“Keep going,” Simon said grimly. “The sooner we get to the mine, the sooner we can go home.” He led the way, glancing over his shoulder at the wilderness along the trail.
Henry saw that they were coming to the high boulders that rimmed the canyon, where Jack had fallen so many weeks ago, and where they’d found the three skulls.
Then, just as they rounded the bend, he saw it: a flash of movement, tawny in the sunlight, darting through the trees on the other side of the trail. And in an instant—even before it appeared above them, crouched on a high pile of boulders—he knew what it was.
A mountain lion.
“Oh!” Delilah gasped. Simon, ahead of them, stopped in his tracks, and Jack, who had been charging along, crashed into him and yelped in surprise.
On the bluff, the mountain lion watched them, its ears pricked. A low growl rumbled from its chest. It was so big, Henry thought—a rippling honey-colored mass of muscle. The fierce black markings on its face looked like war paint. Its thick tail waved above its haunches. Deep in their dark rims, its golden eyes stared intently, watching them.
Despite the wave of fear that paralyzed him, Henry felt an unexpected thrill. The mountain lion was so wild. And so close. The gap of a few yards seemed like nothing between them. And the mountain, the lion, the sun-dappled landscape, this moment frozen in time—everything felt, suddenly, so alive.
“It’s been stalking us,” Henry whispered, awed.
Simon didn’t take his eyes off the mountain lion. He said in a loud voice, “Stand as tall as possible. Start stamping your feet.”
“What?” Henry said. “Won’t that make it mad?”
“No,” Simon shouted, already thudding his feet on the ground.
Stamp, stomp, stamp, stomp, stamp, stomp!
“We have to be loud and BIG,” he yelled. “It’s the only thing that works with mountain lions.”
How does he know that? Henry wondered. And what if he’s wrong?
But Simon had already hoisted his backpack high on his shoulders and was shouting, “GO AWAY!!!”
Jack gamely joined him, pounding his feet in the dust and yelling at the top of his lungs, “Go away, you big lion, you! We’re not scared of you!”
The mountain lion’s ears twitched, and Henry thought he saw it shift its position on the boulder.
He grabbed a branch from the side of the trail and beat it fiercely against the bushes. “YAHHHHHH!” he yelled.
Delilah looked at them like they were crazy.
“Come on,” Simon told her. “Make a lot of noise.”
“Okay,” she said. She unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and hurled the half-full plastic bottle against the rock, where it hit with a crack like a gunshot, sending a spray of water through the air.
The mountain lion’s ears flattened. For a fleeting moment, it looked exactly like Josie: thoroughly disgusted with them. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it turned and crossed the boulder, leaping into the brush and streaking off through the woods.
Henry collapsed to the ground, his legs trembling with fear and relief.
“Woooo hoooooooo!” Simon yelled, waving his fist in the air. “I can’t believe that worked!”
“What do you mean?” Delilah asked. “I thought you said that was the only thing that would work.”
“Well, that’s true. You can’t run away or roll into a ball, ’cuz they’ll think you’re prey and attack you. The only thing that works is to look like a bigger animal that might attack them. You have to challenge them. But…”
“But what?” Henry was still sitting in the dirt, trying to quell his shaking limbs.
“But if that didn’t work, the mountain lion would definitely have attacked us. ’Cuz we were provoking it.”
“Now you tell us,” Delilah said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Simon crowed. “It worked.”
“We saw a MOUNTAIN LION!” Jack cried, dancing around in the dust. “And WE SCARED IT!”
Henry rose unsteadily to his feet. Maybe this was the secret to courage … just acting braver all the time than you really felt. Maybe just trying to appear brave, even if you were scared out of your wits, would make you brave—sort of the way that smiling even when you were sad was supposed to make you feel happier. And even if it didn’t make you brave, what did it matter? If you did the brave thing, over and over again, while your deepest cowardly heart was quaking with fear, weren’t you still, for all intents and purposes, brave?
