“They’re awesome,” Pia said, craning her neck toward the high ceiling, the beam from her headlamp skipping from one formation to the next.
Even though they looked cool, I had the feeling that one of the stone clusters might break loose at any moment and come crashing down on us. Some of the heavier formations had pulled away from the ceiling at some point in time—Maybe during that tremor a few days ago, I thought—and now lay in scattered pieces on the tunnel floor. Pia and I stepped over and around the remains of some of the larger stalactites.
“Should we go back now?” Pia asked, her light stabbing the gloom before us.
I checked my watch. Still plenty of time. “Five more minutes, then we’ll go back.”
Pia turned her head toward me. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
Pools of water had formed on the smooth belly of the tunnel, and we stepped around those as well. Thin shelves had been shaped along the walls by some long-ago underground river, and bunches of tiny stalactites had sprouted from the shelves. The place had an eerie look to it, and there was a sharp odor that burned our nostrils.
“What’s that smell, Pablo?” Pia asked, pinching her nose. “It smells like that stuff Mom uses to clean the bathroom.”
“Ammonia, I think.”
I checked my watch: 3:55.
“How’s the leg, Pia?” I asked.
“It’s okay. Doesn’t hurt much.”
“Much?”
“It felt better when we were on the river.”
“It was the heat,” I said. “Heat’s good for bad bones and muscles. Cold isn’t so good.”
“Oh.”
“When it starts hurting too much we’ll stop and rest.”
“Okay, but I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“What will we do with all the money after we find the treasure?”
I grinned. “A house for Mom and us, and we’ll get your leg fixed.”
“And maybe cell phones?”
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t they fix my leg after the accident?”
“Don’t know, Pia. Something about insurance.”
“After we find the treasure the first thing I’m going—” Pia interrupted herself with a tiny screech. “What was that?” She jerked her head left, then right, her headlamp sketching the walls and ceiling.
“What was—?” Something swished past my head. It darted in and out of the beam from my light. “Bats!” I cried.
“Bats?” Pia howled. “Gross!”
The bats filled the air around us, passing overhead and rustling in the darkness. It reminded me of a scene from a horror movie. Only this wasn’t make-believe.
“Up there!” I said. “They’re coming out of that crack!”
Pia’s headlamp beam merged with mine to reveal a wide crack high on the wall. “Where are they going?” Bats were pouring out of the wall like water from a hose.
“Must be supper time,” I said.
The bats soon disappeared and the cavern silence returned.
Pressing forward, we saw something that brought Pia and me to a sudden stop. Nuzzling close, Pia grabbed my hand.
My eyes bulging with fear, my feet rooted to the cave floor, I stared at the thing.
And the thing stared back.
16
“Pablo, I can feel my heart beating,” Pia said, squeezing my hand.
I wanted to say something comforting to my sister, but my tongue was paralyzed. My instinct was to grab Pia and run, but my legs were glued to the tunnel floor.
Before us in the Boulevard of Chandeliers, perched on a thin ledge a few feet off the cave floor, sat a dead body. It wasn’t a skeleton, but it wasn’t a person either. It was something in between. Most of the nose had been eaten away, and both eyes—which looked like rotting grapes—hung from empty sockets by stringy tendons. The body wore ragged bits of a gray suit, a white tie around its neck. Arms folded in its lap, the corpse’s legs were crossed like some celebrity on a talk show. A full set of teeth scrunched a fat cigar, or what was left of one.
The skeleton seemed to be smiling. It seemed to be alive.
Taking baby steps, and hand in hand, Pia and I approached.
The skeleton’s forehead was stamped with a small opening about the size of a quarter.
A bullet hole, I guessed.
Suspended from a thin wire, a strip of wood hung from the skeleton’s neck. A message had been written in pencil on the wood:
Here sits Woodrow Botine, a Pinkerton detective slow on the draw. He were the first and last to have a go at Jesse’s gold.
My fear was smothered by a surge of wild excitement. “Totally awesome!” I cheered, my joy echoing down the black tunnel. I picked up Pia under her arms and whirled her around in one great circle. “Totally awesome!” I cried out again, twirling her around and around.
