HT02 - Sing: A Novel of Colorado by Lisa T. Bergren Read Free Book Online Page A

granddaddy? Did he become rich?”
    “Nah,” said the old man, leaning back on one arm. “He lost it. Buried them bars again behind the rocks, thought he had the cave marked, and came back months later with men and burros to help get it out—gold bars weigh a bloomin’ ton—but he could never find the right canyon again, let alone the right cave.”
    The men all groaned and turned on their cots, disappointed by the sorry end to the old man’s story.
    But it took everything in Reid not to sit up straight.
    Could it be? Could it be that the treasure old Sam O’Toole had found—and left for the McAllans—was not a fantastic hidden silver mine, but rather an ancient Spanish treasure of gold? One bar, one bar , would’ve been enough to make the man rich. And if this man’s story were true, there had been a stack of them.
    The McAllans hadn’t found them yet. Had they done so, they would not have kept it a secret. It would’ve made international headlines. So it was still there. If it was there, Reid reminded himself sternly.
    And possibly, just possibly, he could beat the McAllans to it.

Chapter 5
    Bryce forced himself not to wince every time the men shouldered a gun and put down another of the stranger’s horses. He looked over the quarantined Circle M horses in the corral anxiously, studying the tilt of their ears, the way they breathed, any oddities along their mandibles. He entered the corral three times a day to lift their lips, peer into their nostrils, run his hands down the long bones of their jaws, searching for the telltale nodules that swelled with disease, fat bumps that indicated impending doom.
    Despondent, he turned and walked out of the series of corrals and up the hill, away from the stables and the house. He could not face Odessa this way. The horses showed no signs of the strangles—yet. But he knew how contagious the dreaded disease was. It would be a miracle if any of them were spared. And he sensed no miracle on the wind. Bryce trudged through mud that coated his boots, ignoring the cold as it seeped in toward his toes. He kept moving until he reached the fence that bordered the first fields, the field where so many had died during that hateful storm.
    Bryce grabbed hold of the post and sliced his hand on a hidden nail. He groaned and sucked on the blood that soon dripped down into his palm, but then he took hold of the post again and rocked it back and forth in fury, as if he intended to rip it from the ground.
    “The horses do enough of that without you helping them,” said a voice behind him.
    Bryce groaned and shook his head, not turning. “Go away, Tabito,” he said. “I need to be alone.”
    “You will be alone for a long time to come. Have you told the missus yet? What you are considering?”
    “Not yet.”
    “It isn’t wise, keeping secrets from your wife.”
    “She won’t understand,” Bryce said, looking up the slope of the field, then higher up, into the mountains that bordered the ranch.
    “No, she won’t,” Tabito said quietly, moving to stand beside Bryce. “Send some of your men instead, to Spain. You should not go, Bryce. You should not risk it.”
    “It is I who should go,” Bryce gritted out. “I’ve made some foolish decisions, Tabito. I didn’t build the snowbreaks. I put too much money into getting us more water. Now … we’re cash strapped. Banks won’t be lending, not after all that everyone has lost through this storm. They’ll be skittish, and it won’t change before fall’s harvest.”
    “What will you do?”
    “I don’t know. If I don’t have more horses, I can’t make my payments to the bank. If I can’t make my payments, they’ll come collecting parcels of land. I can’t let that happen, Tabito.”
    “You can’t or you won’t?”
    Bryce stared at him. Tabito looked back to the mountains and was silent for a time. “Think like the river, Bryce. Seek wisdom, the right route, rather than an end to the journey.”
    Bryce let out a