Page 45 of Country Mist

He leaned back against a tree trunk, one leg out, and his arm settled on his opposite bent knee. He took another swig of his beer and gestured with the bottle toward the trail. “What do you say to heading down that trail to go gold hunting after we pack up and put everything into the truck? I’ll grab the metal detector.”

Haylee took a sip from her bottle and nodded. “The trail looks promising.” A shaft of light made her hair look like spun gold.

She set her empty bottle into the picnic basket. “Since I was young, I’ve always loved treasure hunting.” An amused quirk of her lips turned into a grin. “When I was a little girl, Bear and Brady would hide my toy horses around the ranch. They told me I had to search for treasure. Those times, I wasn’t too keen on hunting.”

Tyson chuckled, started packing up what was left of their picnic, and deposited it into the basket with her bottle. She got to her feet as he did, and he folded the quilt.

He carried the basket and quilt as they returned to the truck. He set the things on the back seat before retrieving the gold detector he’d rented for the weekend and a camping shovel. After he locked the truck up again, they started back down the trail on their gold hunt.

* * *

Leaves crunched beneath Haylee’s and Tyson’s shoes as they headed down the path through the forest. He wore a small forest green backpack with a camping shovel and a few odds and ends.

“How long do you think this path has been here?” She spoke out loud, not expecting Tyson to know the answer. “How many people have walked this trail?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Could be centuries. Could be hundreds of people from Native Americans to Mexicans to Spaniards to prospectors.”

A sense of what it might have been like long ago washed over her. How different had the bushes beside the trail been? What kinds of birds had lived in the trees?

She looked up at the towering trees, shafts of sunlight blinking through the branches. The dense foliage caught at her shirt, and she pushed it away. Her soul felt lighter than it had been in ages.

Her pulse rate picked up at the thought of what might lay at the end of their rainbow. Would they truly find gold? More than anything that was wishful thinking, but the time she spent with Tyson was wonderful.

They chatted about what he’d planned for the day and any number of other things. During the occasional pauses, the only sounds were birds or small animals skittering in the brush and the leaves rustling as they pushed aside low-hanging branches.

Yeah, they probably wouldn’t find anything, but she enjoyed just being with him on their little adventure.

After a good thirty minutes, Tyson inclined his head to a gap in the trees. “Let’s go this way.” Through the arch of bowed branches, a lesser-traveled track was visible.

She followed him, the detector giving no indication that anything was on their route.

She pushed branches from a creosote bush out of her face. “Do you think we’ll find anything?”

He shrugged as he swept the detector from side to side but cast her a quick grin over his shoulder. “Who knows? But we’re having fun trying.”

The gold detector beeped, and he came to an immediate stop. He turned his attention back to the device, which had stopped beeping. He backed up, and it beeped again. He moved away from the path a couple of feet until the detector beeped with excitement as he held it poised over a patch of moss at the base of a large rock.

Her heart skipped a beat. The gold detector was beeping like crazy, so there had to be gold, right? They were closer to their goal—well, close to something.

Tyson bent down, set the detector aside, and slung his backpack onto the ground. Haylee knelt nearby and braced her palms on the leaves and pine needles as sat on her haunches to watch.

He pulled the small camping shovel out of his backpack and used it to pry aside the moss, which clung to a smaller rock at the foot of the larger one. He moved it aside, then started digging.

He dug about a foot down when his shovel thumped and clanged on something hard. He placed the shovel beside him and knelt next to the hole. He brushed aside the dark earth with his palms.

Haylee watched as he uncovered a small, rusted metal box covered in rich soil. As Tyson revealed it more, she saw it had dark leather straps and rusted buckles. He raised it from the ground and set it beside him.

“The buckles are too corroded to release the leather if I try to unbuckle them.” Tyson dug a pocketknife out of his jeans and carefully cut the straps.

Haylee picked up a leather tie that had fallen to the ground. It felt rough and worn across her palm.

“Now to get this lid open.” He took his time and pried until it popped up. Outside, the box had suffered from the years buried in the moist earth, but the inside was dry.

Tyson raised the lid higher and revealed a stack of tintype photographs and a deteriorating folded piece of paper and scraps.

He handed the tintypes to Haylee. “Those aren’t the only treasure.”

She leaned closer and saw a dark brown leather pouch secured with a drawstring. “Do you think the gold is in there?”

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