The Eagle's Quill

by Sarah L. Thomson

“Theo, move!” Sam choked out. He pushed Theo aside and shoved his face against the gap in the door. Desperately, he squeezed a high, loud whistle out of his parched mouth.

  Theo’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Sam? What are you doing?”

  “Disorientation is a sign of carbon monoxide poisoning!” Marty shouted over the roar of the flames.

  “Snickers!” Sam gasped. “Here, Snickers!”

  “Sam! Have you lost your mind? Get away from there!” Theo pulled at his shoulder again. “Maybe I can . . .”

  “No, Theo. Let him do it!” Marty got her words out just before a fit of coughing doubled her over.

  “You little sugar-loving maniac, come on!” Sam called as loudly as he could manage. Then an idea flashed into his head. He grabbed his backpack, lying on the floor next to his feet, and ripped it open, dumping the contents out on the floor. Raincoat, broken flashlight, water bottle—there! He snatched a bag of marshmallows and seized a handful, soft and sticky from the heat. He’d been thinking of a marshmallow roast when he’d stuffed them into his pack—a bonfire in the night, toasty brown treats on sticks. He just hadn’t imagined himself being inside the bonfire.

  Sam thrust his handful of marshmallows out of the gap in the door. “Candy!” he yelled. “Come and get it!”

  A few seconds later, a damp, furry nose nuzzled at Sam’s palm. He let Snickers have a marshmallow, and then pulled his hand back inside.

  “C’mon, Snickers,” he muttered. “More! More! You want more, don’t you, Snickers?”

  Snickers’s nose disappeared, leaving the gap in the doorway empty.

  “Oh, Sam,” Marty said. “It was a good idea anyway . . . What are you doing?”

  Sam was backing away from the door, stamping on flames under his boots.

  “Getting out the way,” Sam told her. “You do it too.” Theo bent, took a quick look through the gap in the door, and flinched back.

  “Everybody move!” he yelled.

  Marty jumped to one side. Theo helped Anita Hodge drag Charley’s body to the other. And Snickers slammed through the door, breaking its planks as if they were toothpicks, heading straight for Sam and the marshmallows in his hands.

  Five humans and one horse tumbled out of the broken door two seconds later. The humans coughed and slapped at sparks in their clothes and hair as they staggered to a safe distance from the fire. The horse whinnied impatiently and stuck her nose in Sam’s face until he fed her handfuls of marshmallows from the remains of the bag. “You earned them, girl. Good Snickers,” Sam told her, patting her as she ate.

  Charley Hodge, stretched out on the ground, began to stir and cough. Anita, kneeling beside him, stared up at the three kids in wonder. Marty handed her a bottle of water from her pack. “Drink it slowly,” she said.

  “Who are you children?” Anita asked, her voice weak. “I don’t know . . . what’s happening . . .”

  “Later,” Theo warned, bending down to heave Charley Hodge to his feet. “We’ve got to get out of here before anybody up at the house sees the fire.”

  Marty tossed Sam’s pack at him; she had snagged her own and the one belonging to Theo’s mother as she raced out the door. “The stable. We can get horses,” she said. “Looks like Sam already has one of his own.”

  An hour or so later, with Sam’s butt already starting to ache, Theo decided that they’d put enough distance between themselves and Caractacus Ranch to call for a rest. They slid off their horses, and Marty dug out more water bottles from her pack, passing them around. Charley and Anita Hodge had already recovered some of their strength, and Marty’s water and trail mix helped more.

  “I was sure we were going to die in that barn,” Anita said softly from her seat on a moss-covered fallen log. “Those men stormed in when we were at dinner three nights ago and grabbed us.”

  “We know what they wanted,” Charley said, swallowing half of the contents of the water bottle at one gulp. “The question is, did they get it?”

  “The Quill,” Theo said with a sigh. “Yes, they did.”

  Charley Hodge eyed him. “You know about . . . that?”

  In a gesture that took Sam back to a time two days ago, Theo rolled up his sleeve, revealing the tattoo on his arm. Charley Hodge’s eyes grew wide. “You’re a Founder?”

  Theo nodded. “And now we have to make a plan,” he said.

  “To get to New York,” Marty added.

  Sam, leaning against Snickers’s side and sharing a roll of SweeTARTS with her, shook his head. “How are we going to get anywhere? We’ve got no money. No car. We can’t just buy plane tickets.”

  “We can,” Theo said. “Evangeline made sure I knew what to do, how to get to the Founders’ money if I needed to.” He swallowed. “She wanted to make sure I could . . . go on. If something happened to her.”

