The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man's Canyon

by S. S. Taylor

  I had started to get excited about the map, about collecting atlases and other maps and figuring it out once we were out of the canyon. And then I remembered. I wouldn’t be figuring anything out. I wouldn’t be getting out of here alive.

  I sat back down, tucking the map back into my vest. I knew the others had read my mind because they sat back down, too, and we all stared blankly at the wall, trying not to think of what was about to happen.

  And then we heard Halla’s voice outside the door. “The Keedow wants them taken to the death chamber,” Halla told the guards outside. “I’ll do it. Can you open the door, please?”

  The locks clicked and we looked up from where we sat on the floor to see her standing there in the doorway. “Come on,” she said, not meeting our eyes. “Follow me.”

  You would think if you had just heard someone say they were taking you to the “death chamber” that you would do whatever you had to do to get free, but we were shocked, I think, and we followed, walking obediently along until she looked quickly in both directions and then leaned into the wall. There was a clicking of gears and a disguised section of wall swung out. “Quick,” she said. “In there. Right now.” Dumbfounded, we did as she said and a second later heard the wall click back into place behind us.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “You’re not going to kill us?” I was disoriented now, not sure what was happening, and even more confused by the strange low light in the tunnel. There seemed to be some torches here and there, but otherwise it was completely dark and I wasn’t sure if we were headed up or down.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I had to pretend so Hanno wouldn’t know I’m helping you. Follow me.” We ran through the darkness, following Halla, and I remembered what M.K. had said about hidden tunnels behind the canyon walls and underneath the ground.

  “Okay,” she said finally, leading the way to the top of a short staircase lit by a large torch. “Here we are. We’re near the mine.”

  “Wait,” I said, stopping. “Hold on a minute.”

  “What?” Sukey asked. “What’s wrong, Kit?” They were all looking at me.

  “We haven’t been thinking straight,” I told them. “We haven’t been…” I turned to Halla. “Your brother is right. We’re not going to tell anyone, but that may not… that may not be enough. There are fifty or so people out there. Before, they were just looking for the treasure, but now they’re looking for us, too. All they’d have to do would be to look behind the waterfall and find the cave. With the IronSteeds, with their equipment, They could come down in a glider or a SteamAirship, break open the ceiling… they’d have no trouble getting here.”

  “Well,” Halla said confidently, “they wouldn’t get very far.”

  I adjusted my vest. “No, you don’t understand. They have weapons, airships, all kinds of tools. And if something happened to them, more people like them would follow. They’re working with BNDL. That’s a… a government agency. They would never give up on the treasure… or whatever else they’re hoping to find here. Our father knew about your people and the canyon, but I think he had other secrets, too, and these people will do anything to find out what they are.”

  For the second time since I’d met her, Halla looked worried.

  “They’re bad, these people,” I told her. I paced around the narrow tunnel for a minute. “I have an idea, though. What if we made it seem like these men—the Nackleys, they’re called—what if we made it seem like they’d found the treasure, only in Drowned Man’s Canyon? What if we put some gold, some of the treasure, there, and we led them there so they would find it?” I was making it up as I went, but I knew it was a pretty good idea.

  “They’d stop looking,” Sukey said. “No one would ever come here looking for it again. You’d be safe forever!”

  “That’s pretty brilliant,” Zander said, grinning at me. “I can’t believe you thought of it.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Somehow, Zander making fun of my intelligence was the most comforting thing I could have heard. I turned to Halla. “Would you mind if we take some of the gold?”

  She thought for a minute. “If anyone finds out, I’ll have to say you overpowered me and stole it. And you’re going to need horses and saddlebags to carry it out. But I can get you some, I think.”

  Fifty-one

  Twenty minutes later, we heard Halla whistling, and we came out of the tunnel into the darkness to find her standing there, leading four sturdy-looking mares and holding a torch. “Pucci!” M.K. called when she saw him fly down to greet us. “He was waiting for you by the mine,” Halla told us. “I told him you were okay and I think he understood me.”

