The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man's Canyon

by S. S. Taylor

  In answer, they pushed us roughly through the flap that served as the tent’s door. A couple of agents followed with chairs, and before we knew it, they had seated us with our backs to each other, our hands and feet tied to the chairs, and the chairs tied together so that we couldn’t turn them around. My wrists throbbed.

  “Don’t try to get away,” Jec Banton said as they left the tent. “You’ll just cut yourself.”

  We all sat there for a minute in silence. “This is insane,” Sukey said finally, struggling against the ropes. “What do they think they’re doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Zander whispered. “But we’ve got to get out of here. Did you see all that equipment out there? They’re going to get to the treasure ahead of us.” He was sitting next to me, and out of the corner of my right eye, I could see him trying to turn his head to look at me. “Please tell me you don’t have the map with you.”

  I was silent.

  “Great. It’s all over. Why did you bring it?”

  “I was looking for the secret canyon,” I hissed back at him. “Why did you come after me? If you hadn’t, you all could be rescuing me right now.”

  “Stop it, you two,” Sukey said. “We’ve got to figure something out. M.K., can you get to your knife?”

  “No,” M.K. said. “Not tied up like this. But I’m trying to rub the rope against the back of this chair. There’s a little piece of metal and I think I can do it.” We listened for a moment to the sound of her struggling.

  “They’re keeping us prisoners!” Sukey said. I could hear voices outside the tent.

  “Shh,” I told her. “They’re coming back.”

  But she didn’t lower her voice. “When my mother hears about this, she’s going to be furious.”

  “Your mother,” Leo Nackley said, coming into the tent, Lazlo, Jec Banton, and Tex trailing behind him, “depends on BNDL for permission to fly to all of the exotic places she likes to fly to. I don’t think she’ll make too much of a fuss. And don’t be so dramatic. Until Mr. Foley gets here, we’re just going to ask you a few questions and keep you from trampling all over the site of what may be a very important find for the United States and the Allied Nations.”

  He stood right in front of Zander. “All right. Where’s the map? If you hand it over in aid of the expedition, I think you may have an easier time once Mr. Foley gets here.”

  Zander hesitated. Then he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Leo Nackley pointed his pistol at us. “Damn it! Where’s the map? Who has it?”

  None of us said anything, but I must have flushed because Lazlo Nackley called out, “He looks guilty, Papa. The skinny one with the glasses. He knows something.”

  Banton came over and put a finger under my chin, forcing me to look up at him. His skin was very cold. “Kit? That’s your name, isn’t it? Where’s the map, Kit? Where’s the map you showed to Mr. Mountmorris?”

  As long as we were talking, they couldn’t look for the map, so I decided I had to keep them talking.

  “Oh, there wasn’t anything on that map,” I said, much too fast, my words tumbling over each other nervously. “Nothing more than what you’d find on a tourist map or something. We thought if we came out here, maybe we could just find it, you know. But, wow, it turns out it’s a really big canyon and there’s nothing out here but rocks and more rocks, so we were just about to go home when you—”

  “Where is the map?” Leo Nackley interrupted. “We know that criminal friend of your father’s gave it to you at the market. This is the last time I’m going to ask.” Tex stood behind him, looking menacing.

  I couldn’t think of anything to do but just keep talking. “Nobody gave me anything,” I said. I met his cold, pale blue eyes and actually felt a chill go through my body. “We know you were friends with Dad and we know that you came here a long time ago looking for the treasure. But we don’t know anything more than that.”

  Something flashed across Leo Nackley’s face and then he scowled. “There’s no secret about that. We were good friends once.”

  “What happened?” I asked him, desperate now. “Why did you get him kicked out of the Expedition Society?”

  Nackley looked genuinely surprised. “Me? He got himself kicked out. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “But why was he kicked out?”

