The Box and the Bone

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  The Box and the Bone

  A Castle Court Kids Book

  Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  To kids and dogs everywhere

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Preview: Ghost Invasion

  A Biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Chapter 1

  CARLOS GARCIA HAD BEEN digging for a long time. Again and again he tromped on the old rusty shovel, scooped up a bunch of dirt, and threw it as far and hard as he could. He was digging a new private clubhouse in the Dragoland Pit, and the other two PROs, Eddy Wong and Bucky Brockhurst, were digging right there beside him. Sounds like fun, right? Wrong! Not so far, anyway.

  One reason that digging the new clubhouse wasn’t much fun was because the whole thing was just part of a big, fat, humongous argument. An argument that had begun early that morning when Bucky showed up at the baseball diamond carrying a basketball instead of a bat and mitt.

  Carlos and Eddy had been sitting on the fence at Prince Field waiting for Bucky for at least half an hour when he finally strolled up the sidewalk. He was wearing his baseball cap on backward and a brand-new pair of Reebok Pumps, and he was carrying a basketball. Right away, Carlos had a sneaky feeling that there was going to be trouble. “Look,” Bucky said as soon as they’d all said hi, “I’m tired of baseball. How about some basketball? Okay?”

  “Oh yeah?” Carlos said. “Basketball today, huh?”

  “Sure,” Bucky said. “And probably tomorrow too. And the day after that. I’m just plain old ODed on baseball. And besides, it’s not baseball season anymore.”

  Carlos couldn’t help smiling a little. He didn’t remember Bucky ever paying any attention to what season it was, back when they used to play basketball all year long. But now suddenly it wasn’t baseball season anymore—the very next day after Eddy hit his forty-ninth home run. Which meant, according to the rules they’d written up when Mr. A. loaned them Prince Field, that one more home run would make Eddy the first member of the Castle Court Hall of Fame.

  “Eddy, old Bro,” Bucky said in a phony-friendly tone of voice that managed to sound a lot like a threat. “What do you want to do today? Huh, dude?”

  Eddy didn’t say anything right away. Instead he ducked his head so a thick bunch of his straight, black hair slid down to hide his eyes—as well as what he was really thinking. But Carlos could pretty much guess.

  Eddy threw his ball into his mitt a couple of times before he answered, and when he finally did he didn’t sound particularly happy. “What do I want?” he said finally. “You mean I have a choice?”

  “What do you mean, do you have a choice? Sure you do,” Bucky said. “We’ll vote. Okay?” He looked at Carlos—the narrow-eyed stare that meant “Do it my way—or else!” “What’s your vote, Garcia? Basketball or baseball?”

  Usually Carlos voted Bucky’s way, even when he didn’t particularly want to. He didn’t exactly know why, except that living next door to the greatest fifth-grade athlete that Beaumont School ever had, you just kind of grew up with the habit of being a “team player.” That’s what Bucky called it—being a team player. But another word for it was pushover. And somehow, this time, Carlos wasn’t in the pushover mood. However, he wasn’t quite able to look Bucky in the eye as he said, “Well, I guess I vote for baseball.”

  “Yeah?” Bucky said. “You sure, Garcia?” It was a question, but it was also a warning.

  Carlos swallowed hard—and said he was sure.

  So it was two to one for baseball, and since Castle Court was part of the USA, it was a democracy. Right?

  Wrong! Not when one of the voters had it way over the other two in inches and pounds and muscles. And right at the moment Bucky’s two extra inches, fifteen or so pounds, and a whole lot of muscle were voting against baseball.

  Absolutely against baseball—but after a while the Muscle decided he might not insist on basketball if they could think of something else to do. Something entirely different. And that was how the PROs, as Bucky and Eddy and Carlos sometimes called themselves, wound up digging in the old unfinished basement at Dragoland.

