Turnback Creek (Widowmaker) Read online

  “I don’t believe you,” Crowell said.

  “I don’t care whether you believe me or not,” Locke said. “I wanted to get paid and wanted to let you know what was going on.” He looked at Molly. “And I wanted you to know that I know. That’s all. What happens after this is up to you two.”

  Locke turned and walked out. He went to the buckboard, flung the tarp off, picked up the sheriff’s body, and walked back into the office with it slung over his shoulder. Crowell and Molly were facing off, and it looked as if she was trying to explain something to him.

  “—Lot of explaining to do, Molly,” Crowell was saying. “I’ve been worried about you for some time, but this—”

  “—You know me better than that, George,” she was saying, trying to talk over him. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I love—”

  “Excuse me,” Locke said. He split them and dropped the dead sheriff onto the desk, right on top of the badge.

  “I believe this is yours.”

  He left again, this time closing the door behind him, and went to buy a horse.

  When Locke rode out of Turnback Creek, he had no idea how things had turned out between Crowell and Molly. He actually didn’t care what happened to the Shillstone mine. The miners had been paid, several months in advance. If the mine closed down, they’d be taken care of for a while.

  Had the mine shown signs of drying up? Was that why Molly was planning to run off with the last of Shillstone Mining’s operating capital? Run out on the bank notes?

  He was a mile outside Turnback Creek when he stopped thinking about any of them at all. His thoughts at that point were for Dale Cooper. He was saddened by what had happened to the man, and he was angry at Cooper for forcing his hand and making him kill him. It seemed to him that when the man died, so did all the good memories of him.

  He was two miles out of town when he stopped thinking about Dale Cooper.

  None of the people he was leaving behind was worth more than an extra two miles of thought, anyway.

  EPILOGUE

  Dan Hagen came over the mountain, pulling on Henrietta’s lead. He stopped short and stared down at the Devil’s Basin. It was still wet, but most of the water had already drained out from the previous week’s heavy rain. The bright sun reflected off about one inch of water that was left at the bottom.

  “There it is, ol’ girl,” he said to the mule. “Bet she was chock full of water last week. Don’t look like no bodies down there.”

  There was something down there, though. The sun was glinting off something in the shallow water.

  “You gonna give me a hard time today, girl?” he asked the mule, scratching it behind the ears.

  The mule shook its shaggy head and took a step forward.

  “Good girl,” Hagen said. “Let’s get back over our mountain.”

  Hagen and Henrietta walked down into the basin, where they sloshed through the water that was waiting for the sun to evaporate it. This close, he could see that the sun was reflecting off small pieces of something lying at the bottom.

  “What have we got here, girl?” he said. He stopped, dropped the reins to the ground, then leaned over to pick something out of the water.

  “What the hell—” He stared at the gold coin lying in the palm of his hand. He bent over and picked up another one, then a third. These were already minted coins, not nuggets, so they hadn’t come out of the ground.

  He kept picking them up until he had a handful of them, then turned to show them to Henrietta.

  “I don’t know how much these are worth, girl,” he said, “but somebody dropped ’em, and we found ’em, and it’s definitely finder’s keepers on this mountain. We’re gonna eat good soon as we get to town.”

  He walked around and dropped the coins into one of his saddlebags, then looked around to make sure he had not missed any more.

  “Looks like the basin took somethin’ from somebody, girl,” he said, picking up the lead again, “but for once it gave us somethin’. Yessir, it sure did give us somethin’.”