The Eagle's Quill

  “I wanted to! But Evangeline said no. She and my mom were good friends, really good. I was staying with Evangeline while my mom was gone. Evangeline kept saying we should trust my mom, that she’d be back. Because she wouldn’t have—”

  “Wouldn’t have what?” Sam asked, a little warily.

  Theo rubbed at the inside of his left arm, where his tattoo lay hidden under his shirt. “Wouldn’t have left without telling me where to find Washington’s vault. If she thought there’d be any danger. If she actually thought she might—die.”

  They all stared at the empty pack, shaken.

  “Well.” Sam hesitated, then spoke. “So maybe Evangeline was right, Theo.”

  “Right?” Theo suddenly crumbled up the empty pack and let it drop from his hands. “I should have come to look for her!”

  “Theo, listen!” Sam raised his voice. “Her things are gone, right? The pack’s empty?”

  “So?”

  “So she took her stuff. The point is, she didn’t just drop the pack and run. She had a plan.”

  Theo looked a little startled, but then shook his head. “Or somebody else took her things after she . . .”

  “Theo. Man. Don’t go there.”

  Theo was still shaking his head. “She wouldn’t have left the necklace. She never would have done that, if she’d had a choice.”

  “Oh.” Sam sagged. His attempt at comforting Theo had fallen apart.

  “Theo.” Abby sniffed hard. Her eyes were shiny in the dim light, and Sam realized she was about to cry. “I know how you feel. You know I do. My parents . . .” She took a quick breath and went on. “But we can’t give up hope, not now. We’ve got to keep going.”

  “She’s right,” Marty said, patting Theo’s arm. “Theo, I’m so sorry. But you can’t believe the worst, not without proof.”

  Sam even jumped in to try again. “If your mom’s anything like you, Theo, she’s as tough as nails. I wouldn’t give up on her. If she’s alive, we’ll find her.”

  Theo stared down at the crumpled pack at his feet, and then slowly bent to retrieve it. He slung it on his back, looked around at all his friends, and nodded once.

  “Let’s keep going,” he said hoarsely.

  “We’d better,” Abby said. “I didn’t want to say, but those bones—something brings its prey here to eat. And we don’t want to be hanging around when it—”

  “Comes back?” Marty said. Her voice quavered.

  “Right,” Abby said, and looked in surprise at Marty’s pale face. “Marty? What’s up?”

  Marty pointed the flashlight down the way they had come, and the light bounced off rock walls and ceiling as her hand trembled. “I saw something back there. Just for a second . . .”

  “What? What did you see?” Sam asked.

  “Eyes.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Eyes!” Sam leaped to Marty’s side as she stood, playing the light back down the cave. “What kind of eyes? How big? How, you know, evil?”

  “Sam, shut up! They were pretty big. And kind of yellow. They flashed like a cat’s eyes in the dark. But I don’t see anything now . . .”

  “Like a cat?” Abby said sharply.

  “Yes. But way too big to be a cat . . .”

  “Maybe too big for a housecat,” Theo muttered. “But they’ve got other kinds of cats around here.”

  “We’ve got to go.” Abby began backing up farther into the cave. “Come on!”

  “Why?” Sam followed her, happy to be away from creepy flashing yellow eyes but wanting to know more. “What do you think it is?”

  “A mountain lion, probably,” Abby answered. “Theo, Marty, come on! Get away from the bones. That’s its cache, where it brings its prey to eat. A mountain lion will kill anything it thinks might be after its food. No, Marty, don’t run!”

  “Don’t run! Why not?” Marty demanded.

  “Because cats chase things that run. Haven’t you ever seen one go after a mouse?”

  Marty gulped back a little whimpering sound and slowed down. “So what do we do?”

  “We walk,” Abby said grimly, reaching out to grab Marty’s arm and pull her close. “And we stay close together. And we hope it isn’t hungry.”

  Sam crowded close to Abby and Marty, with Theo in the lead as they pressed farther back into the cave. Sam could hear nothing except their scuffling footfalls and their tense breathing. But you wouldn’t expect to hear a hunting cat, would you? A cat that was a noisy hunter would be a cat that starved to death pretty quickly.

