Muletrain to Maggody Read Online Free PDF Page A

be no more than muddy pits with spiders and snakes, along with bats hanging upside down on the ceilings. Bats and rats are practically kissing cousins, Dahlia, and I recollect how you carried on something awful over a little mouse in your kitchen. Eula Lemoy swore she could hear you all the way over at the Pot O’ Gold trailer park—and that’s a far piece.”
    Dahlia’s pendulous chins quivered with indignation. “I was jest worried that it might run into Kevvie Junior and Rose Marie’s room and start gnawing on ’em. Besides, I ain’t gonna crawl inside the cave. Kevvie can do that part. He ain’t afraid of anything”—she paused to reconsider—“excepting maybe Jim Bob.”
    “You don’t know where this cave is,” Eileen pointed out. “Cotter’s Ridge is a big place, and not that easy to get around since the logging trails were abandoned more than fifty years ago. Raz is probably the only person that knows which ones are accessible—and you’d better not go asking him.”
    “I don’t need the likes of Raz Buchanon to find the cave. My granny went up on the ridge ever’ summer for more than eighty years to pick berries and collect roots for her homemade medicines. She ought to know where the caves are.”
    “Wasn’t she madder than a nest of hornets when you moved her into the old folks’ home after you and Kevin got married? From what you’ve told me, she won’t even look at you when you visit.”
    Dahlia chewed on this for a minute, then said, “Well, she don’t spit at me anymore, but that may be on account of her losing her dentures. I reckon I’ll make her a real fine peach pie and pretend I want to listen to her stories so I can tell ’em to her great-grandchildren after she’s dead. That might tickle her.” She heaved herself to her feet and headed for the living room, where Kevin, his pa, and the twins were watching wrestling. “At least I got a plan.”
     
    “What we need is a plan,” said Darla Jean McIlhaney as she sucked on a straw. “The gold’s likely to be worth millions of dollars, so we could—” She stopped, wondering what it’d be like to have more money than she’d know what to do with. She was pretty sure she’d be transformed into Britney Spears and fly all over the world in a private jet, ordering her staff to make sure there were fresh flowers in her dressing room, letting them pick up her underwear off the bathroom floor, telling them to set out the garbage and feed the damn dog. If she even had a dog, for that matter. If she did, it would be one of those fluffy little things that slept on a satin pillow and never, ever slobbered on her foot.
    Heather Riley and Billy Dick McNamara were sitting on the picnic table across from her, sharing an order of nachos slathered with sliced jalapeños. Neither had been dragged to the town meeting, and they’d listened without much interest when Darla Jean told them about the Skirmish at Cotter’s Ridge.
    “Get real, Darla Jean. Why would the gold still be there after all these years?” said Heather, who would have been a pragmatist if she could spell it, which she most certainly couldn’t. “A hundred and forty years? The only thing that old around here is the dill pickles in Zanadew Buchanon’s basement.”
    “Yeah,” added Billy Dick, slapping at the bugs swirling around the outdoor lights in front of the Dairee Dee-Lishus. “You’d think somebody would have found it by now.”
    If Darla Jean hadn’t needed their help, she would have flounced back to her car and left them choking on her dust. “This woman said that nobody knew about the gold until her society got the old journal a few weeks ago. Sure, somebody might have crawled way back into some cave and found it, but on the other hand, the caves around here aren’t nothing more than holes. What’s more, the soldier was looking for one that would be hard for the Yankees to find. The entrance was probably all hidden by brush and briars.”
    “And