Father Hortensio said, “I searched everywhere in this area and found nothing. Are you saying that I overlooked something?”
“Nope, I’m sayin’ one of us maybe overlooked somethin’, but until we find it, there ain’t no way of tellin’ which one of us missed it the first time around.” Preacher swung down from Horse’s back and went over to Esteban. He laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I know you’re disappointed, but maybe the ol’ don just hid the loot really good. Like I’ve said all along, sometimes it takes a while to find what you’re lookin’ for. We’ll head back down to camp for the night and come up here again in the mornin’. We’ll spend the whole day searchin’ on foot, takin’ a closer look at everything. Might take a few days, but if that cache is here, we’ll find it.”
Esteban looked at him. “You sound certain.”
“I am certain. And if it turns out this ain’t the right spot, we’ll push on and see if we can’t find somewheres else to look.”
Esteban smiled faintly. “You seem almost as devoted to our cause as the father and I, Preacher, and yet you have no stake in this.”
“Oh, I got a stake, all right,” Preacher said. “Once I get started on somethin’, I’m about as stubborn as one o’ them mules down yonder. That’s my stake!”
Juanita was disappointed, of course, when they didn’t return with the treasure. She smiled bravely, though, and told Esteban, “I am sure you will find it tomorrow.”
“I pray you are right,” he said.
While Preacher and the others were gone, the Yaquis had set up camp just outside the mouth of the canyon. There was grass for the mules and horses, and the river was close enough so that fetching water wasn’t a problem. They could stay here for a week if they had to.
But it wouldn’t take a week to thoroughly search that shoulder of ground at the top of the canyon, Preacher knew. If they hadn’t found the treasure in another couple of days, they would have to consider giving up on this location and moving on. That meant he and Esteban would have to start searching the canyons again for another one that matched Don Francisco’s description.
He warned himself not to borrow trouble. Tomorrow they might be lucky.
As usual, through Esteban he instructed the Yaquis to take turns standing guard during the night. Preacher rose several times to check on everything, and the rest of the time he slept lightly, with Dog beside him and Horse nearby. He knew that if there was trouble, his four-legged friends would probably be aware of it before anyone else and would warn him. The night passed quietly, however, and Preacher was fairly well rested when he rolled out of his robes the next morning.
Esteban didn’t look so chipper, and Preacher figured he’d had a hard time sleeping. The young man confirmed it over breakfast. “I spent a long time studying Don Francisco’s manuscript again,” Esteban said. “I hoped that I had overlooked something that would give us more of a clue where to search. I was wrong, though. There is nothing more in the manuscript than I have already told you, Preacher.”
“Then we just keep lookin’,” Preacher said.
“And today I will come with you,” Juanita declared.
Esteban was about to argue with her, but Preacher stopped him with a raised hand. “That probably ain’t a bad idea,” he said. “That’ll give us another pair of eyes. Fact of the matter is, I was wonderin’ if we ought to leave a couple o’them Yaquis here to watch the camp and take the other two with us to help search. They could double up on that extra hoss.”
“I think that is an excellent idea,” Juanita said, clearly glad that Preacher wasn’t going to object to her accompanying them to the top of the canyon.
Esteban shrugged, still in the grip of his discouragement. “If you think that is for the best, Preacher, then we shall do it.”
“The more eyes we got lookin’, the better,” Preacher said.
After they had eaten, the group got ready to ride. Esteban picked two of the Yaquis to go with them. Preacher thought their names were Pablo and Joaquin. Those were the names they had taken, anyway, when they converted to Christianity. Preacher doubted if they had been born with them. To tell the truth, though, he had trouble keeping the Yaquis straight. They were all grim, stocky, unfriendly-looking cusses, as far as he was concerned.
The group that rode up the canyon was twice as big as the one the day before. Preacher hoped that would make them twice as lucky, but he wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting.
