“She’s right. I know we’re all concerned about our friend, but it’s not going to help Harold for you to go tumbling in after him,” Luther Eldridge agreed, hurrying up beside Bess.
I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m not tumbling anywhere,” I promised Luther, taking in his pale face and worried eyes. “But I am going in after him.”
“Absolutely not,” Morris cried. He had finally shaken off his horror and come running into the cave. I could see the rest of the crew milling about outside the entrance, trying to figure out what to do. “We already have one person down. We’re not going to add you to that list!”
“You have to wait for the ambulance,” Luther agreed.
“Harold wouldn’t be down there if it wasn’t for me,” I shot back. “I’m the one who convinced him to be in the movie in the first place. And it’s going to take the ambulance too long to get here.”
“Nance, don’t be crazy,” Bess said. “I’m worried about him too. But you can’t just throw yourself in there. We can’t even see how deep it is, and you have no way to get down safely.”
She had a point. I scanned the cave and the area outside it where the crew was set up. Rope. I needed rope. I didn’t see any. But I did spot something even better: electrical cords. Tons of them. They were hooked to the cameras and to the lights and lying in coils on the ground. There was more of the heavy black cord than I could ever use!
“Bess, get me the first-aid kit,” I said. I pulled up the long skirt of my costume so I wouldn’t trip, then I raced over to the nearest camera. The longest stretch of electrical cord was attached to it. In about three seconds I had the cord wrapped around my waist and tied tight. Good thing I had learned all about knots during my camping trips with my dad growing up—I knew this one would hold.
“Harry! Jim!” I cried to the two biggest grips. Grips are the people on a movie set who deal with the equipment—hauling, lifting, and moving. This would take muscles like theirs. “You two hold the other end of this.” I gave the cable attached to my waist a tug. “And don’t let go!”
“You can count on us,” Jim answered. He grabbed the loose end of the long, long length of cord and wrapped it around his own waist. Harry stepped in front of him and took hold of the cord with both hands.
“Thanks, guys,” I said. I marched back over to the lip of the cavern. The black electrical cord unspooled behind me.
“It’s so dark down there,” Luther said. “How are you going to see to help Harold?”
I bit my lip, thinking hard. “There’s a miniflashlight in my purse,” I remembered. “It’s the brown leather one in my seat on the bus.” Julie Wilson took off at a run toward the bus.
Bess rushed over with a large metal box. “The first-aid kit is way too heavy for you to carry with you,” she said.
I frowned. Bess was right. “Bandages are the most important thing,” I told her. She handed me several Ace bandages and three rolls of gauze. I stuffed everything into the waistband of my skirt.
Julie came running up with the little flashlight from my purse. “Thanks,” I said, taking it. I turned to Morris. “I’ll use this for starters. You get the lights moved up here and pointed down into the cavern, okay?”
“You got it,” he promised.
I glanced at Bess. She gave me a shaky smile. “Be careful.”
I nodded. “Every time I give two sharp tugs, let out about five feet of cord,” I called to Harry and Jim.
“Got it!” Harry called back. Jim gave me a thumbs-up.
I flicked on my little flashlight and jammed it between my teeth. As Morris winced, I made knots in both sides of my long skirt to get some of the material out of the way. Then I turned around so that my back was to the cavern. I grabbed the cord tight in both hands. Then I leaned back, letting my body hang out over the opening to the deep pit.
I stretched my left foot down and braced it against the rock wall of the cavern. Then I started walking slowly down the side of the wall. The boots of my Esther costume gave me surprisingly good traction.
After five steps the thin beam from my flashlight was all the light I had. The darkness of the chasm pressed in around me, surrounding me in black. “Harold?” I called as well as I could with the flashlight in my mouth. There was no answer.
Fear shot through me. He could be seriously hurt. He’d been unconscious for a while now, unless this cavern was so deep that he just couldn’t hear me. But chances were that he was gravely injured and needed immediate medical attention. Obviously I didn’t have time to take the wall of the cavern step by step. I sucked in a deep breath, then gave the cord two sharp tugs and pushed off from the rock wall with both feet.
