Missing on Superstition Mountain (16 page)

“Hey,” Jack complained, “that's not soda.”

“It's better than soda if we get thirsty,” Simon said. “The soda has a lot of salt in it.”

Henry nodded. Sometimes it just seemed that Simon knew everything about everything. “Water is a
necessity
,” he told Jack morosely.

Using Jack's list, Delilah raided the Dunworthy kitchen for a modestly healthy assortment of snacks that included granola bars, potato chips, and peppermints.

“Don't you have any other candy?” Jack asked, outraged.

“No,” Delilah said apologetically. “My mom says it's bad for your teeth.”

Since candy appeared to make up more than half of the items on Jack's list, the packing process was conveniently abbreviated. Jack looked at what was left. “What about the Band-Aids?” he grumbled.

“Oops, in the bathroom,” Delilah said, heading down the hall. She reappeared with a fistful in wrappers.

“Okay,” Simon said, zipping the backpack shut. “That's everything. Let's go. We'll take turns carrying this—Jack, you first.”

“No way!” Jack recoiled. “That's a girl's backpack.”

“I'll carry it,” Delilah said, yanking both straps over her shoulders. It was bulging, and Henry could tell the water made it heavy.

“Fine, but you're going to have to carry it too, Jack,” Simon said, “or you can't come with us.”

Jack made a face.

“What about our bikes?” Henry asked.

“I'll write my mom a note that we're going for a ride,” Delilah said. “We can leave them at the end of the street by that vacant lot and cut straight across the hills to the mountain. It'll be faster.”

“Great,” Simon said. “And I'll call our mom and check in, like we promised.” He dialed from the wall phone, and Henry listened desperately for his mother's side of the conversation, but all he could hear was Simon's.

“Hey, Mom, it's us, we're at Delilah's. Yeah, we're about to get started, but then we'll be outside so we won't hear the phone.… No, it's fine, Delilah's mom doesn't care.” Henry tensed. What if Mrs. Barker asked to speak to her? But the conversation continued smoothly. “Yeah, we will. Definitely by dinner. Okay, Mom, bye!”

He clicked the phone back in place and turned to them gleefully. “That was easy. She just wants us home by dinner. And it's only eleven! We have tons of time.”

“What about the vegetable garden?” Henry asked. “We have to dig some of it.”

“We can do it when we get back,” Simon said dismissively. “Come on, let's go.”

Henry felt sick to his stomach. He thought of Uncle Hank, going into the mountains all by himself, with angry, gun-toting poker players hot on his trail. It was no use. He and his great-uncle were nothing alike.

Delilah scrawled a quick note to her mother and locked up while the boys climbed on their bikes. As they pedaled down the driveway, away from the safe little house and the quiet, safe neighborhood, Henry saw Josie strolling across a lawn. She stood at the edge of the sidewalk watching them, only the tip of her tail twitching. Far ahead, Superstition Mountain's dark bluffs hovered over the desert, waiting for them.

CHAPTER 21

BACK UP THE MOUNTAIN

T
HEY HID THEIR BIKES
behind a scraggly clump of sagebrush at the end of the street and hurried toward the mountain. They had to cross the foothills first, and Jack, who ran ahead in a fit of enthusiasm, was soon dragging his feet and demanding water.

“You can't have it yet,” Simon told him. “We need it for the mountain, when we're really thirsty.”

“I'm really thirsty now,” Jack complained.

“That's because you're running,” Simon said. “Just stick with us, and you won't get tired.”

“I'm not thirsty because I'm running, I'm thirsty because I'm
HOT
!” Jack argued.

“Come on, Jack,” Henry said. “See? That's the path. And look, our sticks are still there.”

The twigs they had painstakingly used to mark their way days ago still seemed to be in place, propped at odd angles in the dirt, some of them falling over … but visible.

“That'll help,” Simon said happily. “I didn't know how we were going to find the big boulder otherwise.”

Henry glanced at him suspiciously. “I thought you said we knew our way now.”

“Well, we do. But that didn't mean it would be easy.”

They began climbing the twisty, pebbly path up the mountain, past the low-growing shrubs and bright patches of wildflowers, into the occasional loose grove of oaks. Henry's heart began to pound in his chest, its
beat-beat-beat
matching his feet's quick pace. He could sense the change in the air, its strange, oppressive pulse. Even Jack stopped talking, as if the place required silence. Despite the heat, Delilah shivered, looking around with quick, worried glances.

“See what I mean?” Henry asked her.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “It is spooky.”

They kept climbing. The path forked again and again, and the markers were harder to spot.

“Is that one?” Henry asked.

“I don't know,” Simon said in frustration. “It could be, or it could just be a stick that fell and got stuck in the ground. I can't tell.”

Sometimes trees leaned close to the path, speckling their backs with shade, but mostly there were no trees, just the hard, tawny rock, patches of spiky grass or brush, and the sun bearing down.

“Now can I have a drink?” Jack whined. “I'm so thirsty.”

“Okay, okay,” Simon relented. He set the backpack on the dusty ground and unzipped it, unscrewing the cap on a bottle of water.

Jack gulped it greedily, dousing the front of his shirt.

“Save some for us, Jack,” Henry said. He scanned the slopes in every direction. “Are we close to the rock where Jack fell? There are more bushes and trees here, and it seems like we've been walking long enough.”

“Yeah, it does,” Simon agreed. “I hope we haven't passed it.”

“We haven't passed it,” Jack said confidently. “I remember what it looked like.”

How could he? Henry wondered. No part of the mountain looked familiar. The trees, the rocks, the messy scrub of brush along the path looked like everywhere and nowhere. Nothing was distinct. He took a swig from the bottle. The cool water made him feel better. At least they had plenty of water, and it was still early in the day. Surely everything would be all right.

