The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man's Canyon

by S. S. Taylor

  The girl hesitated, as though she was trying to figure out if he was making it up. “Where did you see her last?”

  “She was heading in that direction,” he said, pointing, “where the cat was. I’m worried one of them got her and she’s hurt and can’t call for help.” Zander didn’t usually show too much emotion on his face, but I could see how worried he was and she must have seen it too.

  “I’m sorry about your sister. I just wish they hadn’t seen you. They’ll be worried you’ll tell someone about us. If they hadn’t…” Whatever she said was drowned out by a loud grinding as the gears in the ceiling started moving again.

  It took only a minute or so for the ceiling to open completely, filling the canyon with glittering, golden light again. “Oh, maybe that was just one of your flying machines. If they’d seen you, they wouldn’t have opened it up again.”

  Finally I realized what she’d said. “‘Tell someone about us’?” I asked her. “Who’s ‘us’?”

  She pointed down the canyon toward the cliff city.

  We looked at the sparkling buildings, high in the canyon walls, and I couldn’t believe we hadn’t noticed it when we’d looked up at them before.

  They weren’t the abandoned dwellings of an ancient people. If I squinted, I could just barely see movement on the terraces and in the windows of the buildings. Past the structures, on the canyon floor, a couple of horses grazed in the hot sun.

  “You mean…?” Zander started to ask, but I already knew what she meant.

  The city was full of people.

  Forty-one

  “It’s a whole city,” I said, gaping. “A hidden city that no one knows about.” I looked up at the girl. “But I don’t understand. Are we the first people to find it?” Even as I said it, I knew that we couldn’t be. An idea started that I struggled to keep up with—an idea about why Dad had left the map for us and why he had made it so difficult for anyone but us to find the canyon.

  “Oh no, there have been others,” Halla said.

  “Did you kill them, too?” Sukey asked.

  “Well, not me personally, but yes, some of them got killed. Not all of them, though. It used to be different. There were people who came and stayed with us. That’s why we speak your language. But now the Keedow believes that no one can be trusted. So everyone gets killed.” She shrugged and smiled a small smile. “Anyway, I have to figure out what I’m going to do with you.” She kept the bow aimed at us and seemed to think for a couple of minutes, her forehead wrinkled and her eyes narrowed.

  Finally she said, “Okay, you have to come with me. I’m going to put you somewhere safe while I figure out what to do about your sister. Walk slowly. We’re going back toward the waterfall. Don’t try to get away or I’ll shoot you. And don’t make any noise. We have only ten minutes before the other guards reach this end of the canyon.”

  Sukey and Zander and I exchanged a glance. Zander shrugged as if to say I’m out of ideas, so we started walking along in single file; Sukey, Zander, and I and then Halla. Pucci was making tight circles in the air high above us.

  We walked for only five minutes or so, scanning the canyon walls for M.K. as we went. Before long, we had reached a dead-end offshoot of the canyon, a little hollowed-out place in the rock about the size of a large house. We followed Halla to one end of it and then stopped, waiting as she looked around, searching the canyon to make sure no one was watching us. “Don’t move,” she said in a stern voice before she kneeled down on the ground and used her hands to brush away a pile of dirt and sand and rocks. After a few minutes, she had uncovered what looked like a wooden plank, and after kicking around in the dirt with the toe of her boot, she reached down and pulled on a rope, lifting a wooden trapdoor. We could see stairs disappearing into the ground. “Go quickly!” she said. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  No one moved.

  Halla held the bow up a little higher, looking frantically over her shoulder. “Come on. If the guards see you, there’s nothing I can do. They’ll kill you. Go!”

  “What are you going to do to us?” Sukey asked suspiciously. “I don’t know if I want to go down there.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, but whatever it is, it’s better than what they’ll do if they see you.”

  We descended, Halla bringing up the rear and slamming the trapdoor down once we were far enough down the stairs. It was completely dark now that the entrance had been sealed, but Halla fiddled with some kind of mechanism that lit a large torch mounted on the wall. It illuminated the rectangular underground space where we now stood.

