"Worth Looking Into"

Old Charlie Peters was drifting in with the sunset once more. I watched him from the kitchen door as he opened the gate and led Lena, his little dust-colored donkey, into the corral. Charlie has come to our place that way so many times that I always think of him while I'm watching the sun go behind the blue Arizona hills. He is sure of his welcome at our house but I called him and waved. "Another visit with Charlie, another story!" thought I. I hoard the rumors of hidden Spanish gold and strange tales of secret mines and death and lawlessness that kept the old prospector forever roaming the desert and the hills. "Fellow from Wickenburg was tellin' me Charlie says to us, and as we listen to his slow words that neat paved highway across the desert fades away, a stagecoach careens wildly across the scene and galloping horses are brought to a desperate stop by shots from the bandits' smoking guns! "... and if what old man Andrews said is true, and he was dyin' when he said it, them fellers hid the gold at the corner of the adobe wall. Now, if I could just git me a couple of good men to dig . . ." he muses.

into place, and the stagecoach and its murdered driver vanish. While Charlie unburdened Lena,, and I finished cooking supper, I wondered what will o' the wisp he had been following on his last trip. We would know before long. The spring night was warm so we sat outside. Charlie hunched over in his chair and lit his pipe. "Rain over here last week?" he asked Fred abruptly. "I'll say it did. Get any over where you were?" "Yep. I ran into something funny on account of that rain." I curled up in my chair and waited. "Me and Lena was restin' under a mesquite when I noticed some footprints leadin' to an openin' in the rocks. Somebody went in there while the ground was still wet." "Someone looking for a dry spot, no doubt." Fred suggested. "That's what I figgered." He paused effectively. "But there wasn't no footprints leadin' back out, so I got curious and went in. Blamed if the hole didn't open up into a good-sized cave. I lost the footprints, of course. Even the lantern wouldn't show 'em up on a rocky floor." I knew Fred was ironically thinking "Of course!"

Charlie went on mildly. "The cave narrowed at the back, and I didn't have a rope with me, so I started back out, circlin' round as I went, to see what I could see. Well sir, I stumbled over something and durned if my lantern didn't show up a stack of bones! Yes sir! There's at least one human skeleton in that cave."

"But it couldn't have been the man who went in just last week!" I babbled.

Charlie was never impolite. "No, ma'am, it couldn't have been him, though I couldn't find no place where he came back out. And I couldn't find nothin' else in there but an old water canteen over by the bones." I shivered as he went on. "Well, I was crawlin' out the mouth of the cave when a sizable piece of iron pipe clattered down from the rocks above, and I heard a scufflin' noise up on top." Charlie's voice became emphatic, "There's somethin' goin' on in that cave, and I come so near findin' out what it was that someone tried to finish me, but he got in a hurry and dropped his weapon!"

"The iron pipe might have been sticking up somewhere, and you dislodged it walking around."

Charlie disregarded Fred's remark, as I did. "Why, that's terrible, Charlie! You might have been killed. That place ought to be investigated. Could you find it again?"

He ignored my question. "Goin' back there one of these days and find out what's goin' on. Somethin' worth lookin' into in there," he muttered, and we got nothing more from him on the subject.

"Fred, do you suppose . . . " I began, when he and I were alone.

But he interrupted. "No, I don't suppose anything. The old fellow found a cave, and some bones-maybe." He smiled at me tolerantly. "You really let yourself go when Charlie starts his yarns, don't you? What was it the last time he was here?"

"Well," I spoke defensively. "He had found a sort of a map in an old pistol, and . . ."

"If he can just 'figger' it out, it will lead him straight to the Lost Dutchman!" Fred laughed. "Did you see the old map, honey, or the gun, or any of those other things he tells us about?"

"All right, scoffer! You laugh. Charlie and I will be rich one day." Fred and I laughed together at that.

Charlie left early the next morning, though I begged him to stay awhile. I remember thinking that he and Lena looked pathetic and lonely as they went out of the corral that morning, and that Charlie was getting too old for such long jaunts across the desert.

We never heard Charlie tell another story. The next time we saw him he was dying.

"Only 'mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun'" I chanted glibly as I closed the door. The desert lay in a haze of heat and brilliant sunlight, but we had to get to town for our groceries be fore the stores closed.

We were rattling along in the pick-up when I saw a donkey with the pack still on it, standing beside the road ahead of us.

It was Lena, and the blistered, heat-tortured figure lying in the brush beside the road was Charlie.

Frantically we tried to revive him, but his only response to the water we put to his swollen lips was a faint moaning.

Illustrations by Stephen Golembeski

"He didn't usually go out when it's hot like this, did he?"

I cried over him. "I don't know, I don't know."

We took him to the hospital. His only words were a painful request for water, and though we stayed with him all the time, he never recognized us. He died that night.

The sheriff was unable to find anything in his shack to indicate he had family or friends. Everyone knew him, and no one knew anything about him.

"Guess you folks knew him better than anyone else did," he told us rather awkwardly. "I wish you'd pick up the packs he had on the donkey, on your way back, and see if there's anything of importance in them."

One sack held his clothes, his few pans, and supplies. Instantly we recognized some of the objects that clattered to the table from the other sack. There was an old water canteen and a piece of rusty pipe. Fred picked up an antiquated pistol and examined it curiously.

"Looking for the old map?" I asked softly, through sudden tears.

Then he untied a dirty, loosely-knotted rag, and whistled in amazement as he inspected the gold nugget which lay revealed.

"Look at this! Say, do you suppose . . . I'll bet he was hurrying in with it when he ran out of water!" he speculated.

"It looks like the rag hasn't been tied like that very long," I said.

Fred looked at the odd assortment on the table and tossed the gold nugget up and down in the palm of his hand.

"This stuff is worth lookin' into . . . " he said to himself, thoughtfully.