Mississippi River Blues (9 page)

Thud!
I fell to the floor.

Only it wasn't the floor anymore.

It was cold stone. Cold, rough stone.

The cold, rough stone of … the cave!

Chapter 16

“Tom!”

No answer.

“Becky!”

No answer.

It was just me and lots of cold, rough stone. No old-fashioned Mississippi River people. No best pal Frankie.

And no book.

“Uh-oh,” I said to no one, because no one was there.

I stood up slowly in the cave and didn't bump my head, which was a plus. But when I took my first step, my foot slid on something round and roly.

Thud-ud-ud!

“Owww!”

I slammed the stone floor hard. Groping in the dark, I found what I had tripped on.

“Yay! A candle!”

Of course, a candle by itself is just something to trip on. But a candle next to a bunch of matches? Well, I had that thing lit in no time. And in no time, I wound my way around one of the spookiest, creepiest tunnels in the world.

I remembered all over again why I hated caves so much. And I realized something else, too.

Time was flashing by. My candle was burning faster and smaller by the minute, and I was getting hungrier and more tired by the second.

It was a very weird feeling, until I figured that Frankie must be reading the book, trying to find out what would happen to Tom and Becky (and me). By the look of it, she was reading hard and fast, because sentence by sentence, time was passing quickly. I realized then that several days had passed since Tom and Becky had gotten lost. There would be little or no food left from the picnic, so the chances of finding them alive would be as slim as I bet they were getting.

“But I have to try,” I said to myself, going deeper into the cave. Then I stopped.

By the glow of my candlelight I saw some black marks on the rocky wall above me.

The names “Becky” and “Tom” had been written there with candle soot.

“Hey, at least I'm going in the right direction!” I said. “Tom! Becky! Hey!”

Only echoes answered me. “Omm … Ecky … Eyyyyy …”

“Same to you,” I muttered.

The tunnel wound this way and that, far down under the hillside. In one place I found a big cavern with lots of dripping going on from the rocks above.

A little while later, I came into another cavern that had huge bunches of bats clinging to the ceiling.

“Nice bats, stay.…”

I jetted out of there, hoping I wouldn't smush my nose on a stone wall, when my foot splashed into something wet. Oh, goody. I had just found myself a big underground lake. And my foot found itself wet.

“Oh, man!” I shouted.

“Oh, man, yourself!” said a familiar voice.

“Tom?” I said.

It
was
Tom. He stumbled out of the shadows, all dirty, his clothes ripped, his face dark with soot, his own candle nearly flickering out.

“Devin, is that really you?” His voice was hoarse. “You found us. We're saved! Becky, we're saved!”

Becky crept out of the shadows behind Tom. It was only then that it hit me how long the two of them had been in the cave. She was paler and dirtier than Tom, and had a strange ghostly look in her eyes.

“We're saved!” she said. Then, seeing my own look, she frowned. “We
are
saved, aren't we?”

I tried to smile. “Um … define
‘saved'
…”

“Oh, no!” Tom groaned.

“But you're the one who knows these caves!” I said.

“Partly,” he said. “And partly not. We're in the partly-not part now.”

“Oh,” I said.

We started walking anyway, thinking that going in one direction was better than going in no direction. Every time we stopped to check out a new tunnel, Becky and I watched Tom's face for some kind of happy look. But he didn't have any.

“Nope,” he'd mutter.

“Hey, big deal,” I said. “So there aren't any big red exit signs. So what? We'll find a way out!”

But to myself I said, “Frankie, find us a way out!”

As we traveled on, the way twisted and curved in such a weird way, we couldn't tell whether we were going up or down, getting deeper into the hill, or slowly making our way out.

Tom stopped once and shouted. “Heyyyy!”

The call went echoing down the empty tunnels and died out in the distance in a faint sound that seemed like someone laughing.

“Don't do it again, Tom,” said Becky. “It's too horrid.”

“Someone might hear us,” said Tom.

“Might?” I repeated. “Someone better hear us! Yikes! I never thought I'd say this, but I'd rather be taking Mr. Wexler's test right now! I'm not supposed to die in this book! I mean—I'm not even in it!”

