Andrea pored over it, lost herself in the story it told, while Margaret watched patiently.
"So what do you want to know?" Andrea asked at last.
"You are so like your father," Margaret smiled.
"We're nothing alike."
"Oh, but you are. You have his...steadfastness. Calm intelligence. You're the kind of person one can depend on."
"He doesn't seem to think so," mumbled Andrea, and then caught herself. She picked up a pen and pointed at the map. "The entrance is here, but now there are double vault doors, of course, not just one. Kind of an air lock. This is a slot at the base of the wall that connects to the main tunnel system, which is off-limits. This one labeled the Crypt is below the level of the main tunnel. Bones have been found there." She paused and her pen traced the passages beyond. "This section leads toward a deep shaft called the Drool. It's walled off now. I suspected it linked up like that. But the passage is dangerous. Rock fall, that sort of thing. And the Drool is full of water."
"So the wall is still intact? "
"You've been in the cavern?"
"Of course. Didn't your father tell you?"
Andrea's lips compressed into a thin line.
"I guess he wouldn't. He might not want to talk about it."
Andrea twirled the pen between her fingers. "He's happily married you know."
"Yes! You're exactly like your father!" She sat on the corner of the desk and managed to look comfortable.
"Will you get off my desk?"
Margaret stood as though it were her own idea and paced over to the window to gaze out at grey sky and bleak hillsides. Tiny snowflakes melted on the sill.
"So that's the excuse he gave you? Rock fall?"
"What are you really here for?" Andrea asked.
"Why don't you ask him what's really behind the wall," said Margaret.
As Margaret strode out of the office, leaving Andrea stunned and suspicious, she smiled grimly to herself. Yes, she'd been in the cavern. As a matter of fact, there was only one person in the world who knew the cavern better than her, and he was insane.
She didn't like to dwell on the period of her life when she had become acquainted with the cave, but it had molded her into the person she was today and had set the course for the rest of her life.
Chapter 28
Fourth of July, 1971. Margaret had convinced her distracted parents that she was babysitting all weekend. They didn’t know she was dating a college boy. They certainly didn't know she was going camping with him and his friends.
She and Joe and Ron and Rich loaded up Joe's International with hot dogs, big jugs of Gallo wine and blankets, planning to drive up to Long Shot, to build a bonfire, to sleep under the stars.
Margaret had been to Long Shot before then, of course, with her parents, when she was younger. Her father had pointed out the abandoned Long Shot Hotel, and had told stories of their ancestors, of greed and intrigue, of a cavern of wonders and a golden bear lost in the tunnels under the old hotel.
"Look!" Margaret exclaimed, as she rode through the remains of the town with Joe, Ron and Rich. "That's the Long Shot Hotel!"
It was a derelict stone building with broken windows. The door hung from its hinges. Nailed to the sagging door was a sign: "For Sale-- Price Reduced."
"Oh, it's for sale!" she exclaimed.
The boys whooped with laughter. Joe had to pull over so he wouldn't crash.
But Margaret knew: Long Shot, Colorado was a magical place. It was just a matter of looking at it the right way.
When Margaret asked Joe to go back so she could get a better look, Ron groaned and Rich said, "I'd rather get a camping spot before the good ones are gone."
They'd had a late start. He was right.
Joe, the diplomat, said, "We can check it out some other time."
So they drove onto a rough spur road and parked by a fire ring filled with ash and burned trash, with the smell of pine and the chill of high altitude in the air. There was a little creek that trickled through the grass and a view of a high peak through a gap in the trees.
They built a huge bonfire, sat on logs in their bell-bottom jeans, passing around the Gallo wine jug and philosophizing. They speared hot dogs on sticks and blistered them in the fire.
A raindrop splashed onto Margaret's head, then another. They sizzled as they landed in the fire pit.
The friends laughed and covered their heads with a blanket. Drank more wine. The tiny creek swelled and a huge puddle crept toward them, threatening to drown the fire.
"I know," said Margaret. "Let's go back to Long Shot and wait out the storm in the old hotel." And it seemed like a fine idea to the rest of them.
