Missing on Superstition Mountain Read online

  For my nephews,

  Nate and Jebbie Bauer

  CONTENTS

  Frontispiece

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1. Josie Runs Away

  Chapter 2. Up the Mountain

  Chapter 3. The Hidden Canyon

  Chapter 4. Which Way?

  Chapter 5. “Stay Off the Mountain!”

  Chapter 6. A New Plan

  Chapter 7. A Glimpse of Something

  Chapter 8. Delilah

  Chapter 9. At the Library

  Chapter 10. The Missing

  Chapter 11. Asking for Trouble

  Chapter 12. The Superstition Historical Society

  Chapter 13. Mountain Mysteries

  Chapter 14. “They Weren’t the Same…”

  Chapter 15. The Last Page

  Chapter 16. Telling Someone

  Chapter 17. At the Cemetery

  Chapter 18. Names from the Past

  Chapter 19. Books, Bones, Coins

  Chapter 20. Necessities and Supplies

  Chapter 21. Back Up the Mountain

  Chapter 22. Along the Edge

  Chapter 23. Into the Canyon

  Chapter 24. Lost and Found

  Chapter 25. Remains from Long Ago

  Chapter 26. “The Mountain Is Alive…”

  Chapter 27. Something in the Night

  Chapter 28. Home

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author & Illustrator

  Also by Elise Broach

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  JOSIE RUNS AWAY

  THE DAY JOSIE RAN AWAY was the beginning of everything—the bones in the canyon, the haunted mountain, the buried treasure, the town full of secrets—but the Barker boys didn’t know it then. All they knew was that Josie was missing, again, and they had to find her. It would be harder here, in this strange place in the middle of the desert. But they had no idea how hard, or what else they would find while they were looking.

  Josie and the Barker boys had just moved to an old brown-shingled house in Superstition, Arizona, a town in the shadow of an enormous, craggy mountain called Superstition Mountain. So far, the Barker boys didn’t much like it. The house itself was all right. It had belonged to their great-uncle, Hank Cormody, or “crazy Uncle Hank” as Mr. Barker called him. Uncle Hank was a former cattle wrangler, gambler, and scout for the U.S. Cavalry, who had shockingly left the house to Mr. Barker in his will when he died at the ripe old age of eighty-six. The timing for a move was good. Mr. Barker’s stonemasonry business in Chicago was slowing down—cause for many worrisome, muffled, late-night conversations between Mr. and Mrs. Barker when they thought the boys weren’t listening. Since Mrs. Barker was a medical illustrator who could paint pictures of arthritic hips and diseased kidneys anywhere, a hasty decision had been made that a free house in a cheap part of the country was exactly what the Barker family needed.

  Which, mostly, it was. The house had a bedroom for each of the boys and a big finished basement, one side of which was crammed full of Uncle Hank’s belongings (taped boxes and musty furniture that Mrs. Barker had banished from the upstairs). On the wall was a dartboard, which was a nice surprise because Mrs. Barker never would let the boys get a dartboard, but she could hardly say no when one was hanging right there, with a fistful of pointy darts in the center. Another good thing: Uncle Hank’s backyard didn’t end in another backyard, or a street, or a driveway, like other backyards. It ended in a vast, rolling nothingness of hills and fields. The boys liked that—the sense that there were no limits, and if somebody hit a ball over the scrubby border of trees and bushes, it might go sailing on forever.

  But … well, there were lots of buts. The house was far from their friends in Chicago. It was far from the park where they played baseball. It was far from the hill where they used to sled and have snowball fights in the winter. Why, Arizona didn’t even have winters! What kind of place didn’t have snow? Worst of all, their new house was in this strange town, full of strange people, where nobody looked or talked or seemed the least bit like the people back home.

  “It’s just because you don’t know them yet,” their father said. But even their mother, who was annoyingly upbeat about nearly everything, had to admit the town of Superstition lived up to its name. When the middle Barker boy, Henry, said, “The people here are shifty,” she laughed—because she always laughed at Henry’s funny words—but after a minute, she nodded and said, “You know, that is a very good word for it.”

