William Arden - The Mystery of the Headless Horse

Jupiter nodded. “We were right all along. Don Sebastián planned to hide here. That’s why he put ‘Condor Castle’ on the letter to José, to tell his son where he would be. He escaped from Brewster and his buddies, got his sword from the line shack, and came up here to the cave. But the soldiers followed him, and they shot it out in here. Don Sebastián had the advantage of knowing the lay-out of the cave. Hiding in this cul-de-sac, he could pick off the soldiers as they crawled through the narrow passage. He got all three of them, but they got him, too. Some time later an earthquake buried the cave, and no one ever knew what had happened to the four men.”

“But, Jupe,” said Bob, “why didn’t Don Sebastián’s friends come here looking for him? They knew the eagle had found a nest.”

Jupiter shrugged. “We’ll never know. Perhaps they didn’t know exactly where he was and were awaiting further word. Or perhaps the earthquake covered the cave before they could get here. And apparently the friends were all killed or scattered in the fighting that soon broke out. By the time José got home after the war, there was no one to tell him that Sergeant Brewster’s report of Don Sebastián’s death wasn’t true. José might not have believed that the sword fell into the ocean with his father — but he’d then assume it was simply stolen.”

“Jupe!” Pete cried. “The Cortés Sword! It should be right here with Don Sebastián!”

They quickly searched the small cul-de-sac. Then they looked at each other in dismay.

There was no sword!

“Maybe,” Bob said, “Don Sebastián hid the sword in the cave.”

“In case something did happen to him,” Diego added. “He must have known those soldiers were close behind him. The Cortés Sword was a symbol of our family as well as a treasure. He would have tried to protect the sword and save it for José.”

“Let’s search!” Pete cried.

With only the one torch the boys couldn’t split up, so the search was slow work. Slow and useless. The cave was large, but there was almost no place to hide even a pin. The boys found one more little cul-de-sac and a few shallow crevices in the solid rock walls, but that was all. There were no holes in the solid stone floor, no debris to hide it under, and no place to dig and bury a sword.

“With Brewster and his cohorts close behind him, maybe on their way into the cave, I don’t think Don Sebastián would have had time to hide the sword even if there were a good place,” Jupiter said unhappily. “No, it looks as if he didn’t have the sword with him in this cave, fellows.”

“Then where is it?” Pete asked. “We’re no further along than when we started!”

Bob glumly agreed. “We’ve just about proven everything we guessed was true, but we still don’t have any clue to where the sword is.”

“I… I was so sure we were close to the answer,” Jupiter said slowly. “We must be missing something! Think about what — ”

“Jupiter?” Diego said, frowning. “If Don Sebastián wrote ‘Condor Castle’ on his letter to José, he knew José would come here to find him someday, right?”

“Yes, I suppose he expected still to be hiding here when José finally returned.”

“But Don Sebastián got shot here instead. Now, if he didn’t die right away but thought that he was dying, he’d worry about how José could ever find the sword. So — ”

“So he would have left some message for José!” Jupiter cried. “Of course! He would have been sure to try! Only after all this time would a message still be readable?”

“Depends what he wrote it on and with,” Pete said. “If he wrote a message. I didn’t see anything while we were looking.”

“No,” Diego admitted, “but we weren’t looking for anything like a message.”

“What could he have written a message with, anyway?” asked Bob. “I don’t think he’d have had paper and ink with him. Not if he was on the run.”

“I guess not,” said Diego. “But maybe he would have written it with what he had, fellows — blood!”

“On what?” Pete said doubtfully. “If he wrote it on his shirt or something, it’s long gone.”

“The walls?” Bob suggested, looking around.

“Badly wounded, dying,” Jupiter mused. “He couldn’t have moved much. Look on the walls of that little cul-de-sac!”

They all bent low and studied the rock walls of the cavity where Don Sebastián died. His skeleton seemed to watch them from where it lay against the small boulder.

“I don’t see anything,” Pete said at last, staying as far from the silent skeleton as he could.

“Would blood last so long, First?” Bob wondered.

“I’m not sure,” Jupiter confessed. “Maybe not.”

“What’s this?” Diego asked.

Near the skeleton, behind the small boulder, Diego picked up a small object that the boys hadn’t seen before. It was an earthenware jug with a broken top. It looked like Indian pottery.

“It’s got something at the bottom,” Diego said. “Sort of black and hard.”

Jupiter took the jug. “It’s an Indian pot, all right. That black stuff looks like dried-up paint.”

“Black paint?” Bob said.

They all looked at the pot, and then at each other.

“If he wrote something with black paint,” Pete said. “It could have faded, been covered by dust, and become almost invisible!”

“Everyone dust off the walls,” Jupiter said, pulling out his handkerchief. “And dust carefully! We don’t want to knock off any flakes of paint!”

Working gently, they all dusted the walls of the cul-de-sac. It was Pete who finally found the faint marks.

“Bob! Shine your torch right over here!”

Four words stood out faintly on the stone wall to the left of the skeleton. Spanish words, Diego translated them aloud.

“Ashes… Dust… Rain… Ocean.”

Everyone stared at the four words, wondering what they meant.

“The last two words are written pretty close together,” Diego commented. “They’re all very shaky.”

“Maybe,” Pete guessed, “he hid the sword in some fireplace somewhere?”

“Somewhere near the ocean?” Bob added.

“But how does ‘rain’ fit in?” Diego wondered.

“Maybe there’s a dusty rain tank somewhere near an outdoor fireplace,” Pete said wryly. “Face it, fellows, it’s gibberish! It doesn’t mean anything!”

“Why would my great-great-grandfather have written something that meant nothing?” Diego demanded.

“He wouldn’t have,” Jupiter said. “But… Ashes, Dust, Rain, and Ocean?” He shook his head. “I confess I don’t understand the connection at all.”

“Maybe,” Bob said, “Don Sebastián didn’t write the words. Maybe they were written earlier by someone else.”

“I don’t think so, Records. Don Sebastián would have left some message for José, I’m convinced of that, and the paint was right beside him,” Jupiter said. “And it’s unlikely that someone wrote the words after his death. If anyone had come in here later, he’d have found the four bodies and reported them, and we wouldn’t have found the skeletons. No, I’m certain that Don Sebastián wrote those words. But — ”

“Maybe he was delirious, First,” Bob said. “He was hurt bad, dying. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was writing.”

Jupiter nodded. “That’s possible, yes. But, somehow, I feel the words do mean something, taken all together. Something that Don Sebastián knew José would understand. Ashes… Dust… Rain… Ocean.”

The words seemed to echo through the hidden cave. The boys repeated them in their minds, as if hearing them over and over would reveal their secret. Concentrating hard, they were slow to notice a strange noise coming into the cave.