I had to think fast. I had two choices: I could reveal my presence—and that of my sister and cousin—or I could remain hidden. Remaining hidden was safer. But what about Monroe?
Kiki was on her knees beside me. “Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”
“If we lead Blood to the treasure,” I said in an urgent whisper, “maybe he’ll let Monroe go. Maybe he’ll let us all go.”
Monroe and Blood were within a few yards of the yawning black mouth leading out of the cavern. I couldn’t waste another second.
“It’s like Monroe just said,” Kiki said in a soft voice. “What if there isn’t a treasure?”
I turned my head and looked at Kiki through the flickering shadows. “We have to help Monroe.”
“Pablo’s right,” Pia said, crawling over to us. “We have to help him.”
Kiki looked at Pia, nodded, and managed a thin smile. “I know.”
I sucked in a big breath, yanked the space blanket away from the opening, and tossed it aside. “Blood!” I cried out. “Over here!”
Blood and Monroe by now were at the mouth of the tunnel. Blood wheeled around and shone his light in my direction. “Who’s there?”
“It’s the kid with the treasure map!” I shouted.
“Who?”
“Are you deaf, dude? I’ve got the treasure map! Come take a look!”
“Pablo!” Monroe called out. “Are Pia and Kiki with you?”
“We’re all safe!” I boomed.
Blood muttered something to Monroe, and then splashed toward our cave-within-a-cave. He waded onto the rocky shore, then turned and lit Monroe with his flashlight. Monroe stood motionless in the shallow water.
“Ya stay right thar, Huff,” Blood ordered, waving his rifle. “Ya hear?”
“I hear,” Monroe said in a bored-stiff voice.
Blood kept moving forward. When he was within a few feet of the portal, I sank back into the cave. I removed the treasure map from my backpack, and held it over the fire.
In the next moment, Blood’s bearded face appeared at the opening. He poked his flashlight beam into the cave. He shone it on me, then on Pia and Kiki, and then back on me.
“What’s that you’re holding, kid?” Blood asked in a gravelly voice.
“It’s the answer to all your prayers,” I said, trying to keep the fear in my voice under control. Flames licked the bottom of the map, which was shaking in my hand. “It’s a map. It shows the way to the Jesse James treasure.”
Blood turned again and found Monroe where he had left him, then shone his light on me again.
“What’s your game, kid?”
“It’s simple,” I said. “I promise not to burn the map and give it to you if you promise not to hurt anyone.”
“You can’t trust him,” Kiki whispered.
Kiki was right, of course, but it didn’t seem to me that I had much choice. I had to help Monroe the only way I knew how. I had to gamble that Blood would honor any deal we made. An old saying popped into my mind. It was something about “a deal with the devil.”
“Maybe I’ll just come in there and take the map,” Blood warned, blinding me with the flashlight beam and poking the barrel of his rifle inside. “How’s that sound to ya?” He laid one hand on the stone rim and began to crawl inside.
I turned away from the bright light and lowered the map over the fire. One edge ignited immediately.
“I’ll burn it, Blood!” I announced. “I swear I’ll burn it!”
The flames swept up one side of the map.
“Stop, kid! Stop!” Blood cried, moving back and making a sweeping, chaotic gesture with his free hand. “Ya gotta deal!”
I hurriedly dropped the map onto the cave floor and stomped the flames out with one duct-taped sneaker. Parts of the route to the treasure had been blackened by the fire, but the good part—the part showing the network of tunnels leading from the Graveyard to the Magic Rock and from there to the Cathedral—was still legible.
“Do you swear on your mother’s grave that you’ll honor our agreement?” I asked, looking at Blood.
Blood shook his head. “She ain’t dead.”
“Okay, on your father’s grave?”
“Sure, kid, on my father’s grave.”
Blood had answered too fast, too easily, but I said, “Shake?”
“Sure, shake.”
I stepped over to the entrance and took Blood’s outstretched hand, which was cold and slithery. I was certain that I’d just made a deal with the devil.
“Okay, kid,” Blood said, turning to spit, “give me another look-see at this here map. Lay it down and step back.” Blood motioned me away with the barrel of his rifle.
