Chapter 49

“We’re keeping this money for ourselves! They’d probably never find where it came from and some crooked government official would wind up with it. This money belongs to all of us. I’ve already thought about putting it back for us to buy some land with one day.”

“You mean our own land? Not more land there on Crow Ridge?” Isaac asked.

“Yep, our own land. I hope each of us can own a big spread, like our dads do. I kind of want to own my own ranch one day, separate from Crow Ridge ... Don’t all of you?”

“Hell yeah!” Ezra said and they all agreed.

“Eli, that’s forty thousand each, are you sure you want to split it even-up six ways?” Pike asked.

“We’re brothers, Pike, and what one has, we all share!”

They’d made their way back to the far depths of the cave, where they found two more skulls and lots of scattered bones.

“Hey, look at this!” Micah said as he reached into the pile of bones and pulled out an Army Colt revolver still in fair condition.

“Here’s another one over here and here’s two Springfield rifles under this pile of bones too,” Isaac said as Eli held the torch over his head.

“Eli!” Ezra shouted, pulling his pistol and pointing toward three large rattlesnakes balled up in a shallow hole, in what appeared to be a partially buried wooden box.

“Don’t shoot in this cave! That would break our ear drums. Kill them with a stick! They’re too cold to strike very far, even if they can strike at all,” Eli told Ezra before his brother could fire off a shot at the snakes.

“Here, use this,” Pike said as he grabbed a wooden handle sticking out of the dirt. He pulled it up and it was a long handle shovel.

“Hand me that shovel, I’ll get us some snake meat to go along with that deer meat we have on the fire,” Micah said as he grabbed the shovel and took a whack at one snake’s head. Three quick, strong stabs at the snakes with the blade of the shovel, and he’d chopped off their heads, leaving them in a writhing, bloody ball.

“Take your shovel and move them out of the way. We need to see if this really is a wooden trunk or maybe even a strongbox. There may even be more loot buried here,” Eli told him as they closed in around the boards that lay partially buried in the shallow hole.

Micah stepped on the shovel, pushing the blade deep into the sandy soil. He felt it scrape against something and looked around at the rest of them with a grin.

In a matter of minutes, he’d uncovered the remainder of what had once been a strongbox made of wood and metal. There, where the bottom still remained intact, were six canvas bags with faded writing stamped on the sides.

“Can you make out what it says?” Eli asked as he held his torch closer.

“U.S. Mint - Denver Colorado!” Pike exclaimed as he knelt to look closely.

“Is that bag as heavy as it looks?” Ezra asked, laughing as he too reached for a bag.

They already knew what was inside those six canvas bags!

How much? was the next question.

“Open that one, Ezra. We need to see exactly what we’ve uncovered,” Eli said as they knelt in a circle around the shallow hole where the remains of the box still lay in the dirt.

Ezra slipped the point of his knife under the knot where the heavy lacing was tied. Each of the six bags were tied identically, with rawhide laces pulling the drawstring top closed.

Without making so much as a nick in the faded canvas material, Ezra cut through the leather lacing then pulled the bag open to look inside.

“Damn, Eli. This bag is full of gold coins!” He exclaimed as he held a handful of the heavy coins up to show them.

“Can you see what denomination they are?” Isaac asked.

“Twenty dollar gold coins! There must be at least three or four hundred in this one bag.”

“What will the bag weigh?” Eli asked.

“Heck, as much as thirty pounds, I’d guess – maybe more,” Pike said, hefting his bag in front of him with both hands.

“I agree,” Ezra told him as he looked up to see the others grinning at their good fortune.

“Count the coins in that one, Ezra. All gold coins weigh just a little over an ounce,” Eli told them.

With Eli holding the light over him, Ezra counted the coins out on top of two boards laying side by side.

“Four hundred exactly!” Ezra said as they all knelt close to see the stacks of gold coins.

“That’s eight thousand dollars per bag if they’re all the same and we have six bags of coins. Not a bad find for six Young Bucks out on their first deer hunt alone!” Eli said, and they laughed together.

“Bring the bags up front near the fire. We’ll search this place good before we leave for home. We need to get a hard count on all the money we’ve found too. I think the six of us can buy some pretty damn good cattle grazing land with all this loot!” Eli told them as he reached over to pick up a heavy canvas bag before standing.

“Eli, where do you reckon all this money and gold came from?” Micah asked as they sat around the fire eating the roasted snake meat along with tender morsels of deer meat they’d sliced off.

“I doubt all this money and gold came from one robbery. That would have been one heck of a haul. That is, unless it came from a train robbery that had this much paper money and gold being shipped at once.

