Revenge of Superstition Mountain

by Elise Broach

  “I admit that’s funny,” Mr. Barker said. “But what in the world do you think he could have left buried at the cemetery? There wasn’t anything mentioned in his will.”

  “But he left me that note, Dad,” Henry said. “There’s something he wants us to find.”

  And then Mr. Barker had held up his hands in capitulation, and he had gamely spent the last day or two at the lawyer’s office and the police station, finally gaining the needed permission to open the grave site, where, as it turned out, there was no record of human burial.

  Now, over Mrs. Barker’s protests, here they all were, at the grave site with the Barker tombstone, with Aunt Kathy, Emmett, and Prita herself, who was standing shyly to one side near Mrs. Barker, who kept gently engaging her in conversation.

  “Start digging!” Jack yelled, jumping up and down.

  “Settle down, Jack,” Mrs. Barker reproved him, glancing at Prita. “I still don’t think you should get your hopes up.”

  “You boys had better appreciate how much trouble I went to, getting permission to do this,” Mr. Barker complained. “I had to talk to about six different people.”

  “We do, Dad!” they chorused.

  So Emmett and Mr. Barker started digging, driving their shovels into the hard earth, overturning it next to the grave site. Henry crouched on the ground, his chin in his hands, watching. He had brought Uncle Hank’s note with him to the cemetery and now sat with it clutched inside his fist like a good-luck charm. Would there be anything down there? He thought of the book Treasure Island, with its pirates digging for treasure, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with Huck hiding money in a coffin to keep it safe. What did you leave behind for me, Uncle Hank? Henry wondered. Besides your name.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Barker and Aunt Kathy chatted with Prita, coaxing her with questions, to which she seemed to respond hesitantly, but with tolerant amusement.

  “I just think it’s so romantic,” Aunt Kathy was saying. “You wrote love letters to each other! Nobody does that anymore. Nobody even knows cursive anymore. We have texts and e-mails, but nothing that somebody bothered to write longhand on paper. And he saved your letters, all this time.”

  Prita just smiled, nodding.

  “We’re very happy to have found you,” Mrs. Barker added. “And I do hope you’ll come over and join us for dinner. I’d love to get to know you better, especially because you were so important to Uncle Hank.”

  “I’d like that,” Prita said. “I want to know all of you better too. He talked about you so often, and I see him in your husband.” She paused. “And the boys.” Her eyes rested on Henry, and he looked back at her, smiling.

  Henry suddenly realized that the end point of life wasn’t a cemetery. How could it be? Life went on and on, in letters and desks and inherited houses, in loves that lasted, in the tiny mysterious particles of genetic material that flowed through Uncle Hank and Mr. Barker and now through Henry himself. Uncle Hank wasn’t gone. He was still here, in all of them, in so many different ways.

  “Hey!” Mr. Barker said. “I hit something.”

  He and Emmett began to dig more earnestly now, heaving large shovelfuls of dirt to the side. Delilah came to sit beside Henry, crossing her legs. Her eyes were bright with excitement. “Do you think it’s there?” she whispered. “The deathbed ore of Jacob Waltz?”

  Henry looked at her, his heart full. It was hard to explain, but he wasn’t sure it mattered to him if the gold was there. Uncle Hank had given him so much already. He sighed. The first week of school loomed ahead, and their summer of marvelous adventures was shrinking to an end. But here was Delilah, his friend Delilah, and they would be in the same grade together this year.

  “Huh,” Emmett said. “It’s a box of some sort.”

  A candle box? Henry wondered.

  “Here, give me a hand,” Mr. Barker said.

  Together, they stooped and lifted the box out of the hole, setting it on the grass. It was a wooden container, splintered and crusted with dirt. When Emmett brushed it off, Henry could see remnants of faded paint. He scrambled onto his knees, leaning forward to get a better look.

  “Is this what you boys were expecting?” Mr. Barker asked him. “What do you think is inside?”

  Prita quietly moved away from Mrs. Barker and Aunt Kathy and came over to the edge of the hole. “Open it,” she said softly.