  Pucci landed on Zander’s shoulder and nuzzled his cheek, making his happy little chuckling noise. And then, to everyone’s surprise, he hopped over onto Sukey’s shoulder and did the same.

  She broke into a grin. “I’m happy to see you, too, Pucci,” she told him, giving him a little scratch on his head.

  “We can use the light to load these saddlebags,” Halla told us. “The guards are out at the other end of the canyon. They won’t be back for ten minutes.”

  We started bringing the gold up from the mine, piling the gold bars into the leather bags and then scattering the ingots and statues and jewelry on top. Even when we’d almost filled the bags, the mine was still full of gold.

  As we worked, I thought of something and I looked up at Halla. “Your ancestors were the ones who nursed the conquistadores, the Spanish men who brought all this gold into the canyon.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “They buried them as far away from the canyon as they could, in case someone was looking for them.”

  “And what about Dan Foley? I’ve been wondering about him. Did he make it back here? Did he return to the treasure?”

  “No,” she said. “There was a flood. They say it was one of the biggest ever in the history of the canyon. He drowned in the caverns. My ancestors found his body and buried him here in the canyon. They weren’t leaving as much by then. There were too many stories about us, too many people getting curious about where those stories came from, and they didn’t want anyone finding the body and looking around too much.”

  I imagined a lonely grave, a wooden cross marking it. Poor Dan Foley. He’d found his golden treasure and he didn’t even know it.

  We kept loading, and when we were finished, we buckled the saddlebags in place. Halla led the way over to the solid rock wall next to the waterfall. As we watched, she pressed on a small piece of quartz embedded in the wall and a huge door swung open to reveal another large cavern that seemed to rise upward into the rock.

  “It’s a shortcut, to get you past the waterfall, and it meets up with the other tunnel before the gertoms,” she said. “You’ll be fine on the horses. The birds don’t like them and the cats usually don’t mess with them if there’s more than one. Besides,” she grinned and handed Sukey her pistol, “you’ve got this.” Then she pointed to the knife, which was back on M.K.’s belt. “And that.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Thank you.” She leaned over to kiss me on the cheek and I was glad that it was dark because I’m sure I blushed, though I would have loved to have seen Zander blush when she did the same to him. She kissed M.K. and Sukey, too, and we mounted the horses and waved to her. Pucci lighted on her shoulder for a moment before taking up his post on Zander’s saddle.

  “Goodbye and good luck,” she called. “Maybe I’ll come over to the other side someday and find you. If the Keedow ever lets me.”

  “You should do that,” Zander and I said at the same time.

  “West,” Zander said. “That’s W-e-s-t. We live on Oceania…”

  “Oh for god’s sake,” Sukey muttered. “We better get going.”

  We waved again and as we started into the cavern, I turned around one last time and, in the dim light from my vest light, saw Halla standing against the black space of the canyon. Her expres
sion was a mystery to me and when I turned around again, she was gone.

  We rode for hours in silence, exhausted, not wanting to break the spell of everything we’d seen. I think I must have fallen asleep at some point, because when I woke up, we were almost back to the main part of the cavern. This tunnel traveled deep down into the rocks, and over my head I could hear the underground river running fast.

  “I think we can make it,” I told them. “If we can get out of the caverns without the Nackleys seeing us, then I think we can do this. The trick is to redirect them. We’ll have to get back to the cave and pile all of this gold up, cover it with dirt and sticks, make it look like it’s been there for a while. Then I think they’ll believe that it’s the real mine. The cave is high enough up in the canyon walls that it’s possible it’s never been found. Then we’ll just have to figure out a way to make them think they’ve found it. And then they won’t go looking for the people—”

  “Not so fast,” came a voice out of the darkness.

