Alvarado Gold (19 page)

“I know about as much where it is as anyone here could tell me. When we were at the courthouse, I copied the information. The cross for the cemetery was right off of 206. We’ll find it.”

As we turned onto 107, the roads deteriorated more and more. We were headed into the wide-open expanse of lush green Texas prairie. The four lanes turned into two and finally into a one lane road with no divider marks and little traffic flowed in either direction. The enormous brick homes were few and far between. They appeared to be built on about twenty acre spreads. I was seriously thinking we’d made a wrong turn when I spotted a clearing. “Stop, Clay. Over there.” I bolted from the van but when I reached a fence, stopped to wait for the others.

As I started over the barbed wire fencing, Mel jerked my arm. “Do you think we’re trespassing?”

“It has to belong to someone but I doubt if they’ll come looking for us. The cemetery is on the state registry as a historical site.”

Mel looked at me pensively. “Did you try to get any permission to come out here? Anything?”

“I asked, Mel. No one seemed to care. Ms. McCall told me we were welcome to look around. Why is everyone so worried? This is supposed to be fun.” They were concerned. Maybe I should have been, too. Were they upset about Donnie or worried we were poking around where we shouldn’t be? “If you guys aren’t all right with this, maybe we shouldn’t go out there digging around. We’ve planned this all summer and with all the clues Grandpa gave us, you know he wanted us to look. Shall we?”

Clay bent down and pushed down the lower strand of barbed wired with his boot and lifted up the upper with a gloved hand. “Ladies.” We all climbed through.

I hurried across the green, grassy field. The thick blades gave way to sandy soil revealing the cemetery set back in a grove of trees. As I stood in the shade, I shivered in the early morning breeze gazing out at over a hundred graves, some of which had succumbed to the elements. Some of the limestone markers were crumbled but I recognized many of the names–the Vinsons, the Shopshires, and finally the Barnes’ section.

I closed my eyes and listened to the early morning call of the sparrows. I took a deep breath filling my lungs with the cool, damp morning mist. Then I listened to instincts and years of training. I went to the middle of the cemetery. Our great-great-great-grandfather, John, was the first person buried there. The oldest graves were in the center.

I bent down over his grave and dusted it off. “Here he is.” The sight of the old stone not only piqued my interest in antiquities, but my sense of family history. I looked around. Except for Eric, we’d assembled exactly where we’d stood three months earlier at Grandpa’s funeral. Now, we exchanged glances. Our heads bowed, but none of us spoke. The last few weeks had been a tumultuous whirlwind of emotions for everyone, especially me. A new found family, a love gained, then lost. Our lives were scattered pieces of a puzzle disrupted by our parental siblings who couldn’t understand each other’s needs and Eric, my own brother, who couldn’t comprehend mine. My thoughts formed unspoken prayers. One for old John, the one who buried the treasure; one for Grandpa Addison, who gave us the clues; and one for the four of us. I raised my head to finish what we’d begun, shading my eyes to survey the horizon.

“Where’s that outcropping of rocks?” I asked.

Clay pointed a gloved, leather finger. “Back over there is something.”

I reached down and broke off a yellow flower that grew a few feet away from John’s grave. I gently laid it on the stone.

We walked across the field until the land dipped down to make a small gorge. Black, freckled granite rocks jutted up out of the flat surface. I picked up a small piece, “These are igneous rocks. They’re formed when volcanoes erupt causing the magma to rise above the earth’s surface.”

Clay took the small piece from me and turned it over in his hand. “When did you become a rock hound?”

“The natural frontier of pharaonic Egypt was formed by granite. When my boss, Jack, went on a dig he told me of riding the feluccas down the Nile to the island of Sehel where the granite has been engraved since the Middle Kingdom.”

Susan showed more interest in my explanation of the rock formation than anything else. “What did the engravings mean?”

“They were inscriptions of gratitude by hundreds who made the journey safely through the perilous first cataract.”