Monroe and Blood had spent some time inside the Graveyard warming themselves and drying out—Blood had given the map a quick look—but everyone was now gathered outside the small cave. Our backpacks lay nearby. The flood had been reduced to a trickle of water.
I moved back, and Blood dropped to one knee and studied the dog-eared map. Blood kept one eye on the map, the other on his four hostages.
Monroe nudged closer to where Pia, Kiki, and I stood. “I’m sorry to say I watched helplessly as the flood swept everyone away,” Monroe said, his gloomy expression showing guilt.
“There was nothing you could have done, Monroe,” I said.
“Quit your yapping!” Blood ordered, waving the barrel of his rifle at us. He turned back to the map, his eyes tracing the route to the Jesse James treasure. “Glory be,” he muttered. “I always knowed thar was a treasure.” His eyes dancing with greed, Blood continued to study the map, looking up occasionally to make certain the four of us remained at a safe distance. His finger found its way to the Graveyard.
“Is this here the place called the Graveyard?” Blood asked, training his light on the small entrance to the burial cave a few yards away. “All them bones and such. Gotta be the Graveyard.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”
“Then the treasure ain’t far,” Blood said with a hungry grin. “Let’s go find it.”
Everyone slipped into their backpacks and headed out at the point of Blood’s rifle.
Fifteen minutes after leaving the Graveyard, we arrived at the next destination on the map: Magic Rock.
The formation resembled a huge seesaw, one that had been created after a large, thin slab of ceiling rock had pulled away from the roof centuries earlier and was now balanced on a raised shelf beneath it. The Magic Rock lay beneath the ceiling scar left by its fall, resting there as if by magic.
“Magic Rock,” Blood mumbled, examining the map. “We’re close to the treasure. Real Close. We go off down this here tunnel.” Blood pointed his flashlight beam down the narrow tunnel before us.
We started down the tunnel when Blood ordered us to stop. “Hold your horses for a spell.” The map hanging from his hand, Blood stood motionless for the longest time, his flashlight drifting back and forth over the four of us.
I had a sick feeling.
“Remember the deal we made, Blood,” I said.
“Shut your trap! Need to think!”
“So think,” Monroe challenged.
A light breeze drifted through the chamber, brushing our faces and playing a little tune as it passed over the uneven surface of the Magic Rock.
“Okay,” Blood said after a few more moments of deep thought. “This here’s the plan. We’re all going to this here place on the map called the Ca—” His light fell on the map and he tried the word again. “The Cathy …”
“The Cathedral,” I said. “It’s like a church. You should visit one some time.”
“Shut your trap!”
“Yes sir re-bob!” Earl Blood crowed as he marched us down the tunnel at gunpoint. We were headed toward a place on the map called the Cathedral. An X on the map promised that the Jesse James treasure would be found there.
“First thing I’m gonna do is go out and buy me a brand new Ford 350 pickup—a big yell
er one,” Blood bragged.
“Yellow. That cowardly color seems to fit you,” Kiki scoffed.
“Says you!” Blood snorted. “Darn near got eaten by a bear. Took three shots, but I sure enough got him. Then me and Burl had to jump that thar pit. That weren’t so easy. Fact is, Burl ain’t such a good jumper. He didn’t make it, bless his id-jut soul. Screamed all the way to the bottom of that black hole.”
“Yeah, we heard,” I said, recalling Burl’s shrieks of terror that had echoed throughout the cave the day before.
We pressed forward.
“Tell me something, Blood, how did you manage to avoid the flood?” Monroe asked, his flashlight pushing aside the darkness ahead.
“I climbed me a wall, that’s how,” Blood said from the back of the line. “So the way I got it figured, I got as much right to that thar treasure as anyone. I done worked for it—I done paid my dues.”
“Your gift for logic overwhelms me,” Monroe mocked.
“Says you!”
We hiked on, our ragged shadows following us step for step along the uneven stone walls.
“If I didn’t need ya,” Blood said after awhile, “I’d leave the mess of ya right here.”