  On either side the walls were narrowing, closing in, and soon they were forced to walk single file. Sam began to worry that they were headed into a dead end, and a dead end right now could be very dead indeed. Were they just setting themselves up to be a nice little cat buffet? Behind Sam, last in line, Marty swung the light back and forth, trying to light up the path in front of them as well as turning around to scan the cave for the big cat behind.

  “It’s probably scared of the light,” Abby said softly. “Maybe we can . . .” She reached down and snatched up a leg bone from the litter at their feet.

  “Abby? What are you doing?” Sam asked.

  “Give me something from your pack,” Abby said, her eyes on the darkness behind them. “Something that will burn.”

  They stopped walking, huddling close together. Theo bent down to pick up a leg bone as well, with a hoof still attached. Marty kept the flashlight’s beam moving, but as the light shifted from damp wall to rough ceiling to muddy floor, it cast thick black shadows behind piles of boulders and lumps of stone, shadows where almost anything could be hiding.

  Including a cat the size of a Saint Bernard.

  Sam dug in his pack, finding a waterproof bag that he’d stuffed with what few clothes he had left that hadn’t been lost or taken by Arnold’s men. He yanked out a sweatshirt and groaned a little as he handed it to Abby.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s my best Wolverine one,” he told her.

  “Priorities, Sam!” Marty snapped while Abby ruthlessly ripped Sam’s favorite sweatshirt into three or four wide strips, twisting them around the bone.

  She snapped her fingers. “Matches!”

  “Hurry,” Theo said in a low voice.

  “Why?” Sam asked.

  “Because I just saw that shadow move.”

  “Which shadow?” Sam asked, his voice jumping with nerves. Then he saw for himself. Behind a huge boulder, a dark, curling line lay along the stone floor. It twitched.

  Sam had watched his neighbor’s cat stalk a bird once. It had flattened itself in the grass and lay so still, you might have thought it was a garden ornament—except that every now and then, the very tip of its tail jerked with excitement.

  Sam had thrown an acorn to startle the bird into flight, and the cat had glared at him and stalked away. Nobody was going to save the four of them by throwing an acorn now.

  “Matches!” Abby said again, and Sam snapped his eyes away from the darkness behind the rock and dug into his pack. He’d packed matches, he knew he had . . . but he didn’t know where he had put them. He rooted through Snickers bars, bags of M&M’s, a soggy fleece jacket, a bottle of bug spray, another of water . . .

  “Watch out!” Theo yelled, and Sam looked up.

  In one smooth and sudden movement, a huge cat—it looked as big as a car to Sam—flung itself up over the shelter of the boulder. It was a tawny blur in the air with eyes that caught the flashlight’s beam in a blaze of fiery gold.

  They all cried out in shock. Sam felt his heart thud against his ribs, and then it seemed to stop beating entirely. Or maybe it was time that had stopped. There was a moment where the mountain lion seemed to hang in midair, claws out, forelegs wide. Sam could see the cat’s red mouth and its sharp, curved, ivory teeth.

  Then Theo stepped forward and braced himself like a major league batter facing a pitcher with a wicked fastball. He swung his length of bone. It hit the mountain lion in the face, and th
e animal yowled, flung off balance. It twisted in the air to land on three feet, keeping its left front leg off the ground.

  “Matches! Now!” Abby shrieked.

  Sam snapped his attention back to his pack. With the flashlight trembling in her left hand, Marty grabbed up a skull and threw it with her right. The cat dodged, snarling with rage. Sam snagged a waterproof plastic pouch and fumbled it open. Abby snatched the matches from his hands.

  The cat crouched low to the ground, its tail lashing angrily against the floor. It still kept one front paw up off the ground, as if it didn’t want to put weight on it, and opened its mouth wide to let out a deafening hiss of frustration. It didn’t seem to know what to do with prey that fought back, but it wasn’t going to retreat either.

  Abby struck a match, dropped it, struck a second, and held its flame to the edge of one of the soft rags she’d twisted around her bone. In a moment flames were blossoming on her makeshift torch.

  She leaned past Theo to shove the torch at the mountain lion. It hissed again and backed away.