  Fifty-two

  We pulled our horses up and looked into the blackness ahead to find Tex, standing next to his horse and grinning at us like a cat who’d just caught a mouse.

  “Get down off the horses,” he said in a grim, low voice. “Get down now and you won’t get hurt.”

  “What are you doing here?” Zander asked him.

  “I could ask the same of you,” he said. He raised his hand then and we could see he was holding a pistol.

  “What do you want?” Zander asked. I knew he was stalling for time.

  “I want to know what you saw,” Tex growled. “Did you find the treasure? You were talking about gold. Tell me what you found. Tell me what you saw.”

  “We didn’t find anything, you no-good crook!” M.K. spat on the ground, near his horse’s feet. I thought I saw Tex smile, but I couldn’t be sure in the dark tunnel.

  Zander whistled then and Pucci flew up in the air, squawking and flapping his wings, dive-bombing Tex’s face, the metal talons out and ready to strike.

  “Get that bird away!” he yelled, waving his arms, and the pistol, around wildly. “I’ll shoot him, I swear I will.”

  “We’ve got to lead him away from the canyon,” I whispered to the others. “We can’t let him go any farther.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” Sukey asked. “Ride!”

  At the exact same moment, we all dug our heels into our horses and all four took off as though they’d been stung. We careened through the cavern, the light from our vest lights bouncing off the walls here and there, the horses’ hooves clattering on the stone. A couple of times, I felt my horse’s hooves slide on the cavern floor and she almost lost her footing, just barely managing. I was aware of Zander and M.K. ahead of me and Sukey behind me, and of Tex’s horse behind her, its hooves also slapping on the stone. It felt like a carnival ride, hurtling through the darkness.

  We rode on.

  It seemed like no time at all before we were back in the main part of the caverns, racing away from the underground river and then entering the part of the caverns inhabited by the slugs.

  It was the slugs that brought us down.

  As the rushing of the underground river dissipated and we entered the narrower section of the caverns where the slugs were, I could see their glowing green light all over the floor, feel my horse scramble to keep her footing on the slimy surface, and I called out to warn the others.

  But I was too late. As we came clattering to the end of the tunnel, we could hear the waterfall just outside and the lights on our vests bounced along the slug-covered walls. Zander and M.K. and I managed to stay astride our horses, but Sukey’s horse slid and she went tumbling off. Her horse got back on its feet, but Sukey was lying on the ground, holding her knee.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at me.

  I pulled my horse up to try to help her. “Here,” I said, reaching down. “Grab my hand. We’re almost to the end of the tunnel.”

  But Tex was already on top of us.

  “Stop right there,” he called out, pulling up his horse.

  From the ground, Sukey managed to toss her pistol to Zander and his voice came out of the almost-darkness. “I’m not afraid to shoot.”

  He already had it out and pointed at Tex. There was just enough illumination from M.K.’s light that I could see his mouth fixed in a serious line, his eyes narrowed.

  “Neither am I. So put that down,” Tex said. “You wouldn’t want it to go off by accident.”

  “It wouldn’t be an accident,” Zander said.

  Pucci was perched on Zander’s saddle and he made little worried sounds in the back of his throat, but he didn’t try to attack Tex again.

  Tex dismounted and reached down to pull Sukey to a standing position, holding her in front of him with her arms pinned behind her back. “Well, we wouldn’t want there to be any other accidents,” he said. “Drop your weapon. I want to know what you know about this canyon.”

  I looked at Sukey. She was terrified, her amber eyes wide, though I could tell she was trying to seem brave by struggling against Tex’s grip. She must have realized she didn’t have a chance, because she finally gave up, standing quietly.

  “Let her go!” M.K. cried out.

  Tex and Zander held the weapons on each other, neither of them moving.

  “Let them go,” Sukey said. “You can do whatever you want with me, turn me over to BNDL, lock me up in a BNDL prison forever. I’m just a crazy Neo. No one’ll care. Just leave them alone. They don’t know anything.”

