Missing on Superstition Mountain (20 page)

*   *   *

The next morning, Henry slept later than he ever had in his life. When he opened his eyes, the sun was streaming through his bedroom window, and he could hear Jack talking loudly in the kitchen. He crawled out of bed and checked to make sure Delilah's backpack was still tucked securely in the corner of his closet, behind a jumble of baseball mitts, balls, and shoes. Then he hurried down the hall. With the drama and fuss of the return, and his mother and father firing questions, Henry had had no chance to tell Simon and Jack what he'd found.

They looked up eagerly when he walked into the kitchen. Jack raced around the table to hug him.

“I thought you were going to
DIE
!” he cried.

“Jack,” Mrs. Barker scolded. “That's not nice. What would you like for breakfast, Henry? You slept so late! You must be starving.”

“Did Josie come back?” Henry asked, glancing around at the bright, familiar kitchen.

His mother looked at him curiously. “Where did she go? She's been lying on the deck all morning.”

“Oh, good.” Henry sighed happily. He got a box of cereal from the cupboard and scraped his chair back from the table. Simon and Jack crowded next to him.

“Delilah has a broken leg!” Jack reported. “It's in a cast that looks like a boot! And she's on crutches.”

“Is she in the hospital?” Henry asked.

His mother set a bowl, spoon, and glass on the place mat in front of him. “No, but she didn't get home until after midnight. I talked to her mother this morning. It was a clean break, no involvement of the growth plate, so it should heal quickly—three or four weeks. She'll be fine.” She poured orange juice into Henry's glass. “Did you know she lost her father a few years ago?”

Henry nodded, and at his mother's surprised expression, added, “She only told me that yesterday.”

“But I suppose you knew her mother works for an insurance company outside of Phoenix and is often gone during the day?”

Henry looked at Simon.

“And I doubt you made much progress on their vegetable garden yesterday, did you?”

The three boys stared resolutely at the table. Even Jack knew better than to open his trap at a time like this.

Mrs. Barker's mouth was a thin, mad line. “I can't believe you lied to me!”

“It wasn't a lie—” Simon started.

“Simon, don't even try. You deliberately deceived me, and you know it. You boys are going to stay
right here
for the rest of the week, maybe longer. Your father and I haven't decided yet. Do you understand?” She straightened her glasses on her nose and glared at them.

Simon nodded glumly. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Mom.”

“You should be sorry,” Mrs. Barker said.

“We are,” they chorused, but she didn't seem particularly appeased.

“I have Delilah's backpack,” Henry said. “I have to give it to her.”

“Don't you worry about that,” his mother replied. “I'll make sure she gets it.”

“No, that's okay,” Henry said quickly. “I want to take it to her myself, when she's better. She doesn't need it now anyway. School is
months
away.” He felt cheered by that. They had the whole summer ahead of them.

“Did Dad call about the skulls yet?” Simon asked.

“Not yet,” Mrs. Barker said. “I told you I would let you know as soon as he did.”

“But they're testing them now, right?” Simon persisted. He turned to Henry. “The police took them to the coroner's office last night. They're comparing dental records and looking at that one skull with the dent in it. They said they might know something by this morning.”

Mrs. Barker glanced at Henry. “One of the skulls had a Ping-Pong fracture, I understand.”

He nodded sheepishly.

She came to stand behind him, running her fingers gently through his curls. “That's the only reason I'm not more upset with you boys. I know you were trying to do something good by bringing those bones back so they could be identified.” She leaned over Henry, looking directly into his eyes. “But the mountain is too dangerous a place for children! Or for anyone. Do you hear me, Henry? Poor Delilah, with her broken leg! And you gave her mother such a scare, you have no idea. She's lost one family member already.” She shook her head. “We're lucky nothing worse happened to any of you.”

As soon as Henry finished breakfast, the boys dressed with speedy indifference and fled the house. They climbed into the fort of the swing set, where Mrs. Barker couldn't hear them.

“So what happened in the canyon?” Simon demanded.

“Were you scared?” Jack asked.

Henry took a deep breath and told them everything—about exploring the creek bed, finding the saddlebag, the Spanish coins, the map, the secret canyon.

“Is it a treasure map?” Jack shouted.

“Shhhh,” Henry whispered. “Nobody knows but us.”

“Where is it?” Simon asked. “Did you bring it back with you?”

Henry nodded. “It's in Delilah's backpack. In my closet.”

“I want to see it!” Jack cried.

“I'll show it to you, but not while Mom's snooping around.”

Simon whistled under his breath. “Do you think it shows where the gold is?”

Jack scooted over to the slide and whizzed down it. “We have to go back and find it! We'll be
RICH
!”

“I don't know. Delilah spent a long time looking at it, but she didn't see anything that seemed like a symbol for gold or a mine. It might just be an exploring map.” He paused. “Like Uncle Hank would have used. But the secret canyon was really cool! You have to walk through this tiny alley of rocks. You can't tell it's there at all.”

Just then, the sliding door opened and their mother stepped onto the deck. “Boys? That was your father calling,” she said soberly. “They've identified the skulls. Apparently, they belonged to three boys from Texas—teenagers—who disappeared on the mountain in the 1950s.”

Simon and Henry exchanged glances. So it was the three boys after all! They had been missing for sixty years. And, Henry thought, nobody would ever have known what happened to them—the skulls might never have been found—without Jack falling off that boulder and rolling into the canyon.

“Can they tell how they died?” Simon asked.