  “Whoa,” Sukey whispered.

  “Oh my god.” I think I heard my own voice say the words, but I couldn’t be sure. I was too mesmerized by the sight in front of me. The light from the torch was bouncing off the glittering walls of the room, and it took me a minute to really take it in.

  The space was completely filled with gold.

  “Look at this place,” Zander said. “It’s like Fort Knox.”

  “It’s like a museum,” Sukey said.

  She was right. There were statues and beautifully carved coins and a few religious idols stacked against the low walls. But mostly there were bars of gold, brick-sized bars of shining gold imprinted with beautiful designs and words in Spanish. I remembered Mr. Mountmorris’s voice telling us about the Conquistadores: In 1567, a group of Spanish Conquistadores—the Spanish soldiers who had come to the new world looking for Aztec gold in what is now Mexico—decided to try to run off with a fortune in gold ingots and bars, unprocessed nuggets, statues, jewelry, an incredible treasure in gold…

  My mind reeled as I tried to calculate how much it must be worth. I couldn’t begin to imagine, but I knew that there was enough gold there that we could buy our own house, that we could travel anywhere we wanted, that we could buy our own car, our own dirigible or glider. Forget all that—we could probably buy our own country.

  “Dan Foley’s mine,” I whispered, staring around me. “We’ve found Dan Foley’s mine.”

  Forty-two

  Halla didn’t seem at all interested in whose mine it was.

  “Sit down over there,” she told us. “I’m going to go look for your sister. And I have to go find out if anyone saw you. I’ll bring you something to eat, but you have to stay here. I’ll be back in half an hour or so.”

  Zander and I were still staring at all the gold, but Sukey had stepped forward and was standing in front of Halla, her feet apart, her hands at her sides. “How do you know we won’t just escape to look for her on our own?”

  Halla looked her up and down, as though she found Sukey’s Neo clothes very strange. “I just know,” she said. “There are more of those cats out there. None of the people from the city leave this area after dusk, unless they’re in the Keedow’s guard or a trained hunter, like me. And there are guards everywhere. If they find you, they’ll probably kill you right away. You’re better off letting me look for her. Believe me.” She smiled right at me, making my stomach pitch a little, and then she was gone, slamming the trapdoor closed above our heads.

  Sukey was the first to move. “Okay, everybody look for shovels, picks, anything like that. If we can surprise her when she comes back, we may be able to get the bow and arrows. Maybe we can take her hostage or something and make her show us the way out of here.” She jumped up and started searching around the mine. In one corner, she found a couple of shovels made of highly polished wood.

  “These might work,” she said. “And you guys still have your Explorer’s vests and M.K.’s. Maybe there’s another utility in there that we can use to protect ourselves. Come on, let’s see what we’ve got! We’ve got to get going and find M.K. before that freak girl comes back. If these guards are as dangerous as she says they are, M.K. may not have much time.”

  I couldn’t believe no one had said anything about the mine.

  “I know,” I said, getting carried away with my excitement. “But do you all realize what this is?
It’s Dan Foley’s mine. We found it! Do you know how much this gold is worth? Do you realize how famous we’re going to be when we get back and announce that we’ve found a hidden city and Dan Foley’s mine?”

  “If we ever get back,” Sukey said. “But if we just wait for her to come back and do whatever it is she’s going to do to us, our problems are a lot bigger than some mine filled with gold. Not to mention poor M.K.”

  “‘Some mine’?” I grumbled. “I don’t think you realize how huge this is. Dad was right. He knew the mine was here and he wanted us to find it. We have to find M.K. first, but then we…” Something was still knocking around at the back of my head, an idea about why he’d never told anyone, but the thought of M.K. in trouble and the idea of all the gold was distracting me. “What I can’t figure out, though, is why he didn’t tell anyone about it. He would have been rich. We would have been rich. Why haven’t we ever heard about this canyon? And how did these people get here?”