Susan blue eyes danced with excitement, “How exhilarating. Can you imagine crossing over white rapids afraid you wouldn’t make it? Then being so filled with gratitude that you did. That’s what this adventure is for me. Here I am waiting for this adventure to take me by the hand and, yet, scared to death that it will.”

“Maybe we’ll need to carve our thanks when we get out of this cave.” Clay rubbed his glove over the exterior wall.

“We don’t need to worry. Trust me.” We’d reached a wide opening at the mouth of the cave I crouched down and started to crawl in. “Anyone going to join me?”

“Wait, Addie. Look at the ground. There are a lot of fresh footprints. Tennis shoes. I doubt if any of our ancestors wore Adidas.”

“He’s been here.” Clay crouched down as he examined the soil. “Do you think he found the gold?”

“All we can do is check it out ourselves.” I bent down to avoid the rough granite overhang. “Are we going to crawl in there or not? I’m going. Anyone else?”

Much to my amazement, Susan fell in behind me. “I’ll go.”

“I will stay here and stand watch.” Clay nervously cleared his throat, “Tell us what you find.”

“Not going in, Clay? You’re sending in two women while you guard the door?” Now I could understand why he’d had three wives.

“I don’t like close places. Just hurry up.” He’d been calm all morning. Now he was nervous and Susan dared to go. When would I get these three figured out?

“Coming, Mel?” I queried.

“No. Someone has to hold little Clay’s hand. We’ll keep a look out for good old Donnie.” I figured the real reason was she wasn’t about to ruin that fifty-dollar manicure of hers.

It surprised me that I could stand up once we were in the mouth of the cave. It was cold and damp. I tried to keep thoughts of bats and crawly things out of my mind. Susan stood beside me. “Point your flashlight in front of us. See anything?”

“Not much. It seems to get bigger as it goes back. It is so dark in here.” Susan walked toward the back of the cave.

“Stop. Maybe we shouldn’t go any further.” The word cave brought to my mind beautiful limestone formations. This was a collection of huge granite boulders sitting on top of each other. The spaces in between, like cavities in a six-year-olds’ sweet tooth, formed the cavern. “We’re not prepared for this.”

A low, moaning whisper came from somewhere in the darkness.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.” I’d heard it too. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The warnings from both the old chief and Gary flashed through my mind. I felt it wasn’t a good time to share any of that information.

Susan tried to walk ahead and look back at me at the same time. “It almost sounds like someone calling. Gives me the creeps.”

“It’s probably some geological formation outside. When the wind blows, it makes a reverberation in here. Or water. I don’t know. This isn’t exactly my area of expertise.” We continued to walk back into the dampness of the cave. I glanced at the illuminated dial on my watch; surprised we’d been in the shaft close to twenty minutes. “What do you see up there? Anything?” She didn’t answer. I could hear the muffled sounds of her shoes against the floor of the cave. A weak whimper escaped from her lips. I heard a dull thump, then nothing. My stomach tightened.

“Susan. Susan. You okay?” I waited for her answer, but it didn’t come. “Where are you?”

I should have heeded the warnings. I hadn’t planned on any of us getting hurt. I honestly hadn’t thought about it being dangerous. She wasn’t that far ahead. I scanned the area in front of me with my flashlight. I still couldn’t see her. She’d been swallowed by the cave.
Where is she?
I walked about fifteen steps when I almost fell on top of her. She was crumpled into a shallow hole. I could tell it had been freshly dug by the soft piles of wet dirt. The heaps of damp soil had caused her to fall. Her leg bent to the side. “Susan. Can you stand?”

“No. I think it is broken,” she groaned.

We were too far back into the cave for the others to hear us. “I’ll have to leave you, just for a moment. I won’t be long. We’ve only been in here twenty minutes or so.” I hated to go but I had no choice.

I hurried toward the opening. The blackened interior of the cavern made it difficult. Like a moonless night. A small incandescent bulb was the only star to guide me. I stumbled and scratched my palms on the granite walls. Finally, I saw daylight and crawled out on hands and knees. “Susan’s hurt. We need to get help and take her to the hospital.”

