Redtail
10 Another Generation
I ALWAYS FIGURED one day I’d grow up and have a family. You know. A boy to carry on the family name and a girl for me to dote on and spoil like a papa ought to spoil his daughter. Well, I got the daughter in another time and she turned out to be my great-grandmother. How fucked up is that?
You see, I met Laramie Wyoming Bell as a young man meeting a beautiful young woman, falling in love, and letting nature take its course. Kyle could have left Laramie and been happy with Kat if it hadn’t been for me interfering and getting him killed. I felt damned bad about that. I ruined that kid’s life. But I didn’t know Laramie was my great-great-grandmother. It didn’t feel like incest or anything. I just loved that woman. But I could never have felt that way about Kaylene. Hell, she was my daughter. Yes, I know she was my great-grandmother, but she was still my little girl. I loved her like a daughter. I just wished I’d been there to see her grow up. The feelings I had for her weren’t the same as the feelings I had for a great-grandmother. I got so confused.
In my dreams, I still made love to Laramie. For that matter, I made love to Kat, too. After Arthur died, she was alone with two kids and they were often with the Bells. I felt Kat and Laramie held each other together and they were both happy for my visits.
So how does that work? They were both my great-great-grandmothers. Was my mind just whipping me around to justify stuff that never happened? Do our dreams let us be with people we loved a hundred years ago, or are they just random firings of our synapses that give us a measure of wish-fulfillment? I didn’t get snatched out of my skin, but I continued to dream.
I got the shock of my life when Ashley and I had just managed to give Mary Beth an orgasm that was probably heard at her parents’ house half a mile away. I was still pulsing in her vagina and could hardly breathe.
“She was here!” Mary Beth gasped out. “She was here with me!”
“What are you talking about?” Ashley asked. “Who was here?”
“Laramie Wyoming Bell,” Mary Beth panted. “I swear she came as hard as I did. I felt her. It was like she was inside me, just repeating over and over, ‘I’m here. I love you.’ Cole, she was giving us her blessing. I felt it. I know she was here.”
That shocked the hell out of all three of us and we were crying and confused and trying to figure out what it meant. Laramie visited Mary Beth? And not me?
Revelation
I guess nothing is ever over. I was sitting in the office going over the books for the ranch. Our buyout of stock in March had been two cents above the guaranteed option. Beef prices were strong and Joe’s cattle were auctioned off with his estate. Turns out he’d borrowed against the assets of his brokerage clients and they were pissed. Geneive did her best to delay things, but there was too much pressure to settle. The land went cheaper than it deserved because of the quick sale demanded by the bank. I didn’t bid. I didn’t want any of the property he’d grabbed. We had enough back in our little homestead.
The extra guards were dismissed the middle of April, though two of my new ranch hands had extra responsibilities the others didn’t know about. One would be responsible for security for our herd when we drove them to the upper range in May. The other would be permanently on staff at the ranch, responsible for security at both homesteads. I wasn’t cutting our parents loose to be on their own. I owed too much to Angus, Lily, and Mom. Our drivers were the last to go when it was deemed that we were safe. That was after Phil’s investigator decided Joe had acted on his own to hire thugs and wasn’t into any major crime syndicate. We breathed a sigh of relief over that.
The inquest ruled Joe’s death an accident, even though it was obvious he didn’t have his headlights on. I guess it was an accident that he died instead of me. There wouldn’t have been any benefit to having him declared a murderer or attempted murderer. Dead is dead. I don’t hold with trying to punish a man’s memory. It wasn’t Geneive’s fault and she’d be the only one to suffer. He was stupid to use his very recognizable sports car to try to run me off the road. The F350 dually weighed more than twice the Corvette.
“Cole, we’d like you to run for sheriff in the special election,” Obert said. There was a delegation of ranchers from our side of the county standing on my front porch. “We know that whatever it was that happened this winter, you were at the heart of it. Not that any of us would say anything about it, but we just know. You could win this election hands-down.”
Shit. That would be just what I need. An interim sheriff had been appointed by the governor and a new sheriff would be chosen in a special off-year election in November. Like Joe had been. I really didn’t want anything to do with it.
