Snow reached into his pocket and removed something, handing it over.
A gold coin.
On one side were clasped hands surrounded by capital letters G S L C P G and the value amount of five dollars. On the obverse was an all-seeing eye surrounded by HOLINESS TO THE LORD.
“Those letters stand for Greater Salt Lake City Pure Gold. A bit of a misnomer as the coins were fashioned from bullion metal that contained silver and copper. It’s about 80% gold. That’s one of the coins minted by Brigham Young, included in a time capsule Young created inside a record stone at the Salt Lake temple. We opened it in 1993. The coins were all the same, only differing in value from $2.50 to $20. The so-called Mormon Money.”
“That’s part of what got him in trouble with the federal government,” Malone said. “The Constitution says only Congress can mint money.”
“Brigham Young tended to ignore those laws he did not agree with. But in his defense, we were a long way from the United States and had to survive. To do that we needed an economy we could control. So he created one.”
“Except those wagons never made it to California,” Luke said from the front seat. “In fact, they were just found a few days ago, in Zion National Park, hidden in a cave with four skeletons.”
“That’s right,” Snow said. “By 1857 the Utes’ sacred mine was tapped out. So Young made the decision to replenish his supply with the gold from the wagons. The same wealth, back where it started. But this time it wasn’t hidden in the sacred mine. Instead Young arranged for a private land grant from the territorial legislature and created a new place, his own, where he was in charge. Falta Nada.”
“Missing Nothing. A touch of irony?”
“I’ve always thought so. Slowly, over the next two decades that gold filtered its way back into our community.”
“But not to its rightful owners.”
Snow paused, then shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Another one of those difficult decisions by Young. But it turned out to be brilliant. Our economy flourished. We prospered greatly after the Civil War ended, and especially so as the 19th century gave way to the 20th.”
“Four men were dead in that cave with the wagons,” Luke said from the front seat.
“I know,” Snow said. “Fjeldsted. Hyde. Woodruff. Egan. Their names have been known to us for many years.”
“What did the message in the cave mean?” Luke asked. “Damnation to the prophet. Forget us not.”
No one had told Malone about any cave, but he let it pass.
“I’m afraid the implications are hard to ignore. Young was the prophet at the time, and they blamed him for their deaths.”
“It seems like they had good reason,” Luke said.
“What I’ve told you so far has been passed from prophet to prophet, for their ears only. But when those wagons were found, I learned a new aspect of the story. Four men murdered was never part of what was passed down.”
“Does Rowan know any of this?”
Snow shook his head. “He knows of the wagons, but I did not tell him any of these other details, and I will not.”
The car continued to speed down the interstate, the landscape becoming more rural and rugged.
“Falta Nada eventually became a place for prophets,” Snow said. “The gold was exhausted, its smelting furnace removed. So it evolved into a place of refuge in the wilderness.”
He did not like the continued silence from the front seat so he asked, “Stephanie, where are Salazar and Cassiopeia?”
“Ahead of us,” she said, her eyes still facing the windshield. “They should be at the site by now, with Rowan.”
He caught the deadpan tone. Troubling—on many levels. He knew enough about the situation to know that none of this information could ever see the light of day. Too explosive, the implications too profound. Not only for the Mormon Church but for the United States of America.
Salazar?
Rowan?
They were one thing.
But Cassiopeia.
She was quite another.
And this time she was in deep.
SIXTY-TWO
CASSIOPEIA STOOD BESIDE THE CAR. SHE AND JOSEPE HAD MADE the journey northeast from Salt Lake City in a little over an hour, and they’d been waiting in the morning mountain air for twenty minutes. The peaks surrounding her were not especially high, but glaciers had performed their sculpting, the evidence clear from deep scars and dark canyons. The two-lane highway east from the interstate had woven a path through a spectacular wilderness thick with poplar, birch, and spruce all dressed in autumn gold. Another two miles on a graveled lane led them to a clearing among the trees, where they parked. A posted sign proclaimed