Book Excerpt
Prologue for Superstitions by Thriller Author J. Carson Black
October 1891
Julia Thomas locked the soda shop with shaking fingers. Reiney Petrasch waited, his youthful impatience obvious in the way he paced back and forth along the corner.
“Are you sure?” Julia asked.
“I think so.” The rumble of a passing wagon drowned out Reiney’s words, but there was no mistaking the excitement in his tone.
As they hurried toward her house, Julia experienced a mixture of dread, relief, and strangled hope. It was a mercy, she told herself. The old man had never been the same after the flood. This last bout of pneumonia was worse than any that had come before.
Reiney strode briskly, hands shoved into his pockets. Julia’s hobble skirt made her take three steps to his every one.
“I wonder if he’s making it up.” Reiney caught the look she gave him and blushed. “I just meant maybe he’s delirious. You know he hasn’t been right since he took sick.”
Julia gripped her reticule with icy fingers. “You’re forgetting how he helped me hold on to the ice-cream parlor last year. You saw the gold yourself.”
“But that could be all he had. He’s been talking about that mine for years, but I never—”
“Shut up!” Julia rounded on the youth. “The man’s dying! I don’t want to talk about it now.”
As they reached the eastern outskirts of Phoenix, Julia glanced across a weedy field at the slump of adobe—all that was left of Jacob Waltz’s house. It had caved in last spring, inundated with water when the Salt River flooded its banks. Jacob had spent the night in a nearby tree, shivering in his wet clothes. He never returned to his ruin of a house. Julia wondered if his cache was still there, buried somewhere in the mud, and immediately felt guilty. It had been hard and unpleasant work, caring for an invalid, but she never blamed the old man. I like him, she thought. I wouldn’t have stuck by him if I didn’t. Certainly not for a gold mine that might not exist. Still, she felt like a vulture waiting to pick the old man’s bones clean.
It was not true. She wanted him to die because it would be a release. For him.
The little room was close and smelled of sickness. Waltz lay on the pallet, his breath rattling like a dry com husk on a breezy day. His white beard, already brittle, lay on his chest. Still, he motioned to Julia and Reiney to come near. “I have to tell you,” he mumbled. “Give me something to write with. I’ll draw the map.” He tried to sit up, but the effort was too great.
Julia placed a cool hand on his forehead. “I’ll draw the map,” she said gently. She gathered the writing materials and sat beside him. Reiney leaned close, repeating Waltz’s whispered directions in his strong, young voice. Julia dutifully wrote everything down. She attempted a map, but when Waltz saw it he shook his head. “Try again,” he said.
Hours passed. The old man grew querulous in his frustration. “You’re not paying attention, Reiney. You can walk right over that mine and miss it.”
“Yes, sir.” Reiney leaned closer. “You go over the mountain from the cow barn and then down to a spring.”
The old German tried to sit up, his eyes bright and hard in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp. “No! That’s not right! Listen. I’ll tell you one more time.”
Waltz died around six the next morning. After washing him and laying him out on the trestle table with two pesos to close his eyes, Julia went to sit outside on the bench by the door, holding the map she’d drawn last night. It was still dark, but a faint blush of apricot stained the horizon above the eastern mountains.
Reiney had gone to bed hours ago. He liked the old man, but didn’t want to wait around for what they all knew to be inevitable. Julia had stayed up all night with Waltz. She had been holding his hand when he passed on.
She had taken care of him in his declining years, and her reward was treasure—gold beyond counting. It was a fairy story come true.
Julia shivered, staring at the ragged line of mountains across the desert. It would be a dangerous trek for a woman. The Superstitions were treacherous, especially in hot weather. Some still thought they were an Apache stronghold. But as the sun peeked over the faraway peaks and spread its molten light across the desert, Julia felt only a stirring of excitement. Imagine, to be rich! All the folks who had dismissed her as a poor mulatto shopkeeper would change their tune then! The thought danced in her mind, a whirling, golden light, as golden as the nuggets Jacob Waltz had once shown her. She knew in her heart and soul that she would return a very rich woman.
From a Phoenix newspaper, September 1892: Miss Julia Thomas has traveled by wagon to the end of the Superstition Mountains in search of a gold mine and she has returned unsuccessfully.
The search for the Lost Dutchman Mine had begun.