“Obert, Jack, Josh, thank you all for expressing your faith in me. But guys, put on your Stetsons. Which one of you would give up your ranching to be a sheriff?” They all shook their heads. “This land, them steers, that’s what I love. I’m only twenty years old and I don’t want to hold the keys to a jail. I want to ride the range and love my wife. I’d like to finish college and that’s already been delayed at least a year. I appreciate what you’re saying about me, but I’d be a lousy sheriff.”
Ultimately, they agreed and wished me well. They all said if I changed my mind they’d support me, but they understood and said my dad would be proud of me.
The contest was heated with both sides pledging to clean house. I forget who won. It doesn’t matter.
The Gold Watch Cattle Company had taken a pretty severe loss on feed, subsidies, and hired security, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been if prices hadn’t sprung back. That was another thing I really didn’t care about. It was only a few million. When things settled down, we’d look for another way to use the billion dollars we had in reserve. I put the Gold Watch Trust report in the safe.
Ashley and Mary Beth came into the office, dressed in parkas and boots.
“Come on, Cole. You promised. It’s the first of May. The slopes on this side are clear. We’ve got the ATVs sitting by the back door all packed. Come on,” Ashley nagged, pushing at my arm playfully. I laughed.
“Are you sure you want to do this? When Joe went to his secret stash the cupboard was bare. Hell, for all I know, Kaylene used it all in the Great Depression. We don’t even have partial records.”
“But we’ll see where,” Mary Beth said. “We’ve been waiting all winter.”
“And you’re sure you want to stay out there tonight?” I asked. “You know it still gets close to freezing that high up at night.”
“We’ve got our love to keep us warm!” Ashley sang. Well, there was a reason that Ashley only mouthed the words to hymns in church. She sang that one line in at least three different keys. I kissed her rather than risk another bar.
“Okay. I’m trustin’ you two. I haven’t looked at any of the supplies you packed. If I freeze my fingers, I’m going to put them someplace warm.”
“Here. Wear your gloves.”
“Nobody loves me and my hands are cold,” I whined.
“God loves you and you can sit on your hands,” Ashley shot the standard response back at me. We went out the back and I took the ATV with the supply wagon while Ashley and Mary Beth took the two-seater. In a matter of minutes, we were running up the cattle trail, ostensibly to check the conditions of the upper range. I don’t think there was a ranch hand who didn’t know what was really going to happen when the three of us camped for the night.
What they didn’t know was that we were going treasure hunting. And it was going to be a challenge. The last time I was here, I was dead. I know we’d approached the narrow track below the ridge from the direction of Laramie’s old hut. That was where we planned to spend the night. We could make the distance on the ATVs that we couldn’t on horses. It was still slow going.
When we got to the old hut site on the west side, it was still pretty snowy but there was water in the thermal spring and we could have taken a bath if we were crazy. We could set up camp in the open on snow, go back over the ridge to our usual summer site, or head into the shelter of the woods. We opted for the woods and then cleared a pit for a small fire. It was hard to get stones dug out to line it, but with the help of the ATV, I hauled a dozen from the east side of the ridge. Our camp was beneath the old Mountain Douglas that had Laramie’s and Kyle’s initials carved in it. In a way, that made it feel like home. Once we had warmth and food, we crawled into the tent and piled on top of each other on the air mattress and our sleeping bags. The little tent was surprisingly warm the way we heated it.
“We both want you tonight out here in the wilderness, husband,” Ashley said. “I want to feel you moving inside me and filling me while our lovely Mary Beth holds us tightly. Then I want to hold you both as you light up our tent with your love.”
“What got you so poetic, tonight, lover?” I asked. “First you were singing—no, you don’t have to do it again—and now you’re talking like a romance novel. What classes are you taking this spring?”
“Cattle breeding. Just lie back and I’ll tell you all about it,” she said. Both her hands were on my chest, just like mine were on hers, so it must have been Mary Beth that was stroking my cowboy up to his full potential. I let go of Ash’s left tit to reach out and pull Mary Beth closer to us. She kissed me, then raised up and kissed Ashley.
“You ready for this big boy, sweetie?” she whispered.
“Honey, I’m so ready for it I’m leaking. Put it in me, MB.” Mary Beth stroked my cockhead through Ashley’s wet slit then held it steady for her to sink down on it. I noticed, she didn’t pull her hand away, but kept it between us and stroked my cock when Ashley rose and her clit on the down stroke. “Oh, I like this so much, loves. I am ready to burst.”
