The Adventurer

her a warning glance. "One more outhouse joke and I'm through as a consultant."
    She grinned, undaunted. "Let's go see if we can find enough left of that old outhouse to tell us where the door was."
    "It probably faced the main house." Gideon glanced wistfully toward the kitchen counter. "What about lunch?"
    Sarah started to protest any further delay and then thought better of it. There was something in Gideon's expression that made her think another picnic lunch was important today. "I'll make us some sandwiches."
    Forty minutes later they paced off the distance between the toppled outhouse and the sagging back door of the cabin. Sarah held a tape measure in one hand and Gideon took the other end.
    "Twenty-five feet," he called from the back door of the cabin.
    "All right," Sarah sang out. "I'm sure this is it, Gideon. Now, if we assume that the right angle was at her back door, then the one at the outhouse door was the sixty-degree angle."
    "She could have drawn the triangle to either the right or the left of her base line," Gideon remarked.
    "We may have to measure it twice and see which point is near a white rock." Sarah glanced to the side. "Let's try it off to the right, first. The woods on that side of the house look promising. Got the measuring tape?"
    "I've got it."
    Five minutes later they came to a halt in a grove of pine and fir.
    "I only hope we're walking a reasonably straight line," Sarah said as they started to pace off the remaining side of the imaginary triangle.
    "I think we can gauge it fairly accurately this way. You getting hungry yet?" Gideon was carrying the picnic basket and seemed more interested in its contents than he did in locating the white rock.
    "No. I'm too excited. Aren't you feeling any thrill at all? We're so close."
    "Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you end up with nothing but a pile of dirt at the end of this kind of hunt."
    "Don't be so pessimistic."
    "Sarah, we walked all over this section of ground yesterday and found nothing."
    "We'll get lucky today. Today we know what we're doing."
    "I'm glad one of us does."
    But when they finished, there was no white rock at the point where the B and C of the triangle supposedly intersected. Sarah looked around, utterly baffled.
    "I don't understand it. I was so sure we'd find it using the triangle formula. Maybe we should try the other side of the clearing."
    "Maybe." Gideon glanced up at the sky. "Lunch-time"
    "Is it?"
    "Yes, it is. I vote we take a break and eat right here." Gideon settled down on the ground right at the point where the intersecting lines of the triangle should have revealed a large white boulder. He spread the checkered cloth on the thick carpet of dried pine needles and started unwrapping sandwiches.
    Reluctantly Sarah plopped down beside him. "Do you think maybe this really is a wild-goose chase, Gideon?"
    "How should I know? You're the one with the map and the sense of intuition. Here. Have some carrot sticks."
    She took a carrot and munched absently. "I wonder if I've blown this whole thing out of all proportion. This morning I was wondering if I'd been mistaken in thinking that you and the earrings are linked."
    He slanted her a glance. "Which is more important? Me or finding the earrings?"
    "You, naturally." She wrapped her arms around her knees and gazed straight ahead into the forest. "But I can't quite figure out why meeting you seemed so bound up with my finding the earrings. It's kind of weird when you think about it."
    "It was
Cache
that put the idea into your head. The coincidence of the fact that I publish a treasure-hunting magazine is probably what made you connect me to the idea of hunting down the earrings. It's logical."
    "Yes, but I don't usually operate on logic."
    "I've noticed. Have some lemonade." He poured her a cupful from the Thermos.
    "Things are getting confusing, Gideon."
    "I can see your problem. It always gets confusing when you mix a fortune in gems with the great romance of the century."
    She took that seriously. "Yes, it does. I'm worried that if we do find the jewels, you'll think I used you. How am I going to convince you that you're more important?"
    Gideon leaned over her and brushed his mouth against hers. "You are one wacky female."
    "
Interesting
. I'm an interesting female. Not wacky."
    "If you say so." He kissed her again. "You taste like lemonade."
    "So do you."
    He rolled onto his back. "What do you say we take a nap?"
    She shook her head automatically. "I never take