The Lost Cipher Read online

  There was no sign of him there either. Behind the house, the only movement came from the leaves of the orchard trees whispering in the breeze pouring down from the mountains above the hollow. The two boys stopped beneath the canopy of the huge oak and scanned the rest of the little farm. For all they knew, the old man was way up in the hollow, miles away.

  “Maybe he went back up there to get his shotgun,” George ventured, pointing up into the mountains.

  “If he did, he’s gotta be back before dark,” Lucas replied. Still, he knew if Creech didn’t return soon, they’d never have time to get back to camp before nightfall—or before Maggie or Aaron tracked them down first.

  And just because Lucas was certain this was the oak from the cipher, the treasure could be anywhere near the big tree. Only the rest of Annie Morris’s book would tell him exactly where, but that was locked up tight in Creech’s desk. And if it wasn’t still in the ground, if Creech somehow had it, there was still a chance the old man would help him. Either way, he needed Creech to show up soon.

  Just then, a crow cawed from the big rock looming behind the outhouse.

  “Or maybe he’s in there,” George said, pointing at the little shed under the rock.

  “He’s got a real bathroom, remember?” said Lucas. “Why would he be in there?”

  It was the first time Lucas had paid much attention to the outhouse. From where they stood, he could see a tiny window in the shape of a moon carved in its door. Like the main house, the little shack was well cared for, with fresh paint and a solid-looking roof.

  Why care for an old outhouse if you don’t even need it anymore?

  It was built right up against the big rock too, where it would have been next to impossible to dig the hole. And uphill from the house?

  “That outhouse don’t even make sense, George.”

  “If you say so, Lucas,” replied George. “I mean, no offense, but you’ve probably got a little more outhouse experience than me.”

  “Yeah, I do,” replied Lucas, still staring at the little outbuilding, “and I ain’t ever seen one uphill of a house and built right next to a big ol’ rock.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  Lucas grinned at George. “I’m saying maybe that ain’t no outhouse. But maybe it’s a hole.”

  Before George could reply, Lucas was sprinting uphill toward the little shack.

  CHAPTER 32

  Lucas stopped outside the outhouse and waited for George to catch up. Aside from the buzz of a yellow jacket flying out through the little moon cut out of the door, there was no sound from inside.

  George, still panting, extended his hand toward the door. “You first.”

  Lucas peeked through the moon, but the inside was as black as a cave. The cool air wafting from the little window smelled only of earth and wood, definitely not the stench of a real outhouse. He grabbed the door’s rough wood handle and pulled.

  The outhouse faced east, away from the setting sun, so the interior of the little shack was still shadowy and dim. Lucas half expected to see a secret staircase or a ladder leading underground, but instead they found an old, well-worn bench with a hole in the center, just like a real outhouse. Hanging above the bench, a brittle shell of skin shed by a long, fat snake was draped over a ceiling beam like a warning, the kind of spooky thing Creech would have left there to scare someone out of the place. Lucas looked back at the hole in the bench.

  “We need a flashlight,” he said. “At least we could see what’s down there.”

  Lucas stepped into the tiny structure and moved to one side, so some daylight could penetrate the pit beneath the seat. He tried to look into the hole, but the light only fell a few inches inside. Beyond that, the hole was so black it could have been bottomless.

  “George,” Lucas said, never taking his eyes off the hole, “does that watch light up?”

  “Whoa, wait a minute.” George protested.

  “I need a light.”

  George unbuckled the bulky wristwatch and handed it to Lucas. “My mom gave me that watch, Lucas. Drop it in that hole, and I swear you’re going in after it,” he said. “Even if you have to scuba dive in dookie.”

  “Just show me which button.”

  George took the watch and pressed a button on the side. The watch’s face glowed a dim blue.

  “That ain’t much light, but it’s somethin’,” said Lucas, taking the watch back from him.

