Novel 1966 - Kid Rodelo (v5.0) Read Online Free Page B

caught, and he lowered the globe in place.
    Jake came up to him. “Down that way, I’m thinkin’,” he said.
    They walked away together lifting the lantern to look at the houses on the other side of the street. Finally they saw the adobe they were looking for, the door standing a few inches ajar. Over the door was a horseshoe that had been nailed in place with the front of the shoe at the bottom, but the nails at the top had come out and the shoe had fallen so that the open part at the back of the shoe pointed toward the ground.
    Jake hesitated, not liking the looks of it. “Clint, look at that. The luck’s run out. When a shoe hangs that way the luck runs out the bottom.”
    “What do we care? It ain’t our ’dobe, so it ain’t our luck. No tellin’ what happened to the man who nailed that shoe up there.”
    “Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe our luck
has
run out.”
    “Don’t be a damn fool.”
    Clint pushed by him and went into the room. It was a simple, whitewashed room with a fireplace, its only furniture a rough table, two chairs, and two bunks against the far wall. Clint found a chain hook hanging from the center beam and hung the lantern on it.
    “Now we’re alone with fifty thousand dollars.”
    “But where is it?”
    “That’s up to us. You can’t get more out of folks than they know…an adobe on this street with a horseshoe over the door.”
    “Women! First it was Harbin’s girl, and now this Paxton girl you insisted on bringin’ along.”
    “Leave Nora out of it. She’s decent.”
    “All right, she’s out of it. But now, where’s the gold?”
    Jake Andrews looked around the room, and studied the floor. Treasure is buried, as a rule, he knew. He examined the floor more carefully. It was pieced together of odds and ends of planks, only a few of which ran the full length of the floor, and none of them seemed in any way special. Obviously, the floor had been put in after the adobe had been built, and the pieces of board had been taken from older buildings.
    “He had to leave some mark,” Jake said. “Now, what would it be?”
    “You’re forgettin’, friend. He
knew
where he buried it.”
    “Just the same, he wouldn’t chance it. He’d know that time and dust and wear change the looks of things. He didn’t figure that gold would be left here long, but he knew he wouldn’t be taking it up the next day. You can bet he left some kind of a marker.”
    The whitewash on the walls was very old but it looked undisturbed. It seemed unlikely that anything could have been hidden there without leaving some indication. The fireplace, too, had not been disturbed, so far as they could see. Jake went back to examining the floor. Squatting on his haunches, he studied it section by section.
    “Clint!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Look!”
    He pointed at one section of a board, but it was a moment or so before Clint could see what it was Jake was pointing at. Then he saw it—a crude arrow of rusted nail heads.
    The nails were driven in to fasten the board in place but there was a line of more nails than necessary, and then two extra nails had been placed so as to make a crude arrow. Was it just accident? Or was this the clue they were looking for?
    “Let’s rip it out of there.” Jake looked about, then went back to the door with the lantern. “Seems to me I saw a pick outside the door,” he said.
    Clint waited, staring at the plank. It was there, then. Fifty thousand dollars…a man could do a lot with that amount.
    Jake came back and put the lantern down. “Just the pick, no handle,” he said.
    Thrusting the flat end into the crack between the boards, he pulled back. The rusty nails gave easily in the worn board. A second tug on the pick and the board came loose, splintering around the nails.
    Eagerly, Clint grasped the board and ripped it away. Under the floor was a wooden box bound with iron straps.
    “That’s it!” Jake said. “Fifty thousand dollars!”
    “Yeah,” Clint said flatly.