  There were three Barker boys. Simon, the oldest, was eleven. He had spiky brown hair and a curious, science-y personality, which led to many interesting ideas and experiments. But he could be an annoying know-it-all, and greedy at times. Jack, the youngest, was six. He was hands down the bravest, not just about little things like spiders, but about crashing his bike and jumping from high places. Jack, however, had a temper and would rather take a swing at somebody than work things out peacefully.

  In the middle was Henry, age ten, a year younger than Simon and four whole years older than Jack. But because Henry was small and slight and Jack was big and sturdy, people always assumed Henry and Jack were around the same age. This was quite embarrassing to Henry … almost as bad as when he was five and his long, curly hair had led everybody to think he was a girl. Henry loved to read and to use the strange words he found in books, though not always the right way. Also, while Henry got along with nearly everybody, he had never had a best friend. (Mrs. Barker said, “Oh, Hen … look at your father! He’s forty-one and he STILL doesn’t have a best friend.” Somehow, that wasn’t very comforting.)

  One last thing about Henry: he was named for Uncle Hank, who was really Henry Cormody, though how the name Henry got turned into Hank was a mystery to the boys (doubtless following the same strange logic by which Sarah became Sally or Margaret became Peggy). Mr. Barker had idolized Uncle Hank when he was young, marking time between his rare visits, eagerly soaking up stories of his adventures, and much later, proudly passing along the name Henry to his middle son. Even at the best of times, Henry felt the weight of this inheritance quite heavily. His great-uncle had been a wild one. He roped cattle, gambled away his money in gloomy saloons, fought bandits with fists and guns, and explored the roughest and most remote stretches of the West on his big spotted Appaloosa horse for the army. Henry, in addition to being small and occasionally mistaken for a girl, was not wild at all. Which made him feel that he should have been named something more regular, like John or David.

  The final member of the Barker family was Josie. Was she the boys’ sister? No. Their nanny? Definitely not! In fact, Henry often thought that if you were to compare Josie to Nana, the dog nanny in the book Peter Pan, you would quickly see that there was no comparison. Josie was the Barkers’ cat, and she had little interest in taking care of anybody, least of all the three Barker boys. She had been with Mr. and Mrs. Barker for a very long time, and she was vaguely put out that the boys existed at all.

  Josie was mostly black, with a patch of white on her neck shaped like Florida. She did not enjoy being squeezed or picked up (though that didn’t keep Jack from squeezing and picking her up). Henry liked to say she was dextrous, which meant she could open doors and grab things with her paws. Most importantly, she was good at leaping and climbing.

  On the day Josie ran away, the boys were sitting on their deck after lunch, staring glumly at the pebbly stretch of backyard, trying to think of something to do. Superstition did not have much to offer. The town center consisted of a library, a grocery store, a gas station, a diner, a town hall with the police and fire stations, a post office, and Coronado Elementary School, w
hich went all the way up to the eighth grade. There were a couple of businesses, too—a car repair place and Mr. Barker’s masonry shop. But that was it. Rows of houses sprang up in a square grid around the main avenue through town, and surrounding them? Only barren desert. Even the high school was miles away, in the town of Terra Calde.

  This was the first week of summer, and half of the Barkers’ neighborhood appeared to have left on vacation. Not that it mattered, as Henry pointed out; the boys hadn’t made any friends since they moved in at the beginning of June, happily missing their last week of school back in Chicago. Here in Arizona, they were on their own.

  “We could play cards,” Henry suggested.

  “Too boring,” said Simon.

  “We could play Frisbee,” said Jack.

  “Too windy,” said Simon.

  “We could go see Dad,” said Henry.

  Simon shook his head. “Remember what happened last time?”

  Mr. Barker’s work involved building walls, patios, and walkways. Most of his big jobs were in Phoenix, but he had a few projects in Superstition and the neighboring towns. The boys liked to visit him while he was working, especially whenever he needed help with the cement. But the last time that hadn’t turned out so well … Jack’s sneaker ended up permanently cast in a stretch of sidewalk.