Laughing, they tossed their gear into the truck. They sloshed down the road, which ran with water, to the hotel.
The young men dodged up the steps to the overhanging entryway but Margaret took a moment to gather handfuls of glowing red firecracker penstemon from the clump of weeds by the front steps, to spin in the rain, letting it soak her face and run into her mouth, to squint up at the surrounding peaks.
The boys teased and chided her. When she finally came inside, soaked and shivering, Joe threw a blanket over her shoulders and drew her into a warm hug.
The four of them strolled through the echoing lobby, crunching on glass and garbage.
From the lobby, Margaret and Joe wandered back into a kitchen with marble counters and sinks like bathtubs and pantries with thick wooden doors. High in the walls, small windows were darkened with grime. Through a door to the side, a debris-covered stairway led down to ground level.
At the back of the kitchen another stairway led to the basement. Joe hung back as Margaret peered into the darkness, wishing she had a flashlight.
"There's nothing down there," said Joe.
Margaret tore her gaze away from it. "No," she said. "Everything is down there. I'll bet that's where the cave is."
Joe was about to ask what she meant when they heard a commotion above. They sprinted back to the lobby shouting, "What's wrong? Ron? Rich?"
"Hey, check this out!" Ron shouted down from the second floor, and they trooped up the wide marble staircase to the ballroom, where the light was better, coming through the windows. There was upended furniture strewn around the room. Hanging from the ceiling was a cobwebbed crystal chandelier, and at the far end of the room, an ostentatious mirrored bar, barely touched by time. Above the bar a life-sized naked woman was painted onto the plaster.
The four of them stood speechless.
"This is the grooviest thing I have ever seen," said Ron.
But it was more than groovy. It was miraculous, overwhelming.
A tear slipped down Margaret's face and she wiped it away, embarrassed. She had been waiting all her life to come to this place. Yes, Great-grandpa Gundy's golden bear, was there, somewhere, waiting for her, but it was more than that. It was destiny.
"Can you feel it?" Margaret asked at last.
Ron and Rich looked away, but she knew they could feel it, too. Joe gazed into her eyes, and it seemed like in that moment they were two eagles, talons gripped together, falling from the sky.
"We have to buy it," said Margaret.
"With what?" said Joe.
It was true, Margaret had no money. "We could get a loan."
"And then what would we do with it? It would take years to fix up."
The camaraderie, the laughter died out. Each was sunk in his own private world.
They built a fire in the grand fireplace, finished the jug of wine, opened another. Margaret jammed the penstemon into the empty jug and placed it in front of the dusty mirror in the center of the bar.
Then she and Joe found a room upstairs with unbroken windows where they could sleep alone.
Margaret woke from a fitful sleep. Had she heard a noise? She tried to remember, but all she had were scraps of dream, and even they slipped away. She patted around on top of the blanket, grasped Joe's wool plaid jacket draped there and shrugged h
er naked shoulders into it. Joe snoozed on the floor beside her, a pause between each puff of breath. Rain splattered on the window. She could barely see the outlines of the broken furniture: the shredded mattress, the leaning chest of drawers.
Out in the hall, the floor creaked. Had one of the guys gotten up for a pee? She stood slowly, dizzy from the dregs of sleep, from too much wine, and tiptoed across the dirty floorboards to the bedroom door, stuck her finger in the hole where the doorknob should have been.
The hinges groaned as she leaned out.
First, there was the odor. Sweet, yet repellant. Like cookies and urine.
Then, there was the shadow which seemed to glide away from her down the dark hallway.
"Ron?" she whispered. "Rich?"
The shadow faded into the blackness. A shiver ran through her. She stepped back and jammed her feet into Joe's kletter boots, then clomped out to the hallway, loose laces trailing.
She felt, more than saw, the figure as it disappeared into the stairway, and she clattered after it, tripping on the shoelaces, feeling her way along the wall.
When she got the bottom of the flight and ran out into the ballroom, there were Rich and Ron, snoring softly, a manly distance between them in the huge room.
