by Ron Roy
Five minutes later, they were on a dirt road. The mules trotted beneath a sign that hung over the path. As they passed under it, Dink read PHANTOM RANCH.
Luke slowed Joe in front of two cabins standing under shade trees. The cabins looked old. They were built of river stones and thick wood beams. Sunlight glinted off the windows.
Across a creek were two more cabins. All the cabins had stone chimneys, and the roofs were painted dark green.
“Here’s where you’ll bunk down tonight,” Luke told them. “Cabin number two has bunk beds for the kids. Mr. Duncan, you’ll be next door in number one. Both cabins have a sink, toilet, and kitchen. There’s a shower building over by the mule barn. You can get snacks from the canteen, but meals are served in the dining lodge on the other side of those trees.”
The kids and Uncle Warren dismounted. Their hands and faces were sweaty and covered with trail dust. They all thanked Luke and Junior.
While his uncle snapped pictures of their cabins, Dink quietly told Josh and Ruth Rose about the ransom for Parker Stone. The two just stared at him with wide eyes.
“How do you all feel?” Luke asked the kids.
“My bottom is sore, and my mouth could use some ice cream!” Josh said.
Luke laughed. “I’m sure you can get ice cream at dinner tonight,” he said. “Your rear will feel better tomorrow.”
Josh untied the cat carrier and set it on the ground. Tommy flapped his wings and let out a squawk.
“See y’all later!” Junior said as he and Luke led the mules to the creek for a drink.
“I need a nice, long shower,” Dink’s uncle said. “What are you kids going to do?”
“I think we’ll go exploring,” Dink said.
“Good idea,” Uncle Warren said. “I’ve read there may be gold deposits around here. Maybe you’ll find some!”
“Awesome!” Josh said.
Uncle Warren opened his cabin door and stepped inside.
The kids walked up their cabin’s steps. The door creaked when Dink opened it. Inside, it was dark and smelled old.
Dink put his hand on Josh’s arm. “Shhh,” he said. “I heard something moving in there!”
Ruth Rose poked Josh. “No problem, it’s just a rattlesnake,” she said.
“No,” Dink said. “A whole family of rattlesnakes!”
“Ha ha,” Josh said. “You need better jokes, folks!”
The kids stepped inside the cabin, and Dink flipped a light switch on the wall. “Wow, this is so cool!” he said.
They were in a simple living room. A table and chairs stood on a red-and-blue rug in front of the fireplace. A box of postcards and a pen lay on the table. Books and board games filled a bookshelf.
A small fridge, stove, and sink were built against one wall. Opposite them was a door to a bathroom. Dink pushed open another door, which led into a bedroom.
There were two sets of bunk beds. Each bed was covered with a red blanket, and there were ladders for climbing to the top bunks.
Josh set the cat carrier on the floor. “Do you want top or bottom bunk?” he asked Dink.
“Top,” Dink said. He took off his backpack and threw it onto his bunk.
“So I get two beds!” Ruth Rose said. She plopped her pack onto the lower bed of the other bunk.
Josh let Tommy out of the cat carrier. The parrot ruffled his feathers, flew up to the ceiling, and landed on a beam.
Josh looked up. “Are you going to sleep there?” he asked.
“Sleepy Tommy!” Tommy said. He tucked his head under a wing.
“I guess he’ll be all right,” Dink said. “He’ll come down when he’s hungry.”
“Speaking of being hungry,” Josh said, “I don’t have any food for Tommy.”
“He eats raisins on TV,” Dink said.
“In the jungle, parrots eat fruit,” Ruth Rose said. “Maybe we can get something for Tommy tonight at supper.”
Ruth Rose pulled her flashlight, Swiss Army knife, and binoculars from her fanny pack. She found the half-empty nail polish bottle. “How would I look with red nail polish?” she asked.
“I don’t think red goes with yellow,” Josh said, shaking his head.
