1
Rhona Beck and Martin Kell had walked in the mountains together for eleven years. Every October they took the high path above Cold Creek, in Idaho, and came down the other side of the valley in three days.
On the second afternoon the weather turned. The wind came up the valley and brought the snow with it, and they left the path and went down into the trees to get out of the worst of it.
That was how they found the plane.
It lay on its side among the rocks, a small white plane with one wing gone. Snow had covered the top of it. It had been there a long time — a week, a month; Rhona could not tell.
The pilot was still in his seat. He had been dead since the day the plane came down.
Martin stood and looked at it and said nothing for a long time.
"Nobody has been here," he said.
"Somebody has to know," Rhona said. "A plane comes down and people look for it. There are men in the air the same day."
"Then where are they?"
2
They got the door open.
Behind the seats there were bags. Twelve of them, grey, all the same size, with rope round the tops. Martin cut one open with his knife.
Money. Old money, in packs, with paper round each pack.
He sat back on his heels in the snow.
"Rhona."
"I can see it."
"Nobody is looking for this plane," Martin said. "Nobody has said it's missing. It isn't lost. It's just here."
"Then somebody knows exactly where it is," Rhona said. "And they're coming for it."
Martin put his hand on the bag and held it there.
"One," he said. "One bag out of twelve."
"They know how many there are," Rhona said. "They put them in."
3
They took nothing. They tied the bag shut again and shut the door and went up into the trees, and they were still going up when they heard the engine.
It came along the bottom of the valley, slow, in low gear. Then it stopped. Then a light moved among the rocks below them.
Rhona and Martin lay down in the snow behind a fallen tree and did not move.
Two men came up to the plane. One of them had a light and the other had a gun across his back. They opened the door and looked in, and one of them counted out loud.
"Twelve," he said.
They carried the bags down, four at a time. It took them an hour. Then the engine started again and went away down the valley, and the light went with it.
Rhona lay in the snow and listened to the water under the ice.
"They'll come back for him," Martin said. "The man in the seat."
"Then we should go now," Rhona said.
4
They walked all night, over the top and down the north side, and they did not use their own light once.
At dawn they came out onto the road above Cold Creek, and a truck stopped for them.
The driver was a young man with a clean face and he was very friendly.
"You two been up at the creek?" he said.
"North side," Rhona said. "Three days."
He looked at their boots for a moment. Their boots were wet to the knee.
"Long way round," he said.
"We like it," Rhona said.
He drove on. Rhona watched the back of the truck as it went, and there were bags in it, grey, with rope round the tops.
They walked the last four hours into town.
5
The police went up to the plane in the spring, when the snow went.
The plane was there. The pilot was there. The bags were not.
The police asked Rhona one question more than all the others, and they asked it many times. Why had nobody looked for that plane?
Rhona gave the same answer every time.
"Because the men who sent it knew where it was."