Revenge of Superstition Mountain Page 14

  They crawled over rocks into the scraggly woods that bordered the canyon.

  “We need to head south,” Simon said. “That should be the way home.”

  “Okay,” Delilah said, holding the compass outstretched in her palm and assessing it. “This way.”

  They were just starting into the woods, picking their way along the lip of the canyon, when the mountain’s stillness was shattered by a sudden, shocking BOOM!

  BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

  The noise was deafening. Henry could barely understand what was happening. When the ground shook and Delilah started to topple backward, he instinctively grabbed the strap of her backpack and held on. They both dropped to the ground, wrapping their arms over their heads.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  “It’s the dynamite!” Simon yelled, and Henry pressed his arms tighter against his ears.

  The noise ceased, and when he raised his head, Henry saw that the mounds of rocks that had covered the entrance to the Lost Dutchman’s Mine were now blasted to smithereens, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the canyon. “Look! The mine!” he cried, but as they all stared in shock, they heard another noise … a familiar building rumble. To Henry’s horror, he saw that the top of the canyon wall appeared to be breaking loose, and rock after rock fell through air.

  “Avalanche!” Simon yelled. “Run!”

  They all leapt to their feet and raced over the shifting, shaking ground, running as fast and as far from the canyon as their legs would take them. As he scrambled and jumped through the brush, Henry paused, just once, to glance over his shoulder. He saw the sides of the canyon tumbling down. Rocks broke away and fell, barreling through space, filling the hole in the canyon wall where the mine had been, and then filling the canyon itself—until, Henry realized, there wasn’t even a canyon anymore.

  Had the treasure hunters really believed they could outsmart Superstition Mountain? That a little dynamite would make the gold theirs? It seemed ridiculous to Henry now. Of course the mountain would keep what belonged to it—at whatever cost.

  Frantically, the boys and Delilah stumbled through the trees and brush, tripping and sliding in the pebbly dirt. Home, Henry thought. We have to get home.

  CHAPTER 28

  SANCTUARY

  “WOW, THAT WAS COOL!” Jack exclaimed, as they clambered through dense brush, searching for any hint of a trail, aware of the sudden silence. “Did you see all those rocks falling?”

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “The explosion caused another avalanche, a much bigger one than before.”

  “Or it was the mountain,” Henry said softly. “The gold will stay there forever.”

  “I wonder if Julia Thomas and the others were in the canyon when the dynamite exploded,” Delilah said.

  “I didn’t see anyone on the rim,” Simon said. “And if they were watching, they couldn’t have stayed there for long. The entire wall came down.”

  “Do you think they were caught in the avalanche?” Henry asked, suddenly worried. As awful as the treasure hunters were, and as many times as they had tried to cause trouble for the boys and Delilah, he couldn’t bear to think of them being crushed by a mountain of falling rock. He remembered how terrified he had felt during the first avalanche, when the stream of loose boulders had buried the gold mine.

  “I hope so,” Jack declared, unfazed. “They are the bad guys.”

  “They’re”—Henry hesitated, searching for the right word—“unscrupulous,” he said finally. “But I don’t think they deserve to die.”

  “I didn’t see them anywhere when we were climbing out,” Simon said. “And they put the dynamite there, so I’m pretty sure they knew not to hang around. I’m just glad it didn’t explode sooner. We’d have been trapped … or worse.”

  Henry shuddered, just thinking about it.

  Delilah, who had been forging a trail with her father’s compass, came to a halt. “We’re still going south,” she said, peering through the brush. “But it looks like there are two paths here. Which one should we take?”

  They had come to the junction of two ragged trails, which didn’t even look like trails to Henry … more like the haphazard, matted hoof paths left by deer.

  Simon squinted in both directions. “I don’t know. And we don’t have much time.”

  They stood in the mountain’s stillness, listening to the twittering of birds and faint rustlings in the brush. Which way?

  “We’ll just have to choose,” Simon said. “What do you think, Hen?”

  Henry turned to him in surprise. Was Simon really asking him what to do? He felt both the weight of the responsibility and the thrill of something else, some sense of taking charge, being the one the others could rely on. Maybe this, too, was what it felt like to be Simon.

