Treasure on Superstition Mountain

“This big point on the side has got to be Weaver’s Needle,” Simon said.

  “And here’s the little secret canyon,” Henry added, tracing it with his index finger. “But I don’t see anything that looks like a gold mine, do you?”

  “No.” Simon shook his head in disappointment. “There was nothing else in that bag with the coins?”

  Delilah fished around in the other pocket of the backpack and removed the leather bag of coins. She dumped it out next to the map, and they caught their breath as the shining nugget of gold tumbled onto the carpet. It clinked onto the little pile of coins, flashing in the sunlight. Henry thought about what Emmett had said about its purity; how gold was only attracted to gold, not other elements.

  “This gold came from somewhere,” Simon said softly, holding the nugget up to the window. The dark bluffs of Superstition Mountain hovered behind it. “We just have to figure out where.” He glanced again at the map. “The Lost Dutchman’s Mine has to be there … it has to.”

  Delilah ran her fingers over the coins, spreading them across the carpet. “You’re sure about these? There’s nothing special about them?”

  Henry shrugged. “They look the same as the ones in Uncle Hank’s coin box.”

  “But did you ever actually compare them?” Delilah asked.

  “No.…”

  “Well, let’s do that,” Simon decided, nodding at Delilah. “That’s a good idea. Maybe there’s something different about them that will be a clue to the location of the gold mine.”

  They carefully returned the nugget to the pouch, and the pouch and the map to the backpack. For good measure, Simon tucked the threatening note in the pouch too, since they certainly didn’t want their mother coming across that in one of her cleaning sprees. Henry scooped up the handful of coins and was just hiding the backpack in the jumble on the floor of his closet when they heard footsteps in the hallway and a knock. Simon swiftly slid the closet door closed just as Aunt Kathy leaned into the bedroom doorway.

  “What are you guys doing in here?” she asked. “You’re so quiet.”

  There was a glitch of hesitation, but it was so brief, they hoped she hadn’t noticed. At that exact moment, Josie leapt from the bed and shot past her down the hallway, causing her to jump with surprise.

  “We were looking at some old coins,” Simon said, taking them from Henry and cupping them in his palm. “They’re Spanish. Uncle Hank collected them.”

  Aunt Kathy reached out with one manicured hand and pinched a coin between her thumb and forefinger. “Wow, these are old!” she said. “I wonder where he got them. Did you check to see if they’re worth anything?”

  Simon nodded. “We looked them up on the computer—even in good condition, they’re only worth around forty dollars each. We thought it would be more.”

  “Well, they’re still interesting.” She dropped the coin back in Simon’s hand. “And that’s quite a lot.”

  “Yeah,” Henry agreed. “We’re going to compare them to some of the other ones in Uncle Hank’s coin box.”

  “Okay,” Aunt Kathy said breezily, “I’ll be checking my e-mail in the study if you need me.”

  Relieved, they hurried past her into the hall and stampeded down the basement stairs.

  “Which drawer was it in again?” Jack demanded, yanking the top drawer of Uncle Hank’s rolltop desk open.

  “The next one,” Henry told him. “At the bottom.”

  Jack pulled the second drawer open and grabbed the oblong rusty-orange metal box, with its delicate pattern of engravings.

  “Here, Jack, let me,” Simon ordered, taking hold of one end of the box.

  “No, I want to,” Jack complained, tugging it toward him.

  “You guys—” Henry protested.

  “Careful,” Delilah warned.

  But it was too late. The top part of the box slid in one direction and the bottom in another, coming apart in Jack’s hands and scattering coins everywhere.

  “Jack! Now look what you’ve done!” Simon scolded. “You broke it.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Jack pleaded, his lower lip quivering.

  “Hey,” Henry said slowly. He took one of the pieces from Jack. “He didn’t break it. It’s supposed to come apart like this. Look … there’s a secret compartment.”

  He turned the metal trough in his hands to show them. It was a thin, flat drawer that fit smoothly into the bottom of the coin box, virtually undetectable when it was closed.

  And there was something inside it.

