“Maybe we should get the bigger share, the two of us,” Devlin groused. “Hard landing.”
The train appeared to get smaller as it continued on its way to Waco. Then Ezra looked up toward the movement that had caught his eye and grunted. “Here comes Robert now.”
Robert O’Grady drove a small wagon toward them, coming from the west. It didn’t take him long to join them.
Ezra and Devlin climbed aboard, and Robert steered the two horses pulling the team north, following the tracks, back toward the direction of Fort Worth—the last station stop before their jump.
“There’s the first one!” Ezra pointed toward a hump in the grass. It wasn’t very big, only about eighteen inches long and a foot wide. But it was heavy enough, damn near a hundred pounds, if not more. It had taken muscle to toss it—and its five brothers—from the train.
“We should check them,” Robert said. “Make sure there’s really gold inside.”
Ezra took out his gun and shot the lock off the canvas and leather bag. They all knelt and, together, lifted the flap. The gold coins—twenty-dollar gold pieces every one of them—gleamed in the afternoon sun.
“Easiest fucking robbery ever,” Robert said.
“Except for the jump.” Devlin rubbed his right knee.
Laughing, they loaded the bank-issued money bag onto the wagon and headed toward the next. A couple of hours later, as the sun was going down, Ezra directed Robert that last distance they needed to travel that day with the six bags of gold—to the very tree he’d described to them, a distinctive live oak that grew at the back of his brother, Jonas’s, ranch.
They worked in silence, all three men digging, until they’d made a space big enough for the coffin Robert had brought with him—a box large enough to hide their bounty. They each counted out thirty pieces of gold, giving them each six hundred dollars—more than enough for them to live on for the next year.
One year. They’d made the pact and would stand by that agreement. In a year, they’d come back and dig up the gold, split it up proper, and go their separate ways. Until then, they’d get jobs in the area so that they could blend into life in the town of Waco—where that train they’d just robbed had been headed. Their plan had the added benefit that, during that year, they’d each have their eyes on the others.
Ezra didn’t trust either of his partners at all.
In one year’s time, any hullabaloo from the daring—and crafty—robbery they’d just pulled should have died down.
Their plan likely would have worked, too, Ezra thought a few months later. Sitting next to Devlin in their cell in the Waco jail awaiting transport to St. Louis, he reasoned if only it hadn’t been for the damn wanted posters and that asshole Texas Ranger, Adam Kendall.
They’d all three been arrested—but not for stealing the gold off the train. Poor, dumb Robert had gotten himself shot, resisting the inevitable. They’d been arrested for a robbery committed in their last hometown, St. Louis, Missouri.
With Robert dead, Ezra and Devlin quietly made a new plan, and it was a simple one. They’d wait out the sentence for that armed robbery back in St. Louis then make their way back to his brother’s ranch.
Devlin kept asking for exact directions, just in case. Without blinking, Ezra gave him exact directions—to nowhere. Ezra reasoned he had to protect himself from his last remaining partner, because it wouldn’t surprise him one damn bit if the bastard tried to double cross him.
Devlin Gowan was a sneaky, two-faced son-of-a-bitch.
Even on his deathbed in the Missouri state prison, Ezra never told a single soul, by word spoken or written, about the treasure he and his two partners had buried west of Waco. And even in death, that last great plan failed, too.
Because while Devlin Gowan also died in prison, he’d written a letter to his oldest boy. With the directions he’d memorized included, he died with the satisfaction of knowing he’d screwed Ezra Powell’s descendants out of his fortune.
Chapter One
Late spring, 2019
“I think that’s everything.” Randy Benedict looked at the box of the completely loaded F-150 and turned to his cousin Lewis. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s pretty fucking sad that the entirety of our combined sixty-five years of existence on this earth can fit into the box of an F-150.”
“Well, that’s true.” Randy grinned at his cousin. Together, they set the cover over the box and secured it.
Randy knew Lewis was down. This whole blowup with the families here in Montana was enough to get anyone down, truth to tell. But Lewis was especially bitter, and who could blame him? He’d worked hard since high school, breaking his back, ranching from morning to night, believing he’d get a share of the ranch he’d helped build. And he’d learned last week that wasn’t going to be the case at all.
Randy believed in counting his blessings and decided to do so now, to cheer Lewis up. “Our horses and saddles are all over at Mickey’s. You know he’ll take care of them and then ship them to us when we find our place.”
“I do know that. After the stunt Marcus pulled with my brothers Dale and Parker, you can bet your ass I wasn’t going to trust in the loving generosity of my family. Since Mickey was outraged by big brother’s B.S., he was happy to help us out.”
Even though Randy’s Uncle Carter had come down like a ton of bricks on Marcus for claiming his brothers’ horses belonged to the ranch when the men had bought them on their own, Randy was in full agreement with Lewis. His own father, John, wouldn’t have allowed his older brother and new ranch manager, Carl, to have done anything like that. But the sad truth was he really didn’t trust any of
