The Double-Jack Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) by Patrick F. McManus

let’s assume they turned north on Hastings. They get to the drainage where the mine is located and unload the wagon. They can’t leave the team alone on the road and they can’t leave supplies stacked in view for somebody to come along and steal them. They have to haul them back into the woods and out of sight. Tom thenpacks the supplies up to the mine while Sean drives the horses and wagon back to the ranch.”
    Pap got up from the table and walked over to look out a window. “I can’t stand this,” he muttered.
    Dave said, “Let’s say it takes three hours to drive to the mountains at five miles an hour and an hour to unload the wagon. That’s four hours. It takes Sean three hours to drive back from Hastings to the ranch. That’s seven hours. Sean is gone a total of about ten hours. So he spent a total of three hours going and coming on Hastings. Divide that in half. It took them an hour and a half to drive up to the drainage where the mine is. At five miles an hour, that’s seven and a half miles from the intersection with Hastings.”
    “That’s about what I calculate,” Tully said.
    “Me, too,” Pap said. “Of course, they could have turned south.”
    Tully put his finger on the map. “Don’t complicate things, Pap! This will at least put us in the ballpark of where to look for the mine. The mine was either within a range of seven and a half miles north of the intersection with Hastings or seven and a half miles south.”
    He ran his finger along the road on the map. “There are two small drainages and one big one in that seven and a half miles north of the intersection. Deadman Creek flows out of the big one right at the end of that section.” He tapped his finger on a symbol. “Look, there’s a mine symbol on top of the ridge above the second drainage. I’ll bet it’s a gold mine, too.”
    Agatha looked at the map. “Yes, it’s the Finch Mine. It’sowned by Teddy and Margaret Finch. I know both of them well. The family shut the mine down over fifty years ago, but all the buildings are still up there. It was quite an operation.”
    “Yeah, it was,” Pap said. He walked back to the table and looked at the map. “When I was just a mite, my daddy worked there for a couple of years. He’d bring me home pieces of rock and I’d pound it up with a hammer and get bits of gold out of it. I put the gold in an empty ketchup bottle. I must have had a couple ounces of gold in that bottle, but when we moved away I forgot all about it. Every once in a while I think about going back up to the mine and seeing if I can find that bottle. But they’ve got a heavy chain and a lock on the road and No Trespassing signs all over the place.”
    Dave laughed. “You let No Trespassing signs keep you out, Pap? I find that hard to believe, given a person of your character.”
    “Actually, I usually forget to bring my bolt cutter when I’m up this way. Fortunately, I had the good sense to bring it along this time.”
    “About what I figured,” Tully said.
    “I suppose I could have parked my truck at the chain and walked in but the road is pretty steep from there on,” Pap said. “Now that we’ve got the area narrowed down to seven and a half miles, we should turn up Tom’s mine in no time. How long are we going to spend looking for this mine, which may not even exist?”
    “Who knows?” Tully said. “I’d be glad to leave you here with Agatha and Bernice. They could find some chores for you, right, Agatha?”
    She put her hands on her hips and looked at Pap. “Oh my, yes, we certainly could use an old reprobate to pull some knotweed for us. We’ve been getting a terrible infestation of it the last few years.”
    Pap straightened up and stretched. “Too bad, Agatha, but this old reprobate has got to go help these boys find a lost gold mine.”
    Tully folded up his map and looked at Agatha. Somehow in the past few moments she seemed to have shrunk. Maybe it was a change of light in the room. Her