The Diamond War (10 page)

Uh-oh
, Ari thought. Just what he’d been afraid of. The Diamond War all over again. His hand was just reaching back for his notebook when someone yelled, “And there’s the windup and here comes the pitch.”

When Ari turned around, Eddy was standing on top of the mound over Prince’s grave. Eddy stretched and kicked and almost tied himself in a knot pretending to pitch the baseball-shaped rock that he and Athena had just dug out of the mound.

“Yeah.” Carlos was grinning. “It does look sort of like a pitcher’s mound, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Bucky suddenly seemed to forget about yelling in Kate’s face. “It sure does.” The three PROs stared at each other and then slowly turned to look at what was all around them. At the big open flat field where Prince had lived for so many years. Then, at the same moment, all three of them started running toward Mr. A., who was just coming back into the pasture carrying a big flat board under one arm.

From across the field Ari, Kate, Aurora, and Athena watched while the three PROs jabbered with Mr. A. At first they all seemed to be talking at once, but after a while Bucky and Eddy shut up and let Carlos do most of the talking. And then Mr. A. was nodding his head and the PROs were jumping up and down and yelling and pounding each other on the back. After they’d jumped up and down for a while they took off running toward Carlos’s house.

Mr. A. watched them go for a moment before he came on across the field to where Ari and the others were waiting. Mr. A. was grinning. “Well,” he said, “I guess this pasture is going to be a baseball diamond, at least for a while.” He looked around. “Ought to be okay,” he said. “Plenty of room and nothing around here they can break with a fly ball.”

Athena tugged at Mr. A.’s sleeve. “But Prince’s grave,” she said. “And his tombstone. Isn’t there going to be a tombstone for Prince?”

Mr. A. squatted down in front of Athena and showed her the big flat board he had in his hands. “Yes, there is, honey,” he said. “See this board? I’m going to nail it up on the fence post over there by the street. And I’m going to write ‘Prince Field’ on it in big letters. And every time there’s a big important game we’re all going to sing a song to Prince to remind everyone whose field this really is. Won’t that be okay?”

Athena tipped her head to one side and thought for a minute. Then she smiled and nodded. “I guess that’s okay,” she said. “I think Prince will like that.”

A few minutes later Ari and Aurora and Kate were on their way back down the sidewalk. Athena had run on ahead because she saw Nijinsky sitting on his front lawn with his tug-of-war rope in his mouth.

All of a sudden Kate said, “See, you were right. I knew you’d be.”

“About what?” Aurora said. But then suddenly her eyes widened. “Yes,” she whispered. “It was right. That
feeling
was right. About how Athena was going to be the one to save the Unicorn’s Grove.”

They stared at each other for a moment longer and then they turned and began to run. Back toward Dragoland and the Unicorn’s Grove.

Ari went on alone toward home. He was anxious to get to his room, where he could sit down and write the very last chapter of “The Diamond War.”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Castle Court Kids series

C
ARLOS GARCIA HAD BEEN
digging for a long time. Again and again he tromped on the old rusty shovel, scooped up a bunch of dirt, and threw it as far and hard as he could. He was digging a new private clubhouse in the Dragoland Pit, and the other two PROs, Eddy Wong and Bucky Brockhurst, were digging right there beside him. Sounds like fun, right?
Wrong!
Not so far, anyway.

One reason that digging the new clubhouse wasn’t much fun was because the whole thing was just part of a big, fat, humongous argument. An argument that had begun early that morning when Bucky showed up at the baseball diamond carrying a basketball instead of a bat and mitt.

Carlos and Eddy had been sitting on the fence at Prince Field waiting for Bucky for at least half an hour when he finally strolled up the sidewalk. He was wearing his baseball cap on backward and a brand-new pair of Reebok Pumps, and he was carrying a
basketball
. Right away, Carlos had a sneaky feeling that there was going to be trouble. “Look,” Bucky said as soon as they’d all said hi, “I’m tired of baseball. How about some basketball? Okay?”

