Treasure on Superstition Mountain

  “Come on, higher!” Jack yelled encouragingly.

  But the best Simon could do was to graze Henry’s hand with his fingertips.

  “It’s no use,” Simon said. “I can’t get close enough.”

  Henry sat up and looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock. They should have been on their way to Delilah’s by now. “Do you think we should go for help?”

  “No,” Simon said firmly. “If you do, we’ll never be able to come back to the ghost town again.”

  “Yeah, that’s a terrible idea,” Jack agreed.

  “Besides,” Simon continued, “I’m not hurt. We just have to figure out a way to get me out of this hole.” He looked around. “There might be stairs or a ladder here somewhere. There should be some way to get to the main floor.”

  Henry could see him hesitating. “It’s just so dark,” Simon said. “And even if there are stairs, they’re probably as rotten as the ones up there, after all these years.”

  “What if Henry holds on to my feet, and I hang down and grab you?” Jack suggested. “Like those trapeze guys in the circus!”

  “You weigh as much as Henry. And then he’d have to pull up both of us. We’re too heavy.”

  Henry was quite relieved to hear this plan rejected. “What if I take off my shirt and hold that down to you?” he offered. “And you grab the end, and Jack and I haul you up?”

  Simon considered this, then shook his head. “I don’t think it’s strong enough to hold my weight. It’ll rip, and I’ll fall again. We need something else … like a rope.”

  “A rope!” Henry exclaimed, turning to Jack. “There was a rope near that old wagon wheel! Next to that first building, the store.”

  “I remember!” Jack cried. “I’ll get it!” He sped from the hotel, with Henry calling after him to be careful.

  Henry leaned over the hole again. “Can you see what else is down there? Anything?”

  Simon shook his head. “Just these old burlap bags. But it’s a pretty big room.”

  They lapsed into silence, waiting for Jack.

  “What’s that?” Simon asked suddenly, his voice thin.

  “What?” Henry asked.

  Simon was quiet for a second. “That noise.”

  Henry strained over the mouth of the hole, listening. All he could hear was Simon’s quiet breathing.

  “What noise?”

  “Shhh,” Simon said.

  They both craned into the darkness. Then Henry heard it: a faint rustling in the cellar. The sound of something moving.

  “Is that you?” Henry asked softly.

  “No,” Simon whispered.

  He was quiet again. When he lifted his face to Henry, his eyes were wide with fright.

  “Hen … there’s something down here with me.”

  CHAPTER 10

  WHAT LIES BENEATH

  HENRY FELT A CHILL shoot through him.

  “What do you mean? How can there be anything down there?” he asked, trying to sound normal.

  But his mind was racing. He thought of the scary places in books he’d read … the dungeon in The Count of Monte Cristo, the Chamber of Secrets in the second Harry Potter book … all those dark, underground worlds where something lay waiting.

  Simon shook his head, his jaw clenched. “No, it’s definitely something alive. I can hear it.” He was quiet again. For a minute, Henry heard only his breathing, but then the sound came again, a soft scuffling.

  “Do you think it’s … a ghost?” he asked, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. He knew he’d be petrified if he were down where Simon was, in the blackness, with something he couldn’t see.

  Simon’s voice was a whisper. “No,” he said. “It must be some kind of animal, but what could be living down here? A rat? A snake?”

  Henry immediately pictured the rattlesnake pit in the book True Grit. “How could that be? There’s no food down there.”

  Simon flinched. “What if I’m the food?”

  There was no answer to that.

  “Stay where I can see you,” Henry said. He glanced over his shoulder. Where was Jack?

  “Jack!” he yelled. “Hurry!”

  Simon crouched and picked up one of the broken floorboards that had tumbled into the cellar with him. He held it grimly in both hands, like a bat.

  Just then they heard footsteps outside.

  “I’m coming!” Jack bellowed, and a moment later he appeared in the doorway, the old brown rope clutched in a coil against his chest.