Ruth Rose sat on her bed and twisted the top off the bottle. “That’s funny,” she said, sniffing the bottle. “This doesn’t smell like nail polish.”
“What does it smell like?” Dink asked.
“Kind of sweet, like cupcakes,” Ruth Rose said.
“Stop teasing!” Josh said.
Ruth Rose closed the bottle and set it on a little shelf next to her bed.
Dink started to leave the bedroom. “Let’s go check out this place,” he said.
“Maybe we’ll see the phantom!” Ruth Rose said, following Dink.
“What phantom?” Josh asked, looking worried.
Ruth Rose smiled. “How do you think Phantom Ranch got its name?” she asked. “My guidebook says the phantom is invisible. He sneaks around at night, looking for boys with red hair!”
Josh burst out laughing. “You’re scary, Mary!”
The kids made sure the cabin door was shut when they walked outside. “It seems funny being on the bottom of the Grand Canyon,” Josh said. “This morning, we were on the top!”
Ten yards away, the creek flowed past a small beach. A bunch of orange rubber rafts were resting on the sand. A narrow bridge next to the beach let people cross to the cabins on the other side.
Dink dipped his fingers into the creek. “Pretty cold,” he said. He noticed something floating and grabbed a small square of wet purple cardboard. He put the trash in his pocket.
The kids saw more cabins like theirs. The dining lodge was larger and stood a few hundred yards from the cabins.
Suddenly a loud noise cut through the dry air.
“What’s that?” Dink asked. “It sounds like someone is crying!”
They heard the sound again.
Ruth Rose leaned close to Josh. “The phantom is calling you,” she whispered.
“It’s the mules!” Josh said. “Let’s go see them!”
They ran across the bridge, passed the shower house, and came to the mule barn. About a dozen mules were standing inside the corral.
“There’s Poppy!” Ruth Rose said.
“And Rambler,” Dink said.
“Sleepy is probably in the barn, sleeping,” Josh commented.
“No, there he is, drinking water!” Ruth Rose said.
“Hey, Sleepy, come on over!” Josh called. He pulled a granola bar from his pocket and tapped it against a post.
All the mules trotted toward him. Josh fed them pieces of the bar while Dink and Ruth Rose scratched behind their ears.
A man in a brown uniform came out of the barn, lugging a bale of hay. He dumped it on the ground and used snippers to cut the wire around the bale. The mules trotted over and began chomping on the hay.
“Howdy,” the man said. “Looks like Sleepy, Rambler, and Poppy remember you folks.”
“We rode them down here today!” Ruth Rose said.
The man chuckled. “I know you did,” he said. “I’m Ron, and I take care of these critters.”
“Can we bring them a treat after supper?” Ruth Rose asked.
“They’ll be sleeping by then,” Ron said. “But come back with a carrot or apple tomorrow morning.”
Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose watched the mules munch the hay. When Ron led them inside the barn, the kids headed back toward their cabin.
Near the creek, Dink noticed a small sign on a post. “The cabins on both sides of Bright Angel Creek were built by architect Mary Colter in 1922,” he read.
“Wow, that was almost a hundred years ago!” Josh said.
A man wearing shorts and a baseball cap stepped out
of one of the cabins. He walked to a rope that had been strung between two trees. He draped a wet T-shirt over the rope, then went back inside the cabin.
On the beach, a woman was tugging the orange rubber rafts farther up on the sand, away from the creek. A name tag on her brown shirt said BRENDA. The words PHANTOM RANCH were stitched onto a patch on one sleeve.
Brenda was tall, and Dink could see the muscles in her arms as she wrestled with the rafts. Her blond hair was long, and she wore it in a braid.
She stood up when she saw the kids. “Hi there,” she said, flipping her braid back over her shoulder. “Cabins one and two, right?”
“Yes,” Dink said. “We just got here with my uncle a little while ago. I’m Dink Duncan, and my friends are Josh and Ruth Rose.”
“We rode here on mules!” Josh said.
“Yes, I know,” Brenda said. “Ron told me.”
