Bailey and the Santa Fe Secret

by Linda McQuinn Carlblom

“Yeah, I’m afraid we’ll freeze if we don’t get out before dark.”

  “We’ll get out.” Bailey stood straight. “I have faith!”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I’m glad. So do I.”

  Bailey’s rock suddenly came free, and she landed on her backside. She laughed. “I’m glad you couldn’t see that, Beth.”

  “See what?”

  Bailey explained what had just happened.

  “I missed it,” Elizabeth teased. “I could’ve used a good laugh, too!”

  With each rock that was pulled out, a bit more light came in, but other rocks fell in, filling the hole they’d just made.

  “We can’t seem to clear enough space to crawl out!” Bailey wailed.

  “Just keep at it,” Elizabeth said. “We can’t give up!”

  “Hello?”

  “Anybody there?”

  Bailey and Elizabeth stood stock still for a nanosecond. They leaped onto the rock wall.

  “Help! We’re in here!” Elizabeth shouted. Bailey reached the wire flagpole first and wiggled it wildly. “Help! Help!”

  “We hear you!” the rescuer said. “Hold tight. We’ll get you out of there.”

  Elan yelled into the rocked entrance. “Bailey! Elizabeth! It’s Elan! You’re going to be okay.”

  “Elan!” Tears sprung to Bailey’s eyes. “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

  “Are you hurt?” one of the men asked.

  “No,” Elizabeth replied. “Just tired and scared.”

  “Bailey? Is that you? It’s Mom!”

  “It’s me,” Bailey answered, her voice shaking. “Don’t worry. We’re okay now that we know we’ll get out of here soon.”

  The girls caught glimpses of hands until a circular hole at the top of the wall spanned about two feet wide.

  “Do you think you can crawl out?” a rescuer yelled into the hole.

  “Sure!” Bailey said. “We just have to climb the wall, and I’ve already been up it plenty of times today!”

  She started climbing the wall once more, wincing at the pain from her sore toes and raw fingertips. Elizabeth crawled up behind her, and when Bailey got to the top, the rescuer pulled her out as Elizabeth pushed from behind. The warm sun never felt so good on Bailey’s face.

  In minutes, both girls were out and hugging Bailey’s mom and the Tses.

  “Oh Mom, I love you! I’ve never been so happy to see you in my whole life,” Bailey said, as she hugged her mother.

  “That goes double for me!” Mrs. Chang hugged Bailey, then held her at arm’s length to look her over. “You weren’t hurt in the earthquake?”

  “No, but that’s how we got trapped,” Bailey said. “The rocks fell and covered the entrance so we couldn’t get back out.”

  “God was looking out for you, that’s for sure,” Halona said.

  “We knew it all along,” Elizabeth said. “He was right there in that mine with us, wasn’t He, Bales?”

  “Yep, and His Word kept coming to our minds,” Bailey added.

  “That’s why it’s so important to hide God’s Word in your heart, like you’ve done,” Bailey’s mom told them. “Then it’s there to draw from when you need it.”

  “It was pretty cool, the way that worked,” Beth admitted.

  “Come on,” Halona said. “Let’s get these girls home. They’ve had quite a day.”

  “That’s for sure.” Bailey turned to her rescuers. “Thank you for finding us and getting us out.” She hugged them with all her might.

  The four o’clock sun blazed as they started walking toward the tourists’ parking lot, when Bailey remembered. “Halona!” she said. “I almost forgot. We have some good news for you!”

  The Surprise

  Halona swung around toward Bailey. “What good news?”

  “Well,” Bailey said, “when I tried to fix the pot I broke, I found a secret hiding place inside.”

  “What?” Halona unlocked the car doors and the group piled inside. “I can’t wait to hear that story on the way home!”

  Once they were in the Suburban, Bailey continued. “I picked up the piece with my favorite part of the painting on it, the sunset.” Excitement fizzed in Bailey like carbonation in a soda. “I was going to glue it to another piece, but I noticed that the side where it had broken looked weird.”

  “How was it weird?” Halona asked.