  “I don’t know, but you still haven’t answered the question of how we’re going to get out of here,” Sukey said.

  “Maybe we can convince her to let us go and find M.K.,” I said. “She doesn’t seem too worried about us knowing about the gold. Maybe we could hide it in our vests. We’ll have to figure out how to get it around the Nackleys. If we report it to someone, a newspaper, maybe, then the Nackleys and BNDL can’t take it from us.”

  “BNDL can do whatever it wants,” Sukey said. “And what about M.K.? What makes you so sure she’s okay, anyway?”

  “You don’t know M.K. as well as we do,” Zander told her, looking embarrassed. “If anyone could escape from a mutant cougar or armed guards, even wounded, it’s M.K. We’ve got her vest, but she’s still got her knife. She’s really, really good with that knife.”

  I was embarrassed, too. Sukey was right. We’d been worried about the treasure and for all we knew M.K. was in serious trouble. “She’s right. We’ve got to find her,” I told Zander.

  Zander was quiet for a minute and then he nodded. “Maybe we can ask Halla to help us find her and then show us the way out.”

  “Halla?” Sukey’s eyes were wide. “Halla? Halla wants to kill us, or don’t you remember the part where she told us that? The only thing Halla wants to show us is the end of one of the arrows that killed the cat. She’s probably gone to get some of those guards to carry away our bodies.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Zander said. “She seems pretty nice.” “And pretty,” Sukey said. “I’m sure that doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”

  “It is quite remarkable,” Zander said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl quite that beautiful before.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s really interesting how—”

  “For Christ’s sake!” Sukey threw the shovel back down and sat down on the pile of gold bars again. “Are you really just going to wait for her to come back and kill us? Zander, you think you’re ever going to make it back to tell everyone about the West birds or the slugs or whatever if we let her shoot arrows through our hearts and seal us up in this mine? Forget being a world-famous naturalist. You’ll be a fossil someone will find in the ground a hundred years from now!”

  That seemed to do it. Zander thought for a minute. “She’s right,” he said finally. “We haven’t given her any reason to just let us go. But what can we do? Pucci’s out there. He can’t help us. We at least have to see if she can help us find M.K. The truth is, I don’t think we have any choice but to trust her. I just wish we could—”

  “What?” Sukey asked.

  “I don’t know. I wish we weren’t being held prisoner, for one thing.”

  “We don’t have any leverage,” I said. “That’s the problem. She’s holding all the cards.”

  “You think?” Sukey gave me a sarcastic look. But she seemed to be thinking. “There are more of us than there are of her. What if we take her prisoner and demand that she find M.K. for us?”

  “How are we going to do that?” I asked.

  “Like I said.” Sukey stood up and picked up one of the shovels again. “There are three of us. And if she doesn’t bring anyone back with her, there’s only one of her. Now, she’s got a bow and arrow and it’s pretty clear she knows how to use it, but I don’t think she has any other weapons besides my pistol. And she won’t be very comfortable using it. There’s got to be a way we can overpower her. Quick, empty out your vests, let’s see what we have to work with.”

  We did as she said, laying the utilities out on a board balanced over one of the stacks of gold bars.

  “I don’t think my compass is going to do much good,” I said. “And unless I hit her on the head with the sextant, it’s useless.” I took my spyglass out and turned it over in my hands. “This, on the other hand…”

  “What are you going to do with that thing?” Zander asked.

  “Get some information.”

  Sukey grinned. “He’s right.”

  “What do you mean?” Zander looked up from what he was doing.

  “I can find out if she’s coming back alone,” I explained. “And I can try to figure out what’s going on in that city. I’ll watch and you two work on a plan.”

  Forty-three

  I climbed up to the top of the stairs and lifted the trapdoor just enough that I could stick the spyglass out if I crouched down on the top stair. I focused it and switched on the listening device.