If it hadn't been Rich or Ron, who had it been? A ghost? A dream? And how could the boys sleep so peacefully, with the rain blowing through the broken windows, with the icy cold of a mountain midnight, and with her clomping around hissing their names?
She crept back up, snuggled into Joe's side for warmth and lay awake most of the rest of the night.
In the morning, the rain slowed to a drip and sunshine slowly marched on the valley. When Margaret heard Ron and Rich's laughter downstairs, she slipped out from under Joe's arm and dressed.
When she appeared in the ballroom, Rich offered her a Twinkie and Ron held out a fresh jug of wine. She accepted the Twinkie, downed it in three bites as she paced toward the bar. Something was different. As she got closer, she realized the penstemon in the jug had been decapitated. She paused and looked around, found the flower heads arranged in a tidy row at the top of the staircase down to the lobby.
"Have you guys been messing with my flowers?" A fleck of yellow cake flew out of her mouth. She wiped her chin with the heel of her hand.
Rich waved casually in the direction of the stairs. "I thought you did that."
"It wasn't me," said Ron.
What did it mean? Was it a gift from her ghost? A warning?
"I saw a damned big rat this morning," said Ron.
Lost in thought, Margaret didn't hear.
Joe appeared, yawning, and swallowed a Twinkie and a swig of wine, grimacing.
"There she is!" Ron reached into the carton in his hand, drew out a Twinkie and hurled it across the room.
Margaret saw a gray blur disappear behind the bar.
"She took my Twinkie!" Ron whined.
"Actually, you kind of gave it to her," said Joe.
They discussed what they would do that day.
"Let's go four-wheeling!" said Joe. "I bet there's all kinds of crazy mining roads around here." He was always looking for a reason to drive that truck.
"Or we could check out the cave under the hotel," said Margaret.
"Or we could do that!" said Joe. Margaret could see him trying to hide his disappointment. She liked him all the better for it.
"Why do you think there's a cave?" Rich asked.
Ron lunged forward. The rat had crept back into the center of the room.
"What are you doing?" Margaret cried.
The rat bolted back toward the bar, Ron galloping behind it.
Rich cheered him on. Joe doubled over laughing.
Ron stopped and looked around wildly, grabbed the wine jug with its headless wildflowers off the bar, cocked his arm. "I've got her cornered!"
Joe stopped laughing, but he still smiled. "Let her go, Ron."
Ron faked left, then hurled the jug.
Margaret screamed. Rich and Joe turned to see what was the matter.
Ron took two steps, crouched down behind the bar.
Bewildered, Joe searched Margaret's face.
"I got her." Ron's voice was muffled, unsure.
Margaret covered her face. Frankly, she didn't know why she'd screamed. It just had all felt like too much. Her heart had been full of something, and she had to release it.
Ron squatted down, and as he stood, he stuffed something into his jeans pocket.
"What's that?" Margaret asked.
"What?" Ron showed her his empty hand. "Nothing."
"Was there something around the rat's neck?" Joe asked.
"I thought so, too," said Ron, "but it must've just been the light."
Chapter 29
The Tuesday after Fourth of July weekend, Margaret called the number from the real estate sign and talked to a distracted man who didn't seem to remember the property at all. He called her back later that day with the price: $9000. Margaret had no idea whether it was fair, but she knew she would pay it, somehow.
Joe cradled her in his arms on the futon on the floor of his room in the apartment he shared with Ron and Rich. She played with the hair on his chest and told him the family legend of a long-ago ancestor who had been kidnaped, and of the wonders in the cave behind the Long Shot Hotel. He watched through his long eyelashes as she told him this impossible tale and hatched an even more impossible plot for the two of them to buy the building on credit, to find the treasure, to live happily ever after using their wealth to make the world a better place.
Joe was not particularly interested in wealth, or in owning a saggy old building. The one thing he wanted, more than anything in the world, was the exotic creature who lay in his arms, so perfectly soft, so unpredictable, so sexy.