  “It was hollow!” Bailey raised her eyebrows. “It had a hidden wall inside the outer one, making a pocket-like compartment just behind the sunset.” Bailey buckled her seat belt, and they were off.

  “Was something in it?” Bailey’s mom asked.

  Bailey nodded. “Yes, but I’m not going to tell you what until we get back to the shop.”

  Halona looked at Bailey in the rearview mirror. “Well, aren’t you the mysterious one?”

  “I don’t mean to be mysterious,” Bailey said. “I just think it will be neater to show it to you instead of just tell you about it. Don’t you think so, Beth?”

  “Definitely,” Elizabeth said. “Believe me, this is worth waiting fifteen minutes to find out.”

  Soon, the Suburban pulled up in front of Earth Works, and they all climbed out. Halona unlocked the store and stepped inside, where Bailey saw her wince at the sight of the earthquake damage. Her hands flew to her mouth, tears pooling in her dark eyes. The smell of pottery dust hung in the air.

  “I’ll never be able to afford to replace all this merchandise,” she whispered.

  “What about your insurance?” Mrs. Chang asked. “Will it cover it?”

  “It may cover some of it, but probably not everything.” Halona slumped onto a stool behind the counter. “I don’t know if we can recover financially from this. We may have to shut down the store.”

  “Wait.” Bailey strode to the studio with Elizabeth close behind and rummaged through the pieces of broken pottery in front of the open cabinet that had held the family heirloom. As she brushed shards aside, she spotted the one with the sunset painted on it and picked it up. Like jigsaw puzzle pieces from different puzzles all mixed together, the ancient pot was beyond repair.

  “Where’s the deed?” Bailey asked.

  “In my bag,” Elizabeth replied. “Remember? We put it in there so no one would find it and so it wouldn’t get crumpled.” Elizabeth retrieved her bag and pulled out the deed.

  She handed it to Bailey. “Let’s go present this to its rightful owner.”

  The girls walked down the hall to the store, where everyone was busy picking up broken pottery pieces, baskets, jewelry, and blankets. Elan was putting his broom to good use.

  “Seems like something’s missing.” Bailey looked around the store and spotted the incense holder. “That’s it!” She went over and lit a fresh stick of incense. “Now it smells like it should in here. It smells like Earth Works.”

  “We found what we wanted to show you, Halona,” Elizabeth said.

  All work stopped, and everyone gathered by the counter.

  Bailey cleared her throat. “It is with great pleasure that I present to Halona Tse this deed to the Suquosa Turquoise Mine. It belonged to her ancestors and now belongs to her and her family.”

  Halona’s mouth fell open. Her eyes went from Bailey to Elizabeth, then to Bailey’s mom and her own children. “The deed? Is this for real?”

  “It’s real, all right,” Bailey said. “It’s what we found inside your pot.” Bailey showed her the broken piece of pottery and the pocket where the deed was found.

  Aiyana tugged on her mother’s hand. “Mama! It’s just like what your mother told you, remember? ‘Behind the sunset our treasure awaits!’ “

  “So that’s what it meant,” Halona said, still stunned. “And my grandma always said the pot held the key to riches. They knew. They knew! But the specifics of it didn’t get passed to the next generation.” Halona hugged Bailey and Elizabeth. “You girls have solved an age-old mystery.”

  Her finger traced the fancy old-fashioned writing that spelled the wo
rd “Deed” at the top.

  “Now we just have to find out if the mine still exists, and if so, where.” Halona’s eyes clouded with doubt. “It will be a huge undertaking.”

  “It sure was.” Bailey grinned, her eyes crinkling.

  “Was?” Elan asked. “What’s that mean?”

  “It was a huge undertaking,” Elizabeth said. “But it’s already done.”

  Confusion danced across Halona’s face. “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what we were doing on our hike.” Bailey laughed. “We were looking for your mine when the earthquake hit and we were trapped inside.”

  “But at least we found it!” Elizabeth said.

  “How can you be sure it’s the right mine, the Suquosa?” Halona asked. “There are many old mines in that area.”