  “Let’s go,” Abby said, her voice quavering.

  They hurried farther into the cave, Abby now walking backward at the end of the line, brandishing her torch. Sam took hold of her arm to guide her. The mountain lion snarled, a sound that rumbled off the stone walls like faraway, drawn-out thunder, but it didn’t follow.

  The walls closed in tighter. They were in more of a tunnel than a cave now, going deeper and deeper into the heart of the cliff.

  The tunnel twisted, and they lost sight of the mountain lion. “Now it can’t see us,” Abby said. “Better run. This torch won’t keep burning forever!”

  They followed her advice, their feet thudding against the floor of the cave. The tunnel stretched out before them, mostly level, twisting and turning till Sam had no idea which way they were going. How many minutes had they been running? Three? Fifteen? It was hard to be sure. In front, Marty’s flashlight beam bounced off shiny walls, dripping with water. The ground seemed to be getting wetter under Sam’s feet; drops splashed down from the ceiling onto his head and neck. One hit the torch and the flames sizzled and spat.

  “Watch out!” Marty called. “We’re going downhill!” She was right. In a moment, the ground under Sam’s feet sloped downward. His feet skidded through mud and gravel. Then Marty yelled.

  “Stop! Stop!”

  Sam grabbed at the walls, trying to slow his pace, and his feet went out from under him. He crashed into Theo, who fell on top of him, and the two of them slid into Marty, who threw herself to one side, rolling away.

  Sam and Theo, in a tangle, slid to a halt. “Ow,” Sam muttered. His elbows were stinging, his back was aching, and it was extremely hard to breathe with Theo squashing him. The older boy rolled off, and Sam saw for the first time why Marty had yelled.

  They had just slid into an immense cave, cut through the middle by a deep ravine. Theo’s feet were only a few inches from its edge.

  “When I said ‘stop’ I didn’t mean ‘knock me down’!” Marty said, picking herself up as Abby came up from behind them, her torch still flickering in her hand. Theo and Sam inched back from the ravine’s edge before getting to their feet, and Sam took a look around, trying to figure out where they’d ended up.

  The cave rose up all around them, and it looked bigger than a football stadium to Sam. Faint light from Marty’s flashlight bounced off an arching ceiling that dripped with stalactites. The ravine cut through the cave from edge to edge, and the beam of light could only make a feeble attempt to pierce the darkness inside it. Sam could not see the bottom, but somewhere, deep down, he could hear quickly moving water thundering against stone walls.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked, shivering a little. “Jump across?” He rubbed his arms, because it was cold down here and his sweatshirt was currently smoldering, wrapped around the leg bone of a mountain goat. Not because he’d come close to sliding into a bottomless pit. Of course not.

  “We don’t have to jump,” Marty said.

  “You’re planning to fly?”

  “I’m planning to walk on the bridge.” Marty pointed her flashlight to their right, along the edge of the ravine, and Sam saw what she meant. It was the weirdest-looking bridge he had ever seen.

  In fact, it was two bridges—sort of. Two wooden planks, each about the width of a sidewalk, reached from edge to edge of the ravine. A thick wooden pole stood between them, with a beam across it, making a T shape. The planks had been suspended from the beam by a system of rigid metal cables. Above the bridge, there seemed to be some sort of crack that reached up to the surface, because dim sunlight spilled down through the damp air.

  The four kids walked cautiously along the edge of the ravine to the bridge. “It looks kind of familiar,” Marty said, frowning and pushing her glasses up a little bit on her nose.

  “They have some pretty weird bridges where you’re from, huh?” Sam picked up a small stone from near his foot and pitched in into the murk. There was an extremely long pause before he heard the faintest possible splash.

  “No.” Marty let her light play over the planks, the central supporting beam, the walls of the pit. “That’s not why. It reminds me of something . . . oh!”

  She stopped. The beam of the flashlight had caught something on the far wall of the ravine—letters. She moved the light along. Carved into the stone of the ravine was the phrase “All men are created equal.”

  “From the Declaration of Independence,” Marty said.

  “We do know that, Marty. We’re not complete morons,” Sam told her.

  “But Thomas Jefferson wrote that, Sam! It proves we’re on the right track. This is the next clue!”