  Mr. Barker glanced at her, intrigued. “Ready?”

  Slowly he lifted the lid.

  Henry almost fell into the hole. Delilah gasped. Simon knotted his hands together in amazement, and Jack let out a whoop that could have been heard all the way in the center of town.

  There in the box was a mound of GOLD, shining, flashing, sparkling gold—more gold nuggets than Henry had seen in his entire life. They were as individual as pebbles or snowflakes or pieces of popcorn—piled on top of each other, flashing brilliantly in the sunshine.

  Prita’s calm, lined face broke into a slow smile. “So Hank did find it,” she said, satisfied. “The deathbed ore of Jacob Waltz.”

  Emmett laughed in astonishment. “You mean it’s true? I thought that was just a legend!”

  Mr. Barker was crouched next to the candle box, sifting the nuggets through his fingers. “Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head. “Is it real?”

  “It certainly seems real.… Look how it shines,” Aunt Kathy gasped.

  “What in the world is all this?” Mrs. Barker cried. “Who does it belong to?”

  “To you,” Prita said. “To all of you, but especially to the boys. He left this for them.”

  “But what about you?” Delilah asked. “Didn’t he leave anything for you?”

  Prita smiled at her. “Oh yes, my dear. Much more than you know. The gold is not for me. It was the one thing that came between us, and look how he protected me, by not telling me he found it. The gold is for the boys.”

  And Henry, who had been speechless through the whole discovery, now sat back on his heels and opened his fist, spreading Uncle Hank’s note on the grass next to his knees.

  Delilah leaned close to him, reading it with him, her shoulder almost but not quite touching his.

  Dear Henry,

  Your name is my name. It will outlast death—the way a place can be about death but outlast death. If you believe that, you’ll know where to find something I left for you and your brothers. Live well, Henry.

  Love, Uncle Hank

  My name is his name, Henry thought. I’m his namesake. And he understood suddenly that legacy was a word that pointed in two directions, backward to the past and forward to the future. And the connection between the past and the future was Henry himself.

  He raised his eyes to the shadow-filled cliffs of Superstition Mountain, rising behind the cemetery. He thought of all they had found there, not just the canyon and the skulls, the saddlebag and coins and map, and even the Lost Dutchman’s Mine and the gold—but what he’d found in himself, buried deep inside where he had not known it existed … a thirst for adventure, a steely thread of courage, and a willingness to take risks for something or someone that mattered more than himself. The mountain, which had seemed so terrifying, had shown him the best parts of himself.

  He read the last lines of the note one more time.

  Live well, Henry.

  And there, under the scorching sun, in the middle of the desert, in the shadow of the vast, strange, unforgettable mountain, Uncle Hank’s words shimmered and shifted in Henry’s mind, morphing from a wish to a command to a promise.

  I will, Henry thought.

  I will.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  IT IS STRANGE TO BE WRITING the final author’s note for the Superstition Mountain trilogy. There is still so much to say about this fantastical place.

  While Superstition is an imaginary town and the trilogy’s cast of contemporary characters is entirely fictitious, all the historic figures mentioned are real or based on fact. The details of the mountain landscape are very true, and the T
hunder God described in the book is a genuine part of the Apache belief system. According to the Apache, the Thunder God is the deity that protects the Superstition Mountain range and its gold; they believe that he resents intruders in the mountains and that he is the force responsible for the terrible fates that have befallen people searching for the gold.

  Ken-tee, the young Apache woman who purportedly led Jacob Waltz to the mountain’s gold in the late 1800s, is a prominent figure in the region’s folklore. It is unclear whether she ever existed. According to legend, when her tribe discovered that she had revealed the location of the gold to Waltz, they cut out her tongue to punish her for her betrayal.

  The description of the “deathbed ore of Jacob Waltz” is similarly shrouded in legend. The most common version of the tale is this: as Jacob Waltz lay dying from pneumonia he had contracted during a flood, he told Julia Thomas, the neighbor who was caring for him, about a candle box of gold ore that he kept under his bed. On the day that he died, after she left his bedside to get a doctor, two men came into the house and stole the so-called deathbed ore from its hiding place under the bed. For many years, this famed candle box of gold was the object of much speculation and pursuit.