“Let the dam break, wife. I’m here to catch your flood and to flood you in return,” I said. I wasn’t so awful bad at romantic talk. I guess it was enough, anyway because Ashley started moaning and squealing and the way she clamped down on me had me spurting on the next stroke.
“I feel it!” Mary Beth said. “I feel it going into you, honey. You’re both so wet.” I think Mary Beth had a little come, too. Her other hand was down between her legs.
We just lay there and kissed and hugged while Ash and I caught our breath. It got a little chilly and we pulled the blankets over us. I held both girls as close as I could and counted my blessings.
“Cole, it’s nice to cuddle up to you in spoons, but my front-side is cold. Isn’t there a way you can warm up my front?” Mary Beth complained. By this time, she could already feel that my cowboy was reviving and was poking her in that very warm backside.
“Sure, honey. You want to roll over on top of me?”
“No. Then my back would get cold. I want to use you as a blanket.” Ashley was giggling against my back and pushing at me to help out “poor Mary Beth.” Mary Beth rolled toward me and I settled down on her, supporting most of my weight on my arms. It’s hard to get purchase on an air mattress, but I was working on it. Ashley was doing her best to help, having reached between us to grasp the cowboy and get him in position.
“I love you, Mary Beth. I would never let you get cold if I could help it.”
“Just start moving so you heat up the rest of the tent,” Ashley giggled.
“Is this what you want, honey?” I asked as I pressed forward.
Every time. Every time I press my hardness into the soft core of Mary Beth’s body, it’s like the first time. She consumes me, bit by bit, until I’m buried in her and all my senses focus on that pinpoint at the center of our being that holds us together. She was right in sync with me.
“Do you remember our first time, honey?” she asked. “I love all the ways we make love and all the combinations of the three of us. Don’t forget I love you, Ashley. I’m just so absorbed in our man right now. I like everything we do, but when you are on top of me like this and so deep in my puss, it’s always like the first time and I’m so happy.” We were building up. Mary Beth was panting as I plunged in and out of her with Ashley’s hand gently caressing my balls. “This is our first time, honey.”
“Is it, Mary Beth? Is it our first time?”
“Yes, Cole, my love. It’s the first time I ever made love to you knowing I was pregnant with our child.”
And then that damned hawk screamed.
Traveling: Grandma
“Baby?” I screamed. I love coming back in time to my family, but damn it! This wasn’t the most opportune time. Mary Beth just told me she was having our baby. Holy shit! I was going to be a daddy in uptime. For real, with me there to love and protect her and see her grow up to be a fine young woman. Don’t ask me how I knew my firstborn would be a girl. I just knew!
“Papa?”
“Kyle! You’re here.” The first voice was my little girl, my Kaylene who was struggling in bed. She cried out again. The second voice was Laramie, my beloved, hovering near Kaylene to help her through.
Through what? Please, don’t tell me you brought me back here for another death. Not my baby! I wrapped my spirit around the two women and was immersed in Kaylene’s pains. Not dying. Giving birth. I whispered to them, “I’m here. I love you.” For having no physical senses, the agony that burst through my awareness as Kaylene pushed her daughter through the narrow channel almost sent me back to my own time without the damned hawk.
“That’s it, baby,” Laramie soothed her daughter. “The head is out. Just push one more time and I’ll have my grandchild in my hands.” That push came. It was less agonizing than the last and I just kept soothing and comforting my daughter as if I was really there. I wanted to be holding her hand and wrapping her in my love, so that’s what I did.
“Papa’s here, baby. Papa’s here and I love you. You’re going to give us a beautiful granddaughter.”
“Papa,” Kaylene whispered. “My baby girl?”
“She’s here,” Laramie said proudly and laid the baby on Kaylene’s tummy.
“Oh, she’s perfect, Mama. I have a perfect little girl.”
“I heard you, Kyle,” Laramie said. “You knew it was a girl. I’m so glad you’re here to be with us. I dream of you every night and I listen for you every day, Kyle. Every day.”
I could feel a noisy car approaching the house. Car? What year was this? If this is my Grandma Mildred being born… God! I’ve been gone seventeen years.