  First I did a quick scan of the canyon floor to make sure Halla wasn’t already approaching the mine. Then I refocused on the city.

  At the highest magnification, I had a clear view of the cliff dwellings. There appeared to be five hundred or more apartment houses, with a large central section between them connected to the apartments by a series of bridges high in the air. I realized that I hadn’t been thinking when I’d decided the dwellings had been built in the same style as the adobe cliff houses in other parts of the Southwest. These were much more ornate, with rounded turrets and towers carved out of the stone and elaborate carvings winding around the outside of the terraces and windows. In the very center was a large structure with columns and a long set of stone steps. With the ceiling open, all of the gold-veined stone shimmered in the late-afternoon light.

  The more I looked at it, the more I realized how brilliant the design of the city was. The buildings and terraces were all tucked under the canyon walls in such a way that they wouldn’t be seen from overhead and the ceiling mechanism would shield the entire canyon from observers if need be. The ceiling, I realized, could also be used to shield the canyon from the scorching summer sun but let in the rain, making it possible to grow fruits and vegetables. We had seen the terraced gardens and grazing livestock. They seemed to have everything they needed: water, food, protection.

  I zeroed in on one of the terraces, hearing a low hum of voices through the spyglass’s listening device. A crowd of people was milling around on the terrace; it seemed to be some sort of market: people stopped at stands, looking at vegetables and fruit and baskets and other things. They were all dressed like Halla, in dark, formal Victorian-style suits and dresses and black hats. I was still so amazed at the existence of the city that I hadn’t thought about the people who lived in it. There were kids and old people and men and women who were Dad’s age, and as I watched, I saw a couple of boys running across the market, a little dog following them. An old lady said something in a language I couldn’t understand to a man at one of the stalls, and they laughed. I looked carefully for any sign of M.K., but there wasn’t a small, tough-looking blond-haired girl to be seen anywhere. I tried to keep my panic down; we would find her and she would be all right. That’s all there was to it.

  I tipped the spyglass up a bit and looked around the perimeter of the central cliff structure, spotting guards posted at each corner. They were wearing what looked like plates of armor made of gold, and helmets decorated with multicolored bird feathers, the green and blue and yellow cascading over their shoulders. They were hold
ing wooden bows like Halla’s and were scanning the canyon below the cliff city. I had read about the many different groups of Native Americans who lived in this part of the Southwest, but I couldn’t put my finger on who these people might be. Halla, with her high cheekbones and beautiful features, reminded me of a picture of a Mayan princess I’d once seen.

  Behind me, Sukey and Zander were planning our attack. “We’ll wait until she closes the trapdoor behind her and then I’ll put the light out. I think this should do it.” I heard a snap and then the mine was dark for a second before Sukey lit the torch again. “She’ll be ready,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll have the bow out, so we’ll have to act fast. Before it’s dark, Zander will pick up the shovel and use it to disarm her. It’ll have to be near enough that he can reach for it. And then Kit and I will knock her down and we can tie her hands behind her back with the retracting rope. Kit, can you see anything?”

  “Yeah, I can see everything… It’s incredible, you guys. The city is huge and it’s full of people and animals and everything.” I was still looking at the apartment buildings, trying to count how many there were.

  “But what about Halla? Do you see her?” Sukey asked.

  “No. At least I don’t think so.” I adjusted the spyglass so I could see the canyon and was about to tell them that she didn’t seem to have left yet when I caught sight of her, way off to one side of the city, making her way across the canyon. I focused on her and the listening device picked up the faint sound of her feet on the rocks. She had the bow on her back and she also seemed to be wearing some kind of backpack. She was striding along purposefully, moving fast.

  “There she is,” I told the others. “She’s on her way back. She’s alone. I’d say she’ll be here in five minutes.”

  “Okay. Everyone take your places. Kit, you stand next to me over here.” Sukey seemed to be enjoying being in charge. I put the spyglass away and did as she said.