“Why do you need us?” Pia asked, glancing back at Blood.
In a taunting voice, Blood said, “Why do you need us?” Then, in his regular voice, he said, “’Cause you’ll make great pack mules, that’s why.”
We continued on in silence.
“Didn’t hear nothing,” Blood said. “Everybody done lost their gift for gab? Or maybe ya don’t like what it is I got planned?” He gave a shout of laughter, but there was little humor in it.
“We like it fine,” I agreed.
A soft puff of air murmured up the canal, which now curved to the left at a gentle incline. The floor was strewn with rocky slabs that had pulled loose from the ceiling over the years, and everyone walked over and around the jagged rocks.
“That thar gold and silver must be stacked ten feet high,” Blood said, his voice overflowing with joy. “They been talking about that treasure for years. Never believed them stories til ya kids brought that thar gold coin into my store.” He lowered his head as we passed under a section of the tunnel ceiling that was clustered with knobby flowstone. “All that gold and silver, and I’ll need help packing it out.” Blood uttered a short, revolting snort that was quickly lost in the darkness.
We trudged down the rocky walkway that twisted deeper and deeper into Bear Mountain.
My brain was buzzing wildly. I wondered what Blood would do to us if there wasn’t any treasure? Or what if the treasure was so small that Blood could carry it out himself? I ran half a dozen plots through my mind, but they all led to one terrible conclusion: Sooner or later Earl Blood is going to kill us.
23
From a distance, we heard rushing water.
My brain relayed the warning instantly: Another flashflood!
We all turned and looked behind us, but the tunnel was black and empty.
We pressed forward, the sound of rushing water growing louder, and when the passageway made a long, slow decline to the right, opening up, we were there—the Cathedral. The sound we heard was not that of a flood, but of a fast-moving river that ran through the huge domed gallery.
“Ohmigosh,” Pia said in a small voice, looking around, eyes wide.
We stood at the entrance to the Cathedral, overwhelmed by its size, the beams from our flashlights bringing the huge cavern to life. The ceiling was so high in places that our bright shafts of light were swallowed up by the darkness.
“The Holy Grail of caves,” Monroe said in a choked voice, stunned by what he saw.
Decorated with stalactites, stalagmites, pillars and complex flowstone formations, the Cathedral looked more like a futuristic city than a cavern in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. A natural rock bridge arced above the noisy river. The place was weirdly beautiful.
We entered the great room.
“How big do you think it is, Monroe?” I asked.
“A single chamber in Carlsbad Cavern is three-quarters of a mile long,” Monroe said, soaking it up. “This baby could be that big or bigger.”
“Pablo, look at those stalactites,” Kiki said at my elbow, her flashlight brightening parts of the high ceiling.
“They must be 30 feet long,” I said. The spear-like teeth hung above us like some sort of lethal contraption ready to fall at any moment.
“Awesome!” Pia gushed.
“Yeah, it’s real pretty,” Earl snarled. “Now git to looking for that thar treasure.”
“You don’t have to look,” I said.
“What ya mean, kid?”
“I mean we’ve already found it.” I directed my flashlight beam across the river.
There, sitting on the cavern floor, not far from the arched stone bridge, was a dark hump. All our lights focused on the shadowy object.
“How ya know that thar’s the treasure?” Blood said.
“What else could it be?” I asked.
“Could be a big rock,” Blood surmised.
“It’s no rock,” Monroe said.
Everyone studied the dark hump.
“Is it what I think it is, Pablo?” Kiki asked.
“A trunk of some sort,” I said, squinting in the dim light. I had to fight the urge to jump up and down with joy, and to scream until my throat gave out.
“Can’t tell for sure,” Kiki said, “but it looks like an old steamer trunk.”
“What’s a steamer trunk?” Pia asked.
“Rich people packed their clothes in them on steamship voyages back in the 19th century,” Kiki said. “But I can’t tell for sure this far away.”
“Monroe, do you think that bridge will hold us?” I asked, giving it a wary look.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Monroe said, striding toward the bridge, the three of us following. Blood lagged behind.