And I was in the air. Falling.
Suddenly Harry and Jim grabbed the cord again. I pointed my toes on the rock and used my feet to steady myself. Then I tugged the cord two times again, and took another short flight. This was another trick I’d learned while camping with Dad—how to rappel down a wall. Of course, I’d only done it outside before, in the sunlight where I could see where I was going.
Usually I love the feeling of rappelling. But now all I could think of was Harold. Was he okay down there? And exactly how far down was he? I had already lost track of how far down I’d gone. The darkness confused my sense of distance.
I gave Harry and Jim the signal again, and I went swooping down. A spiderweb—one that spanned a quarter of the cavern opening—came rushing up to meet me. I didn’t want to go through it. And I really didn’t want to meet the spider big enough to spin that web!
But there was nothing I could do. I felt the web’s soft stickiness in my hair, then on my cheek. “Cotton candy,” I told myself. “Just pretend it’s nothing but cotton candy.”
I tugged two more times. The sticky strands gave a lurch, then pulled themselves free of me as I sped down another length of cord. Now the web was ten feet above me.
My feet landed back on the rock wall with a thud. I paused to give myself time to pull in a couple of long breaths—and I realized something was watching me.
My flashlight illuminated two eyes peering at me from a large hole in the wall. A snake? No, the eyes were too big. Too big for a rat, too. What else would live down here? A bat? I wondered, picturing the wicked teeth of those creatures. Or was it something bigger?
My stomach turned over. Could it be a mountain lion? Like Liz, from the movie? The hole was big enough for a mountain lion to use as a lair. No, it was too deep. Even a mountain lion couldn’t climb out of there. Right?
Whatever the thing was, I didn’t want to give it time to spring out at me. I tugged twice on my cord, and once again I felt myself falling through the air. This time, though, it didn’t last long. Almost immediately, the bottom of my feet smashed hard against rock. My knees buckled with the impact, and I stumbled to the ground. The flashlight fell from my mouth and bounced onto the dirt. Luckily it didn’t break. The thin beam of light still shone out from where the light had landed about a yard away.
I spotted Harold instantly. He lay almost at my feet, and he was still. Much too still. With shaking fingers I untied the cord from my waist and crawled over to grab the flashlight. Then I sank down next to Harold.
Harold’s eyelids fluttered when I pointed the beam of my little flashlight at his face. I felt a rush of relief. He was alive! And he was regaining consciousness.
“Nancy,” he croaked as his eyes opened all the way.
“Yes, I’m here,” I said. “You had quite a fall.”
“I remember,” he whispered.
“What hurts?” I asked him. I’d already spotted a bump on his head the size of a golf ball. It wasn’t bleeding much—just a little trickle—but it worried me.
“Everything,” he admitted. “But I’m all right.” He started to sit up.
I gently pushed him back onto the ground. “Stay still. An ambulance is on the way. The emergency rescue people will be here soon.” I ran my hands slowly down his arms and legs, feeling for bumps or jutting bo
nes. “Nothing broken, I don’t think,” I told him.
I used my flashlight to try to get a better look at his condition. The faint light didn’t help me much, but I could see that one of his pant legs had been ripped open. He had the start of a nasty bruise on his bare calf, and his skin was torn and bleeding. There were little cuts and scrapes all over his arms and hands.
“So I’ll live?” Harold asked. He gave a weak smile.
“Absolutely,” I told him. “You’ll be back selling cheese before you know it.”
“I hope so,” he said. “This acting thing is even more dangerous than I thought.”
Suddenly the cavern was flooded with light. It was like being photographed by one thousand flash cameras all at once. It took me a moment to realize what had happened. The movie lights had been dragged into the cave and pointed down at us, just as I had asked. Morris had come through for me!