“Pablo! You’re scaring me!” Pia squawked. “Put me down!”
“Oh! Sorry!” I placed her back on the cave floor.
“Why are you so … so happy?” Pia gasped, looking at me like I’d gone mental.
“Don’t you see? The treasure really exists!” I clapped my hands. “It really exists!” Throwing my head back I shouted, “The treasure is real!”
My yell came back as an echo.
I gave Pia a crushing embrace.
“Pablo … I … can’t breathe,” Pia groaned.
“We heard yelling,” Kiki said.
“That was me,” I said, a grin frozen onto my lips.
It was a few minutes after 5:30 p.m., and the four of us had reassembled at the point where the two tunnels originated.
“Run into another possum, Pablo?” Monroe snickered.
“No!” Pia exclaimed. “We found—”
I clamped a hand over my sister’s mouth. “We’d rather show you than tell you,” I said, that Christmas-morning grin still stretching my lips.
“I hope your discovery was better than ours,” Kiki said. “The ceiling had fallen and covered the tunnel. A snake couldn’t have crawled through.”
Pia cringed. “There’s snakes down here?”
“No, no,” Kiki said. “That was just a figure of speech.”
“Huh?”
Kiki shook her head. “There are no snakes, primo.”
“Did you find the Boulevard of Chandeliers?” Monroe asked, his light on my happy face.
My grin continued to shine. “Better than that.”
We slipped into our backpacks and headed down the tunnel toward what was left of Woodrow Botine. When we came to the fissure in the wall where Pia and I had seen the bats, Monroe said that the presence of bats was conclusive proof of at least one other exit.
“What’s that nasty smell?” Kiki asked, scrunching her nose.
“Bat guano,” Monroe said, tilting his head and looking perplexed. “On the northern side of Bear Mountain grows a huge oak tree. Been dead for years. I’ve seen bats flying out of that hollow oak. Always thought the bats lived in that old tree,” he continued. “Guess the oak’s root system opens up into this cave.” He pointed his headlamp at the fissure in the wall. I could see the wheels turning in Monroe’s head. “Interesting,” he muttered.
We continued down the corridor and in a few minutes our lamps lit the corpse of the former Pinkerton detective.
Kiki recoiled at the sight.
“Doesn’t mean there’s a treasure,” Monroe said thoughtfully, shining his light on the man’s remains. “It says this Pinkerton man had a go at Jesse’s gold. It doesn’t say the gold exists.” Monroe stepped closer to the dead body and lifted the sign closer to his headlamp.
“Monroe,” Kiki said, her voice a little jumpy. “You have a bad habit for throwing a wet blanket—”
“I’m just telling you what it says,” Monroe said. “Besides, if I’d hidden a fortune in gold and silver I certainly wouldn’t advertise it.” His beam of light found Kiki. “Would you?”
Kiki had no answer.
&
nbsp; Monroe released his grip on the tiny signboard. It fell gently against Woodrow Botine’s chest. It wasn’t much of an impact, really no more than a whisper-soft bump of the small wooden sign hitting the body, but it was enough to jar one of the decaying legs, which must have been hanging by a thread. The leg pulled away from the corpse and fell onto the cave floor with a quiet thump.
Pia gasped and stepped back.
Like a house of cards, the remaining pieces of the corpse began to crumble. The other leg had lost its hinge and was the next to go. It dropped to the floor too. Without the legs to prop it up, the torso was now top-heavy and had no sense of balance. It began to wobble forward before pitching onto the cold floor. It landed with a sickening CLUMP!
The impact caused the head to break away from the rotting torso, and it rolled along the tunnel floor toward us. The eyes suspended by rubbery tendons, they bounced up and down like twin yoyos with each rotation. The decaying head stopped a few feet short of where we stood.
Pia screamed first. Then Kiki.
The shrieks were as loud and sharp as a tornado siren, and I pushed the palms of my hands over my ears. It didn’t help much. I squeezed my eyes shut and wondered if the screeching would rip my eardrums open.
