The Eagle's Quill

by Sarah L. Thomson

  “It could be anywhere.” Marty looked around and shook her head. “Well, not anywhere, I suppose. The artifacts were all moved to their present locations around the time of the Civil War, remember?”

  “I remember, yeah,” Sam answered.

  “So maybe we could go to the library and get a map of the town from that era. That could give us some idea of where to start. Or the town historical society, that might be good. Once we dig up some information, we’ll—”

  “Information, huh?” Sam asked, pointing to a building just ahead. “That looks like a good place to get information. Hey, Theo, Evangeline, how about we take a look in here?”

  A sign on the building read GLACIER NATIONAL PARK INFORMATION CENTER. Sam led the way inside. The minute they were through the door, Marty darted away from Sam’s side.

  “Ooh, guidebooks!” she exclaimed. “And topographical maps!”

  Theo and Evangeline moved off into the information center as well. Sam hesitated just inside the door, looking over shelves of protein bars and water bottles and compasses and first-aid kits and lots and lots of books. Hiking guides. Fly-fishing guides. Wildlife guides. Wildflower guides.

  Information . . . right. This place was full of information. But what kind did they need, exactly?

  Restless, he wandered over to a spinner rack of postcards and gave it a whirl. He picked out a nice one of mountain peaks against a blue sky to send to his parents. His mom and dad still thought he was on the American Dream tour, visiting major historical sites and solving some puzzles along the way. He’d send them a postcard in a day or two, but there was no way he could tell them what was really going on.

  Beside the postcards was a whiteboard with Weather Report scrawled across the top. Below was written “Today: sun and clouds. Tomorrow: sun, turning cloudy in the afternoon. Tomorrow night: heavy rains expected. FLASH FLOOD WARNING!!!!”

  Great, Sam thought. Flash floods, Gideon Arnold, and Marty with a new guidebook. Which would be more deadly?

  He dropped the postcard into the pocket of his sweatshirt. A weather report was not the kind of information they needed right now. He caught sight of Theo across the store, standing with Evangeline in front of a map that reached from floor to ceiling. Well, that seemed like a good place to start.

  “Any clues?” he asked Theo when he reached his side.

  Theo shrugged. “It’s a lot of terrain to cover,” he said. “Especially if we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for. What we need is a place to start.”

  Sam looked at the map. He took a step back and tipped his head up and looked at it some more. “How big is this park anyway?” he asked.

  “Over a million acres,” Marty’s voice answered. She’d come up behind him, still holding a new guidebook with a finger marking her place, a bunch of brochures in her other hand.

  Sam sighed. “So we think there’s a clue hidden somewhere in a million acres of park land?”

  “Perhaps here, perhaps elsewhere,” Evangeline said. “If you and Ms. Wright will take a look, I will see if the rangers can tell us anything.” She set off across the store, headed for a pair of rangers in olive-green uniforms. Theo trailed behind her.

  “Come on, Sam. Focus.” Marty settled her glasses on her nose and leaned forward. “Do you see anything that might be a clue?”

  Sam shrugged. “How about that?” he asked, pointing. “Lost Lake. Because I sure am lost.”

  “Get serious. Oh! Goat Haunt Overlook!”

  “What? Goat Haunt? Why would we want to be visited by the spirits of dead goats?”

  “The drawing inside Benjamin Franklin’s key!” Marty looked around and lowered her voice. She tapped the pocket that held her little notebook and shot Sam a meaningful look. “Remember? The picture of a goat? Maybe that’s the clue.”

  “There was other stuff in that drawing too,” Sam said. “Is there anything here that looks like a foot or a head?” Usually arguing with Marty helped him think. But this time, his brain remained stubbornly blank. “Look, there’s the Flathead National Forest.”

  “But that’s not in the actual park.”

  “Do you think Ben Franklin knew the boundaries of the actual park? Did it even exist back then?”

  “Fine. But see, there’s a Goat Lick Overlook too.”

  “Will you stop blabbering on about goats?” Sam snapped.

  “Will you stop being so negative?” Marty snapped back.

  “Can I help you two?” someone asked from behind them. Sam turned to see a plump, smiling woman in a ranger’s uniform. “Are you looking for a place to hike or fish? Anything I can recommend?”

