Piper flicked a large moth away from the glare on her glasses and watched as flames lapped up about it. Her mouth was contorted into an obvious look of disapproval and she couldn't help but feel a little accomplished when the moth fluttered out from the flames and landed a wingless shell at in the embers. One down. She looked at Tom, her friend since childhood leaning back on a log, of all things, and relaxing in the glow of the campfire. Then at Mike, the third of the infamous Three, who was busy sharpening the end of a stick with a knife she had never seen before. She swatted at a mosquito that buzzed at her neck and pulled her hoodie closer around her, all the while beginning to hate her mother for convincing her to go on this little camping trip. Across the campfire, leaned far back against a rock so only the soles of his shoes could be seen in firelight, was Mike's father. The infamous, crazy and sometimes not at all sane Charlie Buckolts. Charlie, his face momentarily lit up as he lit another cigarette, shook his head and chuckled at her.

"Well," Charlie started, leaning up and resting his elbows on his knees, lighting another cigarette with the end of the one in his mouth. "I was in college, studying music education at the University. It was the start of my junior year and I was having second thoughts. Second thoughts about what i had spent the last two years of my life doing. So I did what any guy in my shoes would do. I went up to Keystone, which was just a little place where some friends of mine worked the new resort at the time, to the bar and started to get drunk. After a while, the friends I came with picked up girls, tourists, and headed home for the night, leaving me with the bartender. A cripple named Yukon Jack. Yukon Jack looked like he had been hatched from the side of the mountain, flannel shirts, beard, unruly hair. And he had run the bar for as long as anyone could remember. There wasn't one person who had been going to the bar longer than Yukon Jack had owned it. I swear the only reason he stayed in that bar and didn't live out in a cave somewhere was because of his bum right leg."

"No one knows. Looked like someone hit it with a sledgehammer and it never got knocked back into place right. Anyway, so I sat at the bar, alone, finishing my beer. These two touristy men came up and sat beside me. I hated those guys. All clipped and groomed like dogs, pretending they could survive in nature for a day. They started talking about the tour of the silver mines they went on. Keystone's an old mining town, it has sever-"

"I know."

"They went on the tour of the mines, which are all dried up now, just tunnels through the mountains, and heard the guides telling stories of lost Colorado mines, still full of treasure. Gets them all excited about spending their money. I just laughed at them and choked back the rest of my beer. Yukon Jack slid me another one.

"Something funny, Nancy?" he asked.

"Because I was from California. "Just these fuckin' tourists. Still thinking they could find any gold here," I said. "Everyone knows the mountain's dry. Just trees an' plant-type things now. Maybe a mountain goat. Or a marmot."

"How do you know? Have you asked 'em?"

"Wha'? No, but everyone knows they're dry. Or else there'd be people here mining away at them still."

"They still mine coal, mushroom head."

"Hey, hey now. I only did the shroomies once, gave me a bad headache later."

"Like you'll have tomorrow?" Jack asked. For the record, I wasn't really all that drunk, I still knew what was going on. Obviously, I'm telling the story.

"Yessir. 'Nother beer! And one for each of my idiot touristy friends. They need it after being convinced there's still gold here."

The two men looked at me and got up and walked away, offended, without their beers. Which was my plan all along. I didn't have enough money to buy them both beers, i was just a pro at offending people so they went away. I knew most people could kick my ass in a fight. Jack opened another bottle for me and slid it over. I knocked it over and he caught it before any of it spilled.

"Be nice to the tourists, Nancy," he said. "I enjoy their money. Plus, there's always truth in any old legend."

"What? You think there's gold in them there hills?" I asked.

"I didn't say a goddam thing about gold," Jack said. I stopped drinking and started listening. You could always tell about Yukon Jack when he was just screwing with you or when he knew something you didn't. His eyes would twinkle and he'd smile just a little.
I put my beer down. "Silver?"

He nodded.

"Whadaya know, Jack?" I asked, my chin nearly on the table, looking up over my glasses.

"Only that the mountains are full of silver. It's how a couple of them got their name. ."

"They were full of silver. All the mines are empty, they dried up and most of the towns were abandoned. You can see 'em all rickety on the side o' the mountain. Only silver left in Silverthorne is the name, Jack."

"I ain't talking 'bout Silverthorne, boy. I'm surprised you never heard the legend of the Wild Irishman."

"Wild Irishman is a ski slope. Yep, over there. Except you can't ski now, there no snow and it wouldn't-"

"Where do you think the slopes got their names?"

"Mines?"

"You're catching on. Wild Irishman was a mine up in ______. The called it Wild Irishman because of the town's crazy mayor, an old man named McGinty. He slammed down a whole shit load of money and picked a place on the side of a mountain and decided to carve a town out of the bare rock. He said that there was silver to be found and he was set to make a name for the town. And he was right." Now this is when Jack started to glaze over. I was sober enough to realize he wasn't looking at me, he was looking past me, as if searching for something. And I was drunk enough to believe he actually saw something. At this point I was hugging that bottle of beer like a baby blanket with my head nearly on the bar listening to him. I might have been drooling for all I know.

