tail of his expensive bay stallion swaying as it traversed the rocky downward path. The morning sun was just beginning to rise over the thin line of trees ahead.
Mulloney didn't whistle as he rode. He kept a repeating rifle within easy reach on his saddle and the latest Colt model revolver on his hip while his gaze searched every speck of the trail ahead. In the five years he had been living this life, he'd come to know more dirty tricks and vicious scoundrels than a man had any right to know. He'd learned to survive the hard way, but he'd learned.
He didn't think too hard on the years wasted tracking gold with thousands of other hungry men. He'd been in California, Colorado, and India, contemplated following the hordes to South Africa, but in the end he'd taken what miserable gleanings he'd found and come home. Not home, precisely. He'd never go there again. But he'd come back to the states and the mountains where he'd first started. He was an older, wiser man now, but his ambition hadn't changed. He intended to be wealthy, and he would do it with his own hands, on his own terms.
This time, he meant to succeed. The fire in his belly burned strong as he guided his stallion down the mountainside. The gold was there, and no one else knew about it but Townsend. He'd met Townsend in India, saved his life once, dragged him back here while he still burned with the fever. The man would lay his life down for him but it wasn't Townsend's life he wanted, it was his knowledge.
Townsend was the engineer Mulloney was not. Mulloney was the financier that Townsend was not. Between them, they would not only find the gold, but sell it without being cheated or murdered in their beds as so many had been in the past. They trusted only each other.
Mulloney settled himself more comfortably in the saddle as the horse trotted across a level valley. As a city boy, he found this method of transportation convenient but uncomfortable. He'd learned to manage mountain ponies, mules, and even elephants, but sometimes he had difficulty forgetting the proud bays and elegant carriages he'd once known. At the time, he hadn't realized how spoiled he had been. Now he knew better.
He wasn't bitter about leaving all that behind. It was a choice he had made on his own. He had wanted to rid himself of the corrosion of his father's money. He'd never felt dirtier in his life than when he had stood in his parents' bedroom, wearing a silk shirt and expensive frock coat, listening to the news that he had an older brother he had never known, a brother who had been thrown away because of his deformity.
His skin still crawled when he thought about it. The discovery of his father's cruel deception had led to other discoveries, each one more ruthless than the next. He'd spent his early years living like a leech off the blood of the helpless.
So he didn't think about his past any longer. He didn't think about the wealth he had left behind, the wealth he had known only by default and at the expense of his own kin. He didn't think of the people whose lives had been crushed because of his father's greed. He didn't think about the family he'd left behind. His brothers were in a position to straighten out what was left of the wreckage of their lives. They didn't need him. After twenty-five years of living a lie, he'd had to get out. It was the only way to save his soul.
Only, somewhere along the way, Mulloney thought he must have misplaced it. Perhaps he'd never had one. There were any number of people who could attest to that. Instead of finding his soul, he'd found a goal. He was going to be rich again, but he would earn it with his own hands and mind. And right now, the goal sparkled on the horizon, just out of reach.
If he knew how to whistle, he would as he urged his horse through a rock-strewn streambed. Two days ride ahead, at the foot of the range, waited a little cabin he'd built when he'd thought what he needed was a home. The cabin hadn't held him for very long, but he liked to think of it as home when he was out here with only the sky for a roof. He'd left a warm