Authors: Rebecca Martin
The Treasure Hunt (7 page)
“And we did,” said Father, coming inside in time to hear the last part. “But we sure are glad to have you home!”
“How is your ear, anyway?” Polly asked, busily putting the soup on for supper.
Mother touched the bandage. “Well, it's sore from the operation, but it's not throbbing anymore. The operation took away the pressure that had built up.”
“Can you hear in that ear?” Lydia asked.
“I hope so. I can't tell yet, but the doctor said the operation went well.”
Father said quietly, “We have much to be thankful for.”
“So can we go on with our plans to have the wedding on March twelfth?” Polly asked.
Father and Mother looked at each other. Father said, “I don't know why not. If you think we'll be ready, that is.”
“I think we will, but we'll be busy,” Polly replied confidently.
And they were. What with cleaning the house from top to bottom and preparing food for the big meal, the Yoder household whirled with activity. Besides everyone in the community, some guests from Indiana and North Dakota would be invited as well.
Sam Peachy, meanwhile, was building a small house on his homestead. Jake and Joe, claiming they needed to get out of the women's way, went to help him nearly every day.
To everyone's surprise, a light blanket of snow lay on the ground on the morning of March twelfth. Earlier, it had seemed that spring had arrived. Several hired steam tractors had been chugging around the neighborhood and plowing down the blackened prairie grass. Now suddenly on the wedding morning, winter had returned.
Of course it didn't last long. By the time all the guests had arrived and were packed into the Yoder's house, the sun had melted most of the snow. Lydia listened eagerly as the bishop from Indiana preached. “Life is like a clock,” said the bishop. “The hand goes around from birth to childhood, from youth to marriage, from middle age to old age, and finally to death. Although we do not know when our life's clock will stop, we know that God is in control.”
Soon Polly and Sam stood up to be married. How happy
they looked as the bishop pronounced the blessing upon their union. Lydia was happy for them too, yet deep inside she felt a little ache. Polly was leaving home. The hand on Polly's life clock had moved around to marriage.
A
lthough he never talked to anyone about it, Joe had not forgotten his dream. He still remembered how Father had reacted when he told him about the gold that had been found in Colorado. Apparently Father wasn't impressed with the idea of searching for gold. He had declared, “We need to make an honest living from the land, not go off on a treasure hunt.”
That did not keep Joe from dreaming about finding gold. He reasoned that surely Father would be pleased to have the extra money, so he planned to spend his spare time hunting for gold along the creek without letting anybody know. If he never found gold, no harm would be done. And if he did, well, it was fun to imagine how delighted everyone would be.
Finding spare time was the biggest problem. During the first few months in Colorado, there simply hadn't been
any! In the beginning there were so many building projects. Then Ben's barn burned down. Next came the wedding, and then it was seeding time. Working alongside his brother and Father, Joe stayed busy from dawn to dusk.
At last one day in April, Joe saw his chance. Father had gone to town, and Jake was off helping Ben. A soft chinook wind was blowing down from the Rockies, and off in the distance, the proud shoulders of Pikes Peak butted up into the blue sky.
Joe glanced around furtively to make sure Lydia and Lisbet weren't watching before he slipped behind the barn. There beneath some scrap lumber, he had hidden his gold-seeking tools. He'd found the piece of a broken shovel and an old, rusty pan in the town dump. Stuffing both into a gunnysack, he headed for the creek.
Joe squatted down by the trickling stream. He closed his eyes and did his best to remember the pictures of gold panning in the history book. First the gold seeker would scoop up some water and gravel into the pan. Then he would twirl the pan around, letting the water and the lighter sand swish out over the rim of the pan.
Gold was heavy. That was the whole idea. The lighter stuff was supposed to float out of the pan with the water, while the heavy gold settled to the bottom and stayed there.
Round and round went Joe's pan. When all the water was gone, most of the sand was too. Only a few good sized pebbles remained.
Joe stared at the pebbles. Some were smooth, and some were jagged. Although they glistened at him from the bottom of the rusty pan, anybody could see that the glistening was only because they were wet and not because they were gold.
Joe flipped the pebbles far up the bank. One thing was sure, he wasn't going to swish the same old pebbles through his pan over and over again! He scooped up some more sand, gravel, and water.
Swish, swish, swish.
His thoughts came freely as he worked his pan.
No gold. Not that I actually expected to find any. Well, not really. Not today, but maybe someday⦠It takes a lot of determination. I'll really have to keep at itâif I want to find gold, that is.
So Joe filled pan after pan after pan. He swished the gravel and water back out again. He stared hard at the pebbles that stayed and never saw any gold.
Of course not. What was I expecting?
After a while Joe grew tired of that spot and decided to move farther up the creek.
Maybe the gold hadn't come down this far.