Well, Henry thought, I may not be as brave as Uncle Hank, but I can act brave. And I just did.
CHAPTER 23
THE THUNDER GOD SPEAKS
STILL TALKING ABOUT the mountain lion, they climbed the last stretch to the rim of the canyon.
“That was amazing,” Henry said.
“I knew there were mountain lions up here!” Jack was exultant. “Rattlesnakes and mountain lions! We saw BOTH of them.”
Henry glanced at him dubiously. He hadn’t realized there was a checklist of dangers for them to cross off.
“And I knew we were being followed,” Delilah said. “You should have listened to me.”
“We did listen to you,” Simon said. “But you thought it was a person. And anyway, there was nothing we could do until it showed itself.”
“That was FUN making so much noise,” Jack continued. “I want to do that again.”
“I hope we won’t have to,” Delilah countered.
“Throwing your water bottle was smart,” Simon told her. “I think the water and the noise of that were what finally scared the mountain lion away.”
“Thanks,” Delilah said smugly, smiling at him.
Henry felt a prick of annoyance. “But now you don’t have any water left,” he said, a little meanly.
“She can share mine,” Simon said, as Delilah joined him in the lead on the trail.
Henry trotted glumly after them, as they emerged from the border of trees onto the lip of the canyon.
It opened out below them, the rough walls plummeting to the narrow strip of ground below. And as Henry stood on the edge of rock and surveyed the scene, he saw not a place but a series of summer adventures. There was the ledge where they’d found the three skulls. There was the dry creek bed where Henry had found the bones and the saddlebag. There was the spot where Delilah had fallen, breaking her leg. There was the bush where they’d hidden the saddlebag and where they’d heard the gunshot. And over there, behind the jumble of boulders, was the entrance to the secret canyon.
This wild, strange place was now full of memory and meaning. With a start, Henry realized that Superstition Mountain was becoming a part of him.
“Okay,” Simon said. “We have to keep moving. We don’t have much time to get to the gold mine. I’ll go first.”
“No, let me this time,” Delilah said, stepping ahead of him, and starting to lower herself over the rocks.
“You don’t get to go first!” Jack exclaimed, horrified. “I want to. It’s my turn.”
Delilah looked up at him. “Please, Jack? It’s going to be so much easier for me this time, without my cast.”
Jack wavered, then relented. “Okay,” he said grudgingly. “But I get to be first when we climb back up.”
When we climb back up sounded so optimistic, Henry thought. He wondered what would happen to them between now and then.
“Sure,” Delilah agreed. “That’s fair.”
And so, with Delilah in the lead, they began their descent, carefully picking their way down the canyon wall.
* * *
When they reached the floor of the canyon, they were drenched in sweat, and the reddish brown dust from the climb had darkened the creases in their skin.
“I’m thirsty. And hungry,” Jack whined, plopping down in the dirt.
“Okay,” Simon said, magnanimous. “We can take another break.” He crouched and began unzipping his backpack, removing the water bottles.
Henry went over to sit by Jack, who had a worried loo
k on his face.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Jack was silent, stubbing his sneakers in the pebbly ground.
“Tell me,” Henry coaxed.
“What if that mountain lion was chasing ME? What if that was the curse, ’cuz I took the gold? Maybe he was trying to kill me.”
Henry considered this. “He didn’t seem to be after you specifically,” he said.
“Nah,” Simon chimed in. “He would have attacked all of us.” He thought for a minute. “Actually, they usually go for the smallest, weakest one in the group. That’s not you. He probably would have picked Henry or Delilah.”
Henry glowered at him, and Delilah looked cross. “I was the one who scared him away!” she protested. “With my water bottle. I am definitely not the weakest one.”
Henry did not like where the conversation was headed. “Neither am I,” he said hotly.
Jack, however, seemed immensely relieved. He chugged a bottle of water and grabbed one of the chocolate bars that Delilah had brought, already soft from the heat.
