Fool's Gold

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  His thick blondish hair was hanging down into his eyes as usual, and his slow, crooked grin was just getting underway when Rudy said, “Look, Barney. I’ve got to talk to you about something very important and there isn’t much time. It’s about… it’s about this gold-mining deal.”

  Barney’s smile faded. “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Well, the thing is, I can’t do it.”

  He hadn’t meant to start that way. He’d intended to begin by talking about why some people feel compelled to do dangerous things, not because they really want to but in order to prove something or just to get someone’s attention. But sitting there, staring Barney in the face, he suddenly knew that what he’d planned to say wouldn’t go over very well. What he’d been ignoring was how much Barney hated any kind of poking around in his personal feelings. And the only other approach that Rudy could come up with in a hurry was to tell why he, himself, couldn’t possibly be involved. Admitting to Barney that he had something as weird as claustrophobia wasn’t easy, but on the other hand if Barn was really feeling sorry for him he might not be so quick to get mad at him for what he was going to say next.

  “You can’t?” Barney looked puzzled.

  “That’s right. Well, the thing is, I got caught in a cave-in once and it almost killed me, and now I really lose it if I go in any kind of dark, closed-in place.” Even saying just that much made Rudy’s heartbeat pick up the pace a little.

  “Cave-in?” Barney looked puzzled. “You never told me about any cave-in before.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’d forgotten about it. It’s called repression, which means your mind just kind of wipes out something that’s too painful to remember. And besides, I was unconscious right afterward and when I came to I just didn’t remember. Except in dreams. I’ve kind of remembered it in dreams ever since.”

  He went on then, telling the whole story of the cave-in and the part Murph had played and how Murph had been the one to finally tell him about it.

  It still wasn’t easy talking about it. As soon as he began his shoulders started to quiver, and he could feel a gathering tightness in his head and chest. But he went on talking and finally he couldn’t help being pleased at how well he was doing. Although his voice got wobbly and his heart was pounding a bit, he didn’t come nearly as unglued as he had before.

  The whole time he was talking Barney listened very carefully, now and then shaking his head and saying, “wow,” and “yeah,” and “unreal.”

  Rudy wound up by saying, “So anyway, that’s why I can’t help out with the gold mining. I mean, I couldn’t do it if I knew for absolute certain that old Rooney knew what he was talking about and we were going to find a million dollars’ worth of gold nuggets. Which, by the way, I don’t believe for a minute.”

  Barney nodded slowly. Then he grinned and said, “Hey, it’s okay. I mean, this gold-mining thing isn’t going to take the whole summer. There’s a lot of other stuff we can do.” He got up, grabbed his backpack, and started taking things out of it, a small sharp pointed pick and a coil of rope and then a miner’s helmet with a flashlight taped on top of it. He put the helmet down on the ground and started rearranging the other stuff in the pack.

  “Wait a minute,” Rudy said. “That’s not all I wanted to talk about.”

  “Yeah?” Barney sat back down on the log with the rope in his hands, and as Rudy went on talking he started untying the knot that held it in a coil. “Shoot,” he said.

  Rudy took a slow breath and began. “It’s about why you want to do this gold-mining stuff. I mean, you know as well as I do that the chances of your finding any gold down there are pretty much in the fat-chance range. And you also know that breaking into abandoned mines is against the law, not to mention being about as safe as skateboarding on the freeway. I mean, I’m talking world-class, terminally dangerous, Barn.”

  Barney had been frowning, but now suddenly he started to smile. Not his normal easygoing grin, but a tense, tight-lipped grimace, and Rudy knew immediately that he’d taken the wrong tack. He should have known that telling Barney that something was too dangerous was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. There was something in Barney that wanted danger the way a junkie wants a fix.

  “Wait a minute,” Rudy said. “There’s something else I want to say. I just want to ask you why you want to do it? I know why Styler wants to do it. Partly to get rid of me because he could see I wasn’t going to do it. But also because he really and truly thinks he’s going to get rich, and he is completely and totally hung up on money. But it’s not that way with you. I know that. I know you better than that.”