  He poked the watch down into the hole but immediately felt his hand encased in spiderwebs. When he pulled it out, a fat black widow was dangling from the watch strap.

  “Dang!” he shouted and flung the spider out into the sunlight, just past George’s face.

  “Jesus!” said George. “Is it on me?!”

  “No, it went flying.” Lucas wrenched a splinter of lumber from one of the floor planks and poked it into the hole, stirring it around to knock down any more webs. He tossed the stick into the hole and heard it hit bottom a second later. Holding the watch down in the hole again, he hit the button for the light. The beam only illuminated a few feet of swirling dust. Below that was nothing but black.

  “Not enough,” he said.

  He backed out just far enough to see the sun. It wasn’t far from the top of the trees along a distant ridge. They’d be out of sunlight in an hour. Lucas angled the watch to catch the sun’s rays and carefully moved it until its reflection found the bench. After a few tries, he directed the little beam of light into the hole and held it steady.

  “Look down in there and see if you see anything,” he told George.

  The younger boy went into the outhouse and stood to the side of the light beam. He leaned over and peered in the hole.

  “There’s just dirt,” he said. “Or at least I hope that’s dirt.” He moved his head a little closer to the hole. “Wait a minute. Move it a little lower. There. Hold it steady.”

  George turned to look at his friend.

  “Lucas, there’s something bright down there.”

  Lucas’s breath caught in his throat. His hands shook as he tried to keep the watch focused down the hole.

  “George, you hold it and let me look.”

  They switched positions, and in a few seconds, George had the reflection shining down the hole again. Lucas watched as the narrow circle of light fell on something solid and white.

  “That’s just quartz rock. Definitely not gold.”

  “Silver maybe?” asked George.

  “Just rock,” replied Lucas. “But looks like a bunch of them stacked up like a wall.”

  Then Lucas remembered the words from Beale’s description: The vault is roughly lined with stones…

  “Move it around a little, George.”

  The beam of light dropped down below the wall of rocks and fell on something rusty.

  “Right there, George!”

  It was some kind of metal container, maybe the size of a basketball, topped with a lid. And there were others around it.

  …securely packed in iron pots with iron covers…

  “There’s pots down there! Just like in the story!” shouted Lucas, kicking the bench in his excitement.

  One of the planks on the front of the bench clattered to the wood floor, and a sunbeam over George’s shoulder cast its light through the swirling dust all the way to the bottom of the hole.

  Dozens of iron pots covered in orange rust were stacked in neat rows at the bottom of the pit.

  The treasure vault was exactly as Beale had described it.

  Lucas braced himself and pried a plank off the top of the bench. It was hardly even nailed in place, as if Creech were making it easy for someone to get to the treasure.

  Together, they knocked loose the other boards that formed the bench and propped them against the wall. Every board they removed let more of the day’s dying light into the
hole, revealing a vault walled in on three sides with carefully stacked chunks of white quartz.

  The pit was dug several feet under the sloping rock that jutted from the hillside outside, forming a rough, natural ceiling for the back half of the vault. Half of the floor, six feet down, was covered in the round, metal pots.

  Lucas wanted to jump straight in, but he was afraid he’d land on the pots. “Here,” he said to George, “lower me down.”

  Lucas flopped onto his belly and dangled his legs over the edge of the dark hole. He braced one hand against one wall of the outhouse while George held on to his other hand and lowered him in.

  “I can’t catch my breath,” said George.

  Lucas felt it too—gold fever. When he dropped onto the dirt floor of the vault, his head was spinning, and he had to stop for a few seconds to calm down.

  “Which one should I open?” he asked George, hovering over the rusty kettles.

  “Hey, you found it. You pick.”

  Lucas grabbed the lid of one of the pots closest to him and began to pull.

  It was rusted shut.

  “Hold on,” called George, disappearing from view. When he returned, he tossed a fist-sized rock into the vault next to Lucas. “Try hitting it with that.”

