Jack beamed at her. “I know a lot about rattlesnakes,” he told her. “Did you know their rattles are made of the same stuff as your fingernail?”
“Really?” Aunt Kathy said, glancing at her own long nails. “Isn’t that interesting!”
“And when they’re going to bite you—”
“Hey, buddy,” Mr. Barker interrupted, “you can tell Aunt Kathy all about rattlesnakes later, okay?”
Aunt Kathy turned to Simon and Henry. “Simon—so handsome! Do you have a girlfriend yet?”
“Kathy,” Mrs. Barker reproached her. “He’s only in sixth grade.”
“Well, that’s when it starts,” Aunt Kathy said cheerfully. She took Henry’s face in her hands and pressed her lips to his forehead with a wet smack. “And Henry, sweetie! You have to tell me what you’re reading. I finished the last of those Harry Potter books and, boy, oh boy, I thought they were fabulous. A little long by the end, but so suspenseful! I couldn’t put them down.”
Henry smiled up at her, and she seemed so happy and full of enthusiasm that the strange feeling of dread about his parents’ departure almost vanished. But then he saw the suitcases in the hallway, and he felt it descend again.
“Okay, boys, we’ve got to get on the road.” Mrs. Barker patted a sheaf of lined notebook paper on the kitchen table. “This is everything you need to know, Kathy. Bedtimes, emergency numbers, doctor, dentist, vet, our hotel. We’ll check in every day, and of course you can call us whenever you need us—”
“Oh, Ellen, we’ll be just fine. You two go off and have a great time. Don’t worry about a thing!”
Mrs. Barker hesitated, looking at the boys. “Simon, you know the house rules. I expect you all to follow them. And, Kathy, I told them they could ride their bikes around the neighborhood, but just the neighborhood. They need to stay close to home.”
“But we can go to the library, right?” Henry asked.
Mrs. Barker pursed her lips, considering this. “I guess so. But stay on our side of Coronado Road, okay? I don’t want you crossing busy streets.”
“Mom, we know,” Simon insisted. He flashed a secret look of triumph in Henry’s direction, which Henry realized must stem from the fact that all the interesting places in town—the library, the cemetery, Emmett Trask’s house, and most important, the ghost town—were on the near side of Coronado Road, so they could do all the exploring they wanted without breaking their promise to their mom not to cross the main street through town.
Mrs. Barker picked up her purse and looked at them uncertainly. “Have I forgotten anything?”
“No!” Jack told her, bouncing impatiently and looking ready to shove her out the door.
She hugged and kissed them good-bye while Mr. Barker hovered in the archway.
“Ellen, we should go. Bye, guys! Be good.”
He herded their mother toward the garage, while she glanced over her shoulder and gave last-minute instructions—“Remember to feed Josie! Don’t forget to use sunscreen!”
“We will,” Aunt Kathy called. “We’re going to have a fabulous time!”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mrs. Barker called back, and they both started laughing.
So the mood was merry when their parents left. Even so, as Henry watched their car pull out of the driveway, he couldn’t help but wonder about all that might happen before they got back.
CHAPTER 14
WHERE TO START LOOKING
THE BOYS SPENT much of the day helping Aunt Kathy “get used to Arizona,” as she called it. She kept up a running commentary while they showed her around the house and yard. First of all, it was entirely too hot for her taste, and she worried that it would dry out her skin and hair. On the other hand, the sunshine was so nice, and she did like the desert, with its colorful cactuses, boulders, and wildflowers, like the stage set for a cowboy movie. The mountain was strange, though, wasn’t it? She didn’t like the looks of it. Did the boys hear that she’d broken up with Eddie? (The boys looked at each other blankly; they didn’t even remember that she’d been dating someone named Eddie.) He was a good guy, but too immature for her taste, and she was tired of being his mother. Not that she wouldn’t love to be a mother someday, but not to a grown man.
As Simon opened the door to the deck, Aunt Kathy scooped up Josie to bring her along on the rest of the “tour,” much to Josie’s chagrin.
