The Secret of the Dark (18 page)

But just as we felt we could make a dash for the trail to the tourist cave, we heard them coming back. Neal stepped in front of me and flattened both of us to the wall.

“They couldn't have gotten out,” Rick was saying. “I figure Gallagher is alone though. I'm sure Valerie fell after I left. Maybe we could just let him search and leave. He won't find anything.”

I shuddered. How close I had come. Maybe the thought made me move. My pack scraped against the wall.

“Listen,” Rick said.

I held my breath as silence pressed against us.

“I don't want Gallagher leaving here, either,” said Cy Biddleman. “By now he knows too much.”

“He can't get out. We know the only two exits. And the second took me years to find. It'll have to be dug out some now to put in a walkway.” Rick's voice whined, another sign he was talking to a man he feared.

“Time's in our favor. I'll wait in the store. You go back down to the second tunnel.”

Rick grumbled. “I'm hungry and thirsty. I'll get some stuff and then come back.”

“You won't neither. You kin sit and think about how stupid you are while you wait. That'll take your mind off yore stomach.”

Our chance to get out was gone. They could wait forever if they needed to. But they wouldn't have to. We couldn't last forever down here, trapped underground.

“What'll we do?” I whispered after the two had left.

Neal tugged at my hand and led me back up the passageway. When we were way back up the tunnel, almost to the breakdown, he lit a candle and said, “I don't know. But I feel safer talking here, waiting here till we can think of something.”

Small as the candlelight was, it sent shadows leaping up the cave walls. It seemed colder. I sat and pulled my legs up close to my chest. There was a security in being with Neal, but there seemed no way for us to get out.

“Did Rick have a weapon?” asked Neal.

“What?”

“A gun, a knife, any weapon?”

“I don't think so, or I didn't see one. He didn't need one to taunt me from across the pit.”

“I might be able to overpower him, even knock him out.”

I thought of the strong arms that had held me when he kissed me, even though I had struggled. Those kisses seemed so far away now. The thought of Rick kissing me made me shiver again. But I had liked it. Rick wasn't the only one who had been a fool. I had even enjoyed the devilishness of Rick, the risk of liking him.

“Valerie. What do you think? Help me think of ways we might get out of here.”

“I'm sorry. I was thinking.”

“About our problem?” Neal was too intuitive.

“Neal, the time you told me to leave Rick alone. I thought you were just jealous.”

“I was.” He pulled me close and held me in his arms. There wasn't a romantic feeling to it, our situation was too frightening. But he was saying he still cared, and he was there for me.

“Val. There's no use remembering the past. Right now, all I know is that I care so much for you, and I want to get you out of here. I want us to have more time. When I found you gone and possibly in trouble, I knew how much you meant to me. I want that feeling to have time to mature and grow. I want us to have a future.”

“Oh, Neal. So do I. I want that so much.” I clutched him tightly, as if that would keep me from losing him. We sat that way for a minute.

He took my arms and pushed me away, brushing my lips with his, but saying with his actions that we had other worries.

I stared at the candle. I had no ideas. Even if Neal overpowered Rick, we still had to find the other way out. And Rick had said it would have to be dug out. It might only be a tiny hole, big enough for bats, small animals, not people.

We had both sat quietly, thinking. I had no answers, no suggestions. I was suddenly so tired that my brain refused to work at all.

“Look!” Neal said abruptly. He pointed to the candle.

“What?” The candle was burning low. “Is that the only one you have?”

“No, the flame!”

“Neal, what is it? Say what you mean.” I heard the excitement in his voice but I had no idea what he had discovered.

“See how the flame seems drawn to the right instead of burning straight up?”

I saw it, but why was that so exciting? “Yes, so?”

“I thought it seemed colder here too. There's a breeze. Air from the cave is going on outside, drawing the candle flame toward a hole.”

“But even if we could
see
a hole, that doesn't mean it's big enough to get out of. All I see here is a big pile of rocks.”

