I Win

I Win

By

Mike Marshall

Copyright 2017 by Mike Marshall

Published by Mike Marshall at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Also by Mike Marshall, Published at Smashwords:

Me 'n Norman

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Scorpions, Spiders, and Snakes

Chapter 2 - Back To The Grind

Chapter 3 - Wine, Pizza, and Plotting

Chapter 4 - Identifying the Bumps In The Road

Chapter 5 - Strange Bedfellows

Chapter 6 - Sticky Wickets

Chapter 7 - The First To Action

Chapter 8 - The Meat Of The Hunt

Chapter 9 - An Inner Look

Chapter 10 - A Little Thickening Of The Plot

Chapter 11 - 90-Second Minutes And 120-Minute Hours

Chapter 12 - The Calm After The Storm

Chapter 13 - The Combat

Chapter 14 - Background Intrigue

Chapter 15 - Daddy Has The Hots

About-Mike Marshall

Chapter 1

Scorpions, Spiders, and Snakes

It seems there are always several sides to every coin. In this case I present to you, disguised as a female college professor, disguised as a consummate desert rat: Trigg Mitchell, a woman who has carved her niche in academic life but is happiest crawling around in old abandoned mine sites. At a southern California university, Trigg has built a career shaping young minds in Civic Planning, Literature, and conforming to accepted social structure. She can completely immerse her life in helping the young eager minds fight their way to success by working the system within strong moral limits, and still only stressing the bounds of the written law.

Trigg's favorite diversion, however, is being a part-time Desert Rat exploring the Nevada desert. Enjoying the solitude and the crystal clear air of the high mountains of western Nevada is her principal vice of life. If you were to meet her on campus or at a social function, you would never suspect that she is an inveterate Desert Rat.

For the last few years Trigg has been searching for ruins of old mining camps. In particular she is interested in finding one of the Mormon mining camps that had not been investigated for a very long time, and in recent years thought of as a lost mine. This lost mine was one of the many that provided the wealth to build Salt Lake City and the temples. She had communicated with Brigham Young University and the Mormon Church, and explained what she wanted to do, and they had been very cooperative. She had been provided with maps of the areas that they had already searched, and copies of the legends and stories that were in their libraries.

One clear desert morning a turkey buzzard flared its wings and landed on a boulder. The big bird’s attention is drawn to a large pickup truck with a huge camper parked in a slight gully. The big bird had seen a fault in the hillside and someone working at the rotted and fallen-in timbers of what could have been mistaken for the entrance to an old mine shaft.

Here was Trigg Mitchell, dressed in khaki pants, shirt, and high-top hiking boots, down on her hands and knees crawling into a dugout shelter that had fallen in from the ravages of time and abrasive desert winds. She was in hope of finding any abandoned mine. To her surprise, this was not an abandoned mine but the entrance to a shelter for livestock. There were streams of light streaming through the rubble behind her. A few feet away in the gloom she could see the skeleton of a horse. It appeared that someone had ridden in, tied the horse and never came back. She was shocked to see that the saddle, bridle and saddlebags were all still in place. The saddlebags appeared to be packed.

She gingerly touched one of the bags and then tried to open it. The stiff leather resisted her touch for a moment and then she sat back on her heels, and then tucked an unruly lock of hair back up under her hat. She took a deep breath and looked around at the surroundings, the rotten timbers holding back the earth and the hillside, and again at the skeleton in front of her. After a few seconds all her impulses were shouting for her to get out of here, this place was dangerous. She looked over her shoulder at the light at the entrance behind her and then at the skull of the horse. She set her jaw in determination. The stale, hot air was stifling. Breathing was difficult. She took another deep breath, held it and griped the saddle by the horn and pulled. The skeleton fell apart after a few determined tugs at the saddle. The saddle with saddlebags still attached, pulled free. After dragging the saddle and bags from the dugout out into the open light, she was surprised at the weight of the saddlebags.

The buzzard gave up in disgust and silently flew away. There would be nothing to eat here today.

Trigg tried to unbuckle the straps holding the bag flaps closed but the stiff leather broke under her effort. Opening the flaps of the saddlebag was difficult, much more difficult than she expected. The leather was dry and as hard as plywood. With the bag open, she tipped it up and a single scorpion scampered out. With disdain, she kicked it aside; scorpions, tarantulas, lizards and an occasional snake were common companions on the desert. With the bag turned upside down and after a few sharp shakes, a leather pouch fell to the ground, a folded and decayed leather coat fell out next. From the other side: another pouch, some parts decayed nearly to dust; shirts; and a corroded metal dish was the last to fall out.

