“Hell, no. I’m not the law. Haven’t even a private license in this state.”
“It’s down the street here — couple of buildin’s past Windrow’s store.” Strenk’s flapping jeans led the way past the old bank building on the corner, across Eureka Street and east, past the dark fronts of shuttered buildings on the north side of the highway leading in from Black Hawk.
“Right acrost yonder,” Strenk pointed south across the bottom of the canyon to the steep barren slope rising beyond, “is our ol’ cabin — Pete’s an’ mine. You can see it in the daytime, settin’ there all by itse’f—”
He stopped abruptly, sucking in his breath. “Looks like a light up there right now. That’s what it is. See it yonder?”
His voice and his pointing finger shook with excitement.
Shayne saw a light flicker like a will-o’-the-wisp a couple of hundred feet up the opposite slope and some distance east. It flickered out as he looked.
“Ghost lights,” Cal Strenk whispered, awed. “Nobody up there now with Ol’ Pete dead. Ghost lights. That’s what. Ha’nting our ol’ cabin.”
The light appeared again in the cabin high on the slope. It shone steadily.
“That’s a flashlight,” Shayne scoffed. “Ghosts aren’t that modern. How do we get up there?”
“They’s a path right acrost the street here. Leads over the end of the flume an’ up the hill. What you reckon—”