“We’ll never know for sure if the gold coins were newly minted and being shipped from the Denver mint. That would be my guess ... that these were new coins being shipped to Kansas City or maybe on back east. The money is another story. Maybe all this was a big payroll being shipped to a bank there in Kansas, or possibly back east.”

“Let’s count all the money and the gold coins too, after we eat, to get a total,” Eli told them as they sat down to eat.

The snowstorm never let up during the day and on into the early part of the night. They had decided to wait it out, then hunt again after the blizzard had worn out its welcome on the plains.

During a trip out to tend their horses and mules, they cut and piled all the small green willow limbs and saplings they could find, carrying them back to the cave through the deep snow as they went.

When they’d warmed and were able to strip off their heavy clothes again, the six of them sat around the fire, cutting the willow limbs, warming them, and bending them into the shape of snowshoes. They had never done this before, but they had seen snowshoes hanging on the walls at Perryman’s Store and wondered at the time, what it would be like to walk in snow so deep that snowshoes were needed.

From the memory of inspecting those snowshoes up close, they made their own. Each of them watching and copying from the others as they found better and stronger ways to cut and lace the stripped hides of the deer they had killed, into a network of laces on the snowshoe frames.

They only ventured out of the cave twice during the rest of the day to tend the needs of their horses and mules, feeding them sparingly, watering them by melting snow in their two coffee pots and two skillets.

Once again, they were up early the next morning, ready to head out for a second day of hunting. They were glad to see the heavy snowfall ending and only a few flurries blowing in the bitter-cold wind.

The drifts were over waist deep in places, with snowfall averaging knee deep anywhere they went. The skies were still gray and dreary at first light, but they had hopes of a good day’s hunt. After tending their horses early, they paired up once more to find their favorite spots.

“Damn, it’s cold out here this morning. We won’t be able to stay out long,” Isaac said as he and Eli hunkered down about thirty yards from the cave entrance while the others slowly made their way through the deep snow. Their snowshoes were barely pressing into the snow as they slowly trudged across the surface.

When light began to show in the sky, the heavy snow clouds gave way to partly cloudy skies, with spots of bright sunlight glaring off the snow.

“Would you just look at all those tracks, Isaac?” Eli said as they looked down on the trail below. The deer had already come out during the night, in search of food.

“There must have been a hundred come right through here, as many tracks as there are down there where the snow is tromped down,” Isaac whispered back.

As they looked down on the well-traveled trail, they heard a rustle in the brush to the side of them.

Eli poked Isaac’s arm and motioned with his hand. There, standing at the edge of the trail was a big doe. She stood with her head high, turning to look behind her, before walking out into the open trail below.

“You take her, Isaac.”

“She sure is a big one, here goes.”

Before he could raise his rifle and sight through his scope, Eli grabbed his arm.

“Look!” he whispered as both spotted the huge buck stepping out into the trail behind the doe, looking in all directions before quickly running to where she stood.

They watched as the doe stood still, flipping her white tail high above her back as the buck sniffed her, then snorted with his head held high.

“He’s about to mount her, you take him. I’ll take her,” Eli whispered as he leaned close to Isaac so he’d not be heard.

“Shit, Eli. I can’t shoot him just as he’s about to mount her. I’ll kill her, you take him!”

“You’re too soft-hearted, Isaac. I want that rack hanging on my wall!” Eli whispered as they sighted through their scopes.

“Do it now, Eli. Don’t wait until he gets it in her!” Isaac told him as the buck mounted the doe.

“Here goes.

“Now,” Eli said and pulled the trigger.

Isaac’s shot came at the same instant, as both deer fell in the deep snow, kicking and pawing briefly, before lying still.

“Where did you hit him, Eli? I shot the doe through in her right ear hole.”

“I shot him in his ear hole too. I didn’t want to mess up that skull cap and break the antlers apart. Come on, let’s get down there and cut their throats so they can bleed. Then we’ll need to gut them and see if we can pull those two up in the tree with the others.”

“Damn, they sure are big. I bet she’d go close to two hundred, don’t you?” Isaac said as they stood over the two dead deer.

“Yep and I’d guess him to be over two fifty, maybe closer to three hundred. He’s sure a big one.”

“How many points does he have?”

“Hold my rifle, I’ll raise his head to get a count on both sides.

“Would you look at this? He has fourteen on the left side alone!”

“He must have been the big, bad, bull of the woods. I doubt there are any more out here as big as he is,” Isaac said as Eli counted the points on the right side of the big, widespread rack.

“This one is larger than the one mounted in Perryman’s. He has fifteen on this side and that’s not counting all the spikes at the base of both his antlers!”

Eli knelt and quickly cut the throats of both deer, letting them bleed in the snow.

“Now the work begins,” he said as he stood and took his rifle from Isaac as they looked down at the two deer.