“That’s crazy,” Audie muttered. He glanced back over his shoulder to where Annie was riding next to the horse carrying the twins, with Little Bear flanking the mount on the other side. “You haven’t indulged in any wild speculation like this with Mrs. Collins, I hope.”

  “Wouldn’t figure it was my place to do that. But you and me are old pards, so I didn’t think it’d hurt to say somethin’.” Preacher chuckled. “For one thing, even though you’re the smartest fella I’ve ever knowed, or will know, you can be downright dumb now and then. You ain’t even noticed the way Annie looks at you when she thinks you’re not payin’ attention, have you?”

  “What are you talking about? There’s been nothing of the sort to see.”

  Preacher nodded and said, “All right, you just go on tellin’ yourself that if you want to. I done my part. Anything else is up to you, old son.”

  “Old is right,” Audie muttered. “It would never work out, not in a million years.”

  Preacher didn’t think his friend sounded totally convinced of what he was saying, though.

  Nothing more was brought up about the subject as they crossed the valley. From the way Dog romped ahead of them, acting almost as playful as a puppy as he spooked rabbits out of their hiding places but didn’t bother to chase them, Preacher knew nothing threatening lurked here.

  At one point, they came across half a dozen moose. The ungainly creatures loped off at the sight of humans and horses. Dog started to chase them, but Preacher called him back.

  “Leave them moose be,” he told the hound. “They didn’t do nothin’ to you.”

  Dog just grinned, his tongue lolling from his mouth, and bounded off again to see what else he could find.

  By the time they reached the far side of the valley, Preacher judged that it was too late in the day to start the climb to the cave, which was not visible from where they were now. They would be able to go part of the way on horseback, but some of the ascent would have to be on foot.

  “We’ll get a good start first thing in the mornin’,” he told the others.

  Annie asked, “Won’t that just give Ozark’s men more time to catch up to us?”

  “Yeah, but it can’t be helped. That looks like a pretty hard climb in stretches, and we don’t want to be tryin’ it in the dark. We might be halfway up when night falls, and then we’d have to wait until mornin’ before movin’ on. We’ll be a heap more comfortable here.”

  “I’m not sure I care about comfort anymore,” Annie said. “I just want this to be over.”

  “I reckon that’s what all of us want, ma’am.”

  Annie didn’t put up any argument after that. Instead, she and Audie got busy tending to the babies while Nighthawk and Little Bear saw to the horses.

  Preacher studied the slope rising in front of them, his eyes searching for the best path to take them up to the cave he had spotted. He mapped it out in his mind and memorized all the landmarks he could find, because he knew things might look different the next day when they were actually on the mountainside.

  As usual, Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk took turns standing guard that night. By now, Preacher was convinced that Mack Ozark was waiting for them to do the work, to lead him to whatever it was Jonathan Collins had hidden. He wasn’t expecting any trouble just yet, and that was how the night went—quiet and peaceful.

  In the morning, they broke camp and started climbing toward the cave. Preacher estimated it would take them at least half the day to reach it.

  The first part of the ascent was easy. The slope was gentle enough that the horses could handle it with riders in the saddles. The trees grew close together and the riders had to weave back and forth, finding the easiest routes. But they made steady progress.

  The tree line extended more than halfway up the mountainside. Before they reached that point, the riders had to dismount and lead the horses yet again. It seemed to Preacher that they’d had to do that a lot during this journey—and they weren’t even in the highest part of the Rockies.

  Late in the morning, the trees and undergrowth thinned out and then stopped. Preacher called a halt. The people and the horses were all winded and needed a breather.

  The tree line was important for another reason. Above this spot, the mountainside was bare rock and even more rugged. Preacher gathered the others around him and announced, “Nighthawk and I are the only ones goin’ on up. The rest of you will wait here for us.”

  “If my husband hid something up there in that cave, I have a right to know what it is,” Annie objected.

