Chapter 17

Jay’s turn:

I suppose as fetishes go, Lena’s is rather mild, but I am certainly no expert and we’ve only had this ONE episode.

It’s horrible. Lena’s mostly a city girl. Well, small town, but IN town. Her knowledge of livestock and animal husbandry was limited to what she saw on TV and through the window of the truck on our travels.

Now we have our little rustic hilltop homestead and it’s surrounded by cattle. With a bull. An amorous bull who had a receptive cow and consummated their relationship in full view of the two of us.

Lena MADE me service her in like manner, her on all fours, her delectable butt in the air, me behind her, hard as a rock. In full sunlight.

It’s not a very high level of exhibitionism, after all. We have a long crooked driveway from the road and there’s a heavily brushed thicket between our hilltop and the public road below. But still, outside in the sunlight.

Okay, I admit, Lena’s obvious excitement got to me, too. My orgasm was epic. I know because I ate a lot of it out of her before we stood to pull our jeans up.

“If you moo,” she said, “I will brain you with that wrench.”

“Never, honey bunny,” I said. I hauled her in for a kiss. “I’d ask what brought that on...”

“Can’t let that bull have all the fun,” she said. “And I probably feel a LOT happier than that cow.”

“You’ve got much prettier eyes,” I said. My hand teased a pert breast.

She caught that. “I’m lacking in the ‘udder’ department.”

“Silly rabbit,” I said. “These things are perfect.” I slid my hands down, grasped her hips, pulled her against me. “I couldn’t ask for better.”

“Really?” Sky-blue eyes.

“Really really.” Another kiss.

The next day we had a note in our post office box that a registered letter awaited us at the counter.

I signed for a registered letter from Texas Precious Metals.

“Baby,” I said, “We’re rich. Not ‘Bill Gates’ rich, but richer than I ever hoped.”

She’d been reading along with me. “I see that. I never loved me a rich man before...”

“You’re a rich woman, Lena.”

“Nuh-uh ... Goes with YOUR property that you owned before we were married.”

“Whatever,” I said. “We’re rich. Not stinkin’ rich, but plenty rich. I’m gonna call ‘em.”

“You can do that,” she said, “but I think we ought to get a couple more tubs and drive over there and eat another one of those steaks and have us a celebratory romp in the middle of a big, fine bed...”

“You just want me for my body,” I laughed.

“Nope. Good steaks. You take me to eat good steaks.”

“Switch places,” I said. “You drive to the bank. I’ll make the phone call.”

“And the reservation,” she said.

I thought for a second. “Second thought,” I said, “You drive home. I want to get a gun...”

“A gun? Don’t you have your pistol?”

“Yeah, but baby, we’re gonna haul a half million dollars around. I want more than a pistol...”

“You do have a point.”

We swapped places in the truck. She headed towards the hill. I got on the phone.

Ring. “Texas Precious Metals, may I help you?” in a sweet Texas drawl.

“James Harris. Could I speak with Mister Bowman?”

“Yessir. I will connect you.” I could almost see her smile.

The phone clicked. “Jayyyy. You got my mail?”

“Sure did, Randy. You gonna be there tomorrow afternoon?”

“Sure. Why?”

“We’re coming for a visit.”

“I could just do a wire transfer, Jay.”

“We have a couple more tubs, Randy. We want to turn them over to you.”

“Uh...” he sounded stunned. “Uh, okay ... early afternoon?”

“Yeah. Two-ish.”

“I’ll be here.”

“We’ll see you then. Take care.”

“Alright, buddy. You and Lena be careful.”

“Always.”

We got to the trailer. I unlocked the gate, let Lena drive us up the hill.

“What gun?” she asked.

“That shorty, the M4-gery.” (Auth, note: “M4-gery” is gun-nut speak for a civilian semi-automatic version of the US military’s M-4 automatic rifle. A ‘forgery’.)

“Mine, too?”

“Sure. Why not?” I said.

Hers is in what’s not quite as subtle as a violin case, but close. Mine’s in a black nylon carry bag along with several magazines. It’s an easy grab when we decide to go to the range. Yeah, we could shoot on our property. After all, we’re way out in the country and we have enough space and it’s entirely safe and legal, but it upsets the cattle, so we don’t.

Lena’s been familiarized. Bring a cute blonde chick to a firing range on a Saturday afternoon and you get plenty of help. We used a range made available by the local sheriff’s office, were there with a couple of deputies while I showed her the functions of a couple of guns.

