Missing on Superstition Mountain

by Elise Broach

  “Julia something?” he asked Delilah.

  “Julia Elena Thomas,” she said slowly.

  Simon walked over. “Julia Thomas? You mean…”

  “Yeah. It’s the name of that woman at the library.”

  “What?” Jack ran over. “What does it say?”

  “It’s nothing,” Simon said, but his brows were crinkled. “Just the tombstone of someone with the same name as that librarian lady.”

  “The one with the black hair?”

  “Yeah. But Thomas, that’s a common name. And Julia too.”

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” Henry said. But he wasn’t so sure. He felt strange. Then a black blur caught his eye. “Look,” he exclaimed in relief, “there’s Josie!”

  Josie was sitting on top of a headstone, her eyes wide, tail twitching lazily in the sun.

  “Josie,” Henry called to her, running between the rows of graves. Then he stopped in his tracks.

  Below one of Josie’s dangling paws, he could read the name etched on the tombstone in large, faded letters: BARKER.

  CHAPTER 18

  NAMES FROM THE PAST

  SIMON, DELILAH, AND JACK nearly collided with Henry. Delilah gasped.

  “Hey,” Jack said, staring at the letters, “that’s our name.”

  Simon crossed quickly to the headstone, scooped up Josie, and held her firmly against his chest. “You guys have to stop freaking out. Barker is a common name too! Come on. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  But now Henry was turning, staring in every direction at the hodgepodge of century-old gravestones. “But look … Myers—that was the policeman’s name, remember? And Waltz—that was the name of the guy with the gold mine, right?” His palms were damp, and he could feel the galloping beat of his heart. What was this place?

  Simon ignored him, marching toward the cemetery gate. “Come on, let’s go. It would make sense for that guy to be buried here. This is where he lived. If those other families have lived in town a long time, of course their relatives would be buried here. Like Uncle Hank—his tombstone is probably here somewhere too. Is that going to creep you out? You’re making a big deal out of nothing, Henry.”

  Privately, Henry thought it would very much creep him out to see Uncle Hank’s tombstone. It occurred to him that the inscription would say “Henry,” not “Hank,” and somehow seeing both a “Barker” and a “Henry” on tombstones in one day seemed too much to handle.

  “I don’t think it’s nothing,” Delilah said slowly, gazing at the tombstones. “People who are supposed to be dead are alive. Or people who are supposed to be alive are dead.”

  “Yeah!” Jack cried. “It’s like they’re GHOSTS.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s what Henry said, just a coincidence,” Simon called impatiently.

  He was almost to the gate, with Josie squirming in frustration, one paw batting his shoulder.

  Henry shot a last nervous glance at the tombstone where Josie had been lying; at their own name chiseled across the front. He swallowed, wiping his damp hands on his shorts and scanning the rows of headstones. What if Uncle Hank were buried here somewhere? That seemed likely, and deeply unsettling. “Come on,” he said to Delilah and Jack.

  “Me first!” Jack cried. He pushed between Henry and Delilah, darting down the row after Simon.

  “It IS weird,” Delilah said to Henry, twisting one braid. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything that the names are the same, but it’s still strange.”

  “At least there wasn’t a Dunworthy,” Henry said. “It’s freaky to see your own name on a tombstone.”

  Delilah flinched. “Yeah,” she said, turning away from Henry. “It is.”

  Simon and Jack were already on their bikes outside the cemetery gates. Simon was struggling to keep hold of Josie, whose ears had flattened against her head in profound irritation.

  “Are you going to ride with her like that?” Delilah asked.

  “I’m going to try,” Simon said, clamping her more tightly under his arm.

  Delilah wheeled her bike close to his and stroked Josie’s squirming body. “Shhh, Josie, we’re going to take you home,” she crooned. At least she wasn’t calling her Princess, Henry thought.

  “What should we do now?” he asked.

  Simon stared at him. “Go back up the mountain and get the skulls,” he said, as if the answer were obvious.

  Henry stared at him. “But we didn’t find out what happened to Sara Delgado.”

