“Looks like it.” He picked up the largest of the chunks and held it up to the firelight. From all appearances, the odd-shaped stone was solid gold. Although he’d seen gold, especially during his year or so of mining with Nash, he’d never touched any. If he had to take a guess, he’d say the nugget was ten ounces, maybe more. The others were smaller but contained a mixture of granite and gold.

Ivy examined one of the medium pieces. “How much is all this worth?”

“Likely thousands of dollars.”

She released a low whistle, then she reached inside the hole and withdrew the second satchel. He helped her cut the drawstring again and dump the contents onto the floor next to the first bag, revealing more of the same gold-tinged rocks.

They studied the pieces for a short while, and Ivy remarked excitedly about them.

“We should put them back,” he finally suggested.

“Let’s take some with us.” Her hand hovered above a larger stone. “We deserve a share since we found it.”

He started depositing the nuggets back into one of the satchels. “If the gold was stolen, then we can’t take any. We’d be just as guilty of stealing as the original culprits.”

“But if it was taken from the Spanish a long time ago, then it doesn’t belong to anyone now, does it?”

He scooped up more of the rocks. “I thought we already concluded that kind of treasure wouldn’t have lasted.”

“Even if it’s stolen, how would we trace who took it and where it came from?”

“We might not be able to, but we should at least try.” He buried the gold out of sight in the bags, where it wouldn’t tempt either of them to do wrong.

She snatched a medium-sized nugget before he could stow it away. “Are you sure I can’t have one piece? Just to prove to myself that I found it . . . and maybe to use on buying Steele’s land?”

He hesitated in giving her permission. If anyone learned they’d discovered a treasure, they’d draw all kinds of attention—something he didn’t need. And he wanted the chance to find out more about any stolen gold in the area over recent years before they hauled the treasure away.

She turned the nugget over in her hand. “If we find the owner of this stash, I’ll do the right thing and give the gold on back. But you know as well as I do that’s gonna be real hard.”

The territory had always been rife with thieves and outlaws stealing silver and gold from stagecoaches and wagon trains. Even if he tracked down all the miners in the area who had lost gold at one point, how would he be able to narrow down which one of them the gold belonged to?