Skunk Hunt by J. Clayton Rogers

said finally.
    "You sure?" Jeremy said.
    "I concentrated."
    "That's good," her elder brother answered
with a sneer that brought out not the best but the most familiar in
him. "Did you do the underscore?"
    "Just my secret word," Barbara said.
    Jeremy took her place, added the underscore,
then craned his head up at us. "Assume the position."
    By the time we had turned away he had already
typed in his password.
    "Done," he announced, hitting Enter.
    I was annoyed that he had made us look away.
There was no way I could have deciphered the blur of his fingers.
But before I could file my vapid complaint the computer screen went
into convulsions that resolved into a tunnel-vision light show.
    "Bells and whistles," Jeremy snarled. "Come
on, Dad. Just the facts."
    The light condensed into a diamond-shaped
image with what seemed to be words stenciled on each facet. The
diamond exploded and the words shot out in all directions, then
floated down onto the calm pond of the screen and scooted back and
forth like waterbugs looking for an escape until, finally, they
resigned themselves to captivity and settled into sentences.
    "About time," Jeremy said, looking at the
clock. "He just wasted two minutes with this crap."
    Barbara and I squeezed our brother from
either side. To my surprise he accepted this intrusion on his
personal space, it being the price he had to pay for being the
master of ceremonies.
    We read:
    Ammo lockers into
ploughshares. The leftovers of the old war include socks and
underwear, not very well cleaned. Hidden away, the gin bottle
scrambles the scrambled brain. A nip here and there from the secret
compartment .
    We waited for more words to appear. Perhaps a
map, an X marks the spot. But I didn't think that was necessary. My
heart was racing.
    "Nothing else?" Barbara gnawed on her gum
another moment, then wailed, "I really have to go to the
toilet."
    Either her distress had stripped away her
culture, or the years had coarsened her language. When I last saw
her, she employed the much more refined 'little girls tinkle
room'.
    "I won't hold you back," Jeremy said
graciously. I merely shrugged.
    Barbara raced away.
    "Should we tell her if anything else shows
up?" Jeremy said, nodding at the screen.
    He was still a mean bastard. Too bad for him
betrayal had already entered my mind.
    I didn't answer him. He waited for more
juice from Pseudo-Skunk, but I knew the cyberwell was dry. The
message was complete. The secret compartment was a mild puzzle, but
the rest was clear. The real conundrum was Jeremy's pose of
irritated ignorance. Unless he had suddenly become a retard—a
reasonable if narrow possibility—he had to know as well as I did
the meaning of the text. It was more likely that he saw the same
opportunity as I did: screw bro and
sis . I wondered if he was going through a process of
self-justification similar to what was schmoozing through my own
mind. I deserved the money because I was maintaining the old
homestead. It was true that none of us placed any nostalgic value
in Oregon Hill. True, also, that I only stayed because of my own
profound inertia. But did I deserve all of the hidden loot? Only to the degree that
my siblings did—and none of us did. The entirety was broken into
thirds, and the thirds dissolved into nothing.
    Looking at all viewpoints isn't very
profitable. Truly, I jumped off of that path real quick.
    Jeremy was one helluva an actor,
though. His fingers curled on the tabletop in a spasm of suspense.
I glanced at the floor and saw the same jiggling of the legs that
accompanied all his nervous moments when we were kids. He tried
urging the computer along with a couple of bursts of
humming. Come on, follow the bouncing
cursor! Show us what you've got! But
www.treasure447.com was not in the mood for music. We stared at the
time in the tray at the bottom of the screen. Fifteen minutes was
almost gone.
    Barbara reappeared, looking relieved and
anxious. I glanced back down at the screen, but a moment