  Simon snorted. “We’ll never find that out. She’s not going to tell us, and even if she did, we probably wouldn’t be able to understand her. Look, it’s still early, we have plenty of time to get up the mountain and back before dark.”

  “We’re going now?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  Henry didn’t know what to say.

  Simon looked determined. “You were right, Hen. We shouldn’t have left the skulls up there. They belonged to real people, maybe even to kids around our age. Nobody knows what happened to them but us.”

  “But I thought you said the skulls might not even belong to those Texas boys,” Henry protested.

  “Yeah, I did,” Simon said slowly. “But still … no matter who they belonged to, we’re the only ones who can get them and bring them back.”

  Henry shook his head. Simon was supposed to be the responsible one. “But Mom said we had to be home by lunch! We can’t do this to her two days in a row.”

  It was a well-known fact in the Barker household that timing was everything. The thing you could get away with on an easy summer afternoon when Mrs. Barker was laughing on the phone with her sister was certainly not something you could get away with right before houseguests were expected, or when she was feeling pressured to meet a deadline, or when, for instance, you had just tested her patience with some questionable flouting of family rules the day before.

  Henry knew, in his heart of hearts, if he were truly worthy of Uncle Hank’s name, he should be eager for the adventure, but … he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back up the mountain. He fidgeted miserably. Simon had seemed scared before, too. Why was he being so bossy?

  Jack looked from one to the other. “This is boring! What are we doing?”

  Simon considered. “Maybe Henry’s right,” he said reluctantly. “It might be better to do it a different day. But tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll never be able to go then, or Sunday. Mom and Dad will be hanging around all weekend getting in our hair. We’ll have to wait until Monday.”

  “MONDAY!” Jack groaned. “That’s too long!”

  “No, it’s better that way, Jack,” Henry told him. “They’ll be less suspicious.”

  Simon’s face brightened. “And know what else? If Uncle Hank went up into the mountains with poker players chasing after him as often as Emmett said, I bet he had a good map of the trails. I wonder if we could find it.”

  “A map! Maybe in the boxes in the basement,” Jack said. “Let’s go!”

  He started pedaling vigorously down the road.

  “Jack, wait,” Delilah called after him, as they all began to follow. “You can’t cross the street without one of us.”

  “A good map would really help,” Henry said to her as he rode past. He wouldn’t worry so much about climbing the mountain again if they had a map to guide them. He thought of the map in Treasure Island. With a good map, he would be ready for any adventure. Then he would be just like Uncle Hank: a true explorer.

  * * *

  When they clattered into the house, Mrs. Barker emerged from her study in surprise. “Are you back already? That was quick! I won’t have to worry about you today.” She smiled at Delilah, who was cradling Josie against her chest. “Hello, Delilah! Josie must have been happy to see you.”

  “Oh, she was,” Delilah replied, just as Josie launched herself into the air and took off in a streak of disgruntlement.

  “Mom,” Simon began, “we were wondering if Uncle Hank had any maps.”

  Mrs. Barker raised
her eyebrows. “Maps? Of what?”

  “Oh, you know, this area,” Simon continued casually. “We’re trying to learn our way around. Then it won’t take us so long to get home when we’re out bike riding.”

  Mrs. Barker appeared to accept this explanation. “Well, we certainly have maps of Superstition and the other towns in this area. Your father stopped at triple A in Phoenix and got a bunch when we moved here.”

  Simon shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. We wanted Uncle Hank’s maps,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Henry elaborated. “We thought it would be cool to see the maps he used. Especially if there were old ones, you know?”

  Mrs. Barker regarded them skeptically. “I don’t see how an old map would be of any use to you. It probably wouldn’t even have all the streets marked on it.”

  “Can’t we just look through his stuff?” Simon pleaded. “It’s all just sitting in boxes in the basement.” He paused for emphasis. “It’s such a waste.”

  That was clever, Henry had to admit. Mrs. Barker hated the idea of anything going to waste.