  “Uh, no thanks,” Sam mumbled, and he pulled Marty a few feet away. “I’m not being negative,” he told her in a low voice as the ranger turned to point out a good fishing lake to a man in a baseball cap. “There’s just no way a giant map is going to help. We can’t search every spot in this park that mentions a goat or a foot or a—”

  “Caractacus!” Marty exclaimed.

  Sam frowned. “Isn’t that some sort of eye disease?”

  Marty looked at him coldly. “Seriously? No—it’s a place!” She seized Sam’s arm and dragged him over to a rack of brochures. “I saw it before, only I didn’t realize . . . There!” She seized the shiny slip of paper and waved it in Sam’s face. “Theo! Evangeline! Come and look at this! Caractacus Ranch!”

  Sam caught a glimpse of several horses on the front of the brochure, along with a grinning family of tourists all wearing cowboy hats. “A ranch? Marty, this isn’t a Wild West show. What does a ranch have to do with anything?”

  “Caractacus was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite horse!” Marty said loudly. Startled tourists glanced at her over the shelves of books and camping supplies. She turned down the volume but kept waving the brochure at Sam, nearly swatting him in the nose, as Theo and Evangeline reached them. “It’s a clue. I’m sure it’s a clue. Benjamin Franklin must have sent us to find Thomas Jefferson’s artifact!”

  “Because of a horse’s name?” Sam took the brochure to stop Marty from whacking him in the face with it. “That’s a little . . . thin, don’t you think? I mean, for all we know George Washington had a dog named, I don’t know, Spot.”

  “He didn’t,” Theo put in, and plucked the brochure from Sam’s hand to frown at it.

  Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying, pet names? That’s what we’re chasing after now?”

  “It’s a better clue than ‘Lost Lake,’” said Marty frostily. “But fine. Go ahead. Find something better.”

  “By all means.” Evangeline, in her turn, took the brochure from Theo. “If you find something else, Mr. Solomon, we will have two avenues to pursue. And if not, we will try Ms. Wright’s idea.”

  Sam could not find anything better. He did try. But after flipping through books and brochures and guides and even coming back to stare at the big map until his eyeballs ached, he could not find anything that even resembled the ghost of a hint of a clue.

  “Caractacus Ranch it is,” Evangeline said. “I hope they have four rooms available.”

  “I hope they don’t expect me to ride a horse,” Sam replied. “Or—”

  He broke off as a pack of kids burst into the room from the sidewalk outside. One of them was wearing a black T-shirt and waving a gun. Sam jerked back as the kid pointed the pistol right at his chest.

  “Bang!” the boy shouted, and pulled the trigger. Water squirted out of the black plastic gun and splattered the front of Sam’s sweatshirt. Sam flinched. His elbow knocked over a display of bright silver whistles.

  The kid doubled over in laughter. Theo scowled at him. He didn’t move; he didn’t have to. Theo could look extremely ominous just standing still.

  The boy stopped laughing and fled back outside, followed by his friends. Sam could see the pirate skull on the back of his T-shirt.

  Theo picked up the display, setting it upright with a jerk and scattering whistles all over the floor. “Get a grip, Sam,” he sai
d. “We’ve still got supplies to pick up. We can’t just hang around here all day.”

  “Yeah, okay, thanks for—” Sam started to say, but Theo was already walking toward the door, hands in his pockets, head down, so that Sam suddenly found himself talking to the big guy’s back.

  “What’s his problem?” Sam asked, brushing water off his sweatshirt. Marty shook her head. Evangeline looked thoughtful. All three of them followed Theo out the door. Then Sam had to hurry back inside to pay for his postcard.

  CHAPTER TWO

  First they shopped. Sam and Theo and Marty had lost their smartphones, their backpacks, and a lot of their belongings when they’d been taken prisoner by Gideon Arnold the day before, and Evangeline, credit card in hand, insisted on replacing what had been taken.

  “But this is all so expensive,” Marty protested as Evangeline held up a waterproof, insulated jacket to her shoulder to check its size. She already had a new backpack at her feet, stuffed with more outdoor gear than a Girl Scout troop would need for a weeklong trek through the wilderness.

