“And you think they’re cutting down my trees.”
I raise an eyebrow at my trees, but I let it go.
“No, I think they’ve been dead for almost two hundred years and I suspect ghosts aren’t very adept with chainsaws,” I say. “I think someone’s looking for the Harte brothers’ gold.”
Another long pause.
And then: “I thought that was just a myth.”
“It probably is,” I say. “The simplest explanation is usually correct, you know? Either two brothers lugged a chest filled with pieces of eight a few hundred miles through the wilderness while being chased by lawmen, buried it, and then after doing all that work, drew someone at a saloon a map straight to it, or Obadiah Harte was a drunk asshole who had nothing left to lose and thought it would be funny to send people on a wild goose chase for treasure.”
“But the gold doesn’t have to be real for people to be looking for it,” Levi says.
I point a finger-gun at him.
“Exactly,” I say.
Levi pushes himself off the desk, comes to me, and sits down, his long legs stretching in front of him. His shoulder brushes mine as he does and I hold my breath for a beat, trying not to notice that it happened.
Kid sister, I think. He just wanted your dirty mug. Kid sister.
“You know the story, right?” I ask, pulling his computer onto my lap, tugging the ethernet cable along with it.
Yes, I said ethernet cable. He has to plug his laptop in to get on the internet. Frankly, I’m astonished that it’s not dialup, though it certainly isn’t fast.
“They were bank robbers?” he asks.
“They were highwaymen who held up people traveling along the Wilderness Road toward the Cumberland Gap,” I say. “Mostly families who wanted to move out west, so they had everything they owned with them, and the Harte brothers would take anything they could carry. Money, jewelry, peoples’ good clothes. And they seemed to have an affinity for shooting anyone who even thought about standing up to them.”
“I see,” Levi says.
“So, in 1825, people have had it and a federal marshal named William Gunn makes it his life’s work to track these two down. They’ve got an advantage because they’re already familiar with the area, and because believe it or not they’ve got a network of people willing to help them, but after a couple of years he’s got them on the run, and they head north through the mountains, probably figuring that’s their best chance of staying hidden.”
“Was it?” Levi asks.
“It worked for a while, but eventually they had to head into a town for supplies,” I say.
“This sounds familiar,” he says. “One of them died, right?”
“Yup. They got into a shootout with Gunn and his men. Phineas was shot and died of infection a few days later, but Obadiah got away and rode back into the forest, where Gunn lost track of him again.”
I click through the open tabs on Levi’s laptop until I find the right one.
“Until two weeks later, when a dirty, skinny man walks into a roadhouse between here and Oakton, across the mountains, downs a bunch of whiskey, and starts shouting that his name is Obadiah Harte and may God strike him down if he’s lying. He ends up telling a long story about being on the run and burying the gold somewhere in the forest, and he’s so drunk by this point that he draws a map and gives his rapt audience directions.”
I turn the computer screen toward Levi. On it is the alleged map, drawn crudely in blotchy ink on a piece of fabric, frayed at the edges.
As maps go, it’s godawful: some pointy lines that are probably mountains, a shaky line, some scribbles, and a big black dot that might be the treasure or that might be a random ink stain.
“A few hours later, he stumbles back out and no one ever sees him again,” I finish.
“He probably died,” Levi offers, leaning in to look at the image on the screen, his chest brushing against my shoulder.
Kid sister. Kid sister. Kid sister.
“This was around 1830, so I’m fairly certain he died at some point,” I say.
Levi gives me an amused sideways glance.
“And yet you keep calling me a wiseass,” he says.
“He probably died of exposure somewhere in the wilderness,” I say, biting back a smile. “Phineas was buried in a pauper’s grave in the graveyard behind First Baptist. Every so often someone wants to dig him up for one reason or another, but it’s never gone through.”
“What earthly reason do they give for wanting to dig him up?”
“Mostly to confirm family lore about one of them being someone’s great-great-great granddad or great uncle or something like that,” I say. “Apparently people like to think that their ancestors were notorious murderers.”
“They had kids?”
“They were known to visit ladies of the night.”