  Preacher nodded. “Yes, ma’am, you sure do, and we’ll tell you what we find, you can bet a hat on that. But gettin’ up there is liable to be a rough go, and after comin’ all this way, we don’t want you fallin’ and gettin’ hurt now.”

  “I understand that, but I hate being left out of the discovery.”

  “You won’t be, in the long run,” Preacher assured her.

  Audie said, “I suppose you don’t want me coming along for the same reason. You don’t think I’m up to the task, physically.”

  Nighthawk grunted, frowned, and shook his head.

  “The big fella’s right,” Preacher said. “It ain’t that at all, Audie. I don’t want to go off and leave Miz Collins, Little Bear, and the twins down here without anybody to look after ’em. Dog’s stayin’ behind, too—”

  The big cur whined.

  “You ain’t a mountain goat, so there ain’t no use you complainin’,” Preacher told him. “Anyway, as I was sayin’, Dog’s stayin’ here, too, and I figure between the two o’ you, you’ll be a match for any trouble that rears its ugly head.”

  Audie sighed and nodded. “As usual, what you say makes sense, Preacher. I’ll stay here with the others, of course, just as you suggest. But I expect the two of you to be careful up there.”

  “Ain’t we always?”

  Audie just rolled his eyes at that. Even as a rhetorical question, it wasn’t worthy of a response.

  Preacher used his knife to cut one of their last strips of jerky in two and gnawed on half of the tough meat while he gave the other half to Nighthawk. They washed it down with swigs from their canteens and then, their meager meal finished, they started up toward the cave without looking back.

  Preacher could feel the eyes of the others on him and the giant Crow warrior, though, as they pulled themselves up the steep, rocky slope.

  Some stretches were easy enough that they could walk, but most of the time they climbed by using footholds and handholds. The mountainside wasn’t sheer, but it was steep enough that they were nearly always leaning forward and clinging to whatever grip they could find.

  They rose slowly but steadily, and Preacher knew that if he looked back over his shoulder, he would see the landscape falling away in dramatic but dizzying fashion.

  For that reason, he didn’t look back. He was about as unbothered by heights as they came, but why risk making his head spin?

  Time didn’t mean much where they were. If it hadn’t been for gradual, subtle changes in the light splashing over the peak, Preacher wouldn’t have known that it was passing.

  They reached an area that was almost straight up and down, and the rock was as flat as it could be with no little knobs or anything else to offer handholds and footholds. They would have to work their way to the side and look for a path around that obstacle. A ledge a few inches wide meandered off to the right. Preacher nodded toward it and said, “Reckon that way’s about as good as any.”

  “Umm,” Nighthawk said.

  They set out, Preacher going first. It was easier for his lean body to cling to the rock face. Nighthawk’s massive bulk made it more difficult for him.

  After a few feet, Preacher said, “I think you’re gonna have to go back down to where this ledge starts and wait there. You can’t make it, old son.”

  Nighthawk didn’t say anything, but the stubborn look that came over his face spoke volumes. Preacher tried not to sigh. It was his friend’s choice to make. They pressed on, and somehow Nighthawk managed to stick to the ledge, which angled gradually upward.

  Finally, the ledge widened out a lot, and there was plenty of room for the two men to sit down and rest for a few minutes. Preacher’s muscles were trembling from the strain, and so were Nighthawk’s.

  Preacher tugged at his earlobe and scraped a thumbnail along his jaw as he thought. He said, “If Collins hid a bunch of loot up there in that cave, how in blazes did he get it up there? There’s got to be another trail that we ain’t found yet. He didn’t bring it up the way we’ve come, that’s for sure. That ledge’d give a mountain goat the fantods!”

  Nighthawk nodded solemnly.

  With their iron constitutions, both men recovered quickly and resumed the climb. The going was easier now. They were past the worst of it, Preacher realized.

  In early afternoon, they pulled themselves up and over a slightly rounded edge of rock and rolled onto a flat area in front of the cave’s entrance. The opening in the rock wall was an irregular arch eight feet tall at its highest and perhaps twenty feet wide. Sunlight illuminated the first few feet of the cave, but beyond that, darkness hung down like a curtain.