“Oh yeah?” Carlos said. “Basketball today, huh?”

“Sure,” Bucky said. “And probably tomorrow too. And the day after that. I’m just plain old ODed on baseball. And besides, it’s not baseball season anymore.”

Carlos couldn’t help smiling a little. He didn’t remember Bucky ever paying any attention to what season it was, back when they used to play basketball all year long. But now suddenly it wasn’t baseball season anymore—the very next day after Eddy hit his forty-ninth home run. Which meant, according to the rules they’d written up when Mr. A. loaned them Prince Field, that one more home run would make Eddy the first member of the Castle Court
Hall of Fame.

“Eddy, old Bro,” Bucky said in a phony-friendly tone of voice that managed to sound a lot like a threat. “What do
you
want to do today? Huh, dude?”

Eddy didn’t say anything right away. Instead he ducked his head so a thick bunch of his straight, black hair slid down to hide his eyes—as well as what he was really thinking. But Carlos could pretty much guess.

Eddy threw his ball into his mitt a couple of times before he answered, and when he finally did he didn’t sound particularly happy. “What do I want?” he said finally. “You mean I have a choice?”

“What do you mean, do you have a choice? Sure you do,” Bucky said. “We’ll vote. Okay?” He looked at Carlos—the narrow-eyed stare that meant “Do it my way—
or else!
” “What’s your vote, Garcia? Basketball or baseball?”

Usually Carlos voted Bucky’s way, even when he didn’t particularly want to. He didn’t exactly know why, except that living next door to the greatest fifth-grade athlete that Beaumont School ever had, you just kind of grew up with the habit of being a “team player.” That’s what Bucky called it—being a team player. But another word for it was
pushover
. And somehow, this time, Carlos wasn’t in the pushover mood. However, he wasn’t quite able to look Bucky in the eye as he said, “Well, I guess I vote for baseball.”

“Yeah?” Bucky said. “You sure, Garcia?” It was a question, but it was also a warning.

Carlos swallowed hard—and said he was sure.

So it was two to one for baseball, and since Castle Court was part of the USA, it was a democracy. Right?

Wrong! Not when one of the voters had it way over the other two in inches and pounds and muscles. And right at the moment Bucky’s two extra inches, fifteen or so pounds, and a whole lot of muscle were voting against baseball.

Absolutely against baseball—but after a while the Muscle decided he might not insist on basketball if they could think of something else to do. Something entirely different. And that was how the PROs, as Bucky and Eddy and Carlos sometimes called themselves, wound up digging in the old unfinished basement at Dragoland.

Of course, they’d dug clubhouses there before. Nearly every kid who lived in Castle Court had. The Pit, surrounded as it was by an old brick foundation wall, was a great place for dug-out clubhouses—deep, circular holes with ledges for sitting on all around the edge and a place for a table or fire pit in the center.

When they were only second graders the PROs had cleaned out and deepened an old clubhouse that Carlos’s big brothers had started years before. And last year in fourth grade they’d dug a brand-new one. And each time, when the digging was all finished, they’d held a few meetings in it.

The first thing you did at a meeting was to choose a club name and president. (Bucky was always president so that part never took long.) And then you sat around on the ledges talking about other secret stuff. About who would be the club’s official enemies, for instance—like a few guys who lived on Beaumont Avenue. And girls, of course. Almost all girls. But the clubs never lasted long. After the fun of digging was over, there never seemed to be a whole lot more to do.

But now they were starting a new clubhouse in a new place. In the farthest corner, where no one had dug before because the ground was too hard and rocky. But Bucky thought the PROs could do it—easy. “It’s the best place in the whole Pit for a clubhouse,” he said. “Over here in this private corner, all by itself. It’s just going to take a little extra muscle, that’s all.”

So, without saying much more, they’d started digging. There’d been a lot of grunting and puffing as the three of them stomped and scooped and threw, but hardly any talking. No one was saying much of anything. With this clubhouse, even the digging wasn’t turning out to be all that much fun.