When they reached the top of the canyon, he split them up, telling Juanita to stay close to her brother. One of the Yaquis he sent with Father Hortensio, and he took the other Indian with him. Again they divided the shelf into rough thirds, but today there would be two people searching in each area, and on foot rather than from horseback.
“Which one are you?” Preacher asked his companion as they started their search along the face of the cliff.
“Pablo, Señor,” the Yaqui replied.
“Well, keep your eyes open, Pablo. We’re probably lookin’ for a cave, or somethin’ like that. It’s a cinch all that loot ain’t stashed right out in the open.”
Preacher didn’t know how much Pablo understood of what he was saying, but the Yaqui nodded and seemed to know what Preacher meant. They spread out. Preacher poked under rocks and prodded at the ground and pulled aside the scrubby bushes that grew out of the cliff in places. Dog bounded around enthusiastically at first, but then sat down and looked puzzled when he realized there weren’t any rabbits up here for him to chase.
Why weren’t there any rabbits up here? Preacher suddenly asked himself. He hadn’t seen any birds in the trees or any varmints of any kind, not even a lizard. There were no tracks to indicate that deer or bears ever came up here to forage. Why not? There had to be a reason for animals to avoid the place, didn’t there?
He sniffed the air. He hadn’t really noticed it the day before, but there was a lingering trace of brimstone in the air. It was very faint, so much so that if he hadn’t been looking for something odd, he might not have smelled it even now.
More than once, he had been to the area up north of the Tetons known as Colter’s Hell, because John Colter had been the first white man to lay eyes on the place. It suited its name. Boiling water shot up out of the ground, and there were molten pools of mud and ash that gave off such a noxious scent that they sure seemed like doorways to Hades. The scent that Preacher smelled now was a little like that, only nowhere near as strong.
He knew that the geysers and the stink in Colter’s Hell came from volcanic action far below the earth. Maybe something was going on, on a much smaller level, in these mountains. Though he hadn’t seen it for himself, he had heard about an area somewhere here in Nuevo Mexico where an ancient volcano had erupted far in the past and left a layer of black, razor-sharp lava all over the ground for miles around. Maybe there was another volcano around here, long dormant but still bubbling deep in its bowels, and from time to time some of the pressure that built up was vented off through fissures in this cliff. That might be enough to make animal life avoid the place.
That was interesting as all get-out, Preacher told himself, but it didn’t put him any closer to finding the treasure. He looked along the cliff toward Pablo, who was poking around at the base of the cliff about a hundred yards away. As Preacher watched, the Yaqui suddenly straightened—
And then he was gone, vanished as if he had never been there.
SIXTEEN
Preacher stared for a second, unable to believe his eyes. Folks didn’t just disappear like that. But Pablo sure had, and there was only one explanation Preacher could think of. A moment later, as he heard faint, muffled shouts for help, that guess was confirmed.
The mountain man’s long legs carried him quickly toward the spot where Pablo had vanished. Preacher was running by the time he got there. When he reached the place, he dropped to his knees beside a hole in the ground, an irregular circle a little less than three feet in diameter. It was located right against the base of t
he cliff, and enough sunlight penetrated the hole so that Preacher could see that it sloped backward, underneath the huge stone wall.
He couldn’t see Pablo. He could hear the Yaqui’s frantic cries, however. He leaned over the hole and called, “Pablo! I’m here! Hang on, dang it!”
Preacher turned his head and saw that Horse and Dog had followed him over here, as he expected. There was a rope coiled on the big horse’s saddle. Preacher sprang up and ran to get it.
He was uncoiling the rope as he reached the hole again. He said, “I’m gonna throw a rope down to you, Pablo. Grab onto it, and I’ll haul you out of there.”
“H-hurry, Señor!” The Yaqui’s usual stolid demeanor had deserted him. “I cannot hold on much longer! My hands . . . they slip!”
Preacher tossed the rope down the hole, paying out as much of it as he could and still keep a good grip on it. “There it is! Grab hold!”
