Treasure on Superstition Mountain Read online

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  ALSO BY ELISE BROACH

  Missing on Superstition Mountain

  Masterpiece

  Shakespeare’s Secret

  Desert Crossing

  For my nephew and niece, Henry and Anabelle Wheeler

  CONTENTS

  Title page

  Copyright Notice

  Also by Elise Broach

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1: The Surprise in the Backpack

  Chapter 2: Buried Treasure

  Chapter 3: The Photograph

  Chapter 4: The Warning

  Chapter 5: Gold Creek

  Chapter 6: An Unexpected Visitor

  Chapter 7: Another Expedition

  Chapter 8: Ghost Town

  Chapter 9: Simon in Trouble

  Chapter 10: What Lies Beneath

  Chapter 11: The Hotel Ledger

  Chapter 12: More About Julia

  Chapter 13: Aunt Kathy Arrives

  Chapter 14: Where to Start Looking

  Chapter 15: Something Amiss

  Chapter 16: Gold Ore and Lore

  Chapter 17: Making a Date

  Chapter 18: Secret Letters

  Chapter 19: Signs and Symbols

  Chapter 20: “You’re Not Leaving Me Behind!”

  Chapter 21: Return to Superstition Mountain

  Chapter 22: The Sounds of Silence

  Chapter 23: Don’t Move

  Chapter 24: Into the Canyon

  Chapter 25: Missing

  Chapter 26: Inside the Secret Canyon

  Chapter 27: Threading the Needle

  Chapter 28: Into the Darkness

  Chapter 29: The Dutchman’s Secret

  Chapter 30: Run!

  Chapter 31: “Somebody’s Up Here with Us…”

  Chapter 32: Stones on the Path

  Chapter 33: Out of Danger

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  THE SURPRISE IN THE BACKPACK

  “CAREFUL! She might hear you.”

  Henry glanced at his open bedroom door, but there was no sign of their mother lurking in the hallway. He and his brothers were clustered in front of the closet, where Delilah’s neon pink backpack had been stowed for two entire weeks, untouched.

  How he’d managed to accomplish that still astonished Henry. Simon and Jack were dying to see what he and Delilah had found on Superstition Mountain, and Henry was dying to show it to them. But after the hullabaloo of their adventure—their forbidden trip up the mountain to retrieve the three skulls on the ledge in the canyon; Delilah falling and breaking her leg; Henry staying behind with her while Simon and Jack went for help; finding the ancient saddlebag with the map and pouch of coins, the mysterious gunshot, and Henry’s discovery of a small, secret canyon—they had to be extra careful not to arouse the suspicion of their parents. Officially, they were grounded for two weeks … which meant there was no escaping Mrs. Barker’s watchful eye. Simon pointed out that while it was not a particularly imaginative punishment for flouting the warning to stay off the mountain, it wasn’t an unreasonable one either. Henry was just glad their parents hadn’t said a month.

  Anyway, the timing was good, since Delilah’s mother was sufficiently unnerved by Delilah’s injury to have whisked her away to her grandparents’ condo complex in Tucson, which, according to Delilah, couldn’t have been more safe or boring. She and Henry had talked on the phone twice since she left. “Don’t show Simon and Jack what we found in the saddlebag,” she’d begged. “I want to be there. Can’t you wait till I get back?”

  So despite the impatient demands of his brothers, Henry had promised to save the backpack’s revelations for Delilah’s return. And now here it was Monday afternoon. Delilah was home again, off crutches, in a new walking cast, and coming over momentarily. And, hooray! They weren’t grounded anymore.

  “But can’t you just show us the coins?” Jack complained, more softly this time. “You said they’re just like the ones Uncle Hank collected in his coin box. Delilah won’t care if you do that.”

  Hank Cormody, for whom Henry was named, had been their father’s favorite uncle—a cattle-wrangling, gambling, hard-living former U.S. Cavalry scout with a taste for adventure that Henry longed to find an echo of in himself. The Barkers had inherited his house here in the strange little town of Superstition, Arizona, a few months ago, when Uncle Hank died after a very long and eventful life.