  “So.” Barney’s eyes had narrowed, but the tense excited look still was there. “What else do you think you know about me?”

  Rudy took a deep breath. “Well, I think you’ve been trying to prove something.”

  “Prove something?”

  “Yeah. Not just with this mine thing either. With other things like when we made that swing over the gulch, and dove off the water tower, and lots of stuff like that. I think you were trying to prove something then too. To yourself and perhaps even more to—to your parents.”

  “Like what?” Barney’s voice was low and flat.

  “Like, that you’re just as brave and daring and glamorous as they are.”

  “So, you think I’m jealous of my parents, is that it?”

  “No. Not jealous. It’s more like… well, maybe you think… I mean sort of subconsciously… that if you do something really dangerous and prove how brave you are, they’ll start… well, paying more attention to you.” Rudy found himself talking faster and faster as Barney’s face got harder and tighter. “That’s what Natasha says that Belle thought about you. She thought you were just trying to get your parents to care about you. And she said the reason you used to go to sleep in the daytime all the time was because you were so worried about your folks being gone so much that you couldn’t sleep at night and—”

  Barney stood up suddenly and threw the coiled rope. He threw it more or less down at the ground, but also at Rudy’s legs. Rudy had never seen him look so angry.

  “So that’s what you and your mom have been saying about me, huh? And who else have you been talking to about me? Half of Pyramid Hill? And what else have you been telling them? I suppose you’ve been telling them all about the mine and the gold and what Ty and I are planning to do.”

  Rudy stood up, too, very slowly. In a quiet voice he said, “You know I wouldn’t do that, Barney. You know that. I haven’t told anyone—”

  “Look,” Barney broke in. “I’ve got stuff to do. I’m going to go into that mine in a few minutes and I have to get ready. So you better get out of here. Go on, get out. Now.”

  Rudy got on his bike and left. All the way home he kept thinking the same thing over and over. You blew it, Drummond. You really blew it this time.

  Chapter 17

  IT WAS ONLY about three hours after Rudy rode off and left Barney alone at Pritchard’s Hole, that someone banged on the back door of the Drummond house while another doll game was in progress at the kitchen table.

  The game had been going on for quite a while without anything interesting happening and Rudy had more or less tuned out, using only half his mind to make the Rudy troll doll answer questions with noes and yesses. The other half was busy worrying about Barney. He’d just finished telling himself for the hundredth time that Barney would get over being mad at him and there was no use thinking about what might happen in the mine because there was nothing he could do about it, when someone ran up the back steps and pounded on the door so hard it rattled the hinges.

  Rudy quickly dropped the troll doll and got up from the table—not being particularly anxious to be seen playing dolls. But when Margot rushed to the door and threw it open he forgot to worry about whether he’d been seen. It was Tyler Lewis.

  Ty’s face was bright red and dripping with sweat and he was gasping for breath. He looked like he’d been running—or riding his bike—at to
p speed in the hot sun. But there was more to it than that. Ty was definitely excited about something—or angry—or frightened. “Barney?” Rudy asked. “Is something wrong with Barney?”

  Ty looked around Rudy at Moira and Margot, and then stepped backward, motioning for Rudy to follow. It wasn’t until Rudy closed the door behind him that Tyler said, “No, Barney’s all right. He—he just wants to talk to you. He sent me to get you. He said to tell you it’s very important.”

  “Where is he?” Rudy asked.

  “At the mine,” Ty said. “He’s out by the mine.”

  Rudy was puzzled—and suspicious. “If Barney wants to talk to me why doesn’t he come tell me so himself?”

  Tyler shrugged impatiently. “I don’t know. He’s doing something real important and—”

  But then something occurred to Rudy. “Did he tell you about… well, about what happened this morning?”

  Ty’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe,” he said. “What happened to who?”

  “To Barney and me. About the… well, the fight we had.”

  “Oh, that.” Ty nodded. “Yeah, he told me. That’s probably what he wants to see you about. Something about the fight. Maybe he wants to say he’s sorry.”

  See, Rudy told himself. I told you he wouldn’t stay mad very long. To Ty he said, “Okay. I’ll come. If I can get someone to take care of my sisters.”

