Henry thought of the dark tattered paper with its crude drawings. Nothing on it had resembled the symbol for a gold mine. But why bother to draw a map unless you were showing someone how to get to somewhere important? To uncover the map’s secrets, they would have to think like Uncle Hank … the way a real explorer would.
Simon sat up suddenly and pushed his book toward Henry. “Hey, Hen, look at this. It’s a map of the Phoenix area around 1880, showing the locations of the old mining towns. When did Jacob Waltz live here?”
Henry glanced down at the printed columns under the picture of the austere man with the beard. “He came to this area in the 1870s and died in 1891.”
“So this would be about right. And look … here’s Superstition, and there’s a mining town right here. Gold Creek.”
“Do you think it’s still there?” Henry asked.
Simon shook his head. “It’s just outside of town, and I haven’t heard of it, have you? It says here that most of the mining towns closed down in the early 1900s, when the gold ran out.” He paused, reading silently for a moment, then looked at Henry. “Listen to this—they became ghost towns.”
“Ghost towns! Maybe that’s the ghost town the policeman was talking about,” Henry said. “The one we’re not supposed to explore because it’s too dangerous.”
Simon’s eyes brightened, and his mouth pursed in a calculating way that Henry knew all too well. He had the sudden certain feeling that they would soon be exploring a ghost town.
CHAPTER 6
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
HENRY DIDN’T EVEN KNOW what a ghost town looked like. “Do you think it’s just a bunch of old buildings, or what?” he asked Simon.
“I guess,” Simon said. “There are pictures here, but none of Gold Creek.” He turned his book toward Henry. Together they scanned the dim photos of run-down storefronts and buildings with collapsing roofs.
“It looks like they could fall down right on top of you,” Henry said.
“Yeah,” Simon agreed. “We’ll have to be really careful.”
At that moment, Jack came charging up with a thin orange book clutched in one hand. “Look what I got!” he yelled. “In a Dark, Dark Room. It’s all ghost stories, and I can read some of them myself.”
“I remember that book,” Henry said fondly. “It has this story about a girl who always wears a green ribbon around her neck—”
“Don’t spoil it,” Delilah interrupted. “That’s the best story.” Delilah was carrying a book with a photo of a rattlesnake on the cover and the rather alarming title Rattle of DEATH!
“And this one!” Jack said, snatching it from her. “A book on rattlesnakes with lots of pictures.”
“Cool,” Henry said. “You can learn all about them.”
“So what did you find out?” Delilah asked.
Henry and Simon quickly recounted their discoveries about Jacob Waltz’s treasure map and the abandoned mining town of Gold Creek.
“Do you think it’s the ghost town?” Jack exclaimed. “The one we’re not supposed to go to?” He turned to Delilah. “It doesn’t have real ghosts in it,” he explained condescendingly. “They just call it that.”
Delilah rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “We talked about that place before.”
Simon began reshelving the pile of books, checking the labels on their spines to slot them in the correct place. “Gold Creek is so close to Superstition, it has to be the same town,” he said. “We can get there on our bikes.”
Henry swallowed. “Do you think it’s safe? The buildings in those pictures look like they’re falling apart.”
“Cool!” Jack cried.
“Yeah,” Simon said. “It’s like a ruin. Who knows what we’ll find there.”
Delilah touched her cast. “I can’t ride anywhere,” she said, dejected. “I hate this!”
Henry felt a small twinge of envy. He briefly wished he had such an easy excuse for not taking part in Simon’s harebrained schemes.
Jack rapped the plaster with his knuckles. “Yep, you can’t come,” he said, not unsympathetically. “I sure am glad I didn’t break MY leg.”
“You guys could wait to go to the ghost town until I get my cast off,” Delilah suggested. “It’s only a couple more weeks.”
Simon snorted. “Why would we do that?”
Delilah’s eyes flashed. “Because I would wait for you!” she snapped, then lowered her voice. “And…” Henry could tell she was struggling to think of a compelling argument. Finally, she tossed her braid in defiance. “The gold and the map are in my backpack. I could have taken it home with me, but I didn’t.”