  Jack leaned forward on his knees, tugging the backpack out from the closet’s morass of shoes, board games, and balls. Jack was six, but he was almost as big as Henry, who was ten, and far bolder. Simon was eleven, full of interesting ideas, and given to concocting schemes and issuing orders. Henry was the imaginative, bookish one. He got along with everybody and liked to use big words (though not always exactly the right way).

  “No, Jack,” Henry repeated. “I promised Delilah.”

  Jack groaned and turned to Simon for support, but luckily, since Henry had been the one to carry the backpack down the mountain, even Simon seemed willing to defer to him.

  “We can wait,” Simon said. “She’ll be here any minute.”

  So they sat on the floor of Henry’s room, with the sun streaming through the window and a feeling gathering in the air of something about to happen. The craggy bluffs and peaks of Superstition Mountain huddled ominously right outside.

  Just then they heard the doorbell and, a moment later, their mother’s voice, welcoming Delilah into the house. “Oh, honey! Look at your leg. How are you doing? Are you getting used to walking with the cast?”

  Henry jumped up and ran to the bedroom door. “We’re back here!” he called. Delilah appeared, clunking unevenly on her white cast, brown braids slapping her shoulders. Henry, who hadn’t seen her since that strange, scary night in the canyon, felt suddenly shy. But Delilah thumped eagerly into the bedroom, grinning at all of them. “Hey,” she said.

  “Wow!” Jack stared at her cast. “Cool!” He knocked on it with his fist.

  “Jack,” Simon said, “her leg’s broken! Don’t pound on it.”

  “That’s okay,” Delilah said. “I can’t feel anything.”

  “It doesn’t hurt?” Henry asked. He thought of Delilah cringing in pain on the canyon floor, her bruised, cut leg propped awkwardly in front of her.

  “Nope,” Delilah answered cheerfully. “It’s like walking around on a block of wood.”

  “Like a pirate!” Henry exclaimed. “A peg-leg pirate. Like in Peter Pan.” Henry remembered books he had read as vividly as if he had lived through them, as if their characters and events had been part of his real life.

  “Yeah, like that,” Delilah agreed. “Except I can’t take it off and bonk people over the head with it.”

  Jack grabbed a handful of markers from Henry’s desk drawer and squatted next to Delilah’s cast. “Can we draw on it?”

  Henry noticed that, unlike the casts of kids at school, this one wasn’t covered in colorful cartoons and flowers and messages. It had a few shaky cursive signatures running across it and one “Get well soon!” That was it.

  “Sure,” Delilah said. She sat down and propped the cast in front of them. “My grandparents signed it, and some of the old people they play cards with, but they just wrote regular stuff.”

  Jack eagerly set
to work, brandishing a blue marker as if it were a spear. Simon rolled his eyes. “Don’t draw something dumb, Jack,” he said, but Henry could tell he wanted to write on the cast too.

  Delilah held her foot still while Jack printed his name in crooked letters and drew big arrows around it.

  “What are the arrows for?” Simon asked.

  “They make it look good,” Jack replied. “Like my name is FLYING.”

  Simon smirked and proceeded to sign his name boldly in black. He drew a skull and crossbones next to it.

  “Ha!” Delilah said. “Like the skulls in the canyon.”

  Henry sighed. Why didn’t he think of that? Simon always had the best ideas. Henry wrote his name carefully in green, then made a neat paw print for Josie.

  Delilah smiled. “Aw … Josie. Where is she?”

  “Probably outside,” Henry said, “hunting something.” Josie had managed to catch a ground squirrel last week and had carried its tiny carcass to the back deck in triumph, held gingerly in her mouth the way she transported all her most prized possessions, from squeaky cat toys to the crunched wads of paper she liked to pilfer from the wastebasket. She’d set the dead squirrel proudly in front of the sliding glass doors for all to see. “Ugh!” their father had protested at the time. “That puts me off my dinner.” Their mother had calmly scooped it up and dumped it in the garbage can. “Cats are predators. She’s just following her natural instincts,” she said. Now, in the early mornings and evenings, they often saw Josie stalking across the yard, clearly hoping for a repeat of her good fortune.