  “I’ll tell you why.” Francis Foley came into the tent, looking dusty and mad. “Your father had been lying to us. Last year, he was sent on an expedition to Munopia, to look for a new source of water for the cattle farms. We know that he found one, but he said he didn’t. He turned in incorrect maps to hide his discovery. That’s a violation of the BNDL statutes.”

  Jec Banton raised his eyebrows. “He didn’t tell you any of this?”

  “No,” I said. “None of it.”

  “Well,” Foley said, “he was probably embarrassed. He got caught taking money from a local group of criminals to keep the knowledge of the water source secret. He had lots of unsavory… associations. The truth is that he cared more about money than he did about being an Explorer.”

  “That’s not true,” M.K. said.

  “It is,” Foley said. “Now, where is that map? I know you have it. And if you won’t give it up, we’ll have to find it ourselves.” He nodded to the Nackleys and Tex. “Let’s search him.”

  I was desperate. “You can’t do that,” I protested. “I’m a U.S. citizen.”

  They stepped forward and Banton said, “Under the provisions of the Act Creating the Bureau of Newly Discovered Lands, section 9, paragraph 2, civilians possessing knowledge of the location of undiscovered lands or natural or cultural resources are hereby required to share said information with the government under penalty of imprisonment.”

  “But I don’t know where the treasure is,” I protested. “How can I tell you if I don’t know where it is?”

  “He really doesn’t know,” Sukey said. “And the BNDL provisions apply only to people actively inhibiting the exploration of—”

  “Enough of this. Stand up,” Leo Nackley interrupted her. I felt my heart sink as he and Tex untied me from the chair and pulled me to standing. I could still feel the bite of the ropes on my wrists. They untied my hands and Tex tore my vest off and handed it to Banton, who started going through the pockets. I felt my heart sink as utility boxes clattered out onto the floor.

  I had run out of options, so I started shouting and flailing around. “This is against the law!” I yelled at them. “You can’t treat me this way. That’s unlawful search and seizure.” Leo Nackley pushed me back into the chair and Tex tied my hands and feet again.

  “Here it is,” Banton said, with a little gleam of excitement on his face. He was holding up the plastic bag in which I’d put the two halves. “Hidden pocket. The whole map’s here. They must have found the other half.” He replaced all of my utilities in the vest and tucked it under his arm. My heart sank. Everything was there, everything but the spyglass, which I’d shoved into my pants pocket after listening to Tex near the waterfall.

  “Thank you,” Francis Foley said.

  Leo Nackley turned to me. “You are a little liar, then. Your father was a failure. He had the whole map and he couldn’t even find the treasure.” He held the two halves of the map up to the light, and then he and Tex turned to go. “Alex must be turning in his grave. Lazlo, stay here and make sure they don’t go anywhere while we look at the map. We’ll see what he was up to.”

  He looked up at Foley and put his hand to his forehead. “Hail President Hildreth!”

  Twenty-seven

  They left with the map and my vest, leaving us alone in the tent with Lazlo.

  “Your father’s a coward and a criminal, Lazlo Nackley,” Sukey spat at him. “He’s going to hear from my mother’s lawyers when we get out of here.”

  Lazlo studied her for a minute and then he pulled a chair up in front of me and straddled it so he was facing me, his eyes only six or seven inches from my gla
sses. I could see every detail of his face: the freckles that spread out over his nose and a big, red, angry-looking pimple just under his chin.

  “Did you really think they wouldn’t find the map?” he asked after a minute. “Did you really think you could hide it in your vest?”

  I didn’t say anything and my silence seemed to make him mad. “We’re going to find the treasure,” he said. “We’re going to find it and the reporters are going to call it ‘the Lazlo Nackley Treasure.’ I’ll be famous. They’ll name the new Mountaineering Club clubhouse after me. Neville here knows what that is since she goes to the Academy.”

  We ignored him. I tested the strength of the rope that was holding my hands and feet to see if it was looser now. I could hear Zander and Sukey and M.K. trying to pull out of their constraints, too.