“Oh Laramie, darling. I didn’t know it had been so long. I love you and I miss you and I didn’t know it had been so long. I love you like the day we met.” A door slammed and two men came through the house and opened the bedroom door.
“Kaylene, I got the doctor,” said the first. “Look at there! We’ve got a baby.”
“Robert, meet your daughter,” Kaylene said.
“Well, it looks like I wasn’t all that needed,” the other man said. “Ranch wives always seem to get things done on their own. Let’s just take a look.”
“Uhn!” Kaylene groaned.
“That’s just the placenta giving way and coming out, girl. You’ve seen enough cows give birth to know what’s happening.”
“Do I have to lick it and chew through the cord, Doc?”
“Well now you have to talk to your Mama about that. I don’t know how you Indians do it. I usually just tie a knot in the cord and cut it off.”
“That will do, Doctor,” Laramie said stiffly. “My mother and my husband were white as you are.”
“Now don’t get huffed, Miss Laramie. You know I was just kidding. Don’t matter to me what color a man is, just how well he lives. I’m sorry I never knew your husband.”
I wrapped my spirit around Laramie to soothe her and wondered how much racist crap she had to put up with in 1925. It pissed me off, but I kept that to myself as the doctor continued to clean things up and check the baby’s health. Robert kissed his wife and left to take the doctor back to town. I was impressed that Centennial even had a doctor, but I sensed that he was old and not really practicing much medicine anymore.
“Look at my baby, Mama. Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Well, she will be after we clean her up a little,” Laramie laughed.
“I never thought I’d have a baby, Mama. I’m thirty-five years old. And then Robert came along.”
“He means well,” Laramie said. I wasn’t sure she was that pleased about her son-in-law. “He just isn’t that dependable. The doctor would have been here in plenty of time if he hadn’t insisted on finishing the chores first. You know you’ll have to raise this little girl mostly yourself, baby.”
“Just like you raised me, Mama. I knew what I was getting into.”
“And what is the name of this little treasure? She’s trying to get her lips around your fat teat. Help her a little.”
“Ow! Oh, she’s gonna be a handful. I’ll name her Mildred after Robert’s mother. Write it in the Bible, Mama.”
“I’m ready to take a little walk right now, baby. We’ll clean the two of you up after you’ve rested and she’s had her fill. You have a glass of water here. You need anything else?”
“No Mama. You take Papa for a walk. I love you, Papa. Thank you for being here.”
Laramie left the room and I paused to hug my daughter and her daughter in my mind. “I love you, too, Grandma,” I said. Kaylene giggled a little. “I love you, little girl,” I repeated to Kaylene. She sighed.
I caught up with Laramie outside. She was walking toward the promontory where the graves were. I was thankful to see none had been added. She spread her skirts and sat next to my stone.
“The ranch has grown,” I whispered as I wrapped her in my arms.
“New barn. Second floor on the house so Kaylene could raise her family. Close to a thousand head on their way to the upper range for the summer. I come out here and talk to you all the time. I know you’re not there, but I keep hoping you’ll come back and talk to me again. Hold me in your arms. You wouldn’t want to kiss these old lady lips or suckle my saggy breasts anymore. I’m getting old.”
“Love, I still see you as young and beautiful as the day we first made love. Every day I long to kiss your lips and suckle your breast. Every day I miss you and would be here with you.”
She relaxed in my embrace, dreaming of when we were young. I gave her a feather caress across her lips and down her body as I passed her breasts and her stomach and ruffled the hairs around her cunt. She sighed.
“Are things all right here on the ranch?”
“Oh yes. We have a good life for two women and a scatter-brained man. And now a baby. Kaylene wanted this so badly. He sleeps in the house most nights, but runs home to his Mama on the weekend. I don’t think Mildred even knows she has a new granddaughter. I should go to town and tell her myself. She doesn’t approve of our Indian blood.”
“Is there a lot of that thinking?”
“They still pay good money for our cattle.”
“Do you have plenty of money?”
“Not as much as we once had, but we have the ranch and the house now. Even a truck that Robert drives around as if he owns it. I went to the new college and learned about investing. I’m buying some stocks as we can.”
