William Arden - The Mystery of the Headless Horse

Jupiter shook his head. “No, if he’d buried the sword in here, the fresh dirt would have shown for a long time. I don’t think he’d have risked that. However — ”

The stocky First Investigator was looking thoughtfully at the rusted old stove. Its pipe went up through the tin roof, and its feet rested on a slab of stone.

“I wonder,” Jupiter said, “if this stove can be moved easily?”

“Let’s find out,” Pete said.

The tall Second Investigator gave the stove a push. It was solid and heavy, but it moved. It wasn’t attached to the flat stone under it.

The pipe was jointed with a short section just above the stove. “Slide up that short piece,” Jupiter ordered.

Pete pushed at the short section of pipe.

“Gosh, it’s rusted tight,” he said.

“It wouldn’t have been in 1846,” Jupiter exclaimed. “Break it off if you have to.”

With the help of some tools from Bob’s saddlebag, Pete broke the rusty stovepipe just above the stove. Then, all together, the four boys heaved the stove off its slab. Pete kneeled and tried to move the stone.

“Ooofff,” he grunted. “It’s too heavy, First.”

“Over there.” Diego pointed to a wall. “That beam of wood looks loose.”

Jupiter helped Diego to rip the beam from the wall while Bob and Pete rolled the stove close to the slab. Pete dug down beside the slab until he found the bottom, then scooped out a hole big enough to let the end of the beam slip under the edge of the slab. With the middle of the long plank resting against the stove as a fulcrum for their lever, the four boys heaved their weight down on the other end of the wood.

The flat stone slab flipped up and fell away, revealing a small, deep hole under it! Diego bent over the dark hole.

“I see something!” he cried even before Bob turned on his flashlight.

He reached down into the hole as far as he could and pulled out some short lengths of frayed rope, a heavy sheet of paper that was brown with age, and a long, rolled-up piece of canvas that had been tarred black. Diego looked at the browned piece of paper.

“It’s in Spanish,” he said. “Fellows! It’s a proclamation from the US Army dated 9th September, 1846! Something about rules for the civilian population.”

“That tarred canvas is just the size for wrapping a sword,” Jupiter realized. He began to unroll the canvas with trembling hands.

“It’s empty!” Pete groaned as the canvas opened on nothing.

“Diego, is there anything else down there!” Jupiter said.

Bob stood over the hole with his flashlight while Diego looked inside and felt around with his hand.

“No,” Diego said, “there’s nothing I… Wait! I’ve got something! It’s… It’s just a small rock.”

Dejected, Diego brought his hand out and opened it to show a small, dusty rock. He rubbed it clean against his shirt. Now the small, almost square stone was a deep and glittering green!

“Is it…?” Bob started to ask.

“An emerald!” Jupiter cried. “The Cortés Sword must have been in that hole! That must be where Don Sebastián had it hidden at first. When he escaped from Sergeant Brewster, he got the sword and hid it somewhere else. Maybe someone had a hint that the sword was here, or maybe he just didn’t think this shack was safe enough.”

“He was right,” Bob said. “We spotted it pretty fast.”

“Then he wouldn’t have tried to hide out here himself,” Diego said. “This can’t be the place.”

“No,” Jupiter agreed, “but the emerald means that we’re getting closer. Now we know that Don Sebastián had the sword out here. It wasn’t smuggled to him. Sergeant Brewster’s story has one more lie in it. No, the sword was here until Don Sebastián came for it that night and hid it somewhere else! He hid the sword, and himself, and he had to do it fast.”

“Jupe?” Pete said suddenly. “What’s that noise?”

They listened. It was a loud drumming sound from somewhere outside. Almost a roar like an avalanche…

“Rain!” Bob exclaimed. “It’s hitting everywhere except here, under the rock overhang. Wow, it’s a real deluge.”

“No,” Pete said, “I mean that other sound. Hear it?”

Jupiter shook his head and Bob shrugged. But Diego heard it.

“Voices!” Diego whispered. “Someone’s out there.”

They slipped out the doorway and crouched behind the thick bushes that hid the shack. The three tramp-like cowboys were crossing the small canyon in the downpour. Their voices floated through the heavy rain.

“… saw ’em come this way, Cap. Four of ’em.”

“… keep followin’ this trail.”

The men moved on past the shack without seeing it under the overhang, and vanished around the next hill. Jupiter stood up.

“They won’t be back for a while,” he said. “We’ll get back to Condor Castle before they spot us. Come on.”

But this time Jupiter was wrong! The boys were still crossing the open canyon when voices shouted behind them!

“You four!”

No one had to tell the boys to run!

The boys charged out of the narrow, overgrown trail into the muddy dirt road, and stopped. Breathless, they looked right and left, not knowing which way to run!

“If we run down the road,” Pete said, “those cowboys might catch us before we got to the county road!”

“They’d see us if we tried to climb up on the ridge!” said Bob.

“And we can’t run up the road and cross the dam,” Diego added. “It’s all under water — we’d be swept right over!”

Paralysed by indecision, the boys stood on the road in the torrent of rain.

Behind them, the three pursuing cowboys crashed through the thick brush, swearing and raging as they got in each other’s way. The violent voice of the black-haired Cap could be heard urging the others on.

“Hurry!” Pete cried. “Let’s try the road!”

“No,” Jupiter ordered. “Down in the arroyo! Towards the end of it, near the dam! They’ll be sure we wouldn’t try to run that way — so we will!”

Wasting no more time, the four boys plunged down into the arroyo. They clung to the side, trying to keep above the water that almost filled the deep gully. Under the cover of the steep sides and thick brush, they started to work their way towards the dam.

Up on the road heavy boots sloshed in the mud. Their hearts pounding, the boys flattened themselves against the steep bank of the arroyo, silent and motionless in the cover of thick chaparral. Three harsh voices argued angrily almost directly above them!

“Where the devil did they run!”

“Slippery little punks!”

“You think they really got the keys?”

“Sure they did! They ran, didn’t they, and we couldn’t find no keys at that barn!”

“Cap? Maybe they ran to the dam, huh?”

“Don’t be dumber than you gotta be, Tulsa. Even kids’d know better’n to try crossin’ that dam now!”

“They ain’t over on that ridge, so they must’ve took the road. Come on!”

The three cowboys sloshed away towards the distant hacienda and the county road. In the arroyo, the boys waited quietly in the rain.

“They’re gone,” Bob finally said with relief.

“We’d better go, too,” Diego said. “We can’t hide here.”

“Only where do we go?” Pete asked. “They’ve got us blocked on the road, we can’t cross the dam, and they’ll come back this way sooner or later.”

“Perhaps,” Jupiter said, “there is somewhere close to the dam where we could hide until we’re sure they’ve gone for good. And if there isn’t, we’ll cross that low mound and use it as cover to get to the far side of the ridge. Then we can hide behind Condor Castle. We’re not safe in this arroyo. Those guys only have to look over the edge and they’ll see us.”