  Lucas struck the edge of the lid a few times and finally saw it give a little. He grasped the lid and pulled again. This time it gave way, and he turned the heavy pot to the light.

  Empty.

  He banged away at another lid and knocked it off. Another empty one.

  The next lid he tried came off easily.

  Nothing.

  He began frantically shoving aside the empty pots to get at the ones in the back. But each one he tried was filled with nothing but a handful of powdery orange rust. He had opened more than half the pots in the vault before he heard George yelling his name.

  “Lucas! Lucas, stop! There’s nothing there.”

  But Lucas was nearly delirious. He kept scattering lids and empty pots, banging open the ones that might still be hiding gold or silver.

  There has to be something!

  “Lucas. Listen! You need to stop…Lucas!”

  The tremble in George’s voice brought him out of his frenzy. When he turned away from the jumble of pots and lids and looked up into the light, he saw that George’s eyes were rimmed with tears. He realized he was crying himself.

  There’s nothing left.

  Nothing.

  “Come on, Lucas,” George whimpered, “just get out of the hole.”

  George reached out a hand to help Lucas up the side. Outside, squinting in the fading sunlight, Lucas began angrily knocking the dirt off his clothes, hollering as he did.

  “He’s a liar! That mean old snake is nothin’ but a liar!” He screamed toward the mountains and then at the house, hoping Creech could hear him. “GIDDY CREECH AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A LYIN’, STINKIN’ SNAKE!”

  With the final word, he spun around and gave the outhouse wall a kick that snapped a plank loose. It felt good, breaking something that belonged to the old man, felt like he was kicking Creech himself. So Lucas reared back to give the shack another kick, this one even harder, figuring he’d turn the old man’s outhouse into a pile of splinters.

  But a voice, rough and familiar, stopped him before he could.

  “Son, I hope you ain’t gonna tear down my old johnny house. It’s sorta sentimental.”

  Gideon Creech stood on top of the rocks above the outhouse, his shotgun cradled across his chest.

  CHAPTER 33

  Spry as a mountain goat, Creech hopped down off the rocks and leaned the shotgun against the outhouse. With a glance inside the little shack, he surveyed the damage they’d done. But instead of being furious, he smiled a real smile at them for the very first time.

  “I figured that little book of mine was missin’ a page. Looks like you did a little code crackin’ from it too.” He glanced at the four-wheeler parked under the tree. “And you come all the way back here on that little thing too?” Creech shook his head. “Awful headstrong, ain’t you, son?”

  “So what happened to the treasure?” Lucas asked, still angry that his efforts had amounted to nothing and that Creech had known all along.

  “Well,” replied Creech, “that’s a long story. But a lot of it went back to them explorers’ families a long time ago, at least the ones that could be found. Then a lot of what was left bought some of these mountains. About twenty thousand acres’ worth, in fact.”

  “Twenty thousand acres!” George exclaimed. “So the money is just sitting there? Doing nothing?”

  “Hold on, boy,” the old man shot back. “Keepin’ a big chunk of these mountains from gettin’ logged or mined or turned into some kind of fancy resort for city folks ain’t exactly doin’ nothin’. The way I see it, I’m gettin’ a pretty good return on my investment leavin’ it just like it is. That and lettin’ it help a few kids now and then.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lucas, but then it dawned on him. Twenty thousand acres. Same as the camp. “The camp? Camp Kawani belongs to you?”

  Creech folded his arms over his chest and a crooked grin escaped his face. “Yep.”

  Lucas’s jaw dropped open and he stared at George. So Creech really was rich. But owning a camp to help a bunch of kids was about the last thing he’d expected. Creech went on.