“I . . . I cannot! Señor—!”
Pablo screamed as he slipped and fell. Preacher grimaced, knowing that this hole in the ground might be hundreds of feet deep. He expected to hear Pablo screaming for a long time as he fell....
But a mere heartbeat later, there was a heavy thud and a pained grunt that echoed in the narrow shaft. After a moment, Pablo said, “Señor?”
“You all right, Pablo?”
“Sí. The fall, she was a short one.”
“Can you see anything?”
“No, Señor. All is dark.”
Preacher began pulling up the rope. “Well, if you’re set good, don’t move. No tellin’ if there are any other holes down there. You go to rustlin’ around and you might fall again.”
“I will not move, Señor.”
Confident that Pablo would be all right if he just stayed calm and still, Preacher hurried over to the nearest trees and found a branch that had broken off sometime in the past. He brought it back to the hole and pulled up some dry grass that he wrapped around one end of the branch and tied in place. He tied the rope to the other end of the branch. Then he gathered some more grass, took flint and steel from his pouch, and quickly struck some sparks to get a fire going. When he had a tiny flame and a little curl of smoke, he leaned over and puffed on it until it grew into a large enough fire so that he could light the makeshift torch.
He turned to the hole in the ground and called into it, “I’m gonna lower a torch to you, Pablo, so you can see where you are.”
“Sí, señor.”
Preacher lowered the torch into the hole. The glare from it lit up the slanting shaft. The rough walls told Preacher that it was a natural opening in the earth, not man-made.
But a man could have taken advantage of it. Don Francisco Alvarez, to be precise.
Preacher was trying not to think about that. The important thing right now was to get Pablo out of there. The torch dropped out of sight, but a second later he felt the tension in the rope change. “I have the torch, Señor,” Pablo called, his voice echoing. “Madre de Dios!”
“What is it?”
“Señor,” Pablo said, his voice shaking a little now, “we have found the treasure.”
Preacher’s heart pounded harder. “You’re sure?” he called down.
“There are wooden chests and big bags, just as the padre told us there would be. What else could it be? Do you want me to open some of them?”
“No, just hang on a minute,” Preacher said. “What’s the cave like?”
“Not too big. Large enough for the treasure, but not much more.”
“Any other holes that lead deeper?”
“No, only some small cracks in the rock.” Pablo paused. “It smells bad in here.”
Preacher could smell it, too, wafting up from down below. Gas from somewhere deeper in the earth had to be seeping through those cracks in the cave wall. If a fella was shut up in there, it might be potent enough to choke him to death. As long as the shaft to the surface was open, though, Preacher figured they could stand to breathe the stuff.
“Untie the rope from the torch,” he told Pablo. While the Yaqui was doing that, Preacher tied the other end to Horse’s saddle.
“It is loose, Señor.”
“All right. I’m comin’ down. I’m gonna fire a shot first, though, so the others will come on over here. Just in case somethin’ goes wrong and we need some help.”
He pulled out one of his pistols, cocked it, and fired into the deep blue sky. Then he reloaded the pistol and tucked it behind his belt again.
With that done, he positioned Horse near the hole in the ground and ordered, “Stay right there, old hoss. Don’t move.”
He gripped the rope tightly and started lowering himself into the hole. Dog whined worriedly as his master disappeared into the earth.
The rocks scraped a little hide off Preacher as he slid over them. When he looked over his shoulder he could see a red glow in the darkness that came from the torch Pablo held. About fifteen feet below the surface, the slanting shaft turned and dropped straight down. Preacher’s legs dangled over the edge, and the feeling of empty air underneath him made his hands tighten instinctively on the rope.
“It is not far, Señor,” Pablo said. “Only a few feet.”
Preacher hung over the edge, looked around, and saw that Pablo was right. The floor of the cave was only a couple of feet below his boots. He let go of the rope and dropped the rest of the way, landing lithely.