“Who uses these rafts?” Josh asked.
“They’re for our guests,” she said. “If you’re with an adult, you can take one out into the creek and paddle around.”
“In my guidebook, it says some people take raft trips down the Colorado River to get to Phantom Ranch,” Ruth Rose said. “Are these the rafts they use?”
Brenda wiped her hands on her jeans. “Yep. The river splits off into this creek,” she said. “Guests like to arrive here by raft, stay a few days in the cabins, then continue down the river. I pick up the rafts in my truck and bring them back here.”
She nodded at the kids, then crossed the bridge and headed toward the other cabins.
“We should ask your uncle to take us out in one of these rafts!” Josh said.
“Great idea! I wonder if we can get some fishing poles,” Dink said. The kids walked toward their own cabin.
As they passed the rafts, Dink saw something purple wedged under a seat. He reached in and pulled out a small square of cardboard.
“What’d you find?” Josh asked.
Dink showed them what looked like a flattened box. It was the size a toy car would fit into.
“This is the second one,” Dink said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the wet cardboard he’d picked up earlier.
“They’re the same,” he told Josh and Ruth Rose, showing them. “Both are little purple boxes that someone squashed.”
“Somebody who likes to litter,” Ruth Rose said.
Dink carried the flattened boxes with him as they walked back to their cabin.
When they opened the door, Tommy was sitting on top of the refrigerator. He flapped his wings and squawked, “Tommy is hungry!”
Ruth Rose opened the refrigerator. She found grapes, milk, and a covered plate of chocolate chip cookies.
“Yay, food!” Josh said. “And a note.” He plucked a postcard off the refrigerator shelf. On the front was a picture of one of the cabins. PHANTOM RANCH was written over the cabin roof. On the other side, it said: Welcome to Phantom Ranch, Duncan family. Enjoy the snacks!
Dink and Josh carried the grapes, cookies, and milk to the table.
“Wait, I have an idea,” Ruth Rose said. “Let’s sit in front of the window so we can look at the creek while we eat.”
Dink and Ruth Rose carried the table and chairs to the window, and Josh went to get Tommy. With the parrot on his shoulder, he walked back across the rug. His toe caught on something, making him stumble.
Josh looked down. “Guys, there’s something under this rug,” he said. He slid a foot over the spot, then grinned. “Maybe it’s a hunk of gold!”
He pulled the rug aside. “Uh-oh,” Josh said.
The rug covered a trapdoor.
One edge of the door was raised almost an inch. “That’s what I tripped on,” Josh said.
“Maybe there’s a secret room!” Ruth Rose said.
The kids pried open the door with their fingers. They laid it flat on the floor and peered into a dark space. Three feet below the floor, they saw dirt. A damp smell came up through the opening.
“It’s just an empty space under the floor,” Dink said.
“My grandfather told me when he was a kid, his house had a space like this,” Josh said. “They didn’t have a fridge, so they kept milk and vegetables there because it was cool.”
Dink found a flashlight in a drawer. He jumped into the space, crouched, and shone the beam around.
“What’s down there?” Ruth Rose asked.
“Not much,” Dink said, wiping a cobweb from his hair. “Some old furniture and spiders.”
“They’d better not come up here!” Josh said.
“I’ll protect you,” Dink said. He got on his knees and crawled a few feet farther, shining the flashlight.
In the center of the space, Dink saw a column of bricks that rose to the wood floor above his head. He sat back and wondered what it was for. Then he remembered the fireplace in the living room. These bricks were the base of the fireplace.
Dink crawled past thick logs that supported the underside of the cabin floor. At the back of the space, sunlight was coming in through a small screened window.
Three broken chairs lay on the dirt near the trapdoor. One of the chairs was missing its seat. In its place was a wide spiderweb. A fat black spider sat in the web. “Stop staring at me,” Dink said to the spider.
