Norton, Andre - Novel 32 (7 page)

TEN
  
MILE TREASURE

"The Old Ones," Libby repeated. "
Toliver
, if this is a place of the Old Ones—"

The Navajo boy paused, continuing to look
at the stone on which his hand
now rested.
"The
cat's in there," he said. "The Old Ones
would understand why we have to do
this."

What did he mean, Christie wondered? That
this might be a place where some
Indians
were—buried?
But Shan was in there and that
was all that counted.

Toliver
passed another rock along,
working
steadily
until a large hole was laid bare. It was
so hot, and the dust from their work filled their
eyes, noses, and mouths. Christie
called to
Perks to
get a canteen. They drank and then
Toliver
went back to work. Now there was
a
hole large enough
to wriggle through. Christie
crowded forward.

"I'll go."

Neal's arm swung up before her. "I'll go—
I've got this." He had his
flashlight in his hand.

"Better me."
Toliver
was all ready to boost
himself in.

"No. Shan doesn't know you," Neal said.
"It has to be me. Here goes—"

He scrambled up and slid carefully in.
Toli
ver
put head and shoulders in after
him. Chris
tie heard
a hollow noise that sounded like
stones rattling down inside. Was Neal going to
fall into a big hole?

"It's a cave,"
Toliver
reported. "Something
back in there—"

"Shan, here, Shan!"
Neal's voice sounded
queer and hollow.
"Shan—no!
Let me—got
you!" The last was triumphant and Christie
gave a sigh of relief.

"Here." A moment later
Toliver
turned and
handed out
Shan, spitting and hissing, kicking
against
such indignity. His fight subsided when
Christie's
hands closed about him. She spoke
to him soothingly and stroked his
head, so busy
with Shan that she did not
notice at first that
Neal had not
come back out of the hole. When
she
realized that, she was afraid again. Was Neal now caught in turn?

"Neal?" she asked
Toliver
,
who was back
halfway
through the hole. "What is he doing
in there?"

Toliver
muttered something she could not
understand and then drew himself out and
went
to work quickly loosening more stones.

"Is Neal caught in there?" Christie pulled at
the Navajo boy's arm.

"No. But he's found something! And—"
Toliver
glanced back at his sister as if
to reassure her—"it's not Old Ones' things either!"

He was excited. Christie carried Shan back
to the picnic basket and made very
sure he
would stay
out of trouble by shutting him in it,
the lid tied down. Then she hurried back to
where
Toliver
was again
pulling out stones and
Libby putting them to
one side. It was not long
before they
had a big opening through which they could all see.

Neal was hidden by shadows, but the light
of his flash shone full on a heap
in the middle
of a small cave.
Boxes and bags.
What did they
hold? One at a time the rest crawled through
to inspect the discovery closer.

Christie saw a small trunk and a bag with a
handle, looking a little like a
plane bag but
larger.
There were several other bags tied at
the top.
Toliver
picked up a
flatter pouch from
the
floor. He blew dust from it, rubbed it with
his
hand. Black letters appeared as he loosened
that
covering, us.
mail.

"But
what is it all? And how did it get here?"

"Maybe from a stagecoach."
Toliver
walked around the
find. "They could have dumped all
this
if they had to make a quick run, maybe
because
of an Apache raid. Look there—" He
reached into the heap and pulled something into
the full beam of
the torch. "This is a shotgun—
a real
old one—the kind a stagecoach guard
would
have."

"If the Apaches were after them, wouldn't
they have needed all their
guns?" Neal wanted
to know.

"Could be they had no more shells for it."

"That mailbag."
Neal centered the light full
on it. "We ought to give
that to the postman.

Isn't there-some kind of law about mail having
to be handled that way?"

"Letters in there, if there are any,"
Toliver
commented, "have been on the way a good
long time. Don't think anyone's
still waiting for
them
now."

"How long has all this been here, do you
suppose?" Christie asked.

' 'Last
raid must have been close to a hundred
years
ago now,"
Toliver
answered.

A
hundred
years! It was hard to think of that
trunk, the bags, and all the rest
being shut up here for a hundred years. Christie wondered
what had happened to the people
who had left
them there.
Toliver
said these might have been
hidden to lighten a stage load so they could get
ahead faster and
escape. But nobody ever came
back to get
them, so— Suddenly she wanted
to get
out of this dark cave and forget about
what
might have happened to the people who
had
been here once.