“Laramie, next year, start taking all your money out of the bank, sell the stocks, and keep the money in a safe place. Don’t do it all at once and leave a little there so you look poorer. If you need more money, go up to the cave and take what you need. Don’t let any of the hands go with you or see where you go. Hard times are coming.”
“I’ll do what you say, Kyle, but I don’t know why. Tell me, in your place, are you happy? Do you have a wife and children waiting for the call of Redtail? What do they say about me? Do they know?”
“I have two wives, much as we would have been together with Kat if… if things had been different. One is pregnant with our first child and she swears you were with her when we were making love. We are happy and they both know about you and wish they could be here to love you, too.”
“Mary Beth,” Laramie whispered. “I heard you call her Mary Beth in my dream. I told her I loved her. You brought a good love to me, Kyle Redtail. Hold me and love me like you did before. I’m old now, but I still remember.”
I held Laramie in my mind and silently loved her. Loved her until she was at peace and knew she was loved.
I felt his presence before the call came. I had long enough to tell her again, “I’m here. I love you, Laramie.”
Opening the Box
“Laramie,” I called, just as I erupted in Mary Beth. Her climax was so close that she couldn’t stop it, even though I’d just called out the name of another woman. Ashley just rolled back in shock.
“You were there! I knew you were there. I could feel the tenderness and love. Oh, Cole, do you love me that much, too?” Mary Beth cried. “Do you love me so tenderly that I want to cry and curl up in your protective arms and never let go?”
“I do, Mary Beth. I love you that much and more. It was just like that first time we made love and that hawk came by. Mary Beth, everything I said and everything I felt goes for you and our unborn daughter and for you Ashley. I love all three of you from the bottom of my heart. Every night I fall asleep thinking I can’t love you any more than I do, and in the morning, I prove myself wrong. Now tell me about our baby, Mary Beth. I thought you were on the pill.”
“I told you years ago those things weren’t 100% effective. Even if they are 99.9% effective, we banged a thousand times without protection since Ashley joined us. I think it was the night Laramie came and blessed us. I’m sure she gave us this child. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ashley’s got a bun in the oven before the summer’s through.”
“And you knew about this, too, didn’t you?” I said turning to Ashley. “Are you okay with it, sugar?”
“Of course I’m okay. It’s why we wanted you up here on the mountain before she told you. I’m only disappointed that it wasn’t my pill that didn’t work. But I’m off them now. You get your seeds ready for planting.”
“You want a baby that much?”
“Oh, Cole, yes, I do.
“I love you two so much I’m gonna bust!”
“Cole, you said ‘our daughter’ a minute ago. Did you see something? Are we going to have a little girl?” Mary Beth asked. I had to stop and think about it. Yes, I’d said that. I wondered why.
“I don’t remember seeing anything about our baby,” I said carefully, “but it probably had to do with what I saw while I was gone.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw the birth of my granddaughter. That’s Kaylene’s little girl. Um… that’s my grandmother.”
“Only you, Cole. Only you could have your granddaughter be your grandmother.”
“Well, you know genetically I’m not her ancestor. Kyle Redtail Wardlaw was. But it still felt like I was her grandfather. Kaylene giggled when I called the baby ‘grandma.’”
We talked long into the night, huddled together with all our blankets on top of us but not a stitch of clothing between us. In the morning, we laid a new fire and made coffee and a range breakfast of sausage, beans, and eggs. We almost didn’t come out of the tent because we had to dress first, but once we were out, we got moving pretty quickly to stay warm.
“Any ideas where we start?” Ashley asked. “You’ve been here before.”
“Well, I think it’s over that way. But the last time I was here, I was dead and didn’t have physical senses. I was getting feelings. And it was more than a hundred years ago. Kyle started putting stuff here before that, but nothing actually looks like Kyle’s memories.”
We wandered in the general direction that I thought the cave was. It was rocky going. The drop into the next gully was sheer. We went down into it and then back up to the ridge. We weren’t getting anyplace.
“I’ve got an idea,” Ashley said as we got back to camp to eat some lunch.
“Shoot,” Mary Beth said.
“Blindfold him,” Ashley responded.
“For my execution? I’d rather not walk off the edge of that ravine. I know you’ll be a rich widow, but we ought to find the rest first.”