  Lazlo watched us. “What, you think you’re going to escape and go find the treasure yourself? BNDL would never allow that. They think this treasure is one of the most important ones in the New Lands. Do you know how much it’s worth?”

  “You think they’ll let you have any of the money, Lazlo?” Sukey asked him. “Think again.”

  “They want my father and me to find it and we’re going to. And they don’t care what happens to you.”

  “We’re just kids,” I told him. “What are they going to do to us?”

  He laughed. “They don’t care how old you are. All they care about is making sure the treasure doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. You don’t know what they can do.”

  “So they’re going to keep us locked up until you and your father find the treasure?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, we don’t know anything,” Zander told him. “That’s the truth. They found the map, so they can let us go.”

  “They won’t do that,” Lazlo said. “You don’t know these—” Suddenly, there was a whoosh and the beating of wings and a black form sailed in the open door.

  “Pucci!” said M.K. He had gotten the leather booties off and his metal talons gleamed. He gave a low squawk. I heard something hit the ground and then the parrot went for Lazlo’s face, beating his wings, threatening him with the metal talons.

  “Aaaaaaaaaa!” Lazlo hollered. “Get it off me!” He was waving his arms around wildly, which was just making Pucci beat his wings harder.

  “Be quiet, Lazlo,” Zander said in a low voice. “Or I’ll let him use his feet on you. You know what they did to the faces of protesters in Fazia, don’t you?”

  Terrified, Lazlo stopped yelling.

  “He brought my pistol,” Sukey whispered. “But I can’t get my hands free. Unless Wonderbird here has opposable thumbs, we’re still tied up.”

  “Actually,” M.K. said, standing up and shaking her hands free of the rope, the edges frayed where she’d been rubbing it against the chair, “you’re still tied up. But not for long.”

  Twenty-eight

  M.K. picked up the pistol and trained it on Lazlo with one hand while she untied Zander with the other. Zander untied me and we called Pucci off, stuffing a length of rope in Lazlo’s mouth so he couldn’t call for help. Then we tied his hands and ankles.

  “Let’s get out of here before Foley and his goons show up,” Zander said.

  “But what about the map?”

  Zander swore. “You’re right. But where did they take it?”

  “It must be in one of the other tents.” I looked down at Lazlo, who was still watching Pucci with a scared expression. I lowered my voice again. “We can’t leave Dad’s map behind. We’re going to have to listen to them talking and figure out where it is.”

  “Too dangerous,” Zander said. “We’d have to be right up next to the tents. We’ll be caught.”

  “Not with this.” I took my spyglass out of my pocket and showed them the listening feature I’d discovered. “I think I can figure out where he is without getting too close. Then someone can go get it. We’ll have to get them out of the tent somehow, though. Let’s go.”

  M.K. pinched Lazlo’s nose as we left the tent. We made our way along the outside of the group of tents and found a place to stand where we could see most of them but were shielded from view. I lifted the spyglass and pointed at each tent, listening for Leo Nackley’s voice. It was daylight now, but from the small number of IronSteeds left in the camp, it seemed that most of Nackley’s party had gone out scouting in the canyon. Somewhere, someone was frying bacon and eggs, and the smell that wafted over the camp made me so hungry I was ready to go in search of breakfast instead of the treasure. When I aimed the spyglass at a tent at the far end of the camp, I could hear the bacon sizzling in the pan.

  “Now that’s just torture,” Sukey muttered.

  From one tent we heard the sound of Tex’s voice giving instructions for digging and from another came the sound of music, coming over some sort of scratchy, old-fashioned radio. Just when I’d given up on finding them in the warren of tents, we heard Foley’s voice saying, “…isn’t clear. But it must be there. Damn it! This map doesn’t show anything. Maybe it’s a decoy. Maybe there’s another one somewhere.”

  Sukey and I grinned at each other. They hadn’t figured out the secret to the map.

  “Damn him!” Leo Nackley said. “He knew where it was. He must have! But when did he make the map?”