“No, not yet. The coroner said that might not be possible unless they can find the rest of the skeletons. It looks like one of them may have fallen and hit his head; that was the cause of the Ping-Pong fracture. But the bone had started to heal, which means the fall didn't kill him. He might have died days later. The police are going back to search the area this week.”

Henry stiffened. If the police went into the ravine again, would they find the passageway into the secret canyon?

Their mother rested her hand on the deck railing, studying them. “You three are staying put today. I don't even want you riding your bikes on the street.”

“Okay, okay, Mom. We get it,” Simon said in exasperation.

“Good.” She gave them another long, serious look, then went back into the house.

“That's bad,” Henry said. “If the police go poking around up there, they could find the gold mine before we do!”

“If there even
is
a gold mine,” Simon said. “We don't have proof of anything. It could just be a legend.” He saw the look on Henry's face and amended, “Yeah, I know, we still don't want them looking around up there.”

Henry let out a long breath. “What can we do? We're grounded.”

“It's not fair,” Jack complained. “We did all the work.”

“Well,” Simon said thoughtfully, “it's been called the Lost Dutchman's Mine for a really long time. A hundred and fifty years, right? So it can't be that easy to find.”

“No,” Henry agreed. “And I hid the saddlebag pretty well. I don't think they'll find that.”

Simon and Henry climbed down from the fort to join Jack. They all crossed the yard to where Josie lay in the sun, tail twitching. Henry sat down next to her, stroking the warm fur between her ears. She purred agreeably and butted his hand when he stopped.

“I forgot to tell you!” he said to his brothers. “Josie was there last night. In the canyon. Delilah and I thought it was a wild animal, but it turned out to be Josie.”

“She was? She goes up and down that mountain more often than we do!” Simon said admiringly. “So what's the deal with Delilah's dad?” he asked.

Henry hesitated. “He died in a car accident. When she was six.”

“He
DIED
?” Jack looked horrified.

Henry nodded. “When she was about your age. That's why she's alone so much—her mom works, and there's nobody else. And that's why she got so upset about the compass—it belonged to her dad. And I looked for it everywhere when we were in the canyon, but I never could find it.”

“We have to find it for her,” Jack declared. “The next time.”

Henry stared at him in disbelief, but before he could respond, Simon interjected, “You know what's interesting? Remember when we were at the graveyard? And Sara Delgado was saying all that weird stuff to us, stuff people say at funerals? That's why Delilah knew what she was talking about. Because of her dad.”

Henry had forgotten that. He nodded slowly, running his fingers over Josie's long back.

“Did she get scared up on the mountain? Did she cry?” Simon asked.

“No,” Henry answered honestly. “She didn't. Even though her leg hurt so much. Delilah is kind of
plucky
,” he said thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “She's pretty good, for a girl.” He turned to Henry. “Did
you
get scared?”

“Yes,” Henry said. “But then I got brave too.” For the first time, he began to hope that maybe, just maybe, he had something more in common with Uncle Hank than simply a name.

“So when can we see Delilah again?” he asked Simon.

They drifted into a long debate about their mother's commitment to grounding them.

“Mom will get over it,” Simon predicted. “We just worried her, you know?”

“Yeah,” Henry agreed. “When she's worried, she always makes a lot of rules.”

“So we'll stick close to home for a while,” Simon said. “But that's okay. We can find out more about the Lost Dutchman's Mine. Then the next time we go up the mountain, we'll know what to look for.”

“And we'll find the gold!” Jack added.

Simultaneously, they all three glanced at the mountain rising in the distance, a mystery of crags and woods and canyons, with its scattered bones and secret gold mines. Henry remembered the strangeness of the air, as urgent as someone breathing on the back of his neck. He flopped back on the grass, still stroking Josie's fur. The summer lay ahead of them, vast and uncharted … almost like a long, rocky passageway leading someplace new. Who could tell what secrets the mountain held? It would be up to them to find out.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T
HERE ARE MANY
unsolved mysteries of the American West, but the stories surrounding Superstition Mountain and the Lost Dutchman's Mine are especially intriguing. Could there be a better name than Superstition Mountain? It immediately suggests that this is a strange, spooky place. “The Superstitions,” as the entire mountain range is called, are a rocky, high desert region of Arizona, full of cliffs, canyons, occasional groves of oak and pine trees, and the landmark Weaver's Needle. Their complicated past is peopled by Apache Indians and Spanish explorers, as well as soldiers, pioneers, and prospectors who came to the area looking to get rich.

While the town of Superstition and the contemporary characters in this novel are entirely fictional, all of the historical figures (such as Jacob Waltz and Adolph Ruth) are real, with the exception of Hank Cormody, the Barker boys' great-uncle. Artifacts like the Spanish coins are also based in fact. The record of disappearances and murders on the mountain is a subject of much debate, but the historical disappearances that are described here in detail—e.g., Adolph Ruth and his “
veni, vidi, vici
” note about the gold mine—are factual. The list that Henry finds in the back of the Superstition Mountain Historical Society pamphlet is compiled of recorded disappearances, some of them questionable, from various sources; the real-life list includes three teenagers from Texas who purportedly hiked up the mountain around 1950 and were never seen again.

To call Superstition Mountain a land equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle does not seem a stretch. It is a verifiably dangerous place, where even today visitors have to worry about getting lost and risking heatstroke, dehydration, and death. One of the most interesting things about the mountain is how often a few known details from the long-ago past (a Spaniard with a profitable gold mine) have given rise to elaborate legends (the famous Peralta Massacre). As historians have noted, all of the major components of the Superstition legends have at least some basis in fact.