“Okay, let’s go!” he shouted, revitalized. “Let’s put back my gold.”
“Yes,” Simon agreed. “We should keep moving. The sky looks weird.”
Henry glanced at the vast expanse overhead and saw that he was right. The strange layering of clouds had thickened, and the light had turned sharp.
Together, they hurried to the passageway that led to the smaller, secret canyon.
Henry led the way through the narrow chute, his shoulders brushing against the hard rock walls. It would be difficult for the historical society treasure hunters to squeeze through here, he thought. Then again, maybe there was another way into the canyon that they hadn’t discovered yet.
As soon as they emerged into the smaller canyon, Henry felt a change in the air. It had turned cooler suddenly, and the sky overhead had darkened. A gust of wind blew, startling him. Rising before them, he saw the enormous face of the rock horse. The stillness of the canyon seemed as tense as a coiled spring.
Simon’s forehead wrinkled with worry. “It’s going to storm.”
As if in answer, a clap of thunder shattered the quiet.
Boom!
“Jack, hurry,” Delilah urged, but Jack, with his fist clenched around the plastic sandwich bag of tiny gold flakes, was already running ahead, the dry dust following him in clouds.
Beneath the fierce sky, the others ran after him, past the rock horse, toward the curtain of rock that hid the entrance to the Lost Dutchman’s Mine. Now, because of the avalanche, it was a massive drift of boulders. Shuddering, Henry remembered the crashing sound of the rocks pouring down the side of the canyon … and how close they had come to being buried alongside Jacob Waltz’s gold.
Jack came skidding to a halt in front of the pile of rocks. “What do I do now?” he called to them. “How am I supposed to put the gold back when there are all these ROCKS here?”
A jagged white line of lightning split the sky, and the air shook with thunder.
Boom! Boom!
When Henry looked up, the rim of the canyon was alight with a strange, almost phosphorescent glow.
“It’s the Thunder God,” Henry said, awed.
Fat drops of rain began to fall, splotching the dry ground.
“Is it trying to get us?” Jack cried, his eyes huge.
“Stop it,” Simon ordered. “It’s a storm, that’s all. Help me move some of these rocks. The entrance to the mine has to be down below.”
“There are too many rocks!” Jack wailed. “We’ll never find it.”
Gusts of wind blew through the canyon, whipping Delilah’s braid across her face. She motioned to them. “It’s this way, over here.”
“How do you know?” Henry asked her.
“’Cuz when you guys went into the mine, I was standing out here waiting for a long time … and I remember the tunnel was under those drawings.” She pointed at the high wall of the canyon, where Henry could see the petroglyph they’d discovered before—the crowd of tiny stick figures running and falling, a cascade of circles following them. Of course that’s what the drawing was! A primitive picture of a rock slide. It was a warning from the ancient people who had lived here once … a warning about the Thunder God.
“Henry, help me roll this one,” Simon directed, climbing over the pile of rocks.
Henry reached up and grabbed the rough side of a boulder, and he and Simon both strained to move it. Heaving, they managed to pry it loose.
“Watch out,” Simon cried, as it tumbled to the canyon floor, barely missing Henry’s foot.
The dark sky boiled overhead, and the rain was falling faster now, the drops as painful as pebbles hitting their skin. The wind picked up, and the temperature seemed to fall by several degrees in an instant.
Jack shoved the bag of gold in his pocket and crawled up the pile of rocks, pushing small boulders to the ground, which barely seemed to make a dent in the barricade. Delilah helped Simon and Henry tug on another large stone, but they were unable to budge it.
“This is futile,” Henry cried in despair. “We will never be able to move all these rocks.”
Simon shook his head grimly. “They’re too heavy. Let’s look for any kind of crack or hole that leads down toward the cave. Then you can drop the gold into it, Jack.”
“But that’s not the same as putting it back in the mine,” Jack shouted, over the building roar of the storm.
“It’s the best we can do,” Henry told him. “It will have to be enough.”
