The three men shook their heads no. Then Harold added, "There used to be an Art Dawkins in Montrose. He owned a shoe store at one time-back in the seventies, I think."

"Does this Dawkins fella still own the Lucky Pup?" Roger asked.

"He's deceased. Now his heirs are in suit over it."

"I don't know what there is to fight about. That's been a dry hole for sixty years," Roger said. "Before that-at the turn of the century-it was marginal at best."

"Even if it was any good," Harold added, "the mine's too far up to haul anything down."

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"Then why would the heirs think the mine was so valuable to go to court over it?" Dean asked, the one question that had bothered him from the start.

"'Cause they're stupid," Charlie said with a smile. The others laughed.

"I can't think of another reason," Harold said. "The land's as pretty as any place God ever created but that doesn't make it worth a lot of dollars and cents. The mine's like a thousand other holes in the ground-it's outlived its time."

Charlie nodded and added, "It's too remote to build anything there and snowed in most of the year."

Dean pulled out the photocopies of the old newspaper ads requesting information on Josh published first by Edith Plotke and later by her father. He handed it to Harold who read it and passed it on to the others. "I think this is the Josh I'm asking about."

When Roger's turn came, he chuckled. "Old Ed was a piece of work, wasn't he? I wonder if anyone answered his ad and he caught up with Josh."

"You knew Ed Plotke?" Dean asked.

"Sure," Roger answered. "We all did. He was around Ouray for ten years or so. I remember the daughter, too. She was the prettiest thing in high school-at least that year. She didn't hold a candle to Suzie Clements. Suzie was a sophomore the year I graduated. Suzie really turned heads-could have been in the movies."

"A silent film star," Charlie said.

"Back when you were in high school, they hadn't invented the movies," Harold offered, then asked, "Was she as pretty as that beauty Mr. Dean was parading around the park on Thursday morning?"

It was obvious to Dean that nothing in Ouray went unobserved. He smiled. It was equally obvious that the group was uniform in their ability to poke fun at one another as well as an unsuspecting visitor. Dean half expected to be next referred to Leonidas

W. Smiley of Calaveras County-with apologies to Mark Twain-if he didn't keep the conversation on track.




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