“Look!” Simon said. “There's the needle. We're getting close.”

Up ahead, over the ridge, they could see Weaver's Needle, its craggy pinnacle rising forlornly amid the jumble of smaller peaks.

“That's a weird-looking rock,” Delilah said.

“The old miners and pioneers used it to figure out where they were on the mountain,” Simon told her.

“That's handy,” Delilah said. “So where are we on the mountain?”

Simon hesitated. “Somewhere west of Weaver's Needle.”

They kept walking. Henry carried the backpack for a while, until the straps bit into his shoulders. Then Delilah took it.

“My legs hurt,” Jack said. “Why is it taking us so
LONG
?”

“Because the path is getting steeper,” Henry told him. “It's
arduous
.”

“Hard-yu-us?” Jack asked. “Like, hard for you and us?”

“Arduous,” Henry repeated, shaking his head. “But that's kind of what it means.”

“Hey,” Simon said. He stopped in the middle of the path. “Delilah, give me the compass.”

Delilah fished it out of the bottom of the backpack and handed it to him. “What's the matter? Do you think we're going in the wrong direction?”

“Not exactly,” Simon said. “But there were so many forks.”

Jack plopped onto the ground and dropped his head in his hands. “Then we'll never find the rock!”

“No, listen,” Simon persisted. “It's a
CANYON
. You can't miss a whole canyon. I think we should go this way, through the trees. We'll come to it eventually.”

Henry swallowed. The trees hung over them, and the strange, heavy air pressed like a stone against his chest. “I don't know, Simon. I don't think we should go off the path.”

Delilah nodded. “We might get lost.”

“We can mark the way, like we did before,” Simon said firmly. “Plus, if we can just find the canyon, we can figure out the way home from there.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Let's go!” He crashed through the twiggy bushes and started off into the trees.

“Wait!” Henry cried. “What if we can't find it? What if we end up on a different part of the mountain and can't find our way back?” He thought of Sara Delgado, with her glazed, blank face.

Simon clapped his hand to his forehead in frustration. “Okay, Henry, what do you want to do? We've been climbing for almost two hours. It will take us nearly that long to get home. Do you want to have to come up here again? With Mom and Dad watching our every move? It was hard enough this time.”

Henry held back. He looked at Delilah.

She took the compass from Simon and cupped it in her palm. The silver disk glinted in the sun. “We have this,” she said to Henry, closing her fingers lightly over it. “It's my dad's compass. It's good luck. If we get lost, we should at least be able to figure out which direction is home.”

“Come on!” Jack cried. Henry could see his blue shirt waving like a flag through the clumps of vegetation.

“Listen,” Simon said, zipping the backpack and settling it over his shoulder. “It's two o'clock. Let's walk east for an hour. If we haven't found the canyon, no matter where we are, we'll turn around and use the compass to go down the mountain. Okay, Henry? We'll definitely be back before dinner.”

It made sense, but Henry still felt a prickle of foreboding on the back of his neck. “Okay,” he agreed, as Delilah and Simon hurried after Jack into the woods.

CHAPTER 22

ALONG THE EDGE

T
HEY PICKED THEIR WAY
through brambles, then wended between the straight, rough trunks of trees. Henry could hear furtive sounds all around them … the fluttering of birds overhead, dry rustlings in the undergrowth.

“Do you think this is where the mountain lions are?” Jack asked, slowing down.

“No,” Simon said. “They like rocks. Remember those pictures in our animal books? They're always on ledges or cliffs. Not where the trees are.”

“And they're shy, anyway,” Delilah added calmly.

“They are?”

“Yep. They're scared of people.”

Henry said nothing. He was thinking that any mountain lion pictured on a cliff had probably gone through woods to get there, and why would a mountain lion be scared of people when it could eat people? But it wouldn't be helpful to point this out when Jack seemed reassured.

“Hey,” Delilah said. The others stopped and turned toward her. “There are fewer trees this way. I can see the sky.”

To their right, the grove had thinned, and there were patches of bright blue shining through the branches.

“I bet that's the canyon,” Simon said eagerly. “Come on, you guys!”

They ran, their feet pounding against the ground, with Simon leading the way, the backpack flopping against his shoulder, and Delilah holding the compass outstretched. Abruptly, the ground pitched beneath them, sloping and opening up.

Henry gasped. They were at the edge of a deep gorge. Steep reddish brown slopes plummeted sharply to the pebbly floor, with patches of trees and shrubs growing haphazardly along it.

“Is it the same one?” Henry asked uncertainly. It was hard to tell. The ravine was narrow and twisty, like the first canyon, but where was the ledge with the skulls?

“I think so,” Simon said. He scanned the gorge. “Over there! Isn't that where Jack fell? The side we climbed?”

“Maybe.” Henry shielded his eyes from the fierce sun. “But I don't see the rock with the skulls on it.”

“I think it's just hard to see from here. We'll have to climb along the top to get closer.”

Delilah's eyes widened. “Climb sideways? Along the edge? It's so steep! We'll fall.”

“No, we won't,” Simon said.

Jack jumped in. “Are you scared?”

Delilah glared at him. “No. And I'm not the one who's going to fall, either.”

Henry studied the jagged wall of the canyon. He felt the strange sense of dread circling. “What about climbing down to the bottom and then back up to the ledge where the skulls are?”

“It'll take too long,” Simon said. “We wasted too much time finding the canyon.”

“We could keep walking here in the woods,” Delilah suggested. “That'd be safer.”

“We could try that,” Simon said doubtfully, “but I think we'll end up heading away from the canyon. It would be faster to climb across the wall here, till we can see the skulls.”