  Their mother shrugged. “Oh, all right, I guess so. But I really don’t think you’ll find anything. Uncle Hank lived here for so long, I doubt he needed a map of the area. And I don’t remember seeing one when I packed up his things.” She pursed her lips. “Maybe try the desk, in the drawer with his coin collection. I left all those things alone.”

  “Uncle Hank had a coin collection? That’s great!” Simon pumped a fist in the air. “Is it worth a lot of money?”

  “I have no idea, sweetheart. It looked like mostly foreign coins to me, and there weren’t many. Your father thought you three could divide it up.”

  “Divide it up?” Simon was instantly indignant. “Why can’t I have the whole thing? I’m the oldest.”

  “It’ll be worth less if you divide it up,” Delilah said thoughtfully.

  Henry scowled at both of them. “Hey! I’m the one who’s named after him. If anyone should get it, I should.”

  “That’s not FAIR!” Jack cried. “Is it, Mom?”

  “This is exactly why your father thought you should divide it up.” Mrs. Barker held the door of the basement open for them, flipping the light switch. “Go ahead and take a look in the desk, but I don’t recall seeing a map.”

  They tromped down the basement stairs with Simon leading the way. It was annoying to Henry that Simon assumed he would get the coin collection. The hard thing about being in the middle, Henry often thought, was that you had none of the privileges of the oldest kid—the later bedtime, the bigger allowance, the chance to do everything interesting first—and none of the advantages of the youngest, with people generally humoring you, looking after you, and letting you have your way. What good came from being in the middle? It was impossible to get special treatment of any sort … apparently, not even the coin collection of the uncle you were named for.

  Uncle Hank’s desk was an old brown rolltop, with a grid of cubbies across the front and three big drawers on either side. Their mother appeared to have consolidated all their uncle’s things into two of the drawers. There were the usual trays of pencils, pens, and paper clips; a stapler; a yellowed roll of Scotch Tape; a tangled knot of rubber bands; and then some more interesting items … a small, heavy snow globe of the Grand Canyon; a string-tied stack of old postcards, letters, and greeting cards; and a creamy sheaf of heavy paper with the name Henry Cormody printed in black script across the top. Not Hank, Henry. Henry traced the name with one finger.

  “Too bad the stationery doesn’t just say his first name, or you could use it,” Simon observed, shuffling through the contents of the drawer. He sighed. “No map.”

  “Should we look in the boxes?” Henry asked. They all turned to the towering row of cardboard boxes shoved into one corner of the basement. There were so many of them, sealed with packing tape. Their mother had labeled them in black marker by room—“Kitchen,” “Living Room”—but there wasn’t much more detail than that.

  “That will take us forev—” Delilah began morosely.

  “Hey, look!” Simon interrupted. “I bet this is the coin collection.” He gingerly lifted a long metal box from the bottom of the second drawer and plunked it on the top of the desk. It was a dark rust color, with an interesting design etched over the surface. It looked old to Henry; it was dented and nicked, and the paint was peeling off in places, revealing gray metal underneath.

  Delilah tapped the top of it. “I don’t think that’s a coin collection. My dad had a coin collection, and he kept the coins in plastic sheets, in a big binder … each one in its own little pouch.”

  Simon shook the box. Whatever was inside clinked and jangled noisily. “It sure sounds like coins,” he said. He snapped open the metal lid, and they all peered inside.

  Their mother was right. There weren’t many coins—no more than a dozen, scattered across the surprisingly shallow trough of the box—and they looked nothing like regular American money. They were different sizes, discolored with age, and not exactly round—slightly misshapen, as if they’d been formed by hand.

  “Wow,” Henry said, picking up one of the larger ones. “These are cool.”

  He flattened it in his palm and squinted at the worn, dark surface. It had a man’s profile on one side and a strange, florid design on the other, with scrolls and columns.

  Simon dumped the rest of the coins onto the desk. He, Jack, and Delilah each took one.

  “What does it say on them?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “It’s something in a foreign language.”

  Henry tried to read the faint letters that marked the perimeter, encircling the design. “H-I-S-P-A-N,” he read. “E-T … I-N-D.”

  “What’s that?” Jack wanted to know.

