Preacher's Fortune

by William W. Johnstone

  The mountains were calling him, no doubt about that, and Preacher hoped he would soon be able to answer.

  It was far into the night when a hand touched Rufus Chambers’ shoulder and shook him awake. Instinct took over and made Chambers react instantly. His hand snaked under his coat and came out with a little pocket pistol he kept loaded and primed. His thumb looped over the hammer as he withdrew the weapon from his coat, and it was ready to fire as it flashed into the open.

  A big hand clamped over his, trapping the pistol’s hammer. “Take it easy, you damn fool!” an angry voice hissed. “You almost blowed my head off!”

  “Larson?”

  “That’s right. Now give me that gun.” Cobey wrenched the pistol out of Chambers’s hand.

  Chambers sat up. The fire had died down to just embers, and the night was cold. The good thing about the chill was that the snakes would be dormant until the sun rose and warmed them in the morning. Cobey hunkered next to the professor’s bedroll. The big frontiersman carefully lowered the hammer on the pistol and gave it back to Chambers.

  “Be careful with that,” he warned.

  “I know how to handle a gun,” Chambers said coldly. “Don’t underestimate me, my friend.”

  “I don’t intend to. Listen, Powers and Worthy tell me those pilgrims found what they were looking for.”

  “We don’t know that for certain yet. Worthy was able to sneak up and eavesdrop on them while I approached more openly, as a distraction, so to speak. He heard them saying something about a canyon and the wolves of God—”

  “What in blazes is that?”

  “According to my friend in Mexico City, the phrase ‘wolves of God’ is connected somehow to the hiding place of the treasure, according to Don Francisco’s manuscript. I believe, based on what Worthy overheard them saying, that Preacher and the Alvarez boy have solved the mystery of that phrase and have either actually located the treasure or have a good lead to it.”

  “Then we could go ahead and make our move, right? I got the rest of the boys close by, and we can wipe out all that bunch except the girl. She can tell us what we need to know, I reckon. Her brother will have filled her in on everything they’ve discovered.”

  Chambers shook his head emphatically. “There’s no need for haste. Why not let them go ahead and recover the treasure? That way our work will be done for us. All we’ll have to do is kill the others and take the treasure.”

  “And the girl,” Cobey said.

  “And the girl, of course. We shan’t forget her.”

  Cobey thumbed his hat back on his head and thought about it. “I reckon that might be best. I got to tell you, though, the boys are gettin’ a mite impatient, and so am I. We’re ready to see that gold and get our share that you promised us.”

  “Soon, my friend, soon,” Chambers assured him. “We’ll all be rich men before too many more days go by.”

  “We’d better be,” Cobey said, and there was no mistaking the threat in his voice.

  As usual, Preacher and Dog made several patrols around the camp during the night. Several times, Dog looked off toward the other camp and growled. Preacher ruffled the thick fur at the big cur’s neck and said, “I agree with you, fella. Somethin’ about them hombres don’t smell right to me, neither.”

  Chambers and the other two hadn’t done anything openly suspicious, though, so there was nothing Preacher could do except to keep an eye on them.

  Early the next morning, the Alvarez party began making preparations to break camp. Professor Chambers must have noticed the Yaquis hitching up the mules and the horses, because he walked over and said, “What’s this? You’re leaving?”

  “Yes, there is more of the old land grant we must explore,” Esteban said, falling back on the story they had told Chambers to explain their presence here in the Sangre de Cristos.

  “Well, I’ll certainly miss your company. Especially the lovely Señorita Alvarez, and the stimulating discussions with Father Hortensio. Will you be coming back this way?”

  “Probably,” Esteban said.

  Chambers smiled. “Perhaps my companions and I will still be here then. I hope so.”

  He shook hands with Preacher and Esteban, tipped his beaver hat to Juanita, and said to Father Hortensio, “Vaya con Dios, padre.”

  “I will go with God,” Father Hortensio said. “Can you make the same statement?”