“I don’t intend to be any kind of a widow,” Ashley snapped. “You are going to keep fucking me until there’s a baby in my tum.”
“Do I have to stop then?” I mourned. She threw herself at me and I caught her up and held her in my arms.
“I love you, Cole. There’s been too much death and dying in your history. Let’s don’t be talking about that anymore. Mary Beth and I will guard you to keep you from falling, but you got to just think about what the path felt like when Laramie walked it that last time. Think about that and walk and we’ll get in your way if you are about to trip or fall. Do you trust us to do that, Cole?” Ashley was dead serious and even had moisture on her cheeks when I kissed them.
“I trust both of you, not only with my life, but with the lives of our children,” I said.
We finished up our lunch and they tied a blindfold around my head. They did a good job of it. I couldn’t see anything. They stood a couple feet away from me and I just stood there. I’d learned a lot of meditation techniques when I started traveling and discovered I could be awake for months at a time. The problem with most meditation is that the intent is to free the mind from the body. After Kyle’s death, when I traveled my mind was always completely free of my body. So I relied on memory. I’d been conscious after Kyle died. I just didn’t have any physical sensations. I let go of my body and just let my mind wander into the past where my memories of Laramie leading the mules away from the Douglas took me. I’m not sure when I started moving. Twice Mary Beth or Ashley touched me to keep me from running into a branch or a tree. That jerked me back for a second, but then I recaptured where I was and continued. The going was slow.
“Cole, stop!” Mary Beth’s voice cut into my awareness. I froze. She and Ashley were next to me in a second and they removed the blindfold. I was standing on a narrow ledge. A misstep would have taken me down fifty feet or more. “There’s no sense using the blindfold here,” she said. “There’s only one way to go.”
I agreed and we started along the ledge. It sloped downward slightly. I suppose a sure-footed mule could navigate this path, but there better be a wide spot to get him turned around. He couldn’t go backward all the way we came down. A well-trained mule can turn around in less than half the length of his body but this track didn’t allow that much. I was still in a bit of a daze, hanging on to the remnants of my memories. I even risked closing my eyes once or twice to feel around me.
We’d gone a slow and torturous quarter of a mile when I froze. This was it. If there was still any treasure left, this would be where it was found.
“Here,” I said. “It’s here in the cliff someplace.” We started parting the shrub and vine covering on the canyon wall, thrusting a long stick into the wall until the stick kept going. I almost lost my balance and fell forward. “We’re here.”
We looked for a way through the thicket without damaging anything, but eventually, I had to cut a narrow passage. The good part was at least this wouldn’t be the den of any kind of large animal. When we had a narrow space to get through, I poked a flashlight through and looked around. The little cave was dry and protected and there was no sign of animals larger than a fox. It seemed to have been deserted even by those. The flashlight didn’t penetrate far into the hole, so I pushed through and finally got a better look around. This was the cave. In the back around a bend were stacked wooden crates. It was amazing. I had no idea what was in most of the crates, having never stopped to look when Kyle was collecting them.
Ashley and Mary Beth came through the opening behind me and their flashlights joined mine in scanning the contents.
“This is what Joe Teini was looking for,” I said. “He was willing to buy every ranch in the county to find this.”
“If those chests all contain gold, it would have been a good purchase.”
“Well, let’s see.” I went to the first crate and lifted it to the floor. It was heavy I wondered if it had gold in it. I used the hammer and prybar we brought with us to loosen the top. We looked inside.
“Pots and pans?”
“Iron skillets and Dutch ovens,” I said. “Kyle never stopped to look at what was in most of the boxes he collected. He just went out and found the treasure that Cal sent him after. I suppose pots and pans had to be shipped out west and got lost, too.” In fact, the next six boxes we opened had cookware in them. The seventh box was light and we discovered clothing. I shuffled the first row of boxes aside, anxious to see what else was there, but not willing to go through a lot of domestic goods to get to the next row. These boxes and crates had been carefully organized. Far more carefully than Kyle would have done. Laramie must have sorted and arranged what was in here.
The first box of the second row I opened held rifles. There was a good market for antique weaponry. This, at least, I knew we could sell. There were other boxes of firearms and ammunition. I reached over and pulled a box from the third row deep in the hoard. It was slightly smaller than the front trunks but weighed more than even the boxes of pots and pans or guns. I got it to the floor of the cave and pried the lid open. Mary Beth and Ashley shone their lights in the box.
