by Elise Broach
“Well, from what they say, ol’ Hank was a fair hand at darts.”
The boys glanced at one another.
“Ha! That he was,” Mr. Barker said fondly.
“All right, boys,” Mrs. Barker called from the kitchen. “Time for dinner and bed.”
“I’m sorry we bothered you for nothing.” Mr. Barker swung open the front door. The boys gathered around him.
“Not at all. It was nice to meet you folks,” Officer Myers replied. “And welcome to Superstition. How do you like it so far?”
“Well, it’s only been a couple of weeks.” Mr. Barker gestured to the wall of cardboard moving boxes, still stacked in the living room. “But we like it a lot. It’s got a great sense of history.”
Officer Myers stopped, his hand on the front door. “What kind of history?”
“The surrounding area,” Mr. Barker explained. “It feels like the Old West. I understand there’s a ghost town not far from here.”
A ghost town! Henry perked up. Simon raised his eyebrows. “With real ghosts?” Jack asked.
Mr. Barker laughed. “No, Jack. It’s an old frontier town that’s been abandoned.”
The policeman paused. “Well, that’s another place that should be strictly off-limits for your boys. Those buildings are in terrible shape. They could collapse at any minute.”
“Of course,” Mr. Barker agreed. “I’ll make sure they don’t go anywhere near there.”
Officer Myers stepped onto the front porch, then turned to Mr. Barker, his broad face shining in the porch light. “The mountain,” he said quietly. “It’s tempting to the kids around here … they all want to be little explorers.” He stopped, glancing down at Jack. “But it isn’t safe. Remember that.”
Henry thought he seemed about to say more. Was he still talking about the mountain lions and rattlesnakes? Or something else?
“Right,” Mr. Barker said. “Thanks again.”
A moment later, Henry heard an engine roar and saw the police car back down the driveway, its blue lights pulsing in the chilly, black night.
“Boys! It’s late. I mean it,” their mother scolded, herding them out of the entryway.
Jack craned to see the lights. “Wow … cool!”
Henry would have thought it was cool too, if he weren’t so worried about Josie. She was out there somewhere, alone in the desert night. Alone on the mountain with the three skulls—the mountain that had almost captured them, too.
CHAPTER 6
A NEW PLAN
JOSIE DIDN’T COME BACK at bedtime. She didn’t come back the next morning, or the next afternoon, or anytime the next day. The boys put a bowl of her tuna-flavored kibbles on the back deck, in case she showed up when nobody was home. But each time they checked, the bowl was untouched.
On Thursday, three days after Josie had disappeared, Simon, Henry, and Jack sat on the back deck staring morosely at the empty yard. Henry had been trying to read—he was halfway through Treasure Island and imagining himself kidnapped on a pirate ship—but it was hard to concentrate with Josie missing and in danger.
“What if a mountain lion ate her?” Jack asked sadly.
“I don’t think they eat other cats,” Simon said. “That would be too weird.”
“Yeah,” said Henry. “Like cannibalism.”
But he wasn’t so sure. For a mountain lion, was eating a cat any different than eating a raccoon or a squirrel? They were all just tasty pieces of meat, weren’t they?
“Do you think we should go back up there and look for her?” Henry said this softly, afraid that Mrs. Barker, who was unloading the dishwasher, would hear.
Simon scanned the jagged silhouette of Superstition Mountain. “Maybe,” he said. “But we can’t go anytime soon. Mom and Dad are still too nervous.”
It was true that their parents had been unusually watchful and attentive for the last few days. Mrs. Barker stopped work to check on them frequently, even when they were only playing in the driveway, and when Mr. Barker came home at night, he required a full account of their day.
“They’re like prison guards,” Simon complained. “We can’t do anything.”
There were two things the boys wanted to do: find Josie and figure out the real danger of Superstition Mountain. Henry and Simon had quickly decided that however scary mountain lions and rattlesnakes might be, their parents and the policeman were worried about something else entirely. What was it?
“There’s something they’re not telling us,” Simon said.