C
ARLOS AND EDDY AND
Bucky had been digging silently for about half an hour when Bucky said, “Hey, watch it.”

“Watch what?” Carlos asked.

“Where you’re digging. This is my place. You’re supposed to be over there.”

Carlos straightened up and inspected his hands for blisters. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because I started here, that’s why. And Eddy started over there. So this part of the circle”—Bucky walked over and kicked at the ground and grinned one of his “in your face” grins—“this nice solid part is all yours, Garcia.”

Bucky went back to digging and after a minute so did Carlos. He slammed his shovel down into the “nice solid” earth and jumped on the top of the blade with both feet. The blade sank into the soil a few inches and then stopped dead with a funny screeching noise. Carlos pulled it out and tried again—and got the same results.

“What was that?” Eddy came over and peered into the hole. “Sounded like you hit something.”

Bucky stayed where he was but he obviously was interested too. “Probably just a pipe,” he said. “You just hit a pipe.”

Carlos put down his shovel and picked up the trowel that was used for finishing the ledges. Crouching down, he scraped away the dirt that the shovel had loosened—and sure enough, right away he began to hit some metal. But it wasn’t a pipe. What it was, it gradually became apparent, was
a box
. A box made of some kind of thick metal, like very heavy tin. As Carlos went on scraping and digging around the box, both Eddy and Bucky came over and squatted down beside him.

“It’s a chest.” Eddy’s voice had an excited sound to it. “Like maybe …” He stopped and watched for a moment as Carlos’s scraping began to uncover a rusty padlock. “Like maybe a treasure chest?”

“Wouldn’t be room for a very big treasure,” Bucky said.

Carlos went on scraping. “Well, maybe it’s papers,” he said. “You know, important ones.”

“Yeah,” Eddy said. “Secret ones. Like about the Dragomans and why they disappeared. Maybe some papers that would solve the mystery about the Dragomans.”

The three PROs stared at each other. Everyone in Castle Court knew about the mystery of the family named Dragoman, who had been the first ones to buy a lot when the Andersons turned part of their farm into a cul-de-sac subdivision. And how, after they’d put in a driveway and a fountain and the foundation for a very large house, they just went away. Some people said it had something to do with a family quarrel, but nobody knew for sure.

But what all the kids at Castle Court did know was that everybody hoped the Dragomans would never come back. Because Dragoland, as everybody called the vacant lot, was such a great place to play.

“Here, let me.” Bucky stood up and, shoving Carlos out of the way, began to chop around the edges of the box with his shovel.

Carlos didn’t say anything but he didn’t move much either. After all, old Brockhurst had just gotten through saying that this part of the circle was his. So whatever was in this part of the circle was his too. Right? So he went on squatting beside the hole and when Ducky’s shovel had loosened a little more dirt he reached in and pulled out the box with his own two hands.

It wasn’t quite as big as a loaf of bread but it was pretty heavy, and made of metal, all right. Not as thick as iron but heavier than the tin used in tin cans. At each end of the box there were handles that had once moved up and down but now seemed to be rusted into one position. And on the front of the box there was a latch and a small, rusty padlock.

Carlos pulled the box up out of its hole and was beginning to carefully brush off the dirt when Bucky bent over and grabbed it away. Carlos and Eddy, who were both still squatting, stared up at him as he tipped it from side to side and then shook it hard. At the first shake there was no sound at all, but when he shook it again, even harder, they all heard it. A heavy thump and a muffled metallic clatter.

Bucky grinned. “Not papers,” he said, “something heavy with lots of pieces. Like gold nuggets, maybe.”

“Yes,” Eddy said. “Like a bag full of gold nuggets.”

“Well, whatever it is it must be pretty valuable or they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of burying it,” Carlos said.

The three PROs stared at each other and then at the box. “Well, I’m betting on gold,” Bucky said. “Looks like we found ourselves some gold, dudes. I’ll bet it’s—” Suddenly he stopped and listened, and right at that moment Carlos heard it too. Somewhere, not far away, someone was yelling Bucky’s name.