  CHAPTER 19

  SIGNS AND SYMBOLS

  “I THOUGHT THE INSIDE of the box didn’t seem deep enough when we first found the coins!” Simon exclaimed. “Didn’t you, Hen?”

  Henry had thought that; he remembered being surprised at how flat it was, but he had never imagined there was a secret compartment in the bottom. “What is it?” he asked as Delilah lifted the piece of paper from the drawer.

  “A letter,” Delilah said. “Or part of one.” She held it out, a torn, yellowed scrap with several lines of ink crossing it.

  Henry turned on the lamp. “Can you read what it says?”

  She placed it on the top of the desk, scanning it. When she lifted her face, her eyes were wide. “Listen to this. The canyon entrance is on the eastern wall, behind a group of large…” She squinted at the page. “Boulders. Two cottonwood trees grow opposite the boulders. The entrance is narrow, no wider than a man’s shoulders.”

  “That sounds like the secret canyon!” Henry exclaimed. “Remember? There were big boulders in front of it, and the path was so skinny in places, I had to squeeze sideways.”

  Delilah nodded excitedly. “I know. I think it’s the same one.”

  “Keep reading!” Jack cried, jumping up and down.

  Delilah held the paper close to the lamp and peered at the writing. “Continue toward the…” She paused. “Horse.”

  “Horse?” Simon asked. “Are you sure it’s not house?”

  Henry turned to Simon in bewilderment. A horse or a house? Either one seemed equally unlikely in the barren, rough terrain of Superstition Mountain.

  Delilah shook her head. “No, it’s horse … look.” She showed him the paper, and continued, “Until the bent tree threads the needle.”

  “What horse?” Jack demanded. “We didn’t see any horses up there.”

  “No, and the paper looks old. If there was a horse in the canyon when this was written, it would probably be dead by now,” Simon said. “It’s like this note is in code or something.”

  “Maybe toward the horse means a trail that the Spanish rode their horses on?” Henry suggested. “I mean, the map was in a saddlebag, and I found bones alongside it that had to have come from a horse or a mule or something.”

  “Maybe.” Simon sounded skeptical. “But from the way you described it, and even from this note, it sounds like the entrance to the canyon is too narrow for a horse to get through.”

  Henry thought back to that day, squeezing between the rough walls of rock until he was inside the little secret canyon. “Yeah,” he said. “A horse wouldn’t fit.” He hesitated. “But what if there’s another way in?”

  “Keep reading,” Simon urged Delilah.

  She shook her head, handing him the yellowed piece of paper. “That’s it. It says, Continue toward the horse until the bent tree threads the needle, and then it ends with three V’s, overlapping.”

  “Three V’s? Do you think those are someone’s initials?” Simon asked.

  Delilah shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t remember reading about anybody on the mountain who had so many V’s in his name.”

  “Hey”—Henry leaned forward—“let me see.”

  He took the paper from Delilah and squinted at the dark script. His heart quickened in his chest. “Remember that other piece of paper, the one we found in this same box with Uncle Hank’s coins?” he asked.

  Delilah nodded. “Yes, it was the same message that Adolph Ruth left. Those Latin words—”

/>   “Veni, vidi, vici,” Henry said. He could hardly breathe. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

  “Three V’s!” Simon exclaimed. “Do you know what this means? These must be directions … to the gold mine!”

  CHAPTER 20

  “YOU’RE NOT LEAVING ME BEHIND!”

  HENRY FELT A THRILL course through him like an electrical current. Were these really the directions to the Lost Dutchman’s Mine? Were they suddenly so close to finding the gold that people had been searching for over the span of two centuries—the gold that had cost so many people their lives?

  “That’s it! That’s where the gold is!” Jack shouted.

  “Shhhhhh,” Henry, Simon, and Delilah responded, all at once.

  “Aunt Kathy will hear you,” Henry added. “We have to be quiet.”

  “It doesn’t say anything about gold in the letter,” Simon cautioned. “And the directions … I mean, unless we can figure out what the horse and the bent tree threading the needle are, it’s going to be tough to find anything. Who do you think wrote this? Not Uncle Hank.”

  Henry shook his head. “It’s not his handwriting.” He turned the paper over. “It isn’t signed.”