“Cole? Is that… gold?”
“Looks to be, darlin’. By the count, ten bars across by ten bars deep. One hundred bars at two pounds apiece is two hundred pounds of gold.”
“I just know you’ve got it all worked out already. What’s it worth, Cole?” Ashley asked.
“Depends on how pure it is. Looks like about five million in a box.”
“How many boxes like that one are back there?” I looked. They were stacked six high and five across.
“Looks like about thirty boxes like this, but there’s more behind it.”
“More? That’s like $150 million!”
“Might be more than that. The bottom crates are bigger. They might have larger bricks in them or more of them. And there are more behind. I guess we found what we were looking for. Now what?” I asked.
“I think we should take a couple bars with us to send to our friends in Salem and have them assayed. Then we should talk to Phil about bringing a secure crew here to remove everything and take it someplace where we can inventory everything and get appraisals where we need them. This is like uncovering Fort Knox,” Mary Beth said.
“Um… could we keep one? I mean in the house?” Ashley asked. I looked at her. We had at least three thousand gold bricks. If she wanted one to wear around her neck, I’d give it to her. “I mean, just so we can have one to see what a real gold brick looks like?” she finished.
“Darlin’, if you want, we’ll take the legs off the bed and stack them up just to hold the bed up,” I laughed. I got punched from both sides. I looked over the boxes and crates as much as possible. Laramie had unpacked them all and carted the contents and the boxes down here with two mules, then repacked everything when she got here. She’d organized it all. It surprised me there was no paper money in the cave as far as I could tell. I bet she took the notes home and gave them to Kaylene to get through the depression with. Then I got to thinking. There could be all kinds of things still in the house. I had to get my dates straight, but Mildred was born in ’25 and Dad was born in ’55. The Great Depression hit in 1929 and its effects lasted well into World War II. Kaylene might have done anything with the warning I gave Laramie. They’d come through, but Mildred, my grandmother/granddaughter had died soon after Dad was born and the house had been locked up for twenty years with just the annual cleaning before he got out of the service and married Mom. The house itself could hold many secrets.
“How far are we from camp?” I asked. I’d been blindfolded and had no idea how long we’d walked.
“About a mile, I’d guess,” Mary Beth said. “It was a lot deeper into the woods before you turned back into this canyon.”
“Are we still on our property?”
“Yes. I’ve got the GSA topo map. We’re clearly on the property, just not where we could ever graze cattle.”
“Okay. I should be able to carry ten of these in the backpack out of here. Let’s put everything else back in some semblance of order and head back to camp,” I said. As I started to shift things back in place I saw an old pair of saddlebags. “Wait. I think I know what those are,” I said. I had to climb halfway over the crates to reach them and pulling them up was a strain. The bags were old, but in good condition. I was going to feel like a pack mule hauling them out of the cave. I didn’t bother to open them. Mary Beth and Ashley put five gold bars each in their day packs. I was afraid my lightweight pack wouldn’t take the weight of the bags, so I slung them over my shoulder. We headed back to camp after we restored the foliage around the entrance to the cave the best we could. I kept having to shift the bags from shoulder to shoulder and was the last one up the trail.
An extra ten pounds in your pack when you are hiking up a narrow ledge is more than it sounds like. Mary Beth and Ashley were puffing pretty good when we got back. I was about done in. I figured those saddlebags must weigh close to a hundred pounds. I dropped them in our tent and stood straight for a minute before I started a fire and Mary Beth and Ashley put together our dinner. The steaks that left the house frozen yesterday were just thawed enough that they seared nicely on the outside while leaving the inside warm and red. We were past the equinox, but it still got dark early and we headed bed before the fire’s embers had completely died.
“So, what was so important about those saddlebags?” Ashley asked as she pulled my shirt off. “Oh my god! You are raw and bruised back here.”
“Oh, poor baby,” Mary Beth said as she kissed my shoulders. I winced a little. “How much do those weigh?”
“About a hundred pounds, I reckon,” I said.
“What’s in them?” Ashley said.
“A thousand gold coins. And if I’m right, a bag or two of jewels.”
