The Mystery of the Headless Horse (9 page)

Pete had vanished as if the ridge itself had swallowed him up!

“Wha-what?” Diego stammered. “Where did he go?”

“Pete!” Bob cried.

“Second! Where are you?” Jupiter called frantically.

They anxiously searched the slope with their eyes, but nothing moved. Listening hard, they finally heard something. A voice that seemed to come from nowhere!

“Fellows! Down here!”

It was Pete — and his muffled voice seemed to come right out of the ridge!

“Where are you, Pete?” Diego called.

“Down here! Look right in front of those big boulders!”

The three boys jumped down in front of the exposed boulders and saw a long, narrow hole in the slope! A hole that was all but invisible until they were right on top of it! It hadn’t been there before.

“A mudslide must have uncovered the hole!” Bob realized.

Jupiter bent down to the long, narrow slit in the ridge.

“Second? You need help to get out?”

“I don’t want to get out!” the disembodied voice of the Second Investigator said. “It’s a kind of cave, Jupe! There’s loose rocks down here. We could block up the hole and those cowboys would never spot us! Come on down.”

The three boys on the slope looked at each other.

“Well — ” Jupiter hesitated.

“Come on!” Pete urged. “It’s dry and roomy, and those guys could come back anytime!”

That reminder was all the other three needed. Bob slipped down into the narrow hole first. Jupiter followed, grunting with the effort. The stout boy stuck halfway into the narrow opening!

“I… I can’t fit down — ” he said, red-faced.

From inside the cave Bob said, “Diego, push him! We’ll pull!”

Hands grabbed Jupiter’s legs. Out on the slope, Diego gripped the stout leader’s shoulders and pushed. With a loud sound, almost like the popping of a cork from a bottle, Jupiter slid down and vanished. Diego jumped through behind him.

Bob already had his torch on in the dark hole.

“Gosh!” Diego said as he looked around. “I never knew there was a cave here.”

The light showed a small, rocky space about the size of a one-car garage, with a low ceiling and loose rocks and boulders strewn around the floor. The cave was still dry despite the heavy rain now coming through the hole in the ridge. It had obviously been open only a very short time.

“Shine the light around, Records,” Jupiter commanded.

The small, low cave extended back some ten or fifteen feet and ended in a pile of loose rocks that rose to the ceiling. Jupiter examined the exposed entrance and slowly nodded.

“It looks as if it was covered up sometime in the past, fellows, probably by an earthquake. Rocks rolled down the — ”

“Never mind how it got covered up,” Pete exclaimed nervously. “A mudslide opened it, and those cowboys could spot the hole the same as we did! Let’s block it up!”

“There’s plenty of loose boulders,” Diego pointed out.

The four of them rolled and heaved at the biggest rocks they could move, and finally shut out the grey light of the late afternoon. With the opening closed off, no more rain came down into the cave. The four boys sat back and grinned at each other.

“We’ll wait a few hours,” Jupiter decided, “and by then those cowboys should have given up and gone.”

“I still wonder who they are?” Bob mused.

“They must have some connection with Mr. Norris,” Diego said grimly, “or why would they have stolen Pico’s hat and put it out near that campfire?”

“If they did,” Jupiter said. “We only know that they were looking hard for the car keys that Bob and Pete found in the barn. I wonder why we haven’t seen them with a car?”

“Well,” Pete said, “they sure want those keys, so the keys must prove something bad.”

“Yes,” Jupiter agreed. “Perhaps they — ”

“Ju-Ju-Jupe!”

It was Bob who began to stammer. He was shining his torch towards the rocks at the rear of the cave.

“That… that… rock,” Bob went on “It’s got… it’s… got — ”

“Eyes!” Diego gulped. “Eyes and… teeth!”

“A skull!” Pete moaned.

Jupiter stared at the pile of rocks. He blinked, and then his eyes seemed to light up. He hurried towards the rear.

“It is a skull!” he said. “Dig around, fellows!”

Pete said unhappily, “Here’s some more bones! He must have been buried in here by the quake!”

“Here’s some kind of cloth under the rocks,” Bob cried.

“A button!” Diego said. He held up a round piece of blackened brass. “It’s a US Army button!”

“This man didn’t get buried in here — at least not while he was alive!” Jupiter exclaimed. “There’s a hole in the skull! The guy was shot!”

The excited First Investigator looked at the others. “I think we’ve found the nest of the eagle! Where Don Sebastián planned to hide — and to hide the Cortés Sword! A cave right under Condor Castle would fit all the clues! And José would have known about it!”

Diego asked, “You think this soldier is one of the three who were after my great-great-grandfather?”