  “See, when I was a boy, just about your age, my own mother passed away. Died sudden too, like your parents did. I didn’t know it then, but after I grew up, I saw how this place is what kept me survivin’ in that bad time. Sure I still had my father, but he had more than me to worry about, so he couldn’t be around much. And as lonesome as it is here, well, those rocky knobs up there, this creek, even that big ol’ tree over there, I guess they’re what brought me back to life after a pretty bad time. They showed me this life’s just too danged full a’ wonders to give up on just because you lose a part of yours. It just takes some time and quiet to see that for yourself. ’Course keepin’ these mountains from gettin’ ruined ain’t a bad idea either.”

  Lucas understood now what Creech meant—maybe trying to save the mountain above Indian Hole meant that he’d known it all along. And maybe he still had one last chance.

  “Mr. Creech,” he said, “I need your help with somethin’ else, and I got nobody else to ask.”

  Lucas told him about his mountain, describing it with the same reverence Creech had for Moccasin Hollow and the wilderness around it, how it had been a part of his family for two hundred years and a part of him for as long as he could remember. “But it’s about to be sold and torn apart, and it’s all I got left.” Confessing his own desperate future and giving up what little pride he had left to the old man made it hard to keep his voice from quivering and the tears from spilling out again.

  “I hear you, son,” Creech finally said, “but I don’t think you need my help.”

  “Why?” asked Lucas, thinking, I don’t need another useless speech.

  “Why don’t you and George go on over there and sit in the shade? I need to get somethin’ from the house.”

  Creech picked up his shotgun and headed for the house. When he returned, he was carrying Annie Morris’s book of poems. A folded sheet of paper and a stubby pencil were sticking out of the pages.

  “Need you to do a little more decodin’,” he said, handing Lucas the book. “Just the first twenty-five numbers.”

  Lucas opened the book and pulled out the sheet of paper. Cipher Number Three: Names and Residences. The first twenty-five numbers were underlined.

  “Why Mr. Creech?” Lucas asked.

  “Because that cipher there is the most important one,” Creech said.

  “Jeez, Lucas, just do it,” said George. “We still gotta get back to camp, you know.”

  Creech only nodded.

  Lucas sat do
wn with his back against the big oak. He handed the code and the pencil to George who was already sitting in the grass. He still didn’t see how this wasn’t just a waste of time. “Okay,” he said to George, “you give me the numbers and I’ll find the letters.”

  “The first one’s eighteen,” said George.

  Inside the fragile book, the little numbers were scrawled above every tenth word, just like on the loose page that had led him back to Moccasin Hollow. They were so faint that he could hardly make them out in the fading evening light, but Lucas found the eighteenth word on the first page. The word was garden. “G,” he said. “Write that down.”

  “Okay, the next one is 224.”

  Lucas found the word in the second poem. Under. “It’s a U,” he said, thinking G-U. That spells exactly nothing.

  Three letters later, they had the letters G-U-I-D-E.

  “Guide,” said George. “At least it spells something.”

  “Yeah, but what’s it got to do with me?” said Lucas, looking at Creech.

  The old man only nodded at the book, silently urging him to keep going.

  George gave him the next one, “422.”

  Lucas gently turned the fragile pages and saw that the word he needed was on the page he’d stolen. He fished into his pocket and unfolded the brittle paper, looking guiltily at Creech. “It’s right here,” he said to George. “Ring,” he said. “It’s an R.”

  George fed him the next six numbers and wrote the letters down in silence. Finally, George looked up at Creech, then back at the paper. “The next one’s 387,” he said, “but I bet it’s a T.”

  Lucas scanned the loose page for the word and found it.

  The word was tall. A T.

  “How’d you figure that?” he asked George.

  “Lucas, it’s spelling out your name.” He shoved the paper in front of Lucas’s face for him to read. George had written “G-U-I-D-E-R-W-H-I-T-L-A-T.” “The next two are 34 and 155, but you know they’re going to be a C and an H.”

  Lucas looked them up, turning the pages a bit more urgently. George was right.

  The code spelled out “G-U-I-D-E-R-W-H-I-T-L-A-T-C-H.”