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  But, somehow, he had a gut feeling that things were only bound to get worse.

  Josh upended his Nehi bottle and swallowed the last of the cold orange soda. He gave his father a puzzled glance, studying the troubled look on the man's hangdog face. His dad was acting differently since leaving the Nashville bus station. The walk up the street had been brimming with hearty talk and joking, while the stroll back down was strangely leaden with silence.

  Josh had been on the verge of asking Clay of his troubles, when they passed an establishment by the name of Fogerty's Pawn Shop. Josh caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. It was something inexplicable, something that just shouldn't have been there in the first place. He stared at the object hanging there in the window above a collection of gaudy jewelry and secondhand items, his simple mind trying to sort out the reasons for why it might possibly be displayed there.

  "Pappy," he said, motioning for his father to join him. "Am I wrong or does that look like Johnny's guitar hanging there?"

  Clayburn Biggs walked to the plate glass window. His breath hung dryly in his throat as he surveyed the gathering of fiddles, banjoes, and mandolins.

  There, in the center, hung an old flat-top guitar. It would have looked like any other time-worn instrument to Clay if it had not been for the telltale marks of something hauntingly familiar to him, as well as anyone else in the Biggs family: the worn wood near the sound hole from years of diligent finger picking, the sliver of wood missing on the left side of the neck where Old Tippy had accidentally knocked the guitar down the porch steps last August, and there, almost invisible between the second and third frets of the fingerboard, was where Johnny had carved his initials with his pocket knife. All the earmarks were undeniable. It was Johnny's guitar, all right.

  "I'm gonna have a talk with the man inside," Clay said.

  He walked into the shady interior of the little street-side pawn shop. The walls of the shop were lined with a fair collection of bluegrass instruments, household appliances, and a few rifles and shotguns. The glass counter boasted a sparkling sea of wedding rings, pocket watches, and other jewelry. A fat, moon-faced man sat behind the counter, the sleeves of his pinstriped shirt rolled up over large forearms. He eyed Clay with a mixture of contempt and suspicion when the farmer walked in, frowning humorlessly at the faded overalls and the rawboned, rural appearance of the man.

  "Help you with something, buster?" he asked, then returned his eyes to the newspaper he had laid out on the countertop.

  "Yeah," answered Clay. "That old flat-top guitar in the window. Where'd you get it?"

  The shop owner, Fogerty, shrugged his massive shoulders. "I dunno. I bought it off someone, I reckon. Why? You wanna buy it? It's a real steal for fifteen bucks."

  "No. All I want to know is who sold it to you. Was it a young fella, maybe eighteen? Tall and lanky with dark brown hair?"

  Small, pig-like eyes regarded Clay wearily. "Listen, mister. I buy and sell merchandise from perfect strangers six days a week. I don't remember their faces. I just give 'em a few bucks for their junk, then forget 'em."

  The man's indifference was starting to get under Clay's skin. "I know that guitar hanging there, 'cause I bought it for my son a few years back. All I wanna find out is who sold it to you. Don't you have records on such things? A pawn ticket or something?"

  Fogerty sighed and pulled a Tampa Nugget cigar box from beneath the counter. He took out a stack of yellowed tickets until he came to the bottom of the pile. "Here it is. Dated the first of last month. Gave the guy five bucks for the guitar. His name was John Brown. That your boy's name?"

  "No. I don't know anyone by that name."

  The pawn shop owner was tired of fooling with Clay. "Listen, buddy. Most of the guitars and fiddles I buy are off kids who show up in this town looking to get on the Grand Ole Opry. More than often, they find out their chances aren't worth a spit in hell, and by then, they're down to their last dime. They pawn off their guitars, and I give 'em enough cash for a decent meal and a bus ticket back to Hicksville. Maybe that's what happened to your kid."

  Clayburn shook his head. "Never. Johnny wouldn't have sold that guitar to anyone and especially not for a lousy five dollars. I'm thinking maybe it was stolen."

  Fogerty didn't like what the man was insinuating. "I figure you'd best get yourself outta here before I call the cops, buster."