This struck Henry as quite circumstantial—they could have put the gold and the map anywhere.
“We could have put those anywhere,” Simon scoffed. “We just decided to leave them in your backpack.”
“So your mom wouldn’t find them!” Delilah straightened her shoulders and said disapprovingly, “You’re using me.”
Henry looked from Delilah to Simon. “Maybe we don’t all have to go,” he suggested. “I could stay with Delilah.”
Delilah’s face softened, and she sent him a grateful glance—so grateful that Henry felt instantly guilty. It was horrible to get credit for being kind when your intentions were really cowardly or self-serving.
“Don’t be silly, Hen,” Simon said. “We need you. Don’t you want to explore a ghost town? Think of all the cool stuff we might find.”
Henry bit his lip. He did want to go exploring. He remembered the thrill of finding the secret canyon, the excitement of discovering a place nobody else knew about. He’d felt like Uncle Hank, boldly venturing where nobody else would dare to. The ghost town would be like that too; the sense of danger was what made it interesting, what made it worth exploring. If he was ever truly going to be like Uncle Hank, Henry realized, this is what it would take. You couldn’t change your personality, but you could change your choices. You could consciously choose adventure over playing it safe.
Surprisingly, Delilah seemed to have relented. “You should go,” she said to Henry. “You found the saddlebag in the canyon. You’re good at noticing things.”
And then Henry felt a flicker of pride, the way you do when someone gives you a small, specific compliment that you know in your heart to be true.
Delilah said resignedly, “You’ll just have to go to the ghost town without me. When you come back, tell me everything about it, okay?”
“Okay,” Henry agreed.
“Hey, guys!” Mr. Barker’s cheerful voice carried through the quiet of the library. “Ready to go?” He walked toward them from the circulation desk, where Mrs. Thomas was watching him intently.
Quickly, they all got to their feet, leaving the Arizona history section just as they’d found it, with the books neatly back on the shelves and no visible sign of their research.
“We just have to check out a couple of books for Jack,” Simon told their father, and Delilah showed the covers.
“Ewww … snakes!” Mr. Barker said, recoiling. “And ghosts, huh? Pretty exciting stuff. Nothing for the rest of you? I can wait if you want to browse some more. Hey, Delilah—look at that cast!”
He crouched on the carpet and knocked on it with his knuckles, and Henry thought, not for the first time, that Mr. Barker and Jack were a lot alike. “Whoa! That’s about as hard as the cement I poured today.” He grinned up at her. “Can I sign it?”
“Sure,” Delilah said, a little shyly.
Simon groaned. “Dad, don’t be weird,” he ordered. “She doesn’t want you to sign it.”
“Why not?” Mr. Barker asked, perplexed. “It’s good to have it covered with signatures. Makes you look popular.”
“It’s okay,” Delilah said. “I don’t care if he signs it.” She obligingly stuck out her foot, and Mr. Barker took a pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled his name with a flourish. Above it, he wrote, “Break a leg, kiddo!” and winked at Delilah. “That’s what they say in the t
heater to wish the actors good luck in a play.”
“Really? How come?” Delilah asked.
Mr. Barker shrugged. “No idea. But the boys can ask their aunt Kathy for an answer. She’s done a lot of theater, and she’s coming for a visit on Thursday.”
“She is?” All three boys spun to face their father.
Their aunt Kathy was their mother’s younger sister, funny and chatty and thoroughly indulgent of her three nephews, since she was still single and had no children of her own.
“Yep. Last-minute plans for your mother and me to go away for our anniversary. I just heard about it myself.”
“She’s going to STAY with us?” Jack asked, bouncing on his toes. “Without you there?”
That was intriguing, Henry had to admit, because as often as Aunt Kathy had visited, and even babysat for the occasional Saturday evening, Mrs. Barker had never actually trusted her to watch the boys overnight. “I adore your aunt Kathy, but she doesn’t always have the best judgment. She hasn’t been around children that much. Sometimes she doesn’t know what’s appropriate,” their mother had explained when the boys once asked why this was. Of course the lack of good judgment and ignorance about what was appropriate were exactly the things that made Aunt Kathy so much fun.