  “There’s an animal or something in the basement,” Henry told him quickly. “We have to get Simon out of there now.”

  “What?” Jack demanded. “What kind of animal?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to hurry,” Henry said, throwing the rope down to Simon.

  “Is it a snake?” Jack asked. “A RATTLESNAKE? I bet I will know what kind it is because of my book—”

  “Jack, stop,” Henry said, guiding the rope toward Simon.

  Simon dropped the broken board and immediately wrapped the rope around his wrist. He gripped it with both hands.

  “Okay, pull!” he cried.

  Henry and Jack grabbed the rope and pulled with all their might. Simon was heavy and the angle was awkward, and the rope was so old and brittle that Henry was afraid it would fray apart in their hands. But now Simon was dangling above the basement floor, kicking his legs and trying to hoist himself up the rope. He still wasn’t close enough for them to grab.

  “We have to pull harder,” Henry told Jack. Jack’s face scrunched with the effort, turning a dark shade of red.

  Now Simon was almost to the level of the splintered floorboards.

  “I think I can reach you,” Henry said. “But I have to let go of the rope.”

  “What?” Jack groaned. “I won’t be able to hold it!”

  “You have to!” Simon cried, panting.

  “You can do it, Jack,” Henry urged. “You’re the strongest of all of us.”

  “I know,” Jack said, “but Simon is HEAVY.”

  Henry looked quickly around. He would have to think like Uncle Hank, or like Simon himself—what was here that they could use to get Simon out of the pit?

  “Wrap your end of the rope around that post by the stairs,” Henry told Jack.

  Jack glanced at the staircase in the corner. “That’s so old. Won’t it break?” he asked.

  “Just try it,” Henry urged.

  “Hurry, guys,” Simon pleaded. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. Henry gripped the rope as tightly as he could while Jack took his end and looped it twice around the post of the old staircase, cinching it. “Ready!”

  “Now hold that as tight as you can, Jack,” Henry told him. “And I’ll bend down and pull Simon over the edge.”

  Quickly, Henry let go of the rope and stretched out on the rough boards, leaning out over the hole as far as he could without losing his balance. “Can you grab my hand?”

  Simon nodded. He released the rope with one hand and struggled to reach up to Henry, thrashing his legs and spinning wildly over the black pit.

  Henry gripped Simon’s outstretched wrist. “It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he said, pulling Simon over the lip of the hole. “Okay, Jack, come help me!”

  Jack ran to them, grabbing Simon’s other hand, as Simon kicked free of the rope once and for all. It promptly uncoiled from the stair post and slid across the floor. They watched as its frayed length disappeared into the hole … joining whatever it was that lived down there.

  Together, Henry and Jack hauled Simon over the edge of the broken boards, onto the floor.

  Simon rolled onto his back, breathing heavily. His face was flushed with exertion.

  “Thanks,” he said finally.

  Henry was shaking with relief, his heart still knocking furiously in his chest. He knelt at the edge of the hole and peered into the dark abyss of the cellar. Far below, he could make out the lumpy shadows of the burlap bags, crosse
d by a ghostly curve of rope.

  “What do you think it was?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said, sitting up and rubbing his hand through his hair. “But I sure am glad I got out of there before we found out.”

  “Hey,” Jack said. “What if it was a GHOST?” His eyes were wide.

  “There’s no such thing, Jack,” Simon said, but Henry thought his voice lacked its usual certainty.

  Jack glanced uneasily around the dark room. “You couldn’t see anything but you could hear it. That sounds like a ghost. And it was coming after you! A mean ghost.”

  Since Henry had thought exactly this himself, it was hard to dismiss it.

  But he could see that Jack was really scared. His face was pale, and his lip quivered. It was easy to forget how young Jack was, because he was so brave and sturdy all the time.

  “Jack,” Henry said, “I bet it was a rattlesnake.”

  “Really?” Jack asked hopefully. He seemed suddenly cheered.