  “Okay, okay,” Simon said impatiently, gathering the markers and tossing them back into the desk drawer. “Can we finally look in the backpack? I want to see the coins and this map you’ve been telling us about. We’ve been waiting forever.”

  “You really didn’t show them?” Delilah asked Henry in surprise.

  Henry blinked. “I told you I wouldn’t.”

  “I know, but I figured you were just saying that to make me feel better.” Delilah pulled her backpack smugly into her lap. “Good! Now we can all look at them together.”

  Jack bounced on his knees. “Show us! Show us!”

  “Keep it down,” Simon warned. “Mom’ll come.” He quietly closed the bedroom door.

  Henry looked at Delilah. “Now?”

  She nodded, patting the pockets until she located the one where Henry had placed the map and coin pouch that they’d found two weeks ago in the old leather saddlebag on the canyon floor.

  Carefully, she took out the small brown sack with the coins in it. She cupped it in her palm for a moment, then passed it to Henry. “You do it,” she said.

  The pouch felt heavy and lumpy in Henry’s hand. He untied the rawhide string and tugged open the fragile neck of the sack, sending a shower of dust and leather fragments onto the stretch of carpet between them.

  “That looks OLD,” Jack commented.

  Henry reached in and pinched a coin between his fingers. Its surface was cold to the touch. He drew it from inside the bag.

  Simon took it from him and scrutinized it in the sunlight. “Look … it is the same. Just like the ones from Uncle Hank’s coin collection.”

  “It has the guy with the long hair and the girly ribbon!” Jack crowed. He grabbed the pouch from Henry and turned it upside down, shaking it, “Let’s see how many coins there are.”

  Coin after coin tumbled out, dark with age. They clinked softly against one another as they landed in the middle of the carpet.

  “Jack, careful,” Henry told him. “They’re so old they’re … decrepit.” He was just appreciating the sound of that fancy word leaving his mouth when he froze.

  “Oh!” Delilah gasped.

  There in the jumble of ancient coins was something that didn’t look like a coin at all.

  Something small and jagged, the size of a berry.

  Something that glinted in the sunlight.

  Even Jack was completely silent, his eyes huge.

  “Hey…” Simon picked it up, and Henry thought it almost seemed to glow.

  “Is that…?” Delilah whispered.

  Henry stared in amazement.

  CHAPTER 2

  BURIED TREASURE

  “IT’S GOLD! IT’S GOLD! We found GOLD!” Jack cried.

  “Shhhhh!” They all turned on him at once.

  “Everything okay?” Mrs. Barker’s voice drifted down the hallway.

  Simon glared at Jack, scrambled to his feet, and quickly opened the bedroom door. “Yeah, Mom, we’re fine. Jack’s just being loud.”

  “Sorry,” Jack whispered, chastened.

  They waited a minute, in case she was coming, but then they heard the distant rustling in her office and knew she’d returned to work. Mrs. Barker’s latest medical illustration project was a book on kidney disease, which meant that her sketchpad was filled with drawings of misshapen kidneys—swollen ones that looked about to burst and tiny shriveled ones that resembled rotting fruit, covered in strange bruises and lesions.

  When Simon sat back down, Henry reached out and took the nugget. It was surprisingly heavy. Henry rubbed his thumb across the rough surface, and its glitter blinded him.

  “Gold,” he repeated, wonder-struck. “So there is a gold mine somewhere in that canyon.”

  Delilah grabbed it and held it aloft. “But where? We didn’t see anything that looked like a mine.”

  “What about the gunshot?” Henry persisted. “Maybe that’s why they were shooting at us! Because we were getting too close to the secret gold mine.”

  “But you said the shot was probably hunters,” Simon said. “That’s what the police thought too.”