“I think so,” Jupiter said. “And I think there must be more to this cave!”

“This pile of rock is loose,” Pete said, testing it. “Maybe it blocked off part of the cave at the same time that the entrance to the cave was buried?”

Jupiter nodded in agreement.

Pete groaned. “Okay, let’s start digging!”

The boys went quickly to work, pulling away the fallen rocks and throwing them aside. It was long, slow work. The more rocks they pulled loose, the more rolled down to fill up the spaces. But slowly and steadily the boys inched further ahead. The wall of loose rock grew thinner, until…

“I see a space!” Bob cried. He shone his torch ahead. “Yes! There’s some kind of passage behind this pile of rocks!”

They pulled away more stones and revealed a dark, narrow passage just barely large enough for Jupiter to fit through. Holding his torch, Bob crawled into the dark passage first. It went straight back. A few minutes later, Bob found himself in a cavern some three times the size of the small outer chamber.

“It’s a big cave!” Diego said as he crawled out of the passage and stood up.

The larger cave was about twice as high as the outer chamber, with sheer, slick sides of solid stone and a solid stone floor with a few outcroppings of rock.

“We must be right under Condor Castle,” Bob guessed.

“What a place to hide!” Pete exclaimed. “You could block up the outside entrance and the passage real easy.”

“With someone outside to bring in food and water,” Diego added, “a man could stay in here safely for a long time.”

“If he made it in here unseen, and had time to block the entrances,” Jupiter said. “I don’t think Don Sebastián did.”

He pointed silently to the left of the passage. Bob shone his light. There was a second skeleton! It was lying on its back behind one of the outcroppings of rock. Blackened brass buttons lay around it, and there was a rusted old rifle at its side.

“He must have tried to take cover behind the rock,” Pete said. “I guess it’s the second of those soldiers.”

“And there’s the third!” Jupiter exclaimed.

Bob’s light had swept ahead to reveal a third skeleton lying face down in the centre of the cave. There were brass buttons lying around again, and also the remains of rotted leather boots and a crumbling leather belt with a pistol holster. A Mexican War-style revolver lay inches from the fingers of the skeleton’s right hand.

“This would probably be Sergeant Brewster,” Jupiter said grimly. “A pistol, and good boots.” He shook his head. “No wonder the three soldiers never came back!”

“They didn’t desert very far, did they?” Pete said.

“Three greedy guys looking for an easy fortune,” Bob added.

“But,” Diego asked, “where is my great-great-grandfather?”

Bob shone his light all around the cavern. From where they stood the boys saw nothing else. There seemed to be no hiding places in the sheer walls.

“Someone shot those three,” Pete said. “If it wasn’t Don Sebastián, who was it? Or did Don Sebastián just leave the cave?”

“It’s possible, Second,” Jupiter said thoughtfully. “But if he’d got all three of the soldiers, why wouldn’t he just bury them and stay hidden here?”

“Maybe it wasn’t Don Sebastián who shot them,” Pete said. “I mean, three against one, and they were trained soldiers. Maybe there were others, and Don Sebastián didn’t want — ”

“It was Don Sebastián,” Bob said. “Look over there! Way at the far end of the cave! There’s another passage, and something’s in it!”

When the boys reached the far wall, they saw that there wasn’t a passage after all, but only a low cul-de-sac that went back in some five feet. Inside the cavity, where anyone would have been hidden from immediate view, was the fourth skeleton. It was leaning against one of the few loose boulders in the cave. The remnants of clothing were different this time. Silver conchos of Indian design lay near the skeleton, and by it were two rusted old rifles. Diego picked up a concho.

“It is of our local make,” he said sadly. “I think we know now why my great-great-grandfather was never seen again. All these years he has been buried in this cave.

Jupiter nodded. “We were right all along. Don Sebastián planned to hide here. That’s why he put ‘Condor Castle’ on the letter to José, to tell his son where he would be. He escaped from Brewster and his buddies, got his sword from the line shack, and came up here to the cave. But the soldiers followed him, and they shot it out in here. Don Sebastián had the advantage of knowing the lay-out of the cave. Hiding in this cul-de-sac, he could pick off the soldiers as they crawled through the narrow passage. He got all three of them, but they got him, too. Some time later an earthquake buried the cave, and no one ever knew what had happened to the four men.”

“But, Jupe,” said Bob, “why didn’t Don Sebastián’s friends come here looking for him? They knew the eagle had found a nest.”