  Chambers didn’t answer, but just smiled instead. He waved as Preacher and Esteban mounted their horses and the others climbed onto the wagons. The group moved off to the southwest, following the river. Preacher glanced back from time to time and saw Chambers, Worthy, and Powers moving casually around the old mission. The three men didn’t seem to be making any effort to follow them.

  They might later, though, after Preacher and the others were out of sight. Preacher didn’t have to warn himself to remain alert. That was just a way of life with him.

  Traveling with the wagons meant that they had to go slower than he and Esteban had the day before. They weren’t wasting any time now on fruitless trips up dead-end canyons, though, so it tended to even out. It was still past midday before they reached the canyon that appeared to lead to the hiding place of the treasure. They wouldn’t know for sure until they explored all the way to the end of it.

  “This is it,” Preacher said as he called a halt. “Esteban and I will ride up and see what we can find. Might take as long as an hour to reach the head of the canyon, so it’ll be fairly late by the time we get back.”

  “I must go with you,” Father Hortensio declared as he started to climb down from the lead wagon.

  “There ain’t an extra horse,” Preacher pointed out.

  “There are the two hitched to the other wagon,” the priest said. “One of them can be unhitched and saddled so that I can ride.”

  “It’d be better to leave ’em both where they are,” Preacher argued, “in case we had to move these wagons in a hurry.”

  “Please, Padre,” Esteban said. “Preacher and I can handle this part of the task.”

  Stubbornly, Father Hortensio shook his head. “I must go. If you refuse, I will wait until you are gone and then order the Yaquis to prepare a horse for me to ride. They are good Christians and will do as I command.”

  Esteban sighed and looked over at Preacher. “He is right, amigo. The Yaquis are more his servants than mine. It appears we must allow him to accompany us.”

  “Maybe so,” Preacher said with a frown, “but that don’t mean I’ve got to like it.”

  With a self-satisfied smirk, Father Hortensio told the Yaquis to get one of the extra horses unhitched from the second wagon and put a saddle on it. The chore was performed quickly, and the sun was still high in the sky when Preacher, Esteban, and Father Hortensio were ready to start up the canyon.

  Esteban rode over to the lead wagon and reached across to take his sister’s hand for a moment. “You will be all right here with the Yaquis?” he asked.

  Juanita nodded. “I wish I was coming with you, but I do not want to slow you down. Just be careful, Esteban, and I pray you find what we have so long sought.”

  “I will,” he said. “I am certain of it.”

  He turned his mount and joined Preacher and Father Hortensio, who looked a bit ridiculous with his robe hiked up so that he could sit astride the horse. With Preacher leading the way, the three men started up the canyon. Dog trotted in front of them. The first turn took them out of sight of the wagons.

  Preacher’s nerves were taut. He rode with his rifle across the saddle. The twisting and turning of the canyon grew more and more pronounced, until it seemed almost like they were going around in circles.

  “It is enough to make one dizzy,” Esteban commented. “This must be the right canyon. No wonder its serpentine path impressed itself so strongly on Don Francisco, and he remembered it years later.”

  Father Hortensio said, “I hear no howling of wolves.”

  “The wind ain’t blowin’ hard enough, I r
eckon,” Preacher explained. “You won’t be able to hear the howlin’ all the time, just when conditions are right.”

  “To refer to such a phenomenon as the wolves of God is a bit irreverent,” the priest said disapprovingly. “Perhaps even blasphemous. To the best of my recollection, nowhere in the Holy Scripture is the Lord linked with savage creatures such as wolves.”

  “Don Francisco heard howlin’, and it came from somewheres high up,” Preacher said. “I reckon that’s why he came up with the name he did.”

  “Still, a truly pious man would not think of such a thing.”

  “My ancestor was a soldier, not a priest,” Esteban said rather sharply. “I’m sure he never considered things from your perspective, Padre.”

  Father Hortensio sniffed, and as usual, that marked the end of the conversation. If anyone ever dared to argue with him, he ignored them to the best of his ability.