Squatting on her heels there was a quickly discarded decision, the thought of reaching into one of the pouches which could result in a painful bite by some unseen critter. But after a moment, with one of the pouches in her left hand she stood and drew the sheath knife on her belt and cut off the thong that held it closed, but the leather was too stiff to pull open. She put the pouch on the ground and with her boot, she rolled it from side-to-side breaking and crumbling the leather until it was open. Again it took several sharp shakes for the contents to tumble out.

All gold coins! Gold coins about the size of an American fifty-dollar gold piece.

A tingle ran down her spine from the excitement. She walked in a big circle almost as if she were avoiding the pile of coins. Coming back to the pouches she did the same to open the other. With all the coins in a pile, she muttered, Good God what have I found here? When her nerves had settled a little she picked up one of the coins and examined it carefully. This was a minted coin but appeared to be more crudely minted than the coins made by our government of those long-gone years in history. Even after all these years the coins were as bright and shinny as the day they had been minted.

In her camper, Trigg dug around in the tool box and found a canvas bag that had held snow chains. Then from a cabinet in the camper she brought out several soft cotton bath towels.

As she gathered the coins in preparation of wrapping them and putting them in the canvas bag, there was the growing bitter adrenaline taste on the back of her tongue. Her hands began to tremble with the realization that she had found gold, gold coins with a value that was beyond her wildest imagination. She piled the coins in stacks of ten. When all were stacked, she counted ninety stacks of ten plus five more. Ninety-five coins in all.

With the coins carefully wrapped in the soft cotton towels and secured in the canvas bag, she put the bag in the bottom of the tool compartment and covered it with dusty tools.

Gathering herself and her composure, she began to think about this site. With her big hammer in one hand and a bundle of stakes in the other she began to scout the area again. In the first two days that she had been exploring the site she had found rows of stones that looked as if they might have been the foundations of cabins or buildings. After sweeping away some of the sand with her foot she found some charred stones that must have been the base of a fireplace. Her search had recovered a box full of artifacts. Once again she recorded the perimeter stakes and the location with her GPS. Then she recorded the location of the livestock shelter and headed back toward her camper, and then glanced up at the fading sunlight and muttered, Where did the time go. I have to get home. I have to tell Stephen. All I have to do is tell the wrong person and I’ll be neck deep in legal problems. This is too big to keep to myself, I have to tell someone.

Back in her truck there was that familiar moment of doubt when she had left the truck parked for several days, will it start? As she had expected, it took only three tries and the big engine barked to life. She always felt a moment of relief when the engine started and then settled to an even idle. This vehicle had never let her down but she knew that if it ever did, out here in the middle of nowhere would be the worst possible place. She began to carefully follow her tracks back to Highway 395. The shadows were getting longer and longer. Night would came on suddenly out here in the valleys of the desert, and her GPS told her that she was still a long way from the highway. Each time she felt the need to go faster, she brought herself back to reality, the weight and size of her camper and with just the headlights, trying to go too fast could be very dangerous, Even if I had started early in the morning I couldn’t get back to the campus tonight.

She looked in the rear view mirror at the sinking sun, and then realized that she hadn’t eaten since early that morning, Shoot, I may as well find a good spot and fix myself some dinner.

With dinner done and out of the way, she sat in one of her folding camp chairs and enjoyed the evening as the heat of the day turned to a cool breeze. Next to her sat the last of her bottled water and a bottle of Canadian whiskey that had been in her truck for months. She looked at the glass in her hand and said out loud, wishing that there was someone to hear, This is the last of my bottled-water but today’s find certainly is something to drink a toast to. Oh Lord, listen to me talking to the night, I guess it really is time to go home.

Darkness closed in quickly and the air took on a chill. When she settled into her bed and turned off the lights, she felt reassured with the feel of her pistol under her pillow. When she woke, the sky was still gray and the chill of night caused her to pull her sleeping bag up under her chin. Rather than cooking breakfast she started the long drive out. to the highway.

In about two hours she came to the highway and turned south. All desert roads look straight and flat, however this was never true. They might very well be straight but never flat. When she crested a slight rise about half a mile ahead she saw a crossroads. A gas station was on one side of the highway and a café on the other side. Both buildings had very little paint clinging to their weathered exterior. Over the café was a sign that read, Miracle Café and there as an OPEN sign in the window. The gas station showed only slight signs of use and habitation.

Trigg parked her truck in front of the café and smiled at the sight of a phone booth on the shady side of the building. On closer inspection she could see that the phone had been vandalized. She grumbled and walked toward the door of the café, Now all I have to do find this place closed. But that was not to be the case.

Inside she was greeted with a broad smile and a young and cheery, Hi there. This young woman’s heritage was obviously Native American or Mexican. She was about five-feet-five, perhaps one hundred