  “This way,” Henry decided. And he strode down the path, the others trotting behind him.

  After a while of breaking through brush and shimmying over rocks, they rounded a bend, and Henry saw something up ahead.

  Something small.

  Something black.

  Something that darted through the gray-green shrubs and boulders, barely pausing to cast an appraising glance in their direction.

  “Look! It’s Josie!” Henry cried.

  Simon’s face broke into a grin. “Then you chose the right way, Hen! She must be heading home.”

  And so they followed Josie’s sure and graceful course down the mountain, until at last the brush cleared and the ground became more level. Behind the statuary of cactuses, with their raised, welcoming arms, the rooftops of the houses of Superstition gleamed in the late-afternoon light. There was the roof of Uncle Hank’s house, their home on the edge of the desert. It shone like a beacon, guiding them out of the foothills. Finally, they were home.

  * * *

  It was nearly five o’clock when they burst through the sliding glass door into the kitchen. The house was an oasis of cool and calm, the only noise the low hum of the air conditioner. Oddly, the deck and the yard were bone dry. The violent storm on the mountain had clearly bypassed Superstition. As they hurried into the hallway, the phone rang, jangling urgently in the quiet.

  Simon grabbed it, and Henry saw him stiffen. “Oh, hey … hey, Mom.” He pressed his finger to his lips and widened his eyes at the others. “Oh, you have? For the last two hours? Sorry! Yeah, yeah, we’re all here. We’re fine. We were just outside, in the desert … practicing rock climbing on some big boulders.” He hesitated, shrugging at Henry. “Um, we got a little scraped up—you know, from jumping and climbing.”

  He held the phone away from his ear so that they could all hear Mrs. Barker reacting to that. Her voice raised an octave, sounding thin and worried through the phone. But it was good, Henry thought, to prepare their parents now for the mess of cuts and bruises they would see when they got home.

  Henry heard his mother say, “What? What do you mean, scraped up? Are you hurt? Did Jack fall?”

  “No, we’re fine. Our clothes are dirty. I’ll put them in the washing machine,” Simon told her soothingly. “Yeah, we’re all here—Delilah too. She’s going home right now.” He covered the receiver with his hand and whispered to Delilah, “You’d better go. Our mom called your house and got your mom all worked up wondering where you were.”

  Delilah nodded, lifting her backpack from the floor. “See you tomorrow,” she whispered. She smiled at Henry, and he saw that she was holding her father’s compass tightly in her hand.

  “I’m glad you found your compass,” he said. “Even if you didn’t need to.”

  Her look was suddenly shy. “Me too! It makes me feel different about the mountain,” she said softly. “Know what I mean?”

  Henry nodded. “I feel different about the mountain too.”

  With her brown braid bouncing against her back, Delilah turned and ran through the hallway to the front door. A minute later, Henry saw her hunched over the handlebars of her bike, speeding down the Barkers’ driveway.

  Simon was still on th
e phone but silent, as Henry heard their mother’s voice prattling with tinny insistence through the earpiece. “I’m really sorry! We lost track of time,” Simon said, rolling his eyes now. “Mom, this is why I need a cell phone. I know you said I had to wait till eighth grade, but I really think I should have one now.”

  Henry could never get over how easily Simon turned their parents’ frustration with him to his own advantage.

  “Well, okay, but I’m just saying,” Simon continued. “You could have talked to us whenever you wanted this afternoon if I’d had a cell phone. Okay, here’s Hen.”

  Henry took the phone with trepidation. “Hello?”

  “Henry!” his mother exclaimed. “Sweetie, where have you been all afternoon? We called and called—I even called Delilah’s mother!”

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said. For some reason, hearing his mother’s voice made him want to cry … even more than the storm and the flood and losing Jack had made him want to cry. It was as if all the emotions from their experience on the mountain were suddenly welling up in him, about to spill over, because his mom was here on the phone, worried about him, and now he finally could cry. He didn’t have to keep being brave. He gulped and tried to calm himself.