Jupiter shrugged. “We’ll never know. Perhaps they didn’t know exactly where he was and were awaiting further word. Or perhaps the earthquake covered the cave before they could get here. And apparently the friends were all killed or scattered in the fighting that soon broke out. By the time José got home after the war, there was no one to tell him that Sergeant Brewster’s report of Don Sebastián’s death wasn’t true. José might not have believed that the sword fell into the ocean with his father — but he’d then assume it was simply stolen.”

“Jupe!” Pete cried. “The Cortés Sword! It should be right here with Don Sebastián!”

They quickly searched the small cul-de-sac. Then they looked at each other in dismay.

There was no sword!

“Maybe,” Bob said, “Don Sebastián hid the sword in the cave.”

“In case something did happen to him,” Diego added. “He must have known those soldiers were close behind him. The Cortés Sword was a symbol of our family as well as a treasure. He would have tried to protect the sword and save it for José.”

“Let’s search!” Pete cried.

With only the one torch the boys couldn’t split up, so the search was slow work. Slow and useless. The cave was large, but there was almost no place to hide even a pin. The boys found one more little cul-de-sac and a few shallow crevices in the solid rock walls, but that was all. There were no holes in the solid stone floor, no debris to hide it under, and no place to dig and bury a sword.

“With Brewster and his cohorts close behind him, maybe on their way into the cave, I don’t think Don Sebastián would have had time to hide the sword even if there were a good place,” Jupiter said unhappily. “No, it looks as if he didn’t have the sword with him in this cave, fellows.”

“Then where is it?” Pete asked. “We’re no further along than when we started!”

Bob glumly agreed. “We’ve just about proven everything we guessed was true, but we still don’t have any clue to where the sword is.”

“I… I was so sure we were close to the answer,” Jupiter said slowly. “We must be missing something! Think about what — ”

“Jupiter?” Diego said, frowning. “If Don Sebastián wrote ‘Condor Castle’ on his letter to José, he knew José would come here to find him someday, right?”

“Yes, I suppose he expected still to be hiding here when José finally returned.”

“But Don Sebastián got shot here instead. Now, if he didn’t die right away but thought that he was dying, he’d worry about how José could ever find the sword. So — ”

“So he would have left some message for José!” Jupiter cried. “Of course! He would have been sure to try! Only after all this time would a message still be readable?”

“Depends what he wrote it on and with,” Pete said. “If he wrote a message. I didn’t see anything while we were looking.”

“No,” Diego admitted, “but we weren’t looking for anything like a message.”

“What could he have written a message with, anyway?” asked Bob. “I don’t think he’d have had paper and ink with him. Not if he was on the run.”

“I guess not,” said Diego. “But maybe he would have written it with what he had, fellows — blood!”

“On what?” Pete said doubtfully. “If he wrote it on his shirt or something, it’s long gone.”

“The walls?” Bob suggested, looking around.

“Badly wounded, dying,” Jupiter mused. “He couldn’t have moved much. Look on the walls of that little cul-de-sac!”

They all bent low and studied the rock walls of the cavity where Don Sebastián died. His skeleton seemed to watch them from where it lay against the small boulder.

“I don’t see anything,” Pete said at last, staying as far from the silent skeleton as he could.

“Would blood last so long, First?” Bob wondered.

“I’m not sure,” Jupiter confessed. “Maybe not.”

“What’s this?” Diego asked.

Near the skeleton, behind the small boulder, Diego picked up a small object that the boys hadn’t seen before. It was an earthenware jug with a broken top. It looked like Indian pottery.

“It’s got something at the bottom,” Diego said. “Sort of black and hard.”

Jupiter took the jug. “It’s an Indian pot, all right. That black stuff looks like dried-up paint.”

“Black paint?” Bob said.

They all looked at the pot, and then at each other.

“If he wrote something with black paint,” Pete said. “It could have faded, been covered by dust, and become almost invisible!”

“Everyone dust off the walls,” Jupiter said, pulling out his handkerchief. “And dust carefully! We don’t want to knock off any flakes of paint!”

Working gently, they all dusted the walls of the cul-de-sac. It was Pete who finally found the faint marks.

“Bob! Shine your torch right over here!”

Four words stood out faintly on the stone wall to the left of the skeleton. Spanish words, Diego translated them aloud.

“Ashes… Dust… Rain… Ocean.”

Everyone stared at the four words, wondering what they meant.

“The last two words are written pretty close together,” Diego commented. “They’re all very shaky.”

“Maybe,” Pete guessed, “he hid the sword in some fireplace somewhere?”

“Somewhere near the ocean?” Bob added.

“But how does ‘rain’ fit in?” Diego wondered.