  “The Founders do not lack for resources,” Evangeline said, and gave her a quick, reassuring smile. It was the friendliest Sam had seen her look so far. Personally, Sam had no trouble spending the Founders’ money. He figured if he was going to dodge their traps and solve their puzzles, the least they owed him was a new phone with the latest apps.

  It took the rest of the afternoon for Marty to replace all the supplies that she’d lost and pick up several dozen more things that she considered essential. Sam, once he had a new backpack on his back and a new phone in his pocket, decided to leave her to it. He’d seen a shop on a side street that he thought might be worth investigating.

  He thought of asking Theo to come with him, but one glance at the boy’s face as he sat frowning on a bench, waiting for Marty to finish comparing GPS units, was enough to squash that idea. Theo looked like a guy who seriously wanted to be alone.

  So Sam promised to meet them all in twenty minutes, quickly scanned the street for suspicious characters or kids in pirate T-shirts, and spent fifteen of his free minutes in a little store that had a very nice selection of classic comic books and wasn’t too shabby in the junk food department. Marty didn’t like to venture out into the world without waterproof distress flares and enough protein bars to feed a very hungry army, but Sam had different priorities.

  Then they were off to Caractacus Ranch, with Evangeline at the wheel of their rented SUV. It didn’t take long to get out of town and for the view out of Sam’s window to shift from stores to houses to trees. Theo, up front next to Evangeline, kept his eyes on the map on his phone and gave terse directions.

  “You know, Thomas Jefferson was probably the smartest of all the presidents,” Marty said cheerfully as they drove. “He wrote the Declaration of Independence. Well, other people helped too. John Adams put in some stuff. But Jefferson did most of the work, and they followed his first draft pretty closely. And he made the Louisiana Purchase when he was president, which doubled the size of the United States.”

  “Louisiana isn’t that big,” Sam said.

  “Sam, really. Didn’t you ever pay attention in history class? The Louisiana Purchase was a lot more than just Louisiana. It included territory up to Canada. Jefferson was an architect too. He designed his plantation, Monticello. Plus he played the violin.”

  Theo’s low voice drifted back from the front seat. “Sure. He was a great guy. For a slave owner.”

  “Well.” Marty hesitated. Sam saw, with surprise, that for once she was not sure how to reply. “That’s true. Of course. Some of the Founders—”

  “He wrote, ‘All men are created equal,’” Theo interrupted. “How could the man who wrote that have kept hundreds of people as slaves? How equal were they? What a hypocrite.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good point,” Sam put in. Mostly he was just happy to see Marty stuck for a moment, but the more he thought about it, the more he agreed with Theo.

  “But, Theo . . . ,” Marty began. Theo didn’t let her finish.

  “He kept his own children as slaves. Did you know that?” Evangeline glanced sideways at Theo, a concerned look on her face, then turned her eyes back to the road as he went on. “One of the women he owned, Sally Hemings, he had seven children with her. Four who lived to grow up. And they were slaves in his house.”

  “But he freed them,” Marty said, a little weakly.

  “Eventually. Some not until after he died. What a great guy.”

  Marty got quiet. Which was quite an achievement on Theo’s part.

  “Jefferson had kids?” Sam asked. He wasn’t sure he really wanted a part of this conversation; Theo sounded seriously irritated, Marty looked anxious, and Evangeline didn’t seem to be in any mood to interfere. But an idea had popped into his head.

  “Two daughters with his wife,” Marty answered quietly. “Two who lived to become adults, anyway. And yes, children with Sally Hemings as well.”

  “Then he’s got descendants?” Sam asked. “Like, you know, you guys? I mean, you’re not his descendants—Jefferson’s—but you are somebody’s. I guess everybody is somebody’s. But you know what I mean.”

  “Astonishingly, I do,” Evangeline said. “And yes. Thomas Jefferson has living descendants. As do all the Founders.”

  “So why are we the ones looking for this artifact, whatever it is? Can’t one of them find it?”

  “One of them could. His name is James Randolph,” Evangeline answered. “Unfortunately, he is unavailable at the moment.”

  “What, did he turn his cell phone off?”