  “We’re sure.” Bailey’s voice brimmed with confidence. “For starters, we found an old map on the Internet that showed its location, so we printed it out and took it along.”

  “And it led us to the right spot!” Elizabeth said. “But a huge rock pile covered the entrance.”

  “So we decided to move all those rocks and try to get inside.” Bailey saw her mother’s frown. “We know mines are no place to play around, but we weren’t going to walk back into it or anything. We just wanted to see if it really was behind those rocks.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Our hands got scraped up, so we were glad when we uncovered the mine’s entrance. We opened it up enough to stand in it.”

  “And when we did,” Bailey put in, “we saw an old wooden sign sticking out from behind some rocks. We moved them, too, so we could read the sign.”

  “What’d it say?” Aiyana asked.

  “It said ‘Suquosa Mine’.” Bailey folded her arms across her chest and raised her chin proudly.

  “It is too much to take in,” Halona said. “All of this is so unbelievable.”

  “This is what we’ve dreamed of, Mama.” Elan took his mother’s hands. “We can have our mine back.”

  “We don’t even know if there is still turquoise in the mine,” Halona said. “That will be important to learn before we get too excited.”

  Bailey stuck her hand in her jeans pocket and pulled out two blue stones. “Will this be enough proof to answer your question?” She opened her hand to show the stones to Halona.

  Halona inhaled sharply and tears sprung to her eyes. “It is too good to be true!” She grabbed Bailey and Elizabeth and hugged them fiercely. “Thank you! You have no idea how much this means to our family.”

  Thursday morning, while the Tses went to the county recorder’s office to update paperwork on the mine, Bailey and Elizabeth called the other Camp Club Girls.

  Elizabeth had her phone on speaker so she and Bailey could both hear as she conferenced in the rest of the girls.

  “Mystery solved!” Bailey announced.

  “No way!”

  “What?”

  “How’d that happen so fast?”

  “Amazing!”

  “Yep,” Beth told them. “We followed the old map showing where the mine should be. We couldn’t see it at first, but then noticed a big pile of rocks with some old rusted barbed wire around it.”

  “We started moving the rocks and found the mine entrance,” Bailey added.

  Bailey and Elizabeth recounted their work getting the mine entrance cleared.

  “Wait a minute,” Alex said. “You didn’t go into the cave, did you?”

  “We only stepped in at the edge,” Elizabeth said. “We didn’t walk back into it.”

  “But Sydney forgot to mention one thing in the safety talk she gave us,” Bailey said.

  “I did?” Sydney said. “What?”

  “Earthquakes.” Bailey waited for a response.

  “Huh-uh,” Sydney finally said. “You did not have an earthquake while you were in that mine!”

  “We sure did,” Bailey said. “And we were trapped inside for hours.”

  “You should have listened to me in the first place and not gone in there!” Sydney scolded.

  “I know,” Elizabeth said. “You were right. We had no business going in there.”

  “What’d you do?” Kate asked.

  Bailey told them what it was like being stuck in an old abandoned mine, and Elizabeth added information about how they worked to get out and made a flag to help rescuers find them.

  “Were you scared?” Alex asked.

  “Totally!” Bailey said. “I was more scared than Beth. She kept telling me cool Bible verses to keep me calm. I need to memorize more verses so I’m better prepared for bad situations in the future.”

  “Bailey was very brave,” Elizabeth said. “It was pitch dark in the mine except for when I shined my cell phone light. She did great.”

  “So did Beth,” Bailey said, “especially for a kid who used to be afraid of the dark. We couldn’t get a signal for Beth to call for help on her cell phone, but at least the light on it worked.”

  “We were afraid the battery would die, but we decided to trust that God would get us out safely.” Elizabeth winked at Bailey. “We even prayed together in the dark.”

  “So how did you get out?” McKenzie asked. “Did you move all the rocks?”

  Bailey told them about hearing the men’s voices and how they were rescued. “We climbed out the hole they cleared, and boy, did that sunlight seem bright when we came out!” Bailey covered her eyes and laughed.

  “Was Halona surprised about the deed and the mine?” Kate asked.

