Mark and I had to go to High Butte to settle a cattle deal.  We talked Micah into going along.  I told him we could take in a Bill Cody Circus Show.  He liked the idea.  On the way back Micah suggested we stop by Canyon Town, the place where he grew up.  It was a ghost town now. It sounded like it might be fun and a bit interesting.
We stopped in town first.  The first thing Mark wanted to do was check out the General Store.  Micah told us how he use to sweep the floor for a stick of licorice.  While we were looking around, there was an open door which lead to the back of the store.  It looked like there was an entrance to a mine.  Micah told me there was many of mines around this old town. We went to check it out.  He told me just about everyone who owned a piece of property tried their hand at mining at one time or another.  He said that in ten years time there was about five miles of tunnel underneath the ground.  The payoff was few.  Most folks, including Micah's father, only had blisters to show for their work.

Mark had stayed behind.  He found an old newspaper and started to look at it when he was surprised by the sudden appearance of a big man.  He started to back up and bumped into the counter.  The lamp on the counter fell to the floor.  Micah and I heard this and headed back into the store. 

Micah recognized the man right off.  "Say.....you look familiar mister," said Micah.  Just then an older man with a crutch entered the store.  "I knew.....I knew!"  "It's young Micah."  It was Mr. Newman the bigger man was his son Herbert.  They were the only two left in town.  He invited us to supper.  We accepted his invitation.  He told us he was a windy old cuss lookin' for some ears to bend.  Micah told us he was a fine old gentleman.  You couldn't help but like the guy. 

As we started to leave Mark called to me.  "Mr. Newman and his son came thru that door so they couldn't have been in here."  "But somebody closed that door," said Mark.  "The answer is simple Mark, nobody closed it."  "Like Micah said, the wind plays tricks on ya'."  We went out to get our horses.  Mark couldn't help but look back.  The door went shut.  Mark just stood there staring at the door.  I walked up to him,  "Doors still closing on you son?"  "I guess so," said Mark.  "You wouldn't like much livin' in a ghost town, now would ya'?"  I asked.  "Guess not," said Mark.

We all gathered around the supper table.  The food was good and so was the company.  Micah asked Herbert what kept him here in this ghost town.  He told us a man could make a fair living scrapping the mines.  Mr. Newman told us that Herbert hoped to make a strike again.  Mr. Newman felt too there was a strike here.  "It was found by my boys twenty years ago."  "Found and lost."  He told us his two other sons, Austin and James timed some twenty years ago.  He told us how they were ready to make their move out of this town and get a little farm.  The boys were working the tunnels, takin' out a dollar here and there.  They broke thru this wall into a cavern that could blind you with gold croppings.  He told us how the walls were thick with chunks of gold.  He was getting some grub around while the boys worked the cavern.  There was an earthquake.  Herbert was the only one of his three sons to survive.  He only went back there once.  That was to say a prayer for his sons, may they rest in peace.  Herbert tried to find the opening but it was like it was swallowed up.  Mr. Newman invited us to stay the night.

Micah said that after supper we would go up the slopes to his old homestead.  It was getting dark, we would need some lanterns.  I asked Mr. Newman to leave the dishes for Mark and I.  He said that we could play a game of checkers for that privilege.  He told Mark if he fetched the lanterns in the back room that would take care of his share of the dishes.  Mark was all for that!  He got the lantern and started to leave when he felt someone watching him from behind the curtain.  He slowly walked over and pulled the curtain back.  There was no one there.

While we headed up the slopes I asked Micah if he knew what was bothering Herbert at supper.  He said he was always a quiet boy,  dutyous, not much different then he is now.  I just got the feeling the sooner we got out of town the better he'd like it. 

     We came across a tunnel entrance.  Micah told us how he would play a trick on his father.  He used to use it for a shortcut.  He would duck in the tunnel when they would be passing by and would come out up ahead of his father.  "Time passes quickly, doesn't it Micah?"  "Like the wind on your cheek Lucasboy."  "Here.....and then gone."  We then started off again.   

We hadn't noticed that Mark wasn't behind us.  He though he would play a trick on us, he would cut thru the tunnel like Micah did his father and come out ahead of us.  After Mark is further in the mine he feels the presence of someone or something else in there with him.  He gets deeper and deeper in the mine.  He hears someone.  "Pa?" He calls out.  no answer.  He started running.

