Every detail matters. One wrong step, and none of us are coming back down." For the next hour, over dry cornbread and strips of tough meat, the boys laid it out. The trail started easy enough, but after the first hour, it turned mean, steep, treacherous. The rocks blocking the cave were massive, some as big as buffalo, piled up in a chaotic mess by the floodwaters. "Last time we tried to move them," Mato said, rubbing his arm with a grimace.
"One almost crushed me. The rocks don't sit right. You push one, another shifts. Feels like the mountain's alive, like it doesn't want to let go." Cole nodded. He knew that kind of formation.
He'd seen cave-ins like that back in the Colorado mines. The trick wasn't brute strength, it was balance. Finding the one stone holding the rest in place. They packed ropes, hardwood levers, and what little water they could carry. Cole also asked for sturdy pieces of timber, wedges.
The boys watched him with curiosity as he tested each piece, rejecting anything with the slightest hidden crack. "In the mines," Cole said while working, "I learned something. Right tool beats 10 strong men, and patience beats 100." They started the climb when the sun stood high overhead. The heat was brutal, but Cole knew it was better than the alternative. They needed light.
After sundown, the mountain turned deadly. For the first 2 hours, the trail matched their description, steep, but manageable. Cole kept his eyes moving. Every loose stone, every shift in the ground, memorizing the path, getting down with the treasure. That would be the real danger.
"Why are you doing this?" Takai asked suddenly from behind him. He'd been quiet until now. "You're not one of us. This ain't your problem." Cole stopped, wiping sweat from his brow. It was a fair question.
"Years ago," Cole Mattock said slowly, his voice rough like gravel under a boot. "When I was younger, and a whole lot dumber, I let my pride ruin something that mattered." He kept walking as he spoke, eyes fixed ahead. "Someone asked me for help. I turned my back on them, figured I had better things to do." His jaw tightened. "They died waiting on help that never came." The boys fell silent behind him.
Cole didn't look back. "I can't change what's already buried," he went on. "But I can choose who I am now, and right now, I can help." When they reached the collapse, even Cole felt the breath leave his lungs. The rocks were worse than he'd imagined. Massive, some the size of wagons, stacked in angles that made no sense, like gravity had lost its grip on the world.
Behind the pile, barely visible, was the mouth of the cave. "Good lord," Koda muttered under his breath. "Every time I see it, it looks worse." Cole stepped forward slowly, his eyes sharp, measuring everything. He touched the rocks one by one, feeling the heat baked into them, the roughness, the faint shifts beneath the surface. Then he dropped to a knee.
He studied the gaps between the stones, the weight lines, the pressure points, the balance holding it all together, or ready to break. The boys watched him, caught somewhere between curiosity and impatience. "There's a way," Cole said at last, pointing to a barrel-sized rock near the base. "That one right there. That's your keystone.
Move it the right way, and the rest will settle without coming down on our heads." "And if you're wrong?" Chayton asked. Cole gave a tight grin. "Then we run like hell." A beat. "But I ain't wrong. Trust me." The next hour was all preparation.