For the past few years, he'd coasted through life, taking the easy way, trying not to think of the Vietnam war, of the future. Hoping to avoid the draft. He took courses in religion and philosophy, lived with Ron and Rich, served tables at an Italian restaurant. At this rate, it would take him eight years to graduate from college. And then what? Open a philosophy shop?
Then this marvelous creature had fallen into his life, bringing joy and laughter and now this crazy dream of a spiritual center in the mountains, where people come from all over the world to work toward enlightenment. Oh, it was so much richer, fuller than anything he could imagine on his own.
But to do it they needed money. And Ron, with the gently used old Mercedes and the prep school education and the mysteriously bulging wallet seemed a good place to start.
"That old hotel up in Long Shot sure is something, isn't it?" Joe said to Ron one night.
Ron grunted. He sprawled on their living room floor reading The Prophet for about the thousandth time. He should have had it memorized by now.
"Could you feel it?" Joe asked.
Ron stopped reading, but he took his time looking up from the book. "What do you want?" he said at last.
"Margaret and I want to buy it. Make it into a spiritual retreat. We need a partner."
Ron raised his eyebrows. "How much?"
"The price is $9000. Maybe we can bargain down to $8500. I don't know. I can sell my International." Selling his truck would be like selling his baby, but he would do it. "That would get us $1000."
"And Margaret?"
"She's with me."
Ron looked back to his book. Sighed. "She's not a partner if she doesn't invest."
"She's with me," Joe repeated, steel in his voice.
It didn't bother Ron so much that Margaret would be a partner. After all, Ron knew it was all her idea. What bothered Ron was that her membership in the group came through Joe.
Ron thought of the bear-shaped gold nugget hidden in the bottom of his dirty clothes basket, wondered again about the strange way it had been delivered to him. When he had killed the rat, had broken the thong around its neck and slipped the Golden Bear into his pocket, it had felt like the bear already belonged to
him. The bear's shape, its heft had felt so familiar, as though his future self knew what was in store for him and was pulling him toward his destiny. In light of that, then, Joe's invitation felt inevitable.
"I'm not putting all my savings in," Ron said.
"But you'll do it?"
Ron scratched at his scrawny beard. "I think we should ask Rich, too."
Instead of starting her freshman year at CU, Margaret shocked her parents by moving to Long Shot with Joe. Ron and Rich followed when they lost their lease. They camped in the bedrooms of the old hotel, burned wood in the fireplaces and trusted that the chimneys would draw.
It took weeks just to clean it, and then there was the stuff like replacing windows and patching walls, before the enormity of the project sank in.
But by this time they were in too deep. And it wasn't just that. They were all in love with the Long Shot Hotel, with the dream, with the sense of possibilities. In love with the future.
Going into debt, working their asses off, drifting away from family and friends, it was the best time of all of their lives. They were their own tribe, and they thought that nothing could ever come between them.
The Gundy family treasure was Margaret and Joe's secret, but all of them felt drawn to the cavern behind the vault door. Margaret brought in a locksmith they couldn't afford. It took him two days to get the vault door open because the workings were rusted, and because he kept getting distracted. Margaret hovered over him, brought him coffee, gave him pep talks. The more he slowed, the more animated she became.
She wrote the locksmith a check that would probably bounce, pushed him out to his pickup. As he crawled onto the bench seat and curled up for a nap, Margaret ran down to the basement and burst through the vault door, convinced that she would find a room of wonders, a heap of treasure, or at least a golden bear. The cave was empty. Then she saw the slot at the base of the wall and she knew, she just knew, that something wonderful waited for her there. She was right, in a way. Once she squirmed through, she found the rest of the cave system waiting for her.
Each day, they worked on the renovation, although they seemed to accomplish less and less over time. Either the problems were insurmountable (tainted well water) or too distasteful (sewage in the walls).
At night they wriggled through the slot at the base of the cave wall to explore what lay beyond it: a maze of tunnels and shafts, hidden passages, pools of black water that formed then disappeared. Every time they went into the depths of the mountain, they discovered something new.