  “But at least we have an idea where to look,” Simon continued. “In that secret canyon you found. We have to go back up the mountain.”

  “Yes!” Jack crowed, in a deafening whisper. “When? When can we go?” He raced toward the stairs.

  “Sunday,” Simon said. “If we go then, Aunt Kathy will be with Emmett.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Jack said.

  Henry shivered. Back to the canyon where Delilah had fallen? Where they’d been shot at? One thing was certain: whoever had left that note in the basket of Delilah’s bike was watching their every move.

  “What do you think?” he asked, turning to her. She was leaning against the desk, eyes downcast.

  “I can’t go,” she said morosely. “How can I climb the mountain with this cast?” She lifted her gaze to Henry’s, her look pleading. “Do you think … could you maybe wait…?”

  “Wait!” Jack protested. “We can’t wait!”

  Simon shook his head. “If we wait till you get your cast off, that’ll be weeks. And our parents will be back, and it will be much harder then.” He clapped a hand on Delilah’s shoulder, his voice ingratiating. “I really wish you could come! But we’ll just have to go alone this time. Plus, it would be good to leave someone here who knows what we’re doing. You know where that little canyon is. If something happens and we don’t come back, you’ll be the perfect person to get help.”

  “That’s true,” Henry said, trying to reassure her. “If we run into trouble, you’ll be invaluable.” Silently, he corrected himself. It wasn’t if we run into trouble; it was when.

  Abruptly, Delilah straightened. She tossed her braid over her shoulder, eyes blazing. “I can’t believe you guys!” she fumed. “You wouldn’t even have found that secret canyon except for me!”

  “How do you figure?” Simon demanded, incredulous. “We were the ones who found the skulls on the cliff. You wouldn’t have known anything about the mountain or the canyon except for us.”

  “Yeah!” Jack echoed. “You didn’t do anything but break your leg!”

  “Exactly,” Delilah snapped at him. “And if I hadn’t broken my leg, Henry wouldn’t have had any reason to go to the bottom of the canyon. And he wouldn’t have found the saddlebag or the map or the gold.”

  Henry’s eyes widened. Now she was taking credit for all of that? The gold too? “Hey—” he started to protest, but Delilah stormed on.

  “If it wasn’t for me, none of you would know anything about that secret canyon which—hello—may be the real, actual, exact place to find the Lost Dutchman’s Mine—that people have been looking for since the 1800s!”

  She crossed her arms and glared at them. Henry had never seen her so mad, not even when they first met her and had tried to take Josie back.

  “You already went to the ghost town alone,” she said. “You are not going up the mountain without me. And that’s final.”

  “Whoa,” Simon said. Even he seemed intimidated by her outburst. “Delilah, calm down. Just think about it for a minute, okay? We can’t wait till your cast is off. It’s too long. And this Sunday is the perfect opportunity! Our parents are gone, and Aunt Kathy is busy. We know how to get to the canyon now, so it won’t take as long as it did before. We know what supplies to bring. It really would be great to have you stay here in case—”

  “No! You’re not leaving me behind! Not while you do all the fun stuff. It’s not fair.” Delilah continued to frown at them.

  Henry looked from Delilah to Simon. “Why can’t she come with us, even with the cast?” he asked tentatively. “It’s not like we’re riding our bikes. We’re just walking anyway … and it’s supposed to be a walking cast.”

  Delilah glanced doubtfully at her cast. “I’ve never climbed rocks in it. I don’t think it’s meant for that.”

  “She’ll slow us down,” Simon said. Delilah’s mouth clamped in a hard, mad line, but he continued, “How would she get down into the canyon? She’ll fall again.”

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Delilah said.

  “Listen,” Simon said to her in a more conciliatory tone. “I wish you could come with us. I really do. But it’s too hard for you to climb with your leg like that, and it doesn’t make sense for us to wait.”

  Delilah looked at him in silence for a minute. Then she uncrossed her arms and said coolly, “If you go without me, I’ll tell my mom. And she’ll call the police. You won’t even get halfway to the mountain.”

  Jack lunged at her. “You are nothing but a big lousy TATTLETALE!” he yelled, raising his fist to pummel her.