She was familiar. Familiar. Knew how they worked. Could hit what she aimed at, within reason. She wasn’t Marine sniper or Navy SEAL competent, but I bet you could pick any of a hundred random women off the street and my Lena would be at the top in that particular skillset.

Her case went in the front seat with her, its zipper open.

Giggle. “I’m riding shotgun, okay?”

We drove back to the bank, went through the formalities of grabbing a couple of heavy tubs of gold coins, taking them back to the truck.

The next day we found ourselves in Randy’s office.

“Come in, come in...” he said. “You said you had more...”

“Another two tubs,” Lena said as I sat the containers down.

“You just drove through Dallas, Texas with a half-million dollars,” he stated.

“And two M-4 carbines and a SIG-Sauer pistol,” I said.

He grinned. “How very ‘cowboy’ of you...”

I was peeling the top off a container, handing him a printed spreadsheet.

He scanned the list. “Uh, Jay, some of these are gonna be quite a shock to the system.”

“How so?”

“There are forty or fifty known examples of this 1854-O coin. If yours is crap, it’s worth a hundred thousand plus. You list it as almost uncirculated. Four hundred thousand, maybe half a million.”

My knees weakened. Lena just sat in the nearest chair.

“Seriously?” she managed to squeak.

“Seriously. We’ll have to put this one up for auction, but I can almost guarantee that four hundred K number and if a few good buyers show up, that half a mill is gonna be there. Boy, I may retire off this bucket.”

“Me too,” I said.

We went through the rest of the cache. Several times he stopped and shook his head.

“Shit! Uh ... excuse me. I didn’t mean to be profane. 1856-O. If you can read the DATE on it – quarter of a million. You say ‘fine’. Half mill.” He gently handled the coin in question, having changed to white cotton gloves. “Maybe not quite half a mill. But damn!”

He paused and looked at me and Lena. “This had GOT to be a Civil War cache. Gotta be. Only way these things ... the clock stopped. Somebody cleared out the banks and made a run for it and when things got hot, they cached it.”

I remained tight-lipped.

“It’s okay. If you own the land, it’s found treasure. It’s yours,” he said. “Just damn!”

We went through the rest of the list, encasing each coin in a protective holder. He was referring to his laptop screen as he went. Finally...

“Okay, we agree on the inventory. I’ll print out this spreadsheet. Same agreement as last time?”

“That’ll work well,” I said.

“When I show up at the shows, people are going to want to shoot me,” he said. “We’re putting stuff on the market that’s going to tilt the table.”

“There’s a problem?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “Some of these are rare. Like I said, forty or fifty known examples. Those two we looked at, they’re high end in those categories. I’m not worried about them. I can get what the books value them for, at least close. You know, it behooves me to get the best price because I get a cut. The bigger the price, the bigger the cut. Nothing I’ve seen is scrap value. That’s where it’s only worth the gold in the coin. But it we dump too many on the market, we could dump the prices.”

“Uh,” I said, “if you can sell this bunch and that last bunch, we have enough to keep us going...”

“You’re gonna get a million and a half, maybe two, out of these two buckets,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of lifestyle you want, but that’s rockstar money...”

“And I’m just a poor ol’ engineer with my wife and we just want us a little house on a hill in Louisiana.”

“You can damned sure do that,” He said. “Lemme ask a question. You don’t have to answer. I’ll understand. But how many more of these...”

I looked at Lena. Her eyes gave me the go-ahead. “We have eighteen more buckets. Four of ‘em have half eagles and eagles. And we’ve got a bunch of silver. The silver’s pretty dark. It’s been in leather bags for a hundred and fifty years.”

“Here’s what I offer right now, Jay. Lena.” He took a breath. “Let me look though them, just like this, two buckets at a time. I’ll give ‘em back to you. You pay me to evaluate them. I give you a certified evaluation. We decide what to sell and when to sell it and what to just sit on. Folks, this is GOLD. You’ll always be able to get bullion value. But I think it would be wise to play the market on the really collectible coins.”

“You’re the expert,” I said.

“You can leave these here. I’ll complete the evaluation, just like last time. In a week or so I will forward you a certified evaluation, just like I did for the last bunch. And you can do thumbs up or thumbs down. Jay, Lena, I’m being fair to you. I’m making too damned much money here to cheat.”

“I have to take you at your word. My choice otherwise is to take this to another broker and let him charge me HIS bit for the same info.”