by J.A. Sprouls
Chapter 29
They made it back to the geyser field and were about to go through it when they heard an uproar behind them. Obviously, the Wind Hag had noticed that the power sources were gone and wasn't very happy about it. Pigtail pulled his back pack off and reached inside. His hand emerged holding a couple of sticks of dynamite.
Wicket recognized the dynamite for what it wa and, hollered, "What the heck are ya gonna do with those?"
"I'm gonna blow the tunnel shut. At least, I hope that's what I'm gonna do," Pigtail said as he pulled the matches out the pack too.
"Everyone get going. We need to make it through the geyser field quickly once I light these puppies."
"Puppies, I thought you had dynamite. Man, my eyes are really playing tricks on me. I guess it's from being down here for all this time," Tally exclaimed.
"It's a figure of speech and no, there are no puppies here. Just a few giant horny toads," Pigtail explained as he lit the stick and tossed it into the tunnel entrance. He quickly lit the other stick and tossed it too. Then the group all took off for the other end of the geyser field. The horny toads proved to be capable of moving extremely fast when they had to. By the time they got to the other end the dynamite blew and collapsed the tunnel entrance. Dirt filled the air for a few minutes after the explosion occurred. Once the dust had settled back down they could see that the dynamite had successfully closed off the entrance.
"So what do we do now?" Wicket asked.
"I know exactly what we are gonna do. We've bought us a good deal of time with closing that entrance off so we are gonna go to the gold room and pile the gold wagons high with as much gold as we can and tie the wagons to a horny toad. Then we bring them back here and set them over a geyser. The force of the geyser will send all of us back up top and to freedom. So then the Wind Hag will have lost both her power sources and her treasure," Pigtail rubbed both his hands together as he told the others his plan.
"But do we really have time for that and will the geyser really manage to lift that much weight?" Jethro questioned the captain's plan.
"If it's too heavy then we will abandon the gold and grab plates like the girls suggested earlier and get ourselves up top. Our main concern is for everyone to get up top safely. So let's stop standing here and get to work."
They all took off to the gold room and headed for the wagons. Jethro stayed behind. When the Captain asked him why, he said he was going to time the geysers so that they would know which ones were gonna erupt and when. Pigtail realized that was a very good idea so he left Jethro to it.
Tally and Wicket were working with the ropes, making a harness for the horny toads to pull the wagons. Once they got the ropes fixed up and horny toads hooked to the wagons they pulled the wagons close to the gold so that it would easier for them to load the wagons. Then they all started to scoop up the coins, goblets, bars and plates and placing them in the wagons. They were working so hard that they were really starting to sweat.
"I'm not particularly looking forward to going back into the steam room after all this work. It's gonna be boiling," Tally said to Pill. She nodded in agreement and turned back to loading one of the wagons.
It took about thirty minutes for them to get all the wagons loaded with the gold. The Knarls couldn't understand the humans' fascination with the gold, but since they were all in this together they helped as much as they could. Being so small they could only each carry one coin at a time. But they did contribute to the loading of the wagons. They mainly just made sure to stay out of the way of all the gold being thrown into the wagons.
They had a done a pretty good job of emptying the chamber of its gold. There were only a few pieces left and they were all too big for any of them to attempt to move. Once they were done Wicket, Pigtail and Tally took the reins and steered the horny toads towards the geyser fields. The Knarls were not too happy at the thought of going up top by way of geysers but they didn't want to stay here and face the Wind Hag's wrath. They decided to go with Pigtail, they figured that he was the fatter of the group so their landing would be padded. The girls climbed onto the last wagon and each took a set of the reins figuring that they could steer the wagon together. That proved to be much harder than they had anticipated and they ended up almost turning the wagon over. They both screamed. Pigtail turned to see what the problem was.
When he saw the wagon leaning to the side her hollered at the girls, "Leave it; I'll come back for that wagon myself. I don't want you girls to get hurt. Now come on," he motioned for them to get onto his wagon. Once aboard, he got the horny toads moving again.
"Jethro, I need to go get the last wagon. You take over this one," Pigtail said as he jumped down and ran for the treasure chamber.
By the time Pigtail had made it back Jethro had positioned the wagons over specific geysers and had unharnessed the horny toads. The horny toads had scrambled up on top of the piles of gold of each of their wagons. Jethro then showed Pigtail which geyser he needed to get over. Once he saw to it that everyone had themselves tied-in safely, he headed over to his wagon. The Knarls, realizing they had lost their potential cushioned landing, headed for Tally's wagon and climbed on board with him.
Jethro yelled to the others, "Mine should blow first. If I don't make it up to the top then you guys need to get off your wagons as fast as you can. It will be a quick sequence for the geysers blowing after mine goes, got it?" They all gave him a 'thumbs up' and sat on their wagons, each of their hearts pumping like never before in anticipation to their escaping and being rich.
Suddenly Jethro's geyser blew and he and his wagon and horny toad went straight up into the air. They disappeared into the hole in the ceiling corresponding to that geyser and they all waited holding their breath.
Then there was a loud crashing sound from up top and then Jethro stuck his head down a hole and yelled at the others, "It works! Yahoo! It works!"
The others cheered and clapped and then just as suddenly as Jethro had been propelled upwards the girls, Pigtail, Zephyr and the wagon went flying towards the ceiling. They landed a few feet from the hole they had been pushed out of and landed with a hard sickening thud. The horny toad clambered down and stood in front of the wagon waiting to be hooked back up.
Jethro came running over to them and asked, "Are you two okay, no problems, no broken bones?"
The girls sat there for a few minutes catching their breath which had been knocked out of them on landing. After taking a few big gulps of air Lark replied, "That was so cool! I've never flown before. Now Wicket and Tally need to rig up something like that so people can fly, Now THAT would be a new up and coming thing!"
Pill was a little flushed from the excitement and was not nearly as excited with the ride they had taken as Lark was but at least they weren't underground anymore. It wasn't until she had gotten back up top that she realized she really didn't like closed in spaces.
WHOOSH! The sound came from their left and then there was a loud, "Yipee!!!!'" From Wicket as he landed with a humongous thump. Spring, the horny toad clambered down and stood in front of the wagon. Wicket hopped down and fixed the harness to him and then turned and waved to the others.
It was only a matter of seconds when Tally, the Knarls and Valiant were flying out of a hole. Unlike the others, none of them seemed to have liked the experience at all. The Knarls were rubbing their backside and looked rather put out. Once all the horny toads were harnessed up Jethro hollered for them to follow him. It took a bit to get through the geyser field. They were dodging geysers right and left before they had finally made it out of the geyser field. Once out they steered the wagons for the hideout.
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