  The lanky farmer glared at the fat man, wanting nothing more than to jerk him over the counter and give his skull a bruising. But it was not trouble he had come to Nashville to find. His objective had been to check up on Johnny and his pals, not get in a bare-knuckle brawl with a local businessman and get thrown into the hoosegow for his hotheadedness.

  Without saying another word, Clay turned and left the pawn shop. Fogerty shook his head and fished through the paper for the sports section. "Damned ridge-runner," he grumbled, then went about his reading.

  "It was Johnny's guitar, wasn't it?" asked Josh as he and his father started back down the street for Second Avenue.

  "Yeah, it was his. But he didn't sell it. Someone else did."

  Josh eyed his papa with an expression of slow dawning. "And Johnny and Billy and C.J.? They didn't even get on that eastbound bus, did they? That's why you went into the station . . . to check on whether they did or not."

  Clay regarded his son with raised eyebrows. "You ain't half as dumb as I thought you were."

  When they had gotten back to the truck and were sitting quietly in the cab, Clay turned to Josh. "Boy, I want you to promise me that you won't mention nary a word of this to your ma and the others. It probably ain't nothing to be concerned over, but you know how worried they get over the least little thing."

  "I won't, Pappy. Nary a word. I promise."

  Clay started the truck and pulled back onto Broadway, heading southward for the outskirts of town and Bedloe County. The tobacco farmer drove the fifty miles home in total silence, his thoughts on Johnny and that guitar hanging in the pawn shop window. He found himself thinking of little things he had never really thought of before: Johnny's easygoing smile and the way he wore the gray fedora cocked jauntily on his head; and then there was the last time they had been really close, the firm handshake they had shared the day of Johnny's departure.

  Johnny's not one to get himself into trouble, thought Clay, a cold dread lying like a well stone in the pit of his stomach. He's such a fine boy, that son of mine. Such a damned fine boy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was a steamy hot day in late July, one that was saturated with humidity and unbearable heat. The single, burning eye of the sun shone relentlessly in a cloudless sky, cooking the concrete walkways of Coleman and baking the dusty dry fields of the surrounding area. The day held a lazy creeping of time. Morning stretched past lunchtime into the brilliant shadeless oven of afternoon. Children who regularly spent their free time playing hopscotch or shooting marbles now chose to avoid those sidewalk games, fleeing to the coolness of the rural woods and waterholes.

  It was a day that would haunt Cynthia Biggs for the rest of her life.

  The eight weeks following the end of school had healed old wounds and vanquished a dark prejudice between Cindy and her playmates. The cruel catcalls of "witch" had petered out. The children of Coleman chose to forget the rumors and suspicions that had circulated following the death of Vera Mae's firstborn child. Even the adults in town had lost their peculiar avoidance of the red-haired girl. Their attention seemed more engrossed in topics like the scorching weather, the coming county elections in November, and the unstable price of tobacco that year.

  Even Chester Martin, the school bully, had made amends with Cindy in his own way. He no longer chanted intimidations or threatened her, letting her tag along with him and a few other children their age. In fact, Chester showed a remarkable change in attitude toward Cindy Ann. He almost seemed to hold a grudging respect for the girl. Whether it had grown out of genuine repentance or an underlying fear, Cindy could onl
y hazard a guess.

  That day they roamed the dense woods that bordered Green Creek, searching for signs of buried treasure. "It's here, I swear to God it is," boasted Chester. "My grandpa told me there's gold buried all in these here woods. Said back during the War Between the States, folks used to stick their money in a kettle and bury it deep in the woods on account of bushwhackers and those damned Yankees. Grandpa says that a lot of that gold was never dug up, either, 'cause some folks got killed in the fighting or just plain forgot where they planted it."