“Yes, she’s staying with you. Your mother has decided you’re finally old enough. Or Aunt Kathy is,” he added thoughtfully.
“That’ll be great,” Simon said.
“I can’t wait to see her,” Henry added.
“Yeah!” Jack shouted, and raced toward the door of the library.
“Wait, Jack,” Delilah called after him. “We have to check out your books.”
But Jack burst through the doors without even slowing down.
“Stay out of the parking lot, buddy,” Mr. Barker cautioned him.
Mrs. Thomas waited for them at the circulation desk, her eerie smile fixed on Mr. Barker. “Hello, there,” she said in her syrupy way. “You must be Simon, Henry, and Jack’s father. I can see the family resemblance.”
“That I am,” Mr. Barker said, extending his hand. “Jim Barker. I hope I don’t look too much like these goofballs.”
“I’m Julia Thomas,” the librarian replied, and Henry and Delilah exchanged a quick glance. She paused. “I heard about your children’s mishap up on the mountain.”
“You did?” Mr. Barker looked surprised. “How did you hear about that?”
Mrs. Thomas seemed slightly taken aback, and Henry realized that, like Jack, Mr. Barker could be quite useful with his bluntness. “Well, I … I saw Officer Myers the other night at a meeting,” she said. “And he told me.”
Now, why would she be going to a meeting with Officer Myers? Henry wondered.
“Oh,” Mr. Barker said easily. “Officer Myers was a big help to us.” He ruffled Henry’s curls. “I wish I could hire him full-time to keep track of my boys.”
The thought of stern, broad-faced Officer Myers tailing them around all day made Henry cringe.
Mrs. Thomas studied Mr. Barker with her tight smile. “I’m sure you do! They seem prone to mischief, these three.” She glanced at Delilah. “Four.”
While she said this nicely enough, Henry thought there was an edge to her voice. Their father seemed to sense it too, because he abruptly appeared to have had enough of the conversation.
He gestured to Delilah, who was clutching the books and watching their exchange with wide eyes. “Well, we just need to check these out and then we’ll be on our way,” he said.
Delilah put In a Dark, Dark Room and Rattle of DEATH! on the counter and unzipped her new pink-and-black wallet to find her library card. “We need to renew the books we checked out last time,” she added.
Mrs. Thomas grunted dismissively, tapped the computer keyboard, then scanned the books’ barcodes. She pushed them across the counter. “It was nice to meet you,” she said to Mr. Barker. “I do hope you and your wife will keep a closer eye on your sons. I told them the mountain is far too dangerous a place for children.”
“Oh, we know that,” Mr. Barker said curtly. “Maybe you can convince them to start reading about adventures instead of having them. Have a good day.”
He turned and led the way out of the library, with Simon, Henry, and Delilah fast on his heels. Jack was poking a stick in the dirt of a flower bed next to the building.
The doors had barely closed behind them when Mr. Barker said, “She is certainly annoying. And librarians are usually so pleasant.”
That was true, Henry thought. The librarian at the big public library in their old town in Illinois had been warm and welcoming, always eager to suggest books they would like, interested in their stories about school or about Josie.
“Ugh,” Jack said. “She is a tricky one, always SPYING on us. Where’s my snake book?” He grabbed it from Delilah.
“Well, I’m not sure what her problem is,” Mr. Barker said. “But you guys had better try to stay out of trouble at the library. She doesn’t seem like she’d be very understanding.” He paused. “And she’s right about the mountain. You know that.”
“Yes, Dad, we do,” Simon said, beleaguered. “And you know the reason we went back up the mountain, which even Mom said was the right thing to do.”
That was a bit of a stretch, Henry thought. Their mother had said the only reason she wasn’t more upset with them was that she knew they were trying to do the right thing by bringing back the three skulls they’d found on the ledge, so that they could be identified. She never said it was the right thing to go up the mountain.