  Henry had no idea. He turned to Simon. “Maybe we can find out on the computer,” Simon said, a bit skeptically.

  The boys’ computer use was severely limited because there was only one in the house and their mother and father kept all their work files on it, which made them chronically fretful that one of the boys would accidentally erase something when they were “fooling around.” Also, Mrs. Barker thought they should play outside, not be stuck in front of a screen all day. And even in the short time they’d lived here, the internet in Superstition had proved so unreliable that there was hardly any point.

  Simon had started to scoop up the coins to return them to the box, when Delilah grabbed his hand.

  “Wait,” she said. “What’s that?”

  Amidst the coins that Simon had poured onto the desk was a small piece of white paper, folded in half, about the size of the strip inside a Chinese fortune cookie.

  Delilah pinched it open. She gasped. She looked at Henry and held it toward him.

  CHAPTER 19

  BOOKS, BONES, COINS

  “VENI, VIDI, VICI,” Delilah read.

  Henry sucked in his breath and stared at her. The very same words! What did it mean?

  “What is it?” Simon asked, taking the paper from Delilah.

  Henry realized that neither he nor Delilah had told Simon and Jack about Adolph Ruth and the gold. “Do you remember me reading to you about Adolph Ruth?” he asked impatiently. “He was on the list in the historical society booklet, one of the first disappearances on the mountain. His skull was found with bullet holes in it?”

  Simon’s brow furrowed. “I remember the name. I remember thinking it was like Hitler, and how many Adolphs do you run into?”

  “Well,” Henry continued, “it took years for searchers to find his remains, but they also found his wallet, and inside—”

  “Inside was a note that had ‘veni, vidi, vici’ written at the bottom,” Delilah finished. “Which means ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ It’s Latin.”

  “So?” Simon looked puzzled.

  “Yeah, so?” Jack echoed. “Why’s that important?”

  “Because in the note, Adolph Ruth said that he’d found a … mine.
” Henry hesitated, looking at Delilah. “At the time, people thought he’d found the lost gold—that ‘veni, vidi, vici’ meant he’d discovered the Lost Dutchman’s gold mine.”

  “Really?” Jack cried, leaning on the top of the desk so hard it tipped forward, then thumped down with a jolt. “Do you think this little bitty paper means Uncle Hank found GOLD?”

  “I don’t know.” Henry stared at the tiny slip of paper in Simon’s hand. Had his uncle really written those words?

  “Well, it could just be a coincidence,” Simon said, but Henry could tell he was thinking the same thing Henry was: the day had been too full of coincidences.

  Simon put the piece of paper back in the box, followed by all the coins except one, which he slid into his pocket. Then he glanced up the basement stairs, lowering his voice. “All right, this is what we’re going to do. I’ll get Mom to let me use the computer and figure out what kind of coin this is. Henry, you’re the fastest reader, you check the library book for stuff about those three Texas boys and about the other disappearances on the mountain. See if there’s any pattern. Delilah, we’ll have to leave from your house on Monday. Will either of your parents be there?”

  Delilah shook her head. “It’s just my mom, and she has to work.”

  “Good,” Simon said. “But we’re going to need an excuse to spend the whole day at your house.”

  Delilah thought for a minute. “We’re digging a vegetable garden in the back. My mom would love it if you guys helped with that.”

  Simon smacked her shoulder appreciatively. “That’s a great idea! That could easily take the whole day.”

  “But I don’t want to dig a garden,” Jack whined. “I want to go up the mountain!”

  “We won’t really dig the garden,” Simon told him in exasperation. “We’ll just say that’s what we’re doing, so we can be gone all day without Mom bugging us.”

  “Well, we’ll have to dig some of it,” Delilah said.

  “Yeah,” Henry agreed. “Otherwise, it’ll be obvious we were doing something else.” He felt doubtful about the whole scheme. What if Mrs. Barker asked if Delilah’s mom was going to be home? They couldn’t lie to her! It was okay to mislead her once in a while, but they didn’t usually out-and-out lie. And she was very unlikely to let them go to Delilah’s if she knew there was no grown-up around.