  They sat and thought a bit longer.

  “I know,” Simon declared. “Let’s play Mexican prison. Jack, you crawl under the deck. Henry and I will be the guards—” He was just starting to elaborate when Josie, who had been lying peacefully in the warm sun, leapt to her feet and darted across the yard, straight through the clump of scraggly trees, in the direction of Superstition Mountain.

  “Where’s she going?” Jack demanded. “Josie!” He jumped up and ran after her.

  Henry glanced at the house. Technically, they were not supposed to leave their yard. And they were especially not supposed to go up Superstition Mountain. Their parents were very strict about the mountain.

  “Jack!” Simon warned. He looked at Henry and shrugged. “Josie doesn’t know her way around here. She might get lost.” He ran after Jack, calling over his shoulder, “You tell Mom.”

  Henry scowled. He was often put in the position of breaking bad news to one or the other of his parents, because Simon considered it beneath him to relay information and Jack couldn’t be relied upon to get the message right. Henry yanked open the sliding glass door and yelled in the vague direction of his mother’s study, “Mom, Josie ran away and we’re going after her!” He slammed the door to her faint, “You boys stay close to the house.”

  Henry crossed the yard, then trotted up the rough slope of the foothills. Giant saguaro cactuses rose from the sandy ground, their prickly arms held upright, like soldiers saluting. The reddish brown peaks and bluffs of Superstition Mountain loomed in the distance. Henry could see Simon and Jack—and Josie far ahead, a black streak against the light earth. Where was she going? That was the thing about Josie. You never knew what she was thinking. Sometimes when Henry stroked her head, she’d purr with lazy pleasure and then, a minute later, hiss and bat his hand with her claws.

  He caught up with his brothers, who’d stopped running. June in Arizona was fiercely hot, not like Illinois. At least there was a wind today … even if it blew dry dust in their faces. Simon and Jack were yelling for Josie, but Henry couldn’t see her anywhere. She never came when they called anyway.

  “Where’d she go?” Henry asked, squinting into the hills, past the spiked grasses and bright yellow clumps of wildflowers. The strong sun made crisp shadows on the ground.

  “She climbed over those rocks.” Simon ran his hand through his hair till it stood up even more. The boys gathered in an uncertain huddle, staring at Superstition Mountain.

  They all knew Superstition Mountain was off-limits. But it wasn’t clear why. Their mom had said something about mountain lions and rattlesnakes. Their dad just said they could get lost.

  Jack scrambled on top of a boulder. “I see her!” he said. “She’s way up there. Come on!”

  CHAPTER 2

  UP THE MOUNTAIN

  HENRY HESITATED. “Do you think it’s okay to go up the mountain?”

  Simon considered for a moment. “Look, there’s kind of a trail. We can break off branches from the bushes and stick them in the ground so we can find our way back.”

  That sounded like something Uncle Hank might have done in his army scout days, Henry thought. Reassured, he began breaking branches off the brittle shrubs and propping them in the ground as they walked, avoiding the sharp spines of the prickly pears and giant cactuses.

  “They look like big, skinny people,” Henry told Jack.

  “Yeah, needle people,” Jack said.

  “Think if your skin was covered in prickers like that,” Simon said. “Like a porcupine. You could scare people away just by brushing against them.”

  “Cool!” Jack said, and proceeded to pretend he was covered in prickers, bumping into Simon and Henry until Simon threatened to push him into a cactus.

  When Henry turned back, their house had sunk from view. But the zigzag line of sticks poked up from the dirt, as certain as mile markers on a highway.

  Soon the slope became steeper and rockier. Jack still ran ahead, but Henry could hear him panting from the effort. Lizards skittered across the sandy ground. Henry grabbed the sharp edges of boulders to pull himself up, the sun hot on his back, sweat coursing down his forehead. The trail turned back on itself. It faded into thickets of brush, then reappeared. They kept climbing.

