Page 65 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Grace blushed and looked away.
She dug her toes into the grass and leaned back on both hands. The rock underneath her right palm shifted, and her fingers brushed something in the dirt. Something hard. Something too smooth for a root and too… regular for a rock, and its edge caught under her fingernail.
She glanced down.
A corner of something poked out of the earth about two inches from where her hand rested. Dark, crusted with dirt, but underneath the crust—
She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and pulled.
The ground gave it up easily, as if it’d only been holding on out of habit. A chunk about the size of her thumb. A heavy one. She’d held enough cheap metal in her life to know the difference. Tin was light and rattled hollow. Copper had a specific warmth to it.
This wasdenseand cool. When she rubbed her thumb across the surface, the dirt came away in a streak, and the metal underneath caught the sun in a white flash that made her squint.
Jonah lifted his hat off his face. “What’cha got?”
Grace turned the chunk over. Rubbed more dirt off. The whole surface gleamed now, with luster that pewter or nickel lacked. Grace had seen enough of those with the street vendors in New York, who polished the cheap stuff up and sold it as genuine to tourists who didn’t know better.
Grace knew better.
“I think...” She held it up. “I think this is silver.”
Four heads turned.
Mason scrambled up from the grass so fast his hat flew off. Jonah rolled onto his knees. Thomas closed his notebook. Logan straightened from the stream and crossed to her in three strides.
She held it out on her open palm.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Mason picked it up and turned it over, tested the weight in his own hand, then bit the edge—actuallybitit—and pulled back with wide eyes. “Soft. It’s soft. That’s silver, alright.”
“Lemme see.” Jonah took it from Mason and held it up to the light. “Heavy little thing. How much you reckon?”
“Hard to say without a scale.” Mason rubbed his chin. “Couple of ounces, maybe? Two, three?”
“What’s silver goin’ for these days?” Thomas had abandoned his tree trunk and joined the huddle. “Dollar an ounce? Dollar and change?”
“More’n that.” Mason’s voice picked up speed, the way it did when numbers got involved, because Mason Foster had a head for figures that none of his brothers came close to matching. “Silver’s been runnin’ about a dollar-fifteen per troy ounce out of Leadville. If that chunk’s two ounces, that’s two dollars and change. If it’s closer to three—”
“Three dollars?” Jonah whistled. “For a rock she pulled out of theground?”
“It ain’t a rock, Jonah. It’sore. Well, not ore exactly—it’s a nugget. Native silver. Just sittin’ there in the dirt as if God dropped it out of His pocket.”
“Pitkin started as a mining town.” Thomas crossed his arms. “Half the claims in the county ran silver before the big mines played out. This probably broke off a vein near the surface, and the creek washed it down.”
“So, there could bemore?” Mason’s eyes went wide. “If the creek brought this one down—”
“Don’t start.” Logan shook his head. “Nobody’s startin’ a minin’ operation in the high pasture.”
“I ain’t sayin’ a minin’ operation, I’m sayin’ we couldlook—”
“Mason.”
“Just alittlelook—”
“It’sGrace’s.”
That shut everybody up.
Logan took the nugget from Jonah and set it back on Grace’s palm. His fingers brushed hers during the transfer, just barely, enough that she registered the calluses and the warmth and the way he curved his hand around the silver like he wanted to make sure it landed safely.