  “If it was a rattlesnake, you could have DIED,” he told Simon. “And you would never have gotten out without my rope!”

  “No kidding,” Simon said.

  Henry thought about mentioning that getting the rope had been his idea, but it didn’t seem worth it. He sometimes wondered if the key to Jack’s confidence was his ability to take credit for almost any situation. Jack was always so sure of his own importance. Whereas Henry worried constantly about screwing up—making a mistake, doing something embarrassing, getting himself or someone else into trouble—Jack had a natural inclination to see even his screwups as the linchpins of his success.

  Jack stood up and brushed off his pants. “We SAVED you,” he announced to Simon.

  Simon smiled a little. “Yeah, you did.” He took one last shuddering look down into the cellar, then got to his feet. “We’d better go. We’ll have to ride like crazy to get to Delilah’s by lunchtime.”

  “Me first!” Jack yelled, tearing out of the hotel lobby, with floorboards creaking and dust clouding the air at every step.

  “I’ll take the book,” Henry said, picking up the ledger from the front desk and tucking it under his arm.

  “Good,” Simon said. “We need to have a closer look at that. Maybe if we can figure out who was staying here when it was a real gold mining town, that will be a clue to finding the Lost Dutchman’s Mine.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE HOTEL LEDGER

  THEY RODE THEIR BIKES as fast as they could over the dusty ruts back to the main road, then sped all the way back to their neighborhood. By the time they rounded the corner to Waltz Street, where Delilah lived, it was nearly twelve thirty. They could see her waiting impatiently on the front porch, her cast gleaming in the sun.

  “Where were you guys?” she cried. “Your mom just called!”

  “What did you tell her?” Simon asked.

  “Nothing! I didn’t pick up because I didn’t know what to say. But you’d better call her right back.”

  Sweaty and panting, they burst through the front door into the cool house and ran toward the kitchen. Henry, still carrying the hotel ledger under one arm, glanced into the living room and paused. He hadn’t been inside Delilah’s house since their trip up the mountain, when she’d told him that her father had died several years ago in a car accident. Now, as he looked again at the cluster of photos on the end tables and the colorful array on the walls, he saw the grinning man with the kind brown eyes and felt a pang. It was strange the way a photograph could freeze someone in time, with no knowledge of the terrible things that lay ahead. There was Delilah’s father holding her on his shoulders; there he was building a sand castle with her just beyond the tide line. He was smiling widely, unaware of his future. He didn’t know he would never see his daughter grow up. Would he have looked different in the photos if he had known that? Henry wondered Would he have wanted to know what lay ahead?

  Suddenly sad, he turned away and followed his brothers into the kitchen. While Delilah stood at the sink, filling cups with cold water, Simon took several deep breaths, then dialed the Barkers’ house.

  Henry, Jack, and Delilah listened anxiously to his end of the conversation.

  “Hey, Mom, we’re at Delilah’s. You did? Sorry, we were outside … we didn’t hear the phone. Everything’s fine. You know, if you’d let me get a cell phone—yeah, I remember what you said, I just thought it would make things easier for you.” Simon looked at Henry and rolled his eyes. “We’re about to have lunch. Can we stay here for a while longer? Okay. Uh-huh. We will. Okay, Mom. Bye.”

  He settled the phone back in its cradle and flopped into one of the kitchen chairs with a sigh.

  “Was she mad?” Jack asked.

  “No, it’s fine,” Simon said. “She wants us home by three o’clock.”

  “Oh, that’s PLENTY of time,” Jack said happily.

  “So what happened?” Delilah asked, distributing the cups. “You have to tell me! What took you so long? What did you find?”

  They guzzled the water thirstily and told her all about their visit to the ghost town.

  “Wow,” Delilah said, turning to Simon. “I can’t believe you fell through the floor! And there was something living down there? What do you think it was?”