  “She’s worse than that—she’s a baby,” Simon snapped.

  “Wait,” Henry said, grabbing Jack around the waist and struggling to hold him back. “You don’t mean that,” he said to Delilah. “You wouldn’t really tell on us.”

  “You’re not leaving me behind,” she repeated stubbornly.

  Simon sighed and slumped to the floor, clapping his hands on either side of his head.

  “Okay, okay,” he said finally. “We don’t have a choice. But we are going up the mountain on Sunday, and you’ll just have to keep up.” He glared back at Delilah. “And when we get to the canyon, I’m not helping you! You’ll have to figure out how to climb down on your own.”

  “Yeah,” Jack echoed, glowering at her.

  “Don’t worry. I will,” Delilah retorted.

  Henry gulped. He thought of the trek up the mountain, with its rough ground and sharp rocks and sudden, surprising crevices. Arduous as the trip was, it seemed like it was about to become even more difficult.

  CHAPTER 21

  RETURN TO SUPERSTITION MOUNTAIN

  SUNDAY COULDN’T COME soon enough. The boys spent Saturday surreptitiously amassing the supplies they would need to ascend the mountain and search for the gold mine. They assembled their stash in a cardboard moving box in a corner of the garage, on the theory that it was the one area of the house least likely to attract Aunt Kathy’s attention. The box filled up slowly over the course of the day. Henry and Simon both watched in growing satisfaction, though Henry’s was tinged with worry and Simon’s with impatience. Jack, meanwhile, raced around making suggestions and signaling his approval in loud whispers.

  What supplies were essential? First: two flashlights. Even though they would make the climb up and back during the day, if they were able to find the mine, it would no doubt be below ground in the dark. Next: a small garden shovel. They debated bringing an actual shovel, but the one in the garage was so heavy and ungainly, they couldn’t imagine making the long, hot trip up the mountain carrying it. Finally: a rope, which was hardest to come by—all Simon could find in the shadowy corners of the garage was an old clothesline. But Delilah, who seemed eager to make amends and prove her worth after her outburst, insisted o
n contributing two jump ropes. She also brought a canvas bag filled with bottles of water and an array of snacks—granola bars, potato chips, chocolate bars, a few apples.

  “Did you remember candy?” Jack wanted to know.

  “Chocolate,” Delilah said, showing him. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Looking skeptical, Jack retreated to the kitchen for fortifications. “I’m bringing my hunting net too,” he announced when he returned, holding their mother’s reusable net shopping bag in one hand.

  “What for?” Simon demanded. “We’re not going to catch anything. It’s not that kind of trip.”

  “Well, we might,” Jack said stoutly, adding the net bag and a fistful of candy to the box.

  It seemed that everything would fit in two backpacks, so they emptied Simon’s large black one and retrieved Delilah’s pink one from Henry’s closet. Henry carefully stuffed the pouch with the coins and the nugget into the toe of one of his shoes and shoved it back in the closet. The map they would bring with them, along with the directions from the coin box. Both were quickly sequestered in the outside pocket of Delilah’s backpack.

  On Sunday, Aunt Kathy was expecting Emmett around twelve o’clock. As Henry lay on his stomach across his parents’ bed, she fussed happily in front of the mirror, applying and reapplying her makeup to achieve the perfect “natural” look.

  “If you want to look natural, why don’t you just not wear makeup?” Henry suggested. He was watching her smooth a creamy beige liquid over her cheeks and throat.

  “Oh, no, no, no.” Aunt Kathy recoiled in horror. “If I didn’t wear makeup, I would just look drab and forgettable. The point of the makeup is to look natural in a better-than-normal way.” She turned to face Henry. “There. What do you think?”

  Henry had to admit she looked really good, but not like she was covered in makeup. “You look pretty,” he said.

  “Aw, thanks, honey. Now, if only I could wear my cute sandals. But if we’re going to be walking around the countryside, it’ll have to be these.” Sighing, Aunt Kathy pulled a pair of sneakers out of her suitcase. “Okay, last thing…” She gathered her wavy hair into a ponytail. “Up or down?” she asked Henry.