  Inside the kitchen he went to the phone and called Eleanora.

  “Hi, Eleanora,” he said, talking loudly to be heard over the uproar of playing kids. “This is Rudy. Hey, look. Something real important has come up and I’m going to have to go take care of it. Could I send the girls back for the afternoon?”

  “Well, sure,” Eleanora’s loud good-natured voice boomed out over the cheerful shrieking and yelling. “If it’s really important. Just send them along. Tell them I’ll be expecting them in fifteen minutes. Okay?”

  So a few minutes later Moira and Margot were on their way back to the baby-sitter’s and Rudy and Tyler were on their bikes heading back to Pritchard’s Hole. They didn’t talk much on the way there. It was very hot and they were riding fast, and besides, Rudy’s mind was busy with other things, like wondering why Barney would send Ty for him, and what he was going to say about the fight—and if he really did want to apologize for telling Rudy to get out. Or if there was a possibility, maybe, that Barney wanted him there to back him up, to be on his side when he told Ty that he’d changed his mind about doing something so seriously illegal as breaking into an abandoned mine. Rudy hoped that was it. He was rehearsing what he might tell Tyler about what a breaking and entering charge could do to someone who was just one bust away from juvenile hall, when they came out of the oak grove into the open field. There was no sign of Barney.

  Rudy got off his bike and looked around. “Where’s Barney?” he said. Then he looked at Ty, and suddenly he knew. “Where’s Barney?” he shouted.

  “I don’t know,” Ty wouldn’t meet Rudy’s eyes. “I think—I think maybe he’s somewhere in the mine.”

  “In the mine? You mean you went off and left him alone in the mine?”

  “No. That is, I didn’t go in with him. I was supposed to meet him here and I was a little later than I said I’d be. Not a lot, just half an hour or so, but when I got out here he was already gone.”

  Rudy had to swallow hard before he was able to say, “You sure he didn’t just go on home?”

  Ty shook his head. “I thought of that, but look. There’s his bike over by the cart.”

  “And all his mining stuff? Where’s his helmet and pick and everything?”

  Ty nodded. “Gone,” he said.

  “And you didn’t go in after him?”

  “Yeah, I did. I went in pretty far. Well, a little way. But I couldn’t find him and there are these tunnels branching off in other directions and I didn’t know which way he’d gone. So I decided to come and get you.” Tyler looked embarrassed. “You know,” he said, “it’s better to have two people. I mean, if he’s hurt or something it would probably take two of us to get him out.”

  Anger, hot and thick, rose up in Rudy’s throat, almost choking him. “If he’s hurt or something,” he said in a tight voice, “we should have called the police and an ambulance.”

  “No!” Tyler said quickly. “We can’t do that. If we’d done that I’d be terminally busted. And so would Barney. Don’t forget that. So would Barney! And besides, he’s probably not hurt. He’s probably having a ball down there digging out gold nuggets. He’s got a copy of the map old Rooney made for me, so he’s probably digging away already.” Tyler was babbling, the words tumbling out all over each other. “Yeah, that’s it. He’s probably so busy finding gold that he didn’t even hear me when I shouted and—”

  “You shouted and he didn’t answer?”

  “Well, yeah, but like I say—”

  “Wait a minute,” Rudy said. “Do you have a copy of the map?”

  Ty’s hand went toward his pocket. “Yeah. I have one.”

  “Then why didn’t you just follow it to where the gold is supposed to be? You’d probably have found him if you did that.”

  “I tried to. But it was real complicated. The turns and things didn’t seem to match the ones on the map. I couldn’t figure it out.”

  “Then what makes you think Barney was able to follow it? If the map is no good then why do you think he was able to go right to the gold? Tell me that. Tell me that,” Rudy said and almost added, “you cement-headed lamebrain.”

  He was angry, angrier than he’d ever remembered being. Angry at Ty for starting the whole stupid goldmine thing in the first place, and absolutely furious at him for lying about why he wanted Rudy to come out to the mine, so Rudy would come alone instead of calling the police.