“I just said to myself, ‘Kathy, do you like yourself when you’re with him?’” she continued. “‘Do you like being the nagging, boring, responsible one all the time?’” She buried her face in Josie’s soft fur. “And the answer was no. No, I did not. That’s not me.”
She picked her way across the sandy backyard in her strappy sandals, with the boys trailing behind her. When she got to the swing set, she settled herself comfortably in a swing and released Josie, who promptly streaked under the deck. “But, you see, that’s the role I had to play because Eddie never took responsibility for anything. Do you know what I mean?” She glanced at Henry.
Henry nodded mutely, though truth be told, he had no idea what she was talking about. He was just relieved that Aunt Kathy seemed philosophical about this breakup. Sometimes she was so thoroughly shattered by the end of a relationship that she would be on the phone sobbing to their mother for weeks.
“So it was time to move on,” she continued, twirling lazily. “Of course I miss him, because we’d gotten used to each other. But I was just completely, completely fed up with the person I’d become. I was more tired of myself than I was of Eddie!”
At this point, Aunt Kathy turned squarely to face them, planting her feet in the dust to stop the swing’s motion.
“I’m telling you boys this, even though you’re a little young, because it is something to think about in any relationship. Friendships too.”
Simon rolled his eyes at Henry. Aunt Kathy had many, many opinions about relationships. She seemed to think the boys were old enough to hear them and to benefit somehow. When Mr. and Mrs. Barker weren’t around to suggest otherwise, they had no choice but to listen.
“Think of your friends,” Aunt Kathy said. “You should ask yourself, does this person bring out the best in me? Do they like me for the things I like most about myself? Do they support me and stick up for me? Do they push me in new directions?”
“My friends had better not push ME,” Jack declared. “Or I will push them back.”
Aunt Kathy laughed her big, rolling laugh, and the swing shuddered. “Not that kind of pushing, sweetie,” she said. “I mean, do they open up new worlds for you, challenge you to try new things? Those are the important questions. Some of my women friends have this long list of characteristics they’re looking for in a guy—athletic, tall, ambitious, good job—and I’m like, ‘Honey, those things don’t matter at all compared with how he treats you. How he makes you feel. How you are when you’re with him.’”
Simon and Henry exchanged glances.
“I think we’ll go for a bike ride,” Simon announced. “Is that okay? As long as we’re home for dinner?”
“Oh, I’m sorry! I’m talking your ears off, aren’t I? I’m just so excited to see you boys, that’s all.” She grabbed Henry and squeezed him tightly against her side, until he could feel the rope of the swing cutting into his chest. “I feel like it’s been forever. Of course you can go for a bike ride. What was I supposed to remind you about again?”
“To stay in the neighborhood,” Henry volunteered.
“And put on sunscreen,” Simon added.
“See how responsible you boys are? Why, you’re better than Eddie. All right, be back in a couple of hours, by dinner time. I thought we’d just have pizza. But I’ll make fudge sauce, and we can have sundaes for dessert.”
“That sounds delectable,” Henry said.
Aunt Kathy smiled at him. “Henry. You and your words.”
“It sounds GREAT,” Jack shouted, throwing his arms around her shoulders and sending the swing spinning wildly.
Minut
es later, they quickly slathered themselves with sun lotion and hopped on their bikes.
“Where are we going?” Jack asked, pedaling ahead of them.
“Let’s ride over to Delilah’s,” Simon said. “We can talk about where to start looking for the gold.”
* * *
Delilah swung open the door with a scowl. “I thought you guys were never going to get here!” she said. “What took so long?”
“Aunt Kathy came,” Henry told her. “We had to get her settled.”
“Did you ask her what ‘break a leg’ means?” Delilah asked, thumping back to the kitchen on her cast.
“Shoot, we forgot,” Simon said.
“You can ask her when you meet her,” Henry added.
“When am I going to meet her?” Delilah asked.
“Anytime you want. She’s at our house for six whole days, till next week,” Henry said. “You’ll like her.” He was suddenly sure that was true, though he couldn’t say why.
Jack tugged open the refrigerator and inspected the contents. “Don’t you have soda?”
