[To Die For 01] - A View to Die For (2012) by Richard Houston Page B

bluff.
    Hidden behind several tall cedar and oak trees was an overhang in the limestone bluff. A huge piece of rock, the size of a barn, had broken off ages ago and slid down the steep slope resting halfway between the cliff and the water. The effect was such that the small cave was completely concealed from any passing boat on the water. Only a rock climber, or mountain goat, could have reached the cave before the tram had been built. I had the luxury of stopping the tram midway down the hill, walking to the cave on the path Mike had made shortly before his demise. How Jesse James and his cohorts could have made it here over a hundred years ago is a mystery.
    Fred was waiting for me when I got off the tram. He had taken the stairs and beat me to the path. “Did your aunt send you down here to keep an eye on me, Freddie?” Fred answered with a bark. It could have been a yes or no – I still had a long way to go before I could understand dog language.
    “What do you think, Boy? Did Jesse James really hide his coins here?” This time, Fred answered by running ahead to the cave.
    It was conceivable that Jesse’s gang had hidden some of their stolen loot along the river. Lake of the Ozarks had been created during the depression of the thirties by damming the Osage River nearly one hundred miles downstream from Truman. At the time, it was the largest man-made reservoir in the world. But before the dam, the Osage ran from Kansas to the Missouri River by Jefferson City. As the Osage was the superhighway of mid-Missouri, Truman had been a booming town.
    Missouri was a Union state during the civil war, but someone forgot to tell the proud rebels of Truman and the rest of the Ozarks – including the James brothers. The brothers had been raised in Missouri and must have known the Osage River well. After the South lost the war, they returned to Missouri and continued their own private war against the local banks and trains. I figured the link to the James gang made the coins worth far more than the gold they were struck from. If the story could be verified, the coins would be worth a small fortune, maybe enough to kill for.
    The cave itself looked more like an Anasazi cliff dwelling than the dark hole I had envisioned. It was simply a very large, deep depression in the limestone bluff. Fred had managed to make it to the cave before me – in fact, several times before me. He would run ahead, turn around, and look at me as if to say, “Are you coming slowpoke?” then come back to see what was taking me so long.
    That’s when I saw the footprints. A cold chill came over me and stopped me dead in my own tracks. We were not alone. The prints had to be fresh because they were as deep and visible as mine and Fred’s. There were none of the telltale marks of boots or tennis shoes. The stranger must be wearing street or dress shoes; otherwise, the prints would have left grooves like my hiking boots.
    Fred stood at my side, panting, while I tried to listen for the intruder. “Quiet, boy,” I whispered. It did no good. I couldn’t hear anything besides Fred. Whoever had been here before us was gone now.
    I followed the footprints to the cave. Other than a still damp spot next to the wall of the cliff where someone had recently relieved himself, there wasn’t much else to see. There were no signs of digging or anything – just the spot on the wall and the ground. I went up to the wall and made my own contribution; not so much to mark my territory, but to gauge the height of the intruder. I figured he had to be less than six feet tall; his spot was several inches below mine. Of course, he could have been much more endowed than me; in which case, all bets on height assessment were off.
    When I made it to the top, Meg was standing at the deck-rail, petting Fred. Once again, he proved himself faster than the tram. “Looks like you’ve had visitors,” I said to my sister.
    Meg stopped petting Fred and looked back down toward her dock.