  “Look at that funny rock,” Jack said after a while, pointing to a narrow spire that stood alone in the maze of bluffs.

  Simon nodded in recognition. “That’s Weaver’s Needle. Dad showed it to me. It’s a landmark.”

  “What’s a landmark?” Jack wanted to know.

  “A part of the land that stands out,” Henry explained. “You can use it to tell where you are.” That’s what scouts did, didn’t they? They remembered landmarks so they could guide people in the wilderness. He tried to memorize the position of Weaver’s Needle.

  “So where are we?” Jack wanted to know.

  Henry looked around at the twisty, boulder-strewn landscape. “I don’t know.”

  They climbed on. Behind them the flat land stretched, speckled with the distant houses of Superstition and divided by a thin stripe of highway. Ahead lay the tangle of cliffs and peaks.

  After a while, Jack asked fretfully, “Do you see Josie?”

  Henry shook his head. Had she really come all the way up here? It seemed like they’d left home a long time ago.

  Overhead, a large dark bird wheeled against the blue sky.

  “Is that a hawk?” Henry asked Simon.

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “Or a vulture.”

  Henry shuddered.

  Simon kicked at the dry ground, scattering pebbles. A fat gray toad jumped out from under a rock.

  “Look!” Jack cried, pointing. None of them were used to the strange desert creatures, so different from the squirrels and robins of Chicago. It reminded Henry of The Swiss Family Robinson, a book he’d read about people marooned on a Pacific island who were always bumping into exotic wildlife.

  Simon, who would usually have been intrigued by the toad, barely glanced at it. “We should have brought water,” he said, staring at the cloud of dust where his sneaker had been.

  They kept climbing. There were a few trees now, and the sunlight filtered through, dappling the ground. The boys stopped to catch their breath. The mountain’s loneliness filled the air with small, mysterious sounds … the high twittering of birds, the rustling of branches.

  Jack poked through the brush, and Simon snapped, “Don’t go off the trail, Jack.”

  “But I can’t see Josie anymore.”

  Henry collapsed against a boulder. The sun had shifted in the sky. “I don’t like it up here,” he said. “It’s … it’s eerie.”

  Simon turned to him. “What ar
e you scared of? Mountain lions?”

  “No,” Henry protested. He was a little scared of mountain lions, not to mention rattlesnakes, but it was more than that. The quiet was creepy. It felt like they were being watched. Like the mountain was holding its breath.

  Simon climbed up on Henry’s rock for a better view, shading his eyes with his hand. He looked like a real explorer, Henry thought enviously. “There’s no sign of Josie,” he said after a minute. “We should go back.”

  “And leave her here by herself?” Henry was horrified. He wanted to go home, but how could they abandon Josie?

  “Yeah!” Jack ran down the path to where they were sitting. “We can’t do that! Mom says there are mountain lions! What if she gets EATEN?”

  “Eaten?” Simon snorted. “What’s going to eat Josie? She can take care of herself.”

  “Back home she could,” Henry said. “But here is different. She’s not used to it.” Henry thought about how he’d feel if his brothers left him alone on the mountain when it was getting dark. Despite the heat, he shivered.

  Simon looked exasperated. “Hen, we don’t have any water. That’s what people die of in places like this, not mountain lions.”

  Jack started to climb the boulder. “Make room for me.” He pushed Simon’s leg.

  Simon frowned at him. “No. It’s too crowded.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is too.”

  “Is NOT.” Jack’s foot dug into Henry’s back as he crawled past him.

  “Hey!” Henry complained.

  “Jack, stop—” Simon said, trying to keep his balance.

  “Move over,” Jack insisted.

  “Watch out,” Henry cried, as Jack slammed into his shoulder.

  But it was too late. Simon took a step to the side just as Jack tried to give him another push, and Jack went tumbling over the top of the boulder.

  Crunch! He disappeared in a dense thicket. Then there was a fast crackling sound, and to their horror, Henry and Simon realized Jack hadn’t just fallen to the ground—he was rolling down a hill.

  “Heeeyyyy!!!” Jack cried.