Then he smiled, thinking about what Josh would do if he were down here. He saw nothing else, so he pulled himself back into the cabin. He used a paper towel to wipe cobwebs off his face. “I didn’t see the phantom,” he said. “No gold, either.” The kids shut the trapdoor and pulled the rug back over it.
“Can we eat now?” Josh asked. “Those cookies are talking to me!”
They found glasses and paper napkins and brought them to the table. The napkins were printed with PHANTOM RANCH in blue letters.
While they snacked on cookies and milk, Josh fed grapes to Tommy. Dink opened the window a few inches so they could hear the creek rushing by.
Suddenly Tommy flew off the chair where he’d been perched and beat his wings against the window. He pecked at the glass with his beak and squawked, “Roger! Roger!”
Dink looked out the window. He didn’t see anyone. “Nobody is there, Tommy,” he told the parrot. “No Roger.”
Tommy attacked the glass again with his feet and wings, calling out, “Roger!”
Ruth Rose got up. “I’ll go take a look,” she said, and opened the door. Josh held Tommy against his chest until the parrot settled down.
Through the window, Dink watched Ruth Rose walk to the creek. She crossed the bridge to the two cabins on the other side. Then she turned around and hurried back.
“I think I know why Tommy is upset!” Ruth Rose said, rushing past them into the bedroom.
She came back with her binoculars and sat at the table. “Remember the T-shirt that man hung on the line?” she asked. “Parker Stone wears one just like it on TV. And he was wearing it yesterday in the hot-air balloon. Tommy must have recognized the shirt!”
“But isn’t it just any old T-shirt?” Josh asked.
“No,” Ruth Rose said. “It has that circle with RTTR written inside.”
“I remember,” Dink said. “The letters stand for Roger to the Rescue.”
Ruth Rose pointed out the window. “You can see the shirt from here,” she said. “Tommy must think Parker is over there!”
Josh grabbed the binoculars. “You’re right, Roger Good wears that T-shirt on every show,” he said.
“So do a lot of other people,” Dink said. “You can buy those shirts on his website.”
“But it could be Parker’s shirt,” Ruth Rose said.
Dink looked at her. “What would his T-shirt be doing here?” he asked.
Ruth Rose started pacing around the room. “He got taken near the Grand Canyon,” she said.
“Maybe the kidnappers brought him down here!”
“Here?” Josh asked.
Ruth Rose nodded. “Phantom Ranch would be a perfect place for the kidnappers to hide Parker till they got the three million dollars!” she said.
The kids stared out the window. On the rope line, the T-shirt moved in the breeze.
“If that is Parker’s T-shirt,” Ruth Rose went on, “he might be in that cabin! And the man who hung up the shirt could be one of the kidnappers!”
“Let’s go knock on the door,” Josh suggested.
“Guys, tons of people buy those T-shirts from the website,” Dink said. “That one probably belongs to the guy staying in that cabin.”
“Okay, you could be right,” Ruth Rose said. “But can we just walk by the cabin? Maybe we’ll see something through the windows.”
“Like what?” Dink asked.
“Like Parker Stone watching TV and eating a burger!” Josh said.
Dink laughed. “All right, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look,” he said. “But let’s leave Tommy here. We don’t need him getting all upset again.”
Josh put Tommy in the cat carrier and gave him a grape. The kids walked across the bridge and up the path toward the cabins. The clothesline holding the T-shirt was next to cabin four. Up close, it was easy to see RTTR inside a circle.
“That’s exactly like the one Parker was wearing yesterday,” Ruth Rose whispered. “Can you see anything through the window?”
“Nope,” Josh said.
The cabin door opened, and a woman appeared. “Can I help you kids?” she asked.
She was wearing a sweatshirt and shorts. Her blond hair was draped over one shoulder, and she twirled the ends with her fingers.
Dink stared at the woman. Where have I seen her before? he wondered.
“Um, we thought we saw something moving over here,” Ruth Rose said.
“Moving?” the woman said.
“Someone told us there are bears in the Grand Canyon!” Josh said. “We thought we’d check it out.”