“STOP SCREAMING!” Monroe yelled at the top of his lungs, waving his hands in the air.
Pia and Kiki stopped, but their echoes bounced back for five or six seconds.
And then a deathly silence.
“Please, no more screaming, ladies,” Monroe said in an urgent voice, sucking in a big breath. “Please ….”
“I second that,” I gasped, popping my eyes open.
Leaving the Boulevard of Chandeliers, we proceeded toward the next destination on the map. The site called the Death Cake.
I could see the uneasiness in the eyes of my sister and cousin. Pia kept looking back over her shoulder, and every few steps Kiki would give the tunnel ahead a complete 360 with her headlamp. To be honest, I was pretty tense too. I tried to imagine what in the world the mapmaker had meant by Death Cake. I couldn’t.
Maybe it was just meant to scare away treasure hunters, I concluded.
The tunnel we hiked in soon opened up into a winding passageway, one as wide as a four-lane highway and 60 feet in height. Boulders the size of houses lined either side of the underground freeway. Monroe said the boulders had pulled away from the walls.
Ten minutes after entering the big tunnel, Monroe slowed his pace and said, “I’ve found the treasure.” Although his light pushed back the darkness ahead of us, there was nothing but rock—walls, ceiling, floor.
“I must have missed something,” I said, my headlamp crisscrossing the gray rock.
“Yeah,” Kiki added. “Where was I when all this happened?”
“Where is it, Mr. Huff?” Pia asked, gazing up at his Neanderthal face.
“This place,” Monroe said. “Jesse’s Cave. It’s treasure enough for me. The old gal has won my heart.”
“Fine by me,” Kiki chirped. “You can have the cave, Monroe. We’ll keep the treasure.”
Pia snickered.
“Good one, Kiki,” I beamed.
“Think about it,” Monroe said. “We’re probably the first people to set foot in this cave since the days of Jesse James. And it ranks right up there with the world’s great caverns.”
Monroe was now calling the place Jesse’s cave, and I smiled to myself. I was certain that it was only a matter of time before we found the treasure.
I dug out the map and studied it as we moved down the shadowy tunnel. If the map was right, the Death Cake was just ahead.
17
“That’s it!” I shouted, the beam from my headlamp showering the tunnel ahead with splatters of light. The tunnel opened up into a large chamber about the size of a gymnasium. A strange, platform-like mound occupied a space on the far side of the big gallery. The rock formation resembled a giant eight-layered cake. It didn’t look all that deathly.
“Is this what the map meant by the Death Cake?” Kiki asked, peering down the tunnel and into the chamber.
“Could be,” Monroe said, lengthening his stride.
“It doesn’t look very, uh … deadly,” Kiki observed, sketching it with her light.
“Awesome,” Pia said, her headlamp tracing the terraced knolls.
“I agree with Kiki,” I said. “I don’t see anything deadly about it.”
Everyone studied the Death Cake as we approached.
The chalky-colored limestone formation stood about 30 feet tall. Water spilled onto the “cake” from the ceiling and flowed over a series of eight terraces, each one bigger than the last.
Maybe the water’s poison, I thought. Or gives off a poisonous gas.
“It does look like a cake,” Pia observed, a happy skip in her voice. “Cool!”
“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “The map is right again!”
Eyes forward, I strode past Monroe toward the odd geological wonder. In one quick motion Monroe grabbed me by the arm, jerking me to a stop. “Whoa, Pablo!”
Monroe’s headlamp lit what should have been the cave floor before us. But there was no floor, only a dark pit separating the end of the tunnel from the large chamber housing the Death Cake. Another step or two and I would have tumbled into the black hole.
“Thanks,” I said, exhaling a great breath of air and gazing down into the dark emptiness. I could hear my heart: thump! thump! thump! My stomach had dropped down to my knees.
“Thank you, Mr. Huff,” Pia said, taking me by the sleeve and pulling me away from the pit. “Pablo, be careful,” she said, giving me her best scolding look.
