Muletrain to Maggody Read Online Free PDF Page B

took the coffeepot into the kitchen and rinsed it out. “Now then,” she began as she came back into the living room, “we need to think about what to do. The gold has been in Maggody for a hundred and forty years, and I see no reason why some outsider ought to steal it from under our noses.”
    Elsie shrugged. “I agree with you, but I don’t see what we can do. We ain’t exactly of the age to go crawling into caves.”
    “And I’m allergic to mold and mildew,” said Eula with a sniffle. “My eyes turn itchy and I can barely breathe. My doctor thought it was asthma, but then he did some tests and discovered I was allergic to not only the mold and mildew, but also dust, oak tree pollen, and a goodly number of other things too numerous to mention. Some days I’m afraid to set foot out of my trailer for fear of ending up in the hospital on a respirator.”
    “My second cousin Florellen is allergic to cat dander.” Elsie put down her teacup and leaned forward as if to report some late-breaking and therefore astounding medical news.
    “She swears that when she goes into somebody’s house for the first time, she can tell right away if a cat has ever lived there, no matter how long ago. Even if it was ten years ago, she starts sneezing!”
    Lottie wondered if she was fighting a losing cause, just like the Confederates had once done. “It’s a shame your cousin isn’t allergic to gold as well. We could tie a rope around her waist and drop her into the caves.”
    “Oh, I don’t think Florellen would care for that. She’s always been afraid of the dark. Once, when we were children and she was visiting, the electricity went off and she liked to wet her pants before—”
    “The gold,” Lottie said through clenched teeth. “We need to figure out how to find the gold.”
    “Before the gold diggers start showing up,” said Eula, giggling. “I hope for their sake they don’t wander too close to Raz’s operation. They’ll end up picking buckshot out of their backsides for a month of Sundays.”
    “I thought about Raz,” Lottie admitted, “but I can’t see him helping us—or anybody else, for that matter. But we have to come up with a plan.” She picked up a notebook and a pencil. “Let’s start by listing the different parts of the problem. One would be that we don’t have any idea where the cave is.” She wrote that down, then licked the tip of the pencil and said, “What else, Eula?”
    “Well, even if we did, we don’t have any way to go more than a few feet inside it.”
    “True. Elsie?”
    “We don’t have any idea how heavy these saddlebags might prove to be, so even if we did manage to find them, we might not be able to get them out of the cave and down the ridge.”
    At least they were making progress, Lottie told herself. Making a list always helped. Earlier in the year she’d assigned her sophomore girls to make a list of all the appliances in their houses. They’d been downright flabbergasted when they had finished. “These are good points. Now let’s think of ways we might be able to locate the cave. We’ve already ruled out Raz. Diesel might have information, but I for one am not about to go knock on the door of his cave. Anybody that bites the heads off live squirrels and rabbits is not likely to be neighborly. What else?”
    “What all did this young private say about the gold?” asked Elsie. “That woman from the historical society only read a few tidbits from the journal. Maybe she skipped over something because everybody was getting restless.”
    “Or,” said Eula, beginning to bounce on the sofa, “maybe the private remembered something later and wrote himself a note in the margin. If he was delirious on account of the gangrene or blood poisoning settin’ in, nobody would have paid it much mind. He might have tried to draw a little map that turned out to look like he’d squashed a spider.”
    “Very good.” Lottie made a few notes. “I do believe you’re on to