Mr. Barker seemed about to point out this flaw in Simon’s logic himself, so Henry interrupted him. “Hey, Dad … did the coroner ever figure out anything more about how those Texas boys died?” He pictured that day in the canyon when they first saw the three gleaming white skulls, and shivered. Who could have known all that would come after?
Mr. Barker shook his head grimly. “I think I told you what we heard. The one boy must have fallen and cracked his skull. The coroner’s office suspects there were other injuries as well, but because they don’t have the skeletons, there’s no way of knowing. The theory is, the other boys stayed with him, and they all died of dehydration. Could happen to anyone in a place like that … which is why you need to stay off the mountain.”
“We know, Dad,” the boys chorused.
“And you too, Delilah,” Mr. Barker added, tugging her long braid. “These knuckleheads came back unscathed. You’re the one with a broken leg. Don’t let them talk you into any more of their exploits.”
Delilah smiled at him but said nothing, following Henry into the car for the ride home.
CHAPTER 7
ANOTHER EXPEDITION
THE NEXT DAY, after breakfast had been eaten, beds made, and Josie fed her coveted mix of kibbles and tuna fish, Simon delicately approached their mother with the proposition that the boys go for a bike ride. Secretly, the night before, he had mapped out the route to the ghost town and determined that it was only a fifteen- or twenty-minute ride from their house.
“We’re going for a bike ride on that road by the cemetery today,” Simon said as Mrs. Barker loaded the dishwasher. “Is that okay?”
“Which road by the cemetery?” Mrs. Barker looked at them sharply. “Not the highway?”
“No!” Simon said. “I know we’re not allowed on the highway. That little curvy road. There isn’t a lot of traffic there.”
Mrs. Barker said nothing, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Please, Mom,” Simon continued. “We’ve been grounded for two weeks! We didn’t get to ride our bikes anywhere.”
“And why was that?” Mrs. Barker asked coolly.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t our fault,” Simon replied, his voice even. “I’m just saying we’re…”
“Stir-crazy,” Henry interjected. He reached under the table and stroked Josie, who was weaving between his legs, the tip of her black tail twitching.
Mrs. Barker smiled a little. “I don?
??t know,” she said. “I need to think about it.”
“Josie!” Jack called from down the hallway.
Josie twitched her ears and stared at the doorway in a mixture of irritation and curiosity.
“Josie, come here!” Skeptically, she trotted into the hall.
“Please, Mom,” Simon continued. “You probably won’t want us riding all over the place when Aunt Kathy’s here.”
“You are certainly right about that,” Mrs. Barker said. “Aunt Kathy is going to have her hands full as it is.”
“So is it okay? For us to go today?”
“I told you, I need to think about it.”
Simon groaned. “Well, how long is that going to take?”
“Simon,” Mrs. Barker warned.
“That’s all right. We can play in the yard for a while,” Henry said quickly. He knew from long experience that if they pressured their mom to make a decision too quickly, the answer was more likely to be no. “Come on, Simon,” he said. “We can play Titanic again.” They had started a game on the deck a few days ago that involved hanging on to the railing of their sinking ship and jumping onto life rafts below, which were really crushed cardboard moving boxes strewn around the yard. The best part was fighting each other for space on the rafts.
“Jack,” they both yelled.
“What?” Jack demanded. He came pounding down the hall with Josie clutched to his chest, wrapped inside one of their mother’s reusable green net shopping bags.
“Jack! Is that one of my bags?” Mrs. Barker demanded. “And what are you doing to poor Josie?”
“We’re playing,” Jack said evasively.
“Honey, what are you playing? Look at her! She doesn’t like that.”
Indeed, Josie’s ears were pressed flat against her skull, and her claws were poking angrily through the netting. She glared at them balefully.
“We’re playing panther,” Jack said, unfazed. “I’m the hunter, and I just trapped her in my net. Now I’m taking her back to my hunter camp to skin her.”