"Chris!" Neal was excited. "Don't you
see—this is just what we need for
the Plan!
For a museum at the station—things that were car
ried on the old stagecoaches—better than ar
rowheads.
It's super!"

"But—they don't belong to us. What about
the people who left them
here?"

"A hundred years ago?" Neal demanded.
"Nobody would be alive now.
Maybe we'd
never be
able even to find out who they were.
Listen here—let's just cover this up until we
get a chance to come back and really look it
over. Dad—Mother—they're too busy to want to be
bothered now. We'll come back tomorrow, bring some stuff to wipe all this
clean.
Maybe we'll even just leave it
here in the
cave—fix it up a little so
people can see it bet
ter, then show
it off just as we found it. This
is
the kind of things tourists want to see!"

"Could be you're right,"
Toliver
agreed.
"We
could pick the rest of the stones out of
the
opening,
make it easier to
get in. Maybe
take a
little of the stuff out, though—the shot
gun, the mailbag." It was clear he agreed with
Neal about the value of Shan's
find.

However, Christie was still uneasy. Perhaps
the people who had owned this
were
dead a
long time
ago, but—
Well
, it had been hidden so long it would
not hurt to let it stay where it
was a little longer. And when Father was not
so busy they could ask him about
it.

Neal was continuing: "I vote we don't say
anything about this until we get it cleaned up—
ready to be seen. Then we ask them to come
for a big surprise—"

"Okay,"
Toliver
agreed.

Neal turned to the twins, who had been star
ing round-eyed at the pile of
dusty luggage.

"That means you, too—no talking about this!
You just show your arrowheads and
say we
were
hunting them. But not this—we want it
to
be a surprise." Both of them nodded. "But we get to help
unpack,"
Parky
insisted quickly.
"Nobody
unpacks a thing," Neal said sharply,
"unless we are all here and do it together.
Maybe tomorrow we can sort out part of it.
Now let's get out of here and put some of those
stones back. We don't want to take a chance
of anyone else finding it."
Christie guessed it must be late afternoon by
now. If they did not get back to the station
soon, someone might come hunting them.

However, she stood by, handing stones to the
boys. At last Neal and
Toliver
decided they had
done enough, and once more
it looked like a
natural fall of rock
with no cave behind it.

In a hurry, Christie released Shan from the
picnic basket, while Libby packed
what was
left of
their lunch. Then they started the reluctant twins homeward, leaving the boys
behind
to give the last touches to the
rocks hiding their
find.

The Navajos who had come to help at the station were
camping out near the
Wildhorse
van, and they had already started a cooking fire
when the children came across the meadow. Christie
discovered, to her
relief, that
Mother
was just beginning to wonder about them. She
listened to
Parky's
tale
of arrowheads and said
she was glad
they had such a good time. When
Christie
ventured to suggest they might picnic again tomorrow, Mother seemed relieved
and agreed at once—anything, their sister thought,
to keep the twins out from underfoot.

It was after the twins had gone to bed that
Neal signaled Christie and they
slipped out of the room where Mother and Father were talk
ing to Mr. Wainwright, the
contractor from
town.

"You're not planning to go back to the cave
tonight!" Christie had a
sudden suspicion.

"'Course not! I want to talk to Pinto. Maybe
he can give us some idea why
those things were
left
there."

"You are going to tell him? But I thought it
was to be a secret."

"Not tell him, no. Just ask about the times
when there were those raids here.
Could be he
knows
some story to explain about the things
being hid."

Pinto
was sitting on the broad sill of the shed he claimed as his own quarters. As
the children
came up, he shook flakes of
tobacco into a piece
of paper, which he rolled into a crumpled-look
ing cigarette. Christie had never seen that done
before.

"Do
you always make your own cigarettes?"

"Sure do. Old trick for range hands. I
ain't
learned many new ones. See here—" He
showed her the little drawstring-tied bag of to
bacco and a packet of papers.
"These here are
what we used to call 'the
makin's
.'
There
weren't store-bought cigarettes
then. A man
made his own or
chawed
or went without. So you
was
off
grubbin
^?
for
Injun things today.
Find much?"