  Cindy, Benny Arnett, and Sally and Susan, the Osborne twins, followed the braggart along the wooded banks of the creek. They, too, had heard the tales of lost Confederate gold from their own grandparents. Some would have labeled the stories as pure nonsense if not for an incident that happened years ago in southern Bedloe County. It took place back in 1921. Roscoe Jobson, a poor dirt farmer, had been plowing his fields one day when the plowshares hit metal. The object uncovered had been an old dutch oven of cast iron, the type used for cooking back in the olden days. No one ever saw the contents of that cache, but it had been gold and plenty of it. Soon afterward, Jobson quit his farming, moved to Coleman, and opened his own feed store in town. He bought a large house, a new automobile, and folks said he still had enough money in the local bank to last him till his dying day.

  Tiring of roaming aimlessly in the forest, Chester headed up a steep hollow toward sunlight. "Come on, you slowpokes. I have a good idea where we might find some of that lost treasure."

  They followed their leader up the steep ivy-covered grade, the twin girls squealing as a black snake chanced across their path. Cindy tagged along reluctantly, wishing to remain in the cool shade of the forest. It was peaceful there, the only audible sounds being the scurrying of small animals, the chorus of songbirds, and the trickling of spring water over smooth stones.

  "You coming, peckerwood?" growled Chester, waiting until Cindy had reached the plateau of hot, dry farmland. The moment she reached the choking growth of heavy thicket, Cindy felt a strange chill shudder throughout her. She crossed her arms, feeling gooseflesh prickle along the surface of her freckled skin.

  They stood there on the edge of the old Brewer place. Cindy looked across the great expanse of weedy thicket that covered a good two hundred acres, once rich bottomland brimming with row upon row of lush green tobacco. Harvey Brewer's single-story farmhouse sat close to the main highway. Its clapboard frame showed evidence of rotten wood and peeling paint, long neglected by its reclusive owner. But the heavy growth of thicket and the little house were secondary compared to the huge structure that dominated the center of the Brewer property.

  The old tobacco barn. A towering cathedral of weathered lumber topped with wide, rusty sheets of corrugated tin. Eighty feet long and forty wide, it had been the largest curing barn in Bedloe County during the turn of the century. For nearly fifty years, Brewer's barn had been the site of many a tobacco auction and community gathering. In its better days, it had even hosted a few floor-stomping square dances, the steep rafters thrumming with hoots and hollers and the rapid-fire picking of rowdy bluegrass music. But that had been years ago in an entirely different time.

  "There's gold in that old barn," stated Chester Martin as the five youngsters crouched in the dense concealment of a patch of pink-headed thistle.

  "How do you figure that?" asked Benny Arnett.

  Chester glared at the towheaded boy as if he were a born imbecile. "'Cause where else would Old Man Brewer have stashed his money? Not in no bank, that's for sure. My daddy says that he was one of the richest men in the county before his old woman croaked and he went soft in the head. The old coot probably stashed his money somewhere in that barn and forgot all about it."

  "You mean we're gonna go in there?" Susan Osborne frowned. Her twin sister also wrinkled her nose in distaste, the thought of dank earth and cobwebs coming to mind.

  "Me and Benny are," said Chester. "You sissies can just hightail it on home if you're gonna squawk around like a bunch of wet hens."

  The two boys dodged through the narrow passages of the encompassing thicket, leaving the fairer sex behind. "Aw, come on, Susan," urged Sally. "You coming too, Cindy?"

  The nine-year-old stood there for a long moment, her eyes centered on the building a hundred yards away. An odd queasiness sat heavy in her stomach, the same feeling she got before a pop quiz in school or the threat of punishment for some great wrong done. "I don't know if we should."

  Sally shrugged. "Suit yourself."

  The two girls vanished into the growth, and not wanting to be left there alone, Cindy followed.

  They all joined Chester beside a clump of wild tobacco, watching the barn as if it were some medieval fortress in a bygone age.

  "What about Old Man Brewer?" Benny asked. "What if he takes a potshot at us with that old rifle of his?"

  Chester scoffed. "He ain't even home, you idiot! Everybody in town knows he goes into Coleman for groceries every Thursday like clockwork. We could scream our fool heads off out here and no one would be the wiser."

  In the sparse shadows of the wild tobacco plant, Cindy crouched, her thoughts clashing in a strange combination of conflicting images. Darkness seemed to close in on her mind, boiling with thunderous fury. Her skin felt as if it were being pelted with the cold splatter of a sudden rain, and there was the swishing of footsteps in high weeds . . . behind her. She felt frozen to the spot, her heart beating wildly, the copper taste of fear coating her mouth.