  A short time later, Preacher chuckled as the wind picked up and the distant howling could be heard. It sounded just like a pack of wolves baying at the moon. “There you go,” he said.

  “I wonder if we are getting close.” Esteban sounded excited as he spoke.

  “Ought to be. We’ve climbed quite a distance.”

  Preacher wasn’t surprised when, a few minutes later, they rounded another bend in the canyon and saw that it emerged onto a broad stretch of flat land. Don Francisco had described it as a plateau, but it wasn’t, not really. It was more of a shoulder that stuck out from the side of the mountain, maybe a mile long and half a mile deep. A rocky slope jutted up on the far side, and steep drop-offs bordered the other three sides. The only reasonably easy way to get up here was by following the zigzag canyon up the side of the mountain.

  “This is it!” Esteban said. “It must be!”

  “Looks like it, from the description you read,” Preacher agreed.

  “But where is the treasure?” Father Hortensio asked anxiously.

  Esteban’s hands shook a little as he dug out the pages he had copied from the old don’s manuscript. He studied them for a moment, flipping through the pages, before he said, “There is nothing else. Only the canyon, the plateau, and the wolves of God.”

  “Look up yonder,” Preacher said.

  He pointed to the cliff on the far side of the open ground. It rose almost sheer for a couple of hundred feet, and on top of it were a dozen or more rocky spires pointing toward the sky. Preacher’s keen eyes had spotted holes worn in the spires by time and the elements, and he knew that was what produced the sounds that so resembled the howling of wolves.

  “I don’t see what you mean,” Esteban said.

  “Them rocks up there don’t just sound like wolves, they look a little like ’em, too,” Preacher explained. “Them spires are like the snouts of a bunch of wolves, thrown back and pointed toward the moon.”

  “Toward heaven,” Father Hortensio corrected. “That is why Don Francisco named them as he did. They sing their homage to God.”

  Preacher shrugged. “That explanation makes as much sense as any other,” he said. “And seein’ them so-called wolves up there is good enough for me. I’m convinced this is the right place.”

  “Then the treasure is here,” Esteban said.

  Preacher nodded. “Yep. Now all we got to do is find it.”

  FIFTEEN

  That proved to be easier said than done. Even though the area was relatively small, there could be any number of hiding places here. Preacher suggested that they split up, so that they could cover the ground more quickly.

  “See,” Father Hortensio said. “It was a good thing that I came with you. Three men can search more places than two.”

  “You’re right, Padre,” Preacher said. He pulled one of the pistols from behind his belt and held it toward the priest.

  Father Hortensio recoiled as if Preacher had just tried to hand him one of the rattlesnakes that made its home in the old mission downriver. “I have no need of a gun,” he said. “The Lord will protect me from any danger.”

  “I ain’t givin’ it to you for protection. If you find the cache, fire off a shot into the air, and we’ll come a-runnin’.”

  Father Hortensio hesitated. “I am not sure I know how to fire such a weapon.”

  Preacher reined in the frustration he felt. He had almost said For God’s sake! but he knew that wouldn’t have gone over well. Instead, he said patiently, “It’s already loaded and primed. All you have to do is pull back the hammer until it locks, then point the barrel into the air and pull the trigger. Don’t point it straight up above you, though. If you do that, the ball’s liable come back down and hit you. Aim off to the side a little.”

  Reluctantly, Father Hortensio reached out and took the pistol. “Very well. But I feel a bit unclean having such a weapon in my possession.”

  The old padres hadn’t felt that way about having conquistadors armed with swords, pikes, and blunderbusses along with them when they first came over here from Spain to take over the place, Preacher thought, but again, he kept it to himself.

  He looked at Esteban instead and said, “Same goes for you. If you find anything, fire a shot in the air and we’ll come to you. I’ll do likewise if I’m the one who runs across the hidin’ place first.”

  “Of course,” Esteban said. “Good luck, amigo.”

  Preacher said, “Padre, you take the near end of this shelf. Esteban, you’ve got the middle. I’ll go down yonder to the far end.”