  Foley’s voice came through the spyglass’s tiny speaker. “Our intelligence sources reported that Alexander West must have completed the map not long after his second trip to the canyon. It’s possible that he discovered something. We would have known if he’d brought the treasure out of the canyon, however. And he certainly didn’t.”

  Zander and I glanced at each other. “Intelligence sources”? Dad had been right that the government was watching him.

  “Do you think the children know anything?” Foley asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s something about the middle boy. Mr. Mountmorris said he seems to be something of an expert on cartography. It’s possible he’s figured it out. We’ll have to interrogate them all to be sure, of course. We can use extreme measures.”

  I gulped. I didn’t like the sound of “extreme measures,” whatever it meant.

  The voices were coming from a smaller canvas tent on the far side of the camp and we watched it as we listened. There was some more back-and-forth about the map and then we heard a woman’s voice say, “Mr. Foley, he’s here.”

  “Oh good, thank you.”

  Through the spyglass, I saw them leaving the tent—and leaving the map and vest unguarded.

  “I’ll go. I’m smallest,” M.K. whispered. She darted away, stalking around the outside of the camp like a cat, keeping out of sight.

  “Where do you think they’re going?” Sukey whispered. “Can you see?”

  The four of us peeked around the tent again. I didn’t need the spyglass to see the giant silver airship with its BNDL logo on the side, Mr. Mountmorris’s face pressed against the glass at the front of the gondola as it slowly descended into the canyon.

  Twenty-nine

  The airship was called the Grygia and I remembered reading about it when it was built. It had cost millions and millions of Allied Dollars and BNDL had held a huge celebration, saying that it would allow Explorers to go into even more remote areas of the New Lands to look for resources. There had been protests, but ANDLC had handed out food rations to the protesters and they hadn’t lasted very long. I’d always been curious about the Grygia. According to BNDL, it was the biggest airship in the world.

  The giant, egg-shaped gas envelope was painted a glittering silver color that made it look like a huge cloud. The BNDL logo was painted in black on the side of the silver gondola, and below it, in fancy script, was the airship’s name. The gondola, where the passengers rode in luxury, was huge, and I remembered what I’d read about it being able to carry forty or more passengers for extended trips around the world.

  The airship settled down into the canyon and the door to the gondola opened. Agents Wolff and DeRosa got out first,
followed by Mr. Mountmorris. Agent Wolff was wearing her military uniform and her hair had been styled in an elaborate arrangement of silver knots and whirls on top of her head. Mr. Mountmorris was wearing a bright green suit made of some kind of shiny material that didn’t look like it breathed very well. He looked hot and miserable. Through my spyglass, I could see the huge red welt where Agent DeRosa’s head had hit the wooden floor in the dining room.

  The three of us shrank back against the tent, out of sight, just as M.K. came up behind us. “Got it,” she said, handing me my vest, which was reassuringly heavy. “Everything’s there. The maps, too. They left them right on the table.” Her eyes widened when she saw the airship and who had been riding in it. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I heard the door of the gondola open again through my spyglass. “Well?” Mr. Mountmorris called to Nackley. “Where are the children?”

  “Oh, they’re tied up,” Nackley said. “We’ll have to decide what to do about…”

  I didn’t need to hear any more. “Let’s go,” I whispered.

  The four of us started running. We didn’t look back.

  “We don’t have long,” Zander called back once we were out of sight of the camp. “They’ll be after us on the IronSteeds as soon as they realize we’re gone. We’ve got to go straight to this secret canyon.”

  “Um… about the secret canyon,” I started to say.

  “What about my pack?” Sukey yelled. “It’s back in the cave.”

  Zander waved her away. “There isn’t time. Don’t worry, we have everything we need in our Explorer’s vests.”

  We ran as fast as we could and were at the waterfall in forty-five minutes, completely out of breath and drenched in sweat. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t noticed we were gone and come after us, and I knew we didn’t have much time.