“If it really is a stash of Montezuma’s lost gold,” Kate said, “the whole thing could add up to 21 tons.”
Jenny let out a low whistle. “Damn,” she said. “Could the cave be big enough to hold all that?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “From what Jake and his interns can tell from the initial scans, it looks like the part of the cave that’s under Daddy’s room continues to slant downward. Daddy must have built some kind of platform to serve as a foundation for the floor of the room and to seal off access to the rest of the cave — or cavern, depending on what we find down there.”
“Has that girl had any luck coming up with a solution for the combination to open the trapdoor?” Jenny asked.
“Amy,” Kate said. “Her name is Amy. She’s smart as a whip. I like her. So far she doesn’t have any hard and fast ideas, but she thinks that the red stones might be the points of some kind of symbol that meant something to Daddy.”
“A symbol?” Jenny frowned. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “Maybe the emblem of an organization he belonged to or something.”
“Daddy? Belong to something?” Jenny asked incredulously. “That just can’t be it. I can’t imagine him willingly wading into a group of people for any reason. He didn’t have a social bone in his body.”
“Not when we knew him, he didn’t,” Kate said. “But according to George Fisk, Daddy was a lot of fun when he was a young man. By the way, have you been by to see George this week?”
Jenny sighed. “I have,” she said sadly. “He’s on oxygen all the time now and he’s too weak to go out to his workshop anymore. But he’s so overjoyed to find out that Lenore Ferguson is his daughter, he’s perfectly content to sit and talk with her for hours. Even when he doesn’t have enough breath to speak, he just wants to be with her.”
In the wake of the disclosure of Mandy’s parentage, Elizabeth Jones insisted that George Fisk know her true identity as Alice Browning. She invited Pauline Fisk to tea one afternoon and introduced herself. Pauline, who appeared to have a capacity for graciousness none of them could fathom, took the news calmly. “Thank God,” she said simply. “You will bring George so much happiness in his last days.”
In truth, both joy and great sadness tinged the reunion of the two high school lovers. Beyond honest sympathy for her suffering, George took no notice of Elizabeth’s scarred face or crippled legs. He wept when he learned that Lenore was his daughter and instantly showed her the father’s love she had never known.
While he still had the strength to do it, George insisted that the three of them sit for a photographer. “Lenore should have a family picture,” he insisted. “I’ll find someone who will do it right for us, Alice. Please?”
Smiling at his inability to call her Elizabeth, the old woman gave in and agreed to his plan. George hired a photographer from Kerrville who came to Elizabeth’s house and posed them with great sensitivity, delicately arranging the trio so that Elizabeth’s disfigured features were gently turned away from the lens.
Now the photograph sat ensconced in a frame beside George’s chair, right beside the portrait of him with his wife, Pauline, and their deceased son, John. No one mentioned the younger Fisk’s part in Langston Lockwood’s death, or the fact that his gambling addiction played into Robert Marino’s hands as he tried to acquire the treasure in Baxter’s Draw for himself.
Instead, Pauline, Elizabeth, and Lenore concentrated on the sole reason for their new and solid alliance; caring for George as his death drew near. The three women put aside any acrimony or fault-finding over events that now existed only in the dim recesses of time to form a strange, but genuine family.
The Lockwood girls were included lovingly in this new unit, because in spite of the vendetta Langston waged against George for more than 50 years, the frail old man still thought of Langston as his best friend since childhood.
“Maybe we can go over and see George tomorrow and ask him about things Daddy might have joined when he was a young man,” Kate said. “It might help us solve the mystery.”
“This mystery,” Jenny said ruefully. “There will be another one. Of that, I have no doubt.”
Kate let out a weary sigh. “Surely we will run out of secrets Daddy kept at some point in time. I wish I could just ask his ghost to give us a list and be done with it.”
Jenny hesitated, and then asked, “Do you still hear his boots in the hall?”
Both of the older Lockwood sisters had experienced what they could only describe as “encounters” with their late father. Langston came to Jenny in a dream during the four days she spent alone in the cave in Baxter’s Draw. He instructed her to “look under the bridge.” When she woke up, Jenny turned over a painting and discovered a sketch of Alice Browning that ultimately helped them to discover the truth about her “death.”
It was then Kate admitted to her sister that since the shooting that crippled her shoulder and arm, Kate herself had felt their father’s spirit haunting the Rocking L. Although she had never seen or spoken to Langston Lockwood’s ghost, Kate told Jenny that she often heard his boots on the hardwood floor beyond the study door. The steps came to the threshold of the room and stopped, as if the man himself was standing there and watching his eldest daughter.
The sisters kept these events to themselves. They had no fear of any otherworldly version of their father, but neither wanted to make it known that they were seeing ghosts. A certain thread of instability ran through the Lockwood line, an impression more than strengthened by Langston’s suicide. Their grandmother, Sarah Williams Lockwood, had claimed the women in her family had what she called “the sight.”
Neither Kate nor Jenny had ever seen or heard a spirit before, but they were in complete agreement that if anyone could come back from the dead to badger the living, it would be their father.
“Yes,” Kate said. “I hear him walking around out there 2 or 3 times a week. It doesn’t bother me.”