  “Get down off your horses,” Tex said.

  There was a long silence and finally Zander said, “Do it.” We got down and Zander looked at Sukey and then back at Tex.

  “Leave her alone, you big bully!” M.K. said, going for her knife.

  “Hold her back,” Zander whispered and I grabbed her, holding her while she struggled against my grip.

  He and Tex just stood there opposite each other, neither one of them moving, the weapons locked on each other. I had the feeling it could go on forever, the two of them standing there, neither one willing to give up.

  But after a couple of minutes, Zander dropped the pistol on the ground and said, “Let her go,” in a quiet voice. Tex let go of her and Sukey struggled away and came to stand next to us, glaring at Tex.

  He scowled at us. “What did you mean when you said they’ll never find the people? Did you see someone in the city in the canyon? Did you see the people?”

  My heart sank. If he knew about the city and the fact that there were people there, it was only a matter of time before the Nackleys did, too.

  There was a long silence and then I said to Tex, “You can’t tell the Nackleys about the canyon. You can’t. Do you know what will happen to these people? My father was an Explorer and he always said that Explorers had done more harm to the world than good. He always said—”

  His face like a mask, just his eyes and mouth illuminated in the dark cavern, Tex grinned. I could hear laughter in his voice as he finished my sentence, “—that the world would be a lot better off if all the Explorers had just sat at home and smoked their pipes in their armchairs. He couldn’t resist himself, though, could he?”

  He laughed again. “Nope, my friend Alex could never resist a good adventure.”

  Fifty-three

  We were speechless for a couple of long moments.

  “You knew Dad?” I asked finally, when I’d found my voice.

  “I did,” Tex said, gruff again, as he put his pistol away.

  “But you’re working for the Nackleys,” Zander said. “Aren’t you?”

  “I had to make sure that they didn’t find the canyon. I knew Leo from the Academy, and when he told me he had new information about the treasure, I figured he must have gotten hold of one of Alexander’s maps somehow. Now we’ve got to get out of here. They’re all after you and we can’t risk leading them into the caverns.” He picked up a length of rope that had fallen on the ground and mou
nted his horse. “Follow me,” he said. “We’ll talk once we’re back in Drowned Man’s Canyon.”

  Not sure what else to do, we all mounted our horses and followed Tex back through the tunnel.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” M.K. said. “Aren’t we supposed to be heading back toward the waterfall?”

  “Just follow me,” Tex said in a gruff voice.

  I was starting to get nervous, when he pulled his horse up and reached out to push on the wall of the tunnel. A door, carved into the rock like the ones in the secret canyon, opened and we followed him out into blindingly bright light. It was late morning now, already hot, the sun blazing overhead in a blue sky. Pucci seemed glad to be back in the open and he soared high above us, making happy circles in the sky.

  “This is the door I saw you disappear into!” I told him. “The day they caught us and brought us to the camp.”

  “I thought someone followed me that day. There are hidden doors like this one all over the canyon. That’s where we get all the stories about aliens and monsters sneaking out of the walls of the canyon. The people of the canyon would wear costumes when they had to come out to hunt or forage during droughts or when crops failed.

  “Now,” he continued, “your idea about the gold is a good one, but we’ve got to move fast. They’ve got scouts all over the canyon. I’ll ride ahead and—”

  But we weren’t going to let him get away without telling us more about Dad.

  “How did you know Dad?” Zander asked. I could hear that he was still suspicious of Tex. “I don’t understand.”

  “I went to the Academy with Alexander and Leo Nackley and Raleigh McAdam,” Tex said. “My last name is—”

  And suddenly I realized that we had seen a picture of him, a younger version, without a beard.

  “John Beauregard,” I said. “You’re John Beauregard?”

  “That’s right. I grew up in Texas and when I moved out here they started calling me by my childhood nickname, Tex. Your father found Ha’aftep Canyon and entrusted me with his secret.”