Stainless steel pressed against his skull. His finger trembled on the icy trigger.
“I’m sorry.”
Click.
Cold breath foamed at his mouth. He had won the game of chance.
For the third time today.
Barren trees clawed at his coat. Dead grass sank beneath his feet. This was it. The only patch of tribal land whose innocence was undefiled by white hands.
This was his last chance.
The screen was blank. The alarm silent. The battery nearly dead.
A twig snapped. He paid no heed. The twigs always snapped. But no one was ever there.
Darkness crept over him. The ground was painted black. Time to go home.
But what would he tell her? What would he tell the girls?
And what would he tell the mortgage company?
There was no going back.
His light flickered. A dim pale circle led the way.
Ghostly wind cut through him like a thousand knives. His coat swayed, unbuttoned.
The alarm whined. Shallow. He could reach it with his trowel.
As he swiped at the dirt, his heart sank. Another pull tab. Better than a false reading.
Something shrieked in the night. A coyote? A mountain lion? They were here. And bear scat littered the ground.
The alarm whined again. With a dreadful sigh, he traced an X with the coil. When the screen jumped to life, the blood froze in his veins.
There was something down there. Deep.
Throwing the detector to the ground, he unstrapped his bag and began.
A mound of dirt grew behind him as he slapped the wind with his shovel. The trees watched without expression. They knew if this was it. They were here when it happened. When Jake Hunt, an Indian older than God, had buried it over a hundred years ago.
Had he found it? They’d dare not say.
He poked the foot-deep wound he had gouged in the earth. The pinpointer did not make a sound.
Two feet down. Still nothing.
He pulled tight his gloves and wiped his face. But it was too cold to sweat.
Three feet. Four feet. Five feet.
He crawled out of the hole and snaked down the coil.
One foot to go.
His heart pounded. Even the trees shook with suspense. He stood in the hole, the top of his head level with the ground, digging and digging.
Then his shovel bucked. The sound of metal rang out.
He dropped to his knees, sifting through the dirt. A can surfaced. Then another. And another. He scooped up a can like one of his daughters. Caressed it, even. Brown stained his hands.
With his knife, he cracked open the lid. Gold coins winked back.
This was it. His wife wouldn’t leave him. His kids wouldn’t need to pack up and sell all the things he had bought them.
There was a future after all.
Stowing the cans in his backpack, he hoisted himself out of the hole, being sure to scan it with the coil one last time.
The sun smiled in the middle of a clear sky. The trees were dressed for summer, dancing in their green gowns. The earth seemed to rejoice as if the crater he had left in her delicate face was no insult.
Sweat drenched his clothes. Black spots peppered his vision. He couldn’t find the felled tree he had sat on earlier. Leaning forward, he tried to compensate for the added weight. Easily a million dollars of it.
Halfway up the forgotten wagon trail, he saw something in the woods that wasn’t there earlier. Not yesterday. Not the day before.
Not for the last hundred years.
A wooden shack with metal sheets for a roof. It sat along the creek. Smoke puffed from its narrow chimney. A horse grazed beside a wagon.
Something locked behind him. He spun around—the gold throwing his balance—and gasped.
There he stood. Just like in the old newspaper photo. A worn gambler’s hat. A wrinkled tan face. Two beady eyes. And the black barrel of a lever gun in his bony hands.
Jake Hunt.
Weeks later, the body of a trespasser who had been digging on Indian burial grounds was found with a gunshot wound to his head. The police have determined it to be a suicide.
This story was a writing exercise based on a true story and the following prompt: Write a story that starts with a cliffhanger.