  Directly above the cave mouth was the prominent outthrust of rock that from a distance resembled a nose. It would be easy to overlook the cave, as Preacher and Audie had done at first even with the spyglass, because the rock above it did cast an obscuring shadow.

  Preacher and Nighthawk rested again for a moment before Preacher climbed to his feet. Nighthawk took another deep breath and then stood up, as well.

  “We should’ve brought somethin’ to make a torch,” Preacher said, “but I didn’t think of it. Not sure we could’ve carried much while we were climbin’ up here, anyway. I almost felt like tossin’ these guns o’ mine away a time or two.” He grinned. “Almost.”

  Both men had keen eyes that would adjust to the shadows inside the cave. They moved forward and approached the opening warily. Up here on the side of the mountain, it was unlikely a bear or any other varmint would be holed up in there, but it never hurt to be careful.

  Preacher had his left hand extended in front of him and his right hand resting on the butt of the Colt on that side as he moved into the cave. Nighthawk was close behind him. Preacher hadn’t gone very far when he began to be able to make out shapes looming ahead of them.

  Just as he suspected, there was nothing living in this cave, although the stacks of burlap-wrapped bundles they found looked vaguely like some sort of hunched over beast. Preacher took hold of one of the bundles and hefted it.

  “A mite on the heavy side,” he said. “Looks like there’s a dozen or more of ’em, too. Let’s take this one back to some better light so we can get a good look at it.”

  The thing didn’t look like much, Preacher thought as he laid it on the ground in the cave entrance. A little more than two feet long, a foot and a half wide, maybe a foot deep. Wrapped tightly in burlap that was tied in place with sturdy twine. Preacher knelt next to the bundle, pulled his knife, worked the tip under one of those bindings, and cut the twine.

  He pulled back the burlap to reveal smaller bundles wrapped in oilcloth. About twenty of them, Preacher estimated, packed in so tightly that they had formed an almost solid block. They were wedged in together so securely that he let out a grunt of effort as he pulled one of them free.

  The slight shifting of its contents as he held it and the faint clinking he heard gave him a pretty good idea what he and Nighthawk had discovered. But he wanted to be sure, so he unwrapped the oilcloth and then opened the drawstring of the soft leather pouch he found inside.

  Upending it, Preacher poured out a glittering cascade of gold coins that made a nice-sized pile on the cave floor.

  CHAPTER 28

  Neither Preacher nor Nighthawk were money-hungry by nature. As long as they had enough funds to allow them to live the sort of life they wanted to lead, they were content.

  But there was something about the sight of a pile of gold, Preacher supposed, that made any man’s insides do a little flip-flop.

  It wasn’t greed, exactly, but he felt the urge to pick up a handful of those coins and rattle them around in his palm and let them dribble through his fingers.

  Nighthawk appeared to be feeling that impulse less than Preacher was, but even so, his dark eyes were focused raptly on the money.

  And there was more of it where that come from, Preacher thought. A lot more of it.

  “If all those bundles are full o’ pouches like this, there’s a fortune here, like Annie said.” Preacher began scooping up the coins he had dumped out and replacing them in the bag. “Thousands o’ dollars, for sure. Jonathan Collins must’ve held back a lot from his men. I reckon it ain’t surprisin’ that Ozark and some o’ the others turned against him sooner or later.” Preacher shook his head. “There just ain’t no honor among thieves, as the old sayin’ goes.”

  He closed the bag’s drawstring and wedged it back into the bundle with the others, then wrapped the burlap around it again and retied the twine.

  He wasn’t sure how they were going to get the money back down to the spot where they’d left the others. In fact, they might have to leave it here for now, and if that turned out to be the case, it would be better if the coins were protected from the elements.

  Nighthawk picked up the bundle and put it back on the stack. He turned to Preacher with a puzzled frown on his face.