  Of course, they’d dug clubhouses there before. Nearly every kid who lived in Castle Court had. The Pit, surrounded as it was by an old brick foundation wall, was a great place for dug-out clubhouses—deep, circular holes with ledges for sitting on all around the edge and a place for a table or fire pit in the center.

  When they were only second graders the PROs had cleaned out and deepened an old clubhouse that Carlos’s big brothers had started years before. And last year in fourth grade they’d dug a brand-new one. And each time, when the digging was all finished, they’d held a few meetings in it.

  The first thing you did at a meeting was to choose a club name and president. (Bucky was always president so that part never took long.) And then you sat around on the ledges talking about other secret stuff. About who would be the club’s official enemies, for instance—like a few guys who lived on Beaumont Avenue. And girls, of course. Almost all girls. But the clubs never lasted long. After the fun of digging was over, there never seemed to be a whole lot more to do.

  But now they were starting a new clubhouse in a new place. In the farthest corner, where no one had dug before because the ground was too hard and rocky. But Bucky thought the PROs could do it—easy. “It’s the best place in the whole Pit for a clubhouse,” he said. “Over here in this private corner, all by itself. It’s just going to take a little extra muscle, that’s all.”

  So, without saying much more, they’d started digging. There’d been a lot of grunting and puffing as the three of them stomped and scooped and threw, but hardly any talking. No one was saying much of anything. With this clubhouse, even the digging wasn’t turning out to be all that much fun.

  Chapter 2

  CARLOS AND EDDY AND Bucky had been digging silently for about half an hour when Bucky said, “Hey, watch it.”

  “Watch what?” Carlos asked.

  “Where you’re digging. This is my place. You’re supposed to be over there.”

  Carlos straightened up and inspected his hands for blisters. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because I started here, that’s why. And Eddy started over there. So this part of the circle”—Bucky walked over and kicked at the ground and grinned one of his “in your face” grins—“this nice solid part is all yours, Garcia.”

  Bucky went back to digging and after a minute so did Carlos. He slammed his shovel down into the “nice solid” earth and jumped on the top of the blade with both feet. The blade sank into the soil a few inches and then stopped dead with a funny screeching noise. Carlos pulled it out and tried again—and got the same results.

  “What was that?” Eddy came over and peered into the hole. “Sounded like you hit something.”

  Bucky stayed where he was but he obviously was interested too. “Probably just a pipe,” he said. “You just hit a pipe.”

  Carlos put down his shovel and picked up the trowel that was used for finishing the ledges. Crouching down, he scraped away the dirt that the shovel had loosened—and sure enough, right away he began to hit some metal. But it wasn’t a pipe
. What it was, it gradually became apparent, was a box. A box made of some kind of thick metal, like very heavy tin. As Carlos went on scraping and digging around the box, both Eddy and Bucky came over and squatted down beside him.

  “It’s a chest.” Eddy’s voice had an excited sound to it. “Like maybe …” He stopped and watched for a moment as Carlos’s scraping began to uncover a rusty padlock. “Like maybe a treasure chest?”

  “Wouldn’t be room for a very big treasure,” Bucky said.

  Carlos went on scraping. “Well, maybe it’s papers,” he said. “You know, important ones.”

  “Yeah,” Eddy said. “Secret ones. Like about the Dragomans and why they disappeared. Maybe some papers that would solve the mystery about the Dragomans.”

  The three PROs stared at each other. Everyone in Castle Court knew about the mystery of the family named Dragoman, who had been the first ones to buy a lot when the Andersons turned part of their farm into a cul-de-sac subdivision. And how, after they’d put in a driveway and a fountain and the foundation for a very large house, they just went away. Some people said it had something to do with a family quarrel, but nobody knew for sure.

  But what all the kids at Castle Court did know was that everybody hoped the Dragomans would never come back. Because Dragoland, as everybody called the vacant lot, was such a great place to play.

  “Here, let me.” Bucky stood up and, shoving Carlos out of the way, began to chop around the edges of the box with his shovel.