"________ was the most profitable silver town for about four years. Every goddam gorgeous thing you could make out of the rock came from there. Coins, chains, silverware, jewelry, raw nuggets. The town had it's own jewler, it's own silversmith and was even authorized to ration out amounts to send to the mints to make coin, back when they made the things out of silver. Little kids carried real silver dollars in their pockets. There was even some odd happenin' between the townsmen and the native Americans and turquoise turned up all polished and set in that silver. Fetched a mighty fine price.

"Then, like all the other mines, it dried up. The miners just dug up dirt and some fool's gold here and there. Some of 'em left. The mine was abandoned."

"So fuckin' what? Same old song and gimpy dance, man. Everyo"ne's heard this story."
"Shut your face or I'll make you pay your tab.

"Except the silver kept a comin' out of _________. No one could figure it out. The mine cars just sat there on the tracks. So they had some fancy inspector of sorts treck all the ways up there to look at the mine. He came up in his suit and determined what nobody in that town was trying to hide, the mine was all but a dead hole in the mountain. The only funny thing he did see was that the sign on the mine said "Darling Anna", not Wild Irishman. But he didn't think nothin' of it. Just edited the name in the legal papers. So he left and the town went on their business for a few more months. Then the government got wind of it. Got wind of money being made off of American land that wasn't taxed and they weren't going to have any of it. So they send the authorities in to look for the source of silver.

"They didn't find a damn thing. No silver, no coins, jewelry, nothing. It looked like the jeweler had been cleaned out, the silversmith too. As if someone had come in, bundled up everything and licked his tracks clean as he left. Well, since there was no silver in the mine, no silver in the town and no one was talkin' as to where it was comin' from, the government saw it fit to close down the town. They demanded to know where the real Wild Irishman was, but anyone they'd ask would just point to the old man. In the end they didn't find the Wild Irishman so they wrote up in their official papers it didn't exist. They told all the townies to pack what they could and leave that day. Then they put a big lock on the gates and drove 'em all out."

"Why didn't anyone just spill it?" I asked, still clutching at my beer bottle. "I mean, shit.-"

"No one knows," Jack replied wiping some glasses clean and trying to pry the bottle from my hands. It didn't work, It still had a few drops left in it. "Some say it was a pact with the Native Americans. Some say the land was cursed by 'em. Most say Old Man McGinty took it all and hid it. Some say they had all the silver sewn into their clothes and blankets and such. Alls anyone knows is that when Old Man McGinty was a layin' on his death bed, his granddaughter asked him where he had hidden it all. The old man died with a smile on his face."

Jack finished his story with the kind of smile a fisherman gets when he know's the fish are biting and continued to wash and driy the glasses behind the bar. I must have sat there, staring up at him gape-jawed for a least ten minutes before I got my brilliant idea. I tossed back whatever was left in the beer bottle and slammed it down on the table.

"Damn it, Jack!" I yelled. Everyone looked up from their drinks and stared at me. The two tourists i insulted were glaring at me from their new table, I bet. East coasters always glare. As if it'll hurt somebody. "I'm going to find the Wild Irishman!"

Jack stopped cleaning the class and swayed off his bad leg. "Are you, now?"

"Uh-huh". By then I had everyone's attention. Only half of them knew what the Wild Irishman was and most of them thought it was a ski slope so they didn't understand why it would be such a huge undertaking for me to find it. And since it was August and there was no snow, they didn't know why I'd want to.

"And how do you thing you're gonna find it then? Just go pokin' around ghost towns 'till you think you found the right one?"

It was a good point. I glanced around the room. That's when i spotted it. It hung on the wall, amoung other things, in a crude wooden frame. "Ah, Jack," I said and pointed at him with my beer bottle. The answer to your very question is right under your fuckin' nose."

I danced over to the wall and stared. Most of the room had forgotten about me. Now I was just loud. "This map," I said. "Is really fuckin' old. And _______ has gotta be there somewheres."

I stared at the map with my nose practically pressed up against it until i found the tiny town of ________. I let Jack, and everyone, know I'd found it with a loud yell and punched through the glass in the fame and pulled the antique map from the wall.

"I've got my bearings," I said as I ambled out the door. I still don't know what the look on Jack's face was as I left. I was too excited to care. I was twenty-one years old, drunk and I had just stolen a treasure map off the wall in a room crowded with people. As far as I was concerned, I had everything I needed for a regular, old fashioned adventure. I had Brian's camping gear in my car, which I was no stranger to and the money in my pocket I didn't let Jack know I had to I could keep paying on tab, I had my camera and I was ready. Part of me wanted to wait until morning, go find the guys and take them with me. But I plunked into the driver's seat and stared at the steering wheel. It was then that i decided it was something I had to do on my own. I remember finding the key to start the car and never feeling more ready to drive off.