I blinked rapidly, trying to get rid of the blue and white dots filling my vision. I hadn’t thought I’d ever say the cavern was too bright, but at that moment it almost was.
My eyes adjusted and I got a better look at Harold. To my relief I couldn’t find any injuries I’d missed in the dim light.
“I didn’t fall quite as far as I thought I did,” Harold said, staring up at the mouth of the cavern high above us. “It felt as if I went about halfway to the center of the earth.”
“You went far enough,” I answered. “I’m surprised that you weren’t hurt worse, landing on this hard ground.” I looked around to see if there was something that had broken his fall.
What I saw forced the air out of my lungs in a whoosh.
“What?” Harold asked. “What’s wrong?”
He tilted his head so he could see what I was looking at. He let out a shrill shriek of terror that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Two skeletons lay on the cold stone next to Harold. Their skulls were turned toward me, and their empty eye sockets stared right through me, the darkness showing through the gaping holes.
Harold screamed again, and used both hands to shove himself away from the skeletons.
“Harold, no!” I cried. “You have to stay still until the medics get here!” I gently held him by the shoulders until he calmed down.
“Sorry, Nancy. It’s just that seeing those things right next to me …” He let his words trail off.
“I know,” I answered. “I felt like I was going to jump out of my own skin!”
Harold kept himself turned away from the horrible piles of bone. But I could see curiosity in his eyes. “Are they who I think they are?” he asked without looking at the skeletons.
I took a deep breath and turned back to the skeletons. I forced myself to study them. One still wore the remnants of leather boots. The boots were almost entirely gone, but I could see the sharp silver spurs still gleaming in the light. The other skeleton lay half on top of a gun with an ivory handle. I recognized it immediately. Esther Rackham had left behind an identical gun when she died. It was in the River Heights Historical Society museum. Everyone had always assumed that it was a gift from her husband, Ethan Mahoney. But now I saw the truth—that gun hadn’t belonged to Esther at all. It had belonged to one of her brothers. They must have had matching guns!
I glanced back at Harold and nodded. “The Rackham boys!” I answered. “One of them still has his gun. It matches Esther Rackham’s famous ivory-handled pistol.”
“No matter what else is going on, you always find a mystery to solve, Nancy,” Harold said. He coughed, then winced in pain. “I guess now we know what happened to the Rackham Gang, huh? Looks like they never left town.”
I nodded. “We still don’t know what happened to all the money they stole, though,” I said.
I gazed around the narrow chasm, shifting into sleuthing mode. Every inch of the place was now as bright as day. On the wall that I had rappelled down hung bits and pieces of old rusted chain. Clearly there had once been a chain ladder leading down to this chamber from the main cave above us. And at the bottom of the old ladder I spotted something that made my heart pound with excitement: a rotting wooden chest. At one time the chest had clearly been bound with brass, but now most of the brass joints were hanging off the ancient wood. But I knew what it was anyway. It was the chest that the Rackham boys had stolen from Ethan Mahoney’s office on the riverboat. I’d seen pictures of that chest from the police reports about the Great River Heist. For a long time after the heist, there had been a poster with a picture of the chest, advertising a reward for anyone who found the stolen money.
But nobody had known that the chest was nearby the whole time—right down here in this secret cave. I stood up and walked over to look into the chest.
Empty. The money was gone!
Truth and Lies
Nancy, what’s going on down there?” Bess shouted. She sounded as if she was a mile away, and her voice bounced around the stone shaft. “We heard screaming.”
“Harold’s fine!” I yelled back, my own voice echoing strangely too. “So am I. But you’ll never guess who we found down here!”
“The Rackhams?” Luther asked. Even from this far away I could hear the wonder and excitement in his voice.
“Yes! Well, their skeletons, anyway,” I yelled back.
“I hear the ambulance,” Bess called. “We’re going to meet them. We’ll get someone down to you ASAP.”
“Hear that?” I asked Harold. “You’ll be above-ground in no time.”