  “You’re thinkin’ about what we’re gonna do with all that loot, ain’t you?” the mountain man asked. “It don’t belong to us. Annie might make a claim on it, since she was married to Collins, but when you come right down to it, that money belongs to all the folks Jonathan Collins and his gang stole it from. Problem is, how in blazes would you ever find out who all those folks are? A bunch of ’em are probably dead. We ain’t got no way of findin’ their heirs, or the ones who are still alive, for that matter. We may have to let Audie figure out this one.”

  The two men walked back out onto the open area in front of the cave and began to look around. Now that Preacher knew what was hidden in there, he was certain Jonathan Collins hadn’t brought it up that ledge.

  He supposed it was possible Collins had tied a long rope to each bundle, carried the rope up, and then hauled the bundles up one at a time by hand, but that would have been backbreaking work. Preacher’s gut told him they needed to be looking for a simpler explanation …

  He was looking up at the “nose” directly above the cave when something caught his attention. He pointed and said to Nighthawk, “Look up yonder. See those places on the front of that outcroppin’ where it looks like somethin’ has rubbed against it?”

  Nighthawk studied the rock for a moment and then nodded. Without saying anything, he moved over to the right of the cave mouth and began climbing higher, using little crevices in the rock to hold on to as he lifted himself.

  Preacher followed. They climbed around the outcropping, and once they were above it, it was Nighthawk’s turn to point.

  A trail rose in the other direction, angling up between the “nose” and the “right eye.” Because it was inclined slightly from the outer edge down to the rock face, it was all but invisible from below unless somebody knew it was there.

  The trail was wide enough for a horse to travel on it as it curved around the bulging slope of the mountainside. It would be a little tricky because it wasn’t level, but a sure-footed mount could manage it, especially if the rider got down and led the horse. Preacher spotted some droppings that confirmed an animal had been up here.

  “That’s the back door,” he said excitedly, “and gettin’ here that way looks to be a lot easier than comin’ up the way we did. That trail must wind around the mountain and come out down yonder somewhere. Collins must’ve used it to bring that loot up here on pack horses. Lowerin’ the bundles with ropes from here down to that open space in front of the cave would be a whole heap easier than haulin’ it up. The ropes are what made those marks on the rock. Blast it! Why didn’t he mark this trail on his dang map?”

  Nighthawk shrugged.

  “Yeah, I reckon he wanted to keep one thing back so anybody who got hold o’ them blankets couldn’t just waltz up here and clean out the place,” Preacher said. “I wonder if he figured on tellin’ his wife about the trail and just never got the chance before he died. Seems like that might’ve been the way it was. Likely we’ll never know for sure.”

  Nighthawk pointed down the mountain.

  “Yeah, we’ll go back down this way and let the others know what we found.” Preacher chuckled. “At least it ought to be easier goin’ down than comin’ up, and it’ll give us a chance to scout that trail.”

  Nighthawk started to nod in agreement, but then both men jerked to attention as the sound of a gunshot cracked through the thin high country air.

  No more shots blasted from below, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. In fact, it made a cold finger rake along Preacher’s spine.

  Without a word, he started across the rock outcropping toward the hidden trail he and Nighthawk had discovered. Going back down the way they had come would take too long, and besides, while they were working their slow, torturous way along that ledge, they would be perfect targets for any riflemen down below.

  Nighthawk was right on the mountain man’s heels, but both of them came to an abrupt halt as a harsh voice floated up to them.

  “Preacher! Hello, up there! You hear me, Preacher?”

  That was Mack Ozark shouting at them. Preacher recognized the outlaw leader’s grating tones. He had already decided there was a good chance Ozark was with the party pursuing them, but he had hoped that wouldn’t turn out to be the case. Ozark probably wouldn’t be as easy to outsmart as his henchmen might have been.

  He was also the most ruthless member of the gang. Preacher and his companions couldn’t expect even a shred of mercy from him.

  Preacher and Nighthawk looked at each other. Preacher could tell the big Crow warrior was leaving it up to him whether or not to respond to Ozark’s call.