“The last of Phile’s treasure?” Mary Beth said.
“Yep.” I opened one of the bags and pulled out a handful of Double Eagles. “I don’t know the value of each one, but $20 gold coins from the late 1800s sell for anything from $2,000 to $150,000 each.”
“So, at a minimum you just carted a million dollars up here, up to maybe fifty million. Right?”
“Just a guess. We won’t know until we have every date checked and find out what condition they are in.” I poured the coins back into the saddlebag and kissed my ladies.
It didn’t take long for the three of us to get naked—it’s the way we slept most nights. I gave Ashley a long luxurious kiss that left us both panting. I whispered in her ear and we both rolled over Mary Beth.
“What are you two doing?” she asked.
“We’re on a baby-hunt,” I said kissing her. “Nope. Sweet but no baby there.” Ashley was loving both Mary Beth’s breasts, kissing and sucking on them, one after the other.
“Hmm. No baby here,” Ashley said. I nuzzled right into MB’s left armpit and Ashley dove into the right as Mary Beth squirmed.
“No baby here,” I announced.
We progressed to her hands, one of us on each side, each sucking in her fingers and kissing her palms. We looked up at each other and grinned.
“No baby here,” we both repeated. Mary Beth was giggling as we reversed ourselves and attacked her feet.
“Ticklish!” she gasped. “Oh please. Help.” We didn’t actually try to tickle her feet, but we did make sure every toe had been kissed and her feet had been loved right up to her ankles.
“I didn’t find a baby. Did you find a baby?” Ashley asked.
“Nope. No baby here.” Then things got interesting. I didn’t know how Ashley would respond to this, but she followed along as we kissed our way of Mary Beth’s legs, making sure we’d kissed or massaged the whole way up. There was another ticklish spot just behind MB’s knees and she nearly threw us off of her when she jumped. I moved up, spreading her left leg to the side and licked her slit from her rosebud to her clit. Damn but I loved to lick her. I started to say something, but Ashley pried Mary Beth’s right leg to the side and dove right into the junction.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Mary Beth moaned.
“Oh God, Mary Beth. You taste better than I do. I mean, not that I go around tasting myself all the time, but sometimes there’s some left on Cole when we kiss, you know. I mean, I’ve never really done that before but…” Ashley paused as she swooped down between Mary Beth’s legs and took another long slow lick, flicking my cousin’s clit. Mary Beth went wild and when Ashley emerged, I caught her face between my hands and kissed her before licking her lips thoroughly.
“But did you find a baby?” I asked.
“No. Where could that baby be?” she panted. We leaned down and started kissing Mary Beth all over her tummy. At two months, there was no bump there yet, but I was pretty sure we covered the area well enough to have kissed over that little girl at least a couple of times.
“Oh, there’s the baby,” I said, continuing to kiss. “I love you little baby. I can’t wait to hold you in my arms and tell you all about the amazing love between your mommy and me.”
“And I love you, sweetheart,” Ashley continued. “I’m going to be your other mommy and I’ll love you as much as if you came out of my own tummy. And I’ll love your mommy and daddy forever.” We moved back up to toward Mary Beth’s head, stopping to kiss her nipples on the way to join all three of us in a kiss. There were tears on Mary Beth’s cheeks.
“You two are so wonderful. I love you both so much,” she sobbed. “Will you really love me and love my baby like you said?”
“Now and forever, Mary Beth. I’ll love you always and I’ll always love our children.”
“Sweetheart, I never imagined I could feel for a girl what I feel for you. I still won’t say I don’t prefer Cole’s big old cowboy, but I find something when I’m holding you and when we’re all making love that I never could imagine before. I will always love you and your children will be my children if you’ll let me.”
“Oh. What are we going to do?” Mary Beth asked in a panic. She sat up straight. “We kept all this quiet for so long. Now everybody will know. Will we go to jail for incest, Cole? Oh, God!”
“Easy, girl. We’re okay. I looked it up. Yes, Wyoming State Law forbids marriage between first cousins, but its incest laws don’t offer any penalty for first cousins who commit a sexual intrusion. I plan to be on this child’s birth certificate as the father and if you will consent, she’ll bear my last name,” I said.
“Cole, I love you!”
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