Only 03 - Only You

with a couple of his mustangs for packhorses.”
    “Take the two Shaggies,” Caleb said. “And get Eve a desert mount, too. Her old pony wouldn’t make it.”
    “I was thinking of the lineback dun,” Reno said. “She didn’t foal this year.”
    Caleb nodded, then said bluntly, “Horses are the least of your problems.”
    “Water,” Reno answered.
    “That’s one, but not the worst.”
    Eve made a questioning sound.
    “The worst problem,” Caleb said, “is finding the mine—if the damned thing exists. Or were you expecting to find a sign saying, ‘Dig here’?”
    “Hell no. I was expecting a carnival barker and dancing elephants to point the way,” Reno drawled. “Now, don’t you go telling me there won’t be any. It will plumb break my poor little heart.”
    Caleb laughed and shook his head.
    “All fooling aside,” he said a moment later, “how do you expect to find the mine?”
    “Mining leaves marks on the land.”
    “Don’t count on it. It’s been two hundred years. Long enough for trees to grow right over any signs of mining.”
    “I’m not a bad geologist,” Reno said. “I know what kind of rock to look for.”
    Caleb looked at Eve. “What about you? Think you can come close enough with that journal to find a mine?”
    “If not, there’s always the Spanish needles,” she said.
    “What?”
    Eve reached into the front pocket of her faded dress. A moment later she brought out a small, leather-wrapped bundle. When she unrolled the leather, two slim metal rods fell into her palm with a musical sound.
    “These,” she said.
    “Spanish dip needles,” Reno explained to Caleb. “They’re supposed to find buried treasure, not metal ore or water.” Reno looked at Eve. “Where are the other two?”
    She blinked, then understood. “Don said his ancestors had figured out that two worked as well as four, and were easier to use.”
    “Hell’s fire,” Caleb said in disgust. “You’d be lucky to find the floor with those.”
    “What do you mean?” Eve asked.
    “They’re damned hard to use,” said Reno. “I’ve never tried it with two, though. God knows it can’t be worse than four.” He looked at Eve. “Have you ever used them?”
    “No.”
    Reno held out his hand. She dropped the small rods on his palm without touching his skin with her fingers.
    “Look close,” Reno said to Eve. “The idea is to keep the needles touching on the forked end.”
    “At the tips?” Eve asked.
    “No. At the base. Interlocked but moving easily, able to respond to the least change.”
    Eve watched, frowning. The notch of each Y was so shallow that it offered no real aid in keeping the rods together.
    Delicately Reno brought the narrow metal sticks together until they barely met at the base of thewide Y. Breathing very lightly so as not to break the contact, he held them out for Eve to see.
    “Kind of like this,” Reno said. “Just kissing, mind you. No real pressure.”
    “Doesn’t look all that hard,” Caleb said.
    “Not when one person is holding both rods. But they don’t work that way. Takes two people, one rod each.”
    “No fooling?” asked Caleb. “Give me one of those.”
    Eve watched while Reno handed over one slim metal stick and kept the other. They indeed looked like needles when held in the men’s large hands.
    Large, but not clumsy. Reno and Caleb had unusually fine coordination. Eve had seen both men use their fingers with the delicate precision of a butterfly landing on a flower.
    Indeed, very quickly Caleb had matched the flattened notch on his needle with the one on Reno’s. Keeping them barely touching was more difficult. Even so, it was only a moment before Caleb mastered it.
    “See. Nothing to it,” Caleb said.
    “Uh-huh,” drawled Reno. “Now let’s take a walk around the table.”
    Caleb gave him a startled look. “With the needles touching?”
    “Every step of the way,” Reno said. “Just kissing, mind you. No shoving.”
    A grunt was Caleb’s only answer. The two men stood, matched needles, and looked at each other.
    “On three,” Caleb said. “One…two…three.”
    They took a step.
    Instantly the small rods separated.
    The second time, Caleb tried applying more pressure when he took a step.
    The rods crossed like swords.
    The third time the men tried, the rods clashed, slipped, and drew apart.
    “Damn,” Caleb said.
    He flipped the dowsing rod end over end on his palm several times, then shot it toward Reno without