Fortune Hunters Hero

"We've got another problem. The back-up generator's not working." In the process of replacing a dripping faucet in the kitchen, Buck looked up at his foreman with a quick frown. "You're joking, right?" Even as he asked, he knew he wasn't. David Saenz wasn't the kind of man who joked about much of anything. In fact, Buck had hired David four months ago, right after he'd arrived in Colorado and discovered the condition the ranch was in, and in all that time, he'd only seen David crack a smile a handful of times. Not, he admitted, that there was a lot to smile about. The family homestead that he'd been so anxious to claim as his and his sisters" inheritance was falling down around his ears. Needless to say, he'd been appalled when he'd first seen the place. It was in drastic need of paint and repairs, not to mention a good old-fashioned cleaning, and he blamed the previous foreman for that. Hilda was eightyfour when she died and had obviously not been able to take care of the place for quite some time. Her foreman should have stepped forward and made sure, if nothing else, that basic maintenance was done on the house, barns and equipment. Instead, the man had, apparently, collected his paycheck and done little else except take advantage of a little old lady who'd had no family to protect her. For no other reason than that, Buck had fired him. When he'd put an ad in the paper for a foreman, David was the first man to answer. Buck would have hardly described his personality as sparkling and David had had no experience as a ranch foreman. He had, however, spent the last twenty years working as a handyman for a string of apartment complexes in Denver before he was laid off after being injured in a car wreck. He was healthy again and ready to work, and when he was able to easily fix a loose handrail on the stairs, Buck hired him on the spot. Buck was the first to admit that working around the house wasn't his field of expertise. He was a stockbrokeror at least he had been until he quit to accept his inheritance. Over the course of the last four months, however, he'd come a long way when it came to working around the ranch. With David's guidance, he'd worked on the house and barn and vehicles and learned more than he wanted to about repairing leaky faucets and toilets and crumbling old fireplaces that needed new mortar. He didn't mind the workin fact, he enjoyed itbut there was no time to appreciate the progress he and David had made. Something different seemed to break every other day, and the to-do list got longer and longer and longer. It was damn frustrating. And they hadn't even begun to deal with the more serious problems that were threatening to tear the ranch in two. Fences were down, cattle were missing, and lately, he'd noticed signs of trespassers on the ranch. And he knew immediately what they were after. Gold. Oh, he knew about the lost Spanish gold mine. Who didn't? Tales of the lost mine had been circulating in the area for well over two centuries, ever since the mine was lost in a landslide in the eighteenth century. Even his great-grandfather had written in his journals about how Spanish explorers had discovered an incredible vein of gold in the wilds of what was now the Broken Arrow Ranch, but they'd been forced to abandon it after an avalanche covered the mine's entrance and forever changed all landmarks in the area. According to legend, the massive amounts of gold the Spanish had taken from the mine were nothing compared to what was still buried deep in the mountains. Not surprisingly, fortune hunters, adventurers and geologists had been looking for the mine for centuries, without success. Buck knew as long as the mine's location remained undiscovered, he would have to deal with trespassers who had no respect for what belonged to him and his sisters. For the moment, however, he had more immediate concerns. Setting down the pipe wrench he'dTurner, Linda is the author of 'Fortune Hunters Hero ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373275434 and ISBN 0373275439.