He understood why creeks held gold. The gold, called a mother lode, lay hidden way down deep in the underground. From this mother lode, the gold was washed downstream by the water.
A startled muskrat peered at Joe with beady eyes, and in a flash, it was gone. Joe grabbed the exposed roots of a cottonwood and swung himself up to the door of the muskrat's home. He tried to peer into the burrow, but it was as
black as midnight. The muskrat would never come back out as long as he was there.
Down he dropped to the streambed again. Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he trudged on around one bend, then another, and another.
Suddenly Joe stopped. He saw something on the opposite bank halfway hidden behind scrubby cottonwoods. It looked like a doorâa wooden doorâbuilt into the overhanging stream bank! This was no muskrat's lair. Muskrats didn't have wooden doors.
Joe made a swift leap across the stream. From the water's edge, he scampered up the trampled path that led to the door. Joe grabbed the wooden handle.
Suddenly he froze.
What am I doing? I can't just go barging into someone's home!
Although the door wasn't very big, it was big enough for a human to squeeze through.
Grinning sheepishly to himself, Joe knocked on the door. What a funny feeling it was to be rapping on a door that had no house!
Nothing happened. He knocked again, harder this time.
If anybody's inside, they must be sleeping pretty soundly. Oh well, maybe nobody lives here now. Maybe someone lived here years ago, say in the time of the gold rush.
Joe's heart beat fast. He had to see what was on the other side of this door.
If a prospector used to live here, maybe he left some useful tools.
Joe discovered the door in the stream bank.
He tugged on the carved wooden handle, and the door swung outward easily on leather hinges. Joe gasped. In front of him was a room. A regular little room! It was dark, of course, because there could be no windows here under the stream bank. But in the shadows, he could make out a tiny table, two homemade chairs, and a cupboard. And a stove!
Joe stepped gingerly across the packed-earth floor and touched the stove. It was warm.
Somebody lives here! Somebody made porridge for breakfast and left some of it in a pot on the back of the stove. Somebody slept in that narrow bed at night, covering himself with a red woolen blanket.
Suddenly Joe couldn't get out of there fast enough.
I'm trespassing in someone else's house! What if the person comes back right now and catches me here?
In two giant steps, he reached the door, slipped outside, and slammed it shut. He scooped up his pan and shovel and scrambled up the bank. Not caring that he trampled on the new, green shoots of wheat, he dashed across the field as if a bear were after him.
When he was almost home, Joe stopped and threw himself down in the grass. He needed time to think this over.
What am I going to do with this discovery? Should I tell Father and Mother?
Even though he wasn't sure why not, Joe decided he wouldn't tell.
Not right now, anyway. Maybe I'll go there again, scout around, and find out some more about the mysterious little den. In the meantime, I'll just keep the whole thing a secret. It all seems a little like a dream, anyway.
Lying there in the grass, watching the white clouds drift by overhead, Joe suddenly remembered. Last fall when he'd come to Colorado with Father to look at the land, he'd seen something that looked like a man's foot disappearing in the bushes.
Maybe that foot belonged to the owner of this den in the creek bank!
J
oe had a big secret, and he felt the secret weighing heavily upon his shoulders. Soon he wasn't going to be able to stand it anymore. That is how Joe Yoder felt in the days after he discovered that stream-bank home. He thought about it constantly. He wondered who lived there. More than anything else, he longed to tell someone.
Finally he decided to tell Lydia. She would enjoy sharing a secret. She often complained that he never played with her anymore. Maybe she'd feel better if he let her in on his big secret.
Lydia was outside carrying a pail of water from the well to the garden. The women seemed to be doing that a lot of the time. Practically no rain had fallen since the garden had been planted, yet Mother was determined to keep the garden thriving. And the only way to do that was to carry water.
“Here. Shall I carry that?” Joe made the offer after coming up behind Lydia.
She jumped and spilled some water. “You scared me! Look at the water we lost.”
“Sorry. Water's precious, isn't it,” he said, taking the pail.
“Mother is afraid that the well will go dry. It's pretty low already. The water was for the lettuce.”
Joe began splashing each lettuce plant until Lydia protested. “Let me. Mother taught me how to give just enough water but not too much.” Carefully she gave each little head of lettuce a measured splash.
He sat in the hot, sandy soil watching her. “You can't guess what I found along the creek the other day.”
“A flickertail?” she asked without looking up.
“No. Better than that. I said you can't guess.”
“Well, then gold?”
“Huh. Who wants gold? No, this isâwell, it's pretty mysterious.”
Lydia poured out the last drop of water and stood looking at her big brother. His yellow hair was all mussed up. Mischief twinkled in his blue eyes. “Well, if I can't guess, why don't you just tell me?”
“Either that, or I could show you,” he said. “Want to go for a walk up the creek?”