“Any hole is worth investigating. And if there's another exit to this cave there could be dozens.” Neal started scrambling into the pile of dirt and rocks at the end of the passageway. “Let's just hope it's not solid rock, suitable only for bats.”

I grabbed the candle and held it up so Neal could search.

“That's the way. No, look, the flame is straight now. Move it over here.”

I got the idea finally. A stream of air would move over it, pulling the flame toward the hole.

Perhaps the rock and debris had fallen, closing up an exit Maybe it had never been large. When we found it, I felt only despair. It was a crack the size of a banana. I voiced my disappointment.

“Well now, city girl. You get a lesson in digging.” Neal bounced a kiss off my nose. Suddenly I didn't even mind him calling me city girl, reminding me that Rick had called me that. I was. But I guess everyone knows how to dig, especially if your life depends on it.

It wasn't easy, and it took a long time, but it was mostly dirt, not solid rock, and finally using a sharp rock and a knife that Neal had in his pack — even though the blade broke off — we began to see daylight. And blue sky had never looked so beautiful.

“It'll be a squeeze,” Neal said when he judged the hole big enough to try.

“I'd squeeze through almost anything to get out of here.” Could anything frighten me after this?

Neal pushed me forward first. Dirt filled my eyes as I pushed upward, wiggling to loosen and get past packed ground. But I got my shoulders through and then was able to use my arms to lift out my body.

Neal handed out my pack and his, and then his shoulders wouldn't fit. I dug frantically from atop the hole, blinking my eyes to get out the dirt so I wasn't half blind. Then I had to adjust my eyes to the light.

When the tunnel looked bigger he tried again, and this time by twisting and shoving he was able to pop through. I gave him a hug before he could lift himself all the way out.

“Out of my way, woman. I don't want to be a cave man forever.”

“Welcome to the twentieth century.” I was able to laugh and tease a bit and it felt wonderful. The sun felt great, the air all around me. I stood and spun around.

“Look. Neal, oh, look.”

CHAPTER

20

N
EAL
'
S
eyes were full of dirt, too, and were blinded by the light at first. I had been so intent on getting him out, I hadn't looked around. Right down the mountain was Granny's cabin! We had come out at my rock. The cold air I'd felt there that first day, the air that had made Granny cold at midday — it was coming from the cave. I laughed at my thinking it had been the presence of a ghost.

Then the laughter faded. That was my first meeting with Rick. And right here was almost my last meeting with him, if you didn't count his appearance in the cave to see what had happened to me.

If I had investigated then.… But what city girl would poke around looking for the source of cold air on a warm day?

I wanted to run down the path to Granny's. But I could scarcely walk. My feet were skinned and raw, my whole body achy and sore. Neal wanted to carry me, but I vetoed the idea. He was tired too, and I wanted to get home by myself. So I limped ahead. The sun was low. Another day had passed.

Home. Granny's seemed like home. And it was when we burst in to find Dad and Rue seated on the couch. Both jumped up and hugged Neal and me.

“Whatever has happened? Look at you. Where have you been?”

I looked at Neal and knew what I looked like. He was covered from head to toe with dirt. His dark hair looked gray, even his eyebrows were sandy colored.

“We were worried sick,” Rue said. “Fleecy said Neal went into a cave to look for you last night, but no one knew for sure where you were. Granny has been almost totally in her own world. I'm not sure she even knows we're here. When we called last night and found you missing we made arrangements to come on the next flight. We rented a car in Little Rock and got here just a short time ago. But she's been asleep or wandering in her mind ever since we came in.”

I ran to Granny's room. She lay huddled in the bed, her eyes closed, but I suspected she wasn't asleep. “Granny,” I whispered.

Her blue eyes flew open. “Valerie, child. You're back. I thought I told you not to go.”

I had to laugh at her scolding me, but dirty as I was, I sat on the bed and gathered her into my arms. When did she tell me not to go? Surely I'd have remembered that.

Granny got up and came to the living room to hear our story. Neal had called the sheriff and his father by the time I got back. He'd had to threaten someone to get off the line, but I guess his voice sounded serious. The party line must have been all ears. Why had no one heard my strange calls and reported them?