“Maybe there’s a dusty rain tank somewhere near an outdoor fireplace,” Pete said wryly. “Face it, fellows, it’s gibberish! It doesn’t mean anything!”

“Why would my great-great-grandfather have written something that meant nothing?” Diego demanded.

“He wouldn’t have,” Jupiter said. “But… Ashes, Dust, Rain, and Ocean?” He shook his head. “I confess I don’t understand the connection at all.”

“Maybe,” Bob said, “Don Sebastián didn’t write the words. Maybe they were written earlier by someone else.”

“I don’t think so, Records. Don Sebastián would have left some message for José, I’m convinced of that, and the paint was right beside him,” Jupiter said. “And it’s unlikely that someone wrote the words after his death. If anyone had come in here later, he’d have found the four bodies and reported them, and we wouldn’t have found the skeletons. No, I’m certain that Don Sebastián wrote those words. But — ”

“Maybe he was delirious, First,” Bob said. “He was hurt bad, dying. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was writing.”

Jupiter nodded. “That’s possible, yes. But, somehow, I feel the words do mean something, taken all together. Something that Don Sebastián knew José would understand. Ashes… Dust… Rain… Ocean.”

The words seemed to echo through the hidden cave. The boys repeated them in their minds, as if hearing them over and over would reveal their secret. Concentrating hard, they were slow to notice a strange noise coming into the cave.

“Jupe!” Diego suddenly exclaimed. “What’s that? That tapping noise? Up there!” He looked up towards the roof of the cave.

“Outside!” Bob said softly. “Footsteps! Someone’s up on Condor Castle!”

“Maybe it’s those three cowboys,” Diego said.

“If it is,” Jupiter said, “they won’t find us. We’ve got the entrance to the cave blocked.”

“Our tracks!” Pete said in alarm. “If they spot our tracks in the mud, they’ll know we came down here! They can push those stones away from the hole if they try! Then they can — ”

“Come on,” Jupiter ordered.

The four boys hurried across the cave to the narrow passage and crawled back out into the smaller chamber. They crouched on either side of the blocked-up opening and waited in the dark. Soon they heard faint voices outside.

“They’re coming down,” Pete hissed.

The voices outside became louder, and then the boys could hear faint steps slipping and sliding down the steep ridge.

“Stay flat back against the wall on each side of the hole,” Jupiter instructed. “If they do push the rocks in, and come inside, maybe they won’t see us right away. When they’ve gone past us, we can make a dash for outside.”

The sharp sound of boot heels striking stone rang above them. The voices were almost directly in front of the covered hole now! Three voices with fierce, arguing tones!

“What are they saying?” Bob whispered. “I can’t make out the words.”

“Neither can I,” Pete whispered back.

The boys strained to hear. The angry voices seemed to be right in front of the blocked hole, yet they were oddly muffled.

“Why don’t they try to come in?” Diego wondered.

“They must have seen our tracks,” Pete whispered, “or why would they come straight down to the hole?”

In the dark cave the four boys waited in an agony of suspense.

“They’ve been out there ten minutes,” Bob finally whispered.

Time seemed to stand still in the cave.

“Fifteen minutes,” Bob said. “What are they — ”

Boots moved out beyond the thin barrier of rocks that covered the hole! Footsteps slipped and slid — and the voices faded away! The three men were gone!

In the small cave, the boys waited another fifteen minutes.

“They didn’t see the hole!” Diego exclaimed at last.

“They missed us!” Bob echoed.

“But,” Pete said, “they must have followed our tracks down. How could they miss the hole? Even if it’s dark out there now?”

Jupiter stared at the rocks that covered the hole. “And why couldn’t we hear words? We should have been able to hear what they said if they were right outside.”

For a moment, none of them spoke in the dark cave.

“Guys,” Pete said at last, “pull out some of the rocks.” Bob turned on his torch and propped it on a boulder. Then the four boys pulled out one of the large rocks they had rolled against the hole. Then they pulled out another. And a third.

There was no light or fresh air from outside.

Frantically, they removed all the rocks they had pushed into the entrance to the hidden cave.

No light, no wind, and no rain came in.

“Where is it?” Diego cried. “The entrance?”

Pete crawled into the dark space they had opened, and felt around at the end.

“Rock!” his muffled voice came back. “It’s all rock!”

“You mean they blocked it up!” Bob cried, pale.

Pete crawled slowly out. His eyes were wide. “No, they didn’t block it up. There’s been another mudslide! A big slab of rock has slipped down over the hole. That’s why those guys didn’t see the hole — there isn’t any hole out there now! And that’s why we couldn’t hear them clearly! Now what do we do? We’re trapped in here!”