Delilah shook her head. “My mom says it’s bad for your teeth.”
Jack sighed. “That’s what our mom says. I thought maybe your mom didn’t know that.”
“There’s iced tea,” Delilah offered. “With sugar and lemon.”
She lined up four glasses on the counter and took a yellow plastic pitcher from the refrigerator, pouring carefully.
Henry looked out the kitchen window, at the dark silhouette of Superstition Mountain, like a thundercloud gathering in a clear sky. Was there really a cavern full of gold hidden somewhere in its canyons?
“So when are we going back to the ghost town?” Simon asked.
“We aren’t,” Delilah said dejectedly. “You are. I can’t go anywhere with this thing.”
Even though he had envied her the excuse to avoid Simon’s risky schemes, Henry felt sorry for her. That cast made it hard for Delilah to choose adventure even if she wanted to. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “We could go to Emmett’s. And Delilah could come too.”
“Emmett’s?” Simon turned to him. “Why would we go back there?”
“Well, he’s a geologist, right?” Henry said. “He knows about different kinds of rocks. And he had all those survey maps of the mountain, remember? Maybe he could help us figure out where the gold is likely to be—in what part of the mountain. You know?”
Simon considered this for a minute. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said slowly. “In fact, it’s a pretty good idea, Hen.” He clapped Henry’s shoulder. “It would be better not to go back to Gold Creek for a couple of days anyway, because of Aunt Kathy getting used to things.”
“I can’t ride my bike,” Delilah said doubtfully. “And Emmett’s house is too far away to walk.”
“Oh, Aunt Kathy will drive us,” Simon said confidently. “We can go tomorrow. I don’t think he’ll mind talking to us. He was president of the historical society, after all. He might know something about the Julia Thomas—the old Julia Thomas, not the librarian—that would help us find the gold.”
What if the old Julia Thomas IS the librarian? Henry was thinking. But he was looking forward to seeing Emmett, who was a font of interesting information about Superstition Mountain and all that had happened there.
CHAPTER 15
SOMETHING AMISS
THE NEXT MORNING, it was surprisingly easy to persuade Aunt Kathy to drive them to Emmett’s house. Simon made a phone call first, to find out if Emmett was there. According to Simon, though Emmett was surprised to hear from them—“Oh, you guys! Of course I remember you. What’s up?”—he seemed very amenable to answering more questions about the geology of the mountain … perhaps because Simon said nothing of gold mines or buried treasure. But Emmett had a meeting at one o’clock in Phoenix, so they would have to go over that morning.
“We can pick up Delilah on the way,” Henry told Aunt Kathy.
She was leaning over the dresser in their parents’ bedroom, using the mirror to apply lush sweeps of mascara. “The little girl who found Josie?”
Henry almost said, The little girl who took Josie. “Yeah,” he said. “She broke her leg.”
“I know.” Aunt Kathy dusted her cheeks with blush. “Your mother told me about that. And whose house are we going to?”
“Emmett Trask’s,” Henry told her. “He used to be head of the historical society here.” This made Emmett sound more legitimate, he thought.
Aunt Kathy raised an eyebrow. “The historical society? That doesn’t sound like something that would interest you boys. Why are we going to his house?”
“Well,” Henry said, “he knows a lot about the history of the town, so we wanted to ask him a few things. And he’s a geologist, so he knows about rocks and stuff.”
“Hmm, he sounds smart.” Aunt Kathy shrugged. “Okay, I’m game.”
* * *
Delilah was sitting on the curb in the bright sun when they pulled into her driveway. She hobbled quickly to the car and climbed in the backseat.
“Hi,” she said to Aunt Kathy. “I’m Delilah.”
“It’s nice to meet you, honey. I’m Kathy, Ellen’s sister. I’ve heard all about you. You look like an old pro with that cast—how long till it comes off?”
“At least a couple more weeks,” Delilah said. She lifted her leg toward the driver’s seat. “Can you see what Mr. Barker wrote on it?” she asked, turning the cast slightly.
Aunt Kathy squinted. “Oh! Break a leg!” She laughed.
“He told us it’s something actors say. He thought you might know why.”