  “He is, I believe, leading a trek near Annapurna, Nepal. Where phone service is not the best. He has not responded to any attempts at contact.”

  “Of course he hasn’t.” Sam sighed. “So it’s up to us?”

  “It seems to be. Mr. Solomon, you must understand that, for a great many years, there has been no serious threat to the Founders’ artifacts. This has led to some”—she paused, searching for the right word—“complacency. The Founders were not, shall I say, used to taking on an active role in protecting their inheritance. When my father . . .” She took a breath as if to firm up her voice. “When he disappeared, I knew that something was wrong. But as I could not tell the others exactly what danger we faced, I did not find it easy to convince them. It was only when the three of you encountered Gideon Arnold in Death Valley that the peril to all of us, and to the country, became entirely clear.” Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “One of my associates did believe me from the beginning.”

  Theo clicked his phone off suddenly and turned to stare out the side window.

  “She attempted to check on the safety of several of the artifacts,” Evangeline went on. “But we have had no word from her in quite a while, I am sorry to say.”

  “Oh.” Sam winced a little. That did not sound good.

  “And that is why I started the American Dream competition. The Founders needed allies. I believe we have found them.”

  Sam had to admit that made him feel sort of good. Allies. Him and Marty, on the side of the good guys.

  As long as the good guys were sharing all their information, of course.

  “Oh!” Marty said suddenly. “There’s a sign—Theo, didn’t you see the sign? For Caractacus Ranch. Turn left. Right there! No, I mean left there!”

  Evangeline did so, and they bounced up a gravel road, clouds of dust rising under the SUV’s wheels.

  “Look!” The car rounded a bend, and Marty pointed up ahead. “It’s the ranch! Oh yes. This is the right place for sure.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sam leaned forward to peer between Evangeline and Theo’s shoulders. A gravel driveway wound up a smooth green hill and led to a large white house. It didn’t look very much like a ranch to Sam. It looked more like something out of Gone with the Wind, a mansion with pillars all along a front porch and a dome rising above.

  “It looks like Monticello,” Marty breathed. �
��The dome, those columns. It was designed to look like Thomas Jefferson’s house!”

  “Let us hope you are correct, Ms. Wright.” Evangeline brought the SUV to a gentle stop in front of the house. They got out, and Sam took a careful look at the big white building. He began to feel a familiar excitement—the feeling of being one step closer to solving a puzzle—bubble up inside him. He had the sense that Marty had been right. Good old Marty. Their next clue really could be here.

  As they stood together by the car, the front door of the house opened and a man came down the steps of the porch. “Hello. Can I help you?” he asked, a cheerful smile on his face. He was as tall as Theo, and his thick brown hair was touched with gray. Cowboy boots on his feet scuffed through the gravel as he walked toward them.

  “I certainly hope so,” Evangeline said. “Are you the owner of Caractacus Ranch?”

  The man nodded. “Charley Hodge, that’s me. Were you hoping for a trail ride? I’m afraid we’re not going out on any more rides today. But we can put you on the list for tomorrow, if that’s what you’d like?”

  A trail ride! That was about the last thing Sam wanted. The last time he’d been on a horse, it had been a pony at his best friend Adam’s fourth birthday party, and the thing had given him an evil look and stepped on his toe. Since then he’d steered clear of horses. He’d take a dirt bike any day.

  “No thank you,” Evangeline said. “Actually, we’re here on . . . business. My name, Mr. Hodge, is Evangeline Temple.” She waited for a moment, as if to see if the name meant anything to him.

  If it did, he didn’t show it. Sam glanced over at Marty, worried. This guy didn’t seem like he’d be of any help. Maybe Marty Always-Wright had been wrong, just this once.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Charley Hodge said politely, but he looked kind of baffled. His gaze swept over Sam, Marty, and Theo, his confusion only increasing. “And these guys? Your kids, or . . . ?”

  As if she couldn’t help herself, Evangeline glanced sideways at Sam. “Ah, no.” Was he imagining that slightly appalled look on her face? She introduced the children and then slipped off her jacket, handing it to Theo. Underneath it she wore a pale-blue sleeveless dress. “Thank you for your welcome, Mr. Hodge.” She reached forward to shake his hand.