When we reached the stone bridge we stopped. The bridge arched 10 feet above the river. It almost looked manmade.
“Let’s take it one by one,” Monroe suggested, and one by one we cautiously crossed the bridge and hurried over to the old trunk.
“It is a steamer trunk,” Kiki confirmed, her light outlining it.
Covered in tin and engraved with the shapes of flowers, the trunk appeared in good condition, considering how old it must be. The lid was held shut by a rusty metal clasp.
No one made a move to open the trunk. We simply stared at it.
There is a treasure! I knew it! My body quivered with anticipation.
Even Blood seemed numbed by the discovery. But finally he said, “Open it!”
But no one moved.
“Go ahead, Pablo,” Monroe said after a few more anxious moments. “Try your luck.”
I stepped forward, the beam from my flashlight fixed on the clasp. I hesitated, a hundred thoughts taking shape inside my head. What if the trunk was empty? What if there was no gold and the map was all just a hoax? I could almost hear Jesse James and his gang laughing from their graves. Blood would make quick work of us if the steamer trunk was empty.
“Go ahead, kid!” Blood ordered. “Open it!”
There was a painful tightness in my chest, and I could hear my father speaking to me: “Only a fool pretends to know tomorrow.”
“Open it!” Blood barked, making a gesture with the barrel of his rifle. “NOW!”
His word ricocheted through the Cathedral, but still I couldn’t move.
“I’ll … I’ll open it,” Kiki said, her voice fluttering.
“Then go ahead and do it, little gal,” Blood said. “And be quick about it.”
Kiki stepped in beside me and put her hand on the clasp. Then she pulled her hand back, laughed nervously, and let out a long, heavy sigh. “This is tougher than I thought.”
Her expression crumbling, Kiki looked at me. She shook her head and shrugged. “I can’t ….”
In a quiet voice, I turned and looked at my sist
er. “Pia, open the trunk.”
Kiki stepped back and Pia hurried over to the trunk. She tried to release the metal clasp, but it was rusted shut. Her light swung around to me. “It won’t open, Pablo. It’s stuck.”
Monroe slipped out of his backpacks and laid them on the cavern floor.
“What ya doing?” Blood asked, aiming his flashlight on Monroe.
“The clasp is bound with rust,” Monroe said.
“Yeah, so?”
“So I’m going to break the clasp free of the rust.”
Removing his rock hammer from his equipment pack, Monroe stepped over to the trunk and gave the clasp a heavy thump. Rust sprinkled down from the clasp.
“Try it now, Pia,” Monroe encouraged.
Pia tried the clasp again, but it was still rusted tight, and Monroe gave it another smack, firmer this time, and then stepped back.
Pia’s fingers went to work and the clasp flew open with a loud snap!
No one spoke or moved or batted an eyelash. The only sound was the gurgle of the river.
“Raise the lid, Pia,” I said, my body trembling with a mixture of fear and happiness.
Stooping, Pia placed the palms of her hands under the edge of the lid, and then pushed upward. The lid opened with an unsettling creak, and Pia peeked inside.
“Ohmigosh!”
What Pia saw—and what we all saw as we crowded around—was the inside of an old tin-engraved steamer trunk that was filled to overflowing with decaying canvas bags. Each bag was stenciled with a different name: KANSAS CITY SOUTHERN RAILROAD, WELLS FARGO STAGECOACH, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
Some of the drawstrings on the canvas bags had rotted and hundreds of gold and silver coins had spilled out inside the old trunk—it was filled to the brim with treasure.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“If I’m dreaming,” Kiki said, her husky voice dropping to a whisper, “don’t you dare wake me up.”
Pia pushed the lid back on its hinges, where it rested.
I finally found my voice. “It’s no dream, Kiki.”
A burlap sack filled with jewelry lay in one corner of the trunk. I removed the sack and peeked inside. It contained dozens of gold watches and gold wedding bands, bracelets made from dark red stones and necklaces from bottle-green gems, pearl earrings, and dozens of other pieces, including a ring with a crystal-clear stone as big as a walnut. Kiki held it up to the light.
A Boy Called Duct Tape Page 15