Texas Tall (The Tylers of Texas 3)

By the time they reached the petroglyph canyon, they were both hungry. They tethered the horses near the canyon mouth, where the animals could graze and drink from the spring.

Then they spread a cloth on the sand at the foot of the decorated cliff and feasted on Bernice’s homemade bacon sandwiches, topped off with oatmeal cookies and canned root beer.

“Jasper says we won’t find any treasure because it’s just a story,” Erin said. “But what if it’s really there? Do you think it might be?”

“My grandfather never found it,” Lauren said. “But what do you think?”

Erin nibbled her oatmeal cookie. “Sky always tells me the best way to handle a horse is to think like the horse. Maybe if we want to find the Spanish gold, we should think like the Spaniards. You know, pretend we’re trapped in the canyon and the Comanches are closing in, and we have to hide our treasure fast.”

“That’s a very clever idea,” Lauren said. “What do you say we clean up our picnic and try it? You’re in charge.”

They packed the remains of their lunch, put on work gloves, and gathered up the tools they’d brought. Erin led the way up the box canyon’s narrow, steep entrance to the small clearing on higher, more level ground.

Putting down their tools, they surveyed the spot. On the left, a wall of broken rock rose fifty feet above their heads. Fallen boulders and scree lay thick along its base. Willows, on their right, overhung the spring that trickled down into the lower canyon; behind the spring a high bank of crumbling earth sloped upward, then crested and dipped toward pastureland now owned by the syndicate that had bought out the Prescott Ranch.

The ground under their feet was hard-packed sand and gravel, dotted with tussocks of weedy grass. Almost thirty years had passed since Ferg Prescott had dug for buried treasure here and left empty-handed. The canyon looked as if it hadn’t been touched since.

Glancing around her, Lauren experienced a strange unease. She’d never known herself to have psychic gifts, but instinct whispered that something dark had happened here—something evil, best left alone.

Erin, however, was all grins and excitement. Asking her to leave, based on a whim of imagination, would be cruel, Lauren decided. For now, she would play along. But she’d keep an eye out for the first sign of trouble.

Erin’s gaze traveled up the crumbling cliff. “This is cool!” she exclaimed. “If there’s treasure here, maybe the two of us together will be smart enough to find it! Now let’s think. We’re Spaniards, we’ve got a chest full of treasure, and the Comanches are coming after us. What do we do?”

“We need to get away.” Lauren joined in the game. “But gold is heavy and hard to carry. We’ll have a better chance of escape if we hide it now and come back for it later.”

“Right.” Erin glanced around. “So what do we do with it?”

“We could bury it,” Lauren suggested.

Erin thought a moment, then shook her head. “We’re in a hurry. Digging a hole in hard ground takes time. And we might not even have a shovel. Besides, we’d have to camouflage the hole when we were finished. That would take time, too. What else could we do?”

“Drop it into the spring?”

“Too easy to see. And if the treasure’s in a wooden chest or a leather bag of some kind, the water could ruin it and scatter the gold. What else?”

“Let’s look around.” Lauren was enjoying the harmless fun. Maybe the unease she’d felt earlier had been nothing more than her imagination. “If the Spaniards were here at all, it would’ve been two or three hundred years ago, maybe even longer. Any hiding place would have changed on the surface.”

“Maybe.” Erin made a slow visual circle of the clearing, muttering half to herself. “We’re on the run. We have to hide the treasure someplace fast, someplace safe and dry, where nobody will see it.”

A curious raven launched itself from the cliff top, circled, and glided down to perch on a nearby boulder. Unafraid, it studied the visitors with intelligent black eyes. Erin froze, staring at it. “The rocks,” she said. “We’d hide the treasure in the rocks. It’s the only place that makes sense.”

The idea made sense to Lauren, too. But over the years tons of rock would have broken loose and crashed down the cliff to shatter at the bottom. The layer of scree piled along the cliff base was at least five feet thick. If any treasure had been buried in the rocks, it would be buried deep.

“Can you imagine how much rock must’ve fallen down here since the time of the Spaniards?” Lauren asked. “You and I could never dig through it all. If there’s more loose rock up on that high wall, it could even be dangerous. Maybe we should just take Jasper at his word and go home.”

“Not yet.” As the raven flapped away, Erin stood her ground, gazing at the fallen scree. “I read this in a detective book once. When a lot of rocks fall by themselves, they usually land together—you can see it if you know what to look for. And when you look up, the rocks should match where they came from, and match each other. If not, that’s a sign the rocks have been moved. I’m looking for a place where the rocks have been moved.”

Lauren suppressed the urge to argue. She’d never seen this stubborn side of Erin before. The girl was definitely her father’s daughter. And she was so excited, so determined to find what she was looking for. As long as it made her happy, it wouldn’t hurt to play the game a little longer.

“There.” Erin pointed. “Right there. Look.”

Not far from the steep trail that led down into the petroglyph canyon, rocks were piled against the foot of the cliff. Lauren wouldn’t have noticed on her own, but the rocks did indeed look as if they’d been moved there. The way they were stacked wasn’t how they’d have landed if they’d fallen naturally. And not only did they not match each other, they didn’t match the cliff face above them, where they would have broken off.

Erin was beside herself. “There’s got to be something behind those rocks! Come on! Let’s get them out of the way!”

“Wait!” Lauren held her back. “Let me make sure it’s safe.” She scanned the cliff face where it rose above the rock pile. It looked solid enough. To make doubly sure, she flung a fist-sized rock at the cliff. The rock bounced off and clattered to the ground, but nothing else moved. “All right, we’ll try it,” she said, wishing they’d brought hard hats. “But if you hear something break loose, jump back fast.”

The sandstone rocks were heavy, but not massive. None of them would have been too large for a strong man to lift into place. Lauren and Erin, however, had to struggle. They started at the top of the pile, loosening the rocks and rolling them off to one side or the other. It was slow going, but Erin’s enthusiasm kept them at it.