Neal had left his car on the road and now said he could get home by himself. That was after we'd told what we knew of our ordeal, and I had given him the tape recording to give to the sheriff. I didn't want to hear it again myself.

The rest of the story came out the next day when we'd cleaned up, gotten some rest, and had all gathered at the Gallaghers for dinner.

Neal and his father had been with the sheriff and said he'd need to talk to me later, when I felt up to it. Rick and Cy Biddleman were both in jail. As we knew, they'd tried to frighten me so Mr. Biddleman could get Granny to sign over papers selling him Granny's land. He was going to give her five thousand dollars, a lot in Granny's thinking, and she'd thought it might help Rue in her work. Then the Biddlemans could develop the wild cave from the other entrance, the one Rick had found high on the countain.

It was near where I'd seen Mr. Biddleman that day with his gun. The voices I'd heard were he and Rick talking underground. They'd crawled out when Mr. Biddleman turned back and saw me. He'd worried that I'd seen where he came out.

“Why didn't Rick find the exit we used?” I asked Neal.

“I guess he was looking for a big hole, one more obvious.”

It was the threat of Rue and Dad coming that made them take me in the cave to leave me until I fell into the pit or starved. They had to hurry or Rue would put a stop to the sale.

The sheriff reported what Mr. Biddleman had said, “I never meant to hurt no one. Since she was a furriner, I thought she'd scare easier. But she got as stubborn about staying as that old woman did about signing the papers.”

Granny had listened to the story. “I don't like him,” she added to the conversation.

It occurred to me that she'd said that before. “Granny, when you said that before, did you mean you didn't like By Golly?”

“Hillard Talley's a fool, but I don't like Cy Biddleman. He was never any good that I know of.”

We all laughed at Granny's opinion. If I'd only listened to her before. It came out now that she had tried to warn me. She had gotten some insight on what might happen, but she couldn't put it into enough words to make me understand. She kept giving me pieces of her fear, but I had taken them all to mean something else.

Mr. Biddleman had done the calling to try to scare me. He had written — or pasted up — the letter. Then he made Rick put the bats in my room. Rick had turned on the recorder, by then thinking of his own ways to scare me. He knew I was alone in the cabin that night. Mr. Biddleman had seen Granny go in the cellar and fall He had shut her in, surely not wanting to hurt her before she sold the property to him, but maybe thinking he'd scare her too.

“Come on, ‘furriner,'” Neal teased. “Are you still hungry? I am.”

Mrs. Gallagher had put a great meal on the table, and we all took seats around it, giving thanks that we were safe and together. It felt like a party.

“You know,” I said, when I'd taken the edge off my hunger with ham and cornbread as good as Granny's. “I really felt like a foreigner when I got here and for a long time afterward. But I realize I don't feel that way anymore. Thoughts of New York seem foreign to me now. I don't know if I can get used to the noise again.”

Everyone laughed at that confession. But Dad made the most surprising announcement of all.

“I'm glad you said that, Valerie. How would you like to stay in Catalpa Ridge?”

“Stay? You mean longer than the end of the summer?”

“I'd forgotten how beautiful it was here,” Rue said. “And how peaceful. I felt a little of that in the rural areas where we'd traveled. And the people in those areas seemed so happy.”

“Maybe you want a few pigs and a chicken or two?” Dad asked.

“I wouldn't go that far. But your father and I decided, Valerie, that we can turn out books from anywhere. We'll have to fly to New York occasionally, but I'm sure Granny will be glad to keep you company while we have to be gone.”

“I reckon I could look after her,” Granny said. She hadn't tuned out of this conversation. Maybe she'd underestimated her ability to keep me out of trouble, but I guess she thought she'd try again.

We laughed and talked throughout the dinner. Then while the table was being cleared and the dessert and coffee prepared, Neal motioned to me to follow him.

“I'd follow you anywhere, Neal Gallagher,” I told him when we were alone on the front porch. “You saved my life.”