  “I kept thinking about that pit full of rattlesnakes in the book True Grit,” Henry said. “With the skeletons? The girl falls in, and one bites her.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t tell me that,” Simon said in horror. “But I don’t think it was a snake. I didn’t hear hissing or rattling or anything. And it sounded bigger than that. Maybe it was a big ol’ rat or something.”

  Henry thought Simon seemed quite blasé about it for someone who had been trembling with fright only an hour before.

  “Well, I think it was a snake!” Jack declared. “They are tricky.”

  “So you didn’t find anything but that book?” Delilah continued, taking the leather volume from Henry. She set it gently on the kitchen table.

  “Nope, that was it,” Henry told her. “But, look … it has the names of everybody who stayed in the hotel from 1892 to 1898.” He opened the ledger and began turning the thin pages.

  “Look at their funny handwriting!” Jack said. “It’s all squishy.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to read,” Delilah said. “And it has the room numbers too? Was there anything left in the hotel rooms?”

  “We never got that far,” Simon told her. “I fell through the floor before we could go upstairs. But I doubt it. The whole town seemed to have been cleaned out.”

  “How does someplace become a ghost town?” Delilah wanted to know. “Do people just up and leave all at once? How come? And then it turns into a bunch of abandoned buildings?”

  “Pretty much,” Simon said. “But I don’t think it happens all at once. It seems to mostly be mining towns that turn into ghost towns, and it’s ’cuz the gold or silver or whatever they’re mining runs out. So then all the businesses that used to sell stuff to miners—the stores, hotels, saloons—aren’t making any money and have to close. And after a while, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to live there anymore.”

  “When did Gold Creek shut down?” Delilah asked.

  “We don’t know, but it seems like the late 1800s,” Simon said.

  “The last hotel entry was November 5, 1898,” Henry told her, shifting the hotel ledger so she could see the final page.

  Delilah leaned over it, turning backward through the pages to the beginning of the book again. She ran her finger over the thin paper.

  “Hey,” she said suddenly. Her finger had stopped partway down the page, next to a delicate, neat black signature.

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “Look,” Delilah said quietly.

  Henry leaned over her shoulder and read:

  Julia Thomas

  Henry raised his eyes to Delilah’s. “She is everywhere,” he said softly.

  “Julia Thomas again!” Jack exclaimed.

&
nbsp; “You guys,” Delilah persisted. “Look at it.” She stared at the page, then at Henry.

  He saw her wide eyes, and suddenly, in a flood of understanding, he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  Without saying anything more, Delilah lifted her cast and plunked it on the edge of a chair.

  There, gliding across the white plaster, was the librarian’s signature, in neat, slanted cursive.

  It looked exactly like the one in the hotel ledger.

  CHAPTER 12

  MORE ABOUT JULIA

  “NO WAY,” SIMON SAID.

  “No WAY,” Jack echoed.

  “It’s the same,” Delilah said, running her finger lightly over the signature on her cast.

  “It can’t be,” Simon said. “Unless you think the librarian is, like, a hundred and fifty years old.”

  Henry said nothing. He stared at the tightly curling black signature in the hotel ledger and then at its twin on the white cast. He thought of the grimly familiar face in the old photograph at the library, the name on the headstone in the old cemetery. What was going on?

  “The J’s are the same,” Delilah said stubbornly. “And the T’s. It’s the same handwriting.”

  “Well, hello??? It’s cursive handwriting!” Simon protested. “Nobody writes like that anymore, but back then, everybody did. So, I mean, signatures could look the same for that reason.”

  “But you just said nobody writes like that anymore,” Delilah argued. “And hello, yourself—look at my cast! The librarian does write like that.”

  “I’m just saying there’s an explanation for it. It doesn’t mean that the Julia Thomas from back then is living here in Superstition right now.”

  Henry sank into a chair at the table and rested his face in his hands. On the other side of the kitchen window, the mountain lingered, almost as if it were peering in, enjoying their discomfort.

  “You have to admit, Simon, it’s pretty strange,” he said. “The same name on the tombstone, the same face in the photo, and now this.”