the clerk’s meddling is keeping it from you.”

  “It is.” Erin sounded more resolute now.