“No damn’ spirit of adventure,” Ramage said.
“You go ahead if you want. I’m staying right here.” She meant it. And when she got stubborn about something, you couldn’t change her mind for love or money.
Ramage said disgustedly: “All right, the hell with it. I guess we’ll have to take your word for it, old-timer. About the dirt and the burial ground, both.”
“Some do, some don’t. Suit yourself.”
“For now, anyway,” Ramage added. “Maybe some other time.”
“Anytime you want to see it.” Peete gestured at the pile of free dirt. “How many sacks you want?”
“None right now. Some other time on that, too.”
Peete shrugged, led them out of the barn into the sunshine. He closed the doors, set the latch, and started to move off.
“Hold on a second,” Ramage said. And when the farmer stopped and glanced back at him: “About that sign of yours, down by the road.”
“What about it?”
“Don’t take offense, but you misspelled dirt.”
“That a fact?”
“It’s with an i, not a u. D-i-r-t. You might want to correct it.”
“Then again,” Peete said, “I might not.”
He took the dog away to the house without a backward glance.
Carolyn said: “Did you have to bring up that sign?”
Ramage ignored her until they were in the car, bouncing down the rutted lane. Then he said, more to himself than to her: “Some character, that Peete.”
“You think he’s just a dumb hick, I suppose.”
“Don’t you?”
“No. I think he’s a lot smarter than you give him credit for.”
“Because of that business with the dirt and the Indian burial ground? I didn’t believe it for a minute.”
“Well, neither did I,” she said. “That’s the real reason I didn’t want to go along with him. The whole thing’s a hoax, a game he plays with gullible tourists. I wouldn’t be surprised if he misspelled dirt on that sign just to draw people like us up here.”
“Might have at that.”
“If we’d gone along with him, what he’d’ve shown us is some spot he faked up with Native American artifacts and phony graves.”
“Just to get a good laugh at our expense?”
“Some people have a warped sense of humor.”
“Didn’t look like Peete had any sense of humor.”
“You can’t tell what a person’s like inside from the face they wear in public. You ought to know that.”
“I’d still like to’ve seen the place,” Ramage said.
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Satisfy my curiosity.”
“You’d’ve been playing right into his hand.”
“Still…I can’t help being curious, can I?”
He stayed curious all that day, and the next, and the next after that. About the fake Miwok burial ground, and about Peete, too. How could the old buzzard afford to pay for all the upkeep on that farm of his, and give away good rich soil, when he had no help and no livestock except for a few chickens? Crops like alfalfa, fruit from that small orchard? Maybe he ought to drive back out there, alone this time, and have a look at the “cemetery” and see what else he could find out.
On Friday afternoon, Ramage decided that that was just what he was going to do.
The snotty young fella named Coolidge said: “I don’t believe it.”
“Gospel truth.”
“Graveyard dirt from some old Indian cemetery?”
“Every inch of it.
“And you truck it in here and hoard it so you can give it away free. You think I was born yesterday, pop?”
“Prove it to you, if you want.”
“How you going to do that?”
“Burial ground’s not far from here,” Peete said. “Other side of that hill yonder.”
“And you want me to go see it with you.”
“Up to you. Only take a few minutes.”
Coolidge thought about it. Then he grinned crookedly and said: “All right, for free d-u-r-t, why not? What have I got to lose?”
“That’s right,” Peete said. He tightened his grip on Buck’s chain, tossed his new lucky piece into the air with his other hand. Sunlight struck golden glints from the doubloon before he caught it with a quick downward swipe. “What have you got to lose?”
He Said…She Said
Cal Hartley heaved the last of the five-gallon water jugs into the back of his van and slammed the rear doors. Then he coiled the hose onto its holder on the spigot. As he got into the driver’s seat, he glanced across the parking lot at the White Iron Chamber of Commerce building; only two cars were there, both belonging to employees, and no one had seen him filling up, or else they’d have come outside by now, wanting to know where their so-called voluntary donation was. Three bucks well saved.
At the stop sign at the main highway, Cal hesitated. East toward home? West toward town, where he’d earlier run some errands? West. He didn’t feel like going home yet. Home was not where the heart was these days.
The Walleye Tavern was dark and cool on this bright, hot August afternoon. Abel Arneson, the owner and sole occupant, stood behind the bar under one of the large stuffed pike that adorned the pine walls, staring up at a Twins game on the TV mounted at the room’s far end. When he saw Cal enter, he reached for a remote and turned the sound down.
“What brings you to town, Professor?” he asked. “Professor” because Cal was a former faculty member of the University of Minnesota, recently moved north from Minneapolis to the outskirts of this small town near the Boundary Waters National Canoe Area.
“Water run. Hardware store. Calls on the cell phone. It doesn’t work outside of town.” Cal slid onto a stool. In spite of him and Abel being native Minnesotans, their patterns of speech could not have been more different. Cal sounded pure, flat middle America, while Abel spoke with the rounded, vaguely Scandinavian accent of the Iron Range.
Abel, a big man with thinning white hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses, set a bottle of Leinenkugel in front of Cal. “Not so easy, living without running water, huh?”
“Not so bad. The lake makes a good bathtub, and we’ve got a chemical toilet. All we need the fresh water for is brushing our teeth, cooking, washing dishes.”
“And from the hardware store?”
Cal smiled wryly. “Heavy-duty extension cords. I think I told you the power company allowed us to hook into the pole up on the road till we finish with our renovations. Seems like we need more cords every day.”
Abel shook his head, looked at his watch, and poured himself a shot of vodka. “I don’t envy you, trying to bring back that old, run-down lodge. Thirty-five years abandoned by old lady Mott, just sitting there rotting. Some folks around here say it’s cursed.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that. But I don’t believe in curses.”
“No?”