  “We’re all okay. Sorry we weren’t home when you called.”

  “Henry, what’s the matter?” his mother asked instantly. “What happened?”

  Simon shook his head ferociously, reaching for the phone, but Henry sucked in a deep breath and said determinedly, “Nothing. We finished the garage! It looks … meticulous.”

  Mrs. Barker laughed. “Well, great, that’s a big help. And we have some news for you three, but we’ll wait and tell you in person.”

  “Good news or bad news?” Henry asked.

  “Oh, good! Very good. We’re running late, but we’ll be home in an hour and you’ll hear it all then. Now put Jack on.”

  He handed the phone to Jack, and as he and Simon drifted back toward the bedroom, shedding clothes as they went, they could hear him whining to be told the news.

  * * *

  When their parents walked through the door with Aunt Kathy and Emmett an hour later, the boys were freshly washed and clean—after what seemed like the longest shower Henry had taken in his entire life. The water running down the drain was pure brown at first, and it took endless iterations of soap and shampoo to finally turn it clear. They had put Neosporin on the worst of their cuts, and Jack was sporting three Band-Aids, at his insistence. Simon had dumped all of their clothes in the wash, along with their pajamas and a few towels, and the washing machine was merrily chugging away, erasing the last remnants of the dusty climb and the flash flood.

  “We’re here!” Aunt Kathy sang out, bustling into the kitchen. She dumped her large handbag on the counter and scooped Henry into her arms, burying her face in his wet curls. “You smell so good!” she exclaimed. “But oh my heavens, Henry, what did you do to yourself? And Jack! So many Band-Aids! You look like you were run over by a lawn mower!”

  Mrs. Barker’s face seized in horror at the sight of them. “What on earth were you boys doing?” she cried, dropping to her knees on the kitchen floor to examine Henry’s shin. “You’re so banged up!”

  “We were just fooling around, Mom,” Simon said, attempting nonchalance. “I told you, we were rock climbing, and we got … carried away.”

  Yeah, swept away, Henry was thinking. By a flash flood!

  “Did you fall? Was anyone hurt?” Mrs. Barker had moved over to Jack now, but the generous application of Band-Aids made it more difficult for her to assess his wounds. “It looks like you were in a fight!”

  “Yeah,” Mr. Barker agreed. “If this is what you look like, I want to see the rocks.”

  “You must have been over by the quarry,” Emmett said. “You need to be careful out there. That ravine is deep.”

  Quarry? Henry and Simon exchanged glances, and Henry knew exactly what Simon was thinking. How could they have gone all summer without knowing about the quarry?

  “Tell us the NEWS! Tell us the NEWS!” Jack chanted impatiently. “You promised as soon as you got home!”

  Aunt Kathy clapped her hands, flushed and beaming. “Okay, okay! Anybody want to guess?” Henry saw that she was wiggling her fingers in excitement … and then he saw the reason for her excitement. On the third finger of her left hand was a small, round, sparkling diamond.

  “You’re getting married!” he cried. “To Emmett?”

  Aunt Kathy threw back her head and laughed her jolly, rolling laugh. “Of course to Emmett, silly! Who else would I be marrying?”

  “But it’s so soon,” Simon said.

  “Well…” Aunt Kathy smiled. “Sometimes you just know.”

  “Does that mean…” Henry looked from one to the other. “Are you moving here, to Arizona?”

  “Not right away—I need to find a job first—but soon! And then I’ll get to see you boys all the time!”

  “YAY!” Jack screamed, tackling her around the waist. “That’ll be GREAT!”

  Henry’s smile was so wide he thought it would split his face in half. Aunt Kathy and Emmett!

  “Do we have to call you Uncle Emmett?” Simon asked thoughtfully. “Because we’re kind of used to just calling you Emmett.”

  “You can call me whatever you want,” Emmett said, grinning. He tucked his arm around Aunt Kathy’s waist and pulled her close.

  And in the joyful celebration that followed, the many unanswered questions about the boys’ lost afternoon and battered condition were forgotten, at least temporarily.