“Yeah,” Henry agreed. “They’re being sneaky, like those people in movies who pretend they don’t know anything about the crime. You know, when the police interrogate them.”
Of course, there was also something Henry, Simon, and Jack weren’t telling Mr. and Mrs. Barker. They’d said nothing about the three skulls. At night, before Henry fell asleep, he could see them clearly: ghostly white blobs perched on the ledge overlooking the canyon. He was sure those skulls had a story to tell … especially the one with the dent in it.
Mrs. Barker opened the sliding door and looked down at them, hands on her hips. “Boys, come on. I know you’re upset about Josie, but I still think she’s okay. Don’t you remember in Illinois, that time she was gone for a week? She came back all fat and happy, like she’d been on vacation.”
Henry smiled a little. It was true. They’d been so worried about her, but when she finally appeared at the back door, she was round and well-rested. She didn’t even seem particularly glad to be home.
Mrs. Barker picked up Henry’s neglected book and tucked the bookmark securely in place. “It’s only been three days, Hen. She’ll come back.”
“Hey!” Simon jumped to his feet. “I know! We can make flyers with her picture on them and put them up around the neighborhood.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mrs. Barker coaxed them. “I’ll get you some markers. Why don’t you work at the kitchen table?”
She returned with a fistful of colored markers and some blank paper. “Now I have to get to work too, okay? So no interruptions, please. I’m on deadline for that book on sports medicine, and I have several drawings I have to finish by the end of the week.”
When she left the room, Simon whispered, “Finally she’ll be out of our hair.” Henry hoped so. They all much preferred their mother busy with work than nosing around in their affairs.
Glad to have something to do, they huddled over the blank paper.
“I’ll draw a picture of her!” Jack announced cheerfully, grabbing a thick black marker.
“Jack—” Simon started to protest.
“Let me do it,” Jack insisted. “I’m a good drawer.”
He knelt on a chair and leaned over the table, pressing hard with the marker. Henry saw his face scrunch with concentration; his tongue kept slipping out of the side of his mouth while he worked. When he finished, he waved the picture jubilantly under Simon’s nose. “See!”
Simon snorted. “That doesn’t look at all like Josie. That looks like a big black cow.”
Jack balled up his fist, and Henry barely had time to duck as he reached out to whack Simon’s arm. “Does not!”
“Moooo,” Simon said.
“Boys,” Mrs. Barker called from her study.
“Mom!” Jack yelled. “Simon’s being mean!”
“Simon—” Mrs. Barker began.
“I am not! Jack hit me.”
“Jack—” Mrs. Barker said sternly.
“I drew Josie and he said it looks like a cow!”
“It doesn’t look like a cow,” Henry ventured. “It looks like a goat.”
“All right, all right.” Mrs. Barker appeared in the doorway. “Stop fighting! What did I just say about not interrupting me?”
Simon whipped the paper out of Jack’s hand. “Look, Mom. Does this look anything like Josie? If we put this up around the neighborhood, everyone will think we lost a black cow.” He studied Jack’s drawing. “With horns. A bull.”
“Hey!” Jack cried.
“Give that back!”
“That is ENOUGH.” Mrs. Barker took the drawing and put it on the counter. “Why don’t you use a photo of Josie instead? We can copy it right onto the paper. Take one off the fridge. When you’re finished, I’ll make photocopies for you in the study. But no more fighting! Understand?”
“Yeah, Mom, sorry,” Simon said, but Henry could see him press his foot down on Jack’s beneath the table.
Henry took a photo of Josie off the fridge—it was one of her lying on the couch at their old house, with a smug expression on her face—and carefully taped it to a blank piece of paper. Below the photo, Simon wrote in neat capital letters
MISSING
BLACK CAT*
VERY FRIENDLY
REWARD $$$
LAST SEEN: 6/21 NEAR WEAVER COURT
CALL 555-4201
At the bottom, he added in small print *WHITE SPOT ON NECK.
“Okay, how does that look?” Simon held the paper aloft for their review.