But Becky heard just one word. “Die? Oh! Die!”

She slumped down on the ground and burst into tears. “Why did we ever leave the others! Tom, we are going to die! Devin's right, isn't he!”

Tom glared at me. “Nice work, Devin.”

I gulped. “Me? Right? Ha! Frankie would laugh. I myself am laughing at the silliness of it. Ha-ha. See? Don't worry, Becky. I am never right! Ask Mr. Wexler! Ask anyone!”

But Becky wasn't a dumbbell. She could see that we were in deep trouble. She buried her face on Tom's shoulder and let loose with the waterworks.

“Don't give up hope,” said Tom quietly. “We'll get out of here. I know we will.”

We moved on again, sort of aimlessly, but the truth was that we were getting loster and loster by the minute. Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out to save it, which we all knew was bad news, because he must have known we were in for the long haul.

After a while, Becky stopped and sat down. She was so tired, all she wanted to do was sleep. I knew it was the hunger getting to her. She was paler than pale, and her hands were shaking. It was pretty awful.

But it got even awfuler. Tom's last candle fizzled out. Everything went dark.

“Um … okay,” I said, “what do we do now?”

No one knew. We sat silent for a while.

Finally, Tom stirred. “Wait! I have Frankie's kite string in my pocket!”

I looked at where his voice was coming from. “Good one. But we're missing a kite and we're missing a sky, remember?”

Tom shook his head. “No, I mean while Becky rests, you and me can explore these side tunnels. We'll find our way back by leaving string behind us.”

“You go ahead with the kite string,” said Becky. “And explore around, but just come back every little while and talk to me.”

“We will,” I said. “You bet. The old kite-string idea never fails.”

“And promise,” she said in a faint and spooky voice, “that when the time comes, you'll stay here and hold my hand until it's over.”

“Over?” I said. “You talking about dying again?”

“Dying!” said Becky. “Oh! Devin's right!”

She burst into tears then, and I just about burst into tears myself, but Tom yanked my arm and said, “Devin, come on!”

Taking one end of the kite string, he tied it around a stone. Then, unwinding the rest slowly, he and I entered one of the caves. At the end of twenty feet or so, the cave ended in a jumping-off place. I got down on my knees and felt below, and then as far around the corner as I could reach.

“Anything down there?” whispered Tom.

“Maybe another tunnel, crossing below us,” I said.

I stretched a little farther and at that moment, not twenty feet away, a human hand holding a candle, appeared in the tunnel below!

I got ready to shout that we were found, when instantly the hand was followed by the arm and then the body and face of … Stinky Joe!

I was frozen to the spot. I could not move. Stinky Joe didn't look up, or he would have seen me for sure. And seen Tom, too, for Tom had squirmed in there with me.

But Stinky Joe just strode past the opening and continued down the lower tunnel.

“L-l-let's get out of here!” I whispered.

We scuttled back a bit to where another tunnel branched off from the first, taking the string with us. This new tunnel went farther than any one before it. The kite string unwound and unwound and finally gave out.

“That's it,” I said. “Show's over. We're done. End of the road. Last stop. Roll credits. Good-bye, world!”

“Devin,” said Tom.

“Good-bye, best pal, Frankie, we're through here—”

“Devin …”

“Good-bye, Mom, Dad, TV—”

“Devin!”

I looked at Tom. “Hey, this is my great speech. You're wrecking it. Good-bye, summer at the beach! Good-bye, trusty remote control—”

“DEV—IN!” Tom shouted.

I stopped. “What's so important?”

Tom pointed ahead to a small opening in the rocks.

And there it was, peeking through a crack in the cave wall.

The broad Mississippi River.

Just slowly rolling by.

“Yes!” I cried. “We're found! I knew we would be! Ya—hoooooo!”

Chapter 17

While Tom went back for Becky and told her the news that we were saved, I flagged down a bunch of fishermen in a small boat.

They could hardly believe my story.