“Almost lost you, primo,” Kiki observed cautiously. She looked at Monroe. “Now I know why the mapmaker labeled it Death Cake.”
“Yes, aptly named,” Monroe said.
We slipped out of our backpacks and examined the 12-foot-wide chasm.
“I’ll bet there’s more than one body at the bottom of that pit,” Monroe said, his light passing over the night-black hole. “Tricky old gal, Mother Cave. She gain’s a fellow’s eye with that beautiful cake, and the next thing he knows he’s flying with the bats.”
“Like a trap,” Kiki reflected.
“Precisely,” Monroe said. “Mother Cave is protecting her own.”
“A Death Cake,” I noted, eyeing the formation. It was so close, yet so far.
A rotting, makeshift ladder made from gnarly tree limbs about the size of a man’s arm stretched across the yawning hole. I stepped over to it and nudged it with one duct-taped sneaker. It wobbled unsteadily.
“It was probably strong enough to hold a man’s weight 130 years ago,” Monroe observed. “And it may still have some muscle to it.” He stepped to the edge of the pit and shined his light into it. The bottom was invisible in the darkness.
“Monroe, who do you think made this ladder?” Kiki asked, the beam from her headlamp tracing it.
“Are you asking me if I think Jesse James had something to do with it?” Monroe said.
“Uh-huh, I guess.”
“Let’s just say this old log ladder was made by someone. Maybe Jesse and his boys. Maybe not.”
“That hole looks scary,” Pia noted, leaning forward, her light glazing the pit walls.
“Scary and deep,” Monroe said. “Let’s see how deep.” Monroe opened his equipment pack and removed his rock hammer. He chiseled a chunk of limestone from the tunnel wall.
“How can you tell how deep it is?” I asked.
“Objects fall at a constant speed,” Monroe explained. “When I drop this rock into the hole and it takes two seconds to hit bottom, we know this pit is about 150 feet deep. Five seconds, 300 feet deep. And so on. It’s a formula spelunkers came up with years ago.”
Monroe stepped to the edge again, shined his headlamp on his wristwatch, and pitched the rock into the hole.
He counted aloud the seconds ticking by.
“One!”
“Two!”
“Th
ree!”
No sound.
“Four!”
“Five!”
Silence.
“Six!”
“Seven!”
At eight seconds a faint splash rose from the deep pit.
The distant sound gave me a sudden chill.
“That’s not possible,” Monroe whispered, his deep-set eyes drawn together in confusion, his face folding into a frown. “That can’t be right.” He carved another rock from the wall and went through the drill a second time.
Again, eight seconds.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Monroe announced. “We have just discovered the deepest cave pit in North America. About 750 feet, if my calculations are correct. This is deeper than the Fantastic Pit in Georgia by more than 200 feet.”
“Any idea how we’re going to get across?” I asked. “That tree ladder doesn’t look all that stable.” I studied the limb ladder more closely. It might hold a person’s weight. Might. Might not.
Pia gave a sudden squeal, her light trained at her feet. She knelt down and snatched up something from the cave floor. “Ohmigosh!” she cried. “Look at this!” She held up a moss-green stone the size of a walnut.
Kiki examined the stone. “Awesome! It looks like an emerald.” Kiki’s headlamp filtered through the gem—it cast flickering green shafts of light on the gray walls.
The precious stone was passed among us.
“I’d say it’s real,” Monroe said.
“Where’d it come from?” Pia asked.
The answer came to me in a flash. “I’ll bet it was accidentally dropped when Jesse and his men were transferring their loot across this ladder bridge,” I said, the scene unfolding in my mind’s eye.
“Makes sense to me,” Kiki said. “The James Gang wasn’t real picky about what they stole, according to my book. Pia’s emerald may have hung around the neck of some rich old woman on a train or stagecoach.” A smile splashed across her face. “I’m liking more and more our chances of finding that treasure.”
“Yours to keep, Pia,” Monroe said, handing the emerald to her. “Find a safe spot for it.”
A Boy Called Duct Tape Page 11