“That’s really good!” Jack said happily, the cow episode already forgotten. “Now let’s make lots and lots of copies and put them up everywhere.”
Henry scrutinized the flyer. “I don’t think Josie’s VERY friendly. Just friendly.”
Simon considered. “Okay.” He carefully crossed out very.
“And what’s the reward?”
Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. But we need a reward. Nobody will pay any attention to our signs otherwise.”
“Do we have to use our own money?” Henry asked anxiously. He had twenty-four dollars in his piggybank, but he was saving up for the complete trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.
“Course not,” Simon scoffed. “Mom will pay it.”
They carried the poster to her study, where Mrs. Barker was leaning over her drawing table, pencil poised. She looked up. “All set?”
Simon showed her the paper. “You’ll give a reward if somebody brings back Josie, right?”
“Well, yes, I guess that would be okay,” she said. “You didn’t say an amount, did you?”
“No,” Simon said. “It’s better not to, because then people might think we’re really rich and the reward is a lot of money.”
Mrs. Barker smiled. “This looks terrific! You did a nice job, all of you. I’ll copy it right now, and you can ride your bikes around the neighborhood and put it up on telephone poles.”
Mrs. Barker placed a sheaf of yellow paper in the tray of the copying machine, which produced a stack of flyers in a matter of minutes. “See? Don’t they look nice?”
They looked bright and official, Henry thought … but the photo of Josie made him sad. What if they never did find her? He pictured the way she would lie on the couch, with her hind legs scissored across each other, the tip of her tail twitching.
Mrs. Barker gave the stack a brisk pat. “Take the stapler and some tape, and stay in our neighborhood, okay? Don’t cross Coronado Road.”
So they set out on their bikes, with three handfuls of flyers and the ardent hope that someone in the neighborhood would recognize Josie’s picture and know exactly where she was.
CHAPTER 7
A GLIMPSE OF SOMETHING
AFTER ALMOST TWO HOURS of putting flyers on telephone poles in the broiling heat, all three boys were exhausted. They’d ridden down every street in the neighborhood. The sun was high in the cloudless sky, hot on their backs, flashing off cars, leaving them sweaty and thirsty.
They’d just turned off Coronado Road to head home when Henry saw something out of the corner of his eye that made him slam on his brakes. It was a cat, crossing a front yard. A black cat.
He jumped off the side of his bike, letting it clatter against the curb.
“Hey! Josie?” he cried. Before he could be sure, a girl—who looked about his age and had been sitting on the front porch of the house—leapt to her feet, grabbed the cat, and ran inside.
Simon and Jack circled back to where Henry’s bike lay in the gutter. “What happened?” Simon asked. “Did you fall off?”
“No—I think I just saw Josie!”
“You did?” Jack jumped off his bike. “Where?”
Henry stared at the house in bafflement. “Maybe it wasn’t, but it sure looked like Josie. A girl just took her inside that house.” He pointed at the two-story gray house directly in front of them. It had narrow flower beds on either side of the front stoop, overflowing with spiky plants and pink and orange flowers. A green hose coiled nearby.
Simon lifted his bike onto the sidewalk and pushed down the kickstand. “Let’s go see.”
They climbed the steps to the porch. “Knock on the door,” Simon told Jack.
Jack frowned. “You do it.”
“I’ll do it,” said Henry, but not before Jack stomped on Simon’s foot and knocked on the door himself—a bang, bang, bang that echoed inside the house. The boys waited.
Jack rang the bell. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. The boys waited some more.
“I know she’s in there,” Henry said. He pressed his face against the window next to the door. “Hey, I can see the living room.” He saw a flowery sofa, a glossy coffee table stacked with magazines, end tables cluttered with framed pictures, and a big, fancy-looking green armchair with gold braiding. “It’s very … opulent.”
Simon and Jack crowded behind him. “Does that mean there’s a cat in there?” Jack wanted to know.
“Nope,” Henry said, disappointed.