  "Gotcha . . ."

  The rough voice seemed to sound directly behind her ear, and she fought to stifle a cry of alarm. Swallowing dryly, Cindy turned sharply and found... nothing. There was only an empty thicket there. No darkness, no cold dampness, only the hot, dry brilliance of the Tennessee summer.

  "What's the matter with you?" Chester asked her with growing irritation.

  "I thought I heard something."

  The twins' eyes grew large. "Maybe we oughta get outta here, Chester."

  "Aw, she's just trying to spook us."

  As one, they moved toward the very edge of the thicket. "How're we gonna get in? The doors are locked and chained."

  Chester grinned mischievously. "I know a way in. Come on."

  He lead the others to the western wall of the gray-wood barn. Cindy was the last one out of the bramble, and for a second, another image intruded upon her thoughts: again the cold and rain and, this time, a dull aching pain and the warmth of trickling blood. I'm shot! Oh, God help me, I've been shot! Cindy cringed at the voice, for it was somehow frighteningly familiar to her. Try as she may, though, Cindy was unable to identify the one who had gasped those horrified words. The sounds that rushed in on her thoughts at that moment —the heavy rush of a downpour, the brittle crack of lightning — distorted the desperate exclamation, causing the words to echo dully in her head.

  "Get the lead out of your butt, carrot-top!" Chester called harshly. The girl blinked, forcing the images from her mind. Chester stood at the weathered wall of the big barn, holding a loose board to one side, allowing for a narrow opening between planks. Benny and the Osborne sisters had already squeezed through into the musky darkness within.

  Cindy stared at the black opening, an awful dread gripping her. She could not explain the terrible sensation, the feeling that some heinous act had been committed there, but she knew that she should not go in. It's happening again, she warned herself. You've got to get away from this place. Get back home before you see something you'll regret for a long, long time.

  She heard her thoughts screaming at her to abandon Chester's childish treasure hunt, but still she moved forward, closing the gap between thicket and weathered barn. Despite the oppressive feeling of fear and trepidation, another emotion bled through, smothering the warnings of her mind. Curiosity. That was what propelled her to the opening in the planked wall…that enticing snare that had trapped countless victims in the inescapable grasp of disaster.

  As she squeezed through, Cin
dy peered into dusty blackness, the only light appearing as dust motes drifting through the slits between each unleveled board. Then, gradually, she spotted forms around the massive cavern of wood and tin. There were the three who had entered before her and Chester, as well as objects that had been there indefinitely: shallow ditches full of burnt charcoal and a long, casket-like box that had once served as a chest for tools, farming implements, and the like.

  "It's in here," declared Chester, letting the loose board slide back into place. "I can feel it in my bones!"

  Sally wrinkled her nose and shifted her bare feet on the cool earth of the barn's natural floor. "Sure is creepy in here. I bet the place is crawling with spiders and snakes."

  Her sister echoed her concern. "And it stinks in here, too. Smells like an old dog done crawled in here and died."

  Cindy also detected the distinct stench of decay. The putrid odor permeated the barn's stagnant air. It was the same smell that had seeped into the Biggs house when a sickly possum had crawled up under the foundation and died one summer a few years ago.

  "Aw, you're a bunch of danged crybabies!" said Chester. He strutted through the vast interior of the old curing barn, eyeing the dark corners and the cobwebbed rafters with great interest.

  "There ain't no gold here," voiced Benny, putting in his two-cents' worth despite the possibility of retribution from Chester. "I think we oughta get outta here. We're trespassing. And, besides, this joint gives me the willies."

  "Sissies," grumbled the bully. "The whole lot of you." He studied the shadowy confines of the ancient structure, his dark eyes finally settling on the dusty frame of the big tool box. "There . . . there's where I'd stash my gold if I was Old Man Brewer. And, see, it's padlocked. Why would he lock the danged box up just to protect a few rusty tools?"