  Carlos didn’t say anything but he didn’t move much either. After all, old Brockhurst had just gotten through saying that this part of the circle was his. So whatever was in this part of the circle was his too. Right? So he went on squatting beside the hole and when Ducky’s shovel had loosened a little more dirt he reached in and pulled out the box with his own two hands.

  It wasn’t quite as big as a loaf of bread but it was pretty heavy, and made of metal, all right. Not as thick as iron but heavier than the tin used in tin cans. At each end of the box there were handles that had once moved up and down but now seemed to be rusted into one position. And on the front of the box there was a latch and a small, rusty padlock.

  Carlos pulled the box up out of its hole and was beginning to carefully brush off the dirt when Bucky bent over and grabbed it away. Carlos and Eddy, who were both still squatting, stared up at him as he tipped it from side to side and then shook it hard. At the first shake there was no sound at all, but when he shook it again, even harder, they all heard it. A heavy thump and a muffled metallic clatter.

  Bucky grinned. “Not papers,” he said, “something heavy with lots of pieces. Like gold nuggets, maybe.”

  “Yes,” Eddy said. “Like a bag full of gold nuggets.”

  “Well, whatever it is it must be pretty valuable or they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of burying it,” Carlos said.

  The three PROs stared at each other and then at the box. “Well, I’m betting on gold,” Bucky said. “Looks like we found ourselves some gold, dudes. I’ll bet it’s—” Suddenly he stopped and listened, and right at that moment Carlos heard it too. Somewhere, not far away, someone was yelling Bucky’s name.

  “Bucky,” the voice called. “Bucky. You’d better get home. Right this minute.”

  Muttering something under his breath, Bucky quickly shoved the box back into the hole and began to kick dirt over it. “It’s Muffy,” he said. “Look out. Here she comes.”

  Chapter 3

  THE MYSTERIOUS TIN BOX was back in the hole and covered with dirt, and the three PROs had picked up their shovels and were pretending to dig in other places when Ducky’s sister, Muffy, appeared on top of the basement wall.

  Muffy Brockhurst was nine years old, blond, blue eyed, pug nosed, and very dangerous. Not in the way her brother was, maybe—as in “black your eye and bloody your nose” dangerous. But Carlos knew from experience that, in her own sneaky way, Muffy could be just about as much trouble.

  Standing on top of the wall with her hands on her hips she stared down at Carlos and Bucky and Eddy. “You better get home right now, Bucky,” she said. “Gary’s been waiting for you for a long time and Mom is really mad. You’re probably going to get grounded.” Gary Harding was a college student who worked part time as a math tutor. Once or twice a week he came to the Brockhursts’ for a couple of hours to try to keep Bucky from flunking fifth-grade math. From what Carlos had heard, it was a pretty hopeless cause, but Gary kept trying because Bucky’s parents kept paying him.

  Still standing on the wall, Muffy tipped her curly blond head from one side to the other and smiled her most dangerous smile. “Another clubhouse, huh?” she said. “Another big, old, super-secret clubhouse.” Her tone of voice was definitely sarcastic. Sarcasm was one thing that Muffy had an above-average talent for.

  Watching Muffy, Carlos was trying to keep his shoulders from lifting in a nervous sort of twitch, when Bucky whirled around. Grabbing him and Eddy both by the fronts of their shirts, he jerked them toward each other so hard they almost bumped heads.

  “Shh,” Bucky whispered. “Don’t mention the box. And don’t touch it till I get back. Okay? Just leave it right where it is until we decide what to do with it. Until all three of us decide, I mean.” Then he took off running across the Pit to where Muffy was waiting.

  For a while after Bucky and Muffy had disappeared, Carlos and Eddy just went on standing there staring after them. Then, at the very same time, they turned and stared down at where the box was buried. Then Carlos sighed, grinned at Eddy, squatted down beside the hole, and began to brush away the dirt. Began—and then stopped. He looked up at Eddy. “Well, I found it,” he said.