  Henry lifted his shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know what it was.” When he thought of the echoing boom of the shot in the canyon—the shock of it—it was hard to believe it had really happened. Even at the time, it seemed like there had to be some other explanation.

  “Let me hold it,” Jack insisted. “It’s my turn.” Delilah dropped it into his outstretched palm.

  “I wonder how much it’s worth!” Simon rubbed his hands together. “I mean, this has got to be several ounces, don’t you think? How much do people pay for an ounce of gold?”

  Henry shook his head. “I don’t know. We could look it up on the computer … but we’ll have to wait till Mom’s finished.”

  Their mother was annoyingly fussy about the boys’ computer use. It mustn’t interfere with her work or their father’s accounting for his stonemasonry business. As a principle, she thought their time was much better spent outdoors. Also, she had a constant worry that they would accidentally delete one of her files. But to be fair, the internet was so unreliable in Superstition that they could never count on doing what they wanted on the computer even on the rare occasions when their mother gave them permission to use it.

  “We’re RICH!” Jack declared, plunking the nugget down in front of them.

  “Well, probably not,” Simon corrected him. “But if we could ever find that gold mine, we would be. Wait—what about the map? That was the other thing you found in the saddlebag, right? Where is it?”

  Delilah delved into the side pocket of the backpack again. “It’s here. But we didn’t see anything that looked like the symbol for a gold mine.” Gently, she extracted the tattered brown paper and opened it across the carpet.

  In the glare of the sun, it looked even older and more frail than it had that day in the canyon, Henry thought. The dark ink marks were faded and hard to decipher.

  “The squiggly line is a creek,” he explained to Simon and Jack. “We think these spikes are trees, and the upside down V’s are the mountain peaks all around.”

  “And these,” Delilah added, her finger hovering over two jagged parallel lines, “show where the canyons are. This is the canyon with the skulls, and here’s the little secret canyon Henry found.”

  “Hmmm,” Simon said, leaning over it. “So nothing that looks like a gold mine?”

  Hen
ry shook his head. “I don’t see anything. But what kind of symbol would it be, anyway? A black circle? An X?” He was thinking of the map in Treasure Island, the X that marked the spot where the treasure chest was buried.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “But you’re right. I don’t see anything that looks like a gold mine.” He sat back on his heels and rubbed one hand over his hair, making it even spikier than usual. “Where can we find out more about gold mines?”

  “There was some stuff about the Lost Dutchman’s Mine in that book of legends I got at the library,” Delilah said. “But it was pretty much what we’d already heard. Jacob Waltz found it, kept the location a secret, and lived off the gold for years until he died. Nobody else ever discovered where the gold mine was.”

  Henry jumped up and crossed the room to his nightstand, where a stack of books teetered perilously close to his pillow. “There’s the chapter about Superstition Mountain in that Arizona history book we checked out,” he said, pulling it from the pile. “But it doesn’t have much about gold miners.” He thumbed through the pages. “Maybe we should go back to the library?”

  “With that creepy librarian?” Jack shuddered. “Ugh.”

  “Oh, come on, Jack,” Simon scoffed. “You can’t be scared of a librarian. That’s goofy. And we have to renew those books anyway.”

  “I’m not SCARED,” Jack argued. “She’s weird! And her name was on a tombstone.”

  That made Henry shudder. He thought of the day in the cemetery, the area of old graves, with JULIA ELENA THOMAS carved across one of the tilted headstones.

  “Our name was on a tombstone,” Simon reminded him. “Thomas … Barker … they’re common names.”

  Henry looked at him doubtfully. It was what Simon had said at the time, but it hadn’t seemed a good explanation then, and it didn’t now.

  Simon gathered the coins and dropped them back in the pouch. He cupped the gold nugget in his hand for a minute, rolling it over his palm. “Okay, let’s put it back,” he said. “Take one last look.” He lifted it into a beam of sunlight from Henry’s window, where it flashed brilliantly. They all stared.

  “What if we found lots of gold rocks just like that?” Jack whispered. “What if we found a HUNDRED?”