Aunt Kathy backed the car out of the driveway, smiling. “Well, I should—I’ve been doing theater since high school! But I’m not sure anyone knows exactly where it comes from. One theory is that ‘break a leg’ is an expression for bending your knees when you bow or curtsy … so to ‘break a leg’ would be to perform so well you get to take lots of bows. Another theory, kind of similar, is that it refers to curtain calls. Do you know what those are?”
Simon answered from the passenger seat. “It’s when they open the curtains again and again at the end of a show, so the actors can take an extra bow.”
“Right,” Aunt Kathy said. “In the theater, the curtains used to be held up by wooden pieces called ‘legs,’ and to open the curtains, you had to ‘break’ the legs. So ‘break a leg’ could mean to open the curtains a bunch of times, or to wish an actor lots of curtain calls.”
Delilah smiled, satisfied. “Mr. Barker said you would know.”
They reached Emmett’s road moments later. “Wow, this is out in the middle of nowhere,” Aunt Kathy said as she turned the car down the rutted lane. “Oh! And there’s the mountain again.” She shuddered. “There’s no escaping that thing.”
Henry saw that it completely filled the windshield, a looming presence. They bounced and bumped directly toward it until they finally reached Emmett’s long gravel drive, with the white house and red pickup truck waiting at the end.
Before Aunt Kathy had even turned off the engine, Jack flung open the car door and scampered up the front steps. “Emmett!” he yelled, pounding on the door.
Henry wondered briefly if it was okay to call him that instead of Mr. Trask. But he did seem more like an Emmett than a Mr. anybody. He wasn’t as old as their parents, for one thing, and he was oddly direct when he talked to them, as if they were grown-ups too.
Henry, Simon, and Delilah followed Jack, while Aunt Kathy gathered her bag and set one sandaled foot gingerly on the loose stones.
Emmett opened the door and grinned at them. “Hey, you guys,” he said easily. “Come on in.” He hesitated. “Is that your mom?”
Aunt Kathy slammed the car door shut, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and flashed him a wide smile. “Oh, no,” she said. “My sister’s the married one. I’m the fun one! I’m taking care of them for a few days while their parents are in Santa Fe.” She walked toward the front stoop, extending her hand.
“Kathy McCarthy.”
“Oh.” Emmett didn’t seem to know what to say, but he took her hand. “Emmett Trask.” He held the door wide while Aunt Kathy beamed at him and breezed into the house.
“The boys told me you’re a geologist! I bet that is very interesting work. Especially in this part of the country. There are rocks everywhere!”
Henry thought this was a goofy thing to say; in what part of the country weren’t there rocks everywhere? The whole country was made of rocks. But Aunt Kathy seemed not the least bit bothered by her own ignorance.
“What a cozy house!” she said enthusiastically. “Look at that wonderful map.”
“It’s a survey map of Superstition Mountain,” Henry told her. His eyes scanned the soft pastels of the map, thickly covered in wavy lines. Did it hold some clue to the location of the gold mine?
“Here, sit down.” Emmett gestured to a lumpy tan couch and a couple of armchairs before sitting down himself.
Aunt Kathy immediately plopped down, crossing her legs and beckoning for Henry to sit next to her.
“What can I do for you guys?” Emmett asked.
“Well,” Simon began, “we found out something interesting. There was a woman named Julia Thomas who used to live near Superstition a long time ago … when Jacob Waltz was alive.”
“With the same name as the library lady! And looks exactly like her too!” Jack blurted out.
Emmett seemed amused. “It was Julia Schaffer, actually—is that who you mean? She was a friend of Jacob Waltz.”
“No!” Jack corrected. “Julia THOMAS.”
“Now, who are you all talking about?” Aunt Kathy asked.
Delilah lowered herself to the carpet at Aunt Kathy’s feet, her cast stretched out in front of her, and began to explain. “Jacob Waltz was a miner who lived near Superstition in the 1880s,” she said. “He was German, but people thought he was Dutch, and he discovered a big gold mine on the mountain that people call the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, because nobody has ever been able to find it again.”