  “We told her we had a surprise for her, but we didn’t tell her what it was until we got back to Earth Works.” Bailey scrunched up her shoulders.

  Elizabeth continued the story. “Her store had a lot of damage in the earthquake with broken pottery all over the place. As soon as we got back there, she forgot about the surprise. She started talking about how much it was going to cost to replace all the ruined merchandise and how they might have to close the store.”

  “It was really sad,” Bailey said. “But then I thought about the deed and the mine. I went into the studio and found the piece of pottery with the pocket to show Halona.”

  “And I got the deed from my bag,” Elizabeth added.

  “Then we presented it to Halona.” Bailey couldn’t stop grinning.

  “She must have had kittens right there on the spot,” Kate said.

  Elizabeth laughed. “Practically! She could hardly believe it was real.”

  Bailey went on. “And then she decided she shouldn’t get her hopes up too high until they found out if the mine was still around and if it had turquoise in it.”

  “We informed her that we found the mine and Bailey showed her the turquoise stones she had picked up while trapped inside.” Elizabeth shook her head. “She was dumbfounded!”

  “I’ve never been hugged so hard in all my life!” Bailey teased.

  “What will they do now that they have the deed?” McKenzie asked.

  “They’re at the county recorder’s office right now updating their claim.” Elizabeth smiled proudly at Bailey. “They have the deed, and she has her identification to prove it’s hers.”

  “It didn’t look like it would take much work to make it operational again, and it should pay off for them in the long run.” Bailey shrugged.

  “You guys were amazing!” Sydney said. “I can’t believe you found the deed and the mine in only a few days.”

  “We wouldn’t have found the deed if the pot hadn’t broken,” Bailey admitted. “I’d say God had something to do with that.”

  “And of course you guys helped, too!” Elizabeth said. “Biscuit’s paw prints showed us that the landscape around Puye Cliffs really did match the pot’s painting with trees added.”

  “Good old Biscuit, the Wonder Dog,” Kate said.

  “And Sydney eliminated the idea that the things Halona’s grandma and mother said about the pot was some sort of code when she researched the Native American code talkers from World War Two,” Bailey add
ed.

  Elizabeth jumped in. “And Alex researched all the public records on the Tse and Kaga families.”

  “The rest of us prayed for you like crazy!” McKenzie said.

  “We know you did!” Bailey said. “We might still be sitting in that dark mine if you hadn’t been praying!”

  “Anyway, we just wanted to let you know that the mystery is solved, and Halona has her mine back,” Bailey said.

  “I’m glad you called,” Sydney said. “But mostly, I’m glad you weren’t hurt in the earthquake or from being trapped in the mine.”

  “God really was looking out for you,” Alex said.

  “No doubt about it,” Elizabeth said.

  “We go home this afternoon, so we’d better hang up so we can pack.” Bailey looked at her clothes strewn all over the bedroom.

  “Okay,” McKenzie said. “Thanks for calling us with the good news. Hopefully, we’ll have another mystery to solve soon.”

  “I hope so!” Bailey said. “Bye!”

  Halona hugged Bailey’s mom good-bye. “It was so good to see you again.”

  “I’m glad we could come to help out for a little while,” Mrs. Chang said. “I hope you can get things repaired and replaced in Earth Works soon.”

  “I will,” Halona replied. “I spoke with the insurance company this morning, and they’re going to pay for more of it than I thought.”

  Halona’s arms went around Bailey, then Elizabeth. “When I invited you all to come give us a hand, I had no idea how helpful you’d be.”

  “Thanks.” Bailey held the finished dish she had made in the studio. “It was fun to learn to make pottery and work in your store. I’ve never done those things before.” She looked at her dish, which had somehow survived the earthquake, and admired the sunset she’d painted on it. “This will remind me of our time together.”

  Elizabeth hugged Halona. “Thanks for letting me come with the Changs.”

  “You girls gave me far more than a little help in the store,” Halona said. “You gave me a better life for my family. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “We’re happy everything turned out so well,” Elizabeth said.

  “But I still feel a little guilty about breaking your ancient family pot,” Bailey said.