“Let me see!” Jack pushed in front of him. “Hey, there is a black cat. It’s walking down the hall,” he said. Then he cried excitedly, “Look! It’s Josie!”
“Really?” Simon elbowed between the two of them.
Breathlessly, they watched a black cat wander into the living room and sit down, calmly licking her paws. There was a white patch on her neck shaped like Florida.
“It is Josie!” Simon said. “What’s she doing in there?”
Josie was safe! She hadn’t been eaten by mountain lions! She hadn’t been bitten by a rattlesnake! She’d come down from the mountain all by herself, and she really didn’t look any different at all. But what was she doing in this strange house?
Henry pointed. “Look, there’s the girl. She’s hiding behind that chair.”
Behind one side of the green satiny armchair, they could see pink sneakers, a striped sleeve, and a long, brown braid.
Jack pounded on the door again. “We see you!” he yelled. “Give us back our cat!”
The sneakers didn’t move, but the braid swung sideways and half a face appeared. It was a mad face.
“Open the door!” Henry shouted.
“Go away!” yelled the girl. She hid behind the chair again.
Jack tried the handle of the front door but it wouldn’t open. “We have to save Josie,” he said. “Josie! Josie, come here!”
Josie looked up, gazing at them with her golden eyes. Henry thought she seemed unimpressed.
“Josie!” he yelled.
She started licking her paws again.
The braid moved and the whole face appeared this time. Henry could see a scattering of freckles. “Go away,” the girl said loudly, glowering at them. “If you don’t, I’ll call the police.”
Simon was mad now too. “No, we’ll call the police! You stole our cat.”
“You’ll go to JAIL,” Jack cried. He made a horrible face and pressed it against the window.
The girl came out from behind the chair and sat down next to Josie, stroking her back. “Leave us alone! You’re the ones trespassing. You’ll go to jail.” She stuck out her tongue at Jack.
The three boys looked at one another.
“Who is she?” Henry asked. Since they had moved into Uncle Hank’s house right as school was ending, they hadn’t met many of the kids in the neighborhood. And now it seemed like everyone was on vacation or away at summer camp. Except this girl, apparently. This horrible, cat-stealing girl.
“I recognize her,” Simon said. “She rode her bike in that Pioneer Days parad
e a couple of weeks ago, remember? It was covered with all those dumb ribbons.”
“They weren’t dumb!” came from inside the house.
“She can hear you,” Henry whispered. “We have to do something. Let’s go tell Mom.”
“No!” Jack said. “We can’t leave Josie. We have to rescue her.”
Simon scanned the side of the house. “Let’s see if there’s another way in,” he whispered.
“You go away,” the girl said again. She put her arm around Josie, still petting her. Even through the window, the boys could tell that Josie was arching her back and purring.
“Okay, we’re leaving,” Henry said loudly. The three boys stomped down the porch steps and walked toward the driveway.
“Is she watching us?” Simon asked.
Henry glanced back and shook his head.
“Quick!”
They raced around the side of the house to the backyard, then up the deck stairs to the sliding glass door. Simon grabbed the handle and pulled, but the door wouldn’t budge.
The girl walked into the kitchen, holding Josie in her arms. “Ha!” she said. “It’s locked.”
Jack pounded on the glass.
“Cut it out,” the girl said. “My mom is napping. You’ll wake her up.”
Something about the way she said this made Henry think it wasn’t true. He suddenly felt certain she was in the house alone.
“Listen,” Simon told her, jabbing his finger against the glass. “That’s our cat. She’s been missing for three whole days! You can’t take somebody else’s cat.”
The girl held Josie tighter and glared. “It’s not your cat. She’s a stray. I found her.”
“She is not!” Henry cried. “Look at her collar.”
The girl didn’t move.
“Can’t we come in?” Henry asked. “Then we can show you.”
Josie continued to gaze at them impassively … almost as if they were strangers, Henry had to admit. But then she never was the kind of cat who acted excited to see anybody.
“She’s not your cat,” the girl repeated stubbornly. She lowered Josie to the kitchen floor, and Josie darted back to the living room.