“But you're five miles down the river from where the cave swallowed up those poor kids!”

“Well, the cave must have spat us out,” I insisted. “Because we're here!”

When Tom and Becky came stumbling over, the fishermen fed us and brought us to town in their wagon.

You should have heard all the cheering and yelling when everyone saw us! Almost instantly, there was a big get-together at Judge Thatcher's place, with Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and Judge Thatcher jumping up and down with joy to see us all. Huck was there, too, feeling out of place, but better after the Widow Douglas had taken care of him.

Of course, Frankie grinned the hugest grin she ever grinned when I showed up. “Good to have you back, Devin,” she said.

“Hey, I almost breathed my last in that cave,” I said. “But thanks for reading fast. Being alive is way better than being not.”

“You
should
thank me,” she said, rubbing her temples. “I have one extra-large headache brewing in here. But I guess it was sort of worth it.”

Yeah, it was cool to be with my pal Frankie again.

It turns out that Tom and Becky had been in the caves for nearly a week. Judge Thatcher came over and shook my hand, thanking me for helping to find them.

“Thank you for your part in all of this, son,” he said. “I'm happy to say that nobody will ever get lost in that cave again.”

Tom turned suddenly. “Why, sir?” he asked.

“Because I had its big door covered in iron and triple locked. And I've got the keys!” the judge said, smiling.

Tom turned white as a sheet.

“What's the matter, boy?” the man asked.

“Judge!” I said. “Stinky Joe's in that cave!”

In a flash, a dozen boatloads of men, along with me and Tom and Frankie and Huck, shot over to the cave.

Frankie sort of summed it up for all of us when Judge Thatcher unlocked the huge cave door.

“Eeewww!”

Stinky Joe lay stretched on the ground. He was past his prime. One pulse short of being alive. In other words: he was dead.

The guy's big huge knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The door had been chipped and hacked at, but the only real damage had been to the knife itself.

I felt sort of sorry for Stinky old Joe, because I knew how much it must have hurt to be locked in and hungry. Tom seemed torn up by it, too. But I could also tell he was relieved that Joe would threaten him and Huck no more.

Huck was sullen and sad. But not for Stinky Joe.

“That treasure is long gone,” he grumbled. “With Stinky Joe dead, we have no way of finding that old number two under the cross. We all should have had it. We all should have been rich. But it slipped through our fingers.”

But Tom had that old twinkle in his eye. He took us aside. “It's in the cave,” he whispered.

Huck blinked at his friend. “Say that again!”

Tom smiled wide. “The treasure's in the cave!”

I jumped. “The treasure? In the box? In the cave?”

“In the cave!” said Tom. “Right near where we got out. That's where we saw Joe, and that's where the strongbox is. I'd bet my life on it!”

“I didn't see the treasure,” I said. “I was there, too.”

“But you aren't the hero,” said Frankie, tapping the book.

As fast as you can say, “Treasure!” the four of us were squirming into the small cave opening that Tom and Becky and I had squirmed out of just a short time before.

About twenty minutes later, we were at the spot where Tom and I had seen Stinky Joe in the cave. When Tom squeezed down to the jumping-off place, he pointed his candle to something in the tunnel that Joe had walked through.

“I spotted this the first time, but it didn't mean anything to me,” said Tom. “Then I got to thinking, and I remembered what it meant.”

Frankie and I bent down to look at what he was pointing at. There were two cave openings cut out of the tunnel below. Above the second opening was a mark made in candle soot. It was a small, black cross.

“Number two, under the cross!” I gasped.

“Cave number two!” said Frankie. “Under the cross! That's where Joe and the dirt-faced guy must have hidden the strongbox! It's right here!”

Tom went down first, Huck second, Frankie third, and me last. We entered the second cave, and there it was—the treasure box Joe and his dirt-caked friend had found in the haunted house.

Frankie bent down to it and pried open the lid. On top of a pile of thousands of dollars was the lost page! She grabbed it and stared at it for a long time. Then, just as she opened the book to slip it back in its place, she gasped. “Oh!”

“What's the matter?” I said.