  The other two men nodded in agreement. Preacher wheeled Horse and put him into a trot that carried him toward the far end of the flat stretch of ground. Dog followed.

  This shelf might look flat, but that was only in comparison to the mountains that rose around it. As Preacher rode over the ground, he discovered that it was more rugged than it appeared and was cut in places by gullies and ravines. They were dry now, but when it rained higher up, he imagined all those ditches ran full of water.

  There were also patches of hardy grass and stands of pine trees. The elevation kept the trees from growing quite as well as those lower down, so they were a bit smaller.

  Preacher didn’t see any likely hiding places for the treasure out in the open. When he reached the far end of the shelf, he turned Horse and rode toward the cliff. The shelf had narrowed down here to no more than a quarter of a mile wide, so it didn’t take him long to reach the wall of stone that reared up at the back of the shelf. He started along it, watching for clumps of boulders or cave mouths. The face of the cliff was almost sheer and appeared to be featureless, however. Preacher remembered Esteban saying that the relics from the missions had been placed in bags, and the gold bars in wooden chests. He didn’t know how many of either there were, but it seemed to him that a good number would be required. That would take some room if they were going to be properly hidden.

  He couldn’t see Father Hortensio from where he was, but he could pick out the figure of Esteban in the distance, still mounted and poking around a grove of trees. Preacher stuck close to the cliff, figuring that would be the most likely spot for the cache. A couple of hundred feet above him, the wind blew harder and the “wolves” howled louder. The sound had a faintly mocking quality to it. Preacher felt his frustration growing as the minutes dragged by and his search continued to turn up nothing.

  He kept one eye on the sun as that glowing orb dipped closer and closer to the peaks of the mountains on the western horizon. It had taken an hour to reach the top of the zigzag canyon, and it would take about that long to get down. Preacher wanted to get back to the wagons by nightfall so that Juanita and the Yaquis wouldn’t be by themselves once it was dark. The Yaquis had a reputation as fierce fighters, but Preacher didn’t know firsthand just how much they could be depended upon.

  He crisscrossed his search area several times before he decided that it was getting too late. Knowing that Esteban was going to be disappointed, Preacher looked around until he spotted the young man about three hundred yards away. He rode toward Esteban.

&
nbsp; With an eager expression on his face, Esteban came to meet Preacher. “Did you find anything?” he called when twenty yards still separated them.

  Preacher shook his head. Both men reined in as their horses trotted up to each other. “I didn’t see hide nor hair o’ that loot, nor any place that looked like a good spot for a cache,” Preacher said. “Don’t seem to be nothin’ up here except some grass and trees and a few rocks. Didn’t even see any animal sign.”

  “But it must be here!” Esteban waved his arms. “The canyon that twists back upon itself, the rocks that look and sound like wolves . . . everything fits! This must be the place Don Francisco described.”

  “Sure seems like it,” Preacher agreed. “Let’s go see if the padre found anything.”

  “He would have fired a shot if he had, would he not?”

  “I hope so, but you can’t never tell with a fella like him.”

  Together they rode along the shelf, which led them in a generally easterly direction. Preacher kept his eyes open. Just because Esteban had already searched this area didn’t mean that the young man couldn’t have missed something.

  By the time they found Father Hortensio, however, Preacher still hadn’t seen anything promising. Esteban hailed the priest.

  “Please tell us you have found something, Father,” he said.

  “No, if I had, I would have shot the gun that Señor Preacher gave me,” Father Hortensio answered. “Am I to assume that neither of you found the lost treasure of Mission Santo Domingo, either?”

  “You can assume that, all right, Padre,” Preacher drawled.

  Esteban dismounted, took off his sombrero, and walked around for a moment with a frustrated, pained expression on his face. He burst out, “I do not understand it! Everything is perfect! The treasure should be here!”

  “It ain’t like we found the hidin’ place and the loot was gone,” Preacher pointed out. “Then it really would be lost. Either this ain’t the right spot . . . or we just ain’t found the stuff yet and it’s still here.”