Jenny scowled and addressed the empty doorway. “If you’re hanging around, you old bastard, would it hurt you to lend a helping hand sometimes?”
“Now, now,” Kate scolded. “Don’t taunt the dead.”
“Why not?” Jenny demanded. “The dead are sure as hell taunting us.”
74
Lenore Ferguson kept the Fisk home filled with fresh flowers from her shop. She carefully chose varieties that wouldn’t aggravate her father’s labored breathing, but she knew how much he missed being able to be outside puttering in his yard and workshop. Over the last few weeks, his health suffered a sharp decline. Now, he spent most of his time in his recliner tethered to an oxygen tank.
It was early morning. Kate and Jenny sat on the sofa across from George and described for him the events and discoveries of the past few days. The state of his health certainly negated any chance that he might reveal family secrets to anyone. More importantly, however, the old man still regarded himself as the Lockwood family lawyer and thus bound by the confidentiality of that position.
In one of the many cruel twists in Langston’s vendetta toward his boyhood friend, he’d continued to use George’s services as an attorney, even after stealing Irene Northrup away from him and having an affair with Pauline.
When the women finished speaking, George let out a harsh rattle of a laugh punctuated by the hiss of his oxygen machine. “Oh, I so loved your father,” he said. “Langston was incredibly clever about his puzzles and gadgets. When we were boys he was always studying historical codes and devising his own ciphers.”
Jenny shook her head. “It’s like listening to you talk about a completely different person than the man I knew,” she said.
“He was completely different back then,” George agreed, “and I’m so very sorry you never knew him the way I did.”
“So are we,” Kate agreed. “Do you have any idea what the symbol might be?”
“Actually, I do,” George said. “I suspect it has something to do with the Masonic Lodge.”
Kate frowned. “Daddy wasn’t a Mason.”
“Yes, he was,” George said. “He and I both joined the Lodge when we turned 18. It was a tradition in both of our families.”
“He’s right,” Jenny said. “On the way to Mason yesterday, I stopped at the cemetery in Hext. There’s a Masonic symbol on our great-grandfather’s tombstone.”
“Yes,” George said. “Weston Lockwood. He was a founding member of our local lodge.”
“But Daddy never left the ranch if he didn’t have to,” Kate said. “How could he belong to anything?”
“I didn’t say he attended meetings,” George explained, “I said he belonged to the organization. I paid his Lodge dues right up to the time of his death. Can you draw the pattern of the stones for me? There’s a pad of paper there on my desk.”
Kate walked over to the desk and came back with a pencil and a legal pad. She drew six circles on the top sheet and handed the pad to George, who studied the pattern for a moment. “May I have that pencil?” he asked.
She handed him the pencil and watched as George drew two lines. One started from the outermost dot on the bottom left side, continued up to the top mark, and back down to the outside dot on the right. The second line started on the middle left, came down to the center at the bottom, and out to the middle right.
“Here,” George said, holding out the pad. “I believe that is the symbol you need. The Masonic square and compass.”
Kate looked at the sketch and handed it to Jenny, who said, “Well, I will just be damned.”
“I don’t know the order in which you should press the stones,” George said, “but it shouldn’t take too many combinations to find the right one. And may I ask one thing?”
“Of course,” Kate said.
George looked up at her, his eyes alive with excitement. “Please come back and tell me what you find.”
An hour later, Kate handed the same sheet of paper to Amy, who was sitting at her computer workstation in the lab at the Institute. “Could this be what you’re looking for?” she asked the intern.
Amy’s face lit up. “Oh my God! Yes!” she exclaimed. “That’s it! That has to be it!” She swiveled her chair around and looked at Jake through the door of his office. “Dr. Martin! Come here, please!”
Jake came out of the office and grinned at Kate. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Corrupting my interns?”
Kate grinned back. “Solving your puzzles.”
Amy held out the sheet of paper and Jake instantly made the connection. “The square and compass,” he said. “Damned clever.”
“Dr. Martin,” Amy said, “we have to . . .”
Kate interrupted her. “Don’t worry,” she said. “My sister Jenny is saddling the horses right now. You up for a ride, Professor?”
“Doesn’t seem like to me I have much choice,” Jake said, but the gleam in his eyes betrayed his own excitement. “Give us a few minutes to throw some things together and we’ll be right there. Amy, get five headlamps out of the storage room and three coils of rope . . .”
“Do we need a pack horse?” Kate asked, watching him as he walked away still rattling off his list.
“Wouldn’t hurt,” he called over his shoulder. Then he bellowed, “Chris! Get out here!”
By the time everyone was assembled in the barn, six horses were saddled and ready. Jenny had put together some sandwiches for the group and filled a canteen of water for each of them.
It was noon by the time they once again found themselves standing in the hidden room in Baxter’s Draw. Jake and Chris dragged the old desk in front of the fireplace and helped Amy climb on top. “Okay,” she said, “here goes.”
Jenny and Kate stood on the opposite side of the room watching. They exchanged a look, and Kate said, “Keep your fingers crossed.”
On the third attempt, Amy found the correct pattern. As she depressed the final stone, the boards covering the trapdoor dropped down several inches and slid out of the way soundlessly.