“Great,” he answered. His eyes wandered toward the skeletons, then quickly jerked away.
I wanted to take a closer look at them—to see if there was anything else besides the spurs and the gun on their bodies. But there would be time for all that after Harold was safe aboveground.
I turned all my attention to Harold. I noticed that the cut in the center of the lump on his forehead was bleeding more heavily. I pulled out a square of gauze from the waistband of my long skirt and gently pressed it over the shallow cut.
“I want to bandage up your knee,” I told him. “Can you hold the gauze in place on your head? We need to keep the pressure on it to stop the bleeding.”
“Uh-huh.” He slid his fingers on top of the bandage and held the gauze against his skin, which shone pale in the bright light. Poor Harold had never been much of an adventurer. This might just be the worst upheaval he’d ever had in his life.
I wrapped an Ace bandage around his slashed and bruised knee, and anchored it in place with the little metal clips attached to the bandage. “How’s that feel?” I asked. “I want it to be tight, but not so much that you’re in more pain.”
“It’s fine,” he answered. “I’m just glad to have some company down here.”
“I’m so sorry I got you into this,” I told him. “You would never have been in the cave if I hadn’t talked you into joining the movie cast.”
“Don’t apologize, Nancy. Being a part of the movie is more fun than I’ve had in years,” Harold told me. He gave my arm a pat with his free hand. “I love the cheese shop, but I needed a little adventure.” He chuckled. “Well … maybe not quite this much.”
I felt some pebbles hit the top of my head. Glancing up, I saw one of the emergency medical technicians begin to rappel down the wall. The EMT had a harness that looked a lot more comfy and secure than my electrical cords.
“You’ll have even more company in a sec,” I told Harold. I watched as the EMT swung down the wall in stages.
“Coming in for a landing,” the EMT called.
I moved even closer to Harold to give her plenty of room. A moment later she hit the ground.
“You’re a little too late for those two,” Harold told her. He jerked his thumb at the skeletons. I felt myself relax a bit. He couldn’t be too badly hurt if he was able to joke around.
“So I see,” the EMT answered with a grin. The skeletons didn’t seem to bother her at all. “I’m Sally LaMott. I’ll be your flight attendant out of here,” she told Ha
rold. She crouched down next to him and began checking him over the same way I had. She examined his bandaged knee.
“Nice job,” she told me.
Another harness was being lowered down from up above. This one had a metal cage attached to the end. I recognized it as a type of stretcher. When it reached the bottom, Sally unhooked half of the cage so that the thin metal straps that connected it to the rope hung loose. I helped her slip the straps underneath Harold’s body. We pulled them through, then attached them back onto the main rope.
I put a hand on Harold’s arm. “You’re ready to go,” I told him.
“I most certainly am,” he agreed. “I can’t wait to get away from those Rackham boys!”
“Lift him gently,” Sally called. Someone up above began hauling him up. Sally waited until his stretcher disappeared over the top of the wall, then she strapped her own harness back on. “I’m going to go up and help them get him into the ambulance,” she told me. “One of the guys from the search-and-rescue team will come down to get you out in a few minutes. Are you okay down here?”
I nodded. “I don’t mind the skeletons,” I assured her. “In fact, I think they’re interesting.”
She looked me over. “Brave girl,” she said approvingly. Then she tugged her rope, and her partners up top began pulling her up the wall.
“Sally?” I called after her. “Do you think you could leave us the harnesses when you get out?” I asked. “I know Luther, our history expert, is going to want to come down here and see the remains of the Rackham boys.”
“Sure,” Sally answered. “We won’t need the harnesses immediately, once I get your friend here in the ambulance. We have a spare set just in case we need them, anyway. Just make sure to return them.”
“I will,” I promised.
Luther must have hopped into the harness as soon as Sally got out of it. He came rappelling down to meet me about a minute after I saw Sally reach the top of the cavern. That didn’t surprise me. I had been half expecting Luther to just jump down here to see the Rackhams!