  Rudy grabbed the flashlight Ty was getting out of his backpack and crawled through the opening left by the missing planks, without even stopping to wonder if he was going to be able to do it. He was already standing inside the mine before he felt it beginning. Before the terror started, turning his heartbeat into crazy explosions and tightening his aching throat around an awful need to scream. He was starting to turn back frantically toward the light and air, when Tyler lurched against him, nearly knocking him down.

  “Look out,” Tyler shouted. “Bats. Bats.”

  When Rudy regained his balance Tyler was crouching beside him, his arms waving wildly around his head. He was wearing a helmet with a flashlight taped on top of it and he had a small pickax in one hand. “Bats,” he was still shouting. “Look out. Bats!”

  A jabbing pain shot up Rudy’s arm as the waving pickax hit him sharply on the elbow. It was about to get him again when he grabbed it and wrenched it out of Tyler’s hand. “Stop it!” he yelled. “What’s the matter?”

  “Bats,” Tyler was whispering now, pointing up over their heads. And then Rudy saw them, too, two small dark shapes that flitted around them and then darted out through the entrance and disappeared.

  Rudy turned the flashlight on the ceiling of the mine tunnel. Jagged gray rocks gleamed darkly between the old planks of a rotten wooden frame. Near the entrance thick curtains of spiderweb swayed slightly, but nothing else moved. No flitting wings or glittering eyes.

  “They’re gone,” Rudy said. “I think the bats are gone.” He looked down to where Tyler still crouched on the floor. His eyes, shining out from under the edge of the helmet, were still wide and jittery.

  “Have you got a thing about bats too?” Rudy asked.

  Tyler stood up. He straightened his helmet and grabbed his pick out of Rudy’s hand. “What do you mean, a thing?” he said. “I just don’t like them is all. They fly into your hair or down your neck if they get a chance. I just don’t like them.”

  Rudy stared at him, wondering if bats were the reason he’d given up on finding Barney by himself, if seeing some bats was why he’d only gone “a little way” before he decided to go for help. “Which way did you go before?” Rudy asked.

 
; Tyler pulled the map out of his pocket. Spreading it out with shaky hands, he pointed out how you were supposed to go down the main tunnel past two very short cross tunnels that took off to the left, and then turn down another long tunnel to the right. “But something’s not right,” he said. “There aren’t any short tunnels. The first turn off goes to the right and it looks like it goes on forever.”

  Rudy studied the map, turning it from side to side. It looked to him like a blurry, mixed-up mess. He couldn’t believe that this useless scribble made Tyler and Barney think the old miner knew what he was talking about. “Come on,” he said. “Forget about the map. Let’s just start walking. And calling.”

  Rudy took a deep breath. The air was cool and dank and smelled of earth and decay. He turned the flashlight down the tunnel ahead of them, illuminating ancient scaffolding and rough rocky walls that seemed to lean inward, soaking up the feeble light. He had only gone a few steps when the throat-tightening, chest-squeezing terror started up again, stopping him in his tracks. Gasping for air, Rudy closed his eyes tightly and screamed.

  “Barney!” he shouted with every ounce of power in his throat and lungs. The force of the yell stretched his lungs, pained his throat—and somehow seemed to dull the inward ache of terror. He plunged ahead down the tunnel.

  A few yards down the main passageway a smaller one went off to the right. Rudy turned up it, but after he’d gone a few yards he stopped and came back. Grabbing the pick out of Ty’s hands he hacked a rough arrow into the stone to mark their path. Then he again started up the smaller tunnel.

  Here they had to move very slowly. The footing was rough and uneven, and the ceiling was so low they often had to walk in a crouching position. This branch of the mine seemed to be sloping upward and as they went the air became drier and a little warmer. Every few feet they stopped to call.

  Whenever the terror began to build up, Rudy called—screamed—for Barney, and the black panic backed away. He could still feel it, though, hiding like a dark cloud around the edges of his mind, waiting to force its way out. But the shouting helped to hold it at bay and, in a strange way, so did Tyler. Lurching against Rudy, grabbing his arm from time to time and continually babbling about bats, Tyler’s presence was as constant as the lurking terror’s, and just about as much of a nuisance.