Amy let out a triumphant yell and hopped down off the desk. The five of them formed a loose circle around the hole now visible in the floor. “This certainly explains why we never saw any indication of a seam,” Kate said, pointing to the ragged ends of the opening. “He made the thing work with whole boards.”
Jake turned on a flashlight and got down on his belly. He struck his head down in the hole and played the beam around. “There’s a sub-floor,” he announced. “The cover drops into a track and pulls away to the side. The door itself is set in the lower floor.”
He pulled himself away from the opening and illuminated the area so they all could see what was underneath. There, clearly visible under a thick layer of dust, was a hinged trapdoor held in place by a simple hasp secured by a padlock.
“I don’t suppose there’s a note that says where we can find the key?” Jenny said.
“That won’t be a problem,” Chris said. “I was prepared for this.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of bolt cutters. “I never leave home without’em,” he grinned.
“Good man!” Jake said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Do the honors.”
Chris positioned the bolt cutters and applied force to the handles. After several seconds, a satisfying clang echoed in the small space as the lock fell away. He looked up expectantly. “Do you want me to open it?” he asked.
“No,” Jake said, turning to Kate and Jenny. “I think that honor should be reserved for a Lockwood.”
Kate eyed the door. “That’s a bad angle for me,” she admitted, “but if you’ll run a rope through that handle, Jenny and I will do it together.”
She had hardly finished speaking before Amy produced a length of rope. Jake looped the end through the handle, securing it with a simple slipknot. He gave the rope to Kate, who took it in her right hand. Jenny stepped up beside her and also grasped the line. Together they pulled, stepping backwards as the hinges began to move.
After some initial protest, the door swung back to rest against the edge of the floorboards, revealing a square of inky blackness. The smell of stale, dank air instantly permeated the space around them. No one said anything for a minute and then everyone began talking at once.
“Hot damn!”
“We did it!”
“Would you look at that?!”
“Langston, you old . . . ”
Jake held up his hand for silence. “Okay,” he said. “Archeologist pulling rank here. From now on we do this my way.”
They all watched somewhat impatiently as Jake donned a safety harness, produced a helmet from one of his bags, and affixed his headlamp to it along with a tiny cylinder. “What’s that thing?” Jenny asked.
“I’m not completely cruel,” Jake grinned. “That’s an infrared video camera. “You can watch what I’m doing on this,” he said, pulling out an iPad in a rugged field case. He turned the device on, tapped a couple of icons, and handed the tablet to Jenny. She saw a live image of herself staring up from the screen.
“You’ve had all this stuff down at the Institute all this time?” Kate asked.
“No,” he said, “it was all in my trailer. I’ve done a fair amount of spelunking in my time. This is just a light rig. If your father’s craftsmanship is as reliable as I expect it to be, I imagine things will be pretty solid down there, but I want to make sure before any of the rest of you follow me.”
After painstakingly checking his gear for the third time, Jake swung his legs down into the hole. The beam of his headlamp showed a set of steps descending into the darkness. He gingerly put his foot on the first plank, continuing to apply pressure until the step took his full weight without so much as a creak.
He looked up at the circle of expectant faces, but made eye contact with Kate. “Wish me luck,” he said.
“That and more, Professor,” she smiled down at him. “Go find out what’s down there.”
As Jake descended into the lower level of the cave, the group watched on the iPad. Kat
e wasn’t surprised when the beam of his light played over a kerosene lantern like the ones mounted on the walls of the upper room. Jake produced a lighter from his pocket, trimmed the wick and lit it, a procedure he repeated with each lantern he found.
By the time he lit the fourth one, the chamber in which he was standing was bathed in weak, flickering light. The high contrast of the infrared image on the tablet screen allowed them to make out dark shapes aligned along one rock wall. When Jake’s voice came out of the tablet’s speakers they all jumped, and then laughed. They should have realized there would be a microphone on the camera.
“Looks like we’ve got some old chests down here,” he said.
“I’m assuming you can hear us?” Jenny said, leaning in toward the screen.
“Yes,” he said. “I can hear you.”
“How far back does the cavern go?” Kate asked.
“This is just a small room,” he said. “Maybe 15 x 20, but there’s an opening at the far end.”
“Which end?” Kate asked. “Toward the floor of the canyon or deeper back into the mountain?”
“Back into the mountain,” he said. “I can’t really see much in there, but if I had to guess, I’d say there’s a whole chain of interconnected rooms. It’s going to take a while to explore all of this safely. We don’t have enough equipment with us today to attempt it.”
“Dr. Martin,” Amy said, clearly making an effort to sound calm. “Would it be a breach of protocol to open one of those chests?”
“No,” he said. “I have a camera with me. Give me a few minutes to take some measurements and document everything in situ. Then I think we can risk opening one.”
Fifteen agonizing minutes later, Jake said, “Okay. Here goes.” They watched as he worked the latch on the chest and then carefully pushed the lid back. Even on the high contrast image, the group could make out a wild array of objects piled into the box.
Jake leaned down to examine one more closely and an intricately carved disk came into focus on the iPad’s screen.
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