“Did Morgan tell you why he—I mean, why we gave you the gold?” Sadie asked, waving her hand at the jar Dwayne was still clutching.

“Because you don’t need it none,” he repeated, crawling on his knees to the honeysuckle bush. He put the jar back in the ground, carefully covered it up with sand, and set the boxes back over it.

“Did he tell you where we found the gold?” Sadie asked.

Dwayne looked at her and frowned. “No. We asked, but he wouldn’t tell us nothing. He just said this was all of it, that there weren’t no more.”

He stood up and brushed off his hands, suddenly narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “Was he telling the truth, Sadie? Is this all of it?”

She nodded. “Best as we can tell, Dwayne. There wasn’t really a mine. Jedediah had only found a large deposit of placer gold, not the source.”

“Where?” he asked, cocking his head and squinting one eye. “Was it close to a logging camp? Say, about a mile or so north of the camp?”

Sadie shook her head. “Nope,” she lied, smiling while she did, having already decided it would be best to guide the Dolans to look elsewhere. “It isn’t even in this valley, Dwayne.” She pointed toward the mountains. “It’s in the next valley over, almost in Canada.”

“The next valley!” Dwayne shouted, only to look quickly around himself again. He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You mean, we’ve been searching the wrong valley all these years? Even Frank?” He narrowed his eyes again. “Your daddy thought it was near the Prospect. And Harry and me even found flakes of placer gold here.”

Sadie shrugged. “We all thought it was here, Dwayne. But if you were to look in the valley to the west, you’d probably find several old logging camps.”

“Where?” he whispered, taking another step closer. He set his face into a puppy-dog look of pleading. “Can you at least give me a hint, Sadie?”

“Why? It’s all gone, Dwayne.”

“But there might be more.”

“Why do you need more?” she asked, waving toward the honeysuckle bush. “There’s enough there to go to Russia and bring back a dozen wives if you want.”

Dwayne was startled by the idea. “We don’t want a dozen,” he said, looking horrified again. “We only need two.” He suddenly grinned. “Morgan helped us pick them out.”

“He what?”

Dwayne strode over to his tent, picked up a magazine, and came running back to her, leafing through the pages as he ran.

“Here,” he said, slapping the page with his dirty, callused finger. “Morgan said I should pick this one.”

Sadie leaned away to focus on the page that was now being held in front of her face. A fortyish woman was smiling back at her, looking shy and a whole lot scared.

Dwayne suddenly pulled the magazine back and turned to another page. He held it up to her again. “He said Harry should pick this lady,” Dwayne said, pointing to another woman.

This one was a bit older, a bit more worn-looking, also smiling with what appeared to be… hope.

Sadie smiled at her old friend. “They’re pretty, Dwayne,” she said. “They look like they’

ll make you and Harry fine wives.”

Dwayne moved beside her, held out the magazine, and leafed through it again. “I liked this one,” he said, showing her the picture of a twenty-something woman. “I think she’s beautiful.”

“She is.”

Dwayne looked over at Sadie, his mouth lifted at one corner, his dusty gray-hazel eyes shining with wisdom. He was shaking his head at her.

“Morgan said she wasn’t beautiful,” Dwayne told her with authority, nodding his head in agreement with her husband. “Morgan said beauty isn’t here,” Dwayne elaborated, tapping the young woman’s face. “That’s it’s here,” he explained, quickly turning the page to the woman Morgan had chosen for him. Dwayne touched his finger to the older woman’s eyes, then let it trail down to stop just below the photo, where her heart would be.

“Morgan said me and Harry have to look really deep below the surface to find beauty in a woman. That if we’re wanting good wives, we won’t be tricked by a pretty face.”

Dwayne squinted one eye at her, letting the magazine drop to his side. “Like you, Sadie,” he said.

“Like me? Morgan said like me?”

“Naw,” Dwayne said, shaking his head again. “I’m saying it. Look at your hand,” he told her, waving toward her gloved right hand. “And I know you got other scars. But that didn’t stop Morgan none from picking you.” He smiled and touched her hair.

“Because you got yourself a wise husband, Sadie. He looked real deep and saw your beauty.”

A lump the size of a boulder got stuck in Sadie’s throat.

Dwayne let his finger slide down her hair until he could tug on the end of it, his grin warm and his voice tender. “You’re a beautiful lady, Sadie,” he said in a whisper. “I only hope my new wife is half as pretty as you are.”

Sadie threw herself into Dwayne’s arms and struggled to hold back tears born of the fear and uncertainty of the last three days. Her old friend wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tightly, and frantically apologized.

“Hell’s bells, Sadie,” he growled. “I didn’t mean to make you cry!”

“You didn’t,” she said. “Morgan did.”

Dwayne quickly set her away from him and scanned the bushes surrounding the campsite.

“I—I wasn’t saying you’re pretty because I want to steal you!” he shouted, backing away from Sadie as he spoke. “I was only trying to explain myself.”

Sadie couldn’t keep from smiling. “Oh, Dwayne. I didn’t mean Morgan was here,” she said. “What you said made me think of him, and that made me cry.”

Dwayne relaxed slightly and lifted his brows at her. “Just thinking about your husband makes you cry?” he asked incredulously. He took a step closer. “What happens when you actually see him in person?”

“I smile.”

Her answer confounded him. He scratched his dirty hair and squinted one eye at her.

“Does Morgan tell you you’re beautiful?” Dwayne suddenly asked.

“Every day,” she told him truthfully. “Without words.”

“How’s he do that?” Dwayne wanted to know, stepping closer.

“By his actions,” Sadie explained. “By caring and worrying about me. By scolding and lecturing and bossing me around. By making me so mad sometimes I want to spit. He also teases me every chance he gets. He carries all the heavy supplies in his pack, lightening my load when we hike. He also makes sure I’m warm at night. And safe. And by doing all that, Dwayne, Morgan is telling me every minute of every day that I’m beautiful.”

“Hell’s bells, Sadie. Am I going to have to do that kind of stuff for my wife?”

Sadie wiped another threatening tear away and nodded. “You are. And you’re going to love doing it, Dwayne. Because your wife will understand by your actions how much she means to you. Each small deed will tell her you think she’s beautiful and that you cherish her and are glad she’s agreed to share your life.”

Dwayne suddenly frowned at the ground. “I probably will have to show her instead of tell her, like your Morgan does.” He looked up, his expression confounded again.

“Because I don’t know Russian, Sadie. Me and Harry got us some tapes to listen to, but we just can’t get the hang of the language. And, according to the book that came with the tapes, their alphabet is missing some letters and has some other ones that look mighty weird.”

“The language of love is universal, Dwayne,” Sadie assured him, walking to her pack and slinging it onto her shoulders. She walked back to Dwayne and touched his arm. “It’

s also timeless, I’ve discovered. Don’t worry. You and Harry are going to do all right.

Because,” Sadie whispered, leaning over to kiss his blush-heated cheek,“you are beautiful, my good friend, deep down inside where it counts.”

Sadie walked out of Dwayne’s camp then and decided it was time she found her husband.

Chapter Twenty-four

Sadie knew the first rule of searchingfor someone was that the searchee had to stay put in order for the searcher to find him. If both parties wandered around in the same hundreds of square miles of forest, they likely would pass within yards of each other and not even know it.