  “Of course it is,” Sam said. “Obviously. It’s a crazy bridge over a bottomless pit in the middle of the wilderness. Only a Founder would build something like this.” He sighed. “And I guess we’ve got to cross it.”

  “Your other choice is to go back and see if that mountain lion is still looking for a snack,” Marty told him.

  “No thanks.” Sam took a closer look at the bridge. The planks, he saw, did not actually reach from side to side of the ravine, as he had thought at first. There was a gap of at least a foot between each plank and the rocky edge of the ravine.

  “It doesn’t look very sturdy,” Theo remarked, craning his neck to peer over the edge of the precipice.

  “Maybe the ravine’s eroded some since the bridge was first built,” Marty said, noticing the same thing. “It seems okay, though. We can still use it.”

  “If you say so,” Abby said. “You first.”

  “Fine with me!” Marty huffed. She drew in a deep breath and then took a step across the gap, getting first one foot and then the other on the left-hand plank. “See? Not too bad!” She looked back over her shoulder. “Come on, who’s next?”

  The plank began to tip under her feet.

  It wasn’t just the plank that was moving, in fact. The entire bridge was tipping to the left, rocking on the central support beam. Marty’s weight had pulled it out of balance, and the right-hand plank was coming up while Marty’s plank went down.

  “Marty! Get off that thing!” Theo yelled.

  Sam threw himself forward as Marty shrieked and whipped around, windmilling her arms. Her heavy pack pulled her off balance. Before she could jump, she fell.

  Sam crashed to his knees at the edge of the ravine and threw himself flat on his stomach, grabbing for Marty as her body thumped into the rocks of the ravine’s wall. His left hand got a handful of damp fleece jacket; his right got her left wrist. For a moment he supported all her weight, and he wasn’t sure if he could hold on. Then Theo was beside him, reaching out to seize hold of Marty’s arms as well, and the burden on Sam’s muscles eased.

  “Marty! You okay?” Sam asked.

  “I am so not okay!” Marty looked up into their faces as she dangled above endless blackness. Behind her, the bridge began slowly righting itself, the planks returning to level. “Pull
me up!”

  “See if you can brace your feet on the rocks,” Theo told her. “Okay, Sam, on three. One . . . two . . .”

  Behind them, Abby shrieked.

  Still holding tight to Marty, Sam twisted around. Abby was facing the way they had come, swinging her feebly flickering torch through the air. Sam heard a growl, low enough to vibrate in his chest and make the skin along his back crawl with horror.

  In the darkness where the tunnel met the cave, eyes flashed gold.

  “The torch is going out!” Abby yelled.

  “Sam! Keep hold of Marty!” Theo said urgently and let go.

  Sam wanted to say something sarcastic to Theo—“Well, I was planning to drop her to her death, but since you said not to . . .” But all he had breath to do was grunt as Marty’s full weight swung from his hands once again.

  “Sam!” she gasped, and her eyes were wide and frightened behind her glasses.

  “Don’t . . . worry . . .” Sam got out between gritted teeth.

  He didn’t have any idea what was going on behind his back now. He couldn’t turn his head to see. He heard Abby gasp, and then a thump, and another, and an angry hiss from the big cat.

  With her left hand, the one Theo had dropped, Marty grabbed a rocky outcrop. She scrabbled with her feet at the ravine’s side and got a bit of her weight on a ledge only an inch or two wide.

  “Good,” Sam muttered. “Come on. Up you come . . .”

  The mountain lion yowled behind Sam. “Good shot!” Abby shouted.

  Sam ordered all the strength he could summon into his shoulders and arms, and slowly, steadily, lifted Marty an inch. Another. She set her teeth and pulled at the rocks with her free hand, hoisting herself up farther. On his stomach, Sam writhed backward along the cave floor, dragging Marty with him. His muscles burned. His chin scraped against the ground.

  The little spur of rock Marty was holding onto crumbled in her hands. With a sharp cry, she slid back, and her weight dragged Sam forward too. He tried to brace himself against the stones, but it wasn’t any use. He was sliding. Marty’s face was close to his, and her look of terror mirrored the one he could feel on his own face.