“What happened?” Mel started into the opening.

“Don’t go in there. It is really dark. She fell into a hole. Donnie or one of his men has probably been here looking around. The hole couldn’t be more than a day old. We need to get help.”

“I left my phone on the seat in the van.” Clay started running. “I’ll go back call for the paramedics.”

“We need to splint her leg. Can you go in there, Clay? She’ll never make it out. It will take emergency people an hour to find us.”

Clay turned to head back across the field. He stopped. “Do you know first aid?”

“No. Not really, but I did splint someone’s leg once on a research assignment. I can do it good enough to get her to the hospital. Go on, call.” I ducked back down and crawled into the cave. “Mel, I’m going back inside.”

I groped my way back to the edge of the pit. “Susan. I’m here.”

“It really hurts. I feel faint.” Her voice faded away a bit. “It’s so cold.”

I couldn’t see her face but she sounded like she’d been crying. “Susan, we’re going to have to wait awhile.”

“I heard something.” She gripped my hand to ease the pain.

What if Donnie was inside the cavern? But where was his car? How could he have gotten here? I tried to dismiss it as hysteria. “Do you think you were pushed? You don’t think there’s someone else in here do you?”

“No. Listen.”

I could hear the sound of gurgling water. I remembered the spring and what Gary had said about a subterranean well. The way the splashing sounds echoed from the cavern walls and the moaning wind blew through the crevices, no wonder Susan thought she heard someone calling out.

“There’s water someplace close by.” My pants grew damp from the wet sand and I shivered.

“Cold, Addie?” Just like Susan, thinking about someone else’s discomfort.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m going to look around while we wait for Clay. Someone dug this hole recently.” I shined the flashlight around until it landed on an old metal box, cracked and rusty but intact. It had been thrown up against the side of the cave.

We waited for what seemed like an eternity in the cold, dank stomach of the earth. I prepared to start back when I heard Clay’s voice, “Where are you guys?”

“Here.” I pointed the beam of the flashlight against the ceiling so he could find us. I was in awe of his courage. He’d been terrified to come in here but Susan was more important than his own fear. “What did they tell you?”

“They said to splint it, if you knew what you were doing, and bring her into Walls Hospital in Cleburne. You do, don’t you?”

“I can do it. Do you have anything we can use for the splint?”

“I threw in a small tent. We can use the tent poles and some duct tape I had in the back of the van. Hurry, Addie. I don’t want to be in here much longer.”

“I’ll work as quickly as I can.”

“I guess I have a phobia,” Clay spoke rapidly. “When I was about eight, the neighbor had a cellar with an old trap door. They’d made it into a playroom for the kids. I went down there with my friend and his brother and became engrossed in some toy. When I turned around, the others were gone. I started to hurry up the steps when the hatchway slammed shut. I was too small to push it open. I froze. Scared to death I was going to be left in the crypt.”

“We’ll hurry. Where’s the tape?” I reached out into the darkness in the general direction of Clay’s voice.

He handed me two aluminum tubes. They didn’t feel like they’d be much support. “Here. Do you think these tent poles are strong enough?”

“No. I don’t.” The pipes were about an inch in circumference. “I’ll tape her broken leg to her good one. This is going to hurt, Susan can you handle the pain?”

“Go ahead. Let’s get this over with.” She moaned.

Clay reached under her arms and pulled her from the hole onto the rough floor of the cave. She stiffened and screamed, then lost consciousness as I lined up her legs to tape them together. My stomach knotted. I doubt if I could have been that brave.

When I’d finished, Clay eagerly started toward the opening. “I’ll drag her out. You light the way.” He gestured toward the box. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I think it was what was in the hole back there. I want to look at it in the daylight.”

Clay slowly pulled Susan to the mouth of the cave. We had some difficulty getting her through the opening. Mel formed a stretcher out of the fabric from the tent. Clay gripped the corners at one end and Mel and I took the others. As we headed for the van, Susan started to come back around.