As he straightened, he looked around. The cave was a rough square, about fifteen feet on a side. Pablo stood holding the torch in front of a stack of about a dozen wooden chests. Next to the chests was a pile of sailcloth bags. Preacher stepped over to them and rested a hand for a moment on one of the bags. He could feel some sort of solid object through the cloth.
He had known about the lost treasure of Mission Santo Domingo for only a few days. Finding it had not been a long-held goal for him, the way it was for Esteban and Juanita and Father Hortensio. Yet Preacher still felt a fierce sense of exultation for a moment. As he had tried to explain to the priest, he was not an overly religious man in the traditional sense, but it would give him some satisfaction to see these artifacts returned to their proper place, instead of being hidden away underneath the ground.
“It is the treasure we seek, Señor?” Pablo asked.
“Yep, it sure is,” Preacher replied. He moved over to one of the wooden chests. At this elevation the air was fairly dry, even in the cave, so the wood hadn’t deteriorated much in a hundred and fifty years. A simple brass latch held the lid closed. There was no lock. Preacher turned the latch and lifted the lid. The guttering light from the torch shone dully on the gold ingots stacked inside the chest.
“Madre de Dios,” Pablo said again, this time in a breathless half whisper.
“Yeah,” Preacher agreed.
He lifted his head as he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats on the surface. A moment later, Esteban called, “Preacher! Are you down there?”
“We’re here,” Preacher said, raising his voice so that it echoed in the close confines of the cave. “And so is the treasure!”
“Praise be to God!” That exclamation came from Father Hortensio.
Juanita asked, “Are you all right?”
“And where is Pablo?” Esteban added.
“Pablo’s here with me, and we’re both fine,” Preacher replied. “Hang on a minute, and we’ll climb out.”
“We leave the treasure here, Señor?” Pablo asked, sounding surprised.
“Just for now,” Preacher assured him. “That torch ain’t gonna last much longer. We’ll have to get some better light down here, and then we’ll figure out how to get the treasure up to the surface.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. . . . It ain’t goin’ anywhere until we move it.”
At Preacher’s urging, Pablo climbed out of the cave first. He set the torch aside and grasped the rope, and Preacher gave him a boost that enabled him to reach the slanted part of the shaft. From there he was able to scramble to the surface on his own, although Esteban
and Joaquin stood ready to help him if need be. Preacher went up next. When he emerged from the hole, Juanita threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.
“Please, Señorita,” Father Hortensio said stiffly in disapproval, “there is no need for such a display.”
“Without Preacher we might never have found the treasure, Father,” Esteban said. He extended a hand to the mountain man. “He deserves our thanks.”
Preacher shook hands with the young man. “It was Pablo who found the cave,” he pointed out.
The Yaqui grunted and said, “By falling into it, Señor. I thought I was a dead man.”
“I was a mite concerned about you when you slipped off that edge,” Preacher admitted. “Without any light down there, there was no way of knowin’ just how deep the cave was or how far the drop was gonna be.”
“Just far enough to twist my ankle a bit when I landed . . . a price I will gladly pay to do the Lord’s work.”
Juanita hugged him, too, making the grim-faced Yaqui look a little uncomfortable, and Esteban slapped him on the back. Father Hortensio was too busy praying to issue any congratulations.
Preacher knelt and studied the hole. Now that they knew where the treasure was, there was no hurry about retrieving it, so he decided to indulge his curiosity. “I rode along here yesterday,” he said to no one in particular. “I should’ve noticed a hole this big.”
“But it was not that big, Señor,” Pablo said. “It was small, like the burrow of an animal, and I had to move a rock aside to get a good look at it. When I did, the ground gave way beneath my feet and I fell.”
“Yeah, the way you dropped out of sight, I figured somethin’ like that must’ve happened. Maybe ol’ Don Francisco and his men filled in most of the upper part o’ the openin’ and rolled that rock over it as a landmark. They could’ve figured that they would dig back down to the cave when they came back for the loot.”
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