  CHAPTER 29

  NAMESAKE

  A WEEK LATER, on a blazing hot Arizona day, Henry, Simon, Jack, and Delilah found themselves standing in front of the Barker tombstone in the cemetery, in the surprising presence of Aunt Kathy, Emmett, and their parents … and the shocking company of Prita Alchesay.

  What a week it had been! First, the whole town had been turned upside down by the disappearance of three well-known citizens—the librarian Julia Thomas, Officer Myers, and the cemetery caretaker Richard Delgado. Richard Delgado’s brown sedan had been found in a cul-de-sac near a trail leading to Superstition Mountain, and a neighbor reported seeing three people set off toward the mountain on Sunday morning. A search party was hastily organized, and for two days, policemen and a volunteer search-and-rescue crew fanned out over the mountain, looking for the three treasure hunters. To Jack’s immense satisfaction, a helicopter had even been called in.

  The boys and Delilah were greatly relieved not to have to confess to seeing the treasure hunters on the mountain. But as the search continued, they grew more and more worried that the three had been injured or killed in the explosion and avalanche—that was, until various suspicious items came to light during the police investigation. There was evidence of dynamite at Officer Myers’s home and of hasty packing at Julia Thomas’s apartment. Most important, the police discovered that Sara Delgado was also missing, along with some of the contents of the Delgado home. And so the search was called off, and a full-scale investigation began into the suspected illegal activities of three of Superstition’s most prominent citizens.

  After endless discussion—in which Simon carefully weighed pros and cons, Henry wavered in moral uncertainty, and Jack grew ever more anxious to take action, regardless of the consequences—the boys had finally decided to share with their parents one of their biggest discoveries from their forays into Uncle Hank’s desk: the existence of Prita. It was the only way they could think of to get permission to return to the cemetery and dig up the Barker gravesite.

  “What?” Mrs. Barker had exclaimed when they told her about Prita. “He had a girlfriend? A longtime girlfriend? This is the first I’ve heard of such a thing, and I have to tell you, that does not jibe with his … reputation.”

  “Not just a girlfriend,” Henry had corrected her. “A great love.”

  “Why, that old dawg,” Mr. Barker had said, chuckling. “Keeping it hidden from all of us. But I
can believe it. Uncle Hank was a person of big tastes. Big adventures, big loves.”

  “Well, I would certainly like to meet her,” their mother continued. “We’ll have her over for dinner sometime.”

  “This will be great,” Mr. Barker crowed, rubbing his hands together just like Simon often did. “With Kathy moving down here and marrying Emmett, and now this Prita lady, we are going to have more family in Arizona than we had back in Illinois.”

  Henry smiled, because he realized that, amazingly, although he’d lost his old uncle Hank, he would be gaining a new uncle, Emmett. And he started thinking that, unlike Simon, he might actually want to call him Uncle Emmett.

  Mr. Barker continued enthusiastically, “I can’t wait to see who turns up next! Maybe ol’ Uncle Hank had a kid or two we never knew about.”

  Mrs. Barker shot him a disapproving glance. “Jim,” she said sternly. “And anyway, if he did, they would be older than you.”

  “I know! Wouldn’t that be interesting?”

  “Actually,” Simon interrupted, “we wanted you to meet Prita soon. Like, maybe tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Mrs. Barker raised her eyebrows. “What’s happening tomorrow?”

  And that was how they delicately broached the subject of their visit to Prita, and the note Uncle Hank left for Henry, and their discovery that the Barker monument in the cemetery was a grave plot belonging to Uncle Hank, where something might be buried that he intended for the boys to have.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mr. Barker said. “We can’t just go digging up graves without some sort of permission from the cemetery. And that is going to be difficult to come by, since Richard Delgado has skipped town.”

  Simon and Henry exchanged glances.

  “We can show you the records at the cemetery,” Simon said. “You’ll see that he owns that plot—doesn’t that mean we inherit it, along with the rest of his stuff? And come on, Dad, why would he put the name Barker on the tombstone? It doesn’t make sense. It’s our name, not his, and anyway, he was cremated.”