  The Superstition Mountain range remains a dangerous place where visitors should travel with care. The Pinal and Maricopa County sheriff’s offices send search-and-rescue crews into the mountains approximately thirty times a year to look for missing persons. Since 2009, there have been at least seven deaths and one unsolved disappearance in the Superstitions. Most often, the victims are ill-prepared hikers or treasure hunters searching for the Lost Dutchman’s Mine.

  If you decide to visit this strange and mesmerizing place, please be careful! Make sure you go with an adult; plan your hike thoroughly; take plenty of water and sunscreen; and stay on the trail. It is well worth the trip. Rich in history and folklore, the Superstitions are full of the magical lure of the frontier: a place where different peoples clash and mix; where human endurance in the harshest of environments is repeatedly tested; and where untold riches await. After writing this trilogy, I feel like Henry did on his final trip up the mountain: Superstition Mountain has become a part of me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A SERIES IS A MUCH BIGGER, more complicated project than a single novel, and my indebtedness has grown proportionately. I am profoundly grateful to the following people for their help in the creation of this final book in the Superstition Mountain trilogy:

  My wonderful editor and friend, Christy Ottaviano, whose curiosity and warm encouragement have nurtured many literary leaps—in this case leading me to write a series, something I doubt I would have been brave enough to undertake otherwise.

  My excellent agent, Edward Necarsulmer IV, who is always in my corner, and who helps me balance the business of writing with the art of it.

  The hardworking editorial, design, marketing, and sales departments at Holt, who have done such a terrific job of introducing my books to readers.

  My circle of writer friends—lovely companions in an otherwise solitary profession: Nora Baskin, Jane Burns, Jane Kamensky, Jill Lepore, Bennett Madison, Natalie Standiford, Chris Tebbetts, and Ellen Wittlinger.

  My incredible readers, who have made my books so much better with their insights, questions, and suggestions: Mary Broach, Jane Burns, Claire Carlson, Laura Forte, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, and Zoe Wheeler. Special thanks to my younger readers, Anna Daileader Sheriff and Ben Daileader Sheriff, for their helpful comments on the first draft of this book.

  And finally and most of all, I am indebted to my family—Ward, Zoe, Harry, and Grace—for the many ways in which they contribute to my books, my writing, and my writing life.

  ALSO BY ELISE BROACH

  The Miniature World of Marvin and James

  Treasure on Superstition Mountain

  Missing on Superstition Mountain

  Masterpiece

  Shakespeare’s Secret

  Desert Crossing

  Elise Broach is the author of the Superstition Mountain Mysteries series, The Miniature World of Marvin and James, and the award-winning novels Masterpiece, Shakespeare’s Secret, and Desert Crossing. She spent her teen years in California and studied the history of the American West in a PhD program at Yale. She lives in Connecticut with her family. elisebroach.com

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  Text copyright © 2014 by Elise Broach

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Broach, Elise.

  Revenge of Superstition Mountain / Elise Broach; illustrated by Aleksey and Olga Ivanov.

  pages cm

  Sequel to: Missing on Superstition Mountain.

  Summary: The Barker brothers and their friend Delilah secretly climb up to Superstition Mountain one last time, hoping to solve the remaining mysteries, including whether the librarian is really the ghost of Julia Thomas, what was their uncle Hank’s role in discovering the gold mine, and especially, who is trying to kill them.

  ISBN 978-0-8050-8909-7 (hardback)

  ISBN 978-1-250-05686-3 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-62779-238-7 (e-book)

  [1. Mountains—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction. 3. Superstition Mountains (Ariz.)—Fiction. 4. Arizona—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Ivanov, O. (Olga), illustrator. II. Ivanov, A. (Aleksey), illustrator. III. Title.

  PZ7.B78083Rev 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2014005283

  First Edition—2014

  Printed in the United States of America by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia

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