  “Oh.” Sam nodded. “So we can get to New York after all . . . Wait. Why New York?” He swiveled around to stare at Marty. “You told Arnold the next artifact would be in Connecticut!”

  “Alexander Hamilton is buried in the graveyard of Trinity Church in Manhattan,” Marty said, as if this explained everything.

  Sam stared at her. “So?” he asked.

  Marty sighed. “So Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr, who was Thomas Jefferson’s vice president. A duel, Sam. Meeting on the field of honor? So Honor Under Trinity must mean Alexander Hamilton’s grave at Trinity Church.” She looked at Sam’s wide-eyed expression and put her nose up in the air. “Well, it’s not like I was going to give Gideon Arnold the real answer,” she told him.

  A slow grin spread over Sam’s face. Marty could drive you crazy, with her facts and her guidebooks and her constant chatter. But if you needed somebody on your side in a crisis, there was nobody better than Martina Always-Wright.

  “We can help,” Charley Hodge said. He leaned against a tree trunk, his face exhausted but his eyes determined. “I’m sworn to help the Founders any way I can.”

  “We’re sworn,” Anita said, reaching to take Charley’s hand. “And even if we weren’t, we’d help. After what you’ve done for us.”

  “Okay!” Sam fed Snickers the last SweeTART. “Then we’ll do it.” He felt his confidence returning, rising up through him. They weren’t alone after all, the three of them, and they never had been. Even when things had been at their worst—when a mountain lion had stalked them through a cave, when they’d been inches from burning to death, when someone who’d acted like a friend had turned into a traitor—the three of them hadn’t been alone, because they’d always had each other.

  So maybe Marty was a know-it-all who talked too much. So maybe Theo had his secrets, and he and Sam didn’t always think the same way about the Founders and the artifacts and how to protect the world from the likes of Gideon Arnold. And the two of them might be thinking right now, So maybe Sam’s kind of a slacker and he’s never serious and his jokes aren’t even all that funny.

  But the three of them could trust each other. Sam realized that he knew that, deep down, without question. He didn’t have to wonder if Theo or Marty would suddenly turn out to be like Abby, a liar or a traitor, working for the bad guys. They had their flaws—so did he—but they were on the same side.

  He remembered standing among the pieces of the giant chess game, surrounded by kings and bishops and knights, with his hand on the pawn that would win the game. Because the important thing about chess wasn’t how powerful you were. It was all about where you were standing, and who was standing with you.

  Sam spoke up. “We’ll find Hamilton’s grave.” Somehow, he thought. “Theo, we’ll find Evangeline too. And your mom.” Somewhere.

  Gideon Arnold had said it: “We have a special place for people of distinguished lineage.” A special place meant Evangeline and maybe even Theo’s mom weren’t dead. They were being kept somewhere—somewhere they could be found.

  It was a lot to do, and there’d be no one to show them the way. From now on, they’d be making their own decis
ions. It would be up to them.

  “I don’t know.” Marty looked over at Sam, and he could see the worry in her eyes. “The next artifact . . . Evangeline . . . Theo’s mom . . . how are we going to find all of that on our own?”

  Theo was staring off into the trees, and for the first time Sam could remember, the big guy looked just a little helpless. Like he didn’t know exactly which way to turn.

  “The same way we’ve done everything else so far,” Sam told his friends. “Together.”

  POSTSCRIPT

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  Guess who’s been exploring Glacier National Park in Montana! We really got off the beaten path. I got to try river rafting and horseback riding, and even got a close-up look at some of the wildlife. The Lewis and Clark Expedition passed close by here, you know-Thomas Jefferson sent them to find out all they could about our country. I’m finding out a lot too, especially about how important good friends really are.

  Sam

  Copyright © 2017 by Working Partners

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  First published in the United States of America in April 2017

  by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

  www.bloomsbury.com

  This electronic edition published in April 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Names: Thomson, Sarah L., author.

  Title: The Eagle’s Quill / by Sarah L. Thomson.

  Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2017. |

  Series: Secrets of the seven Summary: In Glacier National Park, middle school geniuses Sam, Martina, and Theo follow clues related to Thomas Jefferson as they tackle a new round of puzzles, riddles, and traps to find the next key left behind by the Founding Fathers, but Gideon Arnold, descendant of the infamous Benedict Arnold, is hot on their trail.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016023141 (print) • LCCN 2016049666 (e-book) ISBN 978-1-61963-733-7 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-1-61963-734-4 (e-book)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Puzzles—Fiction. | Antiquities—Fiction. | Secret societies—Fiction. | Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826—Fiction. | Glacier National Park (Mont.)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.T378 Eag 2017 (print) |

  LCC PZ7.T378 (e-book) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023141