Maggie locked eyes with Silas. “Maybe someone found treasure after all,” she said.
“Hang on. Back up,” Silas said as he helped haul Wallace to his feet. “What are you saying?” The man had insisted on getting an up-close-and-personal look at the coin under the mantel. For a round old guy with a cane, he was pretty spry.
Wallace brushed fussily at the creases in his nipple-high pants. “Clean the wax out of your ears, kid! I’m saying that coin matches the description of the coins stolen in the Dead Man’s Canyon Stagecoach Robbery.”
Maggie’s mouth formed a perfect O. “The robbery that inspired the fake gold coins in all the shops in town?”
“The one and the same,” Wallace said smugly.
“Where did it happen? What were the circumstances? How can you be sure?”
“I’m not sure. But since you asked…” he said.
“Oh, boy, here we go,” Silas whispered.
“What’s in your pockets?”
Between the three of them, they came up with some cash and a tube of ChapStick. “Now, let’s say this lip gunk is the stagecoach. Part of Benjamin Updyke’s stage line, it ran from the Montana gold mines into Boise. Pulled by four of the fastest horses, that particular stage was carrying three passengers as well as four strongboxes. Two of raw gold from the mines, one of gold brick, and one of newly minted coins. All headed for the Basin Bank in Boise.”
Maggie stepped closer and watched the reenactment.
“These two dollars represent the hills on either side of Dead Man’s Canyon,” Wallace said, placing two bills two inches apart. “The coach ran weekly, leaving its overnight stop in Kinship. Dead Man’s Canyon was a four-hour ride south of here. Accounts vary, but most agree that the bandit Black Jack McGuire had intel that the coach would be running with more gold than usual. He paid a spy to hang out in Kinship watching for the coach.”
“So they could ride ahead and report when the coach was likely to leave,” she guessed.
“That’s the general consensus. When that coach entered the canyon here,” he said, moving the ChapStick between the dollar bills, “Black Jack McGuire was here. His cohorts, Bowman Potter and Samuel Espinosa, positioned themselves here and here on the ridges.” He doled out quarters to represent each player.
“Perfect place for an ambush,” Silas observed. He’d grown up playing stagecoach robbery in backyards with friends.
“It did the trick. They fired in the air, made a bunch of noise, and managed to get the whip—or driver—the conductor, and the passengers out without killing a single one. No bloodshed. They left the victims in the canyon with water and then made off with the coach, the gold, and all the passengers’ possessions.”
“Including the Minnie Franklin necklace,” Silas added.
“I was gettin’ to that,” Wallace grumbled.
“What’s the Minnie Franklin necklace?” Maggie asked, willing to play the gold star student.
“One of the passengers was the dour-faced Mrs. Minnie Margaret Franklin on her way to San Francisco, where she was meeting her banker husband. In her trunk, she’d packed the gift her father had given to her upon her eighteenth birthday. An emerald-and-sapphire necklace rumored to have belonged to the royal family of Spain. Upon her rescue a few hours later, Minnie Franklin sent a telegraph to her husband saying he had two months to return to Boston or their marriage was over.”
“And did he?” Maggie asked.
“He most certainly did. He may have been a banker, but her family was the one who owned the bank.”
“Where did the coach end up?” Silas asked, his memory a little foggy on the details.
“The stage was found days later, abandoned outside a silver mine another two hours south. Nothing but scrub brush and canyons for miles in any direction.”
“Were the outlaws caught?” Maggie asked.
“Not for that. Reports say they buried the gold and split up, making a pact to come back a year later to recover it,” Wallace said, sliding the quarters off in different directions. “Black Jack took a slug to the back of the head after a poker game in Montana. Potter took ill and died on a ranch up north. Espinosa went to prison for a bank robbery in Texas. The law tried to coax the location out of him, but he never cracked. Died from typhoid in prison when he was forty-two. No deathbed confession, much to the disappointment of treasure hunters.”
The dog proudly trotted into the room, kittens—dubbed Dolly Parton and Taco by popular vote—on his heels.