We had gone quite a ways before we realized Mark wasn't behind us.  Micah figured He took the shortcut.  I knew how Mark loved to play tricks like this.  I decided to go back and follow him thru the tunnel.  Micah said he go ahead and wait where Mark would be coming out.

Mark heard moaning, he got even more scared.  He tried to climb up a pile of dirt to an opening but tumbled down it.  "Mark!"  "Mark!" I yelled.  He couldn't hear me.  He saw something on the other side of the tunnel.  He slowly walked over to see what it was.  There lay a skeleton.  He flinched and drew back.  Then he heard more noises.  He was relieved when he saw it was me.  "Mark! What are you doin' in there?"  "Mark.....there's nothing smart about you cutting thru these tunnels."  All the while I'm moving rock and dirt to get to him.  "You might have got lost or hurt." I said.  "I was only trying to play a trick on ya' but I found....."  I interrupted him.  "Do you realize you could have gotten hurt?"  "Do you realize how far underground you are?"  "Why did you come down this far?"  I asked.  "I didn't know where to go.....there was somebody behind me....."  said Mark.  "I was behind you son.....didn't you hear me calling?"  "No I didn't," said Mark.  As he kept looking over his shoulder.  "Mark if you ever pull a trick like this....."  I stopped talking.  I saw why Mark was distracted.  I saw the skeleton.  Mark asked me who I thought it was.  I walked over to take a look at it.  Whoever it was, they were killed with a knife.  Just then Mark called to me to bring the lantern over to him.  The walls were filled with gold. 

Mr. Newman had said that he lost two sons in the earthquake.  There was no earthquake.  The cavern was sealed off with a stick of dynamite and whoever that man was he wasn't trapped in here, he was stabbed with a knife.  I thought we better take this to Micah and let him figure it out.  Mark was telling me how he didn't think it was me behind him and that he kept hearing sounds.  I asked him what kind of sounds.  Just then he hollered "Pa!"  There was this man getting ready to hit me with a pick axe.  We struggled with each other.  I finally broke loose and went for my rifle.  He then had a huge rock ready to drop it on me.  "Alright.....hold it!" I said as I aimed my rifle at him.  I asked him if he was Austin Newman.  He just stood there looking at me. I then asked him if he was James Newman.  He went berserk.  "Your not gonna take me!" "Your not gonna take me alive!"  He started to tear the braces loose in the cavern walls. Everything started to give way.  We got out of there in a hurry.  Micah came looking for us.  I told him the place was gonna cave any second and that he needed to get us out of here.

When we got back to the Newman place Herbert told us how it was back then.  "It was brother against brother."  "There was more gold then one man could use."  "Yet they fought."  James had killed Austin.  "They fought over shares and they both lost."  "One dead, the other living the death."  "Driven mad by what he done to flesh n' kin."  James had been living in this town for twenty years without Mr. Newman ever seeing his son.  Herbert explained that his Pa's eyesight had always been poor.  "After I dynamited the cavern there was no reason to think there wasn't an earthquake."  "No cause to believe that his sons hadn't died honorable men."  "The gold was there, right within reach."  "I never touched it."  "I left Austin there just the way he died."  "James.....how could I ever explain what James was?"  asked Herbert.  He had taken care of James all these years.  James lived in the tunnels and only came out at night.  His mind was gone but he knew he was to protect the secret of the caverns.  He left his father think that he was searching for gold when he was really trapped here.  He and his father.  He had to protect this secret. 

Just then Mr. Newman got up from his nap.  He asked what had happenin'?  I told him we had been in the tunnels and that some of them had collapsed.  He got upset.  He didn't want Herbert to keep hunting for gold when it could cost him his life.  Micah told him that he and Hebert were just discussing that and thought it was time for them to get that farm. 

Mark was out on the front porch.  I went out to talk to him.  "What are you thinkin' about son?"  "For a moment there.....I really thought we were rich," said Mark.  "Well, we are. We're very rich."  "You'll realize it more and more the older you get," I said.  "What do you mean, we don't have any gold?" Asked Mark.  "No.....but.....do you remember the old oak tree back at the ranch that you use to climb when you were knee high?" "That's gold to me, Mark."  "Real gold."   "And then the fields in back of the barn, the way they look in the morning green with dew."  "And at night after a hard day's work sitting around the house with the fireplace going."  "That's a kind of gold, isn't it?"  "Your right, Pa. You know something, we really are rich."