Just then, the black sky opened overhead, and the rain poured down.
CHAPTER 24
REVENGE OF SUPERSTITION MOUNTAIN
“HERE!” DELILAH SHOUTED, pushing wet hair away from her face. “What about this?”
She was kneeling on the mountain of boulders, pointing to a triangular gap in the rocks. Rainwater coursed down it into the dark depths below.
“Good,” Simon said. “Maybe the rain will wash the gold all the way down to the mine.”
Jack, clutching his sandwich bag of flakes, looked forlorn. “What if it doesn’t? What if that’s not enough to break the curse?”
“It will be,” Simon said, trying to take the plastic bag.
Henry stopped him. “He has to return the gold himself. Remember?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Simon said. “Hurry, Jack. We need to get out of here. The storm is getting worse.”
As if to confirm his words, another bolt of lightning sliced the dark sky, quickly followed by a deafening clap of thunder. Impossibly, the rain thickened, and the air shook with the mountain’s disapproval.
It was the Thunder God—Henry knew it. He was angry and full of vengeance … but why now? What did the mountain want?
Was it Jack?
They were returning the gold. They were trying to make things right.
Jack looked at Henry in despair, rain plastering his hair to his head and streaming over his face. He opened the soaked plastic bag over the crevice in the rocks. “Do you think it will work?”
“Yes,” Henry told him, with a certainty he didn’t feel. “It will end the curse. It has to.”
With trembling fingers, Jack opened the bag and overturned it above the gap in the rocks, shaking out the tiny flakes of gold. Even in the darkness of the storm, they glittered and sparkled. The rainwater had turned into a stream flowing down the canyon wall, and the golden specks floated on it like tiny enchanted boats, swirling down, down, down, into the crack between the boulders.
“Get to the mine,” Henry prayed under his breath. “Just find your way back to the Lost Dutchman’s Mine.”
“Is that all of it?” Simon asked, as Jack continued to shake the plastic bag.
He held it up to show them. It was empty.
Henry turned his face up to the sky, but if anything, it looked even blacker and more turbulent. The mountain’s wrath was palpable.
“Let’s go,” Simon said, but just then Delilah grabbed his arm.
“Wait,” she cried, her voice faint in the storm. “Look! What is that thing?”
Henry saw that she was pointing to a bundle of something wedged under a long ledge of rock. As he squinted through the heavy rain, he saw what appeared to be a cluster of thick cylinders wound together with a coiled wire. A small white-faced clock, as ordinary as a kitchen timer, was attached to the bundle. The whole contraption was lodged deep under the rock ledge, shielded from the driving rain.
“Oh, no.…” Simon recoiled. “It’s dynamite!”
Dynamite! It looked like something from an old cartoon, Henry thought, like Bugs Bunny or Road Runner.
“The treasure hunters are here,” Delilah gasped. “They’re here right now.”
Henry followed her gaze to the rim of the canyon. “Look! Up there!”
Through the heavy sheets of rain, he could just barely make out three blurred figures at the top of the rough slope, high above them.
“They must have set a timer,” Simon shouted, his voice urgent. “We’ve got to get out of here.” He scrambled backward down the mound of rocks.
“Is it going to explode?” Henry asked foolishly, suddenly numb.
“YES, Henry,” Simon shouted. “Come on! Run!”
They began to crawl, slip, and tumble over the mountain of boulders, only to land in a muddy, rushing stream that was quickly covering the canyon floor.
“What’s going on?” Jack yelled. “Why is there so much water?”
And then the roar of the storm drowned out their voices. Through the watery curtain of rain, Henry could only see vague, dark shapes.
He tried to claw his way along the wall of the canyon, tried to find Jack and Delilah, but his sneakers were full of water, and cold waves of it swirled around his legs, upsetting his balance.
The rain lashed his face, blinding him.
Faintly, as if at a great distance, he thought he heard Simon cry out.
“Flash flood!”
And then he was knocked off his feet and submerged.