  Eddy nodded encouragingly. “Yeah, sure. You found it. Go ahead.”

  When the box was partly uncovered, Carlos wiggled his fingers into the dirt until they were around the handles and pulled up—hard. A moment later the old tin box was sitting right there on the ground between them. Eddy reached out and jiggled the padlock.

  “Can you open it?” Carlos asked. “You got any tools with you?”

  Eddy, who really liked fixing things, usually carried a bunch of handyman stuff around with him in case something needed fixing. Carlos had seen Eddy fix everything from bicycles to wristwatches with stuff he carried around in his pockets.

  Eddy nodded. “I got some stuff, but I don’t know if I can open this thing.” He reached in his pocket and brought out a small screwdriver and an even smaller pair of pliers.

  It wasn’t easy. Eddy put the screwdriver into the padlock’s keyhole and turned and twisted. And when that didn’t work he began to use the pliers too.

  “Wish we had the key,” Carlos said.

  Eddy shrugged. “Probably wouldn’t work even if we had it. The whole thing is rusted together. I think we’ll just have to pry it apart.” Using the pliers to grab hold of the padlock, he began to twist it from side to side, but for quite a while nothing happened. It wasn’t until he’d tried three or four times, biting his lip and straining until his knuckles turned white, that there was a grating sound, a click—and the padlock fell apart. The mysterious tin box was open.

  Chapter 4

  FOR A MOMENT AFTER the padlock fell apart Carlos and Eddy sat frozen, like they’d been shot by some sort of a paralyzing ray gun. The reasonable part of Carlos’s mind was thinking, I’ll bet it’s just worthless junk, like rocks or something. But at the very same time another eager-beaver part was babbling, Gold! Maybe gold nuggets that have been buried there since the gold rush. Or jewels even. Diamonds and emeralds.

  Then, at the very same moment, he and Eddy both reached out, took hold of the lid, tugged—and it came open with a creaky, rusty squeak.

  Carlos noticed the smell immediately. A musty, metallic odor that drifted up from among a bunch of small bags. Small, leathery bags that seemed to be full of something lumpy—and very heavy.

  “Nuggets,” Carlos whispered.

  “Yeah,” Eddy breathed.

  But it wasn
’t nuggets—it was coins. Lots and lots of old, discolored, unfamiliar-looking coins. One by one Carlos and Eddy emptied the old, leathery bags out into the lid of the box and examined each bagful one at a time. Some of the coins were nickels and dimes, although the pictures weren’t the same as on modern coins. There were larger ones, too, like quarters and half-dollars, and some that weren’t familiar looking at all. Nearly all of the coins were covered by a crusty black film. All except the ones in the smallest bag.

  There were only three coins in the smallest bag. Large, reddish yellow coins with a woman’s head on one side and an eagle on the other.

  Carlos was a little disappointed. He really had been expecting diamonds, or at least gold nuggets. He shrugged and grinned at Eddy. “No nuggets,” he said.

  Eddy was turning one of the yellow-brown coins around in his fingers. “Yeah, but gold, maybe. I think these big ones might be made of gold.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. My dad had a coin collection once. He talks about it sometimes. And he has all these books about coin collecting. I think maybe the gold ones looked sort of like this. I’ll take one home with me and see if it’s like the ones in the books.”

  “But we told Bucky we wouldn’t take anything. What if …”

  Eddy nodded and put the coin back into the bag. “Yeah. You’re right.” He looked around nervously. “And we better get out of here. Somebody else might come along any minute and see this stuff.”

  Carlos agreed. He’d been feeling a little nervous, too, ever since they’d opened the box. And he went on feeling that way until everything was back the way they’d found it. All the coins back in their bags, the bags back in the box, the broken padlock more or less stuck back together, and the box reburied under a nice smooth layer of dirt.

  They were on their way across the cul-de-sac to Prince Field when Carlos asked Eddy if he thought they should tell Bucky about opening the box. Eddy said no right away.